tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53367234345168379652024-03-13T03:35:21.579+00:00out of the darkness, into the lightevery day i wake upJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.comBlogger210125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-46146351456979550672015-01-07T14:46:00.002+00:002015-01-07T14:48:59.667+00:00Out of the AcneI have recently acquired all my previously deleted blogs from the evil empire of Myspace after they deleted every remaining good thing about their site a while ago. I am uploading them steadily, all correctly backdated, to here: http://helsby-eschaton.blogspot.co.uk/<br />
<br />
Before I had access to them, I remembered these blogs as being prime examples of the effervescent wit you only get from 17 year olds and better than anything I ever did here on this site, which is basically dedicated to me repeatedly emphasising to you what a big softie I am through vaguely rare soul and disco records and flowery writing. In reality, of course, the myspace blogs are the self-absorbed jeers from the back of the class of someone who needs you to know they listen to Bjork and is genuinely impressed by a missy elliott/le tigre mashup.<br />
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Odd things stand out like some (I stress <i>some</i>) of my points about punk, but most of it I don't agree with anymore. Nowhere is this truer than the horrifying rant against Westwood, who I now think of as the best example of the Romantic ideal of becoming whoever you want since Lawrence of Arabia.<br />
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I will probably start a new blog soon,<br />
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XJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-18104816396053626272012-10-11T22:02:00.001+01:002012-11-15T13:44:52.776+00:00Prose poem about the post-modern, post-ironic crisis inherent in a Jools Holland appearance.the unending strain of trying to do something truly anarchic and spontaneous in our slot on later with jools holland. it never leaves us.<br />
<br />
noise solos dont even work cos he has like jazz shit on all the time and so it's just normality to him.<br />
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how do we make the man sweat, is it really impossible<br />
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i could wear an eccentric dress<br />
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you could sing along despite not having a mic, like it's one of your fav songs and you'd sing along no matter what you were doing<br />
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it never leaves us<br />
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can't trash the stage; too obvious, contrived.<br />
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the stage is a prison and we can never be truly free. never fly. jools our overlord and protector.<br />
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like feudal peasants we both love and resent our paternalistic ruler, but we lack the means to rebel.<br />
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we resign ourselves to fate, for now: the opening single-chord collaboration intro. we pretend it's our own choice<br />
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but in the back of our minds the guillotine looms large.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-47258250046175030782012-08-27T14:59:00.002+01:002012-08-27T14:59:25.688+01:00Of course love, mood-enhancing drugs, sensual delights; these can all make us very happy indeed. But really all we want is reggae cover versions of our favourite pop songs, let's be honest.
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9qKKEcC0x4w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
And it's instumental so you add your own silly-voiced 'awwwwh juh temm's as you gambol on the carpet.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-5830007904593704652012-03-17T00:39:00.000+00:002012-03-19T10:22:42.180+00:00The Stars Down to EarthI saw Drive last night. I thought it was good and don't really understand the 'best film ever' hype, but it coincidentally tied together some thoughts I've been having recently in an almost profoundly neat way and I might as well write about it.<br /><br />When I saw the poster for Drive, I said 'wow I hope it's a film based entirely around the Cars song.' Cos I futtin' LOVE that song:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HFZmRVjUJnY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />I was basically right in my prediction (any moment in the film could be soundtracked by the above), but it also uses music in some pretty neat ways which linked several thought chains I've had on the go recently.<br /><br />Firstly, it uses italo disco as the stylistic anchor for the film. People talk about its 80sness and what they're talking whether they know it or not about is the retro echoes of italo disco. Most movingly, it uses Desire's Under Your Spell:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9K7rmxjk5RQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />But that's not their best song though it is of course boss. This is:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dJqhUbHEpGM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />That synth riff bopping up and down like a hyperventilating chest.<br /><br />What did hit me about Drive was that only the morning before I watched it I was day-dreaming about night-driving.<br /><br />Driving aimlessly at night is so obviously the most romantic thing two people can do together, it's obscene. Just as kissing is better than sex for its manifest pointlessness, so driving is better than dinner because of its vagrant absurdity. <br /><br />'Do you wanna go for a drive?'<br /><br />Two people, looking not at each other but straight ahead, hands on thighs. One person in control, the other a willing passenger, unknowing and uncaring of destination- that's what love <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span>.<br /><br />I come from an area of the world rich in transport links. Trod up the hill to 'churchies', the field next to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Laurence%27s_Church,_Frodsham">St Laurence's where my parents got married</a>, and you look out at the marshland corrugated by line after line of means of moving; first a railway line, then the M56, the Manchester Ship Canal and the Mersey, and finally the runways of Liverpool airport. By any means, the North West is rich in ways to get about, not least Motorways:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.move2wigan.com/images/pages/northwest_motorway_map.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 553px; height: 541px;" src="http://www.move2wigan.com/images/pages/northwest_motorway_map.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I live pretty much where it says 'M56' there on the left. That's me.<br /><br />The M56, Queensferry to Manchester. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8df0zNQHjwE">Highway 56 runs right by my baby's door.</a> Between Junction 12 (Frodsham) and Junction 14 (Stanlow Oil Refinery, Elton, Helsby and Helsby Services (Whimpy, W.H. Smiths, shower block we used for a month when we didn't have a boiler)), there's no junction 13, for reasons much mythologised. I live straight between the two junctions. My area would be unlucky if it had a junction.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg2EbJy-9dc">Americans romanticise their highways</a>. In Britain this is looked down upon but in reality this road has huge sentimental potential for me. It leads right into the Centre of Manchester and I didn't have to take a single turning to end up literally outside my ex's house in my late teens. It is an ever-present drone to the citizens of Helsby, some including my mother saying they find it hard to sleep when away from it in silence. I use it as a barometer for the how the world works; at midnight on New Years Eve I look out across the Mersey firstly to watch the Liverpudlian fireworks reflected in the river but I always find myself looking at the motorway, and wondering what the half dozen drivers on it at that particular time are thinking; are they even celebrating? <br /><br />The motorway is the modern-day river and holds the same position that the river held in the renaissance imagination. We use it to travel far and near, for food and for work, and so even when we're not using it, it becomes a symbol for the world beyond the immediate.