i want bass!

nice, someone uploaded a soundboard bootleg of the cocteau twins concert at the newport in columbus from 1985 which was featured in that youtube clip. hot diggity gott damnation, if the recording is half as hottttttt as the 3/4 profile shot of liz fraser doing her thang onstage was, then we's in for a fuck-treat of large proportions. NEATO MOSQUITO. i love the internet.

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ztt, one of the raddest (& still intriguing) record labels from the 80s, has been uploading tons of vintage-but-still-brand-new-to-most-of-the-world music videos to their youtube station.

radd3st by far is the stack of 808 state jointz, which illustrate how ahead of their game the group & the label were. which still rock the house & still get thine arsez moving & still make ya think. not content with merely moving arsez, 808 wuz/is the thinking mans' bit of dancefloor crumpet, or some shit.

808 State "Lift"

i want bass!

crimson plus peruvian shoegaze

finally listened to the King Crimson gig in chicago from august 2008, their first run with the addition of gavin harrison on drums. the lineup is very odd & it probably shouldn't have been so shocking that the mix of the show was mostly drums. two drummers! & gavin harrison is the double bass maestro so there's quite a bit of that for the first time in king crimson. i'm not sure how i feel about it, to be honest.

the setlist was entirely golden oldies, which were mostly merely adequate. adrian belew's voice sounded a bit rough in some spots.... but hearing 'sleepless' in the set for the first time in forever was interesting. also interesting that even though tony levin is the only bassist in the current lineup, and 'sleepless' was his iconic bass riff, it was mostly absent from the live version. hmmmmmm. 'three of a perfect pair' is always cool. 'neurotica' kind of half cool, half annoying, same with 'thela hun ginjeet.' didn't care for 'frame by frame' at ALL! 'indiscipline' was mostly pointless since the dynamics were kind of flattened out by either the nonstop drum solos or the 'powerful eq' setting on my car stereo, not sure which. but now i am curious to reinvestigate the band Porcupine Tree since gavin harrison is in king crimson.

ALSO:
random search on 'shoegaze' & this 2008 joint by Resplandor came up, produced by Robin Guthrie. a peruvian (it says here) shoegaze band that formed in early 1996. y'know, we should've all formed a peruvian shoegaze band in early 1996. anyway, Resplandor is nice but it's not instant/permachub like The Daysleepers was/were/is/always will be.

Here's another Resplandor track, live, with bigboy Guthrie sitting in (playing a Fender Jazzmaster guitar, very nice!).

tooth house and eau ate

TOP ALBUMS OF 2008
Ting Tings - We Started Nothing
The Daysleepers - Drowned in a Sea of Sound
Wedding Present - El Rey
Jesu - Why Are We Not Perfect
The Cure - 4:13 Dream


TOP OLD ALBUM DISCOVERIES OF 2008
Scritti Politti - White Bread, Brown Beer
Wedding Present - discography
Wheat - Hope and Adams
Red House Painters - Old Ramon


TOP ALBUMS THAT SHOULDA SHOULDA BEEN IN 2008
Irreligion - Summer Exhumation EP
Devilcake - Halloween Binge live DVD/boxset
The Verdant Spiral - Organick
Drone Forest - mega:drone
Samarkand - live DVD/boxset

maybe next year, eh.

cocteau twins link action

this is just weird!

cocteau twins receive an award, october 2008
someone on the cocteau forum said robin looks like he was in a duffle bag & liz looks like queen victoria's sister

this is just weird!

cocteau twins on channel 10, wbns at the newport, 1985.

newer robin guthrie blog

several songs by the literal offspring of cocteau twins

yawning fawnboy

POINTLESS YOUTUBERY OF A FAWNING FANBOY
LICK this, the 1996 video by Red House Painters for their cover of the Cars song "All Mixed Up."

holy crap! I just watched it again & I know I just said holy crap but holy fucking crap, man! This video has it all. An extremely hot chick and an even hotter song! Damnation she's fine! Gott damn! etc.

Just noticed this ancient clip of XTC "this is pop" on a tv show introduced by Peter Cook. & naturally at the end he gets the band's name wrong. Hah.

