Frolix-8

Why Forty-Seven?

Some of the finest minds in UK weblogging have been brought together to cast runes for the state of music this year - and this is the list they came up with. Please say it's a joke. Please. And why forty-seven? Having a round fifty too much like Q magazine, is it? So is doing a bloody great pointless list! Agghhhh!!

Not On My Front Doorstep

Annoyed by teenagers 'hanging around' your shop / home / bus shelter / garden of remembrance? Fed up with their smell ? Their behaviour ? Their rat-like faces ? Then simply invest in a Mosquito. This invention, described in a CNet article here, makes a high-frequency noise which only yoofs can hear. It drives them nuts, apparently. The article also mentions other anti-yoof devices, such as the 'zit lamp' - this gives off a kind-of ultraviolet light which accentuates the visibility of facial pustules. This also annoys the yoofs. It will come as no surprise to you that I am all in favour of these kinds of things - now if someone could do something about the B.O. and rodent features....

Thanks to Cambridge News for the piccy, btw.

Pheromoans

As Christmas approaches, we see that the good burghers of Leicester have turned the city centre into a mock-Munchen market, complete with huge, suspicious-looking sausages. An original idea, certainly - I shall restrain myself from wondering whether Munich City Council is currently offering a miniature version of Leicester to its shoppers... anyway, getting to the point, it's Monday lunchtime and your humble blogger is doing a spot of that hateful task - Christmas Shopping. Bombarded with adverts, tinsel and tinny-tannoy versions of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, I see that the seasonal shelf stackers in Woolworth's are evidently female. How else to explain the image posted here (click, as is your wont, for full joy) ? I'm afraid I didn't check to see if a corresponding 'gifts for her' label was fixed above the 'feminine hygiene' section. Maybe someone could check it out and let me know ...

The Cult of Sublebrity

Ah, the English language. Ever changing, ever evolving. Ever - some might say - mutating, much like its users. Hence the title of this post. Thanks to the Grauniad hack who put it into her column where I could see it - a rare occasion where a meeja professional coins a new word which not only has some use but also describes its subject perfectly. I intend to use it as much as possible, as a publicly-acceptable alternative to 'parasitic, brain-dead cunts'.
	Which brings me to Paris Hilton (amongst others), seen here making a political statement with a t-shirt. I’ve been primed for a rant about this sort of thing since seeing a photo of tabloid tit-bot Jodie Marsh wearing a shitty piece of rag emblazoned ‘Bollocks to Poverty’. I shall avoid the temptation to go off on one about the slogan itself, since I’ve already put the verbal boot into the Make Poverty History gravy train and have no wish to do the same to its yoof-friendly offshoot. Like the 'anti-terrorist' poster I wrote about a couple of days ago, this image of the P-Hilton is about as wrong as it is possible to be. It’s ‘Slumming – the Next Generation’. A multi-millionaire real-life Barbie doll who never has to think about work (never mind politics) reminding the rest of us poor lowlifes of our single, pitiful link with the system which taxes us, makes a laughable attempt to engage with us every so often, and then does what the hell it wants.
	The walking ad for a hotel chain is not alone in this rub-the-proles’-noses-in-it behaviour, of course. A quick scout round the interweb reveals the likes of Mr. Diddy, proclaiming that he is responsible for the USA’s current position of biggest pig in the pen.
	To counter this nauseating meeja ooze, I give you the late Mr. J. Cash (whose image here sums up my attitude to the sublebrities and all they stand for) and the ever-conventional Mr. O’Dowd - seen here making the sort of political statement the sublebrity layer steers well clear of.

A Scanner, Laughably

Another still from the upcoming A Scanner Darkly film (click for full joy). It comes from this review on cinemablend.com, for which thanks are due. I'll pass over this comment from the review, however;

"This is one of the Dick books I haven’t read, but it wouldn’t mean anything if I did. His work is always better after it’s translated on film than it is in print."

Apart from their American-idiot attitude towards reading, the author has obviously not seen Paycheck. Or Total Recall. Or Minority Report. Or....

