I 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/
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.
Odd things stand out like some (I stress some) 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.
I will probably start a new blog soon,
X
Wednesday, 7 January 2015
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Prose 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.
noise solos dont even work cos he has like jazz shit on all the time and so it's just normality to him.
how do we make the man sweat, is it really impossible
i could wear an eccentric dress
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
it never leaves us
can't trash the stage; too obvious, contrived.
the stage is a prison and we can never be truly free. never fly. jools our overlord and protector.
like feudal peasants we both love and resent our paternalistic ruler, but we lack the means to rebel.
we resign ourselves to fate, for now: the opening single-chord collaboration intro. we pretend it's our own choice
but in the back of our minds the guillotine looms large.
noise solos dont even work cos he has like jazz shit on all the time and so it's just normality to him.
how do we make the man sweat, is it really impossible
i could wear an eccentric dress
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
it never leaves us
can't trash the stage; too obvious, contrived.
the stage is a prison and we can never be truly free. never fly. jools our overlord and protector.
like feudal peasants we both love and resent our paternalistic ruler, but we lack the means to rebel.
we resign ourselves to fate, for now: the opening single-chord collaboration intro. we pretend it's our own choice
but in the back of our minds the guillotine looms large.
Monday, 27 August 2012
Saturday, 17 March 2012
The Stars Down to Earth
I 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.
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:
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.
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:
But that's not their best song though it is of course boss. This is:
That synth riff bopping up and down like a hyperventilating chest.
What did hit me about Drive was that only the morning before I watched it I was day-dreaming about night-driving.
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.
'Do you wanna go for a drive?'
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 is.
I come from an area of the world rich in transport links. Trod up the hill to 'churchies', the field next to St Laurence's where my parents got married, 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:
I live pretty much where it says 'M56' there on the left. That's me.
The M56, Queensferry to Manchester. Highway 56 runs right by my baby's door. 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.
Americans romanticise their highways. 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?
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.
From an early age it became apparent that the only interesting thing to do in Helsby is travelling. Not travelling to somewhere else, just travelleing. 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.
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.
There are two options for lovestruck passengers on such a path.
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.
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.
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.
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:
I dunno, who knows?
Anyway, OMD, bards of the teen romantic heart obsessed with the stark, wrote a song about Stanlow's physicalising of local heartbreak and heartache:
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:
So what has this to do with Drive?
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:
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.
Anyway, keep on drivin'. Out of the darkness, into the light...
----
"Come here, go anywhere."
---------------
Ps. here's some Widnesians singing about shagging in cars. The opening 25 seconds took four days to record.
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:
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.
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:
But that's not their best song though it is of course boss. This is:
That synth riff bopping up and down like a hyperventilating chest.
What did hit me about Drive was that only the morning before I watched it I was day-dreaming about night-driving.
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.
'Do you wanna go for a drive?'
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 is.
I come from an area of the world rich in transport links. Trod up the hill to 'churchies', the field next to St Laurence's where my parents got married, 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:
I live pretty much where it says 'M56' there on the left. That's me.
The M56, Queensferry to Manchester. Highway 56 runs right by my baby's door. 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.
Americans romanticise their highways. 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?
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.
From an early age it became apparent that the only interesting thing to do in Helsby is travelling. Not travelling to somewhere else, just travelleing. 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.
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.
There are two options for lovestruck passengers on such a path.
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.
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.
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.
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:
I dunno, who knows?
Anyway, OMD, bards of the teen romantic heart obsessed with the stark, wrote a song about Stanlow's physicalising of local heartbreak and heartache:
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:
So what has this to do with Drive?
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:
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.
Anyway, keep on drivin'. Out of the darkness, into the light...
----
"Come here, go anywhere."
---------------
Ps. here's some Widnesians singing about shagging in cars. The opening 25 seconds took four days to record.
Saturday, 10 March 2012
Sweetness and Light, 9th March 2012
This 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.
1) Roll Deep- Remember the days (in at the deep end, relentless)
2) Charles Trenet - La Mer (Best of, trism leisure)
3) Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark - Georgia (Architecture and Morality, EMI)
4) Lady Sovereign - Ch-Ching (Run the road vol. 1, 679)
5) Missy Elliott- We Run This (Respect M.E., Atlantic)
6) The Slits - Heard it through the grapevine (Cut, Island) (<-- this sounds brill through headphones)
7) Kylie Minogue - I Believe in you (Ultimate Kylie, EMI)
8) The Marvelettes - Someday, Someway (Greatest hits, Motown)
9) Betty Padget - My Eyes Adored You (Lovers Rock, Trojan)
10) UDI Aberdeen City Band - The Final Countdown
11) Zen Baseballbat- An Ode to Purple Ackey (I am the champion concrete mixer, moonska)
12) Talking Heads- A Clean Break (Let's Work) (The Name of this band is Talking Heads, Sire)
13) Cap'n Jazz - Basil's Kite (Analphabetapolothology, Jade Tree)
14) Blind Boys of Alabama - Have Faith (Sanctify my Soul, Union Square)
15) Roy Orbison - Love Hurts (best of, sony)
16) National School - Life of Locomotion (ladies mile, self-released)
------------
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.
1) Roll Deep- Remember the days (in at the deep end, relentless)
2) Charles Trenet - La Mer (Best of, trism leisure)
3) Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark - Georgia (Architecture and Morality, EMI)
4) Lady Sovereign - Ch-Ching (Run the road vol. 1, 679)
5) Missy Elliott- We Run This (Respect M.E., Atlantic)
6) The Slits - Heard it through the grapevine (Cut, Island) (<-- this sounds brill through headphones)
7) Kylie Minogue - I Believe in you (Ultimate Kylie, EMI)
8) The Marvelettes - Someday, Someway (Greatest hits, Motown)
9) Betty Padget - My Eyes Adored You (Lovers Rock, Trojan)
10) UDI Aberdeen City Band - The Final Countdown
11) Zen Baseballbat- An Ode to Purple Ackey (I am the champion concrete mixer, moonska)
12) Talking Heads- A Clean Break (Let's Work) (The Name of this band is Talking Heads, Sire)
13) Cap'n Jazz - Basil's Kite (Analphabetapolothology, Jade Tree)
14) Blind Boys of Alabama - Have Faith (Sanctify my Soul, Union Square)
15) Roy Orbison - Love Hurts (best of, sony)
16) National School - Life of Locomotion (ladies mile, self-released)
------------
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.
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Sweetness and Light, 2nd March 2012
Problems on the mic (ahem) will be fixed by this week, promise.
