oh my god oh my god.
listened the shit out of the ramones version of this (originally by the seeds) when i was 17. one of those songs you stand up to listen to; just feels inappropriate to be seated.
who knows what would have happened if i'd known this existed! (answer: slightly more and less of whatever i had and didn't have)
bit upset that i've found a new thunders song tbh. thought i'd had it all.
ps. i know this is quite an average song but that's not the point.
Monday 12 December 2011
Thursday 17 November 2011
If Chuck Norris wanted to be perceived as an artist and an actor of the greatest calibre all he would have to do is book a theatre for a run of 'Evening(s) with Chuck Norris', wait for the post-modern wastrels to turn up ready to guffaw at their anointed, and give a delicate exposition of his vulnerability, emphasising the fundamental weaknesses of all men. He wouldn't even have to do it well.
Saturday 29 October 2011
some things i would like to be amongst to observe, like jane goodall with ze chimps:
-second life users.
-professional tribute bands.
-theatres which have been putting on the same show for decades (eg cats, les mis) and thus become factories of play.
-the department which deals with the mad letters written to '10 Downing Street, London'
-non-english speaking beatles fans.
-second life users.
-professional tribute bands.
-theatres which have been putting on the same show for decades (eg cats, les mis) and thus become factories of play.
-the department which deals with the mad letters written to '10 Downing Street, London'
-non-english speaking beatles fans.
Friday 7 October 2011
the old Country
Proper coffee
Not got Sky
Tesco's/Tesco
--------------
Was Blair's greatest success creating a generation who unquestioningly absorb the phrase 'social networking' into their lexicon?
----------------
In our crass-builded, glass-bloated, green-belted world Sunday is for washing the car, tinned peaches and carnation milk.
A sergeant's world it is now, the world of the lay-by and the civic improvement scheme.
Country is park and shore is marina, spare time is leisure and more, year by year. We have become a battery people, a people of under-privileged hearts fed on pap in darkness, bred out of all taste and season to savour the shoddy splendours of the new civility.
The hedges come down from the silent fields. The lease is out on the corner site.
A butterfly is an event.
Were we closer to the ground as children or is the grass emptier now?
Tidy the old into the tall flats. Desolation at the fourteen storeys becomes a view.
Who now dies at home? Who sees death? We sicken and fade in a hospital ward, and dying is for doctors with a phone call to the family.
Once we had a romantic and old-fashioned conception of honour, of patriotism, chivalry and duty. But it was a duty which didn't have much to do with justice, with social justice anyway. And in default of that justice and in pursuit of it, that was how the great words came to be cancelled out. The crowd has found the door into the secret garden. Now they will tear up the flowers by the roots, strip the borders and strew them with paper and broken bottles.
--------------
I feel like a beggar accepting alms
Then being pelted with figs
I study my steadily declining chart placings
They greet me with freezing cold inhospitality
Hey, where did that bloke go who said I was vital?
I possess the mild air of a retail tobacconist
That’s because I’m a retail tobacconist
But the mayflies on a Berkshire trout river
Would probably tell you a different story
About ham-fisted diadems and momentary daydreams
Of mythical dividends and illusory boardroom seats
In the room festooned with fat beef certificates
From county shows
Duff Leg Bryn had drank too much again
Most of Wem was steering clear of him
“I’ve got no time for this twelfth consecutive Rose Bowl”
‘Cos on Sunday next at ten to four
I’ve got an invitation for
A trip around Katharine Hamnett’s warehouse
Followed by dinner with David Emanuel
Who I can’t wait to tell about my dream
In which the almost illegal Elton Welsby
Is dressed as a french maid on a moonless byway
Licking his lips as he creeps ever closer
Fast falls the eventide
Fast falls the eventide
The public appearance of bitter ex-soap stars
Who thought they could go on and do other things besides
The Centre Court amusement at the ballboy’s mishap
That bobbing up and down thing that they do at the Proms
Opinionated weather forecasters telling me it’s going to be a miserable day
Miserable to who? I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts
Channel Four presents “Blowjob”
Introduced by Adrian and Sophie Horn
Who is of course one bloke with a pierced dick
Who’s just had the nod from Planet 24
Hear him say “surreal”, “bizarre”, “sad git”
“Yes indeedy”, “completely and utterly”, “footy”, “anorak” and “respect”
Before whipping the audience up into doing the Time Warp
Watch him take us live to The Queen’s Arse and Firkin
Where Joseph Bloggs and his amazing Technicolor shellsuit
Are about to abort their Steely Dan routine
And instead embark upon fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Adrian-stroke-Sophie wants us, the viewers, to ring in
And say how we think the punters will react
These are a few of my favourite things…
I’m incredibly bored with the word “millennium”
I’m with the Jehovah’s Witnesses
Millions now earmarked will later be wasted
Her Majesty, marvellous, Mother – The Musical
The fireworks lighting up the Houses of Parliament
Death in Trafalgar Square, death in the armchair
Of cliched old spinsters who’ve never been loved
Every day is Australia day
“Sons and Daughters” and “Home and Away”
And then the news comes on and the sound goes down
‘Cos she can’t be bothered with all them politicians
They’re all just a bunch of flaming drongos
She died with her telly on, eighty-seven and confused
With not enough hospital beds ‘cos all the money’s been used
On the end of the century party preparations
And they reckon that the last thing she saw in her life was
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican
T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee
T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee
T for Thatcher, that girl that made a wreck out of me
Oh the lady labelled me an idle
Oh the lady labelled me an idle
Oh the lady labelled me an idle layabout
Layabout
Layabout
----------------------
Berkshire and Hampshire, Leicester and Rutland, those were the Edwardian counties. One breath of their pine-laden air and I am through the door in the wall, back in the land of lost content. I am a young man on a summer afternoon at Melton or Belvoir, sitting in the garden with my life before me and the whole vale dumb in the heat. Is it my fancy? Did I ever take tea on those matchless lawns? Did apricots ripen against old walls and the great horn still sound at sunset? One boat on the wan, listless waters of the lake and nothing stirring in Europe for years and years and years.
