First Impressions of Earth - The Strokes
Five Leaves Left - Nick Drake
This is my final post this year as the iPod Challenge is off on holiday for a couple of weeks. I'm taking my iPod with me but I won't be posting and I'll be listening to whatever the hell I goddamn feel like. I've also been given one of the new iPod Shuffles for Christmas (hence the lack of 'challenge' over the last couple of days) and that's going too. I had my doubts about the Shuffle but I've come to realise it's like listening to the best radio station ever - i.e the one where you're the controller, the playlist compiler, the DJ, and the listener. Nary a duff track in sight, which is more than can be said for The Strokes recent outing. There's still flashes of brilliance but the piss-poor Iggy rip-off of Heart In A Cage is certainly not one of them. I still think there's hope for them yet, but they were always going to struggle after the hype that surrounded them at first, and the level they set themselves with Is This It?
Nick Drake is Nick Drake - what else can I say? Actually, I have a theory about Nick Drake but now is not the time to go into it. I have more of his albums on the iPod so I can expound at a later date (that'll bring you back, won't it?).
OK, to paraphrase, I'm tired and I want to go to bed. Happy Christmas your arse, all the best, I'm offski.
Thursday, 21 December 2006
Sunday, 17 December 2006
Just a quickie
Final Straw - Snow Patrol
Finally Woken - Jem
A quick update. As I mentioned before, Final Straw and I got acquainted at a particularly messy time of my life and it got to me more than I think it would have done at another time. Now when I listen to it I can here that it's a decent enough album but the lyrics are mostly in the vaguely sensitive vein favoured by Chris Martin et al. Will the first track of this album ever be toppled from the number one spot in my Top 25? It'll take some doing as I think the next song is about twenty plays behind. All these statistics, do you think the iPod was perchance designed by a man?
Finally Woken is a girlfriend choice and I think it may have been a drunken one. For a while, the first track of the album, They was played constantly on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 2 show and it didn't sound too bad. However, a whole album of Jem is a too much. The production is superb - each track sounds completely different as the album swings through genres, grabbing bits from everywhere - Tricky, classical music, The Neptunes - but Jem's voice divests the record of any intrigue it may have held. She is lumbered with the same sort of blandness as Dido, making this album sound mostly like an Ikea advert. It's a pity - with a stronger vocal performance this could have been something special.
Finally Woken - Jem
A quick update. As I mentioned before, Final Straw and I got acquainted at a particularly messy time of my life and it got to me more than I think it would have done at another time. Now when I listen to it I can here that it's a decent enough album but the lyrics are mostly in the vaguely sensitive vein favoured by Chris Martin et al. Will the first track of this album ever be toppled from the number one spot in my Top 25? It'll take some doing as I think the next song is about twenty plays behind. All these statistics, do you think the iPod was perchance designed by a man?
Finally Woken is a girlfriend choice and I think it may have been a drunken one. For a while, the first track of the album, They was played constantly on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 2 show and it didn't sound too bad. However, a whole album of Jem is a too much. The production is superb - each track sounds completely different as the album swings through genres, grabbing bits from everywhere - Tricky, classical music, The Neptunes - but Jem's voice divests the record of any intrigue it may have held. She is lumbered with the same sort of blandness as Dido, making this album sound mostly like an Ikea advert. It's a pity - with a stronger vocal performance this could have been something special.
Friday, 15 December 2006
Effin' Hell
False Flags (single) - Massive Attack
Family is for Sharing - Brothers in Sound
Fashion Nugget (only one track - I Will Survive) - Cake
Feel Good Lost - Broken Social Scene
Fever to Tell - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Fight Club SE - The Dust Brothers
OK, I promise I will try and stop the horrendously bad puns that have made up the last couple of post titles, but it's Friday, it's been a long week, and 'Effin' Hell' is the best I can come up with. So far, so effin' good (sorry, I have no control over what I write - you may have noticed). False Flags sounded like a decent return to form for Massive Attack. I've got 100th Window but it is the least played Massive Attack album I own. The others are inviolable classics, each of them with the power to take me back to the place I first heard them and recreate an entire period of my life in my head. Sometimes this makes for uneasy listening but it's surely a sign of a great album.
Cake are a band that I always thought I'd hate - one trick pony smart arses who had one decent idea and flogged the fucker to death. My girlfriend lent me some of their albums and I was surprised to hear that they weren't actually that bad. This however, was downloaded when I only wanted to hear this song, hence its solitary nature. I remember reading somewhere that one test of whether a cover version was worthwhile or not was to ask if it added anything new or unique to the original. I think it's fair to say that Cake's reworking of I Will Survive fulfills this criteria as it removes every last ounce of disco glitter and turns the song into a tired but resolute 'fuck you' to the man/woman who's done the dirty on the singer. I like it when bands surprise me - I wonder if there's anything Babyshambles could do to make see a reason for their continued existence?
Two final points - I think Fever to Tell has been the first album that I've listened to in this challenge that has made me wish I hadn't buried it away on my iPod. I borrowed it from a friend because I'd fallen in love with the track Pin the last time I'd been back in the UK. This song made it on to numerous playlists on my iPod but I don't think I gave the album itself much more than a cursory listen. Shows you what I know about music - it's fucking fantastic. It batters along with a verve that most current 'rock' bands can only dream about. Karen O sounds like the re-incarnation of every punky female singer that melted my over-eager teenage heart, and the musicians are tighter than the duck's nether regions. They're definitely not getting punted off the iPod. Not sure I can say the same for the Fight Club soundtrack, though. I loved the film and the novel but certain soundtracks shouldn't be listened to in isolation. In the film it was there in the background, helping create the atmosphere that made the film so successful. On its own it sounds like a lost child clattering noisily around the supermarket trying to find their mother. I'm listening to it as I write this and praying for the moment when Where Is My Mind? kicks in at the end.
Family is for Sharing - Brothers in Sound
Fashion Nugget (only one track - I Will Survive) - Cake
Feel Good Lost - Broken Social Scene
Fever to Tell - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Fight Club SE - The Dust Brothers
OK, I promise I will try and stop the horrendously bad puns that have made up the last couple of post titles, but it's Friday, it's been a long week, and 'Effin' Hell' is the best I can come up with. So far, so effin' good (sorry, I have no control over what I write - you may have noticed). False Flags sounded like a decent return to form for Massive Attack. I've got 100th Window but it is the least played Massive Attack album I own. The others are inviolable classics, each of them with the power to take me back to the place I first heard them and recreate an entire period of my life in my head. Sometimes this makes for uneasy listening but it's surely a sign of a great album.
Cake are a band that I always thought I'd hate - one trick pony smart arses who had one decent idea and flogged the fucker to death. My girlfriend lent me some of their albums and I was surprised to hear that they weren't actually that bad. This however, was downloaded when I only wanted to hear this song, hence its solitary nature. I remember reading somewhere that one test of whether a cover version was worthwhile or not was to ask if it added anything new or unique to the original. I think it's fair to say that Cake's reworking of I Will Survive fulfills this criteria as it removes every last ounce of disco glitter and turns the song into a tired but resolute 'fuck you' to the man/woman who's done the dirty on the singer. I like it when bands surprise me - I wonder if there's anything Babyshambles could do to make see a reason for their continued existence?
