being the delicate blogging of an english chap in austin, texas, who has recently
ressumed his technical writing career but is still searching for eternal verities in
the bottom of his martini glass and on curious web pages. he is married, quite old
and off to the gym in a few minutes. you can email him at anything-that-doesn't-have-the-word-blog-in-it (at) nerichardson (dot)
co (dot) uk...
You can read about the real "Yes/No Interlude" here.
Monday, March 31, 2003
A journalist with principles? Surely that's against the law right now. Katy Weitz resigned as a feature writer on the Sun because of the vileness of one of their headlines and says:
A job, at the end of the day, is just a job and if I have to pull pints for the next few months at least I'll be making a few people happy, not contributing to the misery of millions.
I'm sure there are plenty of hacks, not just at the Sun, who'd proudly take just those last six words as their motto.
Girded my loins, bit the bullet and paid my monthly visit to AndrewSullivan.com. For any British readers who are fortunate enough not to have enocountered Sullivan, he's a lot like Richard Littlejohn only with O Levels, a gym membership and a "sexual preference" that Littlejohn probably has a whole notepad of comedic euphemisms for. But outside the realms of Eros, they're very similar. Both run on arrogance, spite and bluster and employ the same methodology of seeking out the one total loon in a crowd of a thousand opponents so that they don't have to engage with anything but the most ludicrous viewpoint. Show them accounts of peaceful well-organised protest marchs around the world and they'll find a story about a crackpot in Little Piddlehampton who shouted "poopy" at a retired catering corps officer, and pile the inventive on him, and by association, the entire anti-war movement. Admittedly every blogger on earth does this sort of thing for cheap laughs (see last but one entry here for a particularly shameless example) but these guys get paid for it.
In Sullivanworld you can always count on certain verities: George Bush is a godlike genius, every wrong on this earth can be laid at the feet of the Clintons or the BBC, even the mildest anti-war protestor is a Stalinist who wants to kiss Saddam's bottom and George Orwell would be his bestest buddy if he were alive today. Evil lefties take pleasure in American deaths and drawbacks, although there aren't any of those as everything is going exactly as the almost-as-godlike-as-his-boss Donald Rumsfeld said all along and anyone who sez otherwise obviously works for the BBC -- the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation (pause for laughs, applause, loosening of corsets). And if anyone did miscalculate the time, effort and human lives it would cost to liberate Iraq (which they didn't do, because everything is going to plan, aren't you listening?) it's a minor thing and it would be unpatriotic to mention that it happened, unless it can be blamed on Bill Clinton, in which case it should be shouted from the hilltops. And the BBC? Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation! (pause for whoops, air pummeling and screams of "stop it Andrew, you're killing us with your dry, urbane wit!")
I know intelligent people with more academic qualifications than I have Stereolab albums who religiously read this blighter's rantings daily and take every word as gospel. We live in strange times, children. Makes a fellow truly grateful that the world's last sane man, Neal Pollack, has been known to leap on Sullivan's prattlings now and again...
Madonna -- American Life. Sounds more like a comedy send-up of Madonna, a last minute Mad TV parody. She sort of rapped on "Vogue" all those years ago and that worked, but on this one she sounds like she's doing the voice-over for an work-out video. And she's making a satirical dig at milky coffee -- cutting edge!
I still think she should have retired with the Sex book and Erotica album back at the start of the 90s. They both had an air of "the rest is silence..." about them, as if she had gone as far as she could and made her statement about the one thing that mattered to her -- being Madonna. If she had done that -- and ideally, never made a film in her life except for the glorious Truth or Dare -- we'd mention her name in hushed awe these days instead of despairing giggles. Everything she's done since then has seemed at best a minor footnote or more usually just her attempt at hanging onto the coat tails of what someone has told her is the latest thing. The bleepy electronica of "Die Another Day" and "American Life" is already old hat and the pious sentiment of the lyrics just embarrassing.
And I haven't even seen the "is it best to be anti- or pro-war today?" video yet....
I think the poster child for the pro-war movement has just been found at dratfink. (Well come on -- They have been using the way certain anti-war protestors look as a blanket condemnation so it's fair. And funny.)
My "free" subscription to Wired has finally started arriving about 6 months after I sent off my four bucks or whatever it was to cover processing. I still wouldn't pay proper money for it, but it's something to read when I flailing away on the elliptical machine for half an hour at the gym. It's the 10th anniversary issue which ought to be an occassion to look back and reassess the whole "digital revolution" and maybe even own up to being part of the problem rather than a trailblazer for the future, but a quick flick through shows no sign of contrition or even a glib list of "100 things about the New Economy we got horribly wrong". A quick look back at the immediately pre-Wired world, a poster of all previous covers -- what kind of nerd would you have to be to put that on your wall? -- and a page per year of fairly random quotes and graphics is what you get. But at least the poster helps me track my disillusionment with the magazine. I'm surprised to see that I stuck with it up until mid 97 by which point even I could see that the emphasis was shifting from new technology to the money that could be made from new technology and the rabid socio-economic philosophy of cyberselfishness this fostered. I recall feeling distinctly uncomfortable about the combativeness shown on the cover of the July 97 issue:
"THE LONG BOOM -- We're facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world. You got a problem with that?"
