Essential
Reading the music press and trawling the web so you don't have to and therefore have more time to live your exciting lives while remaining up to date with all the news and opinion... No Rock&Roll Fun and The Minor Fall, The Major Lift, both updated with alarming frequency.

He totally rocks in his own pathetic little world
An Amazon critique of Vincent Gallo's Recordings of Music for Film: "Vincent is a multi-talented artist. He is a complicated person. He is a good director. His Buffalo 66 is a great movie. His painting looks cool. And, he is a solid actor. But, if you like to dance or shake your booty, just forget about Vincent's Music. Vince has never understood rhythm, or funk, or blues, or jazz, or rock, neither is he a melody genius like the Beatles, which introduced Vincent to music when he was like 5 or something. But, he's certainly a great sound artist. He must have used 5 million different sounds to produce 60 minutes of music. Unfortunately, his sounds barely have bass or drum, which's required to [get women's attention], and which is what he always complained -- no hot women appreciate his stuff. Vincent's music is not about rock'n'roll, but he totally rocks in his own pathetic little world. To appreciate his sound, you got be a weird person first. If you are normal, he'll drive you nuts. He is utterly original, and his ego is bigger than the door of his apartment. Vince's music is about - beauty, emotion, and art. While, at least, that's what he thinks."

Chance
Couperin (C17/18, French composer and harpsichordist) - his name mentioned on TV last night and also in The Music of Chance which I read yesterday. This time 24 hours ago 'Couperin' would have meant nothing.
"Music brought oblivion, the sweetness of no longer having to think about himself..."

Senseless overtime
1. "And when I'm alone and scared/ I think of little rhymes."
2. Life Without Buildings split up (sad face).
3. Listening to certain people's opinions, e.g. Ash are "a student band, I suppose. They don't sound very professional. Some nice tunes though."
4. The woman at the station, abt 60, her ringtone was Michelle.
5. Really, who would buy an album by 'Big' Ron Atkinson (ins. "I've met him you know" comment here).

12345 Senses Working
1. Built to Spill was played on Six Feet Under. Had to tell someone.
2. I speak like Dave Bowie, my mate said. Same rough geog. Plus he has luvvly lush hair also.
3. A girl at work started distractedly humming Life on Mars but then it turned into All By Myself, an unconscious bootleg if not properly speaking medley.
4. Work is a four-letter word.
5. I was looking for a job and then I found a job. And heaven knows THERE IS NO FUTURE

Trawler

- Download 'new' old Nirvana track You Know You're Right (works today anyway).

- Papercities says: " For me, music is beyond important. Its almost all I think about. I hunt down records and artists I've never heard of on the off-chance that there might be something great for me to listen to. I constantly need something new to my ears, and am constantly listening over and over to things I love to figure out why they affect me so profoundly. That most people aren't like me is probably a good thing for the collective mental health of the world. My beef with the people described above is not that they aren't as obsessed with music as I am. That's fine. Its that they're using their limited knowledge of music in such a public way, in such a "I'm proving a point about how deep I am" way, that it drives me crazy, because in all cases, the people I berate for such behavior are people who have a fierce need for attention."

- ILM: Are The Fall the most overrated band in the history of music?

- Rockcritics.com - long Q&A and interviews with Simon Frith and Richard Williams. "I'm interested in music that breathes rather than repeats itself according to encoded digital signals."

- Perfect Sound Forever on the Modern Lovers.

- Spin: "Every Year, a Thousand Latino Kids Get Together In Los Angeles to Celebrate Their Shared Love For a Depressed, Celibate English Pop Star Who's Never Had a Hit in America."

- M Matos: "It's hard not to think of Queens of the Stone Age as a heavier, metallic Steely Dan..."

- Analog Roam: In defense of Steely Dan. "My girlfriend looked at me and smiled, as if to say, He gotcha! You sure are lame because you listen to Steely Dan!"

- Analog Roam: Obituary for Bob. "I'm listening to the radio, and they keep playing your songs, Bob. Over and over, in no particular order..."

- Mark Prindle rants about 9/11 and finally remembers he's supposed to be reviewing the Vines.

