Post & Publish

Real life: The best song to drum along to, using a remote control on, variously, the arm of the sofa, the thigh, the belt buckle and the shirt buttons, is: Tom Waits' Sixteen Shells From a Thirty Ought Six.

Download: Tangerine Awkestra - children aged 3 - 7 organize their own improvising jazz/classical/avant-garde orchestra.
Thai Elephant Orchestra - elephants in the Thai jungle playing specially designed musical instruments.

Read: 102 Beats That - 102 words about 72 records.
The mid 70s 'glory days' of the NME.
How Danny Baker killed Bob Marley.
Obsessed with Guided by Voices.
The Punk Piece by Mark Sinker, "...the etiquette of punk, its habits, rules, values, dilemmas."

Foxy



"Hunt him down like the fox he is and hang him from a lamppost."

Do You Remember?



On Tuesday I was draped cross the sofa in a sniffly pool of sorrow watching TOTP2. Sheena Easton, resplendent in hideous green boiler suit, performed some awkward dance moves to 9 to 5, vocal swoops kept under wraps till the final verse where she suddenly breaks free of little woman at home role and gives us a delirious insight into her voracious sexual appetite. Never mind that her man's slaving away at some unspecified drudgery all day long, he's not going to get much rest when he comes home. How one envied the mythical Scottish labourer lucky enough to be married to 'our' Sheena. On the same show, Sue Wilkinson - attired in ghastly pastel boiler suit - sang You Gotta Be A Hustler If You Wanna Get On, a number 25 'hit' from August 1980, which disturbed me as I had no memory of it at all and I consider every chart entry between roughly 1977 and 1982 to have been permanently imprinted on my receptive young memory. Or I had almost no memory, there was the merest twinge, the dimmest echo of a tiny bell from a distant room. But this song made you sit up and take notice - if only to stare in open-mouthed horror - it wasn't something as eminently forgettable and tedious as say, Animal Nightlife's Mr Solitaire, which was also retrieved from the TOTP archives. Sue Wilkinson, who seemed more actress than singer, delivered some mercenary advice about flirting your way to success over a dinky little keyboard riff (and bloke from Slade on percussion as the caption informed us). There was a touch of the Flying Lizards' Money in her deadpan semi-spoken delivery, a mock sophisticate using her womanly wiles to get what she wants. And when she's got it... what? She hangs around the house all day getting all heated up, or she goes shopping. Both 9 to 5 and Hustler came out in the year following Thatcher's election, in a time when feminist notions of success, independence and empowerment were up for grabs.

At the checkout in Virgin the other day, I was given a free sampler CD of 'funky grooves from Harmless records', a fine selection of 70s funk from albums like Pulp Fusion, People Get Up and Africafunk. Seeing it there on the shelf below a bottle of champagne I had a flashback-cum-premonition. Four years ago, after 'we' did the Double, I wandered the delirious streets and bought all the Blaxploitation 2xCDs, took them home and drank champagne with Nicola (not her real name). It was her champagne but I insisted that she didn't mind, and it was a fine old evening full of booze and Isaac Hayes. Now, with the current situation so deliciously poised... I am wondering if the funk + bubbly combination points towards history repeating itself? But I must not drag my other obsessions onto these pages. I henceforth announce a self-imposed ban on any mention of the World Cup, for example.

Oi, Who's That Double You Gee?

Things I learned today: the lead singer of the Hives is called Howling Pele Alchemist. Being Swedish, maybe he knows Eureka Yonson who's been in the news lately.

YAH - If I started using this forum for ranting about the music that saddens my spirit and sets my radar to kill, I'd be here all day and give myself an ulcer. Merely to say that changing channels on the radio just now, I went from Muse to INXS.

BOO - I've got the lurgy. I had it before I saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs who didn't come on till midnight and then I couldn't even see them cos it was a rubbish venue for a gig (The End, New Oxford Street) and it was crammed full of unreasonably gorgeous and pouty youths in outlandish garb, none of which helped. But was the band any good? Considering I didn't have a drink and kept getting trodden on, and saw the singer for about half a minute, YES - their energy and fury was the flipside of my uptightness and malaise.