Gig Blogged #24 - Arab Strap @ The Charlotte, Leicester

Arab Strap @ The Charlotte, Leicester, Tuesday 22nd November 2005

	Leicester was spoilt rotten this evening, with an acoustic performance by one of the finest bands in the world. I was of the opinion that they were always pretty much ‘acoustic’ but tonight’s quietness was thanks to their drummer’s absence (he’s just become a father). The majority of us in the audience appreciated how lucky we were – you can read about the not-so-aware minority below.
	If you’ve suffered any of my previous post-gig ramblings you’ll know that I have a big problem with the Charlotte and tonight was no exception. Not content with having a venue so devoid of atmosphere that the audience needs to bring its own oxygen, the powers that be at the Charlotte have taken it upon themselves to plaster the place with ‘public information notices’, examples of which are shown here. An attempted ironic gesture of anti-establishment cool? I wondered to myself (I wanted to ask a member of the bar staff about it but my cohorts for the evening – Kate, Jeremy and Steve – wisely advised me not to). No - I was, once again, being generous to the Charlotte – tolerant of its irritating dullness. To the side of the stage was a sign reading something like ‘Keep This Racking Clear At All Times’ – clearly whoever it was that put these up really meant to ‘inform’. There’s none of this sort of crap at other venues I’ve been to. It’s not as if the Charlotte needs to find ever more insidious ways to be an unwelcoming flea pit.
That said, the sound was – shock, horror – very good this evening. Alright, I was in my usual spot right near the stage by the toilets but nevertheless I was pleasantly surprised, not to say relieved. Aidan Moffat’s whispery rasp was beautifully matched by Malcolm Middleton’s acoustic guitar – with a bass and cello adding a wonderfully evocative undercurrent to the proceedings which, for the most part, made me forget where I was. There were several requests for sound twiddles from the stage (this is the Charlotte, remember) but to be honest the worst of it for me was not being able to hear the guitar on a couple of early songs. Any necessary rhythms were tapped out by Moffat on an archaic-looking box by his feet.
Some of my fellow audience members did not acquit themselves well – from the outset a youth at the front was heckling Moffat with the most inane drivel. He was rapidly dealt with, however – on being asked where he got his trousers from, Moffat replied “They’re Levi’s…you fucking weirdo”. This kept mouth almighty quiet for most of the gig until later, when he trilled “My girlfriend doesn’t think you’re really Scottish”. This statement presumably in lieu of wearing a t-shirt reading “Look at me everyone – I’m a twat”. Moffat parried with more gentle humour – I was thinking ‘Girlfriend? I thought you’d brought your Mum’. A couple of people dropped glasses during the course of the evening – highly audible above the gentle sounds from the stage, of course. An attempt to give the evening a more Glaswegian feel? Possibly, although as Moffat put it at one point – “Yez all must have the worst grip in the UK”.
There were plenty of shouted requests, all of which were ignored. I recognised a couple of oldies but there was no Girls of Summer which is the only one I know by name. I’ve never bothered to remember Arab Strap’s song titles as the tunes are all of consistently high quality – as tonight showed; if it wasn’t for Moffat stating “This is another old song”, I’d never have known. Not so the other, more hardcore, members of the audience. This included possibly the most rabid Arab Strap fan in the country, who was resplendent in a ‘Cool as Folk’ t-shirt and worried Kate for a few minutes at the end of the set with his disturbing Bez-like jerking around (he was also responsible for one of the glass smashing incidents).
We didn’t go forward for the support – an amiable young Scot with a guitar (I didn’t catch his name, unfortunately). His gentle tunes were lulling us to sleep, despite an intriguing choice of cover (Come On Eileen – unrecognisable until the first chorus). Despite having a short interval whilst Moffat clambered to the loos for ‘a pish’ and not doing any encores, the main attraction managed the (almost) impossible – creating a pleasant atmosphere in the Charlotte. Coming from me there is almost no higher praise.

Another Clock Strikes Thirteen

Further to my occasional series of posts about surveillance, here we have a poster photographed in Liverpool which sums up so many horrible things about the human race that it's difficult to know where to begin.

To counter the sense of foreboding (or maybe add to it, depending on your point of view), the Grauniad reports that Ozzy has written a musical based on the life of Rasputin. Will it make people pine for their Boney M records? We shall have to wait and see.

Finally, it would appear that in nineteenth-century France they really knew how to deal with wankers. What strikes me most is that the tone of the warning is very reminiscent of the poster mentioned above...

It's A Sign

Yet another step towards dismissal, with this photo of a sign spotted this morning on a classroom door. I immediately had the image in my mind of students seeing it as they went by and just stopping en masse outside the door, in the manner of that scene in The Commitments where some lunk is asked "What were you queueing for?" only to reply "I just saw loads of people outside your house and I thought you were selling drugs". The second sign which tickled me was last night as I made my way to the checkout in Tesco - the picture was of a woman dressed in Christmassy gear and as I got closer I saw that the sign was advertising some competition or other. Unfortunately, I was getting a completely different idea from a distance, as I could only see the tag line - Enter Your Mum Now.

Fear, Loathing and an Obituary

This Monday's web-aggregation has come up with several items - sadness, fear and interest in (fairly) equal measure;

First up, someone's done a Top Twenty Geek Novels. Pleasing to see a couple of PKD's in there and I have no argument with any of the others, with the exception of the single entry by The Twat in the Hat (sorry, Terry, but that's what they call you...). It's 'Geek Novels', not 'Things Socially Inept Teenagers Find Funny'.
Further Dick-ness comes in the form of this essay about PKD et. al. suddenly becoming 'relevant' once again in the light of The War Against Terror [© George Walker Bush] (T.W.A.T.). Those of you less ignorant will of course know that PKD's writing has always been 'relevant' - the only thing that changes is the brightness of the meeja spotlight.
Now onto some scary stuff - Google is intent on building The Matrix for real, it would appear. According to this chap, we'll soon have 'the internet' (which will probably reside in the virtual equivalent of a bench outside King's Cross) and 'the Google Internet', which we'll probably have to interface with via some sort of face-hugging device.
More future fear and loathing comes with the news of a planned remake of The Prisoner. Why can't these people just leave things the fuck alone? When will we see an online multimedia remake of the Mona Lisa ??
With scaryduck's carefully humourous accounts of last week's Information Society debacle in Tunisia, it would appear dissent is 'discouraged' there. Not if you're Richard M. Stallman, however.
Finally some truly bad news - Link Wray will riff no more on this earth. However, future Wrays may very well play one of these. RIP, LW.