--------------
Scotland's insecurities come out differently. It's a kind of 'we're shit we know we are, but really we're great we are' mentality. You sometimes get the impression in Scotland that we are trying to improve, trying to better ourselves, but under the disguise of not trying to improve and not trying to better ourselves. We do things we don't want to do to avoid the appearance of doing the things that we do want to do.
---------------
mid-table
there's nothing much on my fork
it's alright though
cos I can go for my walk
around Cartmel
---------------
Not got Sky
Tesco's/Tesco
--------------
Was Blair's greatest success creating a generation who unquestioningly absorb the phrase 'social networking' into their lexicon?
----------------
In our crass-builded, glass-bloated, green-belted world Sunday is for washing the car, tinned peaches and carnation milk.
A sergeant's world it is now, the world of the lay-by and the civic improvement scheme.
Country is park and shore is marina, spare time is leisure and more, year by year. We have become a battery people, a people of under-privileged hearts fed on pap in darkness, bred out of all taste and season to savour the shoddy splendours of the new civility.
The hedges come down from the silent fields. The lease is out on the corner site.
A butterfly is an event.
Were we closer to the ground as children or is the grass emptier now?
Tidy the old into the tall flats. Desolation at the fourteen storeys becomes a view.
Who now dies at home? Who sees death? We sicken and fade in a hospital ward, and dying is for doctors with a phone call to the family.
Once we had a romantic and old-fashioned conception of honour, of patriotism, chivalry and duty. But it was a duty which didn't have much to do with justice, with social justice anyway. And in default of that justice and in pursuit of it, that was how the great words came to be cancelled out. The crowd has found the door into the secret garden. Now they will tear up the flowers by the roots, strip the borders and strew them with paper and broken bottles.
--------------
I feel like a beggar accepting alms
Then being pelted with figs
I study my steadily declining chart placings
They greet me with freezing cold inhospitality
Hey, where did that bloke go who said I was vital?
I possess the mild air of a retail tobacconist
That’s because I’m a retail tobacconist
But the mayflies on a Berkshire trout river
Would probably tell you a different story
About ham-fisted diadems and momentary daydreams
Of mythical dividends and illusory boardroom seats
In the room festooned with fat beef certificates
From county shows
Duff Leg Bryn had drank too much again
Most of Wem was steering clear of him
“I’ve got no time for this twelfth consecutive Rose Bowl”
‘Cos on Sunday next at ten to four
I’ve got an invitation for
A trip around Katharine Hamnett’s warehouse
Followed by dinner with David Emanuel
Who I can’t wait to tell about my dream
In which the almost illegal Elton Welsby
Is dressed as a french maid on a moonless byway
Licking his lips as he creeps ever closer
Fast falls the eventide
Fast falls the eventide
The public appearance of bitter ex-soap stars
Who thought they could go on and do other things besides
The Centre Court amusement at the ballboy’s mishap
That bobbing up and down thing that they do at the Proms
Opinionated weather forecasters telling me it’s going to be a miserable day
Miserable to who? I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts
Channel Four presents “Blowjob”
Introduced by Adrian and Sophie Horn
Who is of course one bloke with a pierced dick
Who’s just had the nod from Planet 24
Hear him say “surreal”, “bizarre”, “sad git”
“Yes indeedy”, “completely and utterly”, “footy”, “anorak” and “respect”
Before whipping the audience up into doing the Time Warp
Watch him take us live to The Queen’s Arse and Firkin
Where Joseph Bloggs and his amazing Technicolor shellsuit
Are about to abort their Steely Dan routine
And instead embark upon fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Adrian-stroke-Sophie wants us, the viewers, to ring in
And say how we think the punters will react
These are a few of my favourite things…
I’m incredibly bored with the word “millennium”
I’m with the Jehovah’s Witnesses
Millions now earmarked will later be wasted
Her Majesty, marvellous, Mother – The Musical
The fireworks lighting up the Houses of Parliament
Death in Trafalgar Square, death in the armchair
Of cliched old spinsters who’ve never been loved
Every day is Australia day
“Sons and Daughters” and “Home and Away”
And then the news comes on and the sound goes down
‘Cos she can’t be bothered with all them politicians
They’re all just a bunch of flaming drongos
She died with her telly on, eighty-seven and confused
With not enough hospital beds ‘cos all the money’s been used
On the end of the century party preparations
And they reckon that the last thing she saw in her life was
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican
T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee
T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee
T for Thatcher, that girl that made a wreck out of me
Oh the lady labelled me an idle
Oh the lady labelled me an idle
Oh the lady labelled me an idle layabout
Layabout
Layabout
----------------------
Berkshire and Hampshire, Leicester and Rutland, those were the Edwardian counties. One breath of their pine-laden air and I am through the door in the wall, back in the land of lost content. I am a young man on a summer afternoon at Melton or Belvoir, sitting in the garden with my life before me and the whole vale dumb in the heat. Is it my fancy? Did I ever take tea on those matchless lawns? Did apricots ripen against old walls and the great horn still sound at sunset? One boat on the wan, listless waters of the lake and nothing stirring in Europe for years and years and years.
--------------
Scotland's insecurities come out differently. It's a kind of 'we're shit we know we are, but really we're great we are' mentality. You sometimes get the impression in Scotland that we are trying to improve, trying to better ourselves, but under the disguise of not trying to improve and not trying to better ourselves. We do things we don't want to do to avoid the appearance of doing the things that we do want to do.
---------------
mid-table
there's nothing much on my fork
it's alright though
cos I can go for my walk
around Cartmel
---------------
Tuesday 30 August 2011
come on, I will show you I will change when you give me something to slaughter
Here are some things I've learnt through educating myself about football:
About Myself:
-I am more egalitarian and liberal than I previously thought (and I previously thought of myself as a liberal egalitarian). When I offered a fairly meek and well-formed opinion, only to be shot down with 'you're no expert', it occurs to me that should someone offer an amateur opinion on something I'm an expert on (though I really don't know what that would be) I would literally never respond like that.