Two final points - I think Fever to Tell has been the first album that I've listened to in this challenge that has made me wish I hadn't buried it away on my iPod. I borrowed it from a friend because I'd fallen in love with the track Pin the last time I'd been back in the UK. This song made it on to numerous playlists on my iPod but I don't think I gave the album itself much more than a cursory listen. Shows you what I know about music - it's fucking fantastic. It batters along with a verve that most current 'rock' bands can only dream about. Karen O sounds like the re-incarnation of every punky female singer that melted my over-eager teenage heart, and the musicians are tighter than the duck's nether regions. They're definitely not getting punted off the iPod. Not sure I can say the same for the Fight Club soundtrack, though. I loved the film and the novel but certain soundtracks shouldn't be listened to in isolation. In the film it was there in the background, helping create the atmosphere that made the film so successful. On its own it sounds like a lost child clattering noisily around the supermarket trying to find their mother. I'm listening to it as I write this and praying for the moment when Where Is My Mind? kicks in at the end.
Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Everything Begins With An 'E' (and some with an 'F')
Ege Bam Yasi - Can
Elan Vital - Pretty Girls Make Graves
Elephant - The White Stripes
Ellis 2001 - Ellis
Emotive - A Perfect Circle
Empire - Kasabian
Entertainment! - Gang of Four
Everything All The Time - Band of Horses
Everything Is - Nine Black Alps
Everything Is Wrong - Moby
Excerpts From The Diary of Todd Zilla - Grandaddy
Excuses for Travellers - Mojave 3
Exile In Guyville - Liz Phair
Exit Planet Dust - Chemical Brothers
Eye to the Telescope -KT Tunstall
Eyes Open - Snow Patrol
False Flags (single) - Massive Attack
Family is for Sharing - Brothers in Sound
Fashion Nugget (but only one song - I Will Survive)
Feel Good Lost - Broken Social Scene
Fever to Tell - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A mixture of work, end of year parties, last minute preparations for Christmas and my winter holiday, and good old-fashioned laziness is behind the recent lack of posting. All the elements have worked in their own different ways to prevent me from writing. Most obviously, if I'm busy working I'm pushed for time. So, even though I'm able to listen to music and scribble down notes on the train as I scoot around Tokyo, I haven't really had the time or the energy to write anything when I get home. This post was actually written in a notebook this afternoon when I found myself with an unexpected break (I bet you're amazed to find out that I actually put any forethought into this blog at all).
End of year parties cause a variety of problems but the two main ones are the following. Firstly, if I'm hungover there are certain types of music I want to listen to and certain types I don't. Brian Eno good, Throbbing Gristle bad. Basically, if I want to listen to music when I'm in this perilous state (and I often don't) I want something relatively gentle - acoustic guitars strumming away over burbling folktronica perhaps. Clanging metallic industrial thrash experimental avant garde death metal noise carnage from hell is not the soundtrack I'm after as I fight my way through the madding crowds of Tokyo's train stations like a horny homesick salmon desperately trying to make its way upstream. This means that I need to choose my music carefully, something the relatively random nature of this challenge precludes. Secondly, if I know I'm going out for three hours of all-you-can-drink carnage, I always think it's a good idea to leave my iPod safe at home, in case I don't manage to do that to myself.
I'm going to Cambodia and Vietnam next week so I've been spending time sorting out hotels and visas. I've also been trying to find presents for my family back home that are a) decent; b) a size that can be sent to the UK without me having to use my thumbs as collateral with a Yakuza loan-shark just so I can pay the postage; and c) a reasonable price here. Chocolate and calendars it is again then, much the same as last year. However, trying to find a calendar that's different to the ones I've sent in previous years is something of a challenge. Either I've been in Japan for too long or it's time I was starting to use my imagination a bit more when it comes to buying Christmas presents.
My final excuse - as I said, I'm a bit of a lazy bastard. Last night I had the choice of writing this and some other stuff that I had to finish, or watching Insomnia - guess what I went for. Anyway, am I actually going to mention music at any point in this post? Well, I can try. Listening to Everything is Wrong made me realise that Moby was actually decent once. This was of course back in the days when, if you wanted to hear his songs you had to buy his album rather than just watch an evening of commercial television. Instead of his current 'Best Of' album he should have just taken Everything is Wrong, tacked on a disc of bonus tracks (of course including Go), and re-released it as a deluxe edition. Whether he would allow the puritan anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist sleevenotes to be included in this re-issue is another question entirely.
Anything else? Exile In Guyville is fantastic but didn't it turn to be something of an albatross for the rest of Liz Phair's career? Exit Planet Dust is still a buzz and it is the ideal soundtrack for walking to the station at shite o' clock in the morning (when you haven't got a hangover). If Coldplay are MacDonalds then Snow Patrol are KFC - they're not quite as bad but they still leave you feeling ultimately unsatisfied. I was given Final Straw just after I'd ended a long-term relationship so my guard was down and I fell for it completely. Even now tracks from it make up the top 3 of the 25 most listened to tracks on my iPod. It's not a bad album but Eyes Open is little more than a rehash of it (apart from the song they did with Martha Wainwright).
All the 'F' albums are getting left for another post as I think this one has gone on for too long.
P.S - I haven't included any links from this post as I have done with the others because my computer is having one of its all too frequent go slow days. Must be casual Friday or something.
Elan Vital - Pretty Girls Make Graves
Elephant - The White Stripes
Ellis 2001 - Ellis
Emotive - A Perfect Circle
Empire - Kasabian
Entertainment! - Gang of Four
Everything All The Time - Band of Horses
Everything Is - Nine Black Alps
Everything Is Wrong - Moby
Excerpts From The Diary of Todd Zilla - Grandaddy
Excuses for Travellers - Mojave 3
Exile In Guyville - Liz Phair
Exit Planet Dust - Chemical Brothers
Eye to the Telescope -KT Tunstall
Eyes Open - Snow Patrol
False Flags (single) - Massive Attack
Family is for Sharing - Brothers in Sound
Fashion Nugget (but only one song - I Will Survive)
Feel Good Lost - Broken Social Scene
Fever to Tell - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
A mixture of work, end of year parties, last minute preparations for Christmas and my winter holiday, and good old-fashioned laziness is behind the recent lack of posting. All the elements have worked in their own different ways to prevent me from writing. Most obviously, if I'm busy working I'm pushed for time. So, even though I'm able to listen to music and scribble down notes on the train as I scoot around Tokyo, I haven't really had the time or the energy to write anything when I get home. This post was actually written in a notebook this afternoon when I found myself with an unexpected break (I bet you're amazed to find out that I actually put any forethought into this blog at all).
End of year parties cause a variety of problems but the two main ones are the following. Firstly, if I'm hungover there are certain types of music I want to listen to and certain types I don't. Brian Eno good, Throbbing Gristle bad. Basically, if I want to listen to music when I'm in this perilous state (and I often don't) I want something relatively gentle - acoustic guitars strumming away over burbling folktronica perhaps. Clanging metallic industrial thrash experimental avant garde death metal noise carnage from hell is not the soundtrack I'm after as I fight my way through the madding crowds of Tokyo's train stations like a horny homesick salmon desperately trying to make its way upstream. This means that I need to choose my music carefully, something the relatively random nature of this challenge precludes. Secondly, if I know I'm going out for three hours of all-you-can-drink carnage, I always think it's a good idea to leave my iPod safe at home, in case I don't manage to do that to myself.