1) Charles Wright-You gotta know what you're doing (funk drops, warner bros)
2)make believe - we're all going to die (make believe, flameshovel records)
3) venga boys - boom, boom, boom, boom (the party album, positiva)
4) those dancing days - those dancing days (those dancing days, wichita records)
5) altered images - i
could be happy (best of, sony bmg)
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)
7) Fandango Boys - All you need is nasty sex (fandangomania, quiet records)
8) dizzee rascal - stand up tall (showtime, xl)
9) john holt - ali baba (ska madness 2, spectrum)
10) lee perry - cow thief skank (the upsetter, metro)
11) the band of the cheshire regiment - india, arabia (marching all around the world, hallmark)
12) abba - voulez vous (abba gold, polar)
13) roll deep - the avenue (in at the deep end, relentless)
14) half man half biscuit - fix it so she dreams of me (90 bisodol, probe plus)
15) h20 ft platinum - what's it gonna be jamie duggan remix (the sound of bassline, niche) (<------ sometimes i wonder if i love this more than the original)
1) Charles Wright-You gotta know what you're doing (funk drops, warner bros)
2)make believe - we're all going to die (make believe, flameshovel records)
3) venga boys - boom, boom, boom, boom (the party album, positiva)
4) those dancing days - those dancing days (those dancing days, wichita records)
5) altered images - i
could be happy (best of, sony bmg)
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)
7) Fandango Boys - All you need is nasty sex (fandangomania, quiet records)
8) dizzee rascal - stand up tall (showtime, xl)
9) john holt - ali baba (ska madness 2, spectrum)
10) lee perry - cow thief skank (the upsetter, metro)
11) the band of the cheshire regiment - india, arabia (marching all around the world, hallmark)
12) abba - voulez vous (abba gold, polar)
13) roll deep - the avenue (in at the deep end, relentless)
14) half man half biscuit - fix it so she dreams of me (90 bisodol, probe plus)
15) h20 ft platinum - what's it gonna be jamie duggan remix (the sound of bassline, niche) (<------ sometimes i wonder if i love this more than the original)
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Sweetness and Light 24th February 2012
I now have a slot on student radio where I play records from 1-2 on Friday afternoons over here. Listen in if you will.
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:
1) Rob Brady - Everybody's going to the love in (the best of the northern soul story, sony)
2)zen baseball bat- 100 years of seaside entertainment (i am the champion concrete mixer, moonska)
3)jammer- destruction vip (run the road vol. 1, 679 recordings)
4)beastie boys - sounds of science (paul's boutique, capitol records)
5)no lay- unorthadox daughter (run the road vol. 1, 679 recordings)
6)bonnie prince billie - i see a darkness (i see a darkness, domino records) (<-video there still chills and moves)
7)camille yardborough - take yo praise (fly girls, soul jazz records)
8)staples singers- respect yourself (blues brother soul sister, dino entertainment)
9)kelly marie- feels like i'm in love (disco classics, weston-wegram)
10) betty everett - it's in his kiss (blues brother soul sister, dino entertainment)
11) odyssey - going back to my roots (disco classics, weston-wegram)
12) beatles- soldier of love (live at the bbc,
13) wave pictures - apple boy (beer in the breakers bonus disc, moshi moshi)
14) half man half biscuit - floreat inertia (this leaden pall, probe plus)
15)lou courtney - trying to find my woman (the best of the northern soul, sony) (<--- my favourite song atm)
16)hot chip - no fit state (the warning, EMI) (<--- i didn't play this live version but the segue into temptation in the middle is awesome)
x
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:
1) Rob Brady - Everybody's going to the love in (the best of the northern soul story, sony)
2)zen baseball bat- 100 years of seaside entertainment (i am the champion concrete mixer, moonska)
3)jammer- destruction vip (run the road vol. 1, 679 recordings)
4)beastie boys - sounds of science (paul's boutique, capitol records)
5)no lay- unorthadox daughter (run the road vol. 1, 679 recordings)
6)bonnie prince billie - i see a darkness (i see a darkness, domino records) (<-video there still chills and moves)
7)camille yardborough - take yo praise (fly girls, soul jazz records)
8)staples singers- respect yourself (blues brother soul sister, dino entertainment)
9)kelly marie- feels like i'm in love (disco classics, weston-wegram)
10) betty everett - it's in his kiss (blues brother soul sister, dino entertainment)
11) odyssey - going back to my roots (disco classics, weston-wegram)
12) beatles- soldier of love (live at the bbc,
13) wave pictures - apple boy (beer in the breakers bonus disc, moshi moshi)
14) half man half biscuit - floreat inertia (this leaden pall, probe plus)
15)lou courtney - trying to find my woman (the best of the northern soul, sony) (<--- my favourite song atm)
16)hot chip - no fit state (the warning, EMI) (<--- i didn't play this live version but the segue into temptation in the middle is awesome)
x
Song lyrics as misheard by me which are better than the original, part XII
actual: "I might not have the power of telepathy,
but
I'm gonna be contacting you."
misheard by me: "I might not have the power to know baleaaepa about me,
but-
I'm good at contacting you!"
cos the song's about being an impish irritant, see? Love me or I'll love you back. Gonna get ya, get ya in the end.
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. Paul 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.
Weird cos I usually hate the old easy-going unchallenging acoustic vibe
-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.
"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?!"
-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.
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*.
sigh, flutter.
------------
here's the antonym to that couplet
but
I'm gonna be contacting you."
misheard by me: "I might not have the power to know baleaaepa about me,
but-
I'm good at contacting you!"
cos the song's about being an impish irritant, see? Love me or I'll love you back. Gonna get ya, get ya in the end.
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. Paul 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.
Weird cos I usually hate the old easy-going unchallenging acoustic vibe
-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.
"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?!"
-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.
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*.
sigh, flutter.
------------
here's the antonym to that couplet
Wittgenstein in Popular Culture vol. 8
Joanna Newsom she say: "We are blessed and sustained by what is not said."
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."
-------------------
John Lennon he say: "In spite of you, it's true."
Ludwig he say: "The world is independent of my will."
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."
-------------------
John Lennon he say: "In spite of you, it's true."
Ludwig he say: "The world is independent of my will."
Monday, 20 February 2012
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Monday, 12 December 2011
oh my god oh my god.
listened the shit out of the ramones version of this (originally by the seeds) when i was 17. one of those songs you stand up to listen to; just feels inappropriate to be seated.
who knows what would have happened if i'd known this existed! (answer: slightly more and less of whatever i had and didn't have)
bit upset that i've found a new thunders song tbh. thought i'd had it all.
ps. i know this is quite an average song but that's not the point.
listened the shit out of the ramones version of this (originally by the seeds) when i was 17. one of those songs you stand up to listen to; just feels inappropriate to be seated.
who knows what would have happened if i'd known this existed! (answer: slightly more and less of whatever i had and didn't have)
bit upset that i've found a new thunders song tbh. thought i'd had it all.
ps. i know this is quite an average song but that's not the point.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
If Chuck Norris wanted to be perceived as an artist and an actor of the greatest calibre all he would have to do is book a theatre for a run of 'Evening(s) with Chuck Norris', wait for the post-modern wastrels to turn up ready to guffaw at their anointed, and give a delicate exposition of his vulnerability, emphasising the fundamental weaknesses of all men. He wouldn't even have to do it well.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
some things i would like to be amongst to observe, like jane goodall with ze chimps:
-second life users.