-The experience of trying to teach myself about something I have the deeply limited knowledge of but the greatest enthusiasm for is something I really recommend, especially when it's something that virtually everyone knows more about than you. Perhaps the only comparable thing is moving to a country and learning the language, or that time Hannah tried to learn about politics from the bottom up in the midst of politically active and politically arrogant students. It's at once humbling and assuring. What force there is in the majority! And how difficult it is to transpose from the minority; small spaces are snug.
-I have a great reluctance to do anything until it can be done completely properly with minimal chance of backfiring, eg. holding back on revealing knowledge, not engaging in insignificant chat, not revealing team I support. Indicative of deeper problems (women n that).
-Wikipedia is invaluable for learning about lots of things quickly. Which leads me onto...
About Others:
-People don't half talk shit. 90% of football chat is either meaninglessly banal platitudes ('can't wait to watch united play chelsea') or stuff which is so obviously taken directly from the pages of some journal or blog ('he's right-footed of course but is being tested out on the left to see if he's ready for the champion's league game in ajfkga...'). I think I will always be unable to participate in footy banter as it's either dull, or a load of people aiming to show just how much they know, or both. I just never want to say anything when chat turns that way, which feeds back to people thinking I don't know much or don't really like it, and so on. Which brings to mind another resemblance....
-Football is identical to politics in that it's a huge, ever-changing thing that no one has absolute view of, but everyone has absolute views on. People decide on an ideology and stick to it with no time for pragmatism in a field where it's obviously appropriate.
-But, all communities are artificial, and what attracted me to football is irrationality of it, to a point. I'm not so much against the ridiculous conjectural facade of infallibity, more the agression with which it's held onto.
-Also! I do value dialogues for their own sake above and beyond what's actually being said, so maybe it's unfair for me to resent football banter for lacking substance or originality? Still, there is a pull against it just as instinctively powerful as the initial push I had towards the sport..
-----------
Some football songs:
This is one of the best Fall songs in a lot of respects, such as the way you think it's bad at points but then it redeems itself. Like when Mark goes 'pat mcgatt, the very famous sports reporter, is talking' in a mock posh voice and you think Who are you trying to be? John Lennon in 1968? Why would anyone do that? but then a beat too late he adds '...there' at just the right moment and we're back into it. PLUS! the middle eight is the best since This Boy by lennon himself:
"FANS!
Remember: you are abroad!
Remember: the police are rough!
Remember: the unemployed!
Remember: my expense account!"
and then again we're back down to it.
ok, let's get the fat les on. i don't really give one about the rep this song has. it is a work of post-modern delight. lee scratch perry does stuff none too far removed from the verses in this, and people love it. and yet no one likes this. racists.
(obviously people hate it because it looks like it's made by football hooligans but a) the song itself contains no reference/incitement to hooliganism and b) as clough says, 'there's no such thing as football hooligans, only hooligans' [-take note, riot-bullshitters!])
(nod to the original, why are post-war recordings so centred around gentle weakness? is it something to do with limited recording facilities? i think it might be, you know)
Russell Brand reckons this is the greatest football song ever, as it is about the transience of both success and failure, and that's obviously just the kind of thing that tugs at all my strings, credit to him, but let's never forget:
Some more versions, starting with the original, which is the worst:
it seems silly not to link to this as much as possible, it samples YNWA so that can be my excuse this time:
-incidentally, that bill shankly quote at the start there- 'my idea was to turn Liverpool into a bastion of invincibility'- that's one of my favourite quotes ever. 'cos he's not saying anything, is he? it's basically the same as saying 'my idea was to be fantastically good and successful at my job.' and yet, he was, and he did, and i like it. liverpool historians argue that shankly's era continued in spirit well into the early 90s and, if this song has any artistic merit whatsoever, it's that it probably proves that. does man utd's song of a few years later sample Busby? would anyone have even thought of that? no.
(what you just witnessed there, my lad, is the closest cultural analysis novelty singles featuring ryan giggs and john aldridge will ever receive. and to think the gov't are cutting the humanities)
anyway,
john peel started his show with this one the day of hillsborough:
so close to being my favourite ('WHY DON'T YOU WALK ON???'):
cash fucked up on this one if you ask me. the man spent a career fusing vulnerability and fortitude into one glorious thread, and he gets a song which does this better than any other, and what does he do with it? plays it meek and weak. stir us up, lad.
the last word:
--------------------
'If I went to Anfield I really think I'd cry during YNWA.'
'Yeah but then people would just piss in your pockets.'
-Louise and Patrick.
About Myself:
-I am more egalitarian and liberal than I previously thought (and I previously thought of myself as a liberal egalitarian). When I offered a fairly meek and well-formed opinion, only to be shot down with 'you're no expert', it occurs to me that should someone offer an amateur opinion on something I'm an expert on (though I really don't know what that would be) I would literally never respond like that.
-The experience of trying to teach myself about something I have the deeply limited knowledge of but the greatest enthusiasm for is something I really recommend, especially when it's something that virtually everyone knows more about than you. Perhaps the only comparable thing is moving to a country and learning the language, or that time Hannah tried to learn about politics from the bottom up in the midst of politically active and politically arrogant students. It's at once humbling and assuring. What force there is in the majority! And how difficult it is to transpose from the minority; small spaces are snug.
-I have a great reluctance to do anything until it can be done completely properly with minimal chance of backfiring, eg. holding back on revealing knowledge, not engaging in insignificant chat, not revealing team I support. Indicative of deeper problems (women n that).
-Wikipedia is invaluable for learning about lots of things quickly. Which leads me onto...
About Others:
-People don't half talk shit. 90% of football chat is either meaninglessly banal platitudes ('can't wait to watch united play chelsea') or stuff which is so obviously taken directly from the pages of some journal or blog ('he's right-footed of course but is being tested out on the left to see if he's ready for the champion's league game in ajfkga...'). I think I will always be unable to participate in footy banter as it's either dull, or a load of people aiming to show just how much they know, or both. I just never want to say anything when chat turns that way, which feeds back to people thinking I don't know much or don't really like it, and so on. Which brings to mind another resemblance....
-Football is identical to politics in that it's a huge, ever-changing thing that no one has absolute view of, but everyone has absolute views on. People decide on an ideology and stick to it with no time for pragmatism in a field where it's obviously appropriate.
