08/02/2013 The Review Show

the show tonight, we have got the glitter, we have the gloss, we have

got glam! Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, with his inimical

directing style. More anger. A new biography of Sylvia Plath, uncovers

a hidden love of her life. Kevin Spacey builds a new house of

cards, this time in Washington DC. The nature of promises, Linda, is

they remain immune to changing circumstances.

My glamorous guests tonight are the writer and critic, Paul Morley, the

Guardian columnist, Hadley Freeman, and the literary editor of the

Times, Erica Wagner. And don't forget, you can let us know your

thoughts on Twitter. Hitchcock, famously enjoyed cameo roles in his

films, perhaps he had enjoyed becoming the star. The latest movie

portrayal, by Anthony Hopkins, is with Helen Mirren playing his wie.

But the director no doubt span in his grave at a recent TV drama, far

less flattering. Will the real Hitchcock stand up. 2012 was a

bitter sweet year for Alfred Hitchcock fans, on the one hand,

Vertonghen was voted the greatest film of -- Vertigo was voted the

greatest film of all time in a drama poll. But The Girl, starring

Toby Jones, showed him as less auture, more tormenter.

But a new biopicure may depress the balance. Hitchcock could have been

called Mrs Hitchcock, since it also tells the story of the most

important person in the director's life, his wife, Alma. Playing by

Helen Mirren, Alma Reville, who never took Hitchcock's name, always

told it to him straight. Just think of the shock value, killing off

your leading lady half way through? I mean you are intrigued, are you

not, my dear. Come on, admit it. Admit it? Actually I think it is a

huge mistake. You shouldn't wait until half way through, kill her

off after 30 minutes! Well. film is set in 1959, when Hitchcock

had to bank roll Psycho himself. The charms of matracide and cross

dressing, having been lost on usual backers. Anthony Hopkins's

performance, points to a more vulnerable side to the director.

you remember the fun we had when we started out all those years ago. We

didn't have any money then, we didn't have any time either, but we

took risks, do you remember? I just want to feel that kind of freedom

again. More, more anger, more anger. Does this latest portrayal cast any

light on the dark figure of Hitchcock?

Now everyone has their view of Hitchcock, partly because of the

cameo appearances and the television shows. What version of

Hitch do we get here? We get the more PR-friendly version than we

got in The Girl, over the Christmas period. The problem with the film

and the TV show, they are both so much less interesting than the

films they are purportedly about. I spent most of the film wishing I

was watching Psycho, this film felt twice as long as that. In both

cases, because you get such widely diverging views of him, you think

nobody knows the truth. The problem for Hitchcock is it ind, this is

not much of a spoiler, it ends with the insinuation that Hitchcock has

seen the error of his ways, he won't torment the blonde actresses

and torment them any more. That is what he did in The Girl, with The

Birds made after Psycho. It tells us the back story of Psycho, I

wasn't aware of that? It does purport to do that. But I don't

think it seems like a very reliable portrait. It is certainly not

coming across as a documentary. I would agree with the comment that I

thought, time to watch Psycho again. Did you feel the same? It is not a

work of art about a work of art, that is for sure. In a sense, it

might need nine or ten or 11 courses to get hold of Hitchcock,

so far we have had the cheesey one, The Girl, the slightly cheesey one.