I'm going to Cambodia and Vietnam next week so I've been spending time sorting out hotels and visas. I've also been trying to find presents for my family back home that are a) decent; b) a size that can be sent to the UK without me having to use my thumbs as collateral with a Yakuza loan-shark just so I can pay the postage; and c) a reasonable price here. Chocolate and calendars it is again then, much the same as last year. However, trying to find a calendar that's different to the ones I've sent in previous years is something of a challenge. Either I've been in Japan for too long or it's time I was starting to use my imagination a bit more when it comes to buying Christmas presents.
My final excuse - as I said, I'm a bit of a lazy bastard. Last night I had the choice of writing this and some other stuff that I had to finish, or watching Insomnia - guess what I went for. Anyway, am I actually going to mention music at any point in this post? Well, I can try. Listening to Everything is Wrong made me realise that Moby was actually decent once. This was of course back in the days when, if you wanted to hear his songs you had to buy his album rather than just watch an evening of commercial television. Instead of his current 'Best Of' album he should have just taken Everything is Wrong, tacked on a disc of bonus tracks (of course including Go), and re-released it as a deluxe edition. Whether he would allow the puritan anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist sleevenotes to be included in this re-issue is another question entirely.
Anything else? Exile In Guyville is fantastic but didn't it turn to be something of an albatross for the rest of Liz Phair's career? Exit Planet Dust is still a buzz and it is the ideal soundtrack for walking to the station at shite o' clock in the morning (when you haven't got a hangover). If Coldplay are MacDonalds then Snow Patrol are KFC - they're not quite as bad but they still leave you feeling ultimately unsatisfied. I was given Final Straw just after I'd ended a long-term relationship so my guard was down and I fell for it completely. Even now tracks from it make up the top 3 of the 25 most listened to tracks on my iPod. It's not a bad album but Eyes Open is little more than a rehash of it (apart from the song they did with Martha Wainwright).
All the 'F' albums are getting left for another post as I think this one has gone on for too long.
P.S - I haven't included any links from this post as I have done with the others because my computer is having one of its all too frequent go slow days. Must be casual Friday or something.
Wednesday, 6 December 2006
This post is brought to you by the letter 'D'
Do You Know Squarepusher? - Squarepusher
Dog On Wheels (EP) - Belle & Sebastian
Doolittle - Pixies
Dragonwyck - Dragonwyck
Dub Housing - Pere Ubu
Duello - Unicode
It's a bit twee, I know, but bear with me - things that make me happy:
I've been looking for a link for Unicode, but I haven't been able to find anything (not doing to well on the Google front tonight). They (I think they're a 'they' anyway) are an experimental band from Italy. I saw Mattia Coletti (who may or may not be a member of the band) in Tokyo earlier this year and he was like nothing I've ever seen before. If you're looking for an escape from skinny ties and New Wave wannabes this is a fair distance from all of that.
Dog On Wheels (EP) - Belle & Sebastian
Doolittle - Pixies
Dragonwyck - Dragonwyck
Dub Housing - Pere Ubu
Duello - Unicode
It's a bit twee, I know, but bear with me - things that make me happy:
- Glayva - it's getting mighty cold round these parts and nothing puts a heat in you quite as pleasantly as Glayva. I'm not getting paid for this, I'm just drinking it as I write this post and it's taking the edge of what is a bitterly cold night.
- Seeing vain people in Tokyo make utter arses of themselves - I was walking through Shinjuku tonight when some posing bint in sunglasses, big boots, a pout, and a strut that would put Liam Gallagher to shame, went arse over tit because she couldn't handle the ten inch spike heels on the boots that she'd chosen to wear. Her boyfriend, some gormless git in a cheap looking expensive suit and more Louis Vuitton than should really be seen on a man, was affronted and proceeded to give her a bollocking on the street. If only my mobile battery hadn't have been dead at the time; I may have had my first posting on YouTube.
- The letter 'D'
I've been looking for a link for Unicode, but I haven't been able to find anything (not doing to well on the Google front tonight). They (I think they're a 'they' anyway) are an experimental band from Italy. I saw Mattia Coletti (who may or may not be a member of the band) in Tokyo earlier this year and he was like nothing I've ever seen before. If you're looking for an escape from skinny ties and New Wave wannabes this is a fair distance from all of that.
Sunday, 3 December 2006
It's bound to go pear shaped soon
Damage - Blues Explosion
Danny the Dog OST - Massive Attack
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
Dear Catastrophe Waitress - Belle & Sebastian
Death to the Pixies (Double CD) - Pixies
Deftones - Deftones
Demo - Tokyo Sundown
Demo - Raddie and Weourus
Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes - TV on the Radio
Destroy Rock 'n Roll - Mylo
Different Class - Pulp
Dirty Hits - Primal Scream
Divine Hammer (CDS) - The Breeders
DJ Kicks - Daddy G
'C' was something of a traumatic letter with it's twin salvo of shite, Civilian by Boy Kill Boy and Costello Music by The Fratellis. As long as there was nothing too bad 'D' was always going to be good in comparison, but it's gone way beyond the call of duty to roll out a bunch of storming albums. Granted, the ones by Mylo and the Deftones are a bit flat-footed, but are harmless enough pieces of aural chewing gum. Different Class is an undeniable classic that manages to shoehorn anthropology, vivid prose, razor-sharp wit (of the kind that 'comedians' like Russell Brand can only dream about), scathing social critique, and cracking tunes into an album that's just a little over fifty minutes long. I haven't heard Jarvis Cocker's solo album but I intend to buy it sooner rather than later.
Dark Side of the Moon is another one of those albums that's always there or thereabouts in 'Greatest Ever' polls, but I'm still not convinced. Pink Floyd have always been a mystery to me in the same way that organised religion is. Both have millions of devout followers who don't react too kindly to criticism of any sort, both are huge money-making organisations, and both sets of believers are almost always proselytizers who think your soul/music taste is in mortal danger if you don't see the error of your ways and open your heart and mind to the true path. Dark Side of the Moon is interesting to me in the same way as evangelical TV channels are - it gives me a chance to look into the belly of the beast and see what all the fuss is about without giving myself over to it completely. Maybe I was born too late, or maybe I just didn't take the right drugs at the right time, but I still can't see what all the fuss is about. Maybe it just makes more sense when you're fifty years old and listening to it as you drive your kids to school in the Range Rover.
I'm listening to Dirty Hits as I write this. As I mentioned on Tokyo Music I finally saw Primal Scream live this year, and they were worth the horrendously inflated prices that are inevitable when you go and see foreign artists in Japan. I wasn't too sure about their Greatest Hits album though, not through any doubts about the quality of the music, or whether this was a sign of them selling out, but because it made me feel like I was getting old. Over the last couple of years there have been a spate of 'Best Of's and '10th Anniversary Special Edition's released, and for the first time I can remember buying the records when they originally came out. Is it inevitable that as someone who's never really grown out of the music geek stage, this is how I'm going to measure the progress of my life?