-But, all communities are artificial, and what attracted me to football is irrationality of it, to a point. I'm not so much against the ridiculous conjectural facade of infallibity, more the agression with which it's held onto.
-Also! I do value dialogues for their own sake above and beyond what's actually being said, so maybe it's unfair for me to resent football banter for lacking substance or originality? Still, there is a pull against it just as instinctively powerful as the initial push I had towards the sport..
-----------
Some football songs:
This is one of the best Fall songs in a lot of respects, such as the way you think it's bad at points but then it redeems itself. Like when Mark goes 'pat mcgatt, the very famous sports reporter, is talking' in a mock posh voice and you think Who are you trying to be? John Lennon in 1968? Why would anyone do that? but then a beat too late he adds '...there' at just the right moment and we're back into it. PLUS! the middle eight is the best since This Boy by lennon himself:
"FANS!
Remember: you are abroad!
Remember: the police are rough!
Remember: the unemployed!
Remember: my expense account!"
and then again we're back down to it.
ok, let's get the fat les on. i don't really give one about the rep this song has. it is a work of post-modern delight. lee scratch perry does stuff none too far removed from the verses in this, and people love it. and yet no one likes this. racists.
(obviously people hate it because it looks like it's made by football hooligans but a) the song itself contains no reference/incitement to hooliganism and b) as clough says, 'there's no such thing as football hooligans, only hooligans' [-take note, riot-bullshitters!])
(nod to the original, why are post-war recordings so centred around gentle weakness? is it something to do with limited recording facilities? i think it might be, you know)
Russell Brand reckons this is the greatest football song ever, as it is about the transience of both success and failure, and that's obviously just the kind of thing that tugs at all my strings, credit to him, but let's never forget:
Some more versions, starting with the original, which is the worst:
it seems silly not to link to this as much as possible, it samples YNWA so that can be my excuse this time:
-incidentally, that bill shankly quote at the start there- 'my idea was to turn Liverpool into a bastion of invincibility'- that's one of my favourite quotes ever. 'cos he's not saying anything, is he? it's basically the same as saying 'my idea was to be fantastically good and successful at my job.' and yet, he was, and he did, and i like it. liverpool historians argue that shankly's era continued in spirit well into the early 90s and, if this song has any artistic merit whatsoever, it's that it probably proves that. does man utd's song of a few years later sample Busby? would anyone have even thought of that? no.
(what you just witnessed there, my lad, is the closest cultural analysis novelty singles featuring ryan giggs and john aldridge will ever receive. and to think the gov't are cutting the humanities)
anyway,
john peel started his show with this one the day of hillsborough:
so close to being my favourite ('WHY DON'T YOU WALK ON???'):
cash fucked up on this one if you ask me. the man spent a career fusing vulnerability and fortitude into one glorious thread, and he gets a song which does this better than any other, and what does he do with it? plays it meek and weak. stir us up, lad.
the last word:
--------------------
'If I went to Anfield I really think I'd cry during YNWA.'
'Yeah but then people would just piss in your pockets.'
-Louise and Patrick.
Monday 15 August 2011
Lyrics misheard by me which are better than the original number 7:
Actual lyric: 'Do you think I once saw heaven?'
Misheard by me: 'Do you think I saw a heron?'
Which is better, isn't it? Much more biscuity, cos herons are one of those birds that you always point out when you see.
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear somebody say,
'Careful now, that swan can break your arm.'
-------------------------
Actual lyric: 'Do you think I once saw heaven?'
Misheard by me: 'Do you think I saw a heron?'
Which is better, isn't it? Much more biscuity, cos herons are one of those birds that you always point out when you see.
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear somebody say,
'Careful now, that swan can break your arm.'
-------------------------
Wednesday 1 June 2011
when i was 16 i would, and did, pay upwards of 15 quid for stuff like this. how times have changed.
must be dead easy being a record collector kid these days. in my time you had to get the bus into chester and spend 6 hours working out which sabbath album to get. social capital (aka cool) was genuinely linked to musical knowledge, and you had to be dedicated, finanically and otherwise, to a cause to get to know your type of music well. i realise this is the only change i've seen in the way youth culture works in my life, and of course it won't be the last, but still, it made an impact.
--------------------
Some recent reviews:
Wild Beasts - Smother
About Group - Start and Complete
------------------
Here's my review of latest wave pictures:
No buggering about at the start of the new Wave Pictures record. A single shimmering jewel of a chord rings out, and then with a crack we’re straight down into David Tattersall’s world, an unchanging world of complex relationships and unashamedly brilliant guitar heroics. Within seconds, the humour and the melancholy of David’s cosmos are making us smile: “We/ pissed in the sea/ and pretended/ to drown one another.” It’s good to be back.
And the pace doesn’t let up. The second, third, fourth tracks all keep up the relentless, pushy brilliance. Like the faster Mountain Goats songs, or some early Dylan, at points it becomes oppressively good with its relentless stream of lyrical excellence which barely breaks for breath. ‘Little Surprise’ features this bright, pizzicato twiddling riff and he lists the parodically clichéd contents of his bohemian girl’s handbag (‘..a ticket from the metro in Milan..’) before sneering, ‘Who/ are you/ to tell me that I look depressed?/ You wouldn’t know it but/ I’m at my best.’
The heat finally drops with the fifth track ‘Walk the Stairs Quiet’, which carries one of David’s best solos on the album; this relentlessly cascading and imploding repetitive trill. Then, back into the boogie with ‘China Wale Back’, all bright and poppy. ‘Pale Thin Lips’ shows how great David is a lyricist, as he seamlessly veers between minimalist platitudes and maximalist, vivid imagery, with both having the same impact: the line ‘I liked the time we had/ I thought it wasn’t all so bad’ can hit you as hard as ‘the crashing windscreen windscreen wipers/ and the arms everywhere/ a comedian’s face on a tram car/ one little electric hair/ your pale thin lips.’ He is just such a glorious songwriter.
‘Two Lemons One Line’ is the best of an excellent bunch. What a track, what a chorus: “You said you wanted a white wine in red wine weather/ You said you never really wanted a red wine, ever.” All this is delivered in a not-angry-just-disappointed, plaintive whine which you never want to end.