-- which seemed to suggest gangs of rampaging Ayn Randians beating people up on street corners for not being enthusiastic enough about the latest Dow Jones numbers. By by the time the 5th anniversary issue trumpeted CHANGE IS GOOD with Orwellian certainty I decided to go read something else. I kept a vague eye on it as it grew thicker and thicker and pretty much became the house magazine of free market evangelism and shifted its attention from the creators to the exploiters of cutting edge technology and the transmutation of wacky technolibertarianism into old fashioned money grubbing was completed. No more hot chicks in rubber Virtual Reality suits, just, well, suits in plush offices checking their portfolios. It wasn't even worth being affronted by any more.
So why have I gone back to reading it all these years later? Maybe out of nostalgia for those first issues, which I read when I was getting a raw deal from life and a sucker for the idea that computers + culture = a better deal for nerds like me. And they seem to have done away with those toxic silver pages at the back that appeared back when the magazine turned into a Sassy for venture capitalists. Kelly, Negroponte and Gilder are now just faint memories in the Contributing Writers list. And it was only $3.95 for the year....
I just don't have anything to say lately, not that it matters. I've just been letting everything happen without me , but oh well. Not much on my mind recently. More or less not much exciting happening to speak of, but shrug. Today was a total loss.
Okay, so why does the news that Halliburton won't be getting one of the big contracts for rebuilding Iraq seem just as fishy as if they had? Have I spent so long on the web that I supect everything, believe nothing and see conspiracies everywhere? Is this perhaps the only sane way of viewing the world at the moment? Is Alex Jones finally starting to get to me?
The House passed a resolution Thursday calling for a national day of humility, prayer and fasting in a time of war and terrorism.
The resolution, passed 346-49, says Americans should use the day of prayer "to seek guidance from God to achieve a greater understanding of our own failings and to learn how we can do better in our everyday activities, and to gain resolve in meeting the challenges that confront our nation."
Under the resolution, President Bush would issue a proclamation designating a specific day as a day of "humility, prayer and fasting."
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said officials there had not looked at the resolution but "the president believes that faith and prayer are important and frequently references the importance of praying for American troops and for freedom around the world."
I don't know what to say about this. Go look up "H. RES. 153" on thomas.loc.gov. Until today I felt that moving to America was a step into the future but this makes me think I've strayed back to the 18th century....
Well who would have thought it. I got that gig as "voice talent" with a company that "brings radical innovation into everyday communication infrastructure and lifestyle". I am shocked. I thought my voice sounded so horrible on the first demo take that I didn't bother doing a second. It's only going to be a few hours work but to be paid $60 an hour just for having an English accent is a nice boost to my self esteem and it's going to make my resume look a bit more interesting.
There's an arrogant part of my brain that thinks this is nothing to make a fuss about, that this is how it should be. I am a foppish Englishman, shouldn't that in itself be enough to keep me in canapes and Earl Gray? It worked for Quentin Crisp....
The most gratifying thing is that I have always been self-conscious about my voice. At a tender and impressionable age, when I should have been discovering what a bra felt like through thirteen layers of clothing or vandalising pensioners' allotments, I had to go to a speech therapist. I lisped and mumbled and my teeth were so unfixably bad that it was thought a good idea if I learned to speak from scratch again. It wasn't particularly shaming and -- well, looking back on it, reading The Day of the Triffids out loud while a rather attractive woman circled me closely, looking into my mouth from about four inches away, was much more my idea of fun than what most of my coevals were probably getting up to after school on a Tuesday afternoon, so I probably shouldn't make a big deal out of it. But regardless of this, I've always considered my voice to be my downfall. To find out that it is something I can make money from is almost enough to give me an Oprah moment.
Stavely Makepeace were also Lieutenant Pigeon, of course, the only glam rock band to feature a 60 year old woman called Hilda. The early 70s were a very strange time, children, as you can read/hear if you go to the Stavely Makepeace/Lieutenant Pigeon homepage.
Update: Lieutenant Pigeon reformed in the late 80s and are still going, although in a low-key deliberately unprofessional way that may or may not contain any original members, depending on whether they're recording or playing live. They made a 35 minute long single in 2001 called "Opus 400". The lyrics are here and they are very, very odd. They've got another CD out this year and are playing some glam nostalgia gigs at places like Butlins. There's even a book by two original members of the band available: When Show Business is No Business (2001).
Ah, the early seventies. When chubby blokes with beards could stick a couple of glittery stars on their foreheads, plonk their old mum at the piano, gruffly growl "mmmmmmmoooooooooould owd dooooooooough...." (surely an influence on Napalm Death and subsequent death metal?) and have a number one hit....
Meanwhile, life goes on. This arrived in my email today and might be of interest to any local readers....
Gonga the Great -- 16mm Color Short Film: Casting call
Humiliated by kids, adults and a guy in a gorilla suit, a young man reinvents himself by stealing the gorilla suit and becoming Gonga the Great.
Casting for: * Male lead: age 17-24, nervous, simple-minded. * 2 male gorilla handlers: age 30+. * 20 kids: all ages up to 11. * 5 parents: 30+. * Female cinema employee: 25+, motherly looking. * Young couple (male + female): any age * gorilla
Casting takes place Sunday, March 30th from 12-2pm, in the Jones Communication Center (CMA) in room 5.131, on the corner of Guadalupe & 26th St. Headshots are great if you have them. These positions are non-paid but food and copy of film provided. For an appointment and more info. please contact Christina ().
In the bizarro world of the warblogger, it's not about the oil, or revenge, or weapons of mass destruction/distraction -- it's about spreading feminism. So watch out all you countries that harbor sexism and sexist behaviour -- you could be next for a "shock and awe" pounding.