Danny the Dog OST - Massive Attack
Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd
Daydream Nation - Sonic Youth
Dear Catastrophe Waitress - Belle & Sebastian
Death to the Pixies (Double CD) - Pixies
Deftones - Deftones
Demo - Tokyo Sundown
Demo - Raddie and Weourus
Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes - TV on the Radio
Destroy Rock 'n Roll - Mylo
Different Class - Pulp
Dirty Hits - Primal Scream
Divine Hammer (CDS) - The Breeders
DJ Kicks - Daddy G
'C' was something of a traumatic letter with it's twin salvo of shite, Civilian by Boy Kill Boy and Costello Music by The Fratellis. As long as there was nothing too bad 'D' was always going to be good in comparison, but it's gone way beyond the call of duty to roll out a bunch of storming albums. Granted, the ones by Mylo and the Deftones are a bit flat-footed, but are harmless enough pieces of aural chewing gum. Different Class is an undeniable classic that manages to shoehorn anthropology, vivid prose, razor-sharp wit (of the kind that 'comedians' like Russell Brand can only dream about), scathing social critique, and cracking tunes into an album that's just a little over fifty minutes long. I haven't heard Jarvis Cocker's solo album but I intend to buy it sooner rather than later.
Dark Side of the Moon is another one of those albums that's always there or thereabouts in 'Greatest Ever' polls, but I'm still not convinced. Pink Floyd have always been a mystery to me in the same way that organised religion is. Both have millions of devout followers who don't react too kindly to criticism of any sort, both are huge money-making organisations, and both sets of believers are almost always proselytizers who think your soul/music taste is in mortal danger if you don't see the error of your ways and open your heart and mind to the true path. Dark Side of the Moon is interesting to me in the same way as evangelical TV channels are - it gives me a chance to look into the belly of the beast and see what all the fuss is about without giving myself over to it completely. Maybe I was born too late, or maybe I just didn't take the right drugs at the right time, but I still can't see what all the fuss is about. Maybe it just makes more sense when you're fifty years old and listening to it as you drive your kids to school in the Range Rover.
I'm listening to Dirty Hits as I write this. As I mentioned on Tokyo Music I finally saw Primal Scream live this year, and they were worth the horrendously inflated prices that are inevitable when you go and see foreign artists in Japan. I wasn't too sure about their Greatest Hits album though, not through any doubts about the quality of the music, or whether this was a sign of them selling out, but because it made me feel like I was getting old. Over the last couple of years there have been a spate of 'Best Of's and '10th Anniversary Special Edition's released, and for the first time I can remember buying the records when they originally came out. Is it inevitable that as someone who's never really grown out of the music geek stage, this is how I'm going to measure the progress of my life?
Wednesday, 29 November 2006
Isn't technology a wonderful thing?
Saturday
Clandestino - Manu Chao
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clear - Bomb The Bass
CM - V/A
Come On Die Young - Mogwai
Monday
Community Service - The Crystal Method
Complete 'B' Sides - Pixies
Yesterday
Core - Stone Temple Pilots
Costello Music - The Fratellis
Crimson - Alkaline Trio
Curtis/Live! - Curtis Mayfield
This time the bumper post is not down to my laziness, nor is it even because of a hectic workload. I haven't posted for a couple of days because I have the misfortune to own a computer which is as reliable as the British rail services and is showing signs of artificial intelligence. However, it's not the kind of A.I that's going to make our lives any better - it's more like a moody teenager who decides to work whenever it feels like it.
Coming home last night and finding my computer was on strike pretty much summed up yesterday. As ever, Curtis was fantastic and some of the other stuff wasn't too bad, but The Fratellis hung over everything like a particularly sulphurous fart. They remind me of bands like Powder and Sleeper who were signed on the coat-tails of Britpop by cynically unimaginative record executives who were out to make a quick buck (mind you, is there any other kind?). Ten years later we have The Libertines as the band who started it all, and The Fratellis et al as the guests coming late to the party.
The Libertines were a very welcome blast but looking at what they've spawned perhaps we should be careful with our praise. Pete Docherty's tedious 'solo career' wouldn't have come into being without them for a start. I find it hard to believe that fifty odd years after the birth of rock 'n roll a musician taking drugs, getting into trouble with the law, and shacking up with a model is still front page news. Would The Fratellis have stood a chance of getting signed without The Libertines having gone before them? I doubt it. Their glottal stop ridden tales of cities and the strange characters that inhabit them are a weak imitation that leaves you wanting to listen to the bands they're obviously trying to emulate, but who did it so much better - The Kinks, Blur, Barrett-era Pink Floyd, Ian Dury, and of course The Libertines. Singing in a mockney accent and rhyming 'city' with 'pretty' does not a gritty album make.
That album alone would have been bad enough to send me scurrying to the fridge for a beer when I got home, but the circumstances I had to listen to it in have now burned it forever in my consciousness as one of the worst things I've ever heard. Iidabashi is one of Tokyo's busiest business districts - Toyota has a large office there, as do Ericsson, Astra-Zeneca, and a number of other foreign companies. It's not a good place to be walking in and worrying that your trousers are going to fall down at any moment, as I did yesterday. My belt snapped when I pulled it a little too hard, and I was left shuffling like a tramp as I made my way to the station with my hands shoved in my jacket pockets trying to hold up my trousers. Not one of my better days.
Clandestino - Manu Chao
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clear - Bomb The Bass
CM - V/A
Come On Die Young - Mogwai
Monday
Community Service - The Crystal Method
Complete 'B' Sides - Pixies
Yesterday
Core - Stone Temple Pilots
Costello Music - The Fratellis
Crimson - Alkaline Trio
Curtis/Live! - Curtis Mayfield
This time the bumper post is not down to my laziness, nor is it even because of a hectic workload. I haven't posted for a couple of days because I have the misfortune to own a computer which is as reliable as the British rail services and is showing signs of artificial intelligence. However, it's not the kind of A.I that's going to make our lives any better - it's more like a moody teenager who decides to work whenever it feels like it.
Coming home last night and finding my computer was on strike pretty much summed up yesterday. As ever, Curtis was fantastic and some of the other stuff wasn't too bad, but The Fratellis hung over everything like a particularly sulphurous fart. They remind me of bands like Powder and Sleeper who were signed on the coat-tails of Britpop by cynically unimaginative record executives who were out to make a quick buck (mind you, is there any other kind?). Ten years later we have The Libertines as the band who started it all, and The Fratellis et al as the guests coming late to the party.
The Libertines were a very welcome blast but looking at what they've spawned perhaps we should be careful with our praise. Pete Docherty's tedious 'solo career' wouldn't have come into being without them for a start. I find it hard to believe that fifty odd years after the birth of rock 'n roll a musician taking drugs, getting into trouble with the law, and shacking up with a model is still front page news. Would The Fratellis have stood a chance of getting signed without The Libertines having gone before them? I doubt it. Their glottal stop ridden tales of cities and the strange characters that inhabit them are a weak imitation that leaves you wanting to listen to the bands they're obviously trying to emulate, but who did it so much better - The Kinks, Blur, Barrett-era Pink Floyd, Ian Dury, and of course The Libertines. Singing in a mockney accent and rhyming 'city' with 'pretty' does not a gritty album make.