<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vGD8aQ2GKr0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />From an early age it became apparent that the only interesting thing to do in Helsby is travelling. Not travelling to somewhere else, just <span style="font-style:italic;">travelleing</span>. Initially it was just walking the length of the A56 which of course runs parallel to the motorway, from the park to the shops and back over and over. I still see kids doing this every Saturday, only now it's expanded from the new Tesco to the shops and back. Later, we'd get buses to Chester and do nothing there but walk up and down the high street. Then I learnt to drive and found just another new way to wander. And so came the night drives up and down the M56, sometimes knocking onto the '62, or around the dual carriageway maze of Runcorn.<br /><br />The architecture of motorways at night becomes as profound as anything in the modern world. Everything is reduced to three primary colours of red, white and black. Lights bob up and down in the distance, cities burn on the horizon. From a distance everything is the same- houses, street lights, cars, industry, offices, security lights bleaching the side of a warehouse. The world is homogenised and comes alive as a result. Whilst in the day motorways are a green tunnel strewn with rubber skids and shrapnel, at night-time they seem like the only place in the world, a speckled band of light in the dark.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.aidan.co.uk/lg/ManM56WythLts5Y20.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 480px; height: 321px;" src="http://www.aidan.co.uk/lg/ManM56WythLts5Y20.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />There are two options for lovestruck passengers on such a path. <br /><br />1) Silence, appreciative silence. A sense of common purpose when there is none. We are on a journey, we are young, be quiet, we are taking ourselves seriously because what's going on is serious.<br /><br />2) Talk as you'd never talk anywhere else. Leaning across the steering wheel, emphatically waving the hands in the air, proselytising to the back of a Transit van. Sitting sideways on the passenger seat, repeatedly turning the radio down. Laughing, gossiping, treading old ground. Lovers become Proustians; everything must be discussed. Tristram Shandy remarked that he could never complete his life story as to describe anything takes infinitely longer than the event itself. But no one in the front seats of their parents' cars on a motorway at 2am cares. When there is no end in sight, anything is possible and everything is infinite. A conversation has no foreseeable ending and so its length is insignificant.<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cPQcnjlwtE4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Stanlow refinery takes on a unique beauty by night, as everything and everyone does of course, and from the motorway it doesn't smell as foul as it does from the single track road on the other side.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5220/5384809769_273b111f9c.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 500px; height: 307px;" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5220/5384809769_273b111f9c.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://edwud.com/photos/sunset_over_stanlow_refinery.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 800px; height: 566px;" src="http://edwud.com/photos/sunset_over_stanlow_refinery.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Legend has it that Ridley Scott drove past Stanlow, presumably on the M56, and used it as the basis for Blade Runner's grotesque industry:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://cboye.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/2893298428_48fc499c81.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 500px; height: 375px;" src="http://cboye.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/2893298428_48fc499c81.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />I dunno, who knows? <br /><br />Anyway, OMD, bards of the teen romantic heart obsessed with the stark, wrote a song about Stanlow's physicalising of local heartbreak and heartache:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DmKjNHZd3jg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />But OMD were from up the Wirral, pfft, and probably only saw Stanlow on their holidays or something. For me, I looked at it every day out of my bedroom window, and the gas flares were modern-day beacons, literally the light of my life:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/MiRO7.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 1092px; height: 356px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/MiRO7.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />So what has this to do with Drive?<br /><br />Desire, from way up above, are labelmates of Chromatics, who alledgedly are on the Drive soundtrack but I didnae hear 'em. Chromatics released an album called Night Drive which explicitly channels the feeling of those aimless nights when you knew exactly what you were doing. Astoundingly, only one person on youtube has matched a song from the album with actual footage of a night drive:<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Mgv88ZLi6LY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Even before the Chromatics album, it was obvious that italo disco was the sound of night drives, if they were to have any sound beyond the prayers of the loved sent unceasing into the night. The gentle hi-hats replicating the quick swish of each successive streetlight momentarily highlighting faces and gazes, that neat rubbery bass methodically sloshing around underneath everything like tyres on tarmac, and the ghostly vocals echoing the rest of society to you in the moment: distant and almost irrelevant.<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zwnsS8UG08Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Anyway, keep on drivin'. Out of the darkness, into the light...<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kS2wE7BZel0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />----<br />"Come here, go anywhere."<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LLd1ex1Ruzs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />---------------<br /><br />Ps. here's some Widnesians singing about shagging in cars. The opening 25 seconds took four days to record.<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TR_3gyUq7E0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-79121991730677505612012-03-10T10:18:00.002+00:002012-03-10T11:04:57.187+00:00Sweetness and Light, 9th March 2012This week's development was a presence of a thread throughout the whole playlist. See that blend from lady mcs to lady popstars with the brass sections linking it into the udi band and zen baseballbat? I did that on purpose.<br /><br />1) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcSMpI02gqs">Roll Deep- Remember the days</a> (in at the deep end, relentless)<br />2) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_nopTFuZA">Charles Trenet - La Mer</a> (Best of, trism leisure)<br />3)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOWBZxZHdI0"> Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark - Georgia</a> (Architecture and Morality, EMI)<br />4) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMmt6pzmXJs">Lady Sovereign - Ch-Ching </a>(Run the road vol. 1, 679)<br />5) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv1uae2SwvY">Missy Elliott- We Run This </a>(Respect M.E., Atlantic)<br />6) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQxvo_9DEqY">The Slits - Heard it through the grapevine </a>(Cut, Island) (<-- this sounds <span style="font-style:italic;">brill</span> through headphones)<br />7) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZp2bk4YHFY&ob=av2e">Kylie Minogue - I Believe in you</a> (Ultimate Kylie, EMI)<br />8) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUm3QrgpCW4">The Marvelettes - Someday, Someway</a> (Greatest hits, Motown)<br />9) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HvjDqo5o90">Betty Padget - My Eyes Adored You</a> (Lovers Rock, Trojan)<br />10) UDI Aberdeen City Band - The Final Countdown<br />11) Zen Baseballbat- An Ode to Purple Ackey (I am the champion concrete mixer, moonska)<br />12) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3SoQh_VTZs">Talking Heads- A Clean Break (Let's Work) </a> (The Name of this band is Talking Heads, Sire)<br />13) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBlSDRJ3Qik">Cap'n Jazz - Basil's Kite</a> (Analphabetapolothology, Jade Tree)<br />14) Blind Boys of Alabama - Have Faith (Sanctify my Soul, Union Square)<br />15) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B444PbkmaTQ">Roy Orbison - Love Hurts </a>(best of, sony)<br />16) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUZHtOLKMEQ">National School - Life of Locomotion</a> (ladies mile, self-released)<br /><br />------------<br /><br />I still blame the Ordinary Boys for the disintegration of Lady Sov's career and drift into john lydonesque jeering. Was a time when I held onto every syllable.