Thursday, December 30, 2004
Life is a timewarp
When we finished university, James, Olly and myself promised each other that we’d meet up once a year to drink, talk and take stock of how our lives are panning out. Last year we met in May at Northampton, where we had been to university. The previous year we met at my house in August. This year we have had to wait until late December, as James has been teaching in Japan and now Italy, and our schedules haven’t synced until Christmas. And so I have spent the last 24 hours at James’ parents’ house near Worcester and Kidderminster, drinking Guinness, eating faggots, falling asleep in chairs and talking about live, love, music, films, places and people. Much of the conversation revolved around Oliver’s calamitous university love life. One of the girls in question was called Fiona. I just sat down to watch Weakest Link and eat lamb chops, and she answered a simple question wrong (said “wasp” instead of “buzz”) and got voted off in the second round. I recognised her voice. It was definitely her. Most. Fucking. Odd. An incident of bizarre serendipity.
We have yet to have the conversation with students that some graduates had with us when we were in our first year. We wonder whether we are nostalgic for naivety. We suspect we are. But we’re not doing badly.
NJS
12/30/2004 06:27:00 pm
Friday, December 24, 2004
Bukkake
Am I getting old or is that the most disgusting billboard ever? I'm amazed that there hasn't been a barrage of complaints. I mean, it does look like what I think it looks like, right?!
NJS
12/24/2004 08:48:00 am
Thursday, December 23, 2004
But not yet.
Natalie Portman, in Converse Allstars and faded jeans, listening to The Shins on big geeky headphones with little silly stickers stuck on them, covering up the name of the manufacturer, epileptic and a compulsive liar and an accidental hamster killer, never been in love with anything, falling in love in four days flat with a fucked-up Jewish wannabe-actor whose father is a psychiatrist, who accidentally paralysed his mother when he was nine and has been on lithium ever since and is emotionally numb but is having an existential epiphany and coming off the psychotropic mood-altering drugs and falling in love in four days flat, with a Nick Drake song on the soundtrack, and an acoustic version of “Such Great Heights”, and “The Only Living Boy In New York”… The debut film by writer/director/actor Zack Braff (the cute Jewish guy from Scrubs), Garden State, is the most indie film I have ever seen. My girlfriend loved it, and cried at the end when Zack and Natalie sat on the steps at the airport and he told her it was an ending but rather a beginning, and how he loved her but he was fucked-up right now and needed to go and sort himself out and then he’d come back, and he picked up his bag and went down two steps and then up the escalator (lazy bastard) and actually got on the plane before he realised he loved her and, I dunno, seized control of his destiny or something and got off the plane and went back to her. I quite enjoyed it; bits were particularly funny, especially when Natalie kept on telling Zack she couldn’t believe he wasn’t really retarded (“Do I know you?” “I don’t know, did you go to [school X]?” “No, no, from TV – aren’t you the retarded quarterback?! Oh wow! You’re not really retarded? Oh wow, I totally thought you were retarded!” etcetera etcetera). The deliberate and calculated use of music THE SHINS THE POSTAL SERVICE LOTS OF ANONYMOUS TUNELESS AMERICAN INDIE AND A BEAUTIFUL DEAD GUY WHO WAS DEPRESSED was intrusive (oh wow isn’t it cool how you can hear music when she has her big geeky headphones on and then she takes them off and it gets quieter, wow isn’t that clever, and she’s listening to THE SHINS too, that’s like, totally cool, I really love them); there was little or no character development (emotionally cold 20-something living in LA and working shit job goes back home and sees all his old friends stuck in local ruts rather than exotic ruts, discovers his “soul”, or nebulous variation thereof, by coming off psychotropics and falling in love with kooky-but-flawed girl); in fact, most of the characters remained resolutely within their nicely stereotyped boxes (emotionally cold Jewish psychiatrist father; morally ambiguous but concerned stoner friends; risqué Anne-Bancroft-esque mother having relationship with son’s friend and smoking pot); I find the syndrome-isation of emotions suspicious in the extreme (feel happy one day and sad the next? You must be bipolar! Can’t concentrate? ADHD! Concentrate too much? Autistic!); numerous plot devices were used too heavy-handedly; ah, fuck it, this isn’t a university film studies essay or a review. Garden State, as enjoyable as it was, is a very indie film, and as such it annoyed me intensely. I want to write about how much I Hate Indie.