This wasn't the Auden poem I was trying to remember (like I can remember more than two lines of any poem other than "Tyger, Tyger" and "There Was An Old Man From Nantucket"), but it has resonances for these times:
There will be no peace - W.H. Auden Though mild clear weather Smile again on the shore of your esteem And its colours come back, the storm has changed you: You will not forget, ever, The darkness blotting out hope, the gale Prophesying your downfall.
You must live with your knowledge. Way back, beyond, outside of you are others, In moonless absences you never heard of, Who have certainly heard of you, Beings of unknown number and gender: And they do not like you.
What have you done to them? Nothing? Nothing is not an answer: You will come to believe — how can you help it? — That you did, you did do something; You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh, You will long for their friendship.
There will be no peace. Fight back, then, with such courage as you have And every unchivalrous dodge you know of, Clear on your conscience on this: Their cause, if they had one, is no thing to them now; They hate for hate's sake.
Life during wartime -- strange that right now I can't recall the lyrics or how that Talking Heads song goes. Wartime.... what a strange word. Springtime, lifetime, daytime, playtime, quality time, wartime. Auden must have written something appropriate but my memory draws a blank there too. These are times that really mess with our heads. So many of the bloggers and online diarists I read seem to have disengaged with events going on right now -- even those who wrote passionately about them before the missiles started raining down on Baghdad. Faced with the reality of what is happening so many have sought refuge elsewhere, looking inward to the little things that make life worth living. Me too, I might add, finally getting around to reading Paul Leppin's The Road to Darkness, which had remained by the bed since January despite the enticing backcover quotes ("I have seldom read a more disgusting book" and "a series of disgusting orgies with some mystical drivel wrapped round the obscenties"), and listening to Robert Wyatt Rock Bottom about three times a day. The TV is on, the sound turned down, waiting for some news to come on rather than the usual processed "human interest" fluff about how some local patriotic B-B-Q joint has sent enough sauce overseas for 30 troups. (That works out at what? A five minute TV plug for a couple of bottle of spicy ketchup? I'm hoping I misheard and they were a bit more generous than this, maybe sent over half a pound of brisket and maybe a couple of sides of coleslaw.) More later, with maybe even a modicum of coherency when I can get my brain unjumbled. Meanwhile, here's what you always wanted to confirm your suspicions: George W. Bush's war record.
G. Beato's Soundbitten is probably my favourite non-music blog at the moment -- succinct, funny, passionate, smart and fair. And he has also finally cleared up the burning issue of who the world's worst "journalist" is. Of course there is a lot of competition at the New York Post, which is like the worst of the British tabloids mashed together and anything resembling news, humour and scantily-clad young women taken out. It seems to be put together ("written" seems too strong a word) by people who make Richard Littlejohn read like Will Self. (And yes, here's another link to this interview -- you can never have too many links to this interview.)
Anti-French hysteria comes even to Austin. The Eiffel Tower is no more. This is, or was, the exact, authenticated replica of the tower located outside Dreyfus Antiques on MLK and Lamar, but they had to remove it earlier in the week because of threats from freedom-lovin' Talk Radio throwbacks. We drove past last night and the four bare concrete blocks it once stood on symbolize the bloodyminded insanity of -- oh, just about everything going on at the moment.
I know, I know. As soon as hostilities break out and the streets of Austinfill withprotestorsand cops in battlegearbreak out the pepperspray I start writing about glam rock, weird Chilean singers and soft drinks. And when we did go out last night, it wasn't to join the barracades but have dinner at Curra's with Shobhana who's visiting Austin before moving here in May. We briefly watched the police helicopter circling the protest on the other side of Congress Street Bridge from outside her hotel, the one sign that the world wasn't how it ought to be, a place for people to meet up for mole enchiladas and margaritas....
The iconography, sounds and naffness of glam rock was never truly banished from popular regard in the UK, no matter how mocked, ridiculed or ironically appropriated it's been over the last thirty years. Stomping around to "Blockbuster" or "Cum On Feel The Noize" was always a treat, and people got an extra thrill from pretending to feel guilty about, especially in the days before nightclubs like the Flares' chain rehabilitated the genre for nostalgic fun and profit. But it always seemed to be a very precise oeurve -- the names and discs were known to devotees and casual pop memoriabilists alike. There was a glam canon and it didn't seem possible that there could be a b-list, a undergrowth of near misses and also-rans for collectors and archivists to get to work on. The whole point of glam was transforming the ordinary and lumpen into something glamorous and charismatic which could only happen with. regular appearances on Top of the Pops, Lift Off, Get It Together and -- God help me -- Cheggers Plays Pop. Without those shows -- where a whole generation of us were first exposured to desperate men in makeup and bacofoil platforms over our teatime beans and curlywurlies -- the bands would have been nothing more than anonymous, unseen blokes in a studio trying to cash in on the new thing that they didn't quite understand but seemed to be a surefire earner....
Which just goes to show what I know. Go read today's Church of Me which investigates the sound of the unknown glam rockers, Plod, Iron Virgin, Bearded Lady, Crunch and more on a compilation entitled Velvet Tinmine - 20 Junk Shop Glam Ravers. One of these days Marcello will write about some band I've never heard of and I'll think "Nah, he doesn't make them sound worth hearing at all".
