THE SUN CAME IN LIKE A PACK OF ORANGE SPANIELS



wave pictures have given this blog a raison d'etre, i think. my blog is the LEAST current thing possible. i'm really quite a poor blogger to be honest. i have no connections or anything with other blogs and i write about songs that were released about three years ago, at the very least. but wave pictures have provided me with something in the here and now that i feel the need to campaign for. they really are wonderful, and give this blog a structure and point (but thank god not a 'theme', ack) which i think spreads into other aspects of it. they got the ball rolling, at long last.


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some people talk about how youtube has revived the diy spirit and i think that's not only complete shit but also the standard journalist's trick of claiming that one thing is a 'revival' of something that has always been around and never went away (also ridiculously used for pop, 'vintage', rave, antisocial behaviour, heavy metal etc) as a way to make an article seem more interesting than it ever could be. it's true that people do use youtube as a way to get their views out but they all seem to think it's the only way to do so. where once you might have someone making a fanzine or even doing a pirate radio show you now have boring voiced people giving reviews of new albums and films into a webcam. a lot of people now seem to think youtube is a way to do EVERYthing, even things which clearly work best in print. and that's a shame. but a few people use it as what it is; a tool to get videos seen that could be seen no where else. this is all youtube is and really all it should be. this idea is beautifully harnessed in this superb video of bonnie prince billy's i see a darkness that someone has made for their friend.



THIS is what the youtube DIY ethic should be, not people making poor gervais-inspired sketches and giving irate monologues. it's just so simplistically wonderful, isn't it. youtube is garish and horrible at the best of times and all we have here is relentlessly flowing water settling into an infinite, hellish red lake. i love thinking about a person making this and thinking that it's fine as it is (it is) and adding absolutely nothing to it. who else would be able to leave it naked and bare like this? certainly no 'vlogger' that's for sure. diy's all about minimal effort for maximum effect, and i've never seen a better demonstration of that than this.

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incidentally i found out about the above song and bonnie prince billy through johnny cash's superb cover version of it which is on the equally superb but bizarrely under-rated album american III, which as an album is the sound of a lion dying.


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ah spring.

every day a little brighter.