SUCKS - 'The morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age.'

With thanks to: the mango and the fig.

Error Trying To Connect

Wasted the day downloading lots of football related songs ready for the World Cup, 39 days away and I'm frothing at the mouth. Meanwhile, everyone is consumed with Sven & Ulrika fever.
Other stuff: heard Rings' I Wanna Be Free for the first time since it came out in, I'm guessing, 1978. It's an above average chugging old punk single which I may play three more times in my life. Thus another thin, thin slice of the past is recovered, with ever-decreasing returns.
-- What else? A bunch/batch of Nico songs. Chilly harmonium + through the back of the wardrobe appeal.
-- We Support Iran in Their Bid to Win the 1998 World Cup by Exhaust, an instrumental with no WorldCupCon at all, bar the title.
-- A brace of Dianogah as I enjoyed seeing them live last week.
-- A grab bag of tracks by Titan. Mexican acid-jazz is up my alley.
-- A clutch of Four Tet, whose pastoral electronica suited my Sunday afternoon which was spent staring vacantly onto a sunlit street. I feel so uncomfortable at specifying genres - because it's so often flip and misleading, because it's an essential part of a reviewer's toolkit, because I'm probably off the mark a lot of the time - that I may have to ditch it. Like I go around dropping casual references to 'pastoral electronica'.
-- After a look at what's new at Rock's Backpages, found My Flamingo by the Subterraneans, Nick Kent's short-lived band. Also, some agreeably offensivetracks by Vom, who featured rock writer Metal Mike Saunders. And the shocking-titled My Heart Is The Bums On The Street by Marah, named as one of Nick Hornby's top ten records, a sickeningly cheerful summery tune with early Springsteen all over it.
-- A mishmash of bootlegs from Boom Selection. Also, there are pics on there from last month's Remix night at the Cargo when Simian played live, and Freelance Hellraiser DJ-ed. I was there and that time I didn't lose my mobile like a Hoxton tart, or stare helplessly at the shoulder blades of ravishing young sculptresses.
-- Jad Fair & Daniel Johnston I Did Acid With Caroline. See, even they get to 'do' acid. You wouldn't think they needed it.
-- Nobody's Children's Good Times which I have on a Pebbles LP (so why bother downloading it, why not give the vinyl a play?). It is disaffected growly 60s garage punk fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best of 'em.
Today was brought to me by: Procrastination, Displacement, and Indifference.

The Swimmer

The best way out of a cul de sac is to walk straight ahead, knock on the first door, invite yourself in like Burt the swimmer and carry on regardless, through back doors, french windows and across lawns, over fences, through gates, and you'll soon find yourself out of that cul de sac.
--My mp3 of Moby's We Are All Made of Stars don't sound nothing like what I heard on the radio.
The Bellrays' Stupid Fuckin' People slices like the Calais swordsman through Anne Boleyn's little neck. I think, by the time I've drank through two support bands, my ears my ears are dulled and aren't operating on all frequencies so I would like to hike up last week's Bellrays live experience.
--My man on the inside was giddy with delight and some degree of lustfulness after seeing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs last night. They're playing tonight, but I've promised myself I'm seeing Karate.
--Falling under the influence of a thread on ILM, I have now downloaded 22 versions of Light My Fire, testament to my depravity. I would like 10 related accounts of Smells Like Teen Spirit to be take into consideration (why do crims do that?)
--In the back of my mind I knew Kylie had covered St Etienne's Nothing Can Stop Us Now, one of my late night private karaoke specials. But it was confirmed by a trip around the Covers Project, where I spent way too much time adding my own suggestions. The Cat's Miaow do it too, but neither are a patch, lacking the broad orchestral flourish and the subvocal vocals.
--The shuddering depths of my downloading fetish was brought into focus for the nth time yesterday when Radio London played Jonathan Richman singing the Kinks' Stop Your Sobbing, which me and a friend sang one night on a long drunken walk home accompanied by a punctured bicycle and so it possesses Romantic Empirical value. (Look, there are five esses in possesses.) I didn't know Jonathan had covered this, I thought, and ten minutes later had a copy on my desktop (if I had broadband, it's possible I could have got hold of it before the song had even finished playing on the radio). It's almost too easy, and those industry nitwits need to call in interweb experts to find out how the new Oasis album is available online?!
--I am permitting Teenage Fanclub and Jad Fair's album Words of Wisdom and Hope to envelop me in a lost, neverwas teen haze of candy coloured swooniness. It's just sweet is what it is, with more colours in its palette than a solo Jonathan Richman album. Jad Fair's talky voice and gauche rhymes is fulla warmth and charmth (though the endless comic book references are beginning to grate), but then I'm not a lady. If I was, I may be inclined to run a mile from the earnest proclamations of this creepy man-child.
--Last night watching England v Paraguay in the pub, we spotted Ian Broudie of Lightning Seeds. He was drinking neat vodka which is what pop stars drink apparently, but he didn't stay for the second half.
--Just now, the interminable Terry's Carrot by Sonic Youth was making the same sounds as my printer, but on guitar. This may be related to the way the ejection of a floppy disk replicates the phrase summ-er-time. Oh, I hear the music of trains, I detect melodies in roadworks, I harmonize with the buzzing of pylons, for I am the terpsichorean eel, swimming against the tide of my own worst impulses. And I remain. Wet.