I forgot to mention that we went to the Dr Pepper museum in Waco at the weekend. Or the Dr Pepper Museum and W.W. "Foots" Clements Free Enterprise Institute if you want to give it the full-blown title. The museum is amusing enough if you're happy to spend an hour or two entertaining the notion that everything about this soft drink is interesting. It's starts well with the spookiest anamatronic creation this side of the LBJ museum, and the progression of logos, can designs and advertising material through the 20th century confirms my suspicion that for several decades genuine artistic talent was put into designing even the most trivial of things -- whereas now a slanting typeface, a drop shadow effect or incorporating the word EXTREME!!!!!!!!! is enough to win an award. I'm not so convinced by the succesion of Dr Pepper advertising copy, however. Nice artwork, lame slogans. "Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2 and 4" for example. What does that mean? "Dr Pepper, you're a part of me"? That's sounds like a line from badly translated porn. "I'm a Pepper, He's a Pepper, Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?" That's just weird. They don't mention the slogans they used in England: "Dr Pepper, so misunderstood" and "Dr Pepper -- What's the worse that could happen?" which had an admirable sense of admiting the uphill struggle they were having.
The museum fizzles out on the third floor when it turns into the W.W. "Foots" Clements Free Enterprise Institute, which sounds like it ought to be some sinister front but is really just endearingly daft, a half-hearted attempt at presenting capitalism as some creaky old Horatio Alger rags-to-riches fable where everyone can and really should be a millionaire and that its only medlesome bureaucrats and laziness that stops us all becoming astronauts or soft drink manufacturers. There's a video where it all goes into extreme overdrive, with a futuristic fantasy that somehow links America conquest of distant galaxies on "space scooters" with the gumption and stick-with-it-ness learnt at the soda fountain of the corner drug store....
The exploration of the heavens was the free enterprise system’s finest hour. But its first hours were in those old-time soda fountains and bottling companies in small towns. Of all industries, it is the American soft drink industry of Earth that most typifies free enterprise and the spirit that has created so much progress in so many worlds.…
You have to wonder why anyone would think that Texas of all places needed an institute to promote the advantages of capitalism over socialism or anarchy (the only other choices according to "Foots"), but I suppose it gaves the guy something to do when he retired....
(For everything else you ever wanted to know about Dr Pepper, including the startling revelation that Lee Harvey Oswald was a habitual Dr Pepper drinker but bought a coke on the morning he -- or someone -- shot JFK, see the alt.fan.dr-pepper FAQ....)
Had a brief and unusual interview yesterday. Or rather an audition. Fifteen years of experience as a technical writer gets me nothing after six months of trying in this current economic mire but merely having a British accent is enough to get me through the doors for the chance of some freelance work that pays about sixty bucks an hour if my voice is the one the management prefer. I'm sure I won't get it -- there must be someone in Austin with more melifluous tones than I, someone who isn't getting over a headcold and whose voice doesn't sound like a creaky door -- but just being able to say that I auditioned to be the voice of an automaticated telephony system brings me a moment of cheer.
Of course it might be interesting to wonder why a company located in the heart of Texas wanted a nice middle-classed English accent....
A name from the past that wasn't mentioned at the rather depressing induction of the Clash into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or any of the eulogies to the late Joe Strummer was Alvaro, the Chilean with the Singing Nose.
"Who?" I hear you ask. "Strummer was a punk, he didn't have anything to do with singing gnomes...."
Nose. Singing Nose. Here's the story.
Alvaro Peña-Rojas was born in Chile in 1943 and released a couple of singles there 1965 there in a band called Los Challengers, followed two years later by "El Twist del Infierno" as a member of Los Bumerangs.
In 1973 he fled Chile after Pinochet's fascist coup and took his saxophone to England, where he met up with Joe Strummer (who at the time went by the rather unpunk name of "Woody" Mellor) to form El Huaso and the 101 All Stars -- named after the squat where they lived at 101 Walterton Road, Maida Vale, in north London. The band, whose name became shortened first to the 101 All Stars and then the 101ers, played fast, earthy r'n'b, what was then known, not always approvingly, as pub-rock.
The band played for two years, released the still listenable "Keys to your Heart" on Chiswick before splitting early in 1976. Their last two gigs were supporting a bunch of upstarts called the Sex Pistols. It was seeing the Pistols that made "Woody" suspect that playing old Chuck Berry riffs in sweaty London pubs was a dead end and the future lay elsewhere. So when Mick Jones and Paul Simeon came around asking if he wanted to form a band with them he didn't need to be asked twice....
For pub-rockers the 101ers gave birth to some unlikely musicians. Aside from the renamed Strummer, other members went on to join the Raincoats, PIL and the Passions, whose "I'm in Love with a German Filmstar" is an early goth favorite around these parts and about as far from gutsy r'n'b as you can imagine. One of their guitarists, Martin Stone, even made the strange transition into a literary character and now crops up in novels by Michael Moorcock and Iain Sinclair.
But Alvaro was the most unlikely of all. He put away his saxophone and recorded the curious, infamous just for the title, Drinkin My Own Sperm, 500 copies of which were released on his own Squeaky Shoes label in 1977 -- and mainly disapeared without trace. (I remember seeing it mentioned in Zigzag when it came out and was mildly intrigued, but they didn't have it in the local branch of Virgin so I probably bought something by the Residents or Devo instead and forgot all about it.) Ever since, punks and collectors have been intrigued, confused and horrified by this record. Expecting some sort of outrageous proto-punk grail they've spent up to several hundred dollars on what turns out to be mostly rudimentary piano thumping, nursery rhyme flute-tooting, minimal percussion and "ridiculously schmaltzy singing". What I've heard of this album could be considered "outsider music" but for the fact that it is playful and catchy, even when it's as disturbing as the title song. "Don't worry about the bum notes," say the sleeve notes.