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-64793067991879732592012-03-06T11:55:00.003+00:002012-03-06T12:10:11.230+00:00Sweetness and Light, 2nd March 2012Problems on the mic (ahem) will be fixed by this week, promise.<br /><br />1) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJxLjsPePrw">Charles Wright-You gotta know what you're doing </a>(funk drops, warner bros)<br />2)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMPY23p3qQU">make believe - we're all going to die </a>(make believe, flameshovel records)<br />3) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvTQZO3hiCE&feature=fvst">venga boys - boom, boom, boom, boom</a> (the party album, positiva)<br />4)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXiW-Lg1wrM"> those dancing days - those dancing days</a> (those dancing days, wichita records)<br />5) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQfUYZ0mS1M">altered images - i <br />could be happy </a>(best of, sony bmg)<br />6) RFL - You're the one (self-released single) (<--- this was pair of 8 year olds joe knew growing up and they don't have a strong online presence)<br />7) <a href="http://www.myspace.com/thefandangoboys">Fandango Boys - All you need is nasty sex</a> (fandangomania, quiet records)<br />8) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3HMogp86cI">dizzee rascal - stand up tall</a> (showtime, xl)<br />9) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGVLX8GDYA4">john holt - ali baba</a> (ska madness 2, spectrum)<br />10) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T84uAPhRWyM">lee perry - cow thief skank</a> (the upsetter, metro)<br />11) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7NDd13_qLo">the band of the cheshire regiment - india, arabia</a> (marching all around the world, hallmark)<br />12) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6xl5Cx0c2Y">abba - voulez vous</a> (abba gold, polar)<br />13) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVsKyncRoDU">roll deep - the avenue</a> (in at the deep end, relentless) <br />14) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH66IB64UBA">half man half biscuit - fix it so she dreams of me </a>(90 bisodol, probe plus)<br />15) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVcS_LtOzqo">h20 ft platinum - what's it gonna be jamie duggan remix </a>(the sound of bassline, niche) (<------ sometimes i wonder if i love this more than the original)Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-86289017842735582402012-02-28T14:04:00.004+00:002012-02-28T14:25:29.555+00:00Sweetness and Light 24th February 2012I now have a slot on student radio where I play records from 1-2 on Friday afternoons over <a href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/asr/">here.</a> Listen in if you will.<br /><br />The station asks for my playlists and I don't know what they do with it tbh so I'll post them here as well. When the song's not on youtube I've linked to a similar track from the same album:<br /><br />1) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-jrPhajJAI">Rob Brady - Everybody's going to the love in </a>(the best of the northern soul story, sony)<br />2)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjY1bIWTC-I">zen baseball bat</a>- 100 years of seaside entertainment (i am the champion concrete mixer, moonska)<br />3)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1G_kFFlLyU">jammer- destruction vip</a> (run the road vol. 1, 679 recordings)<br />4)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pAxdXlbXKs">beastie boys - sounds of science</a> (paul's boutique, capitol records)<br />5)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Pp3V0N0hk">no lay- unorthadox daughter</a> (run the road vol. 1, 679 recordings)<br />6)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYBVAfvRpps">bonnie prince billie - i see a darkness </a>(i see a darkness, domino records) (<-video there still chills and moves)<br />7)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlqP87-zFxs">camille yardborough - take yo praise</a> (fly girls, soul jazz records)<br />8)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIYhYmCR05g">staples singers- respect yourself </a>(blues brother soul sister, dino entertainment)<br />9)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR03E91J_uA">kelly marie- feels like i'm in love</a> (disco classics, weston-wegram)<br />10) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngivZsUjFZY">betty everett - it's in his kiss</a> (blues brother soul sister, dino entertainment)<br />11) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qW9-s3ITbU">odyssey - going back to my roots </a>(disco classics, weston-wegram)<br />12)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8iLwwac4i4"> beatles- soldier of love</a> (live at the bbc,<br />13) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sLbmI077cA">wave pictures</a> - apple boy (beer in the breakers bonus disc, moshi moshi)<br />14) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBc4cKN0vbc">half man half biscuit</a> - floreat inertia (this leaden pall, probe plus)<br />15)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEL-nIwap7I">lou courtney - trying to find my woman</a> (the best of the northern soul, sony) (<--- my favourite song atm)<br />16)<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVxEnKwkerw">hot chip - no fit state</a> (the warning, EMI) (<--- i didn't play this live version but the segue into temptation in the middle is awesome)<br /><br />xJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-60781093250188680982012-02-28T00:32:00.008+00:002012-02-28T00:59:16.981+00:00Song lyrics as misheard by me which are better than the original, part XIIactual: "I might not have the power of telepathy,<br />but<br />I'm gonna be contacting you."<br /><br />misheard by me: "I might not have the power to know baleaaepa about me,<br />but-<br />I'm good at contacting you!"<br /><br />cos the song's about being an impish irritant, see? Love me or I'll love you back. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFerLNdpwO4">Gonna get ya,</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pWU1PYiFJ8">get ya in the end.</a><br /><br />Interesting band, Slow Club. I think the above mishearing succintly demonstrates that I don't listen too closely. And the reason for this is that Slow Club are just so absolutely average. <a href="http://retroheckle.blogspot.com/">Paul</a> once talked about how he likes to listen to bad Queen albums to relax and I guess it's a similar thing. It's not quite muzak but it just music, like literally 'just music'. What do you wanna hear, James? Oh, some music, you know me. Put some music on. Ok. Here is music. This is what music sounds like.<br /><br />Weird cos I usually hate the old <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y5kxOGhqrw&feature=fvst">easy-going</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4_4abCWw-w">unchallenging</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRxccy-zcJ8">acoustic</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Tm7gJxtyM">vibe</a><br /><br />-last link there was a joke OBV. that album's amazing against all the odds and ain't never gonna say nothing against the song that this blog's epigraph comes from, sugar.<br /><br />"Is making an act so asinine that no-one can possibly be challenged or offended by their music the same as them being everyone's favourite act?!"<br /><br />-James Lightfoot on Take That. Maybe that's applicable here. Do like 'em though. Slow Club, that is. New album's shit, mind. 'Cos they tried to be distinctive! Ha. Mates of State they ain't despite their best wishes.<br /><br />I'd like to take this opportunity, as I take any opportunity I get, to say of Rebecca Slow Club, just in case she's reading: I love you and everything you are and stand for. I want you in my eye, my heart, my vicinity, my life, my everything *defiantly holds gaze*.