Knife in the Marathon II

Yesterday's London Marathon was probably the best, with records in men's and women's events, and Paula Radcliffe's victory one of the great sporting moments EVER. I ran a marathon once and every year I see them all puffing round I think it's about time I did another one... but then again.

Last week, in the Observer Sports Monthly, there was a letter asking for a sports-related song to be identified. The author got some of the lyrics wrong but it was clear the song in question was Knife in the Marathon by Breaking Circus. I know this because the song has stuck with me since I first heard it played by John Peel in 1985. Years later, before the www was worldwide, I wrote to Q magazine and I'm not sorry quoting the lyrics and asking what it was. The answer came in the next issue and soon after I got a second-hand Breaking Circus album, but it was sludge poor and didn't have Knife in the Marathon on it.

I've found mp3s of stuff I never thought I'd hear again, from Furious Pig to the GTOs, but this one's never turned up, and it's not that obscure. Tim Midgett talks about it here and Planes Mistaken For Stars released an EP called Knife in the Marathon, but forgot to cover the song from which they took the title. One day it'll turn up, ready to disappoint me.

Knife in the Marathon I

"Conscious of my advancing years, I entered my second marathon, keen to prove I still possessed a measure of fitness and determination. Like my first marathon I was nervous at the start due to an inconsistent training programme in the weeks leading up to the event. But having completed one, albeit several years before, I knew I could do it.
To make a long run short I started well and ran at a steady pace. The weather was cool and the air was still, and I concentrated on maintaining a good rhythm.
As I ran I was singing to myself... 'an unidentified/ third world athlete/ was wrestled to the ground by security/ he came up slashing... they said he had a knife in the marathon/ knife in the marathon... '
I didn't know who the song was by but I repeated it over and over. Blot out the world and the pain in my body. Plod plod plod. Along the tarmac and the grass, the pavement and the cobbles.
The last mile was all uphill, past railway lines and greenhouses. There seemed to be nobody about and I wondered if I'd taken a wrong turning somehow. But the finishing line got nearer and I saw the time on the big digital clock.
When I crossed the line and saw my finishing time of two hours twelve minutes I felt guilty - surely I couldn't have run that fast. I was convinced I must have cheated, at least subconsciously.
Nevertheless. I accepted the medal and the congratulations from my family and friends."
c.1990

The Daily Prowl

Made CD-R of Hampton Grease Band's Halifax, now on its way to New Zealand for someone to tell the Interweb highway what they think of it (bloody awful in all likelihood) for Freaky Trigger's 102 Beats That birthday special.

Made low quality mp3 of Mike Hart's Almost Liverpool 8 from an old C90 I found at the weekend. Released on John Peel's Dandelion label, it's a maudlin break-up song with more than a hint of poisonous self-pity and wounded sneering - 'Go home, get married like a good girl'.