Only 200 copies of the follow up, Mum's Milk Not Powder, recorded in Germany in 1978, were released. This features Alvaro on piano, percussion, bass and nose-whistle and a friend on drums, percussion and "washing the dishes sounds". You just know that Joe and Alvaro had well and truly parted ways musically by this point.
Unnoticed by the rest of the world, Alvaro has gone on releasing tapes and vinyl. To celebrate his 50th birthday in 1993 he put out a single called "I'm not so young anymore" (b-side: "Watching the fridge defrost"). In 1997, twenty years after its original release Drinkin... (I'm not typing that title again) came out on CD and may still be available. I've think he's now returned to Chile after all these years with the Pinochet regime out of the way. He's had a website for years, although most of the useful information is in Spanish or German, which explains why this piece is so patchy. There are some audio samples of his songs if you're feeling brave. It's fun to finally hear the title track of his first album after all these years, to hear what else was going on when we were all pogoing to the sond of his old bandmate bashing on about white riots and London burning with boredom -- although I wouldn't recommend you played it too loud in the office....
I'm still waiting for the following message to appear on the Dixie Chicks fansite:
Okay, we said sorry. Turns out you're all just a bunch of unforgiving knuckledragging thugs. So we're going to boycott you. No more nice lilting bluegrass, feisty country rock and Texan cleavage for you undeserving rednecks. We're going to do Butthole Surfers cover versions from now on. While wearing spacesuits. And playing samplers, turntables and synths. That'll learn ya!
Oh well, at least "stocks and the U.S. dollar rallied this week while oil prices and safe-haven government bonds and gold have dropped on signs the conflict is imminent." All we need is "a quick, uncomplicated military campaign that will unseat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein within weeks, entail a minimum of civilian and military deaths and retain a framework for global political stability" and we'll be fine and dandy. Sorry that should be the market will be fine and dandy....
Here we go. Anti-France backlash grows ugly. As opposed to merely amusing and chucklesome, I guess. Just as well "Frenchie" got herself disqualified from American Idol or else Fox would be getting boycotted.
And this is just horrible, using the dead as the pawns of self-righteousness. Just dig 'em up 'n' ship 'em home, that'll show the frogs. Can't these people just concentrate on fighting one battle at a time?
LATER: What do these damn fools think they're doing, fraternizing with the enemy? Who do they think they are, the Dixie Chicks? Boycott everything! Pour everything down the toilet! Beat yourself up for having once watched Amelie.... And you know, I hear there are nerdy kids still playing French Horns in school orchestras who are just asking to be beaten up....
Each morning the birdsong grows more maniacal, symphonic with whoops, caws, trills, hoots, mad shrieks and noises that are just too damned silly. You rush to the window expecting to see something from Dr Seuss, bright blue 'n' yellow, knock-kneed and wrinkled, possibly wearing an amusing hat and pince-nez, but it's usually just a grackle....
Today the temperature may reach the low 80s which will no doubt herald the chitinous tap of insects against the screen windows and the onset of the sound of crickets, a 360 degree electrical hissing that you feel at the tip of your spine rather than hear. By lucky coincidence the air conditioning is scheduled to be switched on today, to blast icy air against the searing central Texas heat until about November when it starts to cool down. And we had our first roach of the season on Saturday, lazily crossing the wall, about the size of a cigar. Hit it with a shoe and it might eventually notice. You really need a pneumatic drill or sledgehammer to make any kind of impression on these monsters. Time to go to Target for a selection of sprays and traps, or maybe to Just Guns to get something a bit more satisfying. A couple of rounds from an Uzi at close range might be enough to stun your average roach....
Osama bin Laden's niece, Waffa bin Laden, a 26 year old lawyer and Natalie Imbruglia lookalike who is apparently "a regular on the London party scene," is planning to release a pop single with Madonna's producer Nelee Hooper.
And t.A.T.u. are planning to get married underwater in Holland. (These may be Signs of the Apocalypse #2 and #3.)
Dixie Chicks get boycotted, banned and burned in effigy for not being the slackjawed, robotic Bush apologists that corporate country musicians are expected to be. I think this story only reaffirms my opinion that Dr Johnson got it wrong -- country music is the last refuge of the scoundrel....
I have the horrible feeling that all Marc Katz's pronouncements as he runs for mayor of Austin are going to start "I can't help it, I gotta tell ya..." But maybe they'll come with a free bucket of pickles too....
To the Gallery Lombardi, for the opening party for the Rawkshow, a exhibition of artworks by mostly female rock musicians including original US punk rockers Penelope Houston and Exene Cervenka, the Toxic Avenger's girlfriend Phoebe Legere and others from Hole, L7, the Lunachicks and, um, the Mediaval Baebes. Some interesting work, some groping for conceptialistic relevance and failing. Most of the people there weren't looking at the art, as you'd expect. There were bands and a female DJ playing Drum 'n' Bass, which made a nice change to the usual outmoded SXSW stuff leaking out from establishments all over the city. Satan's Cheerleaders dispensed beer and sushi and added to the obligatory vinyl miniskirts and fishnets quotient, which I have to admit is closer to my conception of true Austin style than stetsons, belt buckles the size of manhole covers and cowboy boots. But I'm funny that way....