Dom Passantino is a wise man, hear him quoth; “Indie is the soundtrack of failure, and that’s why so many of us have an attraction to it and a need to defend it. It’s like seeing someone throw stones at your psychiatrist.”
Funeral by The Arcade Fire won the Album of the Year poll at PFM, and it will be in the top ten at Stylus too. The review for it at Stylus is one of our most read ever. I bought it a few weeks ago, played it once and wrote it off as honking indie shit, quite nice if it wasn’t for the tramp yowling crap over the top of it. I thought pretty much the same about it as I thought about that Neutral Milk Hotel album from a few years ago. Dismemberment Plan I could deal with because it was electrified and funky and stole from hip hop and synth stuff and was technicolour. Arcade Fire and Neutral Milk Hotel are brown. Their covers are brown. The music contained within is necessarily brown (do the design departments at record companies not realise how much effect a simple thing like the colour brown can have on borderline synaesthetes like myself? [the colour of a record’s sleeve seeps into the music for me] Of course they do, they’re just not marketing at me!) even if it isn’t. The riff on the first track of Funeral is great, and I love how the piano is used, and the second track has some cool accordion and splenetic drums, but then the yowling tramp singing about digging a tunnel to your bedroom starts to do my nut in, much the way that the hollering tramp on the Neutral Milk Hotel record jars my nerves, and the Indie Talent Gap (meaning that you must self-consciously and deliberately sabotage your music in order to make it more- more what? Vulnerable? Loveable? Appealing to a certain type of person?) is manifest and frustrating.
Personally I consider that most people I meet everyday are completely, hideously, hopelessly insane, as mad as hatstands; people who might send their wives Christmas cards from the family pet - I would consider this insane behaviour rather than “fun” or “kooky” behaviour; religious people, as well, strike me as being irretrievably insane on a very basic and profound level. Probably most people I come across day-to-day have at least one huge, unbound and ragingly obvious chunk of completely irrational insanity in their lives to act as a coping mechanism. Indie is a coping mechanism with a flaw; it paints fantasy as reality by making the fantastical mundane (all good things in life [caveat; not all, obviously, that would be mental] make the mundane fantastical rather than the other way around [consider the difference between running away from and running away to]), meaning that people, rather than attempting to find or create the fantastical in things, wait for things to become fantastical. Creation of unrealistic expectations? Over-romanticising of faux-profound conceits in the face of actual expression of emotional sincerity. Excuse making (“I love you but I’m so fucked-up right now”). Acceptance of myth over engagement with reality. Plus the nasty little niggling aura of defensive condescension that cloaks and covers and permeates everything, the small-mindedness, the one-upmanship, the assumptions.
This is just a rant now, isn’t it? It was meant to be considered. I had considered it.
I suspect that Funeral (and the Neutral Milk Hotel record) would, after a great deal of time and effort and many listens, end up being fully enjoyable, possibly even a favourite. But I don’t know that I can be bothered to exert the required effort to get there, I don’t know if I consider it worth it anymore when, OH I DON’T KNOW, STUFF LIKE BRITNEY JUST SEEMS SO MUCH MORE IMMEDIATELY REWARDING. Speed, chaos, perpetually-enfolded surface. No depth. There is no depth. What is there no depth to? Things which are very narrow appear much deeper than things which are very wide. Proportional representation. No depth? Speed. Chaos. Can’t concentrate? ADHD. Concentrate too much? Autism. Oh the snot has caked against my pants.