And I get the feeling that over time, maybe there will be more

revelations about a Hitchcock that will start to piece together who

and what he really of. It is like a minor DVD extra, Sunday afternoon,

it is more Mid-summer Murders, there is a lot of nice things to

look at with the art directing. It has the relaxation quality of a

Mid-summer Murder, not a lot happens. Helen Mirren is too Jane

Tennyson to pull off the wife. Imelda Staunton was better. The

wife chose the actors and the actresses and put the music over

the scene, she got rid of Janet Leigh after half an hour. And then

it is what did Alfred Hitchcock actually do. It is going too far

the other way. It is more ambition than the Midsummer Murders, we have

the dialogues between Hitchcock and the mass murderer? The film is

based on a 1990 book about the making of Psycho. It was a book

strictly about the making of Psycho, and Sacha Gervasi and the screen

writers had to put in some plot development. It was about Fox not

wanting to make the movie and him bank rolling it. It was about

Hitchcock talking to the dark side of his south. What was bad for me

was the phoney plot between Helen Mirren, the wife, and a member of

the crew, and it was a phoney plot to bring him to some kind of

emotional realisation. There is lots of subtle references to

Hitchcock's directing style, and doing sorts of things that are a

homeage. You think if you are really that interested in Hitchcock,

this is a statement of the bleeding obvious. If you are not that

interested in Hitchcock, you won't want to come to a film about

Hitchcock. I wish, in way, they would go further into the idea of

doing something Lynch or Tim Burtonesque about Hitchcock, and

fantasise a bit about him, rather than saying something literal. When

I say Midsummer Murders, it isn't a criticism, it is frothy

entertainment. There is such a weight of expectation on things it

is crucified, it is very entertaining. It has an afternoon

drama feeling to it, I thought. If I was feeling poorly, sitting up in

bed, one afternoon, and came across this on the tele, I wouldn't have

been sorry. I was distracted for a couple of hours. But I didn't think

it was a great film. Interesting portrait of a marriage? Interesting

portrait of a marriage. Whether it is a portrait of this marriage. You

don't know. I did enjoy seeing two grown-up people having fairly

grown-up conversations, that is not something you see in a lot of

movies on the big screen. What do you make of the fact that we have

had these two dramas so close to each other, Vertigo being voted

Best Picture, Hitchcock has never really gone out of fashion, he's

riding high at the moment? He does. There has been an interest around

Hitchcock before, there was the terrible Gus Van Sant remake of

Psycho, shot by shot remake. It seems we have mined his movies

without showing his movies, let's look at his personal life, I think

the Tippi Hedron novel has given the material for The * girl.

guess it may bring a younger audience to Hitchcock films?

way we process everybody as a celebrity, and he was a celebrity

director, there is the way in to a film director. Effectively he was

as iconic and as famous as any of his films and actors. We are

getting a retrospective of someone who made such an impact as a famous

person. It is interesting it is retrospective. It is interesting it

ising back, it is interesting we are kind of -- it is interesting it

is looking back. We are celebrating and putting into position the 20th

sent treatment one of the things I thought was fascinate beg it was

the implication that -- fascinating about it was the implication that

he tidied up and glossed the original book, and the original

events. If that kind of thing was done now, it would be more like Saw.

The fact that he compressed it, turned it and polished it and

burnished it into almost a poem is why he's a genius. You get a sense

of what is going on without the grim event. It made me want to get

out a DVD of Psycho and watch it all over again. Peter York once

said that Brian Ferry led such an art-directed existence, he should

be hanging on the wall of the Tate. Now he is, at least his sequined

jacket and trousers are, in a new exhibition in Tate Liverpool. Glam!

The Performance of Style glam casts a critical eye over the period,

when art and popular culture collided, and popstars and artists

turned themselves into living artists.

Bringing together over 100 works from both sides of the Atlantic,

Glam! The Performance of Style glam is an ecclectic and playful

collection of culture from an extravagant era. Alongside the

paintings and photographs, there are record sleeves, posters, movies,

magazines and stage costumes, exploring the glam aesthetic in all

its glory. The exhibition really explores how glam was like fine art

ideas at the front face of popular culture. The glam narrative begins

in the late 1960s, there was a real culture of convergence that was

evidences in art school culture. This coming together of fashion

designers, musician, artists. the heart of glam are definitions

of gender and the notions of masquerade and transformation.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Mick Rock's photograph of Andrew

Logan, as an alternative Miss World, post-hostess. So many artists were

playing with gender, attempting to be male and female, using self-

staging masquerade. This is reflected in the exhibition.

Despite the glamour and glitter hang more expected work, the name

David Hockney is not the first one to spring to mind when appraising

the art of the glam era. I think Hockney was important. He was

somebody who was a graduate of the Royal College of Art. He was really

part of a very glamorous millure, the painting included is a famous

portrait of Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark. These two together

epitomised this culture of convergence. It was through pop

music, and more crucially the rock star as the embodiment of all these

elements, that glam cull canure was expressed most explicitly. There

must be something in the air, in March the V & A is going glam, with

their exhibition, David Bowie Is. Is it time to remake and remodel

ourselves, and declare 2013 the year of the glam revival?