<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/AkH9hfkCbDc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />sigh, flutter.<br /><br />------------<br /><br />here's the antonym to that couplet<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MbAmRwAdvCs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-43700993169060664962012-02-28T00:02:00.004+00:002012-02-28T00:51:52.830+00:00Wittgenstein in Popular Culture vol. 8Joanna Newsom she say: "We are blessed and sustained by what is not said."<br /><br />Ludwig he say: "My whole tendency and, I believe, the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it."<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/P_47_CHdzHI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />-------------------<br /><br />John Lennon he say: "In spite of you, it's true."<br /><br />Ludwig he say: "The world is independent of my will."<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7uVRIAinA3E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-76333588001665358352012-02-20T11:09:00.001+00:002012-02-20T11:09:21.510+00:00<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/C5dXJGHOAag" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-30605768783419916842012-02-09T12:11:00.000+00:002012-02-09T12:12:08.966+00:00PoemFell asleep on the train,<br />Woke up in Peterborough,<br />again.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-1631415220711566942011-12-12T23:57:00.002+00:002011-12-12T23:59:52.556+00:00oh my god oh my god.<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/aF0u1JogNlg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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)<br /><br />bit upset that i've found a new thunders song tbh. thought i'd had it all.<br /><br /><br />ps. i know this is quite an average song but that's not the point.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-23016539966724755462011-11-17T16:29:00.000+00:002011-11-17T16:33:33.078+00:00If 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.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-58821210566431673092011-10-29T22:16:00.002+01:002011-10-29T22:18:10.152+01:00some things i would like to be amongst to observe, like jane goodall with ze chimps:<br /><br /><br />-second life users.<br />-professional tribute bands.<br />-theatres which have been putting on the same show for decades (eg cats, les mis) and thus become factories of play.<br />-the department which deals with the mad letters written to '10 Downing Street, London'<br />-non-english speaking beatles fans.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-38920004534938096812011-10-07T15:30:00.009+01:002011-10-09T19:44:42.600+01:00the old CountryProper coffee<br />Not got Sky<br />Tesco's/Tesco<br />--------------<br />Was Blair's greatest success creating a generation who unquestioningly absorb the phrase 'social networking' into their lexicon?<br />----------------<br /><br />In our crass-builded, glass-bloated, green-belted world Sunday is for washing the car, tinned peaches and carnation milk.<br /><br />A sergeant's world it is now, the world of the lay-by and the civic improvement scheme. <br /><br />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.<br />The hedges come down from the silent fields. The lease is out on the corner site.<br />A butterfly is an event.<br /><br />Were we closer to the ground as children or is the grass emptier now?<br /><br />Tidy the old into the tall flats. Desolation at the fourteen storeys becomes a view.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />--------------<br /><br />I feel like a beggar accepting alms<br />Then being pelted with figs<br />I study my steadily declining chart placings<br />They greet me with freezing cold inhospitality<br />Hey, where did that bloke go who said I was vital?<br /><br />I possess the mild air of a retail tobacconist<br />That’s because I’m a retail tobacconist<br />But the mayflies on a Berkshire trout river<br />Would probably tell you a different story<br />About ham-fisted diadems and momentary daydreams<br />Of mythical dividends and illusory boardroom seats<br /><br />In the room festooned with fat beef certificates<br />From county shows<br />Duff Leg Bryn had drank too much again<br />Most of Wem was steering clear of him<br />“I’ve got no time for this twelfth consecutive Rose Bowl”<br /><br />‘Cos on Sunday next at ten to four<br />I’ve got an invitation for<br />A trip around Katharine Hamnett’s warehouse<br />Followed by dinner with David Emanuel<br />Who I can’t wait to tell about my dream<br />In which the almost illegal Elton Welsby<br />Is dressed as a french maid on a moonless byway<br />Licking his lips as he creeps ever closer<br />Fast falls the eventide<br />Fast falls the eventide<br /><br />The public appearance of bitter ex-soap stars<br />Who thought they could go on and do other things besides<br />The Centre Court amusement at the ballboy’s mishap<br />That bobbing up and down thing that they do at the Proms<br />Opinionated weather forecasters telling me it’s going to be a miserable day<br />Miserable to who? I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts<br /><br />Channel Four presents “Blowjob”<br />Introduced by Adrian and Sophie Horn<br />Who is of course one bloke with a pierced dick<br />Who’s just had the nod from Planet 24<br />Hear him say “surreal”, “bizarre”, “sad git”<br />“Yes indeedy”, “completely and utterly”, “footy”, “anorak” and “respect”<br />Before whipping the audience up into doing the Time Warp<br /><br />Watch him take us live to The Queen’s Arse and Firkin<br />Where Joseph Bloggs and his amazing Technicolor shellsuit<br />Are about to abort their Steely Dan routine<br />And instead embark upon fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah<br />Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah<br />Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah<br /><br />Adrian-stroke-Sophie wants us, the viewers, to ring in<br />And say how we think the punters will react<br /><br />These are a few of my favourite things…<br /><br />I’m incredibly bored with the word “millennium”<br />I’m with the Jehovah’s Witnesses<br />Millions now earmarked will later be wasted<br />Her Majesty, marvellous, Mother – The Musical<br />The fireworks lighting up the Houses of Parliament<br />Death in Trafalgar Square, death in the armchair<br />Of cliched old spinsters who’ve never been loved<br />Every day is Australia day<br />“Sons and Daughters” and “Home and Away”<br />And then the news comes on and the sound goes down<br />‘Cos she can’t be bothered with all them politicians<br />They’re all just a bunch of flaming drongos<br /><br />She died with her telly on, eighty-seven and confused<br />With not enough hospital beds ‘cos all the money’s been used<br />On the end of the century party preparations<br />And they reckon that the last thing she saw in her life was<br />Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican<br />Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican<br /><br />T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee<br />T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee<br />T for Thatcher, that girl that made a wreck out of me<br /><br />Oh the lady labelled me an idle<br />Oh the lady labelled me an idle<br />Oh the lady labelled me an idle layabout<br />Layabout<br />Layabout<br /><br /><br />----------------------<br /><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><br />--------------<br /><br />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.<br /><br />---------------<br /><br />mid-table<br />there's nothing much on my fork<br />it's alright though<br />cos I can go for my walk<br />around Cartmel<br /><br />---------------<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jQUKFKm3hCg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-21169984821914425722011-08-30T02:06:00.003+01:002011-08-30T02:46:45.565+01:00come on, I will show you I will change when you give me something to slaughterHere are some things I've learnt through educating myself about football:
<br />
<br />About Myself:
<br />
<br />-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 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY-iNVM6EaY">what</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36P1wCvFX4s">that</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tw4VNKXDhc">would</a> <a href="http://www.cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk/libraries.aspx">be</a>) I would literally never respond like that.
