AVI BUFFALO

Credits roll.

Tommy finished the article on the upcoming actor. He slipped on his turquoise Blondie t-shirt, and checked himself out in the hotel room's mirror. Then he took the i-pod from his bag and put it on shuffle. Headphones clamped, wraparounds fixed, he made his way downstairs. In the open air, the heat tranquillised his mind. He crossed the bridge with the toothless beggars selling their trinkets. He passed by the piper band, 'Money please,' and waited for the boat to arrive. Standing there, he spied the actor and his sidekick. Someone shouted at him in Italian to stop blocking the entrance. 'Scusi.' The actor eyed him suspiciously, pulling back his sunglasses. Tommy copied his movements. The boat arrived. As it sailed through the majestic paradise, Tommy bit his lower lip, remembering a moment from the actor's last film. The actor glared at the mirage in disbelief, before exiting at his destination.

A ringtone. Sigh. Grimace.

'Hello' she said. 'I'm at the movies.'

'What? This is ridiculous' said the old man from the row behind.

'It's about a man on a boat. Speak later.'

The warm breeze blew and "What's In It For?" came on. He swayed to the endless harmonies- 'Oh oh ah oh'- and laughed at the way the singer sang about his muse, with her 'Bacon lips.' Released from the city grind, he danced in the yearning euphoria and stretched his long arms up into the sunbeams. He wished all the other passengers could share his happiness. 'Look over here, I feel so free, watch me, listen-'Oh oh ah oh.'

Tommy got off at the stop beside his father's bar. Tonight he was attending a rock legend's dinner party. He sat down and ordered a vodka martini, the seventeen euros waved. At the other side of the lounge was a girl he'd seen at the airport concourse yesterday. A dark haired sparrow who never blinked. He tried to smile at her, but she'd obviously cottoned on to a greater truth. Both weren't exactly sure who was following whom. She whispered in her friend's ear. Feeling sleepy, he curled up in the music.

'He's sleeping. Bad boy,' she said.

The old man rose out of his chair, and stood in front of her.

'Can You Please Be Quiet. I'm trying to watch the film.'

A 50's guitar gently introduced "Can't I Know." There was a slight unease, as if the singer was stepping quietly to the object of his desire. Barely there, and taking little turns in melody, until the tempo took hold and the conquest bathed this lingering apprehension in the lightest of liquidity. He opened his eyes, and saw an old man observing a talkative woman at the table beside him, they seemed so familiar.

COURTNEY LOVE

Listening to Hole's 'Pretty On The Inside' again, I was struck by the raw venom. It's relentless and poetic. Songs like 'Teenage Whore' and 'Good Sister/Bad Sister' involve you in the choked turbulence of one woman's experience. Slammed together with disgust, howled with distain, it never let's up in vivid horror. What had happened to her, where would she go to after purging her hatred and untamed emotion? Courtney Love divides people, some see her as a fuel of reckless honesty, others as a shameless opportunist. She is full of contradictions. A well read raconteur, a druggy mess, someone dying to be loved, someone hellbent on causing trouble. But always, without doubt, living right now, fluid in thought and opinion.

After the violent splurge of 'Pretty', she begged for solace in the mainstream. This wasn't a sell out, it was a cry for acceptance. 'Live Through This' is a great, wracked punk pop album, containing wild, sensational entertainment. 'Violet', 'Miss World' and 'Doll Parts' are thrilling feminist anthems, beautiful, valiant and harsh. 'Celebrity Skin' had many bittersweet songs, burnt by the L.A. sun, but was diluted by an unsatisfying production. After a long spell in the wilderness a solo album appeared and musically it was an ugly monstrosity. But 'America's Sweetheart' is tough and funny lyrically, the acid was unleashed once again, deceptively sloppy, sharp as a razor. She also appeared in two films by Milos Forman, 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' and 'Man On The Moon', both offbeat biopics centred on irrational iconoclasts. Receptive and natural, her acting felt untainted by Hollywood artifice. Then there was Nick Broomfield's morally dubious documentary 'Kurt And Courtney', which denies the integrity of an essay for a tabloid bogusness. The elitist and the naive may fail to detect the joker's parody or the clown's pathos.

'Nobody's Daughter' has a laboured history. Along with the infamous, self-proclaimed 'Joycean' rants, she uploaded, then deleted some very fine demos on her My Space page. They were moving, confessional songs coated in unobtrusive AOR arrangements. Love's vocal delivery was bruised and rasping, her words revealing a latent tenderness. She sounded her age, signifying a sage-like maturity. Then predictably this was all scrapped for the reformation of Hole without any of her former bandmates. Despite the absence of guitarist Eric Erlandson, a loyal deputy, 'Samantha' and 'Skinny little Bitch' roar in an accurate approximation of their original glory. She sounds fierce again, ready to chew and spit out all the pretenders half her age. But what of the remakes, the new versions of those touching laments, dissolving in cyber land?

With ex Material man Michael Beinhorn back in the control room, compression is turned up to the max. This makes 'Pacific Coast Highway' less a melancholic eulogy, more a feisty piece of work. Somehow 'For Once In Your Life' survives, as a brutalised country-rock lullaby. Yet many of the songs suffer from a methodical, unimaginative uniformity, a wall of commercial noise. Which is a shame, since her voice is often affecting and candid, at times stirring the heart with an expressive anguish. No more so than on 'Letter To God', Linda Perry's power ballad, which should be dreadful but is sung with such rough feeling that it twists into something riveting. She believes in every lyric, and this shot self-assurance places her in the mould of Dylan and Faithfull; essential, ravaged singers with enormous authority over anything they touch. And yes, praise be, past masters and mistresses of savage regret, 'Loser Dust' gives us the fingers up, being a very likeable slice of bubblegum. Crass, flawed, unfashionable. A rock 'n' roll rebel.