Now Paul, I walked into the first room of this exhibition and it was

like my bedroom! But that was my bedroom! What are you talking about.

We didn't have the same bedroom. no, it was the same thing.

Bowie albums, the Biba posters? don't know about you, a funny

moment is what is our lived memory starts to transfer into recorded

memory and history. Don't say that? We are witnessing it happening, it

is pins and needles, very strange. I appreciated this one very much. I

was always of the view that glam, because sometimes you think of glam

and you think of the corny side. The Sweet? The bricky glam, the

brickies that dressed up. And colour television came along, that

was a huge reason why glam rock was so important. Suddenly things were

in colour, we had never seen that before. Top Of The Pops was always

black and white. I appreciated this exhibition because it was very much

pursuing the intellectual side. Because glam was very much about

pretension in the best possible sense. It was ambition, it was

claiming something, inventing yourself, inventing something

brilliant. I appreciated the idea that metaphorically it represented

the idea that at the time those people making music, being fans of

music, were putting together a lot of different things from outside

music, theatre, poetry, film, art, anything to get together to create

this wonderful collage. Even though it is a subjective and personal

view, ultimately, as you go through the rooms and get further and

further away from T Rex, Slade and bowy, and the idea that scenes were

created. I did appreciate that it gave a reflection, not actually as

it was, because observously it wasn't anything like this, but the

idea there was no -- obviously it wasn't anything like this, but the

idea that you could borrow and beg and choose anything to become

absolutely glam in a grim post-war setting. Did you have the same

nostalgic rush? No, in a sense, for me the exhibition was ill served by

its opening. Which was difficult. Because you can't access someone

else's nostalgia. I recognised that this was somebody's bedroom, but it

wasn't mine. That was rebarbative at the beginning. When I got deeper

into the exhibition I found it more interesting. I almost wish it had

been reversed. Did it feel, clearly it is not of your generation, did

it have enough depth for you? There is such an eclectic range of

objects, was there a coherence underlying it, do you think? There

was enormous he can clekism, I found that a -- he can collectism,

I found that overwhelming. There was a vision with Warhol and

someone fellating a banana. The ones I liked best was those that

put in a political context. The photo of Adrian Sweet and his

father, the coal miner. What glam was rebelling against in Britain,

recession, how that affected it, the poverty, Margaret Thatcher

being the Education Minister then. Glam was the bridge between

psycadelic and punk, I never considered that either. We can see

striking photographs of the os mond fans against the background of

deriliction. When things become scholarly there is a net draped

over events that were abitary to create a diversion of events. At

the time it wasn't a direct response to what is deemed to be

the direct response to a recession, a strike, a political climate, no

way. They were just popstars on the television? It was a series of

attitude and things, and local streets, there was a beautiful film

from the Manchester polytechnic of some Roxy music fans, we hum

knowingly at the backdrop of these young men in full make up with the

chimneys behind them. At the time that wasn't the statement. The

statement was elsewhere. I thought that video was fascinating, because

it celebrated or showed the way that dressing-up had become a form

of artwork in itself, what these art students were doing? Yes, and

it was, as was said, it was a reaction against a post-war world

of three-day weeks and terrible strikes. That comes into relief

when you see the exhibition. Also an exploration of sexuality, and

transgressiveness, and people in drag, and camp, all sorts of

playing around with gender? decadence, the 1920s decadence and

carried over into experimentation of gender. The yolking together of

two element of glam in the east village in New York, and what

seemed to be mainly in west London, from the photos, is very

interesting, they were two schools I never put together either out of

my own ignorance. The best photos are things like Bowie and Mick

Ronson on the train eating lunch. Why are we so interested in this

era now, the V & A has a big Bowie exhibition? It is the moment it

becomes history, it is the moment that one thing is ending and

something else is beginning. Everyone is a critic and can

comment and wants to discuss things. It is also, these are important

moments now, they are becoming history. They are becoming less

frivolous. It is interesting the separation you talk about between

high and low art. For me, much of this, the Eno, the Bowie, the Roxy

music, is as much fine art as anything else. This was a period

when a lot of artists decided not to use paint or materials to make

their art, but music, sound and image. It is as much deserving of a

position in those places as anything else. Of course Brian

Ferry was an art student himself? And Eno was an artist, but made the

sculptures out of sound. And David Bowie was an artist and made

sculptures out of himself. Now the battle goes on about what history

is to be told. That is the battle that is beginning now, I think.

