i was reading the independant today, since someone else had the guardian, but it meant that i got to read the art review section (g2 is always stolen). andy gill, record review guy, wrote a two page article on stuff, letting it be know that he'd recieved 75 cds to be reviewed that week, showing how the cd wasn't dead and internet style marketing was over-rated. however, turning to his actual reviews, he gave grinder man (nick cave + dirty three) 5 stars, but three of the other releases - all big names - got two stars. why not review the good albums, andy? even giving the new bryan ferry album 2 stars gives it the oxygen of publicity, instead of some good indie band (or euros childs). ok so you had a two-page article about the ones you didn't review, but this is hardly a weekly occurance. maybe cds are dead, he's just not paying any attention in his ivory tower of promo copies.
also in that issue was john gray of 'straw dogs' fame reviewng 'the meaning of life' with a mixed conclusion and reviewing in such a way as to encourage investigation of his next book, the marvellously titled 'black mass: apocolyptic religion and the death of utopia'.
a query - the water at work tastes disgusting. so it has to be drunk cold. we have atap, and a water cooler, taking water from the tap and cooling it to a tasteless level. now which is more eco friendly? if i run the tap, i waste water, if i drink from the cooler, i waste power. right now, which is more important?
what is it about blackbird song that breaks my heart? it's the most beautiful sound. maybe it's because they're free to sing whatever they want, while other birds' songs are repetitive, and you know how humans love the illusion of free will. years ago, we had a blackbird in our garden that my parents taught to sing the speedy gonzales song. at the time i wondered - and it's no clearer to me now - if the bird could hear the song and was deliberately imitaing it, or if the song was filtering gently into his repetoire without him noticing. maybe there's no difference.
maybe it's just cause they're such amazing singers. they got the best tunes.
spent all night tonight wandering around soho 's sam smith pubs with adam green, taking in a vegan organic restaurant too. still hard to get over meeting david wrench and sticking a cd in his hand.
adam was breaking up with his live-in girlfriend of two years, which prompted me to go off on one about oxytocin, meaning i didn't notice rowan atkinson walking past me and giving me a funny look (adam said).
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
gig update
cult of luna:
dry, and alone, and feeling exhausted, ii went to the cult of luna show. the lights went down and a beautiful taped piano version of 'marching to the heart beats' came on, and people didn't shut up. then, when they walked onto stage, instead of going straight into 'finland' like you expected, they played it experimental and went with the old set closer 'waiting for you' but without anymore drums than tambourine and light synthetics. the guitarists played it totally straight - but there was no huge big banging. instead of the singer running out for the last 15 seconds (of 8 minutes), we were left with the guitarist's, often off-mic, efforts. ii can understand why people would talk through the (lengthy) opening music, but when they're on stage, please, just shut up and let's all enjoy the band. when the singer did come on, he couldn't quite get the force of the recordings and couldn't hold a note. but the musicianship - if a little close to the album versions largely, with some great variations in tempo and volume (the intro drum roll on 'echoes' is now monumental) - was excellent. a shame at the vocals generally let it down, especially on 'crossing over', which is actually possibly the most beautiful moment in metal ever.
bill bailey and the bbc concert orchestra:
often something of a mel brookes-style slant to this evening; the vastly expensive crap joke, of which part of the humour is 'i can't beliieve you made all that effort for that cheap joke', which of course just makes it funnier (bad e.g. 'what's the matter colonel sanders? chicken?'). but a great way to refresh some now-very-old tunes, and a great opportunity to see someone playing the theremin really well.
girls girls girls:
yes, girls girls girls, but more importantly, me giving luke the masters for my last five releases and saying 'now go make me some money'. i could talk much more (as always) about the awful supporting wench then the very acceptable girls, whose new songs definitely impress in an unexpected way; but what, no 'south america', 'vepp's email' or 'morning sickness'? how can you flog a cd and not play any of the songs on it? can't really comment further, as i'm not an impartial observer.
euros childs:
fantastic. well i'd imagine so; it was sold out. tommy and i walked from piccadilly to the mall, then turned right instead of left, all the way down to the victoria monument, then back up to find it exactly where we'd joined the road. walking up to the door, i noticed two figures outside smoking;one was obviously david wrench, the other identifiable as the durmmer and multi-instumentalist in the euros childs band. i was well made up to see david wrench, who looked a lot frailer in real life than in promo shots. having just loaded up on copies of 'new boyfriend' e.p. (it's largely a 'single' thing, maybe not deliberate, but it seemed to work with the lovely marion) so i gave him a copy, and under pressure described myself as 'eclectonica' (which seems to have usurped 'prog-pop' and 'heavy meta-l'as my new favourite description). then we went in and found out it was sold out. we went back outside and hinted that the guys should sneak us in but they wouldn't have it so we walked across town, getting lost in the west end so we could find ourselves again with maps, and ended up in a nice belgian bar ion drury lane. it was a good night. and now i'm late for my bed appointment.