Made even lower quality mp3s, source material also mid-80s Peel tapes, of Elton John (FallCon) performing a camped-up honky-tonk medley of Daniel and Your Song, with silly voices galore. Also two songs by the Galactic Symposium from 1978, giggling incompetent versions of YMCA and Money that weren't half as funny as they seemed 17 years ago.

Lester Bangs: Insultingly indulgent, a second-rate immature nitwit, says Anthony DeCurtis. Wickedly funny, a literary trailblazer with a keen sense of poetic flow, says Nick Kent.

Download: Mercury Rev - Low - Guided by Voices.

Yerself is Steam

"BOMBED OUT LOVERS BREATHE EASIER YOU CAN'T EAT ATMOSPHERE HAPPINESS IS
EGG-SHAPED HIGH SPEED GLASS - HEAT THAT OBEYS YOU AND LIFTS ME BE ME AND
BEAT THESE DUMB BEAUTIFUL BLONDES FROM ABOVE THEIR EYES ARE RIVERS THEY GIVE
ME SHIVERS YOUNG PEOPLE ARE ALL THE SAME THEY DON'T MIND THEY OUGHTTA
RUNNING AROUND CHASING A BEE INSIDE A JAR WHOEVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING HALF
THE TIME IT'S NOT AS EASY AS IT MAY SEEM TAKING A PEE INSIDE A JAR REMEMBER
THAT YERSELF IS STEAM SO Y'VE COME DRIPPING FROM THE HIVE WE KNOW YER IN
THERE C'MON THE GRASSHOPPER MONSTER IS READY T'GO IN A SKID HE GROANS WITH
JOY AT THE SIGHT OF HER SO THEY LET HIM GO AND "SEASON'S GREETINGS" HE GOES
RIGHT TA THOSE HOOTERS DRAGGING ME BY YER SIDE PHONY COLOURS IN YER EYES YER
SOULS'S OBSCENE BUT I DON'T MIND YEAH ONCE AND FER ALL BRING A 7.65 BULLET
TO A PATHETIC STOP PHLIPPING OUT LIKE SOME OLD WIFE YER SYRINGE MOUTH IS
OPEN WIDE YOU GO INSANE AND I GO INSIDE EVERY WOMAN'S A STRIPPER WAITING
T'GET OUT HEY BABE I SPEND ALL DAY MIXING IT UP AND SPEND ALL NIGHT THINNING
IT OUT WELL THIS ONE IS GOING TO KILL YOU REMEMBER HOW CLEANING FLUID LOOKS
JUST LIKE GINGER ALE WHEN YER TWO AND A HALF? CREATED PEOPLE DON'T NEED
IMAGINATION.....SEEMS A GIRL'S FATHER ALWAYS PLAYS THE SPOILER WHEN YER BOTH
ABOUT TA STRETCH OUT AND ROLL LIKE CONEY ISLAND CYCLONES THOSE FUCKERS
SHOULD DIM THEIR LIGHTS NOW I SPEND ALL DAY CIRCLING THE DRAIN BUT I WON'T
CHICKEN OUT NO I WON'T CHICKEN OUT WHY I SEE BLUE IN EVERY FAT MAN A THIN
ONE IS WILDLY SIGNALLING TO BE LET OUT RELEASE HIM AND BEAUTY BLAST OFF LIKE
JAMACAN GINGER DAVE KEPT ALL BANDS ALIVE SO WHY BOTHER I SEE YOU IN A CRACK
AND I'M HEADED FOR THE DIVIDE PINK AND GREEN WHAT DO THESE MEAN TO ME I NEED
SOMEONE WHOSE SOUL'S OBSCENE THERE'S THAT WORD AGAIN WE SUCK SO......WHY
BOTHER LOOK DEEP INTO OUR RYES LOOK DEEP INTO OUR RYES ONTO THE ICE FLOW
WHERE YOU MAKE A FABULOUS JACK MARK BURGESS IS NOTHING BUT A STAR IN THE CAP
OF A WIZARD IN WALES AND THIS IS OUR FIRST RECORD CHLORDIAZEPOXIDE HCL FOR
LOW KINGS WASHED UP AND THIS IS OUR FIRST RECORD AND SOME OF IT SUCKS IT MAY
EVEN HELP YOU BRING A DEPRESSUVE OUT OF HER SHELL HURRAH LIFE REACHES 1.5
MILLION YOU SHOULD LIVE SO LONG BUT REALLY THE NEXT ONE WILL BE BETTER
JONOTHAN I'M SICK OF EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER DONE WAS FOR YER MOTHER OR
RICHARD BURTON I SEEN YOU EAT AWAY SCREWHEADS AND KILL EVERY CEREAL TASTES
LIKE SUMMER NOW I KNOW I KNOW IF WE HELD A LAMP UP TA HIS BRAIN WEED SEE YOU
SUZANNE PRETTYING UP ON OUR PRIME TIME WHOA AND YOU WONDER WHY AT LAST I
FEEL BLESSED TO HAVE MADE SUCH A MESS WITH NOVOCAINE THE ESKIMOS USED TO
FREEZE THEIR OLD PEOPLE TO DEATH WE BERRY OURS ALIVE HOW LONG WILL YER
ABUNDANCE LAST WHEN SOME OF OUR BEST SALESMEN ARE BIGGOTS HOOKERS PUSHERS
AND FAGS BAZAAR SOMEONE SHOULD LOVE MERCURY REV AT ALL NO, REALLY PEOPLE WE
DO, AND THIS BAND IS FULL OF LOSERS SINKING FROM THE BOTTOM DOWN SLOW AS A
GLACIER IT LOVES TO FUCK EVERY PIRELL GIRL ARE YOU? VERY SLEEPY RIVERS LAST
YOU 'TIL MARCH DAVID HOLDS UP THE QUESTION MARK WRITHING LIKE A WHORE VERY
RUSTY VERY LUSTY I REMEMBER THAT TWISTED THING I REMEMBER FEELING NO HARM IN
FALLOPIAN TUBES LIKE A FISH IN WARM CLEAR LIQUID BALLOOOONED IN BUFFALO
DOING THIS WHOLE THING BECAUSE POP SONGS NEVER JUMPED UP AND BIT ME IN THE
ASS BEFORE IT ALL BEGINS WITH CLAMOR ANYWHEY MILK SILVER AND SULK, EIGHT
PINTS AND FOUR LARGE WHISKEYS TODAY AREN'T DOING DAVID ANY GOOD THANK LUCKY
STRIKES I BELIEVE IN COMING UNGLUED NOW THAT I'VE GOT MY LID ON A VERY
SLEEPY PLACE NOW ARE AT LEAST UNTIL I GIVE MY WINDOWS A GOOD TALKING TO
PEOPLE ARE DICKS TO YOU AND MERCURY REV KNOWS THIS HERE IS LOSERS WHO STOOD
UP TO THAT TWISTED THING BEFORE THE TAPE RAN OUT AND SAID "CUT THIS OUT AND
PUT IT IN BED NEXT TO YER CHILD...... WIPE OUT POP."