<br />-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.
<br />-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).
<br />-Wikipedia is invaluable for learning about lots of things quickly. Which leads me onto...
<br />
<br />About Others:
<br />
<br />-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....
<br />-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.
<br />-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.
<br />-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..
<br />
<br />
<br />-----------
<br />
<br />Some football songs:
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JjyQkt04Urc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br />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:
<br />
<br />"FANS!
<br />Remember: you are abroad!
<br />Remember: the police are rough!
<br />Remember: the unemployed!
<br />Remember: my expense account!"
<br />
<br />and then again we're back down to it.
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DvwA7BK4-6A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gaxB5qRSq1I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br /><iframe width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/elVt-NszDtI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br />(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!])
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/x_Wwi5B34pw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rhVkDTfORQs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yvuOtlpSAeY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br />(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr_DTozbH8E">nod to the original</a>, 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)
<br />
<br />Russell Brand reckons this is the greatest football song ever, as it is <a href="http://www.lyricstime.com/west-ham-united-i-m-forever-blowing-bubbles-lyrics.html">about the transience of both success and failure</a>, and that's obviously just the kind of thing that tugs at all my strings, credit to him, but let's never forget:
<br />
<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8smO4VS9134" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />Some more versions, starting with the original, which is the worst:
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<br /><iframe width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/B7YhWIzd-gc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jE5gLpx_Wkc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rgyXGPXI8sk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />it seems silly not to link to this as much as possible, it samples YNWA so that can be my excuse this time:
<br />
<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Kcy3gwwxat4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />-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. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgIs6PerO6Y">does man utd's song of a few years later </a>sample Busby? would anyone have even thought of that? no.
<br />
<br />(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)
<br />
<br />anyway,
<br />
<br />john peel started his show with this one the day of hillsborough:
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/N5S6Ohl9UAg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />so close to being my favourite ('WHY DON'T YOU WALK ON???'):
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bVY5EuFpcok" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />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.
<br />
<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-oo2TP4i5jg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />the last word:
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<br /><iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RQSD6LCRFQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />--------------------
<br />
<br />'If I went to Anfield I really think I'd cry during YNWA.'
<br />
<br />'Yeah but then people would just piss in your pockets.'
<br />
<br />-Louise and Patrick.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-14436198690077040332011-08-15T11:52:00.003+01:002011-08-15T11:55:31.670+01:00Lyrics misheard by me which are better than the original number 7:
<br />
<br />Actual lyric: 'Do you think I once saw heaven?'
<br />
<br />Misheard by me: 'Do you think I saw a heron?'
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Which is better, isn't it? Much more biscuity, cos herons are one of those birds that you always point out when you see.
<br />
<br />
<br />When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
<br />When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
<br />When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear somebody say,
<br />'Careful now, that swan can break your arm.'
<br />
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<br />-------------------------
<br />
<br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FTv4HtS0hx8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oWxUVGbArc8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-90584890740077292492011-06-01T21:19:00.006+01:002011-06-07T12:46:58.041+01:00when i was 16 i would, and did, pay upwards of 15 quid for stuff like this. how times have changed.<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mjaFuN7JuqU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />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.<br /><br />--------------------<br /><br />Some recent reviews:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2011/06/07/wild-beasts-smother/">Wild Beasts - Smother</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2011/05/09/about-group-start-and-complete/">About Group - Start and Complete</a><br /><br /><br />------------------<br /><br />Here's my review of latest wave pictures:<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.’<br /><br />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.<br /><br /> ‘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.<br /><br />‘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.<br /><br /><br />-----------------<br /><br />Here's me being a bit of a stewart leeish prick about rebecca black:<br /><br />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.<br /> <br />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.<br /><br />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’ ‘. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><br />-----------------<br /><br />The highest good chorus:shit verse ratio in all of pop:<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/d4lPA5G0DOo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br /><br />----------------------<br /><br />What's good about Roy Orbison is what's good about Alexis Taylor: <br /><br />1) a profoundly self-confident and unashamed vulnerability and earnestness, like Jesus had <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"mock the strong! that's what i say. it's the only thing that separates us from dogs." - stewart lee<br /><br /><br />get in there, roy lad!<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CYhMrtZM1WA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br /><br />and of course, the quiver. the quiver which leads to the caress, not done so well since piaf:<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/DyK5ew4m6JU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />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:<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7dPBG86iQz4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />--------------------<br /><br />also check out Cash pretending to know the chords in this:<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/eV9GxtDao9g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br /><br />------------------<br /><br />as post-modern as it gets:<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VzNuGOZ_Eeg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-4499729597811070622011-05-25T18:18:00.004+01:002011-05-25T18:27:17.232+01:00lovely 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 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCE0z4V3USQ&feature=related">'Me and My Monkey'</a>):<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zrcO04iml7A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />actually not that big a fan of the original, you know. and I don't like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15WwwgGxpfI&feature=related">her Bootie Luv cover</a> which broke my heart. She's exactly the kind of person I ought to adore!<br /><br /><br />xxJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-32488733058536573242011-05-19T12:59:00.003+01:002011-05-19T13:18:46.222+01:00past immemorialConsider 'Then He Kissed Me' by The Crystals.