-professional tribute bands.
-theatres which have been putting on the same show for decades (eg cats, les mis) and thus become factories of play.
-the department which deals with the mad letters written to '10 Downing Street, London'
-non-english speaking beatles fans.
-second life users.
-professional tribute bands.
-theatres which have been putting on the same show for decades (eg cats, les mis) and thus become factories of play.
-the department which deals with the mad letters written to '10 Downing Street, London'
-non-english speaking beatles fans.
Friday, 7 October 2011
the old Country
Proper coffee
Not got Sky
Tesco's/Tesco
--------------
Was Blair's greatest success creating a generation who unquestioningly absorb the phrase 'social networking' into their lexicon?
----------------
In our crass-builded, glass-bloated, green-belted world Sunday is for washing the car, tinned peaches and carnation milk.
A sergeant's world it is now, the world of the lay-by and the civic improvement scheme.
Country is park and shore is marina, spare time is leisure and more, year by year. We have become a battery people, a people of under-privileged hearts fed on pap in darkness, bred out of all taste and season to savour the shoddy splendours of the new civility.
The hedges come down from the silent fields. The lease is out on the corner site.
A butterfly is an event.
Were we closer to the ground as children or is the grass emptier now?
Tidy the old into the tall flats. Desolation at the fourteen storeys becomes a view.
Who now dies at home? Who sees death? We sicken and fade in a hospital ward, and dying is for doctors with a phone call to the family.
Once we had a romantic and old-fashioned conception of honour, of patriotism, chivalry and duty. But it was a duty which didn't have much to do with justice, with social justice anyway. And in default of that justice and in pursuit of it, that was how the great words came to be cancelled out. The crowd has found the door into the secret garden. Now they will tear up the flowers by the roots, strip the borders and strew them with paper and broken bottles.
--------------
I feel like a beggar accepting alms
Then being pelted with figs
I study my steadily declining chart placings
They greet me with freezing cold inhospitality
Hey, where did that bloke go who said I was vital?
I possess the mild air of a retail tobacconist
That’s because I’m a retail tobacconist
But the mayflies on a Berkshire trout river
Would probably tell you a different story
About ham-fisted diadems and momentary daydreams
Of mythical dividends and illusory boardroom seats
In the room festooned with fat beef certificates
From county shows
Duff Leg Bryn had drank too much again
Most of Wem was steering clear of him
“I’ve got no time for this twelfth consecutive Rose Bowl”
‘Cos on Sunday next at ten to four
I’ve got an invitation for
A trip around Katharine Hamnett’s warehouse
Followed by dinner with David Emanuel
Who I can’t wait to tell about my dream
In which the almost illegal Elton Welsby
Is dressed as a french maid on a moonless byway
Licking his lips as he creeps ever closer
Fast falls the eventide
Fast falls the eventide
The public appearance of bitter ex-soap stars
Who thought they could go on and do other things besides
The Centre Court amusement at the ballboy’s mishap
That bobbing up and down thing that they do at the Proms
Opinionated weather forecasters telling me it’s going to be a miserable day
Miserable to who? I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts
Channel Four presents “Blowjob”
Introduced by Adrian and Sophie Horn
Who is of course one bloke with a pierced dick
Who’s just had the nod from Planet 24
Hear him say “surreal”, “bizarre”, “sad git”
“Yes indeedy”, “completely and utterly”, “footy”, “anorak” and “respect”
Before whipping the audience up into doing the Time Warp
Watch him take us live to The Queen’s Arse and Firkin
Where Joseph Bloggs and his amazing Technicolor shellsuit
Are about to abort their Steely Dan routine
And instead embark upon fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Adrian-stroke-Sophie wants us, the viewers, to ring in
And say how we think the punters will react
These are a few of my favourite things…
I’m incredibly bored with the word “millennium”
I’m with the Jehovah’s Witnesses
Millions now earmarked will later be wasted
Her Majesty, marvellous, Mother – The Musical
The fireworks lighting up the Houses of Parliament
Death in Trafalgar Square, death in the armchair
Of cliched old spinsters who’ve never been loved
Every day is Australia day
“Sons and Daughters” and “Home and Away”
And then the news comes on and the sound goes down
‘Cos she can’t be bothered with all them politicians
They’re all just a bunch of flaming drongos
She died with her telly on, eighty-seven and confused
With not enough hospital beds ‘cos all the money’s been used
On the end of the century party preparations
And they reckon that the last thing she saw in her life was
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican
T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee
T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee
T for Thatcher, that girl that made a wreck out of me
Oh the lady labelled me an idle
Oh the lady labelled me an idle
Oh the lady labelled me an idle layabout
Layabout
Layabout
----------------------
Berkshire and Hampshire, Leicester and Rutland, those were the Edwardian counties. One breath of their pine-laden air and I am through the door in the wall, back in the land of lost content. I am a young man on a summer afternoon at Melton or Belvoir, sitting in the garden with my life before me and the whole vale dumb in the heat. Is it my fancy? Did I ever take tea on those matchless lawns? Did apricots ripen against old walls and the great horn still sound at sunset? One boat on the wan, listless waters of the lake and nothing stirring in Europe for years and years and years.
--------------
Scotland's insecurities come out differently. It's a kind of 'we're shit we know we are, but really we're great we are' mentality. You sometimes get the impression in Scotland that we are trying to improve, trying to better ourselves, but under the disguise of not trying to improve and not trying to better ourselves. We do things we don't want to do to avoid the appearance of doing the things that we do want to do.
---------------
mid-table
there's nothing much on my fork
it's alright though
cos I can go for my walk
around Cartmel
---------------
Not got Sky
Tesco's/Tesco
--------------
Was Blair's greatest success creating a generation who unquestioningly absorb the phrase 'social networking' into their lexicon?
----------------
In our crass-builded, glass-bloated, green-belted world Sunday is for washing the car, tinned peaches and carnation milk.
A sergeant's world it is now, the world of the lay-by and the civic improvement scheme.
Country is park and shore is marina, spare time is leisure and more, year by year. We have become a battery people, a people of under-privileged hearts fed on pap in darkness, bred out of all taste and season to savour the shoddy splendours of the new civility.
The hedges come down from the silent fields. The lease is out on the corner site.
A butterfly is an event.