Fatal error: Can't call method "quote" on an undefined value

This week's reading matter, material: Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. It's truly GRATE and I should no, I've red a lot of buxxoR in my many yearz...
Ok. Infected by too much Starry vs the Atommick Brane lingo...
So, one of the minor 'Corrections' characters is said to listen to a lot of Californian bands - Fibulator (hmm, rings vague bell), the Minutemen (knowing smile of smug alt.dik + clicky Queen Mother respect finger), Thinking Fellers Union (mild irritation at author's failure to provide full nomenclature, coupled with regret that I never really listened to that tape of them a famous Internet rock critic sent to me four years ago... then ooh four years!) and the Nomatics (hmm, no bells rung). Being an anal analyst from Arsenal, I look them up on Google and find nothing except a link to an excited discussion about Stephen Malkmus getting a mention in the book (in the course of which discussion the four above groups are listed).
Later in the book, there is a conversation about the Nomatics - "They suffered on the cross of obscurity so that others might enjoy eternal fame" - and I realise that Franzen has pulled his wool over my eyes and the Nomatics are a Made Up group. Ha ha, very good! I briefly toy with the idea of making a fake homepage about the Nomatics, with discography, history, Photoshopped band pics and so on. Then... what kind of a sick psycho web perv stalker would do that?! Oh, not me! Make no mistake, considering such a thing is fine, a moment's diversion. Oh make no mistake, the flight of fancy, the idle speculation, is no invitation to the straitjacket.