‘Rain Down’ has a rubbery, buoyant bassline to start off, then David’s um-cha upstroke-downstroke guitar comes in. It’s as formulaic as Wave Pictures get, with the imagery-full verses and the simple, emotional chorus: ‘when our time comes down/ I will hang on a little while longer’ is the chorus line, and when it’s sung it feels like the most profound thing anyone’s ever said, despite the fact that on paper it’s obviously not. And that’s what good pop music is meant to do.This is easily their best album. The lyrics, the production, the vision, the ambition, all are reaching their zenith in the Wave Pictures world right now. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a band so dedicated to hard work and improvement as them, and I hope they manage to bottle whatever they’ve got running through them right now.
-----------------
Here's me being a bit of a stewart leeish prick about rebecca black:
Mozart. John Stuart Mill. Michael Jackson: all of them protégés pushed to extremes by their parents. Personally, a tragedy of course. But historically, a gift. We look at the relentless pressure, the emotional trauma wreaked early on which later echoed throughout their entire lives, and we naturally sympathise. Then, we look at their body of work and we excuse the boorish parents for forcing open the channels which led to such unparalleled genius.
Rebecca Black now takes her rightful place in this pantheon. Her mother commissioned the production of ‘Friday’ as a vanity piece for her daughter, and her daughter has since received death threats and worldwide ridicule, but in the long-term it will of course all be worth it. Black has already become a dominant cultural force of our age, and it is time someone began serious criticism of her work.
The lyrics express a minimalist aesthetic not seen in pop since Talking Heads, or in poetry since Gertrude Stein. The objective minutiae of daily life are depicted with Joycean microscopic focus with verses dedicating to choosing a car seat but, just as with Joyce, tiny details of life are described in the context of appeals to wider philosophical ideas: ‘Gotta have my bowl, gotta have ceral/ Seein’ everything, time is goin’ ‘.
Yet the spectre of divine judgement hovers over even such devout followers of getting down and party-party-party as Rebecca: one lyric runs, ‘Yesterday was Thursday/ Today it is Friday […]/ Tomorrow it’s Saturday/ And Sunday comes after/ wards/ I don’t want this weekend to end!’ Just what kind of doomsome Calvinist Sabbath does she fear? Only the plaintive cries which swarm over the chorus can come close to explaining. Mere words cannot do her religious terror justice. Indeed, mere words cannot express many of Rebecca Black’s thoughts and feelings.
The voice is autotuned to extremity and comes across as a ghostly, soulless whine. Black succinctly evokes the experience of modern teenagers lost in a world of technological dependence: without the aid of machines, she has no voice at all. A verse by an unknown rap artist comes in towards the end as a deliberate post-post-modern Dadaist parody of other hip-hop cameos: the verse merely echoes Black’s verses, placing her in the musical canon but also making a clear anti-musical statement. Like Duchamp did with his found art, Black throws a found rapper into her own song to point out the absurdity of performance.
On the YouTube video of the song, 3 million people have ‘disliked’ the song, whilst a mere 420,000 have liked it. But this is nothing to worry about. Black has become a member of the so-called minority artists, one person against all society, up there with Kafka and Van Gogh, existing to provoke and puncture mainstream values. Rebecca Black is the aesthetic gadfly of our times.
-----------------
The highest good chorus:shit verse ratio in all of pop:
----------------------
What's good about Roy Orbison is what's good about Alexis Taylor:
1) a profoundly self-confident and unashamed vulnerability and earnestness, like Jesus had
2) the caress it gives the underbelly, which you can physically feel when the high, indignant notes are hit. roy sings the high notes like he's at that very moment recoiling from some emotional shock, like every time he does them he's been dumped 3 seconds beforehand.
3) there is something inherently charming about a conventionally unattractive man just going full pelt for who he loves. anyone sexy like elvis or cheryl cole can sing about loneliness whilst it's patently clear they've never struggled. but roy orbison was damned weird-looking, and you know his songs alone are what make him attractive. THAT's 'authenticity', kids! apologies if anyone finds this offensive but i think it's fairly accurate.
"mock the strong! that's what i say. it's the only thing that separates us from dogs." - stewart lee
get in there, roy lad!
and of course, the quiver. the quiver which leads to the caress, not done so well since piaf:
early rock n roll is charming because of its nerdiness, but roy did the buckled up bright neatness better than all. the high bit in this is just sublimely disarming, it suspends all contempt:
--------------------
also check out Cash pretending to know the chords in this:
------------------
as post-modern as it gets:
must be dead easy being a record collector kid these days. in my time you had to get the bus into chester and spend 6 hours working out which sabbath album to get. social capital (aka cool) was genuinely linked to musical knowledge, and you had to be dedicated, finanically and otherwise, to a cause to get to know your type of music well. i realise this is the only change i've seen in the way youth culture works in my life, and of course it won't be the last, but still, it made an impact.
--------------------
Some recent reviews:
Wild Beasts - Smother
About Group - Start and Complete
------------------
Here's my review of latest wave pictures:
No buggering about at the start of the new Wave Pictures record. A single shimmering jewel of a chord rings out, and then with a crack we’re straight down into David Tattersall’s world, an unchanging world of complex relationships and unashamedly brilliant guitar heroics. Within seconds, the humour and the melancholy of David’s cosmos are making us smile: “We/ pissed in the sea/ and pretended/ to drown one another.” It’s good to be back.
And the pace doesn’t let up. The second, third, fourth tracks all keep up the relentless, pushy brilliance. Like the faster Mountain Goats songs, or some early Dylan, at points it becomes oppressively good with its relentless stream of lyrical excellence which barely breaks for breath. ‘Little Surprise’ features this bright, pizzicato twiddling riff and he lists the parodically clichéd contents of his bohemian girl’s handbag (‘..a ticket from the metro in Milan..’) before sneering, ‘Who/ are you/ to tell me that I look depressed?/ You wouldn’t know it but/ I’m at my best.’