That album alone would have been bad enough to send me scurrying to the fridge for a beer when I got home, but the circumstances I had to listen to it in have now burned it forever in my consciousness as one of the worst things I've ever heard. Iidabashi is one of Tokyo's busiest business districts - Toyota has a large office there, as do Ericsson, Astra-Zeneca, and a number of other foreign companies. It's not a good place to be walking in and worrying that your trousers are going to fall down at any moment, as I did yesterday. My belt snapped when I pulled it a little too hard, and I was left shuffling like a tramp as I made my way to the station with my hands shoved in my jacket pockets trying to hold up my trousers. Not one of my better days.
Sunday, 26 November 2006
The JAMMS (KLF) It's Grim Up North Live on Top of the Pops
Buffer all to do with the music on my iPod but I'm just testing if this video posting works. It's taken me a while to get it set up properly.
Friday, 24 November 2006
Clint Eastwood's curry
Bryter Later - Nick Drake
Buffalo Skinners: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 4 - Woody Guthrie
Bummed - Happy Mondays
Canadian Amp - Neko Case
Carboot Soul - Nightmares on Wax
Chairs Missing - Wire
Chicken Skin Music - Ry Cooder
Civilian - Boy Kill Boy
If variety be the spice of life then today has been a veritable vindaloo - a mixture of the good, the bad, and the utterly shite. Might as well get the rant out the way first - Boy Kill Boy, what is the point of your existence? Maybe it was just unfortunate that you followed Wire on my iPod because it was difficult to avoid making comparisons between them and you. The biggest one is that Wire were original, visionary, and genuinely fresh; you on the other hand sound like every other guitar band out there at the moment. You know a band are in trouble when the most noticeable thing about them is the fact that their singer has the most irritating voice out of the current crop (quite an accomplishment given the competition), and the highlight of the album is when you can remember what song it is they're ripping off. Everything on here sounds like something from the late 70's/early 80's but is naggingly difficult to pinpoint - however if Paul Weller doesn't sue and win a case for plagiarism (listen to the first track, Back Again and tell me they haven't lifted the riff from Eton Rifles wholesale), then Wire ought to return the money they got from Elastica.
I'm listening to the last track of this album as I write this. It said ten minutes and I shat myself. Then I thought they might partly redeem themselves by turning out an epic change of direction to close, i.e a krautrock tinged cosmic jam. My initial, scatalogical reaction was the correct one though - it was that old chestnut, the hidden track. All I can say was I wish this whole fucking album had been hidden. Another indication of the dangers of drunken downloading, although I think this one was because someone recommended them to me. Bastards.
The good? Bummed. Hadn't heard it for a while but it brought a smile to my face, a swagger to my walk, and a desire to neck loads of pills and go out and cause some carnage. It was so good in fact that I'm listening to it again right now in the hope that it'll wipe out the memory of Boy Kill Boy. Fool's Gold is usually held up to be the ultimate 'Madchester' song, or the finest example of what could be achieved when you mixed indie/guitar rock with dance music, but I'd disagree. Go back a year to 1988 and listen to Wrote For Luck, surely the Ur-track for a whole swathe of the next decade's music. It's the musical expression of Liam Gallagher's swagger, the forerunner of all those Chemical Brothers/Noel Gallagher/Bernard Sumner collaborations, and the best thing you've ever heard in a sweaty club at three in the morning after an hour of faceless indie pap.
The ugly? The inside cover of Bummed.
Buffalo Skinners: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 4 - Woody Guthrie
Bummed - Happy Mondays
Canadian Amp - Neko Case
Carboot Soul - Nightmares on Wax
Chairs Missing - Wire
Chicken Skin Music - Ry Cooder
Civilian - Boy Kill Boy
If variety be the spice of life then today has been a veritable vindaloo - a mixture of the good, the bad, and the utterly shite. Might as well get the rant out the way first - Boy Kill Boy, what is the point of your existence? Maybe it was just unfortunate that you followed Wire on my iPod because it was difficult to avoid making comparisons between them and you. The biggest one is that Wire were original, visionary, and genuinely fresh; you on the other hand sound like every other guitar band out there at the moment. You know a band are in trouble when the most noticeable thing about them is the fact that their singer has the most irritating voice out of the current crop (quite an accomplishment given the competition), and the highlight of the album is when you can remember what song it is they're ripping off. Everything on here sounds like something from the late 70's/early 80's but is naggingly difficult to pinpoint - however if Paul Weller doesn't sue and win a case for plagiarism (listen to the first track, Back Again and tell me they haven't lifted the riff from Eton Rifles wholesale), then Wire ought to return the money they got from Elastica.
I'm listening to the last track of this album as I write this. It said ten minutes and I shat myself. Then I thought they might partly redeem themselves by turning out an epic change of direction to close, i.e a krautrock tinged cosmic jam. My initial, scatalogical reaction was the correct one though - it was that old chestnut, the hidden track. All I can say was I wish this whole fucking album had been hidden. Another indication of the dangers of drunken downloading, although I think this one was because someone recommended them to me. Bastards.
The good? Bummed. Hadn't heard it for a while but it brought a smile to my face, a swagger to my walk, and a desire to neck loads of pills and go out and cause some carnage. It was so good in fact that I'm listening to it again right now in the hope that it'll wipe out the memory of Boy Kill Boy. Fool's Gold is usually held up to be the ultimate 'Madchester' song, or the finest example of what could be achieved when you mixed indie/guitar rock with dance music, but I'd disagree. Go back a year to 1988 and listen to Wrote For Luck, surely the Ur-track for a whole swathe of the next decade's music. It's the musical expression of Liam Gallagher's swagger, the forerunner of all those Chemical Brothers/Noel Gallagher/Bernard Sumner collaborations, and the best thing you've ever heard in a sweaty club at three in the morning after an hour of faceless indie pap.
The ugly? The inside cover of Bummed.
Thursday, 23 November 2006
B is for boring and bastards
Bows and Arrows - The Walkmen
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
I'm sure I've probably heard albums as boring as Bows and Arrows by The Walkmen, but I'm struggling to think of one off the top of my head. I'm even listening to it again as I write this to make sure the fact that I played it on my way to work on a national holiday didn't colour my judgement. It didn't. Every song sounds exactly like the last one - a wash of bog standard guitar rock, fronted by Hamilton Leithauser's pained, Dylan-down-the-bog vocals. Shit, it's grim. It's another album that's going to be making space for something more deserving, and an indication of the dangers of downloading music that you've listened to on MySpace while drunk.
Lying somewhere at the furthest end of the spectrum from The Walkmen are Broken Social Scene. Their eponymous album sounds joyously eclectic at the best of times, and following The Wankmen it was the aural equivalent of leaving the turgid heat of Tokyo in summer and heading for the hills. Simple summary then: Social Scene good, Walkmen bad.
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
I'm sure I've probably heard albums as boring as Bows and Arrows by The Walkmen, but I'm struggling to think of one off the top of my head. I'm even listening to it again as I write this to make sure the fact that I played it on my way to work on a national holiday didn't colour my judgement. It didn't. Every song sounds exactly like the last one - a wash of bog standard guitar rock, fronted by Hamilton Leithauser's pained, Dylan-down-the-bog vocals. Shit, it's grim. It's another album that's going to be making space for something more deserving, and an indication of the dangers of downloading music that you've listened to on MySpace while drunk.