NJS
12/23/2004 01:54:00 pm
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
It's Over.
NME's Albums Of 2004
1. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand
2. The Libertines – The Libertines
3. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For A Free
4. Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters
5. The Futureheads – The Futureheads
6. Danger Mouse – The Greay Album
7. Kanye West – The College Dropout
8. Razorlight – Razorlight
9. The Radio Dept – Lesser Matters
10. The Dears – No Cities Left
11. Interpol – Antics
12. Morrissey – You Are The Quarry
13. The Killers – Hot Fuss
14. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus
15. Dizzie Rascal – Showtime
16. Beastie Boys – To Thr 5 Boroughs
17. TV On The Radio – Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babies
18. U2 – Ho To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
19. The Concretes – The Concretes
20. Kasabain – Kasabain
21. Keane – Hope And Fears
22. Gwen Stefani – Love Angel Music Baby
23. Ryan Adams – Love Is Hell (Pt 1 & 2)
24. Elliott Smith – From A Basement On The Hill
25. Kings Of Leon – Aha Shake Heartbreak
26. Secret Machines – Now Here Is Nowhere
27. Mylo – Destroy Rock ‘N’ Roll
28. The Ordinary Boys – Over The Counter Culture
29. Hope Of The States – The Lost Riots
30. Dios – Dios
31. Devendra Banheart – Rejoicing In The Hands
32. Kelis – Tasty
33. Brian Wilson – Smile
34. Amplifier – Amplifier
35. Graham Coxon – Happiness In Magazines
36. The Go! Team – Thunder, Lightening, Strike
37. The Zutons – Who Killed The Zutons
38. Goldie Lookin’ Chain – Greatest Hits
39. Eminem – Encore
40. The Bees – Free The Bees
41. Mos Def – The New Danger
42. Regina Spektor – Soviet Kitsch
43. The Music – Welcome To The North
44. Wilco – A Ghost Is Born
45. Green Day – American Idiot
46. Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans
47. The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow
48. Joanna Newsom – The Milk-Eyed Mender
49. Selfish Cunt – No Wicked Heart Shall Prosper
50. 22-20’s – 22-20’s
What, no Il Divo?!
NJS
12/22/2004 01:32:00 pm
Monday, December 20, 2004
Extinction.
So I'm thinking of killing off the blog. I'm bored of it. Whaddaya reckon?
NJS
12/20/2004 03:27:00 pm
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Polar Bear
So yeah, Final Straw by Snow Patrol is actually really good, isn't it? Why did no one bother to tell me that they sounded even more like My Bloody Valentine than they used to? Why did no one bother to mention that the arrangements are really subtle and interesting? Why did it take repeated exposure to "Spitting Games" and "How To Be Dead" to convince me to steal Emma's copy? Why do people call them indie bedwetters when it's actually quite obvious that they're strung-out romanticists who've taken too many drugs. It's not great or anything, but, you know. Not bad.
NJS
12/14/2004 11:12:00 am
And yes...
... that juxtaposition was deliberate. I'm not very well, you see. Also William and I won the lottery bonus ball thing at work this week. A massive £14 each.
NJS
12/14/2004 09:35:00 am
Can (planned for Stylus)
Prior to recording Ege Bamyasi in 1972, Can scored an unlikely pop hit in the German charts with “Spoon”, which sold some 300,000 copies due to being the theme tune to a television programme. The money that came from this unexpected hit enabled them to buy an old cinema, which they both lived and recorded in for the next few years; prior to that they’d recorded in a castle, because the owner of the castle thought they were great (possibly). Recording Ege Bamyasi was fractious – two of the band obsessively played chess during the sessions (if you can call them sessions), driving the rest of the band to distraction, and a shortfall of finished material meant they superglued “Spoon” to the end of the album in order to flesh it out to 40 minutes and seven tracks.