might just add some more face book's first.. where's all the white girls at?
dry, and alone, and feeling exhausted, ii went to the cult of luna show. the lights went down and a beautiful taped piano version of 'marching to the heart beats' came on, and people didn't shut up. then, when they walked onto stage, instead of going straight into 'finland' like you expected, they played it experimental and went with the old set closer 'waiting for you' but without anymore drums than tambourine and light synthetics. the guitarists played it totally straight - but there was no huge big banging. instead of the singer running out for the last 15 seconds (of 8 minutes), we were left with the guitarist's, often off-mic, efforts. ii can understand why people would talk through the (lengthy) opening music, but when they're on stage, please, just shut up and let's all enjoy the band. when the singer did come on, he couldn't quite get the force of the recordings and couldn't hold a note. but the musicianship - if a little close to the album versions largely, with some great variations in tempo and volume (the intro drum roll on 'echoes' is now monumental) - was excellent. a shame at the vocals generally let it down, especially on 'crossing over', which is actually possibly the most beautiful moment in metal ever.
bill bailey and the bbc concert orchestra:
often something of a mel brookes-style slant to this evening; the vastly expensive crap joke, of which part of the humour is 'i can't beliieve you made all that effort for that cheap joke', which of course just makes it funnier (bad e.g. 'what's the matter colonel sanders? chicken?'). but a great way to refresh some now-very-old tunes, and a great opportunity to see someone playing the theremin really well.
girls girls girls:
yes, girls girls girls, but more importantly, me giving luke the masters for my last five releases and saying 'now go make me some money'. i could talk much more (as always) about the awful supporting wench then the very acceptable girls, whose new songs definitely impress in an unexpected way; but what, no 'south america', 'vepp's email' or 'morning sickness'? how can you flog a cd and not play any of the songs on it? can't really comment further, as i'm not an impartial observer.
euros childs:
fantastic. well i'd imagine so; it was sold out. tommy and i walked from piccadilly to the mall, then turned right instead of left, all the way down to the victoria monument, then back up to find it exactly where we'd joined the road. walking up to the door, i noticed two figures outside smoking;one was obviously david wrench, the other identifiable as the durmmer and multi-instumentalist in the euros childs band. i was well made up to see david wrench, who looked a lot frailer in real life than in promo shots. having just loaded up on copies of 'new boyfriend' e.p. (it's largely a 'single' thing, maybe not deliberate, but it seemed to work with the lovely marion) so i gave him a copy, and under pressure described myself as 'eclectonica' (which seems to have usurped 'prog-pop' and 'heavy meta-l'as my new favourite description). then we went in and found out it was sold out. we went back outside and hinted that the guys should sneak us in but they wouldn't have it so we walked across town, getting lost in the west end so we could find ourselves again with maps, and ended up in a nice belgian bar ion drury lane. it was a good night. and now i'm late for my bed appointment.
might just add some more face book's first.. where's all the white girls at?
why i joined facebook
in many ways, this is self consciously the stupidest thing i have ever done. it is also art. it is also for stalking.
it curdles my milk to think of joining facebook, a supremely useless website, the virtual equivelent of repeatedly asking everyone 'we're friends aren't we? good. because.. you know... i wasn't sure for a minute there'. i activated my profile at six o'clock. when i got back from the gig at half 11, i had six friends.
this number may have doubled, or more by tomorrow.
myspace was never this intense. 'how do you know this person?' the site begs, with the grace of the front page of a free newspaper, and then forces the information from you with exacting, pigeon-hole effieciency. the website pleads with you that you invest so much time in it, setting up your friend list so that it mirrors your life in the most precise detail. how did you meet? who introduced who? who's the big match-maker? whic groups do i belong to? poke luke! whimper. it's so stressful.
and it goes on and on and on and on and on.
so then i joined the 'anti-facebook' group, only to find a bunch of comments from people saying it wasn't as good as myspace, and a few comments from people saying that i was stupid for joing facebook then joining anti-facebook. so i left.
