I can understand that you did, you probably aren’t as flawlessly tasteful as me, but I really can’t believe that I fell for it too. I resisted the Block Party hype and laughed at Arcade Fire’s stadium prog. But CSS? Not only did I tolerate them, I actually paid for the album. I even put one of their songs on a compilation cd that I made for a girl who I was trying to court. Now, only a few months later, I hear a bar of one of their songs and instantly recoil. It may that they remind me of the rough side of a particularly debauched week in Spain this summer, or it may be that they are not ‘just a bit of fun’ any more than Robbie Williams’ Angels is ‘actually quite good’. They’re both total utter shit in their own ways, and CSS’ way, screaming art school whimsy, is only slightly less offensive than Robbie’s good bloke pop. I’ll sign off now and put my CSS cd where is belongs, somewhere between the Darren Emerson and Libertines releases, in the What The Fuck Was I Thinking section.
Not so much a post as a quick plug for the philosophy bites podcasts available form itunes. David Edmonds, who wrote the hilarious Wittgenstein’s Poker, and Nigel Warburton, of whom I’ve never previously heard, interview top names from modern philosophy on topics as diverse as Physicalism and Wine. The programs only last Ten to Twenty minutes (hence the ‘bites’ of the title) but they don’t dumb things down at all. Rather they take an irreverent issue past perspective and focus on modern ideas rather than they history of philosophy. Easily the best podcasts I’ve come across since little atoms.
We had been given some free tickets for a ‘classical music extravaganza’ at the Albert Hall. Like total fools, we thought this would merely mean three or four performances of classical favourites, popular and crowd-pleasing no doubt, but a good opportunity see world-class musicians in a world-class venue none the less. I couldn’t find the program anywhere on the internet prior to the performance (though as it turned out that was more or less irrelevant anyway)
We should have seen the warning signs, but we were swept forward on wave of good feeling that we were getting out doing something cultural for once.
It was as though we’d walked into a dystopian future, or an idiocracy style world way out there beyond the realm of kitsch. Unbelievably, the music was amplified (presumably for the hard of hearing), and badly done. In combination with the light show it amounted to a full on assault of the senses. You’d find more subtlety at a metallica gig. Only the genuinely mentally handicapped, or people old enough to have their critical faculties completely desert them, would have found any enjoyment from last night’s performance. The people that didn’t fit into these two brackets were merely shells of human beings, hysterical flag waving philistines, for whom the music only provided wall-paper to their frantic collective nationalist jerk-off. Never have I seen so many Union flags. Never before have I experienced such a strong sense of the terrible and dangerous power of music.
During the interval we made a be-line for the door; our one thought to escape this weird shared nightmare. Suddenly all the people around us seemed like unthinking automatons. It was a harrowing insight into the dim right wing. The venue will be forever tarnished for us all. The horror.
Joe says:
I was separated from the others and found myself trapped in a small room with four Australians one of whom passed me a union jack. I reluctantly accepted the cheap plastic artefact and discreetly dropped it as soon as the lights dimmed. This was when the real trauma began. The chorus from Carmina Burana began and a bright green laser was shone directly into my eyes. After the orchestra had been playing for about two minutes, the ‘conductor’, in the style of smug radio four stalwart Nicholas Parsons, spoke for about five minutes about the Royal wedding anniversary. At this point the woman who’d kindly given me the flag turned around to make sure I was waving it. I wasn’t. The only ray of light came from a text from Matt (pictured). We left at the interval, shocked, traumatized, slightly hysterical, and sadly aware that the world was an even more terrifying place than any of us had previously imagined.
Joe bought the new Jeffrey Lewis record the other week. It’s Jeffrey Lewis doing cover versions of twelve Crass songs. Crass were an English anarchist punk rock band that formed in 1977. Liking the album we decided to track down the original Crass versions of the songs. Crass were a riduculuos band. Their songs consist of leftist rants in a six-form poetry style. While other punk acts merely postured, Crass were the real deal: angry young men (and women) sticking it to the man, taking on the establishment. They were angry about absolutely everything in an endearingly juvenile way.
Jeffrey Lewis makes the tracks into something altogether more palatable and updates some of the lyrics for a contemporary audience. My favourite changes being on the lyrics to ‘I aint thick, it’s just a trick’:
Standards and values on the living room screen, Sarah Jessie Parker acting mean. She’s got it all that’s what they want you to think but if you read between the lines you’ll see the missing link. She’s just a puppet in their indoctrination plan – be link me girls and become a real man. Live to the full, always act flash. Don’t use your brains when you’re body makes a splash.
I think this album maybe a modern classic, or at the very least a highly recommended curiosity.