The Gallery Lombardi is in a great location -- I thought "on the other side of the tracks" was just an expression, but this gallery really is located on the other side of the tracks. There's a disused railway siding outside and through the abandoned rolling stock from way across the USA you can see the unpopular but strikingly photogenic City of Austin Power plant, the only electricity generating station in the world to have three movies named after it. The gallery is owned by Ron Prince -- who played "man on phone" in an episode of Laverne and Shirley in 1977. Sometimes I think this website is too informative....
The free classes at the gym will be the death of me. See, I had this notion that the classes were gentle things aimed at those who wanted to feel that they were doing something laudible for their health and fitness but didn't particularly want to lift weights until their neck veins popped. And maybe there are classes like this, but you probably need to look for the ones that say "an entirely painless introduction to..." and the music coming from the teacher's CD player is something lilting and languid, a nice piece of Faure, say. Intermediate Pilates was perhaps not a good idea, especially not with a gallon of spicy beef noodle soup sloshing around inside me. I got through it without snapping any vital organs and sweated out whatever cold or viral ickiness had clobbered me again, but I suspect half of what I did was only a rough approximation of what was intended. I don't have a very good grasp of anatomy so when the instructor said things like "take the weight on your ostranoid and thrust your snoot towards your ichnium socket so that your left runcible almost touches your pyxnycia" I just wiggled my leg a few times and hoped that was close enough.
I am disapointed at how unfit I am. I thought I'd done great things by losing all that weight last year, but it seems all I've done is go from a 200 pound slob to a 166 pound weakling....
Messthetics #1 from Hyped2death.com. A dream come true for an old fart like me. All those DIY records that came out in the UK between 1978 and 82, all those bands who took to heart the sleevenotes of the Desperate Bicycles and Scritti Politti first singles and did it themselves on the cheap, available again on a series of CD-Rs. This first volume is just bands with names starting with R to Si, so the series is likely to consist of about 20 or more volumes when it reaches some sort of stability. Mostly fabulous stuff, great sound quality and enough high-impact post-punk nostagia to keep me rambling for days. Bands I vaguely remember, bands I loved, bands I read about twenty years later, bands that even their mothers never knew existed. 29 tracks for eight dollars, including what for the last two hours I have regarded as the greatest record of all time, "Don't go backwards" by the Record Players (Wreckord 001, 1978) . It's all legit too, the bands no doubt seeing this project as an updating of the whole DIY culture they were involved with that, for a year or so, actually made some of us think the record industry was a silly irrelevance.
Yeah, this was my era and I don't feel at all sorry about it now....
Blah, blah, blah, South by South West, blah. Not my kind of thing, I'm afraid. I'm sure there's an obscene number of obnoxious schmoozing industry types, but that sort of behavior goes on far from the places we go. All I get to see are too many acoustic guitars being strummed on the drag, too many nicely-dressed "alt" kids asking for spare change, too many smug features on local TV channels about that vast self-congratulatory wodge of cosy, country-tinged, singer-songwriter, comedy-cowboy-hat-wearing dullness that seems to be regarded as Austin's great musical heritage and culminates in the Austin Music Awards. (Although congratualations to the Basil and the rest of the Eggmen for winning the best cover band award again....)
What I want today. There was once an Austin all-girl band called the Foams. They put out a 4 track EP (Gay Boys/Paint Me/Wanton/Shoes) in 1981 on the Pet Me Quick label. It is described on Collectorscum as "One of the worst records ever released. Avoid at all costs". How could anyone with any curiousity still burning in their soul not want to track this down immediately?
Monday evening we got $25 each for spending an hour in a computer-filled cupboard, wearing headphones and evaluating voice samples. I have made easier money, but I wouldn't say no to a lot more "work" of this kind, so if you know any companies in Austin that need research subjects, let me know. I'd prefer not to be injected with radioactive leeches but, hey, if the money is right....
More punk nostalgia for anyone who, like me, has a vague memory of John Peel playing a song called "Wot's for Lunch, Mom? (Not Beans Again!)" and thought they'd look it up on Google one evening: Batman in the Laundrette -- The Story of the Shapes. Pages of great rambling gossipy and possibly even libelous stuff like this:
We go and play at all the dives in London with the famous, the no so famous and the soon to be famous. We play with The Reaction, who shortly thereafter benefit from the magic Shapes touch and change their name to Talk Talk and go on, as is usual by now, to fame and fortune. The singer is once again bereft of all personality and I see him later trying to staunch a flow of blood from his nose. Apparently he had been negotiating with our drummer again. If this doesn't stop, we're going to get a reputation. This behavior is continued by Steve who threatens Sounds music journalist Gary Bushell the next night when we play in West London with all women (don't call us girls, we're not fucking girls, we're a feminist all-women collective), Tour De Force. Inexplicably, he writes a great review of us. We must threaten journalists more often. It must be said though, that had we had known that he would eventually become the right wing homophobic, race-bating asshole and all around media nightmare that he became, we would have foregone the review and just given him the sound thrashing that he is still grossly overdue for. It must also be said that I did not offer the delights of my deluxe body to the charming women of Tour De Force. I'm not that stupid.
The Shapes story has a happy ending, twenty odd years on. One of the original members became a professional skydiver (there's an article by him in the February 1999 issue of Sport Parachutist entitled "No Wind Situation" which ties in nicely with the Shapes' most famous recording) and another is Sister Bendy from Eurotrash. You learn all sorts online, don't you?