Best song I've heard today - I'm Your Witchdoctor by the eternally-rubbishly-named The Chants R&B off "Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond" (the 60s garage collection which ain't American and is therefore sometimes dodge). I used to have a record of Motorhead doing this song (maybe I still do). I like to say that Motorhead were the first band I ever saw (I did see them, in 1979! actually!! exclamation mark!!!) but they were really the second. The confessional urge, muted.
Second best song I've heard today - Steve Albini's Blues by lapdancing Viennese oompah collective Songs: Ohia. It's at Epitonic.
I bought wine (2 botls, red) and snacks (misc) today for a friend who is visiting tomorrow. But I've just drunken + eaten the lot, I am a naughty pissed up NACKER, and also I promised to go to the gym some say James sorry couldn't help it tomorrow morning with a diff persona to accentuate the metaparcels and attempt a new World Record 15-minute rowing machine time trial, so FUkKXo5rr all round.
K, third best which is now really the first best as I listen to it is Aqua Vista's surf versh of The Model. G'nite.

Recent Downlolads

Links To Some Great MP3 Sources. Needs updating, but here are the best links:

Wylde Ratttz
'Supergroup' featuring Ron Asheton, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Mark Arm, Don Fleming etc. Some great unreleased original songs from band formed for the Velvet Goldmine film.
Sonic Youth
Lots of B sides, rare singles and live stuff from when they used to be good.
Yo La Tengo
If a bunch of sloppy lo-fi originals and sloppy lo-fi cover versions appeals.
Hood
Forests of stuff - live, Peel sessions, 7" singles, split singles and comilations, some of which may be quite good.
Bob Dylan
Live, with the Hawks in Sydney in April 1966. One acoustic, one electric set.

Let 'em in

An Irish boy aged about 13, astonishing in both height and girth, knocks on my door and tries to sell me a leather suite at a once in a lifetime price.
I am berated by the Liberal Democrat canvasser for not taking part in the democratic process. She thinks she recognizes me. I assure her she doesn't.
Would I like to know how much I could save by switching gas and electricity supplier?
Those little bleeders are playing football out the back again. They knock on the door when I'm in the bath. I don't answer so they climb over the fence, grab the ball and let themselves out without closing the door.
"Can I ask you who supplies your gas and electricity?"
Who's that knocking on the door? It's not you. Your tennis racket is still in the cupboard under the stairs.

Day in, day out

Woke up early, turned on the radio and listened to nearly three enjoyable hours of Danny Baker on BBC London talking about well... tramps mainly. There was also a chat with Tony Wilson in which both motormouths made vasty claims about music. Baker: "Emerson Lake and Palmer were better then the Sex Pistols!" Wilson: "There were no good bands between 1969 and 1976!" which they later admitted were rubbish.
24 Hour Party People was way better than I anticipated, very funny and the Joy Division sequences were surprisingly moving.
'Vasty' is a word I learned from Colin B Morton, who claims it is in Shakespeare.

I've finally finished my 50 CD-R project, which doesn't have a snappy name apart from 'my 50 CD-R project'. All the tracklistings are on the Art of the Mix. Search for 'Wisdom Goof' under Mixer's Name.

The Bellrays last night at the Monarch were fun but no more. It was hardly the revelation I half expected (half crave). For one thing, nothing seems loud enough for me these days and the audience were virtually comatose. A very famous popstar was in the audience watching the overwrought spectacle of Belgium's Millionaire, but if I say who it was I'll sound like a starspotting gimp.

My previous star spot was Cat Deeley - she had a lovely coat and a lovely bottom and was being hounded by a photographer as she made her way into the Capital Radio building in Leicester Square. Before that... like you care... I saw John Peel! In a record shop! Golly, I was excited.