On television last night I watched Beethoven’s 9th symphony being performed by the BBC symphony orchestra and chorus at the Royal Albert Hall. It was the first night of the annual proms. It’s a classical favorite that everyone knows because it’s used to great effect in the first Die hard Movie, as well as numerous other films. I’ve been listening to quite a lot of Beethoven this summer and so I enjoyed having the visuals as well. It wasn’t long however before a few observations led to a rather negative train of though I’m afraid. I was struck by how old all the singers were. I would expect that Beethoven had in mind strapping young aryan men and women to perform this piece as let’s face it, the voice weakens with age. A large portion of the chorus were well beyond the age for being soloists and I couldn’t help but imagine what it would sound like if all the singers were in the prime of their life: surely louder, clearer, better. Here young singers were the exception and some of them looked to be well into their 60s. This doesn’t bode well for the future. The decline of Church of England community singing may have something to do with it (though it’s worth noting that evangelical churches are thriving in some inner city areas).
This all points to a wider reality: that there’s going to be increasingly fewer recordings of classical music made in the future. What does this say for the state of our culture? That we no longer feel the need to document newer performances of works in the cannon reflects both the shrinking market and the abundance of recordings already available. But it also reflects a wider malaise. The market is saturated, but there’s also little new music coming through that large audiences want to buy. In the first half of the twentieth century there were an abundance of popular composers that sustained the industry. They’ve all dried up now. The medium has been exhausted. And it’s not just music. Just look at the state of Hollywood and tell me there isn’t a crisis. Unfortunately we are living through the fag-end of Western civilisation. Our ‘culture’ such as it is, has become so complex it’s become unstable (it’s impossible not to think of black-hole analogies here). Something new will come through it’s just at the moment nobody has any ideas what forms they will take (I suspect it’s going to have something to do with new technologies). But we may all be dead by the time it happens.
I’m conscious that I may be laying myself open to the rejoinder that, well, “history is littered with people who thought that their particular age was crappy and we’re no different. Stop complaining, what we have now is a culture for the many instead of just the privelaged few. You’re just idealising imagined former glories.”
Perhaps I am. But for many of our ancestors, surely art and music actually meant something, and an even more fortunate few felt themselves to be heroic players in the unfolding human drama that had direction and purpose. Postmodernity has robbed us of this comforting illusion(?) Instead we have Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and torture porn. The end is nigh.
This week I have been mostly listening to Arcade Fire’s new album ‘Neon Bible’. If you liked their first album you’ll almost certainly like this one. I think it’s fabulous. What a great band. After their first album they bought a church in which to record this one. It worked as there are some amazing sounds on it; in particular a majestic organ on the track ‘intervention’ that just hits you in the chest.
There was a good bit in Paul Morley’s long and gushing interview in Observer Music Monthly last weekend about watching them play in Manhattan. Apparently David Byrne and Lou Reed were seated in a sort of exclusive press box. Maybe they’d both received one of David Bowie’s complimentary copies of their first album that he allegedly bought in bulk to give to friends. No emotion or reaction registered on Lou Reed’s face throughout the entire gig. Maybe that’s because he was freaked out by Morley staring at him the whole time.
Apparently hat wearing funkster berk Jay Kay has announced he’s to retire from the music business to sit on his huge pile of cash and raise a family. http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2023261,00.html Great news for popular music (not the poetential replication of his DNA but rather his exit from the industry). He’d been getting away with it for way too long.
I just had a coffee in the village cafe and had a conversation with an sweet octogenarian lady who used to be a neighbour. After a while I realised that she thought she ws talking to my dad. Yet more evidence of my dire need to extricate myself from this place. I need to be somewhere I can be anonymous and where the simple act of going out for a coffee doesn’t necessarily result in awkward and embarrassing social situations. As luck would have it I’m leaving for Barcelona on Saturday and not a monent to soon it would seem.
I’ve been meaning to post something about this for a while. .Pandora. One of those stupendously amazing things that would have, I’m sure, seemed totally miraculous a few years ago, prior to the internet and broadband connections. If you haven’t already tried it give it a go – I think it has more than novelty value. It’s free, but you’ll need to make up a US zip code if you decide to stick with it (I’m confidant you will). What it does is create a personalised playlist or ‘radio station’ based on the name of a band or artist you specify. It references a massive on line music database ‘the music genome project’, and chooses other music you might like based on similarity of form. I think it does so in quite a technical basis and it’s not flawless, but it’s really brilliant if you want to here something new, or find the shuffle setting on your mp3 player a bit too random. You can have lots of channels of your favourite artists running simultaneously, and then flick between them and rate the choices it suggests in order help refine a channel. The ambition of this program is potentially limitless and I just think it’ amazing that it works at all.
It’s another step towards a time when there will be no such thing as scheduled broadcast media. What we will see increasingly is personalised content; it’s already upon us to some degree in various forms.