Lying somewhere at the furthest end of the spectrum from The Walkmen are Broken Social Scene. Their eponymous album sounds joyously eclectic at the best of times, and following The Wankmen it was the aural equivalent of leaving the turgid heat of Tokyo in summer and heading for the hills. Simple summary then: Social Scene good, Walkmen bad.
One tenth of the way through
Black Session - Interpol
Blacklisted - Neko Case
Bleed Me White (Double CD single) - Eat
Blonde Redhead - Blonde Redhead
Blue Lines - Massive Attack
Boc Maxima - Boards of Canada
Bootleg - Belle & Sebastian
Boss Hog - Boss Hog
Bossanova - Pixies
Finally some synchronicity between my mood and the music playing: Blue Lines to smooth my way home after a rough day on Tuesday; Boc Maxima yesterday morning to take the edge off my hangover and ease me gently into what was promising to be another rough day; a Belle & Sebastian bootleg that kicked in mid-morning, coincidentally about the same time my brain kicked in and I started to function. Just as I started to flag in the afternoon, the loud and jarring Boss Hog album came along and kicked my arse back into gear, and then finally Black Francis and his troop of jolly little pixies deafened me all the way home. I doubt this run of ideally matched music and mood can continue much longer. Today is a holiday here but I'm working, so I'm not sure if there's any music that can match that mood - perhaps the extreme dissonance of a live Throbbing Gristle album, or Metal Machine Music, but neither of those are on the iPod.
Blacklisted - Neko Case
Bleed Me White (Double CD single) - Eat
Blonde Redhead - Blonde Redhead
Blue Lines - Massive Attack
Boc Maxima - Boards of Canada
Bootleg - Belle & Sebastian
Boss Hog - Boss Hog
Bossanova - Pixies
Finally some synchronicity between my mood and the music playing: Blue Lines to smooth my way home after a rough day on Tuesday; Boc Maxima yesterday morning to take the edge off my hangover and ease me gently into what was promising to be another rough day; a Belle & Sebastian bootleg that kicked in mid-morning, coincidentally about the same time my brain kicked in and I started to function. Just as I started to flag in the afternoon, the loud and jarring Boss Hog album came along and kicked my arse back into gear, and then finally Black Francis and his troop of jolly little pixies deafened me all the way home. I doubt this run of ideally matched music and mood can continue much longer. Today is a holiday here but I'm working, so I'm not sure if there's any music that can match that mood - perhaps the extreme dissonance of a live Throbbing Gristle album, or Metal Machine Music, but neither of those are on the iPod.
Monday, 20 November 2006
Weekend break
The rain yesterday was of Biblical proportions (we started designing an ark just in case) so the majority of the day was spent watching DVDs and reading. That means no iPod challenge, which means this post is nothing more than fluff, but what's wrong with fluff?
Saturday, 18 November 2006
Battle of the heavyweights
Back in the DHSS - Half Man Half Biscuit
Bedtime for Democracy - Dead Kennedys
Bee Thousand - Guided By Voices
Bend Sinister - The Fall
Berlin - Lou Reed
Bitches Brew - Miles Davis
It almost reads like a fight bill: starting out with the verbal jabs and sarcastic uppercuts of the physically lightweight transatlantic Biscuit/Kennedy bout; moving onto meatier ground with the vastly different but equally effective styles of Smith and Pollard; before winding up with the heavyweight bout between two visionaries who each bestride their respective genres, generating awe, respect, and disdain in equal amounts. That's probably as far as I should stretch the boxing analogy for now because it's starting to look a bit dead on it's legs, but don't be surprised if it makes repeated Foreman-esque comebacks throughout this post.
I don't know if Lou and Miles would have been my chosen companions as I killed time wandering around bookshops and record shops in Shinjuku this afternoon, but they were what the gods of iPod fate dealt me so, like Job I just got on with it.
It took me a long time to buy my first jazz album, in fact almost as long as it took me to buy my first jazz mag, and I'm not sure which was more daunting. The first one I bought was Take Five, by the Dave Brubeck quartet when I was at college in the States (I'm not telling you what the first jazz mag I bought was - that would be revealing a little too much). The bloke that I shared a room with on the exchange trip was well into his jazz and over the course of the three months, Take Five really grew on me (thankfully his repeated playings of Cat Stevens had no effect).
Jazz is possibly the most intimidating musical genre, or at least it has the most intimidating fans. When I was younger most of the jazz fans I met were incredibly precious about the music they liked (I'm sure they would probably hate to be referred to as 'fans' - I think they thought they were connosieurs or afficianados, whereas most people thought that in the future when they introduced themselves as 'a banker' that would be closer to their core make-up than they'd ever realise). God help you if you don't know the difference between your free jazz and your avant-garde jazz, or your Dizzy from your Monk. Mind you, probably all genres are the same and it's just that I'm just more comfortable swimming around in the milieu of guitar-based music that makes up a huge part of my collection. Still, jazz FANS seem to take it a notch further.
Regardless of all of this I love Bitches Brew simply because it sounds like nothing else. I sometimes put it on as background music to read to, but a few minutes into it my book will be lying neglected in my lap as I stare into space and try and work out just what space Miles Davis and his band were occupying when they made this music. It's a futile endeavour - as Ralph Gleason says in his sleeve notes, "it doesn't make any difference what kind of brush picasso uses and if the art makes it we don't need to know and if the art doesn't make it knowing is the most useless thing in life." - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't lose yourself in the album. We'll never know what was going on in that studio, no matter how many boxsets containing every tune-up and fart are released, but we'll always have the album itself and surely that's what matters.
Lou Reed is another artist whose back catalogue is the musical equivalent of those ancient maps that state 'Here there be dragons'. The Velvet Underground are a much easier proposition - buy the first two albums, no questions asked, and cadge the other two of someone you know who's got them (it shouldn't be too difficult). Alternatively, splash out thirty five quid and get the Peel Slowly and See boxset - it's got everything you need to know. Mr. Reed, on the other hand, is a much more contrary bastard. Transformer is probably indispensable, Metal Machine Music is infamous and more talked about than listened to, but what about the other stuff? The straight answer is that I don't know because the only ones I own are Transformer and Berlin. I've heard bits of the others but I don't know enough to be able to say. Handily enough, Mojo magazine carried a 'How to buy Lou Reed' guide in a recent issue, but I couldn't find it online anywhere. Guess that means you're on your own.
What I can say is that Berlin is a great big dark bastard of an album. If you're already down it's best avoided, but if you need to be reminded of just how lucky you are or how shit life can be, this is the album for you. You'll reach the end of it and thank whoever/whatever you believe in that you're not one of the blighted characters that populate the Stygian depths of these songs. The story about the reasons for the children wailing in the background of The Kids may be nothing more than musical urban myth but regardless of that, it is still one of the most harrowing pieces of music ever recorded. To follow that with the twisted tour guide narrative of The Bed, where a widower describes in intimate detail the room in which his wife killed herself, is relentless. Sad Song closes the album with soaring choruses which, despite the title and subject matter of the song, seem to hint at the possibility of redemption, leaving you with the hope that something might be salvaged from all this.