& holy feack, why have I never even heard of this before?!??!!? it's a sickeningly literal music video for the stunningly pretentious, stunningly great, neil peart crossed with a pagan ritual in a library or something. Icicle Works "Love is a Wonderful Colour,"

I swallowed hard and listened, intently resigned
beside the glow
--
reality finds you fumbling for reason
when the chance comes round

etc.

& holy shit, I also didn't know this existed. a live clip of the awesome "Reaping the Richest Harvest", which features some nice over the shoulder camera work so ya's can see my man Chris Sharrock beating the living tits off his drums. HOLY SHIT!!!!! obviously you'll have to try to disregard the singer Ian McNabb who was already beginning to lose the plot by this point, sporting as he does a brown fringe jacket & a headset mic. Very ill-advised.

will i
subsequently fumble
through the reasons to be gained......

but then check out the bassist giving hell to the roto-toms in mid song

(clearly, the less said about this the better. and this. after that first album it all went pear-shaped.)

but gasp "as the dragonfly flies" live! in the pissing rain. Korgs in the rain, surely a great album title

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Here's Prefab Sprout taking the piss out of The Boss with "Cars & Girls".

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MIRANDA SEX GARDEN
I don't know why I thought to look this up, but there it is. The remix, anyway. The original was only like 90 seconds.

Here's a much better song, from those 2-3 years when they & everyone else in the world sounded like Levitation. Good times!

speaking of which, Levitation "Nadine" music video, another blueprint for my current preferred vision of dark, organic pop, check out the chick & that fucking horn part has always given my chub a chub. rock on! & the drumming, oh the drumming. Dave Francolini is like a caveman (ie savage, brutal) scientist behind the kit. I'm tellin' ya. This song is only 90 seconds & it KICKS FUCKING ASS!!!!! even though it came 8-10 years after the good icicle works shit it still seems v similar to me for whatever reason. same vibe, same spirit, if that's not too ghey a word to use.

enjoyment

the past few mornings have given me a chance to digest some musics & to even recreate certain aspects myself. yesterday in the car i jammed like fuck to the Sundays, obviously, i finally got all 3 of their albums in mp3 form & had them on random play. sweet. add to that the 2008 stuff so far from the Cure, which includes new singles & a couple of remixes. i like the songs themselves a lot but at least one of the remixes sucks. today, this morning, i was back to the 'nu-misc' folder on the mp3 cd & fell in ear-love with the two songs by Windsor For The Derby. me neither. shit was pretty righteous this morning, they hit me with some old school dirgeyness but they added old style xtc drums & wires so it was just weird enough to make me go HOLY hot BAD F-WORD! there was another song in the nu-misc folder, i forget who it's by, but it sounded like Swans crossed with Beach Boys. It was power dirge, then a breakdown, then a 4-part a capella thing. It was weird. ... that was also Windsor For The Derby. So, well done, them.

ghouly halloween muzak

last night on the ghouly halloween muzak at work, my ears exploded to the tones of....... one of the last songs i'd ever expect to hear at work, "shadow of love" by the Damned!

followed 90 min later by "lullaby" by the Cure.

if only they coulda worked in some xtc & kiss it would've been the best muzak set evar.

jesu "why are we not perfect" ep is fucking excellent. i'm almost positive that ole justin k broadrick fleshyjesu got himself a old casio sk-5 toy sampler like mine. the way he uses loops & the loops he's using sound very familiar. plus there's this telltale xylophone tone. hah. i guess we'll know for sure if his next album features dog barking, laser machine gun & bongo hi/bongo lo. the new ep is full-on my bloody valentine worship, which is allllllllllll right with me. my bloody valentine meets red house painters. very obscure for most of the world, very bonerific for myself & my earholes.

it could be sweet, like a long forgotten dream

yep, heard portishead "it could be sweet" on the muzak at work this morning. outrageous! in addition to hearing that one cocteau twins song numerous times at work..uhhhh, i think it's the one on 'heaven or las vegas' that comes after 'iceblink luck'.

i didn't care for "Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music" funny BBC radio show till the later episodes, which included many Morrissey jokes (& jokes about sad obsessive Smiths fans) & many many funny rock songs, including the one about being trapped in the airport, 'vodka & toblerone'. which, yeah. hey, there ya go. it's no 'cereal & beer' but it'll do.