Last Saturday I went to see The Fall at the New Century Hall in Manchester. Despite the recent line-up change during another turbulent tour of the states which resulted in every one but MES’s wife being sacked, they didn’t disappoint. I’m beginning to see a method in MES’s madness because the high staff turnover in the group keeps the band alive in a way lesser groups aren’t. Personally I would have liked to see the last line-up one last time because they do represent a productive and quality period in the groups more recent history and it remains to be seen how long these new kids MES picked up in the States will last. MES was on good form though the venue was a bit strange. It was essentially a large bingo hall, not a theatre exactly, but a place for entertainment and variety. This choice I’m sure reflects MES’s personal taste and his feelings about South Manchester venues in general. Bingo Masters Breakout would have worked well here. The unfamiliarity of the surrounding meant it didn’t feel like being in Manchester at all but this probably had more to do with the sweltering heat than anything else. The fall have also ditched the old and excellent ‘official fall website’http://www.visi.com/fall/ in favour of a new ‘official website’http://www.thefall.info/fallsite/ the old ‘official’ one now being the ‘unofficial fall website’. The reasoning has something to do with the band wanting more emphasis on the representation of how they are now. There are also rumours that the involvement of old band member in the now ‘unofficial fall website’ was not to MES’s liking.
I realise it’s been a while since I posted anything. There are reasons for this. Rumours that I’m addicted to Myspace are not true. Myspace is a bit limited in it’s appeal unless you want to throw yourself into it completely and have weird virtual relationships with people – I’m not sure I do. Another reason for me not being able to find the free time I used to is that the World Cup has kicked off and so far it’s been pretty marvellous. I’ve enjoyed pretty much every game apart form those involving England. And no I’m not glued to Big Brother either. It started out moderately interesting and quickly became unsalvageable and dreadful. What a witless charmless bunch of morons (apart form Nicky who is possibly a genius). Besides this a fair amount has happened of moderate interest and I’m not sure where to start. After a week characterised by a palpable sense of paralysis and featuring long periods of sitting in the garden observing our resident nesting robin (Robben in honour of the Dutch player) whose industriousness served only to highlight my own lethargy, I’ve managed to sort one or two things out and found a job. Well actually by some bizarre twist I’ve managed to return to my old job, I’m tempted to say even that I was head hunted. God bless the public sector. Despite my track record I’ve been welcomed back into the fold. Last weekend in particular ended very much on a high note though the 35 hour drudgery of the week just passed has quickly brought me back down to earth again.
Benicassim is all definitely happening now. Tickets have been bought and arrangements made. For a while I was getting a bit worried there. The new Futureheads album ‘News and Tributes’ is very good indeed, but I was anxious that on listening to it in years to come it would forever haunt me as reminder of the festival I never made it to. Thankfully this will not be the case and I’m pretty sure this is shaping up to be a memorable summer in many respects.
What’s happenin’? Lamentably I still have no job which could jeopardise my plans for the summer if this situation is not turned around soon. But today is a bank holiday so there’s not a huge amount I can do about it at the moment. What better day than for spending a few hours on Myspace setting up my page?http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=80907487 I think it’s going to be fun: sometimes it’s good to be a Johnny-come-lately.
More evidence of Wayne Coyne’s strangeness can be found in this video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SzWtkMVBRI&search=wayne%20coyne He is addressing his old high school. He tells a long story the point of which is a bit beyond me. He is great though. Like a caring paternal figure that has lived a life well travelled and seen strange things. I think some auteur should give him a starring role in a film – some sort of indie-flic set in the mid-west or something. I’d watch it. This is enough of a screen test right here
Joe bought the new Jeffrey Lewis record the other week. It’s Jeffrey Lewis doing cover versions of twelve Crass songs. 
On television last night I watched Beethoven’s 9th symphony being performed by the BBC symphony orchestra and chorus at the Royal Albert Hall. It was the first night of the annual proms. It’s a classical favorite that everyone knows because it’s used to great effect in the first Die hard Movie, as well as numerous other films. I’ve been listening to quite a lot of Beethoven this summer and so I enjoyed having the visuals as well. It wasn’t long however before a few observations led to a rather negative train of though I’m afraid. I was struck by how old all the singers were. I would expect that Beethoven had in mind strapping young aryan men and women to perform this piece as let’s face it, the voice weakens with age. A large portion of the chorus were well beyond the age for being soloists and I couldn’t help but imagine what it would sound like if all the singers were in the prime of their life: surely louder, clearer, better. Here young singers were the exception and some of them looked to be well into their 60s. This doesn’t bode well for the future. The decline of Church of England community singing may have something to do with it (though it’s worth noting that evangelical churches are thriving in some inner city areas).
I’m conscious that I may be laying myself open to the rejoinder that, well, “history is littered with people who thought that their particular age was crappy and we’re no different. Stop complaining, what we have now is a culture for the many instead of just the privelaged few. You’re just idealising imagined former glories.”
This week I have been mostly listening to Arcade Fire’s new album ‘Neon Bible’. If you liked their first album you’ll almost certainly like this one. I think it’s fabulous. What a great band. After their first album they bought a church in which to record this one. It worked as there are some amazing sounds on it; in particular a majestic organ on the track ‘intervention’ that just hits you in the chest.