No updates from No Rock 'n' Roll Fun for a day or two, which goes without saying is bad news for those of us who like to have our pop poop sifted first.The Minor Fall, The Major Lift is back, recommending William Gaddis, which is always nice to see. I'd probably disagree and recommend Carpenter's Gothic as the first thing to read of his -- it's not his best and at heart is not much more savage and insightful than a couple of series of Seinfeld, but it's the most "gentle" introduction if you can't face the formidable heft of his other novels. A more detailed review of his last work, the barely-paragraph-long Agape Agape may follow....
(I hated Britpop, the name, the concept, the whole sad business of watching a third or fourth generation of groups being obliged to recapitulate the Beatles trajectory from innocence to tragic bloat at triple-speed, "Please, Please Me" to White Album in two years and half a dozen videos... oh and the chimpy grins and sideburns, the media-friendly, retrograde laddishness of it all, where the only women allowed usually dressed as men (Elastica, Echobelly). It was as if all the invention and discovery of the post-punk years had been wiped away and the established canon was reinstated, the more popular recordings of the Beatles, Stones and Small Faces set in stone again as the only acceptable influences. No longer would you gain bonus credibility points for leaving those King Tubby, Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman LPs at the front of your collection when the lads came back from the pub....)
(For me Britpop was a convenient tag for everything I hated, from Tony Blair's glibly avuncular attempts at being a "y'know, sorta hip guy" to the Chris Evans' media empire with Paul Weller lording it over everything somewhere in between. I'd only just started to pay attention to "popular" music again after a couple of years listening to jazz and classical (I'd just replaced my ailing turntable with a CD player and didn't like forking out £12.99 for thirty nine minutes of whatever was that week's thing when you could get 79 minutes of Shostakovich for a fiver) and this all seemed a very silly scene to come back to. Luckily there was PJ Harvey and Stereolab, Seefeel and Aphex Twin, British and American bands I heard on tapes that came free with Lime Lizard, Royal Trux and Trumans Water, Tindersticks and Drugstore, Black Dog and Liz Phair and Portishead.... There was a whole heap of good stuff once I knew where to look and listen. But that didn't stop Britpop from annoying me, from making me want to have words with the junior programmers who came back from HMV each lunchtime with their exclusive limited edition Oasis single sets that they already owned in three other formats....)
(My ghastliest Britpop moment came at Brighton Beach, the club in Leeds that was supposed to be the pinnacle of the whole thing but that happened to be where we usually ended up going from work on a Friday night because it was the only place you could get into without making some effort of looking the part. Dispite its fame and reputation, anyone could get into Brighton Beach, whether you were a computer nerd straight from the office, a Quadraphenia wannabe or an obnoxious drunk, and it was most convenient if you had spent the last five hours drinking in the bar next door. Anyway, one night, filled with a gallon of something handpulled and only slightly toxic, I found myself in the sweaty, crowded cavern of Brighton Beach, surrounded by dour, solitary men shambling around in horrible clothes and subjected to the lumpy plod-rock of Symposium. This was such an absolute negation of everything that made life worth living that it gave me an almost perverse thrill, a false sense that things just had to get better than this, that this hapless subculture had to realise it had been sold a pup and needed to do something about it. There were a few couples around dressed in wacky sixties styles and they seemed to be having their own version of fun, something that borrowed from Blur and Supergrass videos, but for everyone else it just seemed like a joyless obligation, four or five hours of standing around listening to their older brother's record collection in order to claim they had been there, Brighton Beach. I don't know what become of Symposium. They were young and enthusiastic and awful, destined to back Paul Weller on TFI Friday if they were lucky. I walked home, fell asleep listening to u-Ziq's In Pine Effect and vowed never to go to Brighton Beach again. But somehow I ended up there three more times over the next seven or so years and each time was worse than before. I trust that putting the Atlantic Ocean between me and it will at last prove a permanent barrier....)
(Maybe I missed some good stuff with my blanket dismisal of Britpop. I never really "got" Pulp at all, assuming they were a more ingraciating version of the Fall for some reason -- and I'd gone off the Fall by that time so why would I bother with them? And I always suspected there was more to Suede than I was hearing....)
The condensed wisdom, political and otherwise, of Noel Gallagher.
Speaking about himself he said that if he ever did an autobiography it would be called Kettle, Cigarettes, Guitar, Television, as he didn't need anything else in order to live - no women, no drugs, and no band.
I ache. I tell myself that I ache in a good way. Monday night we overdid it, put in an hour on various cardiovascular machines and then endured an hour of "Body Pump", which is some kind of popular insanity involving vigorous exercise with weights to horrible music. I can't believe I'm doing this after decades of being a slob. It feels like it must be doing me good -- nobody could put another human being through that if it wasn't -- and I'm counting on improved muscle strength, endurance, body shape, muscle conditioning, tendon and ligament tensile strength, bone density, muscle balance, postural stability, fat burning capacity, hormonal status and a stronger immune system, not to mention a tolerance for horrible music and improved gaydar. (Right now my gaydar isn't very good, although I perhaps over-compensate by assuming everyone at the gym who isn't pale, bespectacled, wearing a computer industry t-shirt and sweating to get rid of a beer belly is gay.)
Oprah declared not sexy, focused "on the inner self rather than a woman's exterior" and unlikely to be mistaken for rubber-clad dominatrix. And that's a victory?