The heat finally drops with the fifth track ‘Walk the Stairs Quiet’, which carries one of David’s best solos on the album; this relentlessly cascading and imploding repetitive trill. Then, back into the boogie with ‘China Wale Back’, all bright and poppy. ‘Pale Thin Lips’ shows how great David is a lyricist, as he seamlessly veers between minimalist platitudes and maximalist, vivid imagery, with both having the same impact: the line ‘I liked the time we had/ I thought it wasn’t all so bad’ can hit you as hard as ‘the crashing windscreen windscreen wipers/ and the arms everywhere/ a comedian’s face on a tram car/ one little electric hair/ your pale thin lips.’ He is just such a glorious songwriter.
‘Two Lemons One Line’ is the best of an excellent bunch. What a track, what a chorus: “You said you wanted a white wine in red wine weather/ You said you never really wanted a red wine, ever.” All this is delivered in a not-angry-just-disappointed, plaintive whine which you never want to end.
‘Rain Down’ has a rubbery, buoyant bassline to start off, then David’s um-cha upstroke-downstroke guitar comes in. It’s as formulaic as Wave Pictures get, with the imagery-full verses and the simple, emotional chorus: ‘when our time comes down/ I will hang on a little while longer’ is the chorus line, and when it’s sung it feels like the most profound thing anyone’s ever said, despite the fact that on paper it’s obviously not. And that’s what good pop music is meant to do.This is easily their best album. The lyrics, the production, the vision, the ambition, all are reaching their zenith in the Wave Pictures world right now. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a band so dedicated to hard work and improvement as them, and I hope they manage to bottle whatever they’ve got running through them right now.
-----------------
Here's me being a bit of a stewart leeish prick about rebecca black:
Mozart. John Stuart Mill. Michael Jackson: all of them protégés pushed to extremes by their parents. Personally, a tragedy of course. But historically, a gift. We look at the relentless pressure, the emotional trauma wreaked early on which later echoed throughout their entire lives, and we naturally sympathise. Then, we look at their body of work and we excuse the boorish parents for forcing open the channels which led to such unparalleled genius.
Rebecca Black now takes her rightful place in this pantheon. Her mother commissioned the production of ‘Friday’ as a vanity piece for her daughter, and her daughter has since received death threats and worldwide ridicule, but in the long-term it will of course all be worth it. Black has already become a dominant cultural force of our age, and it is time someone began serious criticism of her work.
The lyrics express a minimalist aesthetic not seen in pop since Talking Heads, or in poetry since Gertrude Stein. The objective minutiae of daily life are depicted with Joycean microscopic focus with verses dedicating to choosing a car seat but, just as with Joyce, tiny details of life are described in the context of appeals to wider philosophical ideas: ‘Gotta have my bowl, gotta have ceral/ Seein’ everything, time is goin’ ‘.
Yet the spectre of divine judgement hovers over even such devout followers of getting down and party-party-party as Rebecca: one lyric runs, ‘Yesterday was Thursday/ Today it is Friday […]/ Tomorrow it’s Saturday/ And Sunday comes after/ wards/ I don’t want this weekend to end!’ Just what kind of doomsome Calvinist Sabbath does she fear? Only the plaintive cries which swarm over the chorus can come close to explaining. Mere words cannot do her religious terror justice. Indeed, mere words cannot express many of Rebecca Black’s thoughts and feelings.
The voice is autotuned to extremity and comes across as a ghostly, soulless whine. Black succinctly evokes the experience of modern teenagers lost in a world of technological dependence: without the aid of machines, she has no voice at all. A verse by an unknown rap artist comes in towards the end as a deliberate post-post-modern Dadaist parody of other hip-hop cameos: the verse merely echoes Black’s verses, placing her in the musical canon but also making a clear anti-musical statement. Like Duchamp did with his found art, Black throws a found rapper into her own song to point out the absurdity of performance.
On the YouTube video of the song, 3 million people have ‘disliked’ the song, whilst a mere 420,000 have liked it. But this is nothing to worry about. Black has become a member of the so-called minority artists, one person against all society, up there with Kafka and Van Gogh, existing to provoke and puncture mainstream values. Rebecca Black is the aesthetic gadfly of our times.
-----------------
The highest good chorus:shit verse ratio in all of pop:
----------------------
What's good about Roy Orbison is what's good about Alexis Taylor:
1) a profoundly self-confident and unashamed vulnerability and earnestness, like Jesus had
2) the caress it gives the underbelly, which you can physically feel when the high, indignant notes are hit. roy sings the high notes like he's at that very moment recoiling from some emotional shock, like every time he does them he's been dumped 3 seconds beforehand.
3) there is something inherently charming about a conventionally unattractive man just going full pelt for who he loves. anyone sexy like elvis or cheryl cole can sing about loneliness whilst it's patently clear they've never struggled. but roy orbison was damned weird-looking, and you know his songs alone are what make him attractive. THAT's 'authenticity', kids! apologies if anyone finds this offensive but i think it's fairly accurate.
"mock the strong! that's what i say. it's the only thing that separates us from dogs." - stewart lee
get in there, roy lad!
and of course, the quiver. the quiver which leads to the caress, not done so well since piaf:
early rock n roll is charming because of its nerdiness, but roy did the buckled up bright neatness better than all. the high bit in this is just sublimely disarming, it suspends all contempt:
--------------------
also check out Cash pretending to know the chords in this:
------------------
as post-modern as it gets:
Wednesday 25 May 2011
lovely remix (MAKE IT FAST AND HIGH-PITCHED AND HE'LL LIKE IT THE DAFT LAD) of Tweet's 'Oh My', the best song about wanking ever (I know very few, and it's certainly better than 'Me and My Monkey'):
actually not that big a fan of the original, you know. and I don't like her Bootie Luv cover which broke my heart. She's exactly the kind of person I ought to adore!
xx
actually not that big a fan of the original, you know. and I don't like her Bootie Luv cover which broke my heart. She's exactly the kind of person I ought to adore!
xx
Thursday 19 May 2011
past immemorial
Consider 'Then He Kissed Me' by The Crystals.
Note that the titular snog comes at the end of each verse, almost an afterthought; the main event here is not the main event. The buildup, both outward and internal, is meticulously described, and the thing we've all been waiting for is left undescribed, except for the middle eight. Then we get meeting the parents, and the proposal, all events suffixed with the inevitable kiss.