Rhythmic crumbling
Dr C has a good go at the Honeycombs - I got the same four songsah, and 2 of them surely IS great. It's the how to describe pa-ching like scrapey chimes at the front does it, puts it in outer space for a start, plus the relentless mong stomp of multipack thud, and the nervous energy vocals with alternating strangulation of nuts/roar of cock, suggestive of grave anxiety possibly due to restrictive clothing. Ann Honey Lantree the thudding hairdresser in Joe's bathroom - look, when Joe was 38 he went gaga in the gay old Holloway Road, but when I was 38 sometime in the future past last week I was walking down the grey old Holloway Road bcs this is where I buy my Provisions. And my drugs! Ha ha I buy DRUGS! Yeah you wish.
Really, I wish I could buy some drugs, I know they're not nice or clever or safe, or fucking cheap. But I would like some. Not inc. the ones I'm already on that is.
This whole show is brought to you courtesy of Grave Anxierty (sap)_. See.
re: restrictive clothing... My current dismalness, it occurs, could be due to my frying pan, which has a receding hairline fracture in its non-stick lining, you know. Perhaps cooking food in this damaged utensil is exposing me to lead poisoning or some manner of excessive carbon intake thus DISTURBING the inner balance.
Always looking for excuses, this is what I'm told.
I often imagine my vital organs boiling up inside if not actually FIZZING merely needing the addition of herbs and spices to provide a tasty Lecteroid dish, notably underground where even the cattle are not allowed.

The music of our hearts
"When we walk through this land
we walk for one reason
the reason is to help another man to think for himself
the music of our hearts is roots music...
The music that tells about history
because without a knowledge of your history
you cannot determine your destiny
The music that tells about the present
because without a knowledge of the present
you're like a cabbage in this society
The music that tells about the future
and the judgement that is to come
the music of our hearts is ROOTS music..."



"Presenting Misty in Roots..."

Sick of the sound of your own voice
From the in-pro Attic of Wisdom Goof:
"AT the start (1999) I thought it would be a Good Idea to write a little bit about every mp3 I downloaded. But it soon became obvious there was no way I could keep up, especially when the broadband connection was installed. And reading back, I don't like my tone, the flip knowingness, the desire to place songs into categories and the patent inability to do so. The tongue of jaded hipster, sickening myself on a daily basis."
Caution: vast page.

Sick of being sick
i am a scenester!




How indie are you? test by ridethefader

You are so indie it hurts. You hang out with the coolest people in your city. It doesn't even bother you that none of them know your name. You know lots of bands personally, you know a couple of guys from We Hate The Mainstream Records, and you blag your way into getting almost
everything for free. That fanzine you write gives you extra kudos. You probably don't
even care that non-scenesters think you're a pretentious fuck.

Playlisteria
I just found my summer 1992 chart, a playlist of that long-lost time just ten, possibly even exactly 20, years ago. I'll stick by most of them and resist the urge, indefensible in this day and age, to make a 2002 version.
It was the last time I FELL IN and God only knows, in a very Shangri-Las sense, if that will ever happen again. Let's hope so, eh. I was hook line awash with soapy suds and fat thick honey pouring into my tiny mind. I walked all around the bridges and the pylons and lay down by the stream listening to these and thinking about whatever.
So just put it down and put it away.