still, it doesn't have the class of the guy whose sole mission in life was to have more myspace friends than tom. oh no, i'm making reference to myspace folklore...
it curdles my milk to think of joining facebook, a supremely useless website, the virtual equivelent of repeatedly asking everyone 'we're friends aren't we? good. because.. you know... i wasn't sure for a minute there'. i activated my profile at six o'clock. when i got back from the gig at half 11, i had six friends.
this number may have doubled, or more by tomorrow.
myspace was never this intense. 'how do you know this person?' the site begs, with the grace of the front page of a free newspaper, and then forces the information from you with exacting, pigeon-hole effieciency. the website pleads with you that you invest so much time in it, setting up your friend list so that it mirrors your life in the most precise detail. how did you meet? who introduced who? who's the big match-maker? whic groups do i belong to? poke luke! whimper. it's so stressful.
and it goes on and on and on and on and on.
so then i joined the 'anti-facebook' group, only to find a bunch of comments from people saying it wasn't as good as myspace, and a few comments from people saying that i was stupid for joing facebook then joining anti-facebook. so i left.
still, it doesn't have the class of the guy whose sole mission in life was to have more myspace friends than tom. oh no, i'm making reference to myspace folklore...
Sunday, February 25, 2007
pile of cds
while i've been waiting for my new hard drive to come through (pending investigation about noise levels) i have managed to acquire the following cds, which i have not yet managed to rip:
various artists of switchflicker records: selaed with a loving flick
i'm listening to this for the second time and it's great. very laid back - not what i was expecting from a label i only know through valerie and chloe poems. but great, soft jazz and mature, reverbacious music.
soundgarden: superunknown
it was a fiver in fop and now i own it and it's still great.
uncut: best of 2006 (who knew that 2006 was such a chilled out year?)
syd barrett: opel
only listened to it once - scratchy demoes and outakes. i may have heard it before when i worked in the offy, and realised that nothing is more psychaedliec than a man singing out of time and out of tune with a guitar that he's playing that's also out of time.
jethro tull: passion play
i got this and the above barret album for my birthday. this was a complete surprise - a zappa-inflected (reminiscant of cardiacs) proggy concept work with some astoundingly imaginative instrumental sections. really inspirational.
ooberman:carried away
actually quite a good record.. i didn't think i still liked pop. there's a new ooberon album out this week too.. spin off band. i'll have to investigate it, if not own it straight away
various artists of cherryade: a very cherry christmas one and two
bought for bobby mcgees tracks and general investigative purchase. bbc's DIY label of the year 2006!
anti-war protest double cd
bartok/albern quartet: string quartets 1-6
this is weird as fuck. bought because i heard some on the radio and thought it sounded like dillinger excape plan, harmonically and rthymically.
bach/graeme gould: goldberg variations, 1955 recording
distilled genius. i bought the recording he made thirty years later for iona;s birthday, and that was great, and when i saw this i had to get it.. perfection.
neutral milk hotel: in the aeroplane over the sea'
didn't strike me on listening as it first did hearing it at ian's. but then i'd just been listening to the goldberg variations and thinking 'oh god i've wasted my life'
i've also bought bohm's 'wholeness and the implicate order' and 'opening skinner's box'. my brain will soon be complete, but also incompatible with anyone elses.
i want to write proper reviews on this blog, reviews of every product i consume, every gig i attend and everyday i live. with percentage scores where appropriate. but there's no time. what's above is just a few words cobbled together, not the epics i start in my head while i'm on the bus without a book or walkman.
last week i found myself in a bad way, the cycle of caffiene escalating. i think i'm quite sensitive to it; a couple of cups of tea day and i'm over the table. how much i enjoy work is directly related to the amount of sugar and caffiene i consume. which sucks the life out of my evenings and leaves me slumped in front of whatever's on in the lounge, be it dinner computer games or star trek.
weekends have been trying and i've spent the last few sundays entirely indoors, despite the same being said for fridays. i suppose i need a couple of days off, which i'm now entitled to, but will probably save up to cash in at the end of this contract on the 16th, when i'll go mental and try and visit everyone.
lots of love.
various artists of switchflicker records: selaed with a loving flick
i'm listening to this for the second time and it's great. very laid back - not what i was expecting from a label i only know through valerie and chloe poems. but great, soft jazz and mature, reverbacious music.
soundgarden: superunknown
it was a fiver in fop and now i own it and it's still great.
uncut: best of 2006 (who knew that 2006 was such a chilled out year?)