<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/cE_jOD2Fxvs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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:<br /><br />Friend: "So what happened with Jane (sic) last night?"<br /><br />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."<br /><br />Or words to that effect.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />-------------<br /><br />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:<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EZHFtMYyf9E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />-----------------<br /><br />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:<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lUfj4PE0Glg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />But they only truly channelled the spirit of Then He Kissed Me in All Summer Long:<br /><br /><iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2smDXr13EJE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Lyrically, it is superb, meandering randomly from inner thoughts and memories to pleasantries directed at someone, someone real.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />I don't care whether this was deliberate or not. That should be clear to you all by now.<br /><br /><br />-----------<br /><br />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).<br /><br />---------------<br /><br />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.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-58076029667302741842011-05-12T12:16:00.000+01:002011-05-13T21:52:22.704+01:00"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?<br /><br /><br />big post coming soon<br /><br />xJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-41240827456766586702011-03-01T14:20:00.000+00:002011-03-01T14:20:37.502+00:00Kanye West's Slo-Jams Workshop Walmart Tent 3:30PM<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs018.snc6/166857_10150128381926206_540006205_8309975_2410586_n.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 540px; height: 720px;" src="http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs018.snc6/166857_10150128381926206_540006205_8309975_2410586_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />----------------<br /><br />Joe Meek was tone deaf. Check out the demo he made for Tel Star.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FxY082Ckp-o?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FxY082Ckp-o?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Yeahhh.<br /><br />Grand old song, Telstar. The scene in Mad Men where Don catapults himself towards California as it plays is pretty stupendous.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SQdDjy1UtW4?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SQdDjy1UtW4?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />---------------<br /><br />Here is the reggae equivalent of telstar.<br /><br />2:04!!<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lg9R0KjQHa0?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lg9R0KjQHa0?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />---------------<br /><br />Some recent reviews:<br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2011/01/25/anna-calvi-anna-calvi/"><br />Anna Calvi- Why Can't I Live in the Past?<br /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2011/01/17/bjorn-torske-kokning/">Bjorn Torske- Kokning</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2011/02/02/hercules-and-love-affair-blue-songs/">Hercules and Love Affair - A Good Album with a virtually unanimously unpopular review</a><br /><br />Th<a href="http://www.factmag.com/2011/02/08/the-streets-computers-and-blues/">e Streets- I Will Be Dead Soon</a><br /><br />--------------<br /><br />'Beauty is not a luxury. How can you say I don't deserve beauty?'<br /><br />-Imelda Marcos<br /><br />Meant to put this in my Romanticism paper at some point, forgot.<br /><br />-------------------<br /><br />I love it when people say 'I would think' when they mean 'I think'.<br /><br /><br />I dislike it when people say the weather is 'disgusting'.<br /><br /><br />---------------------------<br /><br />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. <br /><br /><br />--------------<br /><br />Nigel Blackwell agrees with me on this.<br /><br />'I quite like a bit of drizzle so stick to the facts'<br /><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/afKauqBwFDI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />59 of those 109 views are me.<br /><br />---------------<br /><br />I bet Nigel Blackwell would get on well with Karl Pilkington.<br /><br />---------------<br /><br />When old people ask for coffee, just coffee in McDonalds.<br /><br />---------------------<br /><br />A standard family reminiscence leads to metaphysical certainty.<br /><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OPN59U1O4yI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />-------------<br /><br />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:<br /><br />The Lewis Chessmen exist on their own island in history <span style="font-style:italic;">(-appalling opening sentence/pun, it deserved to be binnned in retrospect)</span>. 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. <br /><br /> 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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />-----------------<br /><br />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'. <br /><br /><br />James: I’ve never seen a Gilbert and Sullivan thing before.<br /><br />Gavin: Nor I.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />G: Yeah, if the froth was gone it’d be missed. I’d see another one.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><br />--------------------------------<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZtnTaUcMLjA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />--------------------<br /><br />WE LOSE GARY MOORE AND THE WHTIE STRIPES IN THE SAME MONTH?????!?!?! not GARY MORE!!!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />The White Stripes were as important band to me as they were to nearly anybody else (despite the <a href="http://www.musicvice.com/reviews/albums/the-white-stripes-under-great-white-northern-lights-230310">relentless uphill struggle I sometimes had in demonstrating this fact</a>) 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.<br /><br />Not actually a White Stripes song but concisely conveys every good about them:<br /><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zimV0QHKp2c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />------------------<br /><br /><bye!3Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-939226226315391872010-11-23T21:52:00.011+00:002010-12-08T17:20:10.790+00:00Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad.<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tLDlOCq296Q?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tLDlOCq296Q?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />--------------<br /><br /><br />"Should anyone ask you,<br />'who composed this song?'<br />Should anyone ask you,<br />'who composed this song?'<br />Say, 'It was I! and<br />I sing it all day long.'"<br /><br />Nice verse summing up the idea of folk music/all popular music from Worried Man Blues. You are the author of these thoughts, whether you know it or not.<br /><br />-------------------<br /><br />Interesting joke from John Lennon here. He mockingly refers to this song as being from 1822, deriding its old fashioned sound. But Johnny Burnette recorded the original in 1957, and I think this session is 1963 at the latest. Did the early 60s change the musical landscape THAT much? I can't imagine someone joking about a Girls Aloud song from 6 years ago like that.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xv6aR9P5BFo?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Xv6aR9P5BFo?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />--------------<br /><br />Here's a selection of songs which are the only songs that I like by the artist that made them, if you get me. This actually means I have an unusually strong attachment to them; isolation increases passion.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sOwanwaO4Zk?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sOwanwaO4Zk?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uGwH-x4VoH8?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uGwH-x4VoH8?