1 Car Wash Hair - Mercury Rev
2 Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan
3 My Old School - Steely Dan
4 Negative Creep - Nirvana
5 I Could Have Lied - Red Hot Chili Peppers
6 La La Love You - Pixies
7 Molly's Lips - Vaselines
8 Half a World Away - REM
9 Taillights Fade - Buffalo Tom
10 Under the Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers
11 Freak Scene - Dinosaur Jr
12 Only a Fool Would Say That - Steely Dan
13 Coney Island Cyclone - Mercury Rev
14 Lithium - Nirvana
15 Hey, That's no Way to Say Goodbye - Ian McCulloch
16 Show You The Way - Dinosaur Jr
17 Pushin' Too Hard - The Seeds
18 Vicky's Box - Throwing Muses
19 Trigger Cut - Pavement
20 Wishing Well - Bob Mould
21 Sci-Flyer - Swervedriver
22 Astral Plane - Modern Lovers
23 Homeward Bound - Simon and Garfunkel
24 Little Fury Things - Dinosaur Jr
25 Ohio - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
26 I Fall to Pieces - Patsy Cline
27 Racine - Buffalo Tom
28 I Never Asked to be Your Mountain - Tim Buckley
29 Chasing a Bee Inside a Jar - Mercury Rev
30 Alcoholiday - Teenage Fanclub
31 True Love Leaves no Traces - Leonard Cohen
32 My Favourite Dress - Wedding Present
33 Teenage Lust - Jesus and Mary Chain
34 Like a Hurricane - Neil Young
35 This Guy's in Love - Herb Alpert
36 Liar Liar - Castaways
37 Kooeaddi There - Incredible String Band
38 Breaking the Girl - Red Hot Chili Peppers
39 Real Real Gone - Van Morrison
40 Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding
41 Racing in the Street - Bruce Springsteen
42 Walk on by - Dionne Warwick
43 Pull the Wagon - Miracle Legion
44 Twist Barbie - Shonen Knife
45 Blues for Ceausescu - Fatima Mansions
46 Territorial Pissings - Nirvana
47 Alive - Pearl Jam
48 Son of Mustang Ford - Swervedriver
49 Whatever's Cool With me - Dinosaur Jr
50 Summer Babe - Pavement
51 Ballad of the Grievous Angel - Gram Parsons
52 So-Called Dangerous- The Fall
53 Gentlemen's Agreement - The Fall
54 All the World Loves Lovers - Prefab Sprout
55 The Way that Young Lovers do - Van Morrison
56 Another Girl, Another Planet - Only Ones
57 Celebrated Summer - Husker Du
58 The Real World - Husker Du
59 Merry - Magnapop
60 Oh Lonesome me - Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood
61 Flying on the Ground is Wrong - Buffalo Springfield
62 Rose Darling - Steely Dan
63 Sweet Jane - Velvet Underground
64 Turn on the Water - Afghan Whigs
65 Bit Part - Lemonheads
66 My Little Red Book- Love
67 Just One Happy Day - Nymphs
68 Skip Steps One and Two - Superchunk
69 Sexy MF - Prince
70 Love Street - The Doors
71 Reason to Believe - Tim Hardin
72 Zurich is Stained - Pavement
73 Aneurysm - Nirvana
74 Papa's Got a Brand New Bag - James Brown
75 Swlabr - Cream
76 Winterlong - Pixies
77 Here, There and Everywhere - Beatles
78 Gradually Learning - Rockingbirds
79 Straight to you - Nick Cave
80 I Misunderstood - Richard Thompson
81 Rainy Season - Howard Devoto
82 Meet the Witch - Big Dipper
83 Cheyenne - Del-Lords
84 Tenderloin - Green on Red
85 Constant Craving - kd lang
86 Depending on You - Rain Parade
87 Montague Terrace (in blue) - Scott Walker
88 Rachel Built a Steamboat - Teardrop Explodes
89 Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow - Felt
90 Heartbreak a Stranger - Bob Mould
91 Ramble Tamble - Creedence Clearwater Revival
92 The Concept - Teenage Fanclub
93 You're the One for me, Fatty - Morrissey
94 Mrs Jones - Hole
95 Sheela-na-Gig - PJ Harvey
96 Unsatisfied - Replacements
97 Winona - Matthew Sweet
98 Winona - Drop Nineteens
99 Hey Nineteen - Steely Dan
100 100% - Sonic Youth

Drrim
Our dreams not of battling the weedfull garden
or locating the source of that penetrating squeak

After being informed that my services were no longer required, I initially slumped at my desk in semi-relief. But, being the conscientious sort, I decided to finish the project I was working on - a series of webpages detailing the plot of a film.
I soon became bogged down in detail and went wordblind. I was singing Athlete but spelling Nelly. Oh It's Getting Hot in Herre. And there was confusion surrounding the timings - there was an explosion at 2:55 but was that their MINS or my HRS. I saw their point; if I'd lost my own plot, how could I be trusted to follow theirs. And yet, wasn't I allowed to play myself in my film?
Only after they chased me from the building did I refer to my contract.

Ital vital VITAMIN
So Tony Blackburn is King of the Jungle (do keep up). Really, the resplendent and delightful Tara P-T shoulda won, but s'only a game and all that. Anyway, I was singing (not sicking, see 2 posts below) the old Tony Blackburn song. Which goes "Tony Blackburn, Tony Blackburn, Tony Blackburn, Tony Blackburn, oh-oooh Tony Blackburn." It was a hit, in the very loosest sense, by Binky Baker in c. 1979 on the Stiff label. Do you remember it? I did, and I shoved it up Audiogalaxy last year when you could do stuff like shove "Tony Blackburn" up Audiogalaxy and confidently expect to get a result. After he sings "Tony Blackburn" a lot, he goes "Knee Burn Toe Black, Black Toe Knee Burn" and variations thereon for a while. I would gladly swap it for the entire oeuvre of.... musicals. I hate Musicals, don't you. All of them, they are a low down dirty shitty so-called artform. Infested by the likes of Darren Day for a start.