Bedtime for Democracy - Dead Kennedys
Bee Thousand - Guided By Voices
Bend Sinister - The Fall
Berlin - Lou Reed
Bitches Brew - Miles Davis
It almost reads like a fight bill: starting out with the verbal jabs and sarcastic uppercuts of the physically lightweight transatlantic Biscuit/Kennedy bout; moving onto meatier ground with the vastly different but equally effective styles of Smith and Pollard; before winding up with the heavyweight bout between two visionaries who each bestride their respective genres, generating awe, respect, and disdain in equal amounts. That's probably as far as I should stretch the boxing analogy for now because it's starting to look a bit dead on it's legs, but don't be surprised if it makes repeated Foreman-esque comebacks throughout this post.
I don't know if Lou and Miles would have been my chosen companions as I killed time wandering around bookshops and record shops in Shinjuku this afternoon, but they were what the gods of iPod fate dealt me so, like Job I just got on with it.
It took me a long time to buy my first jazz album, in fact almost as long as it took me to buy my first jazz mag, and I'm not sure which was more daunting. The first one I bought was Take Five, by the Dave Brubeck quartet when I was at college in the States (I'm not telling you what the first jazz mag I bought was - that would be revealing a little too much). The bloke that I shared a room with on the exchange trip was well into his jazz and over the course of the three months, Take Five really grew on me (thankfully his repeated playings of Cat Stevens had no effect).
Jazz is possibly the most intimidating musical genre, or at least it has the most intimidating fans. When I was younger most of the jazz fans I met were incredibly precious about the music they liked (I'm sure they would probably hate to be referred to as 'fans' - I think they thought they were connosieurs or afficianados, whereas most people thought that in the future when they introduced themselves as 'a banker' that would be closer to their core make-up than they'd ever realise). God help you if you don't know the difference between your free jazz and your avant-garde jazz, or your Dizzy from your Monk. Mind you, probably all genres are the same and it's just that I'm just more comfortable swimming around in the milieu of guitar-based music that makes up a huge part of my collection. Still, jazz FANS seem to take it a notch further.
Regardless of all of this I love Bitches Brew simply because it sounds like nothing else. I sometimes put it on as background music to read to, but a few minutes into it my book will be lying neglected in my lap as I stare into space and try and work out just what space Miles Davis and his band were occupying when they made this music. It's a futile endeavour - as Ralph Gleason says in his sleeve notes, "it doesn't make any difference what kind of brush picasso uses and if the art makes it we don't need to know and if the art doesn't make it knowing is the most useless thing in life." - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't lose yourself in the album. We'll never know what was going on in that studio, no matter how many boxsets containing every tune-up and fart are released, but we'll always have the album itself and surely that's what matters.
Lou Reed is another artist whose back catalogue is the musical equivalent of those ancient maps that state 'Here there be dragons'. The Velvet Underground are a much easier proposition - buy the first two albums, no questions asked, and cadge the other two of someone you know who's got them (it shouldn't be too difficult). Alternatively, splash out thirty five quid and get the Peel Slowly and See boxset - it's got everything you need to know. Mr. Reed, on the other hand, is a much more contrary bastard. Transformer is probably indispensable, Metal Machine Music is infamous and more talked about than listened to, but what about the other stuff? The straight answer is that I don't know because the only ones I own are Transformer and Berlin. I've heard bits of the others but I don't know enough to be able to say. Handily enough, Mojo magazine carried a 'How to buy Lou Reed' guide in a recent issue, but I couldn't find it online anywhere. Guess that means you're on your own.
What I can say is that Berlin is a great big dark bastard of an album. If you're already down it's best avoided, but if you need to be reminded of just how lucky you are or how shit life can be, this is the album for you. You'll reach the end of it and thank whoever/whatever you believe in that you're not one of the blighted characters that populate the Stygian depths of these songs. The story about the reasons for the children wailing in the background of The Kids may be nothing more than musical urban myth but regardless of that, it is still one of the most harrowing pieces of music ever recorded. To follow that with the twisted tour guide narrative of The Bed, where a widower describes in intimate detail the room in which his wife killed herself, is relentless. Sad Song closes the album with soaring choruses which, despite the title and subject matter of the song, seem to hint at the possibility of redemption, leaving you with the hope that something might be salvaged from all this.
Thursday, 16 November 2006
Bumper bonanza roll-over (aka I'm a lazy git)
Albums covered since the last post:
Amateur Night in the Big Top - Shaun William Ryder
American Graffiti O.S.T - V/A
American Roots - The Essential Album - V/A
Amputechture - The Mars Volta
Antics - Interpol
Apologies to the Queen Mary - Wolf Parade
Archival Recordings - Klaus Nomi (though only one track)
Army (single) - Ben Folds
Around the Sun - R.E.M
As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pts. 1 and 4 - 2 Many DJsAu
Ask Me Tomorrow - Mojave 3
At Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash
ATP 2004 - Mogwai (again only one track)
Autobahn - Kraftwerk
Bach: Cello Suites 1-6 - Pablo Casals
Back in Black (Remastered Edition) - AC/DC
Two things. Firstly, if you want real pain and angst in music forget about your skinny, pasty boys with guitars, they're a bunch of lightweights mewling because they think no-one understands them. I'm afraid we do understand you boys, and the game's up - you couldn't get your hole so you wrote a song about it. For every Joy Division or Smiths we're lumbered with a million and one Coldplays, Keanes, Interpols, or Snow Patrols trying to pass off meaningless and vague adolescent poetry as profound songwriting that tackles the big issues. Bollocks. For the real pain and suffering the country music shelves are a good place to start. Not the shite touted by Toby Keith, Garth Brooks et al, but the older stuff by the likes of Johnny Cash or Hank Williams, or some of the lesser known artists. Take the following song from the American Roots album by the late Eva Cassidy:
Bill and I got married following our first born
Daddy left this gas & convenience store just before he died
And I was only nineteen when I had my third baby
And sometimes I think maybe I should've left here long ago
Travellers are stopping by, check their oil and their p.s.i.
Gas up and away to fly, moving down the line
But this beat-up truck & worn out shoes always give me the blues
Billy sucking down the booze nearly every night
Chorus:- I never seen the city lights
How they must shine so bright
Not like this country night
The sky's black as coal
And this gas-station mountain home
Not a thing to call my own
How I wish I was alone
With a penny to my name
Strangers say this mountain here is beautiful beyond compare
But it's just a dumb old mountain; I see it every day
If I could see sunset skies over fields of green or ocean-tides,
City skyline in the night, I'll be dancing till the dawn
Chorus
Bill and I got married following our first born
Daddy left this gas & convenience store just before he died
Maybe Bill & I someday will find a chance to get away
Until then it's here I'll stay wishing on a star
Chorus
Fuck Yellow or Run, this is true misery and pain - a woman stuck in the arsehole of the States, married to an alcoholic with a dead-end job, living a life that's over before it even had a chance to begin. Of course country has it's share of shite songs but I'm sure that overall there are significantly more and truer reflections on the messiness of life in the country section of your local record shop than there are in the indie/rock section. And before anyone asks, yes I do have Snow Patrol and Interpol on my iPod. My defence? Hell, I like to eat MacDonalds from time to time but that doesn't mean I think it's gourmet food.
