Saturday, August 09, 2003
I have been in London for the last two days drinking ale and buying records. I may tell you about it at some stage. I am also slowly becoming convinced that Mouse On Mars are the greatest band in the world.
8/09/2003 05:49:00 pm
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Draught...
My five-week goal draught ended last night with a simple tap-in from close range. Hardly spectacular or even notable (considering this is a 'friendly' kickabout rather than a league of any kind), but it is good for my footballing confidence. I thought I'd lost it there for a while since I knackered my hand. On the flipside I am however limping as my right hip has seized up.
Hipsterism...
I hate hipsters. I mean really fucking hate them. The only consolation is that they hate themselves more than I hate them. This whole kerfuffle with the new PFM column has cemented the reasons for my hate, the small-mindedness, the blinkered dismissal of other, the canonisation of the artist over the art itself, the obsession with ranks and lists and etiquette, the unwavering belief that they have somehow stumbled across "the truth", the path, the finishing line, the universal order, when there is no such thing. It twists my stomach and makes my temples clench. The snarling how can you like that, it's shit?, the condescension, the barely concealed disdain. Where does this come from? A projection of deep-seated self-loathing? Possibly. A desperate grasping at some kind of concrete fulcrum upon which to found the basis of one's identity in post-religious, post-social/cultural-stability times? You are not your record collection. And even if you were it would make you a small minded, precious little shit. But you're that already.
It's the fascistic denial of the potential for other people to find joy in anything you yourself cannot (will not?) see as having the possibility of joy within it that disturbs me most. 'Friends' of mine telling me "you can't listen to techno, it's shit" when I was 16, "you can't like dance music, it's shit", "you can't have fun, it's shit..." Well fuck you. I am not about definitions and rules and linear routes. I want to be able to experience and understand everything that I see as worthwhile, whatever it is, wherever it comes from. This adhesion to some kind of indie meta-narrative and prizing of authenticity, belief in the romantic idea of artist as genius, obsession with cliques and movements and 'scenes'. Argh.
Apologies for the complete lack of form and coherence here. This really is just bile-spilling time.
There is no meta-narrative. There is no guidebook, there are no rules. How stupid is it to want one anyway? To have someone else make your decisions for you? Plugging in to the indie heirarchy isn't about discovering universal truth, a system for making essential qualitative judgements; it's about letting someone else make your decisions for you, about giving up your own existential control. Which is inauthentic. Hence, for what it's worth, Justin Timberlake is more authentic than, fuck, The Black Keys, say, or the fucking Field Mice, because hell, Justin's producers might have a lot of influence over his music, he might swoop across the audience at gigs on a guide-wire, but he knows what the fuck he is doing. Whereas these other little fuckers are pissing in the wind, running uphill towards nowhere, hands on their crotches, ideas holding their trousers up, fool fool fool fool fool. Ah, shit. You can't achieve authenticity by proxy simply by thinking you know what someone else is doing. Bitch you.
I am these people's demographic anyway, more to the point. 24, spend a LOT of money on music (send me free stuff, people), tastes that are predominantly left-of-mainstream. But I hate it. So much. Fucking fake, illusiory, no integrity, no joy, no generosity, shit shit shit shit. Chris Ott reviews !!! and what he should have done (what he did) was write out his fucking CV and then bitch "see? i am ALLOWED to say i like this grudgingly!" Wipe your arse with your credentials and authenticy and realness and realise that you have no humanity.
Why don't I ever just sit down and take a few hours to sort this shit out in ym head first, make some notes, formalise it, make me sound like less of a fucking angry young man?
I'm off to watch the ducks and listen to Mouse On Mars.
8/06/2003 11:59:00 am
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Hmmm... integrity?
8/05/2003 12:00:00 pm
Just to let you know, if you didn't already, that Marcello is absolutely on fucking fire over at The Church of Me this week with his qualitative value rundown of the UK Top 40 Albums...
Praise be.
8/05/2003 11:47:00 am
!!!