It's so true as well, isn't it? This IS how people talk about getting off with others. How many times have you heard or had this conversation:
Friend: "So what happened with Jane (sic) last night?"
You/Our hero: "Oh well y'know we were in Bar till 11 and then we went for a walk and she has work today so we got something to eat and I had to get cash out so we went down Bridge Street and then sat on the benches there for a bit and I walked her home and then y'knowwekissed and I got the bus home."
Or words to that effect.
Why does this happen? Because when you love someone the good stuff feels inevitable. It's the way you get there that you worry and want to talk about. Proper great.
-------------
It's like the matter-of-fact, 'and then my wife WAS DEAD' which comes smack down slipped-in in the middle of Leadbelly's magnum opus, followed up immediately by 'that started me a grievin'', as if it's just another thing to put on the to-do list:
-----------------
The Beach Boys covered Then He Kissed Me in a reasonably mediocre version, but it does its own tucked-in-shirt nickle-for-the-jukebox-with-change-left-for-a-'shake'-baby charm, I guess:
But they only truly channelled the spirit of Then He Kissed Me in All Summer Long:
Lyrically, it is superb, meandering randomly from inner thoughts and memories to pleasantries directed at someone, someone real.
But! The harmonies make it something exceptional. 'Miniature golf and Hondas in the heat', they sing ensemble, but then the a single-voice harmony (Brian?) comes in to echo it, but never gets to the end, ever: 'Miniature golf and hondas in th...' etc. Even at the moment of recollection, the memory is already lost, or fading fast at least.
I don't care whether this was deliberate or not. That should be clear to you all by now.
-----------
The Ronettes also did Then He Kissed Me, which is fine and as with any song of there's it should be called Then He Kissed Me (At Christmas).
---------------
I would also like to draw attention to the single, isolated scream of mixed emotions at 1:56 in the original, lost amongst a flurry of strings.
Note that the titular snog comes at the end of each verse, almost an afterthought; the main event here is not the main event. The buildup, both outward and internal, is meticulously described, and the thing we've all been waiting for is left undescribed, except for the middle eight. Then we get meeting the parents, and the proposal, all events suffixed with the inevitable kiss.
It's so true as well, isn't it? This IS how people talk about getting off with others. How many times have you heard or had this conversation:
Friend: "So what happened with Jane (sic) last night?"
You/Our hero: "Oh well y'know we were in Bar till 11 and then we went for a walk and she has work today so we got something to eat and I had to get cash out so we went down Bridge Street and then sat on the benches there for a bit and I walked her home and then y'knowwekissed and I got the bus home."
Or words to that effect.
Why does this happen? Because when you love someone the good stuff feels inevitable. It's the way you get there that you worry and want to talk about. Proper great.
-------------
It's like the matter-of-fact, 'and then my wife WAS DEAD' which comes smack down slipped-in in the middle of Leadbelly's magnum opus, followed up immediately by 'that started me a grievin'', as if it's just another thing to put on the to-do list:
-----------------
The Beach Boys covered Then He Kissed Me in a reasonably mediocre version, but it does its own tucked-in-shirt nickle-for-the-jukebox-with-change-left-for-a-'shake'-baby charm, I guess:
But they only truly channelled the spirit of Then He Kissed Me in All Summer Long:
Lyrically, it is superb, meandering randomly from inner thoughts and memories to pleasantries directed at someone, someone real.
But! The harmonies make it something exceptional. 'Miniature golf and Hondas in the heat', they sing ensemble, but then the a single-voice harmony (Brian?) comes in to echo it, but never gets to the end, ever: 'Miniature golf and hondas in th...' etc. Even at the moment of recollection, the memory is already lost, or fading fast at least.
I don't care whether this was deliberate or not. That should be clear to you all by now.
-----------
The Ronettes also did Then He Kissed Me, which is fine and as with any song of there's it should be called Then He Kissed Me (At Christmas).
---------------
I would also like to draw attention to the single, isolated scream of mixed emotions at 1:56 in the original, lost amongst a flurry of strings.
Thursday 12 May 2011
"obsession is a terrible thing, does it happen to everyone?"
Further to my 'people should write more songs about mobiles, they are the romantic loci of our age' idea: What's sweeter than inputting a girl's surname into your predictive text dictionary, knowing that it's gonna be prevalently used in the future?
big post coming soon
x
big post coming soon
x
Tuesday 1 March 2011
Kanye West's Slo-Jams Workshop Walmart Tent 3:30PM
----------------
Joe Meek was tone deaf. Check out the demo he made for Tel Star.
Yeahhh.
Grand old song, Telstar. The scene in Mad Men where Don catapults himself towards California as it plays is pretty stupendous.
---------------
Here is the reggae equivalent of telstar.
2:04!!
---------------
Some recent reviews:
Anna Calvi- Why Can't I Live in the Past?
Bjorn Torske- Kokning
Hercules and Love Affair - A Good Album with a virtually unanimously unpopular review
The Streets- I Will Be Dead Soon
--------------
'Beauty is not a luxury. How can you say I don't deserve beauty?'
-Imelda Marcos
Meant to put this in my Romanticism paper at some point, forgot.
-------------------
I love it when people say 'I would think' when they mean 'I think'.
I dislike it when people say the weather is 'disgusting'.
---------------------------
I think what gets me about is that it's usually used to refer to misty rain, that 'fine rain that wets you right through' as Peter Kay would say, and whilst this can feel oppressive, I find something distasteful about referring to water as something unclean.
--------------
Nigel Blackwell agrees with me on this.
'I quite like a bit of drizzle so stick to the facts'
59 of those 109 views are me.
---------------
I bet Nigel Blackwell would get on well with Karl Pilkington.
---------------
When old people ask for coffee, just coffee in McDonalds.
---------------------
A standard family reminiscence leads to metaphysical certainty.
-------------
Here's a piece I wrote a long time ago about The Lewis Chessmen which didn't get published. The paragraph where I use the word 'silly' six times is a deliberate attempt at AA Gill emulation:
The Lewis Chessmen exist on their own island in history (-appalling opening sentence/pun, it deserved to be binnned in retrospect). No one really knows where they came from, who they were made for, or why they disappeared for seven hundred years. It wasn’t even immediately obvious they were chess pieces upon their discovery. All we have is the pieces themselves, and the knowledge that they are for chess. That’s literally it. Oh, and we also know they’re made from Walrus ivory.