Were we closer to the ground as children or is the grass emptier now?
Tidy the old into the tall flats. Desolation at the fourteen storeys becomes a view.
Who now dies at home? Who sees death? We sicken and fade in a hospital ward, and dying is for doctors with a phone call to the family.
Once we had a romantic and old-fashioned conception of honour, of patriotism, chivalry and duty. But it was a duty which didn't have much to do with justice, with social justice anyway. And in default of that justice and in pursuit of it, that was how the great words came to be cancelled out. The crowd has found the door into the secret garden. Now they will tear up the flowers by the roots, strip the borders and strew them with paper and broken bottles.
--------------
I feel like a beggar accepting alms
Then being pelted with figs
I study my steadily declining chart placings
They greet me with freezing cold inhospitality
Hey, where did that bloke go who said I was vital?
I possess the mild air of a retail tobacconist
That’s because I’m a retail tobacconist
But the mayflies on a Berkshire trout river
Would probably tell you a different story
About ham-fisted diadems and momentary daydreams
Of mythical dividends and illusory boardroom seats
In the room festooned with fat beef certificates
From county shows
Duff Leg Bryn had drank too much again
Most of Wem was steering clear of him
“I’ve got no time for this twelfth consecutive Rose Bowl”
‘Cos on Sunday next at ten to four
I’ve got an invitation for
A trip around Katharine Hamnett’s warehouse
Followed by dinner with David Emanuel
Who I can’t wait to tell about my dream
In which the almost illegal Elton Welsby
Is dressed as a french maid on a moonless byway
Licking his lips as he creeps ever closer
Fast falls the eventide
Fast falls the eventide
The public appearance of bitter ex-soap stars
Who thought they could go on and do other things besides
The Centre Court amusement at the ballboy’s mishap
That bobbing up and down thing that they do at the Proms
Opinionated weather forecasters telling me it’s going to be a miserable day
Miserable to who? I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts
Channel Four presents “Blowjob”
Introduced by Adrian and Sophie Horn
Who is of course one bloke with a pierced dick
Who’s just had the nod from Planet 24
Hear him say “surreal”, “bizarre”, “sad git”
“Yes indeedy”, “completely and utterly”, “footy”, “anorak” and “respect”
Before whipping the audience up into doing the Time Warp
Watch him take us live to The Queen’s Arse and Firkin
Where Joseph Bloggs and his amazing Technicolor shellsuit
Are about to abort their Steely Dan routine
And instead embark upon fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Fifteen minutes of mantra-filled oompah
Adrian-stroke-Sophie wants us, the viewers, to ring in
And say how we think the punters will react
These are a few of my favourite things…
I’m incredibly bored with the word “millennium”
I’m with the Jehovah’s Witnesses
Millions now earmarked will later be wasted
Her Majesty, marvellous, Mother – The Musical
The fireworks lighting up the Houses of Parliament
Death in Trafalgar Square, death in the armchair
Of cliched old spinsters who’ve never been loved
Every day is Australia day
“Sons and Daughters” and “Home and Away”
And then the news comes on and the sound goes down
‘Cos she can’t be bothered with all them politicians
They’re all just a bunch of flaming drongos
She died with her telly on, eighty-seven and confused
With not enough hospital beds ‘cos all the money’s been used
On the end of the century party preparations
And they reckon that the last thing she saw in her life was
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican
Sting, singing on the roof of the Barbican
T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee
T for Toxteth, T for Tennessee
T for Thatcher, that girl that made a wreck out of me
Oh the lady labelled me an idle
Oh the lady labelled me an idle
Oh the lady labelled me an idle layabout
Layabout
Layabout
----------------------
Berkshire and Hampshire, Leicester and Rutland, those were the Edwardian counties. One breath of their pine-laden air and I am through the door in the wall, back in the land of lost content. I am a young man on a summer afternoon at Melton or Belvoir, sitting in the garden with my life before me and the whole vale dumb in the heat. Is it my fancy? Did I ever take tea on those matchless lawns? Did apricots ripen against old walls and the great horn still sound at sunset? One boat on the wan, listless waters of the lake and nothing stirring in Europe for years and years and years.
--------------
Scotland's insecurities come out differently. It's a kind of 'we're shit we know we are, but really we're great we are' mentality. You sometimes get the impression in Scotland that we are trying to improve, trying to better ourselves, but under the disguise of not trying to improve and not trying to better ourselves. We do things we don't want to do to avoid the appearance of doing the things that we do want to do.
---------------
mid-table
there's nothing much on my fork
it's alright though
cos I can go for my walk
around Cartmel
---------------
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
come on, I will show you I will change when you give me something to slaughter
Here are some things I've learnt through educating myself about football:
About Myself:
-I am more egalitarian and liberal than I previously thought (and I previously thought of myself as a liberal egalitarian). When I offered a fairly meek and well-formed opinion, only to be shot down with 'you're no expert', it occurs to me that should someone offer an amateur opinion on something I'm an expert on (though I really don't know what that would be) I would literally never respond like that.
-The experience of trying to teach myself about something I have the deeply limited knowledge of but the greatest enthusiasm for is something I really recommend, especially when it's something that virtually everyone knows more about than you. Perhaps the only comparable thing is moving to a country and learning the language, or that time Hannah tried to learn about politics from the bottom up in the midst of politically active and politically arrogant students. It's at once humbling and assuring. What force there is in the majority! And how difficult it is to transpose from the minority; small spaces are snug.
-I have a great reluctance to do anything until it can be done completely properly with minimal chance of backfiring, eg. holding back on revealing knowledge, not engaging in insignificant chat, not revealing team I support. Indicative of deeper problems (women n that).
-Wikipedia is invaluable for learning about lots of things quickly. Which leads me onto...
About Others:
-People don't half talk shit. 90% of football chat is either meaninglessly banal platitudes ('can't wait to watch united play chelsea') or stuff which is so obviously taken directly from the pages of some journal or blog ('he's right-footed of course but is being tested out on the left to see if he's ready for the champion's league game in ajfkga...'). I think I will always be unable to participate in footy banter as it's either dull, or a load of people aiming to show just how much they know, or both. I just never want to say anything when chat turns that way, which feeds back to people thinking I don't know much or don't really like it, and so on. Which brings to mind another resemblance....
-Football is identical to politics in that it's a huge, ever-changing thing that no one has absolute view of, but everyone has absolute views on. People decide on an ideology and stick to it with no time for pragmatism in a field where it's obviously appropriate.
-But, all communities are artificial, and what attracted me to football is irrationality of it, to a point. I'm not so much against the ridiculous conjectural facade of infallibity, more the agression with which it's held onto.
-Also! I do value dialogues for their own sake above and beyond what's actually being said, so maybe it's unfair for me to resent football banter for lacking substance or originality? Still, there is a pull against it just as instinctively powerful as the initial push I had towards the sport..