What I wanted to express, earlier today, before I got distracted by boggy music and me having gooo-oood taste (rhymes with tomato paste) was this. I wanted to express my let's say misgivings about the whole imminent bombing the crap out of Iraq thing. Last night I spent hours trying to get into a certain place, and this morning I spent quite literally several more hours trying to get out of this certain place much closer to (not necessarily your) home, to wit the Elephant & Castle. Wouldn't it, honestly, be much better if we delayed the utter annihilation of the planet and instead wiped that whole fucking shithole off the face of the fucking earth. This is my biblical Thought for the Day and I'm sorry if it offends thee (see: plank of wood, eyeball, pluck it out) but like the good book says, 'I am not here to cheer you up'.

And it has been an interesting (Darren) day. This evening, I heard the Best Joke EVER (saw it, really, as it was on TV). Even though I was well into Taking The Edge Off my hangover with a bottle of cheap sherry the likes of which only the wankers on the site would stoop to drinking, and was thus especially receptive to a chuckle.

It made me laugh my ass off, as they say. Yes, I quite literally laughed my ass some say arse right OFF. I dunno where it's gone but it's fucking gone. I'm swearing like a cunt lately, I'm terribly sorry. Anyway...

Obv, you won't find this funny, me just writing it out, but that's kind of the Point. You missed it, so shut up. This is it...

A young lady goes into an office reception. She asks the receptionist (Frank Skinner) if she can speak to her uncle, a Mr Forsyth.

Frank says yes, I'll put you through.. and he picks up the phone ...

Cut to.... Bruce Forsyth playing the Big Boss in his office. He picks up the phone "Yes, who is it?"

.......


.......


Frank: "Niece to see you... to see you..."

I thang yew...

PS. If you're not British, please feel free to shout obscenities at your computer and promise never to come here again because you don't understand a fucking word of what I'm saying.

What you like vs what you're like
From Guardian interview...
"Moving on, [Ricky] Gervais counts Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks as his "favourite album of all time, ever", citing Dylan as "the coolest man who ever lived from beginning to end". [Stephen] Merchant has his own theory on Dylan's role. "I have a poster of Scorsese's After Hours in my bedroom," he says. "If people haven't seen it and they're intrigued, that's cool, we can hang out. If they hate it, we may as well finish the conversation immediately. But if they love it, we're mates for ever. With Dylan it's the same. If people don't like him, I say: 'Go away and listen to him, you can come back when you've grown up a bit.' "

Philosophically I disagree, but it's a position I admire. My three best friends have more or less rubbish musical taste [their fave artists: Peter Gabriel, Orbital, Depeche Mode] and all of them hate Bob Dylan but it obviously doesn't matter. I mean, they are wrong but I'm the one who boils with childish rage because I still take this who is good and who isn't shit seriously. Let me explain:

Good: the Ben Folds Five, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Hawkwind's Space Ritual, Isaac Hayes, Derek and Clive singing the My Mum song, Belle & Sebastian. Any music made by midgets very short people eg Rusty Goff and Bushwick Bill. Bands who are More of a Concept Than a Band (Oxes, Furious Pig) and any artist who swears like a trooper and/or trouper.
Not good: Muse, Cliff Richards he's an old square, the Blazin' Squad and their pikey ilk, all classical music especially opera and also The Jam. Prog rock supergroup Yes when those wanks from the Buggles joined. Meatloaf and Bryan Adams and the Hives and Bon Jovi and stuff you know.