syd barrett: opel
only listened to it once - scratchy demoes and outakes. i may have heard it before when i worked in the offy, and realised that nothing is more psychaedliec than a man singing out of time and out of tune with a guitar that he's playing that's also out of time.
jethro tull: passion play
i got this and the above barret album for my birthday. this was a complete surprise - a zappa-inflected (reminiscant of cardiacs) proggy concept work with some astoundingly imaginative instrumental sections. really inspirational.
ooberman:carried away
actually quite a good record.. i didn't think i still liked pop. there's a new ooberon album out this week too.. spin off band. i'll have to investigate it, if not own it straight away
various artists of cherryade: a very cherry christmas one and two
bought for bobby mcgees tracks and general investigative purchase. bbc's DIY label of the year 2006!
anti-war protest double cd
bartok/albern quartet: string quartets 1-6
this is weird as fuck. bought because i heard some on the radio and thought it sounded like dillinger excape plan, harmonically and rthymically.
bach/graeme gould: goldberg variations, 1955 recording
distilled genius. i bought the recording he made thirty years later for iona;s birthday, and that was great, and when i saw this i had to get it.. perfection.
neutral milk hotel: in the aeroplane over the sea'
didn't strike me on listening as it first did hearing it at ian's. but then i'd just been listening to the goldberg variations and thinking 'oh god i've wasted my life'
i've also bought bohm's 'wholeness and the implicate order' and 'opening skinner's box'. my brain will soon be complete, but also incompatible with anyone elses.
i want to write proper reviews on this blog, reviews of every product i consume, every gig i attend and everyday i live. with percentage scores where appropriate. but there's no time. what's above is just a few words cobbled together, not the epics i start in my head while i'm on the bus without a book or walkman.
last week i found myself in a bad way, the cycle of caffiene escalating. i think i'm quite sensitive to it; a couple of cups of tea day and i'm over the table. how much i enjoy work is directly related to the amount of sugar and caffiene i consume. which sucks the life out of my evenings and leaves me slumped in front of whatever's on in the lounge, be it dinner computer games or star trek.
weekends have been trying and i've spent the last few sundays entirely indoors, despite the same being said for fridays. i suppose i need a couple of days off, which i'm now entitled to, but will probably save up to cash in at the end of this contract on the 16th, when i'll go mental and try and visit everyone.
lots of love.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
i am the nutter on the bus, parts two and three
people just don't understand. well, in one case they did, and in the other they didn't.
leaving ed's, perhaps drunker than i'd realised and planned on saturday night, i got on the tube at finsbury park, plugged into my walkman and opned up the iain m. banks book ed had lent me. oh ok, and i dropped out. i couldn't read properly. there was a guy next to me with an ipod on, and i couldn't resist. i did what i've wwanted to do ever since i moved to london - i asked if whe wanted to swap headphones.
he was very happy to. i wasn't sure if i meant to swap mp3 players - i don't know about putting a stranger's headphones in my ears, it's a bit 'unprotected'. but he was happy to and i couldn't be bothered to do anything about it. he was listening to alice in chains, which i had never heard before but they have quite interesting vocal layers. i had mone on random - he was treated to ( i checked afterwards) mugison, audioweb, zabrinski and lester young. i only told him the name lester young as it was the one that was playing when he got off. so nothing to unfriendly came up. he enjoyed it and so did i. next to try it sober, and on a sufficeintly hip-looking girl wh's obviously cool but not one that i'm blatantly attracted to (because that would just be a chat up line, and this is such sa better scheme than that). of course, the ultimate aim is to be cool enough to use it on a girl i am actually attracted to without it being a chat up line but actually it is and i know it but actually it's not, honestly.
so then i was waiting for a bus last night, sat next to an older fella. he starts talking about the buses that go from here... you have to wakl to this stop and it's aslightly further but sometimes it's worth it because of the 607 express and that. then he says soemthing odd about all these people researching things when they should be researching the things that are really going to save them, and that's their fate (he might hvae said 'faith', it's impossibleto tell with his accent). we had a discussion on the way home - he was going on about the whole allah thing. you know - no democracy, this is allah's world. he didn't say anything that would actually convince me he was right, it was all just scare mongering and reinforcement - ooh, i'm going to hell if i don't believe in god. yes, but why should i? i a=would ask him. i can live my life fine withou god, i told him - it's god who needs you to believe in him. a cruel god, a miserable god, the usual stuff i pull out on peolpe. except that he was actually agreeing with me, yes, god is cruel. he tried to worry me with the fall of man, and i asked him how the hell did satan get into 'paradise' (he said it was satan, not me, which it is in the quaran). and i asked him how to decide between a real prophet and a false one - and he replied that god knows. well that's all very well, i said, but how do we we tell the difference between what god tells moses and what god tells the yorkshire ripper?