-----------
Some football songs:
This is one of the best Fall songs in a lot of respects, such as the way you think it's bad at points but then it redeems itself. Like when Mark goes 'pat mcgatt, the very famous sports reporter, is talking' in a mock posh voice and you think Who are you trying to be? John Lennon in 1968? Why would anyone do that? but then a beat too late he adds '...there' at just the right moment and we're back into it. PLUS! the middle eight is the best since This Boy by lennon himself:
"FANS!
Remember: you are abroad!
Remember: the police are rough!
Remember: the unemployed!
Remember: my expense account!"
and then again we're back down to it.
ok, let's get the fat les on. i don't really give one about the rep this song has. it is a work of post-modern delight. lee scratch perry does stuff none too far removed from the verses in this, and people love it. and yet no one likes this. racists.
(obviously people hate it because it looks like it's made by football hooligans but a) the song itself contains no reference/incitement to hooliganism and b) as clough says, 'there's no such thing as football hooligans, only hooligans' [-take note, riot-bullshitters!])
(nod to the original, why are post-war recordings so centred around gentle weakness? is it something to do with limited recording facilities? i think it might be, you know)
Russell Brand reckons this is the greatest football song ever, as it is about the transience of both success and failure, and that's obviously just the kind of thing that tugs at all my strings, credit to him, but let's never forget:
Some more versions, starting with the original, which is the worst:
it seems silly not to link to this as much as possible, it samples YNWA so that can be my excuse this time:
-incidentally, that bill shankly quote at the start there- 'my idea was to turn Liverpool into a bastion of invincibility'- that's one of my favourite quotes ever. 'cos he's not saying anything, is he? it's basically the same as saying 'my idea was to be fantastically good and successful at my job.' and yet, he was, and he did, and i like it. liverpool historians argue that shankly's era continued in spirit well into the early 90s and, if this song has any artistic merit whatsoever, it's that it probably proves that. does man utd's song of a few years later sample Busby? would anyone have even thought of that? no.
(what you just witnessed there, my lad, is the closest cultural analysis novelty singles featuring ryan giggs and john aldridge will ever receive. and to think the gov't are cutting the humanities)
anyway,
john peel started his show with this one the day of hillsborough:
so close to being my favourite ('WHY DON'T YOU WALK ON???'):
cash fucked up on this one if you ask me. the man spent a career fusing vulnerability and fortitude into one glorious thread, and he gets a song which does this better than any other, and what does he do with it? plays it meek and weak. stir us up, lad.
the last word:
--------------------
'If I went to Anfield I really think I'd cry during YNWA.'
'Yeah but then people would just piss in your pockets.'
-Louise and Patrick.
About Myself:
-I am more egalitarian and liberal than I previously thought (and I previously thought of myself as a liberal egalitarian). When I offered a fairly meek and well-formed opinion, only to be shot down with 'you're no expert', it occurs to me that should someone offer an amateur opinion on something I'm an expert on (though I really don't know what that would be) I would literally never respond like that.
-The experience of trying to teach myself about something I have the deeply limited knowledge of but the greatest enthusiasm for is something I really recommend, especially when it's something that virtually everyone knows more about than you. Perhaps the only comparable thing is moving to a country and learning the language, or that time Hannah tried to learn about politics from the bottom up in the midst of politically active and politically arrogant students. It's at once humbling and assuring. What force there is in the majority! And how difficult it is to transpose from the minority; small spaces are snug.
-I have a great reluctance to do anything until it can be done completely properly with minimal chance of backfiring, eg. holding back on revealing knowledge, not engaging in insignificant chat, not revealing team I support. Indicative of deeper problems (women n that).
-Wikipedia is invaluable for learning about lots of things quickly. Which leads me onto...
About Others:
-People don't half talk shit. 90% of football chat is either meaninglessly banal platitudes ('can't wait to watch united play chelsea') or stuff which is so obviously taken directly from the pages of some journal or blog ('he's right-footed of course but is being tested out on the left to see if he's ready for the champion's league game in ajfkga...'). I think I will always be unable to participate in footy banter as it's either dull, or a load of people aiming to show just how much they know, or both. I just never want to say anything when chat turns that way, which feeds back to people thinking I don't know much or don't really like it, and so on. Which brings to mind another resemblance....
-Football is identical to politics in that it's a huge, ever-changing thing that no one has absolute view of, but everyone has absolute views on. People decide on an ideology and stick to it with no time for pragmatism in a field where it's obviously appropriate.
-But, all communities are artificial, and what attracted me to football is irrationality of it, to a point. I'm not so much against the ridiculous conjectural facade of infallibity, more the agression with which it's held onto.
-Also! I do value dialogues for their own sake above and beyond what's actually being said, so maybe it's unfair for me to resent football banter for lacking substance or originality? Still, there is a pull against it just as instinctively powerful as the initial push I had towards the sport..
-----------
Some football songs:
This is one of the best Fall songs in a lot of respects, such as the way you think it's bad at points but then it redeems itself. Like when Mark goes 'pat mcgatt, the very famous sports reporter, is talking' in a mock posh voice and you think Who are you trying to be? John Lennon in 1968? Why would anyone do that? but then a beat too late he adds '...there' at just the right moment and we're back into it. PLUS! the middle eight is the best since This Boy by lennon himself:
"FANS!
Remember: you are abroad!
Remember: the police are rough!
Remember: the unemployed!
Remember: my expense account!"
and then again we're back down to it.
ok, let's get the fat les on. i don't really give one about the rep this song has. it is a work of post-modern delight. lee scratch perry does stuff none too far removed from the verses in this, and people love it. and yet no one likes this. racists.
(obviously people hate it because it looks like it's made by football hooligans but a) the song itself contains no reference/incitement to hooliganism and b) as clough says, 'there's no such thing as football hooligans, only hooligans' [-take note, riot-bullshitters!])
(nod to the original, why are post-war recordings so centred around gentle weakness? is it something to do with limited recording facilities? i think it might be, you know)
Russell Brand reckons this is the greatest football song ever, as it is about the transience of both success and failure, and that's obviously just the kind of thing that tugs at all my strings, credit to him, but let's never forget:
Some more versions, starting with the original, which is the worst:
it seems silly not to link to this as much as possible, it samples YNWA so that can be my excuse this time:
-incidentally, that bill shankly quote at the start there- 'my idea was to turn Liverpool into a bastion of invincibility'- that's one of my favourite quotes ever. 'cos he's not saying anything, is he? it's basically the same as saying 'my idea was to be fantastically good and successful at my job.' and yet, he was, and he did, and i like it. liverpool historians argue that shankly's era continued in spirit well into the early 90s and, if this song has any artistic merit whatsoever, it's that it probably proves that. does man utd's song of a few years later sample Busby? would anyone have even thought of that? no.