Still crushing hard on the happy songs on "skylarking", the 3 good songs on "nonsvch", & maybe 1 song from "wasp star". the rest....not so much. Colin Moulding songs don't make sense to me lately. & "mummer" had eluded me completely till this very morning. when I was reminded of the Andy Partridge interview when he talked about Steve Nye, who they got in to produce "Mummer" after hearing his work with the band Japan. "Mummer" is just a slow, depressing album overall for some reason to me. Even the last half of "Skylarking" just seems doom-laden.

Gimme the happy, gimme "Dear Madam Barnum" 50x in a row, please!!!!!!!

blagger's fact

the Blagger's Guide destroyed me yesterday when he did the Blagger's Guide to New Romantics, ie Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet.


He said that Japan used the New Romantic genre to go from being a third rate Roxy Music cover band to being "a sort of gay Talking Heads" which then he cued up "Visions of China" & it really did sound like a sort of gay Talking Heads.



Hahahahahhahahahahaaa! Greatest show ever.

bearsuit nearby

hmm, Bearsuit will be in philly oct 14 & cleveland the 16th. They made that funny, kick-ass song "foxyboxer" that still sounds great in the car. Dunno if it would be worth driving for 2 hours in each direction to see/hear/witness, but maybe. No.


never underestimate the power of punch from a foxyboxer.
what?
oh yeah.
what?
oh yeah. etc

they're kind of like the Ting Tings but with two chicks & a dude & another dude.

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watched the movie 'smart people' last night. it wasn't bad but i thought it would be better for some reason. it was funny that pretty much all the action in the entire thing takes place over the closing credits. very clever.

oh yeah & clearly i approve & was practically yelling at the tv when the main dude had a william carlos williams book under his arm & was starting to recite 'the red wheelbarrow' to sarah jessica parker.

this week has been all about reconnecting with my heroes, reaffirming my ongoing lust for cathy dennis & the mindblowing poetry of william carlos williams.

i'll say it again, learning about wcw & imagist poetry in high school definitely changed my life. the fact that there was a lesson that included poetry that was literally a note on a guy's refrigerator to his wife, apologizing for eating all the fruit. it was a punk rock moment, it was a moment for me that said ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS IS A FUNNY MOTHERFUCKER & IT DOESN'T TAKE A GENIUS TO RECOGNIZE. Anything could be art, art could be anything.

So much depends
upon a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens

it rocked me in 1988, it rocks me now.

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speaking of 1988, i'm up to the middle of season 2 of 'it's garry shandling's show'. it's half funny half stupid half retarded.

and also in the car listening to the history of uk dance music, they just came up to the part in 1988 when acid house came together. the early acid house shit is still cool when it's just a super dark bass synth line and a kick drum.

the dragons - "here come the roses"

i think i'm seriously in love with cathy dennis. i might've had a dream about her. i need to get a grip, she's one of the richest women in the uk for fakc's sake.
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TV
Had to force myself to watch the 'peter serafinowicz show' after the first episode was so godawfully dull. I'm so glad I did, every other episode of that show is literally incredible. It's so fucking funny. Serafinowicz was the mastermind behind 'look around you' (the greatest show you've never seen), also he was the voice of darth maul and uhhhh if you saw 'shaun of the dead' he played the dickhead housemate. Anyway.... his sketch show was on BBC last year & I didn't care for it at the time, but when I finally watched the other episodes over the weekend it had me gasping with laughter. The Star Wars sketches are amazing (like the love interest for darth vader). And his Beatles impressions are so amazingly bad-ass, he does this whole thing like 'let it be' except it's about taking a dump. awesome.

and the BBN news-reader... that one killed me instantly... hah.

nevermind.

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MOVIES
over the weekend i watched 'the wackness', which is about a guy in nyc graduating from high school in july 1994 & the girl he dates blah blah blah. ben kingsley is in it. it's a good movie, i don't know why or how you'd ever see it but check the shit out.

the bit when the main dude is staring at his dream girl on the beach & they played jane's addiction 'up the beach' had me THIS CLOSE to welling up.

well done, hollywood. gold star.