Secondly, I spent most of my journey home last night, my journey to work this morning, and time spent travelling between offices listening to Bach. I don't mind a bit of Bach on a Sunday afternoon after a Saturday night has slipped off its leash and turned into a Sunday morning. I sometimes listen to it on the way to work if I want to relax on the train and maybe dose off for a while, but this was too much. By lunchtime today I felt like I was living in a world designed by a Marketing/Advertising deity - classical music following me everywhere, soundtracking my every move, trying to make me buy cars. The fact that advertising has created this image in my head is just another sign of how evil it is - Bill Hicks wasn't far off the truth when he told all the marketing people in his audience to go home and kill themselves because there was no justification for what they did. Anyway, this is a rant for another day, so back to my point. Never before have I been so glad to hear the opening peals of Hell's Bells by AC/DC. I was given an insight into how teenagers must have felt back in the grey part of the Fifties when Elvis burst into their lives with a shake of his hips and a shitload of sex appeal. Culture is good but there's always going to be a place for innuendo-laden songs about taking too many pills and being 'shook' all night long.
Amateur Night in the Big Top - Shaun William Ryder
American Graffiti O.S.T - V/A
American Roots - The Essential Album - V/A
Amputechture - The Mars Volta
Antics - Interpol
Apologies to the Queen Mary - Wolf Parade
Archival Recordings - Klaus Nomi (though only one track)
Army (single) - Ben Folds
Around the Sun - R.E.M
As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pts. 1 and 4 - 2 Many DJsAu
Ask Me Tomorrow - Mojave 3
At Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash
ATP 2004 - Mogwai (again only one track)
Autobahn - Kraftwerk
Bach: Cello Suites 1-6 - Pablo Casals
Back in Black (Remastered Edition) - AC/DC
Two things. Firstly, if you want real pain and angst in music forget about your skinny, pasty boys with guitars, they're a bunch of lightweights mewling because they think no-one understands them. I'm afraid we do understand you boys, and the game's up - you couldn't get your hole so you wrote a song about it. For every Joy Division or Smiths we're lumbered with a million and one Coldplays, Keanes, Interpols, or Snow Patrols trying to pass off meaningless and vague adolescent poetry as profound songwriting that tackles the big issues. Bollocks. For the real pain and suffering the country music shelves are a good place to start. Not the shite touted by Toby Keith, Garth Brooks et al, but the older stuff by the likes of Johnny Cash or Hank Williams, or some of the lesser known artists. Take the following song from the American Roots album by the late Eva Cassidy:
Bill and I got married following our first born
Daddy left this gas & convenience store just before he died
And I was only nineteen when I had my third baby
And sometimes I think maybe I should've left here long ago
Travellers are stopping by, check their oil and their p.s.i.
Gas up and away to fly, moving down the line
But this beat-up truck & worn out shoes always give me the blues
Billy sucking down the booze nearly every night
Chorus:- I never seen the city lights
How they must shine so bright
Not like this country night
The sky's black as coal
And this gas-station mountain home
Not a thing to call my own
How I wish I was alone
With a penny to my name
Strangers say this mountain here is beautiful beyond compare
But it's just a dumb old mountain; I see it every day
If I could see sunset skies over fields of green or ocean-tides,
City skyline in the night, I'll be dancing till the dawn
Chorus
Bill and I got married following our first born
Daddy left this gas & convenience store just before he died
Maybe Bill & I someday will find a chance to get away
Until then it's here I'll stay wishing on a star
Chorus
Fuck Yellow or Run, this is true misery and pain - a woman stuck in the arsehole of the States, married to an alcoholic with a dead-end job, living a life that's over before it even had a chance to begin. Of course country has it's share of shite songs but I'm sure that overall there are significantly more and truer reflections on the messiness of life in the country section of your local record shop than there are in the indie/rock section. And before anyone asks, yes I do have Snow Patrol and Interpol on my iPod. My defence? Hell, I like to eat MacDonalds from time to time but that doesn't mean I think it's gourmet food.
Secondly, I spent most of my journey home last night, my journey to work this morning, and time spent travelling between offices listening to Bach. I don't mind a bit of Bach on a Sunday afternoon after a Saturday night has slipped off its leash and turned into a Sunday morning. I sometimes listen to it on the way to work if I want to relax on the train and maybe dose off for a while, but this was too much. By lunchtime today I felt like I was living in a world designed by a Marketing/Advertising deity - classical music following me everywhere, soundtracking my every move, trying to make me buy cars. The fact that advertising has created this image in my head is just another sign of how evil it is - Bill Hicks wasn't far off the truth when he told all the marketing people in his audience to go home and kill themselves because there was no justification for what they did. Anyway, this is a rant for another day, so back to my point. Never before have I been so glad to hear the opening peals of Hell's Bells by AC/DC. I was given an insight into how teenagers must have felt back in the grey part of the Fifties when Elvis burst into their lives with a shake of his hips and a shitload of sex appeal. Culture is good but there's always going to be a place for innuendo-laden songs about taking too many pills and being 'shook' all night long.
Clarification
"I need some clarification on the rules here.
What happens to albums (if any) added to your iPod during the challenge? Or are you committed to a new tunes blackout?"
A wise question. Basically I'm not adding anything to my iPod while I'm doing this. I have a 40GB iPod which is about 1Gb short of being full, so I have enough to keep me going. This is more of an extended form of iPod spring-cleaning. There's stuff on there that I've never listened to, stuff I haven't listened to in ages, and I want to know if it's worth keeping or not. It doesn't seem right to make that kind of decision without listening to the music in question, hence the challenge.
However, I'll still be buying/adding other music to iTunes on my computer (and even listening to it in the old-school way, using my steam-powered CD player). I've got reviews to do for keikaku and Tokyo Music so I need to keep buying CDs etc. I think I'd also go insane if I didn't listen to something that I really want to hear. Of course it's my iPod and I chose the majority of the music that's on it but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear anything else. Also, given that it's taken me over a week to listen to 577 of 6822 songs, if I only listened to what's on my iPod I probably wouldn't hear any new music until some time next year.
Anyway, the rules are fluid (i.e. I'm making this up as I go along) but feel free to ask about them.
What happens to albums (if any) added to your iPod during the challenge? Or are you committed to a new tunes blackout?"
A wise question. Basically I'm not adding anything to my iPod while I'm doing this. I have a 40GB iPod which is about 1Gb short of being full, so I have enough to keep me going. This is more of an extended form of iPod spring-cleaning. There's stuff on there that I've never listened to, stuff I haven't listened to in ages, and I want to know if it's worth keeping or not. It doesn't seem right to make that kind of decision without listening to the music in question, hence the challenge.
However, I'll still be buying/adding other music to iTunes on my computer (and even listening to it in the old-school way, using my steam-powered CD player). I've got reviews to do for keikaku and Tokyo Music so I need to keep buying CDs etc. I think I'd also go insane if I didn't listen to something that I really want to hear. Of course it's my iPod and I chose the majority of the music that's on it but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear anything else. Also, given that it's taken me over a week to listen to 577 of 6822 songs, if I only listened to what's on my iPod I probably wouldn't hear any new music until some time next year.
Anyway, the rules are fluid (i.e. I'm making this up as I go along) but feel free to ask about them.
Wednesday, 15 November 2006
Previous posts
Am I just farting against thunder?
This is something I started recently and I've been writing about it on my other blog, but I felt it was something that probably should have its own blog. The first few posts have already been published on the other blog but where else should I begin but the beginning?
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