But anyway, influence aside. Ege Bamyasi is my favourite Can album, possibly because it’s the first one I got, some 7 years ago as a wide-eyed 18-year old, and possibly because it’s also the most fun. I played it at a party once, years ago, and everyone else complained that it was weird. It’s Can’s most pop album, which is to say that it’s like aliens hearing all 20th century music at once and not realising that there are different genres at work, that genres must not cross or whatever it is that fascists think, so that when the aliens try and make their own music it contains everything at once, mashed up and amalgamated, given equal weighting, ideas chosen on whether they sound good rather than some arbitrary order of “merit” (which is, of course, how it should be). So you end up with something that borrows from jazz, from rock, from the beginnings of electronic music, from Vietnamese music and various other musics from across the globe, long before World Music became a section in HMV. There’s guitar as wild as anything Hendrix did, synths and electronics as innovative as Tangerine Dream, rhythms as motorik as Faust and always, always, Jaki Leibzeit’s incredible, pulsating drumming, repeat repeat repeat into delirium, making you twitch and jerk and spasm with little, replicating jolts of percussive joy.
“I’m So Green” is a liquid funk thing divorced from what George Clinton was doing but still recognisable, almost catchy if it actually had real words (some of them sound like real words, sometimes). “Sing Swan Song” (emerging through a veil of water, a trick Orbital would pinch for “I Wish I Had Duck Feet” some 20+ years later) is a bona fide pop song, blissed and vaguely oriental, that you can sing along to, as long as you sing in mumbles, yelps and yodels and can concentrate enough to stop your entire body jerking with the rhythm. The aforementioned “Spoon” is bizarre, spooky, oddly disorienting, but still pop, just about; I’d love to know what kind of television programme it themed. “One More Night” is likewise laden with extra-terrestrial hooks, conventions being disregarded and reconstructed, a song if a song is music with words, or even just music on its own, but also a whole other world of possibilities and sounds and hyperactive imaginations.
Possibly the best two tracks on Ege Bamyasi are the spiralling sonic miasma of “Spoon”, the most outright experimental and “difficult” song on the album (just listen to the tremulous, ludicrous round-and-round surge five minutes in), and “Pinch”, the ten-minute spacepop opener, shuttling rolls of drums and electronic squeaks, everything I’d ever imagined Can would be after reading about them before I ordered the original CD release of this album. That is to say insane, but brilliant, involving, experimental but not unfriendly, weird but not horrible in any way, too long but not long enough. Just listen to it.
The original CD version of Ege Bamyasi from 1989, like almost all early CDs, was thin and indistinct sounding. Sure, you could tell the music was amazing and extraordinary, because really great music shows its quality even over a shitty transistor radio with a fucked cone (“River Deep Mountain High”!), but there was always a sense that it could become exponentially better if only it had that extra depth and clarity, if only the drums had that little bit more thwack, the bass a touch more weight, the bizarre slips of electronic noise or synthesiser a little more definition. But technology’s come a long way in the last 15 years, and the remastering jobs on classic Miles Davis albums recorded in the 50s, 60s and 70s (and a whole host of other great records from decades past by myriad artists) shows that a good pair of ears and a mixing desk and whatever-the-hell-else filters and compressors and other assorted little electronic boxes with magical sonic powers can work absolute wonders. That is to say that Ege Bamyasi was always a bloody fantastic record, but now, remastered and re-released by the lovely people at Mute and Spoon, it is an absolutely fucking monumental one. It has voodoo qualities. It’s one of my favourite records ever, and now it sounds good enough to justify the hyperbole.
NJS
12/14/2004 09:24:00 am
Who's allowed?
Live on television the other day an a cappella performance featured only three of the girls, because, frankly, they can't sing live for toffee, even if that's what they were supposedly chosen for from amongst the legions of pop wannabes who trudged to auditions across the country some two and a half years ago.