(what you just witnessed there, my lad, is the closest cultural analysis novelty singles featuring ryan giggs and john aldridge will ever receive. and to think the gov't are cutting the humanities)
anyway,
john peel started his show with this one the day of hillsborough:
so close to being my favourite ('WHY DON'T YOU WALK ON???'):
cash fucked up on this one if you ask me. the man spent a career fusing vulnerability and fortitude into one glorious thread, and he gets a song which does this better than any other, and what does he do with it? plays it meek and weak. stir us up, lad.
the last word:
--------------------
'If I went to Anfield I really think I'd cry during YNWA.'
'Yeah but then people would just piss in your pockets.'
-Louise and Patrick.
Monday, 15 August 2011
Lyrics misheard by me which are better than the original number 7:
Actual lyric: 'Do you think I once saw heaven?'
Misheard by me: 'Do you think I saw a heron?'
Which is better, isn't it? Much more biscuity, cos herons are one of those birds that you always point out when you see.
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear somebody say,
'Careful now, that swan can break your arm.'
-------------------------
Actual lyric: 'Do you think I once saw heaven?'
Misheard by me: 'Do you think I saw a heron?'
Which is better, isn't it? Much more biscuity, cos herons are one of those birds that you always point out when you see.
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear,
When you're down by the lake you're bound to hear somebody say,
'Careful now, that swan can break your arm.'
-------------------------
Wednesday, 1 June 2011
when i was 16 i would, and did, pay upwards of 15 quid for stuff like this. how times have changed.
must be dead easy being a record collector kid these days. in my time you had to get the bus into chester and spend 6 hours working out which sabbath album to get. social capital (aka cool) was genuinely linked to musical knowledge, and you had to be dedicated, finanically and otherwise, to a cause to get to know your type of music well. i realise this is the only change i've seen in the way youth culture works in my life, and of course it won't be the last, but still, it made an impact.
--------------------
Some recent reviews:
Wild Beasts - Smother
About Group - Start and Complete
------------------
Here's my review of latest wave pictures:
No buggering about at the start of the new Wave Pictures record. A single shimmering jewel of a chord rings out, and then with a crack we’re straight down into David Tattersall’s world, an unchanging world of complex relationships and unashamedly brilliant guitar heroics. Within seconds, the humour and the melancholy of David’s cosmos are making us smile: “We/ pissed in the sea/ and pretended/ to drown one another.” It’s good to be back.
And the pace doesn’t let up. The second, third, fourth tracks all keep up the relentless, pushy brilliance. Like the faster Mountain Goats songs, or some early Dylan, at points it becomes oppressively good with its relentless stream of lyrical excellence which barely breaks for breath. ‘Little Surprise’ features this bright, pizzicato twiddling riff and he lists the parodically clichéd contents of his bohemian girl’s handbag (‘..a ticket from the metro in Milan..’) before sneering, ‘Who/ are you/ to tell me that I look depressed?/ You wouldn’t know it but/ I’m at my best.’
The heat finally drops with the fifth track ‘Walk the Stairs Quiet’, which carries one of David’s best solos on the album; this relentlessly cascading and imploding repetitive trill. Then, back into the boogie with ‘China Wale Back’, all bright and poppy. ‘Pale Thin Lips’ shows how great David is a lyricist, as he seamlessly veers between minimalist platitudes and maximalist, vivid imagery, with both having the same impact: the line ‘I liked the time we had/ I thought it wasn’t all so bad’ can hit you as hard as ‘the crashing windscreen windscreen wipers/ and the arms everywhere/ a comedian’s face on a tram car/ one little electric hair/ your pale thin lips.’ He is just such a glorious songwriter.
‘Two Lemons One Line’ is the best of an excellent bunch. What a track, what a chorus: “You said you wanted a white wine in red wine weather/ You said you never really wanted a red wine, ever.” All this is delivered in a not-angry-just-disappointed, plaintive whine which you never want to end.
‘Rain Down’ has a rubbery, buoyant bassline to start off, then David’s um-cha upstroke-downstroke guitar comes in. It’s as formulaic as Wave Pictures get, with the imagery-full verses and the simple, emotional chorus: ‘when our time comes down/ I will hang on a little while longer’ is the chorus line, and when it’s sung it feels like the most profound thing anyone’s ever said, despite the fact that on paper it’s obviously not. And that’s what good pop music is meant to do.This is easily their best album. The lyrics, the production, the vision, the ambition, all are reaching their zenith in the Wave Pictures world right now. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a band so dedicated to hard work and improvement as them, and I hope they manage to bottle whatever they’ve got running through them right now.
-----------------
Here's me being a bit of a stewart leeish prick about rebecca black:
Mozart. John Stuart Mill. Michael Jackson: all of them protégés pushed to extremes by their parents. Personally, a tragedy of course. But historically, a gift. We look at the relentless pressure, the emotional trauma wreaked early on which later echoed throughout their entire lives, and we naturally sympathise. Then, we look at their body of work and we excuse the boorish parents for forcing open the channels which led to such unparalleled genius.
Rebecca Black now takes her rightful place in this pantheon. Her mother commissioned the production of ‘Friday’ as a vanity piece for her daughter, and her daughter has since received death threats and worldwide ridicule, but in the long-term it will of course all be worth it. Black has already become a dominant cultural force of our age, and it is time someone began serious criticism of her work.
The lyrics express a minimalist aesthetic not seen in pop since Talking Heads, or in poetry since Gertrude Stein. The objective minutiae of daily life are depicted with Joycean microscopic focus with verses dedicating to choosing a car seat but, just as with Joyce, tiny details of life are described in the context of appeals to wider philosophical ideas: ‘Gotta have my bowl, gotta have ceral/ Seein’ everything, time is goin’ ‘.
Yet the spectre of divine judgement hovers over even such devout followers of getting down and party-party-party as Rebecca: one lyric runs, ‘Yesterday was Thursday/ Today it is Friday […]/ Tomorrow it’s Saturday/ And Sunday comes after/ wards/ I don’t want this weekend to end!’ Just what kind of doomsome Calvinist Sabbath does she fear? Only the plaintive cries which swarm over the chorus can come close to explaining. Mere words cannot do her religious terror justice. Indeed, mere words cannot express many of Rebecca Black’s thoughts and feelings.
The voice is autotuned to extremity and comes across as a ghostly, soulless whine. Black succinctly evokes the experience of modern teenagers lost in a world of technological dependence: without the aid of machines, she has no voice at all. A verse by an unknown rap artist comes in towards the end as a deliberate post-post-modern Dadaist parody of other hip-hop cameos: the verse merely echoes Black’s verses, placing her in the musical canon but also making a clear anti-musical statement. Like Duchamp did with his found art, Black throws a found rapper into her own song to point out the absurdity of performance.