Pleased to discover that Jonathan Greer has started a Slow Thrills weblog - "news, info and rambling self-indulgence, somehow connected to Slow Thrills zine." We used to swap fanzines back in the so-called day.

Conway Paton's Fall at a Glance is a good new Fall news page. And his Fall timeline is a visual history of their releases, sessions, gigs and line-ups that delights me more than is proper.

The Peer-to-Peer Review Project

"The idea of this project is to let bloggers review other bloggers in a huge ring. The goal is to introduce more bloggers to each other's sites and hopefully end up with a nice library of reviews."
So... hmm, someone somewhere is reviewing Wisdom Goof. I was given Algernon to review and this is what I wrote in a rather stiff but sensible, exhausted but dutiful style...

"Steven Baughman is an 18-year-old graphic design student living in Seattle whose weblog 'Algernon' consists of his journal entries, photographs and designs. Algernon is Steven's pseudonym but he doesn't explain why (that I can see) which I like. His site's headline is 'i fear the consequences'. Again, I'm not sure why, but I like this enigmatic approach.
The main page has an unconventional layout but it's simple to navigate - although there is a huge expanse of white space beneath the main section which makes me think I'm missing something. There are a lot of photos of friends and places, as well as some 'experimental' photos listed in neat dropdown menus, but it's annoying that clicking on the image name downloads the file rather than opening the image in a new web page.
General complaints: there are some neat 'Portfolio' graphic links on the left of the page, but one of them is broken, and two of them open pages which contain broken links.
The 'Daily Journal' shows him to be a thoughtful writer with a nice turn of phrase plus, for a graphic designer, he can spell! Which I know sounds patronising but it's not always you find someone with such a developed visual sense who also has a gift for language. Steven is clearly a talented designer with an individual style but I'd like to read more background on his pieces. He's thoughtful and intelligent, but I'd like to see more details about his life and work, more context. His anti-art stance is self-limiting and kind of a shame but maybe he'll grow out of it. Dammit, I feel like I care for him already!
Ultimately though, I wouldn't visit this weblog regularly unless I was a friend of its creator - there's nothing universal enough to grab the casual surfer's attention."

http://www.acutecut.com/p2p.html

All Through The Night

Something in the air like the first stirrings of summer so a restless sleepless night. The radio on, barely audible unless I shift to the edge of the bed and turn to face it. The only song I can remember is Donna Summer's State of Independence. Sparked this: at home for Easter we're watching some aristo pop award ceremony. A lifetime award is announced with the clue that the recipient embodies 'disco'. Attempting to follow on from my superb performance the night before, guessing which singer was going to be 'done' in Stars in Their Eyes, I plump for Donna Summer but no, it's Gloria Gaynor. She comes on and gamely performs I Will Survive giving it plenty like this isn't the millionth time she's sung it, and briefly managing to put the karaoke hordes in their place.

My mother compliments Gloria on her dress which, she says covers her bulk very well. (We get the same thing when watching the news, there might be some terrorist atrocity but she'll be studying the newsreader's choice of tie.) She follows this up with the statement that black women have big bottoms so the choice of dress was very... at which point my sister rises to the bait and yells 'You can't say that!' Me, with my black girlfriend, I say nothing. They don't know about her, my relationships having been none of their business for many years. Anal silences vs the confessional urge, discuss.

In bed, I think of the fellow in The Ginger Man who tells Sebastian Dangerfield that he likes a big woman with huge great tits and arse so he can climb aboard. He's the larger than life character who likes to "lace the gut with raw meat". That wonderful vulgar book with spicy blood coursing through its veins, but always heading toward disaster. You can be smaller than life and achieve the same.

The birds tweeting twittering occupied my right ear while the faint murmurings of the radio occupied the left. If I was Brian Eno (but then again no) I would no doubt take this as a rare opportunity to study my heightened sense of mid-night hearing as an ambient offering. Thinking of the way he listened to a recording of traffic and park noise and began to discern rhythms, textures, began to hear it as a piece of 'music'. All I come up with is: how do the birds get so loud, are they like this every morning at four a.m.?

