Esquire (May 2009) now on stands: includes vampires

I haven't yet been able to prise my copy of this month's Esquire away from my wife, but I'm very much looking forward to it, because I know it contains an essay by my friend Dan Davies about the Hillsborough disaster, at which he was present; and on the basis of previous discussions with him on this very subject I strongly suspect that what he has written, 20 years on from the tragedy, will be extremely powerful and enlightening.

My own contribution to this ish is a review of the newly released Swedish vampire movie Let The Right One In, which I thought was generally terrific. But the money sentence in the write-up runs like so:

"At heart we know that the best fairytales are not about under-age wish-fulfilment but, rather, the getting of wisdom: the sorcerer’s apprentice makes a devil’s pact, and there’s a price to pay for a wish to come true."

This sentiment is certainly hinted at in the movie, but finally it comes down on the side of under-age wish fulfilment, and who wouldn't, these days?

Run DMC, right and exact

In the early spring of 1985 I bought RUN DMC's long-playing record King of Rock at my local record emporium, brought it home and listened to it in a state of uncontainable excitement. So much so that I called up a schoolfriend, someone with whom I'd talked casually about 'maybe forming a band', and played the title-cut of the album down the phone to him. He didn't seem to like it too much. Hard to fully appreciate rap music down the phone, to be fair, but then I don't think the chap in question would have come round to that sound if he'd spend ten years poring over the master-tapes in Abbey Road.
That said, it was only 18 months later that their cover of 'Walk This Way' made RUN DMC a household name, but in a way it was a shame that the heavy metal aspect of their particular fusion had to be made so explicit and radio-friendly. And nothing they did thereafter was embraced by the mainstream, which possibly hurt them, though they were hurt by other things too.
Anyhow, I say all of this in contented reminiscence because RUN DMC are now formally installed in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and their eulogist, eloquent as only he can be, was Marshall Mathers.