!!!
GSL
2002
Ah! I can feel the seams coming apart at last.
Some people will tell you how all the great songs were written long ago and how things don’t work now the way they used to. How it was so much better back then. There’s no craft now. It’s just not as good. And I say to them; fuck off. Are you not dead yet? Hope you die soon. Maybe, just maybe, the last fifty, sixty years, all those songs, all that technological development, rock n roll, psychedelia, punk, acid house; maybe that was all practice? Rehearsal? Maybe now we’ve learnt the ropes of popular music we can start to get down to the really fucking good stuff.
!!! are the best band in New York right now. And they’re not even from New York. Get your head round that. As I understand it they’re something to do with Out Hud, a splinter, more focused maybe, pursuing some different vision. If this is tangential then cosine me, or sine me, or whatever. Just find me the gradient. Oh; here it is. Yes. It was here all along.
What’s going on? Bass and drums and guitars, some organs, some horns, some electronic shit in there, dance music made for people to actually dance to. You know the climax? When the acid surges through and the percussion’s gone and you’re waiting and waiting and it builds and builds and then comes in, shocks your heart back into time, and then tumbles away just as fast? You know rock n roll bands forgot how to do that? It’s back. “Hammerhead” pulls itself apart through this great big mountain of percussion that scrambles shit up, and maybe it’s a bit like Vision Creation Newsun by Boredoms, but it isn’t that, which is enough. “KooKooKa Fuk-U” gets eaten in layers of noise and it’d be looking at its shoes if it wasn’t fucking dancing, OK? At one point “Intensify” just gives up and people start shouting, the human voice as the most exciting thing another human being can hear, damn right, but imagine how much more exciting it would sound with a beat. Go! Clap! The best beat!
“Storm the Legion” opens up in a storm of trumpets and LSD before short-term memory loss makes itself known and friends start walking out of doors in the ceiling with absent looms on their faces, eyes focused on things that aren’t there. “LSD taught me a lot about me / or would I have figured it out naturally? / it’s 2 late 2 tell / cuz I’m walking to hell / with all the other acid casualties.” Of course they’re right. Everybody starts out thinking they’re opening up new realities. Few realise they’ve lost the one they had to start with when it trickles away though. Too many friends… Too right.
Ah. That shit I was saying up top, about the past, about pop music’s historiography all being practice, rehearsal. !!! need all of pop music behind them. They are the product, the culmination of what’s happened before. It’s not just rock n roll, or punk, or funk, or dance; it’s all of it. This is a psychedelic experience as much as anything else. Headphones! Stereo bass! You mad fuckers! Like you haven’t turned me around enough already!?
This is far from perfect. What’s perfect? But this is bleeding with energy and integrity and ideas. OK; idea. Singular. But what a fucking great idea. One tune is called “There’s No Fucking Rules, Dude” and it’s right. There are no rules. There never were. What’s coming next? “Me And Giuliani Down By The School Yard (A True Story)” is the next instalment. This is already old hat. It only just found it’s way over here. What’s next? What’s next? What’s next? Now.
8/05/2003 10:04:00 am
He's a fat man...
I feel so much better...
Enjoy Bowling For Columbine.
So Carly Simon is auctioning off the right to know who "You're So Vain" is about, but if you buy the right to know you don't get the right to tell anybody else, so you must carry the secret with you to the grave. I'd like to raise two points about this;
1; I thought everybody knew it was about Warren Beatty anyway?
and
2; Who gives one? I mean, really?
Drive that taxi. Drive that taxi to your daughter's wedding. I bet you think this post is about you, don't you, don't you, don't you?
I reviewed the !!! album last night for Stylus (the eponymous one, not the new one) because it's only been out on this side of the pond for a few months. It didn't take long; an opening of the valve and a swift outpouring of tangential consciousness which lasted probably only half an hour and resulted in 600-odd words which I was very pleased with. Said review is now posted here, up above this. I always get my shit backwards. Oh well.