If you would like to seat history of Paul and my bedroom, the

exhibition continues at Tate Liverpool until the 12th of May. It

is 50 years since Sylvia Plath committed suicide. But the

fascination with her life and work shows no sign of abating. It is

also 50 years since her novel The Bell Jar was published. Despite the

plethora of Plath biographies, a new book is the first to focus

solely on her life before she married Ted Hughes. Mad Girl's Love

Song, by Beau Willimon, delves deep into Plath -- Andrew Wilson defls

deep into her life to look at her mental health problems. Wilson

travelled to America to speak to Plath's family and friends. But

more significantly studied the writings of early boyfriends and

lovers. It is a fascinating point about memory, and how much people

can tell you about the past, and whether they can be trusted. As a

biographer you go on a case-by-case basis, you can sense whether

somebody is telling the truth. You can compare it with letters. Plath

was an extraordinarily detailed diary writer. She recorded almost

every heart beat. We can check people's accounts with Plath's

diaries, her letters, other people's accounts. The biography

doesn't shy away from analysing Plath's tumultuous relationship

with her mother, and the great loss she felt at the death of her father,

when she was eight years old. 1947 Sylvia composed a poem called

"Bereft", the people, unpublished, takes the form of a lament of an

unknown person, who takes the people to the sea and says goodbye

forever. Plath says she associated her father with the ocean, and

later would look at him as a sea God. Wilson's greatest fine was

Plath's ex-boyfriend, Richard Sassoon, she was his great love,

and had she stayed with him, things may have been different. She had

this boyfriend before Ted Hughes, Sylvia slept with him in London,

but she went back to Paris to track Sassoon down, but he had fled to

Spain, and he rejected her, that rejection led her back to Ted

Hughes's arms. That is a fascinating insight. I close the

book with this kind of poignant letter that Richard Sassoon writes

to Plath, in 1956, when he realises that Ted Hughes and Plath are going

to get married. "There is no reason for me to believe that you are

happier now than you were or ever could have been with me except your

letter to me was not a letter of a happy woman, long before I was

yours I was something else to you, I was always some what more than a

paramour. You tell me I am to know I am doing what is best for you. If

it is so you believe it Sylvia, if it is so, then it is." You have

entered this very difficult territory yourself, haven't you.

You explored the real lives behind the poetry in The Birthday Letters.

Do you think there is a virtue in looking at the early years of

Sylvia Plath's life in this way? There is some virttu. I think --

virtue. It is hard not to think of the territory of the struggles with

her mother, her sorrow at the death of her father, hasn't been explored

enough. Finally, as we were saying about Hitchcock, you can't explain

art. I would say that about this book, I would say it about my own

book. Anything biographical, finally, doesn't ever get to the

bottom of a real work of art. is something inherent in the buy

oingfee. But looking at this particular -- biography, looking at

this particular book, diligent research? Very diligent. Andrew

Wilson was talking about memory, you have to ask yourself finally

how valuable it is to go and talk to people about encounters they had

60 years ago. We know how fallible our own memories are, even when we

have written records. Even when we have letters. Memory is something

that we create, it is an invention. It is never the truth. What picture

did you get of Sylvia Plath from this? To be honest I found the book

infuriating. I studied Plath a lot at university. I was an American at

a British university, obviously I related to her in that way, that an

18-year-old girl can. The introduction just set it up right

away why I found it infuriating. First of all there is the Ince he

have table dig at Ted Hughes, as if there was an act of censorship,

about where Hughes burned her diaries. Then comes up with this

completely reasonable claim that Andrew Wilson wants to rescue Plath

from the shadow of Hughes, that is good. But immediately brings up

these boyfriends that she had that nobody knew about that, and the

importance of that her life. And once again she's defined again in

relation to various men. And speaking as a former 18-year-old

girl who has boyfriends and dates, they are not that important to your

future life. And your adult maturation. Someone going out there

in my future life, and finding boys I went out with on three dates when

I was 18 years old and finding notes I sent to them, it is not

that important. It is someone trying to find new ground in a well

trodden life, the most important thing about Plath is her work.