Maybe 10cc were on the radio and I picked it up subliminally but I spend some time wondering why they are still in critical Siberia when ELO were released sometime ago. There are other things I could worry about at this small hour, like my greying hair and lack of gainful employment, but my silly little head (long in thrall to pop culture minutiae as mental displacement tactic, or mere popcorn stuffing of the spectacle depending on ) is now full of 10cc songs. Triumphant melodies, a joyful parade of pop classics with left-field lyrics, daft falsetto vocals, lashings of daft Americanisms and half a dozen hooks in each hit. I'll take them over ELO, Queen or even T Rex any time. I'll even up the stakes and take them over Abba! Yes, you can keep your Dreadlock Holiday. Even in my youth, I was embarrassed about that reaching number one, knowing it spelled their demise.

And then I remember how I used to leave the house late at night and go for a walk in the summer, when it grew too hot to sleep. I used to go down near the park where I could look back on the town, its streetlights, the hiss of cars and blossomy warmth of the air. Once, mashed on vodka, I imagined a version of Motorhead performed by the band (trio) in three parts (trilogy) along these lines... First as country waltz, fiddles and brushes, polite and measured.
"Sunrise, wrong side of another day/ Sky high and six thousand miles away/ Don't know how long I've been awake/ Wound up in an amazing state... "
Then the introduction of electric but-not-metal guitar as we head into a swinging rendition of the next verse, midtempo. "Brain dead, total amnesia/ Get some mental anaesthesia... "
I was hanging on the park railings, singing the words as far as I remembered them. I didn't think anyone could hear me, so what if they could.
Headlights approached and I saw it was my neighbour's camper van. My parents had obviously asked him to go and find me. He stopped across the path and flashed as a sign I should go and join him. But I had to do the final part of Motorhead, the full-on furious speedfreak assault. As if to wake the town I screamed in my best growl: "I should be tired/ And all I am is wired/ Ain't felt this good for an hour/ Motorhead! Remember me now, Motorhead! Alright."
Satisfied I'd done my bit, I walked towards the van. There was a patch of ground to cross where someone had spilled a bag of chips. I avoided treading in them and saw small flames licking the grass. I ran over them but they grew higher as I got nearer the van. Fearless, I drove on and was grateful when the orange door slid open and I got into the back seat.
'Let's get you home,' said Mr Simmons. 'What were you singing?'
'Motorhead,' I mumbled and looked at the blisters on my elbows where the fire had reached.

Easy Money

According to Kabalarian Philosophy - your guess is as good as mine - my name means that I am: "... spontaneous, happy-go-lucky, and you enjoy the company of others--the more the merrier. You make friends easily as people are attracted to your warm and generous nature. However, you have to watch that others do not take advantage of your generosity, for you are apt to be influenced by hard-luck stories and give when it might be more prudent not to. You are ever on the watch for ways and means of making some "easy money" because this name destroys initiative and ambition, producing an easy-going, come-what-may nature which attaches value to money only for the self-enjoyment it can offer. Misunderstandings could exist in your personal life because of this emotional power which you have difficulty controlling and also because of a difficulty in accepting a responsibility and seeing it through. You are apt to leave a project unfinished and go on to something else. Routine and system are foreign to your life, and, of course, these assets are an integral part of any successful undertaking. You are fond of sweets and rich foods and your tendency to eat heavily, causes overweight. You could be subject to skin disorders, swelling of the legs and ankles, fluid function disorders or weakness affecting the back." Which couldn't be further from the self-perceived truth. Apart from the bit about skin disorders.

During this week's daily downhill slalom to the gym, the following albums are on rotation - Slint's Spiderland, Vincent Galllo's When, Lambchop's Is a Woman and um, Simply Saucer's Cyborgs Revisited. Apart from this last one, they are all albums I can't imagine sharing in a public place. They're too intimate, too full of spaces and whispers (in Slint's case, literally) and obviously too emotionally damaged. You want to hear all the nuances and the silences which headphones allow, even in the midst of busy traffic.

When noise annoys: at the end of a long day, relaxing in the bath listening to a poorly tuned radio which you can't adjust without getting out of the warm water. Even U2 wasn't improved by fuzzy distortion.