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />I've talked about this one before and will continue to for a while. Easily in my top five videos ever. It was around the time of myspaces and full of myspace photo poses, which for a song about a fat girl being insecure is so great.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AB2T4aCQh6g?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AB2T4aCQh6g?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />I feel like I should be ashamed of this one but that's not the way I do things like this.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1Jdqk2UJjno?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1Jdqk2UJjno?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />I think the sentiment in this song is confused and poorly expressed, but the voice redeems it spectacularly.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8CMpSFqUwpM?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8CMpSFqUwpM?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />I of course like Jay-Z, but this is the only time I like MOP's style of butch, macho cunt-rap. And it's all cos of that female vocal sample, which is spectacular. MOP rap clumsily and violently over the top, whilst the feminine quivers and squirms underneath the overbearing masculine, trying to seep up between the cracks of this charmless veneer with the faltering 'oh no' and 'do you believe' prayers which are offered not up to MOP, but higher still: to the listener.<br /><br />"I don't claim to be no philosopher,<br />but I sure know, this isn't life."<br /><br />A brief snippet of beauty at the start then MOP obliterate and ruin it, ignorant of the fragile distress underneath them.<br /><br />Jay-Z is also on it and he is ok I guess.<br /><br />--------------------<br /><br />"I'll take my chances,<br />for romance is,<br />so important to me."<br /><br />-------------------<br /><br />Let's look at Wanda Jackson.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nvSOsldlClU?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nvSOsldlClU?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />So that was amazing. And then:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pzJ3hiqsi0U?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pzJ3hiqsi0U?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />"We think this is one of the most beautiful love songs that's ever been written"!!!!!<br /><br />So, we're clearly in the presence of greatness. Wanda Jackson is exceptional for a number of reasons not least because she's absolutely fine about being completely removed of sex appeal (this will be a theme of this blog, btw nice article in the guardian recently about Polly Styrene's deliberate removal of herself from feminine sexuality) and female romantic platitude.<br /><br />So:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Kf5FvUt7iIw?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Kf5FvUt7iIw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />To sing about love in a voice like that! I have two theories about it. It's either:<br /><br />1) Meant to be a chain-smoker's voice; the sound of 3am end-of-a-twenty-deck heartbroken calls to no one.<br /><br />or <br /><br />2) Just deliberately ugly to remove oneself from emotional cliché.<br /><br /><br />They're of course not mutually exclusive, but I'm more tempted towards the second because of this:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/76k7cL7qKuc?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/76k7cL7qKuc?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />25 seconds in, Wanda lets slip that plaintive, tender 'I love you' at the end of her shoegazings mumblings before a brutal sandpapered 'YEAHHH' comes in to affirm it. Wanda has moments of romantic normalcy bubbling underneath the surface, but covers it up with this anti-sexual voice. Which is great!<br /><br />It's also assured by the fact that all her plain-singing songs about love are pretty much unexceptional and dull:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HvnWcb6mu4Q?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HvnWcb6mu4Q?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />You can tell she'd rather be singing her voice in funnel of love here. The voice of battery acid, wasps and vinegar.<br /><br />---------------------<br /><br />'I Bid You Goodnight' by Any Old Time String Band (find it on spotify or buy it for 79p on amazon, I did both) is my favourite song right now. Here are the lyrics: <br /><br />Lay down my dear sister<br />Won't you lay and take your rest<br />Won't you lay your head upon your saviours breast<br />And I love you but Jesus loves you the best<br />And I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight,<br />And I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.<br />One of these mornings bright and early and fine.<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />Not a cricket not a spirit going to shout me on<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />I go walking in the valley of the shadow of death<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />And his rod and his staff shall comfort me<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />Oh John the wine he saw the sign<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />Oh John say I seen a number of signs<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />Tell A for the ark that wonderful boat<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />You know they built it on the land getting water to float<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />Tell B for the beast at the ending of the wood<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />You know it ate all the children when they wouldn't be good<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />I remember quite well, I remember quite well<br />Goodnight, goodnight<br />I was walking in Jerusalem just like John<br />Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.<br /><br /><br /><br />Ain't nothing I like more than Christianity for my pseudo-profundity (at a philosophy conference in Edinburgh recently I said that profundity and pseudo-profundity are the same thing when put to music and I could feel the collective intake of breath across the room). <br /><br />I like it because it's about removing yourself from romantic and possibly sexual love in the aim of a higher cause (the jesus loves you the best couplet is one of my favs), which is nice. Then it's just a set of abstract, barely connected phrases which as we all know I'm very fond of as they're ripe for misinterpretation, which is where I come alive.<br /><br />These aren't the exact lyrics on the original and I do recommend you seek it out but I got them from <a href="http://www.lyricstime.com/incredible-string-band-a-very-cellular-song-lyrics.html">here which has some excellent poetry either end of them, which is mysterious but great</a>.<br />-------------------<br /><br />Gavin chastised me for liking Waugh, saying that he idealised the aristocracy that he claimed to lampoon. Martin Amis said something similar, saying Brideshead Revisited set egalitarianism as its target and unrelentingly gunned it down for 400 pages.<br /><br />But I think they both miss the point and one of the reasons I really like Brideshead is it's about the idea that if you really want something, you to some extent already have/are that thing. Charles wants to be Sebastian, and when he gets his chance, he is better at being Sebastian than Sebastian ever can be. Some people, both in and out of the novel, accuse Charles of being cool and soulless, but in reality he is just calm and methodical in his acting out a life he's internally rehearsed thousands of times. Charles can seem ruthless but in reality is endeavouring to close the gulf between our private and public persona.<br /><br />This song expresses a similar thing. A sexy song from the least sexy band ever. It reminds me of the Knife at points in its astonishing level of self-assurance. Fox knows what she is. Inside, we're all exactly what we want. Fox in this song is Charles around the time of his divorce: things are beginning to come apart in his plan, the world is not perfect and instead of getting upset he transcends himself to a yet higher realm, marrying Julia, and going for a more perfect union.<br /><br />You know what, it comes back to I Bid You Goodnight, as everything in my life does at this moment. You spend an evening drinking and the whole world as you want it is laid out before your eyes, and you pull back and out, cos internal wranglings of the mind are better than anything he has to offer.<br /><br />Internal sexual superiority and general, non-sexual romantic fantasy remains pure and intact when it's not put into use or practice.