It’s hard to get an exhibition’s worth of information out of this, but of course the pieces themselves are more than enough. They are extraordinary, both now and in the context of their time. Chess was a game which originated in the East where the depiction of humans in art was a taboo, and so Chess pieces at the time were crude blocks. The Lewis Chessmen were uniquely ornate for their age in their detailed depiction of real people.
Detailed, but not realistic. Because the pieces are, and there’s no better word for them than this: silly. They look like children’s drawings of people come to silly three-dimensional life from the page. They inspired Noggin the Nog in their silliness. Not that mere silliness degrades their value in any sense. They may be the first truly silly piece of art ever, and perhaps the first deliberately silly art, which is much more important yet.
And they’re not just silly. It’s hard to connect to the art of the distant past at the best of times, but it’s never helped by the fact it seems so anti-individualistic and brutal. But the smiling, kindly, ridiculous faces of the Lewis Chessmen bring up no such barriers to the past. Look at the face of the Queen smacking her cheek in surprise, or the Bishop slumped with head in hand, or the King who just looks constipated. Never has an army appeared so harmless; nor has the distant past ever appeared so humane. Exhibition runs until 8th January.
-----------------
Here is a joint-review me and Gavin wrote for The University of Aberdeen's Gaudie of The University of Aberdeen's Gilbert and Sullivan Society's production of The Mikado. We were fairly clueless about what G&S do/are and so whilst Gavin retreats to his typical (and great) safety ground of post-theoretical reasoning, I tag along kicking my heels throughout the text with little to say other than I enjoyed it, like Phaedrus in 'Phaedrus'.
James: I’ve never seen a Gilbert and Sullivan thing before.
Gavin: Nor I.
J: They’re all about Britain, right? This one clearly was, and it was set in Japan. It could be set anywhere. The presumably hysterical jokes about Victorian British democracy shot over my head a bit, but still: so English!
G: But that’s the thing. The best, most telling thing about The Mikado - a make-believe Edo Japanese operetta – is that it has nothing to do with Japan. It's an English cartoon manhandling a tradition making fun of itself (and of foreigners; don't let it be denied). There's no hint of Asian themes or timbres in the music; instead, Sullivan just blithely plugs away at his preferred meat-and-two-veg rumpity-tum-pum pop Romanticism. The overture is stout imperial adventure, not the Otherly East.
J: There’s a certain kind of English theatrical comedy which they clearly couldn’t resist plonking in, as per. The self-important bureaucrat, the overbearingly sexual spinster, the weedy lad come good, all of these characters are standard British comic stage characters from Shakespeare to Stoppard. But this isn’t surprising. What are G&S if not establishment, traditional?
G: It’s sillier than most theatre though. We rarely talk about how very close opera is to pantomime, probably because we rarely talk about opera. This is “Buffa opera” - panto rather than dry modern Absurdism. Disney and Broadway can fairly clearly trace their heritage right through. Its humour is neither subtle nor malicious; a warm kind of satire, which we're very unfamiliar with.
J: It did drag things out, first into parody, then beyond that into self-parody. The infinite codas to a song which you got the point of in the first three lines, and such.
G: I know! You could halve the libretto and not lose any plot; there's so much repetition, antiphony, and tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-las that it could easily fit within an hour instead of our two plus.
J: It was self-aggrandising, certainly. But it never lost sight of its own absurdity. It revelled in its sheer, brazen-faced pomposity. Victorian society was so self-confident, did we expect anything less from a wilfully pop opera about a country on the edge of the empire? It’d be weird to cut it down to a work of Brechtian minimalism. You’ve got to go on (and on and on) about something every now and then, haven’t you?
G: Yeah, if the froth was gone it’d be missed. I’d see another one.
J: Me too, and it’s hard to imagine getting a stronger production from a student troupe. I was terrified I’d be seeing some awful work of nationalism. And, in a way, I got just that. But when it’s this self-aware and deflating, fighting silliness with silliness being produced, it’ll take on the unseemly silent dignity of all historical things, which it wouldn’t survive. It’d take a cold heart to not at least smile. Or perhaps smirk?
G: Yep; all credit to the cast and crew, particularly James Corrigan’s tenor blast and Daniel Fletcher’s pomp. It’s weird to think about G&S being the only survivor from the whole busy field of Victorian pop, but it’s a good thing they did survive.
--------------------------------
Ahh A Quoi Ca Sert L'Amour, it must be the greatest duet ever. Here La Mome's not just defending love but her entire career and raison d'etre and, bigger than that, the purpose of music/art in the widest possible sense. Music exists to put limits to rationality and say 'thereof we must not speak' when clear argument (the lad in this, who i think piaf was snogging at this point) invades the realm of ignorant beauty. "EACH TIME I CRY, AND YES I'LL ALWAYS CRY... BUT YOU YOU'RE THE FIRST, AND YOU'RE THE LAST... IT'S YOU THAT I WANT, IT'S YOU I NEED." This is nonsense! But it makes sense if you don't think about that.
And no chorus! Just relentless dialogue. A Wittgensteinian approach to argument: if it reaches no conclusions it's fine, the process is what's important, and it must be repeated over and over again lest we forget. There is no highpoint, no catchy way to bring all this to a close. To perform any art about love is to fight, and the fight must be relentless.
--------------------
WE LOSE GARY MOORE AND THE WHTIE STRIPES IN THE SAME MONTH?????!?!?! not GARY MORE!!!
The White Stripes would never have released a good album again anyway so let's just move on. And hey, The Hives are still going! Probably.
The White Stripes were as important band to me as they were to nearly anybody else (despite the relentless uphill struggle I sometimes had in demonstrating this fact) but there comes a time when you have to accept that every time they made a good record it was a bit of a miracle, and recently the invisible hand of chance has come to claim its dues, and Jack White is incapable of landing on his feet anymore. Ah well, is all you can say.
Not actually a White Stripes song but concisely conveys every good about them:
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