Oil on water

Forgive my lazy ignorance, but I’d always assumed that “Canaletto” was a nickname, based on the fact that he painted lots of pictures of Venice. I’ve only just discovered that it’s simply a diminutive of his real surname, which was Canal. It’s the only case of nominative determinism that I can think of among major painters; unless, of course, someone has evidence that Van Gogh was christened Vincent Sunflower, or that Lucian Freud’s birth certificate identifies his father as Mr Gloomynakedlady.

Plunk rock

I’m sorry to say that I’ve never been able to play a musical instrument, but deep down I know I should really have been a bass player. It’s all about temperament; it’s the Eeyore-ish, resentful glumness about them, based on the fact that, excepting the case of those who operate in the realms of funk and reggae, only about 10% of the audience will be able to identify the noise they’re making, above those ghastly egomaniacs, the guitarists and drummers and saxophonists. One way that bassists do assert their individuality, though, is through the medium of deliciously preposterous names. Don’t believe me? All the following are American jazz bass players; bar one, who’s a fictional character in a book by Thomas Pynchon. 

Ronnie Boykins
Wellman Braud
Monty Budwig
Jimmy Butts
Spanky DeBrest
Malachi Favors
Squire Gersh
Chris Lightcap
Cecil McBee
Grachan Moncur II
Kurt Mondaugen
Buell Neidlinger
Lonnie Plaxico
Esperanza Spalding
Victor Sproles
Hank Van Sickle
Ike Sturm
Leroy Vinnegar
Virtue Hampton Whitted
Chester Zardis

The fact that you almost certainly can’t spot the ringer suggests to me that the majority of bassists are in fact minor characters from the works of Pynchon (or Kurt Vonnegut, or possibly Philip K Dick) who have temporarily invaded what mere mortals (and trombonists) foolishly know as ‘the real world’.

Biba Kopf? Who’s she?

Regrets, I’ve had plenty, and I don’t mind mentioning them. At inordinate length, to anyone who’s buying.

According to a profoundly unscientific straw poll on Twitter and Facebook, these are just some of the pseudonyms I could have chosen if I’d really wanted to be a highly successful music journalist: Dirk Nastie; Glen Thrips; Rick Ord; (Tim?) Phutmon; Ace Ventura; Jeff Senstarship; Tim Shaar Footy; Tim Shaar True; Tommi Fanto; Tom Fantomi; Tad Foot-Tapper; Mitch Carper. Thanks to all who contributed to the experience. At last, I know where I went wrong in my life.

Actually the real reason I never became a successful music journalist was that I was always trying to write stuff like this, but never quite pulling it off:

Everywhere you look, there seem to be increasing signs that we are living inside a novel that JG Ballard started to write at the exact moment he died, a novel that takes the form of a reverberating hallucination that just keeps giving. Perhaps the novel/hallucination ends when Ballard himself is the most followed character on Facebook, his brain radiating astounding time-bending realities at the centre of the new post-internet universe where the numerous and multiplying levels of our existence interact. For reasons that help the writing of this column, the soundtrack to this novel/hallucination would be best supplied by Prince, himself currently mucking around with reality and his possible mysterious connection to it in ways that mix up the Ballardian with splashes of obsessive Gaga narcissism, madcap McLuhan theorising, larky Russell Brand lunacy and teasing Dylan masking.