They’re an odd phenomena, Girls Aloud, simultaneously drawing from The Sex Pistols, The Monkees, The Spice Girls and any number of other acts, artists, trends and styles that have made up what we call pop music from the last 50 years, as important as any of them but still nothing more than bubblegum. In many ways they’re the end of the dichotomy of meta-pop - What Will The Neighbours Say? is only about the Girls themselves in as much as it’s about any girls who drink and dance and fall in love. There’s a song about Big Brother but it’s not obviously about Orwell or reality TV – just being eyed-up in a club. I could name two of them – Nadine and Cheryl – but not put any faces to those two names. I think one of them is a scouser, and one of them has legs, and another is blonde, and… that’s it. There is no Sporty Girl Aloud or Slutty Girl Aloud. That’s the point; it really is all about the music, man, and they know very well that almost anyone could be fronting it. Which has all been said before and is, of course, both perfectly true and also missing the point.
And yet… and yet…
The first four tracks are a major sucker-punch, a combo the like of which we don’t see anymore. Four singles, two of them covers, two of them the best singles released by a reality pop outfit since “Sound of the Underground” by… Girls Aloud. Sure, it’s far from the best version of “I’ll Stand By You” but it’s an amazing song and still makes hairs stand on end. “Jump” is useful only as another piece of 80s revivalism (they should have done the Van Halen track), but then the turbo-charged pop rush of “Wake Me Up” comes in (Dom thinks it’s like Nine Inch Nails – he’s wrong; it’s like Girls Aloud), and is better than any of the opening salvo. And then “Deadlines & Diets” is a dawn swoon that’s even better, and you realise that, Fucking Hell, this is a proper manifesto, this plays like a Greatest Hits, “Graffiti My Soul” is a stutter-tastic moment of pop every bit as good as “Toxic”, “I say A Prayer For You” is a good ballad…
Trust it.
NJS
12/14/2004 08:51:00 am
Thursday, December 09, 2004
2004; A Song Odyssey
So 2004 has nearly ended. I hate end-of-year things that go on and on and on and on and on; who has the time, frankly? There are things to be said and done and drunk. There were some records released this year, and some of them were fucking wicked. Here is a list of 40 albums and 40 singles, to be followed at some stage next week by a list of 40 songs that were not singles. I shall write about the albums (but not much). I shall write about the songs (but not much). The singles I hope you’ve heard on the radio, and if you haven’t it’s much easier to download them and listen for yourself (or else find another blog that did write about them – there won't be many surprises and I’m sure lots of people will have covered them), so I wont write about them at all. How much longer can I keep on doing this? I dunno.
ALBUMS
1. Embrace – Out Of Nothing
I wouldn’t be writing this, probably, if it wasn’t for this band. Perhaps. You all know that now. But anyway. This is the record they should have made 7 years ago. They’re still not finished.
2. Bark Psychosis - ///Codename: Dustsucker
This runs it a very close second, and if it wasn’t for the mad emotional connections and the tears and the stuff that surrounds that one, this would have won. If you haven’t heard it yet, please do so soon.
3. The Necks – Drive By
This accompanied me all year. I may only sleep to it or fuck to it, but sleeping and fucking are two essential and wonderful activities.
4. Various – DFA Compilation #2
This is here just because it should be, because discopunk was never discopunk, because none of the albums it spawned were any good, and because, frankly, it makes me dance in my own room.
5. Fennesz – Venice
For me, more beautiful and evocative and accessible than that Beach Boys one from a couple of years ago. Like the sound of machines dying. “Circassian” may be my favourite song of the year, if “Out Of Nothing” didn’t exist.
6. Junior Boys – Last Exit
I’m not sure where the hype ends and my own opinion begins, but nevertheless, although this lacked some dynamism, is was beautiful and observational. Teach me how to…
7. The Beta Band – Heroes to Zeroes
… fight? They didn’t. They folded instead. I think this is their best record, their most fun (“Outside”) and their most beautiful (“Pure For”). You can’t ask them to do “Dry The Rain” forever, anymore than you can ask them to do 2-step again. No one paid them any mind though.