A brief respite from the blogging thing. We joined a gym, you know, so I'll be writing about "lats" and "gluts" and "abs" instead of the usual silly stuff like the first Raincoats album, the ghost stories of Robert Aickman, Georgie's war against Iraq and last night's "Fox -- Your Voice of Evil" episode of The Simpsons when the urge returns tomorrow or some time this week....
Who pointed me towards this rather good music blog: Agony Shorthand? Nothing but music here, and nearly all the kind I have at some point made wild claims about. But.... But reading and nodding my way through it only reaffirms to me that musically my time has passed, that nothing new really connects to me the way stuff used to. Alas, the music is there and I am here and the webs that used to join us are now the faintest of spidery gossamers. Oh, I'll still get around to listening to the latest bunch of ruffians on the cover of the NME eventually and may even tap my toe to their loutish rhythms but my mind will be elsewhere, probably trying to remember the name of that EP by the Wrong Way Ups on Whoops Lady records of Throckmorton back in 1985 that had the same two note guitar figure. The thrill has indeed gone. Part of me isn't too sad that I've completely lost my focus on what's hip 'n' happening right now (it's been coming for years -- the Stone Roses came and went without me noticing, and I still don't know if this is something to boast about). There's still plenty for me to catch up on from the British post-punk DIY period, 1978-81. I suspect I will enter the 22nd century as a 143 year old man still seeking Desperate Bicycles, PragVec and Bogshed obscurities on whatever the current recording medium happens to be....
It used to be acceptable when they printed forthcoming pieces from Granta or the New Yorker, but something is very wrong when the Guardian starts reprinting stuff from Rolling Stone. Couldn't they get one of their many underemployed pop hacks to churn out a pretty similar "Whither Avril" piece or are they too busy fretting over the situation in Bagdad?
Felt utterly foul for much of yesterday morning. Woke up with the brainshattering remains of a migraine -- my second in two days -- and a temperature of 100 and something. Normally my migraine attacks are months apart and I can console myself during one with the knowledge that I won't have to deal with another for a while. But to have a second attack during the night, to wake up to the axe-through-the-cerebrium world o' pain without the usual harbingers and preparations is a foul prank for my biochemical systems to pull on me. When the mere act of mentation is enough to inflinct howling agonies the pills in the bathroom might as well be in a chest at the bottom of the ocean.
So yesterday morning was not a good time to be me.
Blogger seems to have its arse in a sling at the moment, or at least it did yesterday when I couldn't post at all. This may be a good time to start thinking about moving away from Blogger and perhaps even blogging altogether and return to the online diary fold.
Now this is more like it after that rather lame and silly Bashir interview -- some real, nasty dirt about Michael Jackson coming soon in Vanity Fair. Allegedly he calls black people "spabooks", has no nose at all, is $240,000,000 in debt and in 2000 paid $150,000 to a voodoo chief in Mali to put a murderous curse on Stephen Spielberg, David Geffen and 23 others. Apparently the curse involved the slaughter of 42 cows, so that'll put him in PETA's bad books too....
A "music magazine for adults" is going to be launched in September, aimed at a 30-somethings audience that "has had to do a lot of work on its own to navigate the landscape of popular music with no guidance." You mean they've had to listen to music and judge it for themselves rather than take the word of a bunch of corporate hacks? Thank God this yet-to-be-titled magazine from, ahem, Good Music Media, is going to step in and save them the bother. Who wants to bet me that Norah Jones will be on the first cover?
(Checking on Google, I see the magazine was previously announced in December, to be called Good Music and launched in the Spring aimed at those who found the new incarnation of Rolling Stone too risque for their health.
E-Music Sites Settle on Prices. Ten bucks a month and 99c for each track downloaded of the internet and burned onto CD. Which is dandy if you're a fan of old prog or krautrock bands who rarely did anything less than seventeen minutes long but a bit of a rip-off if you're into Napalm Death. Examples: leaving aside the monthly fee, Television's Marquee Moon would cost $7.92, Ash Ra Tempel's first album $1.98 and the Minutemen's Double Nickles on the Dime, $42.57. Abba's Greatest Hits would be $18.81 while Vladislav Delay's Anima would be a bargain at 99 cents. The Farmer's Manual's explorers_we would be an extortionate $59.10, although you could save $4.95 by skipping the first five "silent" tracks....
A Sunday morning, a flat gray-white sky, another compulsion to listen to English music: this time Havergal Brian's Symphony No 3. As is befitting for a composer so awkward and obscure (his only major impingement on the world at large is that his first symphony is in the Guiness Book of Records as being the largest or longer or vastest -- or maybe all three -- symphony ever written) that he mostly appeals to a certain obsessive mindset, there's an excellent and extensive website dedicated to Brian. You don't really need to hear a note of his music to be fascinated by Brian, to find him the epitome of the obdurancy of the creative process. He was working class, having left school at 12 to work as a carpenter's apprentice, was virtually self-taught and no recordings of his work were ever released during his lifetime ). He wrote the bulk of his 32 symphonies after the age of 80. During his early years -- and Brian lived so long that these "early years" took him up to the age of about 50, when he finished his first symphony -- he "behaved much of the time like a silly ass, both in personal relations and in his career" and squandered the money he got from a local patron of the arts in almost rock 'n' roll style -- mistresses, alcohol, servants and bright orange cummerbunds. Brian's music is as odd as his life, but I will have to listen to a few more of the CDs I have of his, that I haven't listened to for years, before I can try and describe it....