There is no work here, just her life. He seems to take a strange

attitude towards her boyfriend, he describes her almost as oversexed?

It is terrible. One of the phrases I particularly hated was "dated

hundreds of boys". Sylvia Plath, her work, herself is the one and

thing that will rescue her from Ted Hughes's shadow, and continues to

do so and always will. You can also on the one hand can see why Ted

Hughes was protective in a way of the possibility that this kind of

book could only be extracted in OK! Magazine. It is very strange, in a

way. I feel if you need to know this period of Sylvia Plath's life

you have The Bell Jar. To an extent, as much as that is one person's

memory of a particular life, everything that is inbetween, the

gaps in that book, this didn't really fill in veryle with. It got

more and more distorted and distressed. What is particularly

annoying in the end is the potential for objectivity that is

falling apart in your hands. The way to make a work of art in

response to a work of art, like Janet Malcolm did, with the book of

Sylvia Plath done as an original piece of writing about writing.

Aren't there genuine revelations in this, Richard Sassoon, her lover,

the fact that you knew? I don't think so. You knew about him?

certainly knew of his existence. But the letters, that's a new

thing? Yes, but honesty I don't think they add. The question is

whether they add to our understanding of Sylvia Plath as an

artist? Whether they are necessary to our understanding of her, as an

artist. Is there any understanding about what it was like to be a

young, intelligent woman in that period in American life, with the

stifling nature of society around her? That was the best bit about it.

Her frustration at not having the freedoms that men Z in that sense

that is one great favour it does to Plath, there is so many insinnation,

allegations, -- insinuations, since she has died, that Hughes killed

her, and this books shows she suffered mental health and

depression before. This exonerates Hughes from doing so. As Paul says,

we can read The Bell Jar. I was mystified by the biographer's claim

that we didn't know about her boyfriends before. She writes about

her boyfriends in The Bell Jar. The famous meeting between her and

Hughes at Cambridge, written so many times, when she bites his

cheek, that is not the act of an innocent young virgin, anyone with

a mind would know she had boyfriends before. The great act of

mystery refreshs the mystery and life, these books always want to

reduce and ruin the mystery and reduce it to mere facts and details

and possibility. I don't understand why there is such a love for the

subject that you then want to go and kill it and destroy it and make

it orderry I would rather a book written about Plath done in the

early days that was more novelistic and a celebration about what she

was trying to do, which is create something special in the world

rather than bog it down in the details. That sense of oppression

of being a woman in 1950s America, does diligently explain that. But

if you go back and read the sections of the The Bell Jar when

she was at Mademoiselle magazine, it breathes at you. With the The

Bell Jar it is exploding with possibility more than any lines in

this book. Go and read the The Bell Jar, reissued with the appalling

cover. But Mad Girl's Love Song is on Radio 4 on Monday. And the film

Lady Lazereth, featuring Plath herself can be seen digitally, on a

link on website. You might very well think I couldn't possibly

comment, that phrase issued by the fictional Urquhart u, became a

Westminster stalwart. Now Jim Dobbin's creation, House of Cards,

has been transposed to the American Congress, and the Machiavellian

politician is played by Kevin Spacey. Costing a reputed $100

million, it is the first drama by Netflix, it allows on-line viewers

to gorge on the entire series in just one sitting.

Andrew Davies adaptation of Jim Dobbin's novel, House of Cards, was

a big hit for the BBC in the 190s, the thriller set at the heart of

the Westminster machine, featured a memorable performance as the

Machiavellian MP Francis Urquhart. Now David Fincher, the director of

Fight Club Seven, has moved to Washington, with Kevin Spacey, the

majority whip in the house of representatives, whose lust for

power is undimmed in the face of adversity. I would like to borrow

from Regan, I would like to coin the phrase, "trickle down

diplomacy". I want to stop you there, we are not nominating you

for Secretary of State, he made you a promise, but circumstances have

changed. The nature of promises mean they remain immune from

changing circumstances. Together with his amoral life, played by

Claire Wright, they form a partnership to be reckoned with.

knew you shouldn't have trusted that woman. I didn't trust her.

could you not see this coming. never thought they were capable.