8. Delays – Faded Seaside Glamour
Crept up on me over the course of, what, nine months? Beautiful, detailed, melodic and more ambitious than it seems. Boys with guitars and hair make good record shocker.
9. Phoenix – Alphabetical
A New York summer filtered through Paris. Perfect at what it does. I wont be able to listen to it again until May, I suspect, unless we get an amazingly sunny March.
10. Girls Aloud – What Will The Neighbours Say
Some kind of mad tour de force, some kind of poppist victory, tune after tune after tune. I wish I was a girl and lived in a city. I wish it was 3am. I suspect you’re lying if you hate.
11. Can – Ege Bamyasi
A reissue, and hence banished from the top ten, but what a record this still is. Alien pop fans play at jazz. 30 years old! Amazing.
12. Brian Eno – Another Green World
Another reissue. Is this the best oddpop record ever? Eno and I share a birthday. I want those cards, man.
13. Orbital – Blue Album
Bye bye love, bye bye sweet carress, hello loneliness, I think I’m gonna cry.
14. The Blue Nile – High
It sounds like The Blue Nile, ergo it is beautiful and rained on and crystalline and urban and melancholic. If you like those things, listen to this.
15. Tonetraeger – This is Not Here
An unexpected slice of German postrock and electronica, from people who everyone says I would like but who I never investigate. Intensely listenable, which is always good. Pop music is, isn’t it?
16. Ghostface Killah – The Pretty Toney Album
I can’t understand the words! Is Ghostface gay? Who cares. This is the psychedelic soul review.
17. Brian Eno – Before and After Science
Reissue. Not as good as that other one, but not far behind. Had I bought all the remasters instead of just these two, I guess they’d all have ended up in here. But this and Green World are my favourites.
18. Howie B – Mayonnaise
Howie B + Crispin Hunt + some Irish guy I’ve never heard of = the most concise and enjoyable electrofunkpop album of the year. Better than Junior Boys? Less net-trendy, that’s for sure. Not released in the UK. Why not?
19. !!! – Louden Up Now
Not a bad try, all told. They got the sonics right, at least.
20. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free
Faded as months passed, because the tunes simply didn’t fall apart and remain strong. But for those first two listens, beautiful.
21. Mouse On Mars – Radical Connector
Sentimentality decrees this must be here somewhere, and 21 is as good (and arbitrary) as any other number. This is almost deconstructionist discopunk.
22. Eminem – Encore
He knows what he’s doing. Let him do it. My heart lies in the coffin with Eminem.
23. Can – Monster Movie
SMOKED A HAIKU CIGARETTE, TURNED AROUND AND THEN WE LEFT…
24. Can – Tago Mago
Not as good as people say, but still… wow.
25. Kanye West – The College Dropout
I have a problem with his problem with education. Also, learn more tricks. But very good.
26. Lambchop – Aw C’mon / No You C’mon
Kurt sounds like he is dying. This makes me sad. Totally inferior to the last two, because it has no over-riding character. It is just Lambchop being Lambchop.
27. Wilco – A Ghost is Born
Too much guitar? HE DID A DRONE, THAT’S ALL. I still love his voice.
28. The Mountain Goats – We Shall All Be Healed
Not listened enough. I love John Darnielle. I hope one day to see him live and share beer and chat with him.
29. Tom Waits – Real Gone
Cranked. I do not have fanaticism on my side, but I still enjoyed this.
30. The Earlies – These Were The Earlies
It sounds like Yo La Tengo remixed by Plaid. Some people think that is the greatest thing ever. I think it is just very good. Possibly a concept album about death.
31. Various – Moaning, Groaning, Crying
Old soul. Lots of it. Concise, upbeat, lots of horns, amazing basslines. Fucking class.