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MUSIc
Yes. There's this band called The Dragons that includes former members of Levitation, whom I might've mentioned before. Their brand of meaty alternative rock, driven by the still KICK-ASS drumming by Dave Francolini, is currently all I can listen to when I'm at home.

Well, them and Cathy Dennis. I fuckin' love me some Cathy.

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jesu - sun day: TUNE!!!!!

finished listening to 'the blagger's guide' in the car, easily the best show about music maybe ever. i said no one else would like it but me & then the last 4 eps were 'the blagger's guide to the classics', all about classical music. which i know jack fuck about! so it was cool AND i think a couple of you might actually enjoy it. the funniest bit to me was the audience members yelling 'tune' at one of the composers. that's a funny thing that happens in real life at clubs & elsewhere in england when a good song comes on. people yell TUNE! that has always cracked me up, so to hear it in a sketch about classical composers... well... well done, david quantick.

started listening to an almost identical program, 'paul morley's guide to musical genres', which was a six part series covering recent musical developments such as 'twee', uhhh 'glitch', and 'emo'. paul morley is usually one of my favorite people, since he was a music journo in the 80s, uhhhh was responsible for a lot of the non-musical aspects of frankie goes to hollywood, he was the non-musician in Art Of Noise, i usually agree with everything he says. but his series, after listening to 'blagger's guide' is just......annoying. it's not funny and worst of all it doesn't even explain why something like 'emo' exists now, let alone defining what it actually is. so i've just been getting increasingly annoyed... but... then... he saved the best for last, the final episode of the series is called 'perfect pop' & it's kicking my ass. he uncovers a lot of opinions & tries to get to the heart of what perfect pop is & without getting too specific, kind of rekindled my interest (however briefly) in the possibilities of music-making. where this will lead (nowhere, probably) remains to be seen. or heard. or not. probably not.

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watched 'emotional arithmetic' last night, a moody doomer of a film, kind of almost on a 'schindler's list' kind of tip. but not. the music was pretty fucking awesome and the scenery - eastern canada in autumn - was gorgeous. it kind of continued the mental/internal/creative wellspring i was pondering from the 'perfect pop' show earlier & just thinking about how music, coupled with images, can have still have so much impact. the movie was quite depressing in many ways, i'm not sure if i'd recommend it or watch it again. but it was also beautiful and mature in its way.

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quick postscript to the paul morley thing, after writing the above, i heard the conclusion of the perfect pop episode (accidentally typo'ed 'perfect poop' there, shoulda left it), which included an absolutely astonishing interview with CATHY DENNIS!!!!!!!!!!!!! who cowrote kylie's big 2001 comeback hit, which paul morley hinted might be his favorite pop song ever. I've never heard Cathy Dennis talk about music before. Her voice, her giggle, her tone, the things she talks about, she's incredible. I'm in re-lust with Cathy Dennis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! w00t.

BLLLLLLLLLLLLLAGGER'S FFFFFFFFACT!

i've been totally enjoying 'the blagger's guide', the bbc radio comedy-documentary-whatever series by david quantick. it's all about different genres and artists and it cracks my shit up every time. quantick is an awesome comedy writer plus he's also a music journo, in fact he was the one whose review of a certain indie band in the 1980s caused a band to changes its name to Pop Will Eat Itself. there are awesome sketches about captain beefheart, nick drake, syd barrett, and totally informational bits about reggae, the band Love, etc. & apart from a few glaringly obvious incorrect things (like saying KISS is from Detroit), I agree with everything he says! quantick's descriptions of the music & the musicians, his critical 'voice' reminds me of my own. He's even shouty & screamy in the same way I would've been when I was writing music reviews all the time. NICE!

you broke my heart at the funplex, yes you did

i love some of the songs on the new b-52's album, i can't help it.

'juliet of the spirits' is just amazing.

a couple of the songs are too campy and/or stupid but overall, holy shit what an album. great sounds, great songs, totally modern. great songs!!!!!!!!!!

toe jam + citizen kane

I just read about David Byrne's track with The Brighton Port Authority - with him, Norman Cook and Dizzee Rascal. The song "toe jam" is on the Myspace, I declare it to be the funky-fcuk jam o the day! You should read about David Byrne's lyric writing method before checking out the track. Be warned, it IS on a loop. I listened to it like 6x in a row earlier. I'm like 'damn, david byrne is dropping a lot of f-bombs today, isn't he'. But it was all the same song. Dizzee Rascal is an odd choice for a third member of their group but whatever.