You don't usually underestimate Francis. Francis forms an alliance

with the simply ambitious journalist, Zoe Barnes, played by

Kate o. Mara. You would have made a great Secretary of State. How can I

help you. The company behind the series is Netflix, the world's

biggest on-line broadcaster, which released all 13 episodes of the

series to subscribers on the same day. We lift the veil. Two decades

on from the original, how does this landmark series from 1990s Britain,

translate to contemporary America. Does the release of an entire

series at once reshuffle the cards in the traditional TV market place.

The original BBC version casts a long shadow, I know you have done

your homework, how do you think the two compare? They are completely

different. The original one was Shakespearian, really, it felt

medieval like you were looking into Henry VII the court, it feels like

West Wing, meeting Seven, it is appropriate with David Fincher

produce it, he brings out the menace of Kevin Spacey. They not

only keep the catchphrase, but keep Spacey from the South, that can

have the camp menace like the British accent. It is a bigger

budget and glitzy, the way American remakes of British TV shows are.

The view of politics is very different from the Rosie-tinted

glasses? It is an anti-West Wing, where everyone is the opposite of

do-gooding idealists, it is very entertaining for it. How did you

find Kevin Spacey taking over from Richardson? Not much by a miles,

his southern accent is appalling, how many I have binged on, it is

all over the shop, he started sounding like Noddy Holder by the

end. I think of it more that we are talking about Netflix, the idea of

it appearing all at once. The fact it is about something happening in

an innovative context, but retrospective is fascinating. It is

about the idea that it is all released at once. For me this is

fascinating in terms of the world being filled with critics now. What

happens really is what they are interested in mostly is getting

reviews. Because they want reviews and comments on the people that are

getting it immediately, so they get more subscribers to Netflix. We are

watching something in itself that is something I would almost want to

see the film about by David Fincher, what is going on really. It doesn't

matter about the thing itself as long as it is done moderately well.

Funcher is used as a bling to draw you in, later it is Joel Schumacker

is drawn in. Netflix, it reflecting how we consume a lot these days. It

is like sitting down with the box set. We are greedy viewers, we want

it instantly? I'm surprised, to be honest, that Netflix has jumped

ahead of HBO on this. A lot of people watch HBO shows like this,

they buy the box set and watch it during a hole I da. Netflix has

gone in there and trying to over-- holidays. Netflix has gone there to

try to overtake HBO, and it is to breakthrough in Britain, all of my

friends in America have it but none here. They don't have TVs, just

iPad and Netflix. We are being watched, everything we do, I notice

with my watching patterns, they know where I am when I have done it,

they are starting to show recommendations, everything you

want to avoid is machines dictating your tastes. But you like it you go

back in. Netflix is the organisation that Kevin Spacey is

fronting. Do you think that writers will treat this in a different way,

because they don't have to write it in such an episodeic way. They

don't have to have recaps or flashback, because it will be

spread over a period of time. But people will be watching it in a

continuous form? What I liked reading, Netflix don't like the

term "bingeing", they prefer "marathoning", that is a very

interesting antithesis of the idea of fitness to watch something. The

absence of recaps, you get your box set of the Wire or the Killing,

they are your recaps to remind you in case you haven't seen the past

series. This assumes that you are following right the way through.

Just going back to the actual content. I think there were

interesting update, weren't there, what about the young reporter

figure, in the original she was a woman in a man's world. This is a

young woman who is of the internet age, battling against the dinosaurs

of the print? I felt that Kate Mara has much more blood to give to the

character than Susannah Harcourt was allowed to, you weren't

entirely sure in the original why Susan that Harker was ambitious,

trying to make it in a man's world. This is a young journalist battling

against the old dinosaurs in her office, trying to get a blog and

showing the value of putting things straight away, and trying to get on

NBS C. She's very hard, they are all cynical and hard? She will do

anything to get her story there, selling out her colleagues and

subject. Ever day life in the newsroom the I thought -- Every day

life in the newsroom? I thought she was overdone. What about his wife?