On the YouTube video of the song, 3 million people have ‘disliked’ the song, whilst a mere 420,000 have liked it. But this is nothing to worry about. Black has become a member of the so-called minority artists, one person against all society, up there with Kafka and Van Gogh, existing to provoke and puncture mainstream values. Rebecca Black is the aesthetic gadfly of our times.
-----------------
The highest good chorus:shit verse ratio in all of pop:
----------------------
What's good about Roy Orbison is what's good about Alexis Taylor:
1) a profoundly self-confident and unashamed vulnerability and earnestness, like Jesus had
2) the caress it gives the underbelly, which you can physically feel when the high, indignant notes are hit. roy sings the high notes like he's at that very moment recoiling from some emotional shock, like every time he does them he's been dumped 3 seconds beforehand.
3) there is something inherently charming about a conventionally unattractive man just going full pelt for who he loves. anyone sexy like elvis or cheryl cole can sing about loneliness whilst it's patently clear they've never struggled. but roy orbison was damned weird-looking, and you know his songs alone are what make him attractive. THAT's 'authenticity', kids! apologies if anyone finds this offensive but i think it's fairly accurate.
"mock the strong! that's what i say. it's the only thing that separates us from dogs." - stewart lee
get in there, roy lad!
and of course, the quiver. the quiver which leads to the caress, not done so well since piaf:
early rock n roll is charming because of its nerdiness, but roy did the buckled up bright neatness better than all. the high bit in this is just sublimely disarming, it suspends all contempt:
--------------------
also check out Cash pretending to know the chords in this:
------------------
as post-modern as it gets:
must be dead easy being a record collector kid these days. in my time you had to get the bus into chester and spend 6 hours working out which sabbath album to get. social capital (aka cool) was genuinely linked to musical knowledge, and you had to be dedicated, finanically and otherwise, to a cause to get to know your type of music well. i realise this is the only change i've seen in the way youth culture works in my life, and of course it won't be the last, but still, it made an impact.
--------------------
Some recent reviews:
Wild Beasts - Smother
About Group - Start and Complete
------------------
Here's my review of latest wave pictures:
No buggering about at the start of the new Wave Pictures record. A single shimmering jewel of a chord rings out, and then with a crack we’re straight down into David Tattersall’s world, an unchanging world of complex relationships and unashamedly brilliant guitar heroics. Within seconds, the humour and the melancholy of David’s cosmos are making us smile: “We/ pissed in the sea/ and pretended/ to drown one another.” It’s good to be back.
And the pace doesn’t let up. The second, third, fourth tracks all keep up the relentless, pushy brilliance. Like the faster Mountain Goats songs, or some early Dylan, at points it becomes oppressively good with its relentless stream of lyrical excellence which barely breaks for breath. ‘Little Surprise’ features this bright, pizzicato twiddling riff and he lists the parodically clichéd contents of his bohemian girl’s handbag (‘..a ticket from the metro in Milan..’) before sneering, ‘Who/ are you/ to tell me that I look depressed?/ You wouldn’t know it but/ I’m at my best.’
The heat finally drops with the fifth track ‘Walk the Stairs Quiet’, which carries one of David’s best solos on the album; this relentlessly cascading and imploding repetitive trill. Then, back into the boogie with ‘China Wale Back’, all bright and poppy. ‘Pale Thin Lips’ shows how great David is a lyricist, as he seamlessly veers between minimalist platitudes and maximalist, vivid imagery, with both having the same impact: the line ‘I liked the time we had/ I thought it wasn’t all so bad’ can hit you as hard as ‘the crashing windscreen windscreen wipers/ and the arms everywhere/ a comedian’s face on a tram car/ one little electric hair/ your pale thin lips.’ He is just such a glorious songwriter.
‘Two Lemons One Line’ is the best of an excellent bunch. What a track, what a chorus: “You said you wanted a white wine in red wine weather/ You said you never really wanted a red wine, ever.” All this is delivered in a not-angry-just-disappointed, plaintive whine which you never want to end.
‘Rain Down’ has a rubbery, buoyant bassline to start off, then David’s um-cha upstroke-downstroke guitar comes in. It’s as formulaic as Wave Pictures get, with the imagery-full verses and the simple, emotional chorus: ‘when our time comes down/ I will hang on a little while longer’ is the chorus line, and when it’s sung it feels like the most profound thing anyone’s ever said, despite the fact that on paper it’s obviously not. And that’s what good pop music is meant to do.This is easily their best album. The lyrics, the production, the vision, the ambition, all are reaching their zenith in the Wave Pictures world right now. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a band so dedicated to hard work and improvement as them, and I hope they manage to bottle whatever they’ve got running through them right now.
-----------------
Here's me being a bit of a stewart leeish prick about rebecca black:
Mozart. John Stuart Mill. Michael Jackson: all of them protégés pushed to extremes by their parents. Personally, a tragedy of course. But historically, a gift. We look at the relentless pressure, the emotional trauma wreaked early on which later echoed throughout their entire lives, and we naturally sympathise. Then, we look at their body of work and we excuse the boorish parents for forcing open the channels which led to such unparalleled genius.
Rebecca Black now takes her rightful place in this pantheon. Her mother commissioned the production of ‘Friday’ as a vanity piece for her daughter, and her daughter has since received death threats and worldwide ridicule, but in the long-term it will of course all be worth it. Black has already become a dominant cultural force of our age, and it is time someone began serious criticism of her work.
The lyrics express a minimalist aesthetic not seen in pop since Talking Heads, or in poetry since Gertrude Stein. The objective minutiae of daily life are depicted with Joycean microscopic focus with verses dedicating to choosing a car seat but, just as with Joyce, tiny details of life are described in the context of appeals to wider philosophical ideas: ‘Gotta have my bowl, gotta have ceral/ Seein’ everything, time is goin’ ‘.
Yet the spectre of divine judgement hovers over even such devout followers of getting down and party-party-party as Rebecca: one lyric runs, ‘Yesterday was Thursday/ Today it is Friday […]/ Tomorrow it’s Saturday/ And Sunday comes after/ wards/ I don’t want this weekend to end!’ Just what kind of doomsome Calvinist Sabbath does she fear? Only the plaintive cries which swarm over the chorus can come close to explaining. Mere words cannot do her religious terror justice. Indeed, mere words cannot express many of Rebecca Black’s thoughts and feelings.