Gig Blogged #23 - Dirty Three @ Nottingham Rescue Rooms

Dirty Three @ Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, Friday 18th November 2005

It’s cold. So, what better way to combat the onset of weather that would cripple a penguin than by going to see Australia’s finest musical export, the Dirty Three? I’m not massively up on Oz bands of the moment, obviously, so no doubt some of you out there bothering to read this may take issue with my opinion of the ‘Three. But so be it – inform me, then. Previous to this evening my experience of music from the dingo kennel was of the following;
1) INXS 2) The Minogue-bot cloning facility 3) Midnight Oil 4) Rolf Harris 5) AC/DC.
But could tonight even begin to compare with Monday’s meltdown? As Gilbert and I froze our way to Nottingham it seemed unlikely. However, G had seen the band before and made a good fist of selling them to me. I was to expect violins, drumming, quiet guitar and highly accurate, powerful spitting. Which I got, but thankfully there was much more.
To the front we went, our regular gig-trio being augmented by the amiable young Master David for the first time (who proved it’s not just me who has a chip about the Charlotte). We could see drums. We could see a violin. We could see a guitar. And we could see amps capable of causing some damage – after going to see the Wedding Present earlier this year, I shall never again underestimate those small, cubey Boogies (there was one in front of us, sitting innocuously next to a fat old Twin).
	Onto the stage and onto a stool appeared a tall, rangy cowboy sporting a (nearly) full Billy Gibbons. This was one Josh Pearson, of the parish of Texas. “I’m not responsible for George Bush,” he quietly drawled, “But if you don’t hold him against me then I won’t hold Tony Blair against you”. Political lines drawn, it was into a song about ‘redemption’. Things sounded great but we had to take his word for the song’s subject matter – plugging your acoustic into a Twin is brave enough, but when it’s going through a RAT and an octave pedal then all hell is at your fingertips the whole time. Consequently we heard not a lyric. Then he broke a string (the low E, as you ask – not seen that done before) and told a few jokes to fill in whilst replacing it. Most were about drummers, which had the Illusionator laugh knowingly. Unfortunately I now only remember his paedophile joke, which was “A man says to a paedophile on a beach ‘Hey, you – get out of my sun’. “ [cough] I don’t think Josh did that many tunes, but what he did do sounded good despite the guitar overshadowing his voice most of the time. It was a roared-up, twisted take on Country, with the man himself not only pounding seven shades out of his guitar when he got going but also treating the stage to a good heel-kicking from his cowboy boots – which could be heard above everything. His final song ended with a softly-sung chorus from Love Will Tear Us Apart – part of me thinks this sounded great but another cringed slightly. Anyway, no arguments about the chap – an excellent start to the evening.
	As the Dirty Three arrived on stage I turned around to see the Rescue Rooms pretty much full. I was soon to see why. Beginning with a short quiz (to which the answer was ‘Gustav Klimt’), the band tore into tunes which by turns frightened, inspired, lulled and mind-melted. Any concerns about this being an anti-climax after the mighty ‘Banana were soon cast aside – here we had energy, skill and imagination of an entirely different sort. And much the better we felt for it. Main man Warren Ellis looked and behaved like an Antipodean offshoot of the Zappa family tree as he spent most of the gig playing with his back to the audience. His violin was, for the most part, treated like a guitar in manner of which Hendrix would be proud – producing the most tone-perfect rasps, wails and grinds I’ve heard this side of …well, anybody else currently abusing strings at the moment. A mandolin was also thrown around a bit but it was the violin which really ripped the roof off.
	Looking like a bored extra from Phoenix Nights, drummer Jim White was amazing to watch (and , indeed, hear). It looked like he was not so much playing the drums as letting the drums play him, or perhaps guiding the drums in the manner of a nuclear power station technician guiding plutonium rods. Various items of percussion were strewn around the kit, as were several (home-made, according to Gilb) beaters, sticks and other wooden weaponry. The bass drum was thunderous in my chest – yet he barely seemed to be tapping it. I could not for the life of me work out where the sound was coming from – it was miked but to where I know not. I refuse to believe we were receiving the actual sound of the drum itself – maybe we were getting something from the monitors…
	As Gilb stated before the gig, the guitar was quite muted in comparison, adding a soft wash to the leaping-mental proceedings elsewhere. I would say this to Mick Turner, though – ditch the Gretsch and use the Tele more! But then I would say that.
	Mr. Pearson joined the band for a couple of songs about halfway through, adding mandolin for one and strapping on a BC Rich madbass for the other. Truly superb stuff and I have a live album to look forward to when my ears have recovered.