WATER EVERYWHERE

I have to give Steffen Fuchs, my favourite Berliner and adopted member of the Joyce family for some ten years, credit for this one. While visiting us here in Basel over New Year, Steffen, a passionate fisherman, expressed his appreciation of the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk The Line”, only criticizing the fact that June Carter Cash’s prowess as an angler hadn’t been emphasized enough in the film. To his knowledge, the accomplished singer and song-writer had also been a stellar sportswoman who could out-fish both her husband and her son.
This little-known fact, confirmed in John Carter Cash’s book “Anchored In Love” got us thinking that perhaps the film (and the song it was named after) should in fact have been called “Cast The Line” instead of “Walk The Line”. We then developed the possibility of niche journalism as a growth market for the otherwise shrinking field of print journalism. For example, one could start by judging films only on the basis of their aquatic content, but that’s a dangerous road to go down, as that would man rating Kevin Costner’s disastrous “Waterworld” much higher than David Lynch’s rambling yet powerful “Dune” epic. Furthermore, any film with Laurence Fishburne would inevitably get a five-star rating and Jacques Cousteau would be a superstar far outstripping the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Taking this line of argument on to music, Fishbone would be the sharpest band on the planet (which they in fact were around 1992), but Stock, Aitken & Waterman would go down in history as the greatest record producers of all time. Considering that the British trio was responsible for 80s pop horrors by Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley and Samantha Fox, I’m not sure that fishy music criticism is such a good thing. Sorry, Steffen.