The voice is autotuned to extremity and comes across as a ghostly, soulless whine. Black succinctly evokes the experience of modern teenagers lost in a world of technological dependence: without the aid of machines, she has no voice at all. A verse by an unknown rap artist comes in towards the end as a deliberate post-post-modern Dadaist parody of other hip-hop cameos: the verse merely echoes Black’s verses, placing her in the musical canon but also making a clear anti-musical statement. Like Duchamp did with his found art, Black throws a found rapper into her own song to point out the absurdity of performance.
On the YouTube video of the song, 3 million people have ‘disliked’ the song, whilst a mere 420,000 have liked it. But this is nothing to worry about. Black has become a member of the so-called minority artists, one person against all society, up there with Kafka and Van Gogh, existing to provoke and puncture mainstream values. Rebecca Black is the aesthetic gadfly of our times.
-----------------
The highest good chorus:shit verse ratio in all of pop:
----------------------
What's good about Roy Orbison is what's good about Alexis Taylor:
1) a profoundly self-confident and unashamed vulnerability and earnestness, like Jesus had
2) the caress it gives the underbelly, which you can physically feel when the high, indignant notes are hit. roy sings the high notes like he's at that very moment recoiling from some emotional shock, like every time he does them he's been dumped 3 seconds beforehand.
3) there is something inherently charming about a conventionally unattractive man just going full pelt for who he loves. anyone sexy like elvis or cheryl cole can sing about loneliness whilst it's patently clear they've never struggled. but roy orbison was damned weird-looking, and you know his songs alone are what make him attractive. THAT's 'authenticity', kids! apologies if anyone finds this offensive but i think it's fairly accurate.
"mock the strong! that's what i say. it's the only thing that separates us from dogs." - stewart lee
get in there, roy lad!
and of course, the quiver. the quiver which leads to the caress, not done so well since piaf:
early rock n roll is charming because of its nerdiness, but roy did the buckled up bright neatness better than all. the high bit in this is just sublimely disarming, it suspends all contempt:
--------------------
also check out Cash pretending to know the chords in this:
------------------
as post-modern as it gets:
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
lovely remix (MAKE IT FAST AND HIGH-PITCHED AND HE'LL LIKE IT THE DAFT LAD) of Tweet's 'Oh My', the best song about wanking ever (I know very few, and it's certainly better than 'Me and My Monkey'):
actually not that big a fan of the original, you know. and I don't like her Bootie Luv cover which broke my heart. She's exactly the kind of person I ought to adore!
xx
actually not that big a fan of the original, you know. and I don't like her Bootie Luv cover which broke my heart. She's exactly the kind of person I ought to adore!
xx
Thursday, 19 May 2011
past immemorial
Consider 'Then He Kissed Me' by The Crystals.
Note that the titular snog comes at the end of each verse, almost an afterthought; the main event here is not the main event. The buildup, both outward and internal, is meticulously described, and the thing we've all been waiting for is left undescribed, except for the middle eight. Then we get meeting the parents, and the proposal, all events suffixed with the inevitable kiss.
It's so true as well, isn't it? This IS how people talk about getting off with others. How many times have you heard or had this conversation:
Friend: "So what happened with Jane (sic) last night?"
You/Our hero: "Oh well y'know we were in Bar till 11 and then we went for a walk and she has work today so we got something to eat and I had to get cash out so we went down Bridge Street and then sat on the benches there for a bit and I walked her home and then y'knowwekissed and I got the bus home."
Or words to that effect.
Why does this happen? Because when you love someone the good stuff feels inevitable. It's the way you get there that you worry and want to talk about. Proper great.
-------------
It's like the matter-of-fact, 'and then my wife WAS DEAD' which comes smack down slipped-in in the middle of Leadbelly's magnum opus, followed up immediately by 'that started me a grievin'', as if it's just another thing to put on the to-do list:
-----------------
The Beach Boys covered Then He Kissed Me in a reasonably mediocre version, but it does its own tucked-in-shirt nickle-for-the-jukebox-with-change-left-for-a-'shake'-baby charm, I guess:
But they only truly channelled the spirit of Then He Kissed Me in All Summer Long:
Lyrically, it is superb, meandering randomly from inner thoughts and memories to pleasantries directed at someone, someone real.
But! The harmonies make it something exceptional. 'Miniature golf and Hondas in the heat', they sing ensemble, but then the a single-voice harmony (Brian?) comes in to echo it, but never gets to the end, ever: 'Miniature golf and hondas in th...' etc. Even at the moment of recollection, the memory is already lost, or fading fast at least.
I don't care whether this was deliberate or not. That should be clear to you all by now.
-----------
The Ronettes also did Then He Kissed Me, which is fine and as with any song of there's it should be called Then He Kissed Me (At Christmas).
---------------
I would also like to draw attention to the single, isolated scream of mixed emotions at 1:56 in the original, lost amongst a flurry of strings.
Note that the titular snog comes at the end of each verse, almost an afterthought; the main event here is not the main event. The buildup, both outward and internal, is meticulously described, and the thing we've all been waiting for is left undescribed, except for the middle eight. Then we get meeting the parents, and the proposal, all events suffixed with the inevitable kiss.
It's so true as well, isn't it? This IS how people talk about getting off with others. How many times have you heard or had this conversation:
Friend: "So what happened with Jane (sic) last night?"
You/Our hero: "Oh well y'know we were in Bar till 11 and then we went for a walk and she has work today so we got something to eat and I had to get cash out so we went down Bridge Street and then sat on the benches there for a bit and I walked her home and then y'knowwekissed and I got the bus home."
Or words to that effect.
Why does this happen? Because when you love someone the good stuff feels inevitable. It's the way you get there that you worry and want to talk about. Proper great.
-------------
It's like the matter-of-fact, 'and then my wife WAS DEAD' which comes smack down slipped-in in the middle of Leadbelly's magnum opus, followed up immediately by 'that started me a grievin'', as if it's just another thing to put on the to-do list:
-----------------
The Beach Boys covered Then He Kissed Me in a reasonably mediocre version, but it does its own tucked-in-shirt nickle-for-the-jukebox-with-change-left-for-a-'shake'-baby charm, I guess:
But they only truly channelled the spirit of Then He Kissed Me in All Summer Long:
Lyrically, it is superb, meandering randomly from inner thoughts and memories to pleasantries directed at someone, someone real.
But! The harmonies make it something exceptional. 'Miniature golf and Hondas in the heat', they sing ensemble, but then the a single-voice harmony (Brian?) comes in to echo it, but never gets to the end, ever: 'Miniature golf and hondas in th...' etc. Even at the moment of recollection, the memory is already lost, or fading fast at least.
I don't care whether this was deliberate or not. That should be clear to you all by now.
-----------
The Ronettes also did Then He Kissed Me, which is fine and as with any song of there's it should be called Then He Kissed Me (At Christmas).
---------------
I would also like to draw attention to the single, isolated scream of mixed emotions at 1:56 in the original, lost amongst a flurry of strings.
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