Is that Iggy Pop singing on the second BPA track? Nice. This is what pop music should sound like. "He's Frank". I like one other Iggy Pop song, it's called "Candy" and what's-her-name from the B-52's co-sings it.

Third BPA track is not so hot. But no matter.

There's a super rad video for "toe jam", you have to check this shit out.

nice to see Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim making an appearance toward the end, with the biggest knob yet.


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I've been meaning to watch Citizen Kane for a while now. My first attempt ended in failure when the file took a shart in the DVD player. So a replacement file was quickly procured. I saved the file to a 2gb jump drive & crossed my fingers when I plugged it into the DVD player. Success! I'd like to see Citizen Kane with subtitles because a lot of the dialog is garbled. Or like 3 people will be talking at the same time.
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Stereo MC's's music has aged very well & their dude still programs some of the funkiest shiooo ever. They make nice choons and their beats are lithe. Find "Gringo" & agree.

jane child - here not there

listened to jane child's second album again last night. it's hotttt & it's exactly the album i would've made in 1993, in some parallel universe where all my ideas actually worked. hell, even her piano ballad in 5, i mean who hasn't fantasized about writing a sad song in odd time. okay, just me then. the album is a strange one, the first song rocks, the second song is a commerical-sounding pop song. the third song rocks, the fourth song is an even more commerical pop song with a better chorus & awesome bass line. it's that kind of thing. i would've wanted my work to straddle the line between art & commerce exactly that way.

jane child's publishing company was called Radical Dichotomy, which even sounds like my 'label' at the time, 'Bizarre Depiction'. Right?

making flippy floppy

I watched 'lars and the real girl' yesterday. In the party scene it featured two songs that have been stuck in my head ever since, 'genius of love' by Tom Tom Club (which was the Talking Heads rhythm section plus Adrian Belew - this song was also used by Mariah Carey a few years ago, yuck) and.... Talking Heads - "This Must be the Place (Naive Melody)". I've been on a pretty big Talking Heads kick lately anyway & this song especially just creeps up on me. The whole thing is so propulsive, you can't help but bust a move when it's playing & I'm still not sure why. It's not especially funky or anything on its own.

& its use in the movie was very cool. I mean, I'D certainly want to go to a party where people are dancing to a Talking Heads record from 1983!

I couldn't have enjoyed the Talking Heads in the 80s, they were too ubiquitous! & seemed to be played out & all the discussion of David Byrne was mostly pointless to my KISS, Twisted Sister, W.A.S.P. addled pre-teen brain. But now of course my mind has caught up with my genitalia in terms of music taste. So Talking Heads songs are occasionally a revelation now.

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meanwhile, 'lars and the real girl' itself wasn't bad. I do resent it when an entire movie is summed up in its title. It was annoying to know beforehand that Lars would be getting a Real Girl, etc. Y'know, it kinda kills the mystery!

Same thing with 'tristan and isolde', which for its first half is two different stories taking place on separate sides of the Irish Sea. Gosh, I wonder, will they hook up, do you think? Tristan in England, Isolde in Ireland... I didn't bother watching the second half, because...who cares!

Dear Whoever Makes Movies, Don't give away the whole movie in the title, pleasethanksokaybye.

'lars' wasn't really funny, exactly. It was about a guy who went a little mental. It was quite dark & european looking.

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New B-52's album sounds very old school. I approve. Live drums, synths, GUITARS. Wow, guitars. People still use those?!?!

Wow, looks like they're on the Astralwerks label now, that's insane. Astralwerks had Chemical Brothers, Future Sound of London, um, a bunch of cool ambient compilations in the early 90s. Good job, the B-52's. "Juliet of the Spirits" is definitely not "Love Shack". Are all the songs about movies?

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Also, I finally finished reading Salman Rushdie's "shalimar the clown". What an ending! I'm still not sure what happened. Sweet book. I already started his "the ground beneath her feet".

Jesu "Silver" + interview at Amoeba Records

Jesu "Silver" + interview