The boggy man
Walking along Oxford Street this morning after being a dirty stopout and nothing's open yet, but I've got the music on and could easily cause a disturbing 'look at the loony' scene by sicking (I meant singing, I wrote sicking, ha ha I'm so unconsciously hilarious!!) and dancing along to the Meat Puppets' Backwater, a great waking up in the sun and GOING song. Or at least that's what I believe it's about, I'm too important to actually listen to the lyrics. Yesterday I read an interview Mark Prindle did with Meat Puppets drummer Derrick Bostrom in which the absurdly named 'sticksman' revealed that he wrote the lyrics on their first (and in my uninformed opinion, best) album. The one with 30 howling caveman songs where you can't hear a word and none of which sound remotely like Backwater.
Then I bought some CDs including the Interpol one. I just played it and trust me, it's a waste of money. The only good song is NYC and you can download that for free. When I say 'trust me', I mean don't listen to me, I'm suffering from multiple delusions as a result of lack of sleep and excess alcohol and I may change my views tomorrow. I know when I'm really drunk because I speak French and truly believe that I'm making sense, like last night. This is only when French people are present, you understand. I recently had a long conversation with some fellow who may or may not have been French on a tube train. He'd just split up with his girlfriend and I was offering him sympathy and advice about 'les femmes', plus information regarding the last train south. I have no idea if he understood a word of what I was trying to say but at least I made the effort eh?
You've got to make the effort.
Got. To. Make. The. Effort.
In the record shop where I got Interpol they were playing "Camembert Electrique" and I knew it off by heart even though I haven't heard it for years. For some reason, there was a period when it was briefly crucial to like Gong at school, probably as a reaction against whatever was really popular. There were several of these phases where the chief tastemaker decreed some random band from the past to be great and various of his gullible chums agree. I resented the brief, demented apotheosis of Gong because I was a long term Hawkwind fan and they were and are obviously light years better but did anyone listen to me? No. But you're listening to me now aren't you!
All together now: "I've been stoned before/ In Saint John's Wood crematorium..." Fucking rubbish really but I like it.
I've been listening to boggy music lately after reading Mick Farren's autobiography Give the Anarchist a Cigarette. It's a splendidly entertaining account of a period it's now hard to believe ever existed. And he refers to 'boggies', a sort of early 70s post-hippie scumbag who followed the likes of the Deviants (Farren's band) and the Pink Fairies. So, of course Hawkwind and Gong and probably Amon Duul II are all now boggy bands in my mind. If this is the most fantastically unfashionable music it's possible to admit to liking, then I'm buried up to my neck in mud. Oh, the joys of rediscovering the Pink Fairies' masterpiece "Never Never Land"! I bought it for five English pounds when that was all I earned from my Saturday morning job. It was scratchy as fuck (second hand) and had a thick, thick cover with a daft drawing of pot smoking elves sitting on the moon. It was the favourite album ever of Brian from Nottingham who was my penfriend so that was why I bought it. Writing 'penfriend' there made me cringe, but that's what people did before the Internet if they wanted to discuss obscure and filthy hobbies, like trampling hamsters to death in high-heeled shoes and being into boggy music when everyone else likes the Human League.
It says here: "John Lydon once referred to The Pink Fairies as his favourite of the old wave rock bands". So there.

Links
Rare and unseen video clips. "Mainly culled from UK & European TV from 1978-1988, generally Post Punk, Industrial and just rarely seen footage."

You People Have No Taste by Jody Beth Rosen (08/21/2001)
"My point, and if I've been writing for this long I probably have one, may be that everybody out there is a goddamn retard and that some of us retards are just fucking hipper than you, and some of you that think you're hipper than other people are misguided poseurs, and that those of you that aren't hip in any way at all should be ashamed of yourselves..."

There Are Only 935 Perfect Songs - 'Caution vast post.'

Matter
On C4 tonight: a dumb smug geezer who doesn't realize his bread's buttered on the lesbian tip gets to reject dozens of potential girlfriends. The theme tune is an attenuated Iron Man, kill me if it isn't.
I sing along to I'm Sticking With You on the car advert, shameless consumer monkey. I swear at the 'telly' (UK slang) when I see American Idol final, gushing winner thanks God followed by Lucky Girl! duet with Gates.
Making a unique spaghetti dish I play Come to the Sabbat very loud with my back door open & added cackling so I will probably be arrested. To be accused of a heinous crime of which I am innocent is my (not anymore) secret desire - there must be a name for this condition. Attention seeking being mirror of hermitage.
TOTP is 2000 issues some say editions OLD soon but still younger than me. I spend up to 10 secs worryING about my attitude towards pop pop pop music; the patronising urge to adopt/ co-opt those, e.g. Streets, Ms Dynamite, Misteeq, Nelly, who I merely tolerate with cardigan aspect. There being no AUTO knee pinging response.
The blunted, muted face = 200 months of world war three.
This day of black! black! and being fed pins in the cellar.