Anyway... It just struck me this morning on the train that in the !!! review I mention each of the "eleven-year cycle" revolutions, the musical/cultural fulcrum's which are popularly accepted (in some circles) as being massively important moments of zeitgesit serendipity which irrevocably alter the playing field from then on in. Roughly speaking these are;
1955: Rock n Roll
1966: Psychedelia
1977: Punk
1988: Acid House
Nothing unusual about that. It's common music-journalist practice to bring up these 'events'/'fulcrums'/'movements' every so often and bemoan the fact that we haven't had one for ages, that we were due one in 1999, man, and it didn't happen, it's all over, we're fucked, we've stalled, everything's been done already... Which is bullshit, first and foremost because it's not over yet and if you think it is you can fuck off and die. But mainly because those four movements and their associated years of impact and the whole meme of the "eleven-year cycle" are all completely arbitrary, just as all history is arbitrary (history existing only as recollection, collective OR individual, and never as actual past events because past events are past therefore how can they exist?- they cannot). But that's not the concerning thing, that I should fall prey to perpetuating a meme about moments of historical significance; we all do it. The thing that concerns me is the fact that these movements seem to bear some claim towards being all-encompassing, that these four movements are the only ones of true significance and development, that all other movements/genres/moments/events in popular musical history are merely incidental at best. And what really concerns me about this (clearly false) meme is that these four moments of significance are all white, with the possible exception of Rock n Roll (if only we [and by 'we' I don't actually mean we as in us; I mean them as in everybody else of course] were to fully accept the influence of Chuck Berry as being greater than Elvis Presley then we'd be getting somewhere with understanding it). I make the briefest mention of funk in the penultimate paragraph, but nowhere do I mention hiphop or soul or reggae or gospel or or or or all of which are probably as important to the development of !!!'s sound as psychedelia or acid house (what's with the capitalisation of genre names?- I shall remain inconsistent) if not more so.
I've recognised this insidious little twist within the meme, and probably lots of other people have as well. Which is good. But it's still unsettling how it can slip into a review or article that isn't specifcally anything to do with it otherwise. The casual and unnoticed dismissal of whole tracts of popular culture, not because they're worthless or irrelevent, but because... well, why?
In related news, Pitchfork have resurrected their We Are The World column, with devastatingly nobular (or even crapulent) results. "Pop, r'n'b, hiphop..." blah blahblah blahblah... Scott Plagenhoef started writing for them for this? In which Ryan says "this hiphop/pop/dancehall/garage tune is good! it's good because it's like indie music! hooray me!" Scott wants to try and fix what he perceives as being wrong with the site? You'd have to destroy it and start again from scratch, I'm afraid, Scott. I don't really hate gays/blacks/jews/opticians/traffic wardens anymore; in fact they're alright, some of them. the ones that are like me, anyway... It's the same thing, kids. And what's more the readers fucking hate it. You think I'd want anything to do with such nasty, small-minded little culture-fascists? Not a chance.
Just heard "Love Shack" by The B-52s playing in the campus shop. Already the day is bright and clear and hot as you can imagine (tarmac melts, office workers loosen ties, Nick wears shorts in the library), but it has been intensified by that song. Forza.
8/05/2003 09:53:00 am
Monday, August 04, 2003
Coming soon (just for Sam)...
November 1995
Nick get's involved in a huge fight which involves drugs, police, and excessive violence.
Be there or be square!
We all fuck-up from time to time.
8/04/2003 05:08:00 pm
James Oldham strikes again in NME's longform review of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's second album, Take Them On, On Your Own;
"The songs themselves (particularly the swagger of 'We're All In Love' and the breathtaking 'In Like The Rose') are cleverly arranged and accessible throughout."
The Sunday Express beckons, James; you'd be a fool to resist. I think this may even trump Bang!'s feeble attempts to rank the 'goodness topography' of any given album in their new reviews.
8/04/2003 04:34:00 pm
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