<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EKG2bAoGguI?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EKG2bAoGguI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />"You thought it'd be great,<br />You thought it'd be great,<br />But a good mind does not a good fuck make"<br /><br />-The Fall<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mApijH7UjvA?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mApijH7UjvA?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />---------------------<br /><br />Just do not need this kind of song in my life at the moment. AND YET IT MOVES.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yhNdeevzFi8?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yhNdeevzFi8?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-16282656467744245062010-11-09T22:01:00.004+00:002010-11-09T22:45:22.274+00:00Complex simplicityDriving your pedigree dog across the country for it to have sex with another dog for money.<br /><br />----------------------<br /><br />Two songs which are commonly misunderstood and/or barely listened to properly.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1IdEhvuNxV8?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1IdEhvuNxV8?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />It's a song about ringing up every guy you know and begging them for sex. Which is a great thing to write a song about. Complete, wanton, all-encompassing desperation. But people dance to this at <span style="font-style:italic;">weddings!</span><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aOl4oeHZnBk?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aOl4oeHZnBk?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />The Fully Monty made it a comedy song, which is so unfortunate, as it's surely one of the best disco hits. Those opening chords, sounding just like the tide coming in and out, then consolidated with that guitar, the one cohesive constant as pitch-shifted bongos drip and drop behind.<br /><br />But listen! to the lyrics. Because in what way is sex the main theme here? Just saying 'you sexy thing' does not make it an anthem for impregnation.<br /><br />'Yesterday,<br />I was one of the lonely people,<br />But now you're lying close to me,<br />Making love to me.'<br /><br />Akin to:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF02JX7u5TA&feature=related">'Wow, I can't believe yesterday morning I was trying to jerk off over Toni's answer-phone message, and this morning...!'<br /></a><br />In both these quotes, the sex is the secondary consideration but you, you, you think otherwise, cos you don't care do you! The <span style="font-style:italic;">primary</span> emotion, overriding all else, is the surprise and shock that someone wants you. A miracle. It's a reversal of 'Yesterday', with the same central message: nothing in the world makes sense when someone stops loving you, but when they start it is equally incomprehensible but we forget.<br /><br />-------------------------<br /><br />You know when you really think about it, I mean really think about it, Thomas the Tank Engine is about the Aristotelian notion of eudaimonic flourishing in both animate and inanimate objects. Think about it. Think it through.<br /><br />I first noticed it when watching this which I was watching because I really like the song. I'm not sure why it exists.<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8bEZSKpD7oM?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8bEZSKpD7oM?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />-----------------------<br /><br />Some recent reviews:<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2010/10/05/tropics-soft-vision/">Tropics - Soft Vision<br /></a><br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2010/10/06/james-blake-klavierwerke/">James Blake - Klavierwerke</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2010/10/12/glasser-ring/">Glasser - Ring</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2010/10/18/antony-the-johnsons-swanlights/">Antony and the Johnsons - Swanlights<br /></a><br />I like my ever-growing habit of putting links to reviews of recent music in posts where I talk about songs that are 30 years old, don't you? Eh? Mate? Eh mate?Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5336723434516837965.post-52196805657093671312010-11-01T20:11:00.007+00:002010-11-01T22:22:42.309+00:00You're not God's, you're one of mine.Rufus Wainwright has appeared a lot doing excessively good songs on the soundtracks of reasonably bad films. Here's a quick guide.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eIGrqvA1SC0?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eIGrqvA1SC0?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Apparently this was for a film called Meet the Robinsons, which as far as I can tell is a pixar/psuedopixar cartoon thing. The use of extremely mature ideas of love in a kids' film is interesting. What could a child get from this other than beauty? And, as such, why did pixar/wannabepixar commission it?<br /><br />'With arm pointing and the other arm holding your hand'- nice. Echoes of 'Love is not looking inwardly to one another, but looking outward in the same direction' whoever it was that said that.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mmbQEQltOwM?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mmbQEQltOwM?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />This, my favourite version of Hallelujah ever, was commissioned for, of all things, a Shrek film. I haven't seen the film where it's used, but judging from the first Shrek film, which I have seen, they like to make strong use of kitschy cultural allusions to bolster the timelessness of the fairytales which they're all about. Still, it seems odd to have such a subversive version of such a subversise song for a project which involves Mike Myers.<br /><br />Incidentally, 'Michael Myers Resplendent' was a Mountain Goats song title I adored when I thought it was about Mike Myers, and liked a lot less when I learnt that Michael Myers is the name of the serial killer from the Halloween series of horror films. It seems much less witty now, because it is.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fh-q76T4lEg?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fh-q76T4lEg?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br />This is from the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack. Rufus has a way with opening couplets, see the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX0DyQmmPqQ">'I pray for the power to stay/ in love with you' from Low Grade Happiness</a> as a celestially perfect example. And this is another good example. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0efKyfhUa9E?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0efKyfhUa9E?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Silly fantasy dress-up from the soundtrack to a Howard Hughes biopic. Seems a bit trivial but consider:<br /><br />"I got the blues,<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">And up above it's so fair</span>,<br />Shoes,<br />Come and and carry me there."<br /><br />Not dissimilar to My Sweet Lord in its cry for heaven. Or 'where is my mind' in its combination of the highest metaphysical with the lowest common experience. To bring the listener up to heaven's door, then drag them down as low as possible with the word 'shoes' in all its ludicrous, everyday tawdriness.<br /><br />For a long time when I was young I thought the Beach Boys lyric, 'Wouldn't it be nice if we were older/Then we wouldn't have to wait so long?' meant wait so long to die. Which says many things.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lA0pP1nBmFk?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lA0pP1nBmFk?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0xcc2550&color2=0xe87a9f" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />This song as sung by Rufus wasn't in the History Boys, so I don't know what it's doing on the soundtrack. The song is in the film; Posner sings it to Dakin in a moment of all-too-often emotional honesty across a room full of sneering adolescent condescension. Later in the play, we learn that Posner eventually turns into a new and not-improved version of Hector, and thus such pathetically dogged, lowly moments like this represent the absolute high points of his entire romantic life as he prepares to spend the rest of his years continuing to stare at boys across the classroom.<br /><br />"I'm not happy, but I'm not unhappy about that." says Posner, summing up Rufus' corpus of work well.Jameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06898460058784161896noreply@blogger.com1