32. JC Chasez – Schizophrenic
Ignore the final third, take out all the ballads bar “Build My World” – please, JC, do more sex-bangers. You’re good at them. Also more Jaxxxxxxxx.
33. Various – Kompakt 100
German techno. Lots of it. Drawn out, downbeat, lots of synths. Fucking class.
34. The Arcade Fire – Funeral
Some indie shit. I do not understand American indie boys. This was… like a really good busker who used to take acid and has lost his dog.
35. The Killers – Hot Fuss
Note to all and sundry; please mix your albums with more than just midrange. I am sick of lack of space and bass. Some good tunes though. Not enough like Pulp.
36. Dizzee Rascal – Showtime
Really, Dizzee, what the fuck are you gonna do? Nintendo hip hop? Grime? Urban? Kicked Wiley’s ass. Not hard. Lacked tunes, but done quick. Good man. Stay on top.
37. Bjork – Medulla
Bjork sings. No electronics. Some beatboxing. Very good. Not very moreish.
38. Adem – Homesongs
Guy from Fridge makes album of subdued futurist country. Very pleasant.
39. Felix Da Housecat – Devin Dazzle & the Neon Fever
Guy from nightclub makes technodancefunkpunk futurist thingamabob. Very excitable.
40. Brian Wilson – Smile
Guy from Beach Boys makes Beach Boys album. Late and overrated.
SINGLES
1. LCD Soundsystem – “Yeah”
2. Britney – “Toxic”
3. Deep Dish – “Flashdance”
4. Girls Aloud – “Love Machine”
5. Eminem – “Just Lose It”
6. Robbie Williams – “Radio”
7. M.I.A. – “Galang”
8. Kelis – “Trick Me”
9. Kylie – “I Believe In You”
10. Embrace – “Ashes”
11. Scissor Sisters – “Laura”
12. Rachel Stevens – “Some Girls”
13. Blink 182 – “I Miss You”
14. Ghostface – “Run”
15. The Streets – “Dry Your Eyes”
16. Nas – “Bridging The Gap”
17. Natasha Beddingfield – “These Words”
18. Dizzee Rascal – “Stand Up Tall”
19. Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out”
20. Kanye West – “Jesus Walks”
21. Khia – “My Neck, My Back”
22. LCD Soundsystem – “Movement”
23. Girls Aloud – “The Show”
24. Embrace – “Gravity”
25. Snoop Dogg – “Drop It Like It’s Hot”
26. Delays – “Long Time Coming”
27. The Zutons – “Don’t Ever Think”
28. The Streets – “Blinded By The Lights”
29. Jamelia – “DJ” / “Stop”
30. Scissor Sisters – “Mary”
31. Snow Patrol – “Run”
32. Usher – “Yeah”
33. Goldie Lookin’ Chain – “Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do”
34. Nelly – “Flap Your Wings” / “My Place”
35. Delays – “Lost In A Melody” / “Wanderlust”
36. Green Day – “American Idiot”
37. Destiny’s Child – “Lose My Breath”
38. Avril Lavigne – “My Happy Ending”
39. Shapeshifters – “Lola’s Theme”
40. The Killers – “Mr Brightside”
Thanks to Emma, J, Todd, Dom, Billy, Julie, M&K, DM, RM, MD, MH and SF (also TP and Y and AM, in a roundabout way), Steve, Pete, GS, Karim, Ben, Stylus, Grooves, everyone I’ve played football with, everyone I’ve played records with, everyone who’s got me drunk, everyone who passes through AV, everyone I’ve had an interesting conversation with and anyone who’s kept me engaged via that there internet for the last 12 months, and also anyone who’s read anything, anywhere, that I’ve written, and not thought I was a cunt.
NJS
12/09/2004 08:48:00 pm
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Sure plays a mean pinball...
One
I was asked the other week whether I’d rather be blind or go deaf. This is the most difficult question ever. Are we talking from birth, or as the result of an accident? From birth = rather be blind. Result of an accident = rather be deaf, I think. I've talked about this dilemma a lot over the years, and as my mum has quite serious hearing problems, it's a horrible question to consider.