all this with a book about middle eastern mythology in my hand. i just hadn't got around to the islam section yet. not that i'd have had him anymore than he had me because he wasn't listening to me and his arguments waere pathetic - he tried to convince me that because the quaran drew on older material, that showed it was divinely inspired, he actually said that. but hat least he was old so i didn't think he'd actually attack me or anything, although he was very impaasioned..
all this time we were standing at the front, and when he got off i didn't notice the bus driver telling me to move down. then someone piped up after he got up the bus - picked me up onthe whole 'cruel god' thing. 'et the millionare driving around in his sports car doesn't think it's such a bad world, eh?' he said. his head lolled around in a wierd way. i agreed with him and tried to develop the point, but it seemed to come out like i was disagreeing with him.. went on like that for a bit until we were both very confused.
then i went home and played oblivion for four hours and wondered where the time had gone.
leaving ed's, perhaps drunker than i'd realised and planned on saturday night, i got on the tube at finsbury park, plugged into my walkman and opned up the iain m. banks book ed had lent me. oh ok, and i dropped out. i couldn't read properly. there was a guy next to me with an ipod on, and i couldn't resist. i did what i've wwanted to do ever since i moved to london - i asked if whe wanted to swap headphones.
he was very happy to. i wasn't sure if i meant to swap mp3 players - i don't know about putting a stranger's headphones in my ears, it's a bit 'unprotected'. but he was happy to and i couldn't be bothered to do anything about it. he was listening to alice in chains, which i had never heard before but they have quite interesting vocal layers. i had mone on random - he was treated to ( i checked afterwards) mugison, audioweb, zabrinski and lester young. i only told him the name lester young as it was the one that was playing when he got off. so nothing to unfriendly came up. he enjoyed it and so did i. next to try it sober, and on a sufficeintly hip-looking girl wh's obviously cool but not one that i'm blatantly attracted to (because that would just be a chat up line, and this is such sa better scheme than that). of course, the ultimate aim is to be cool enough to use it on a girl i am actually attracted to without it being a chat up line but actually it is and i know it but actually it's not, honestly.
so then i was waiting for a bus last night, sat next to an older fella. he starts talking about the buses that go from here... you have to wakl to this stop and it's aslightly further but sometimes it's worth it because of the 607 express and that. then he says soemthing odd about all these people researching things when they should be researching the things that are really going to save them, and that's their fate (he might hvae said 'faith', it's impossibleto tell with his accent). we had a discussion on the way home - he was going on about the whole allah thing. you know - no democracy, this is allah's world. he didn't say anything that would actually convince me he was right, it was all just scare mongering and reinforcement - ooh, i'm going to hell if i don't believe in god. yes, but why should i? i a=would ask him. i can live my life fine withou god, i told him - it's god who needs you to believe in him. a cruel god, a miserable god, the usual stuff i pull out on peolpe. except that he was actually agreeing with me, yes, god is cruel. he tried to worry me with the fall of man, and i asked him how the hell did satan get into 'paradise' (he said it was satan, not me, which it is in the quaran). and i asked him how to decide between a real prophet and a false one - and he replied that god knows. well that's all very well, i said, but how do we we tell the difference between what god tells moses and what god tells the yorkshire ripper?
all this with a book about middle eastern mythology in my hand. i just hadn't got around to the islam section yet. not that i'd have had him anymore than he had me because he wasn't listening to me and his arguments waere pathetic - he tried to convince me that because the quaran drew on older material, that showed it was divinely inspired, he actually said that. but hat least he was old so i didn't think he'd actually attack me or anything, although he was very impaasioned..
all this time we were standing at the front, and when he got off i didn't notice the bus driver telling me to move down. then someone piped up after he got up the bus - picked me up onthe whole 'cruel god' thing. 'et the millionare driving around in his sports car doesn't think it's such a bad world, eh?' he said. his head lolled around in a wierd way. i agreed with him and tried to develop the point, but it seemed to come out like i was disagreeing with him.. went on like that for a bit until we were both very confused.
then i went home and played oblivion for four hours and wondered where the time had gone.
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