I loved his wife. But again, it is interesting how we are having this

discussion. Because how much of each of us watched? That is

interesting n my office, in Radio 4, Eddie Maier is watching it, he's

way ahead of me, I want to talk to him about it, I can't because he as

several episodes ahead? Typically macho, it is fascinating in a world

where we are told attention spans are getting shorter and shorter,

they have given us a 12-hour movie. But if it was sold as that we would

have gone no way. Without water cooler moments, we can't talk about

it at one moment because we are watching it in different places?

Cutting across things like that is traditional, in the future we will

be in our own spaces having the discussion, possibly with ourselves.

I will move on with that. I don't know quite what you are saying.

is sinister. What is that compared to the BBC. BBC is best, we all

know that. Episodes 1-13 of House of Cards is available on Netflix,

as is the original BBC series. Revolver, Dark Side of the Moon,

Hunky Dory, London Calling, you all have your own favourite album of

call time. This time -- all time, this week marks the start of a

programme in BBC Two and BBC Four, slipping vinyl from sleeve and

celebrating the golden age of the family. The season gaj with Danny

Baker and guests discussing some of the best albums in different genre,

and followed tonight by a documentary, which traced the rise

of the album from the 60s, through to the near demise in the 1980s.

Next week a starry line-up, including Joss Stone and the

Stereophonics, will attempt to emulate the Beatles years on, by

reregarding their first album, Please please Me n a 12-hour

session in Abbey Road. With the advent of multitrack recording in

the 1960s, the album changed from one of singles, but a way of having

creative freedom. The record collection became an expression of

musical taste and status. The album and CD boosted sales of old and new

music. But album sales have been declining for the last eight years.

Downloading and streaming has made it easy for fans to pick and choose

from multiple tracks on-line last year. Single sales reached an all-

time high last year of 190 million. Is the album, so beloved by music

fans of a certain age, doomed to suffer death by download.

What do you think led to the demise of the album? Greed, a weird

technological series of advancements kept things moving,

when there should have been someone pausing and saying the vinyl way of

delivering music is the best it could be. Once it travelled further,

even though people essentially delivered two-sided albums and CDs,

and delivered singles even though there wasn't a single to do it,

that is what they were doing. We are talking about the vinyl era and

the magical property of that. is a vinyl revival going on? When I

was at university the cool boys had their vinyl albums and record

players. That holds true. I have started listening to albums on my

iPod. I have found myself downloading and listening straight

through, it feels warm and familiar like when I was a child. On the way

to Liverpool I was listening to Abbey Road and Hunky Dory, getting

myself in the mood for glam. There is the physical art on the album?

remember all my albums and gate fold sleeves, and lyric, and CDs

are extremely unsatisfying objects, and downloads don't exist as

objects as all. They were the canvasses and work of arts that he

dictated the length of the songs and the length of the experience

you had, the two sides, 20-minutes a side. In terms of futuristic and

disappearing straight into machines, musicians are still faithful to the

structure. The same with the House of Cards, Netflix and the idea that

what will lap now when writers think they can write for a 12-hour

length, that are change things. So too it will change things now

because music doesn't come on these canvasses, we are going in the echo

of the last few years of people being faithful to that. What comes

next, we mustn't get too nostalgic about dropping the needle on the

record. But on the other hand, it was a wonderful period, a wonderful

series of remarkable works of art, but it is leading to something he

will. If we can just get away from the horrible retro pecs, we will

see what it will be. What is your favourite album? It has as much to

do with the time as the album. It was the second album I bought, it

has to be Like A Prayer like Madonna. They have a special place

the early albums. I will go right out there, Heart, the Village

Weight, Stelie Spam. A wrote a book about how I wouldn't do that, and

gave 842 versions of my favourite. But the one I played almost every

day, was Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan.

You have already mentioned Hunky Dory, that was mine. My thanks to

Hadley Freeman, Erica Wagner and Paul Morley as well. Do visit our

website for more details about tonight's items and the rest of the

golden age album season. Next week Kirsty will be here to discuss the

film adaptation of Cloud At last, and a controversial new biography

of Benjamin Britain. Another opening at the national portrait

gallery, Manre portraits, it suggests he may have been one of

the Godfather of glam. This is just # Lady

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