My reasoning is blind from birth = don't know what you're missing, learn to cope better moving around, etcetera : deaf from accident = can still enjoy music on a physical (i.e. volume) level, going to clubs and dancing, and communicate via lip-reading and so on (I know a few people through work who do this, it's quite incredible). Plus I suspect deafness may be easier to solve/cure/correct than blindness.
Think about it though; if you encounter a blind person in your day-to-day life it’s generally very apparent that the person is blind, and as a consequence you are generally very understanding and accommodating, and do your best to help them, or at least to not hinder them. But saying everything twice and always making sure you look at someone face-on when you talk to them, constantly having to turn the television up so loud that it hurts your own ears, is, frankly (and I say this as someone who lives with someone about to get a hearing aid) fucking annoying. Deaf people get treated like shit in society; they get none of the consideration that blind or otherwise obviously handicapped people receive. They're treated as if they're subhuman and it's pretty disgusting. People compensate for obvious disabilities; blindness, physical afflictions etcetera - people don't notice you're deaf, and ergo assume you're an awkward twat rather than someone who needs a little consideration.
Saying that, my mum finally got her hearing aid on Tuesday. Now she whispers so quietly that my dad and I can barely hear her, and complains that we’re shouting if we talk at a reasonable level. I ate a packet of crisps in the same room as her on Tuesday night when I got back from football and she complained about me scrunching the packet deliberately to make as much noise as possible. I wasn’t doing that. Normal, everyday ambient noise, which my mother has been masked from for the last… well, five years or more, probably (when we finally convinced her to go and see a specialist he said that he couldn’t understand how she’d coped with day-to-day life, such was her hearing loss), is now an unwanted intrusion into her near-silent bubble. It’s going to take some getting used to. And, frankly, right now, I wish she was still deaf.
Two
A question I posted on ILM;
Do you JUST listen to music or do you have music on while doing other things?
Q Video games, washing up, reading, surfing the net (NOT driving - this question is about listening AT HOME only), or anything else? If you JUST listen to music (notnecessarily all the time) without any other activity to distract, how do you do so? Describe a "typical" listen to a record or song when you are consciously listening to music as opposed to just hearing or playing music in the background.
A Basically...
I have my iPod while commuting to work, and at work we play music ambiently in the office (iPod again, often on random, though we have a large amount of jazz etcetera at work too). At home in my bedroom / office whilst surfing / playing Champ / writing / doing anything at the PC or in the room generally I have a Denon mini system that I listen to stuff on whilst doing whateveritis, and which is set up so the speakers are positioned nicely to listen to music in/on my bed.
I don't often listen to music before going out, because I don't really "go out" as such - if I do anything even close it's just going down the pub to chat shit with friends, and I don't get changed for that. I've never been massively into clubs or bars because I find it suitable neither for listening to music or enjoying a drink or talking to people, which are the three things I'd want to be able to do.
But I also have the "music room" as I call it, where I keep my CD collection and my separates hi-fi and also my TV and DVD player - this is a dedicated room, basically, for listening and watching (and playing PS1 [soon to be Xbox]). A few times a week, sometimes everyday, sometimes less often, I like to sit down and listen to a record in much the same way as you'd watch a film; sitting down, focusing, lights off (or maybe just lamp on) and soak it in.
I'm intrigued by the ideas of connections between modes and methods of consumption of music and musical taste...
Now I want more responses from you lot, in the comments here, especially to the last part of the question, i.e. the bit in italics just above this bit.
Three
Ignore that singles list from two weeks ago – that was just the voting for Stylus. What I really think will be presented shortly, as will albums of the year, in the only format acceptable - A TOP 40 RUNDOWN. Balls to you, BBC – I love you but you killed TOTP when you moved it from a Thursday.
NJS
12/02/2004 08:58:00 am
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