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Author Message arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, June 29, 2006 - 7:01 pm:    I´ve recently come over this on a colum by Steve Grant. "'s complicated. Mainly I don't listen to a lot of "modern" music. I once told Bob Schreck the difference between our generation and our parents' generation is that when they heard the music we were listening to they said, "Oh, how awful, that isn't music!" and when we hear what our "kids"' (I always love it when some talk show host or pundit condescendingly refers to "The Kids" with arch overemphasis, like they're talking about specimens in some demented freak show) music, we think, "Y'know, it was better the first time." Like if I'm unfortunate enough to switch on the car radio while whatsisname is singing "You had a bad day," whatever it's called, all I can think is that this guy is the modern Gilbert O'Sullivan. (For those who came in late, a hideously maudlin twerp whose morose, "sensitive" tripe scarred the airwaves in the early '70s.) But that's pop music, which is almost enforcedly retrograde these days, though occasionally something interesting slips out, like The Killers or The Dresden Dolls or the Black Eyed Peas. But even on the "cutting edge" side, there's very little new material that I hear that has made any significant strides over what was being done 20-25 years ago, when, via TROUSER PRESS and OPTION, I heard a hell of a lot of music across the spectrum (which isn't to say it's not out there, but it hasn't filtered down to me). There's very little being done with electronica, for instance, that doesn't walk where Cabaret Voltaire had already trod by the time their "breakout hit," Sensoria, came out" This is pretty much my own attitude towards pop music and the reason why I am listening other things now (like world music or jazz) dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 10:24 am:    I listen to a real mix nowadays. Spent years listing mainly to world music, jazz and avant classical stuff, but I'm now a lot more well-disposed towards pop & rock than I have been for years, even if much of it revisits old stuff. What does impress me is the ease with which genre boundariies are now crossed. A lot of the bands in Sheffield who I enjoy seeing play a mix of electronica and rock which is so effortless that it seems, for their generation, there is no boundary there in the first place. Also, I've been discovering more hip-hop and grime recently. There's certainly been strides there in the last 20-25 years. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 10:28 am:    >>bands in Sheffield who I enjoy seeing play a mix of electronica and rock which is so effortless that it seems, for their generation, there is no boundary there in the first place. Actually that's something I was thinking about "ver kids" the other day. It's really interesting the way that metal, folk, electronica, prog and disco just get thrown together, as you say like there were no boundaries in the first place. I think the tyranny of Melody Maker, NME and indie-boy superiority really did our generation no favours. dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Monday, July 03, 2006 - 1:20 pm:    BTW, could we perhaps get this thread moved where people can see it? iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, July 04, 2006 - 12:44 pm:    Moved it! martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, July 04, 2006 - 2:41 pm:    I thought I had wide tastes - but it turns out I've heard hardly anything: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~gstacks/dylanxm Astonishing songs, enlightening links (I don't know anyone else who can move from a coffee-drinking pope to Damon Albarn in one sentence) and often very, very funny: and still the coolest sounding white man on the planet. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, July 04, 2006 - 8:33 pm:    Dylan is playing in Madrid next saturday and I am listening to "the essential Dylan".( EVa and I got tickets) iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, July 04, 2006 - 10:16 pm:    >>coolest sounding white man on the planet I'm still trying to deal with the question of "what does a beige man do?" martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 7:42 am:    Hi, Arturo - I saw him last week - part brilliant, part okay, one song dreadful: I hope you enjoy it! martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 8:32 am:    Without becoming a Dylan bore, I think this is a sweet piece of film. It's a good job *one* of them knew the words ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUbcWzCaQNM&search= bob%20dylan alex Username: alex Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 9:26 am:    Interesting (pop, not Dylan - although he's always interesting if not always good). I tend to explore genres quite heavily for a while before hankering after some pop music. My most recent excursion was into English folk music - some great stuff there, as no doubt Martin will agree ;) But then my pop yen got going again, and I started seeing that English folk has been oozing into the pop scene recently, and I discovered interesting acts like The Eighteenth Day Of May, Tunng, Woodcraft Folk, King Creosote and - most recently and joyfully - Soft Hearted Scientists. All these combine folk elements with electronica, jazz, pop... it's all a big melting pot (and I'm very much looking forward to this year's Green Festival where Bert Jansch and Donovan will be rubbing shoulders with Keiran Hebden and Steve Reid, Sol Seppy, The Silver Jews - ace! - and Woodcraft Folk). Incidentally, I intend to punch Donovan for the way he sings 'alizarin cimson'. Watch this space. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 9:49 am:    Folk: yes - but I think Alex knows far more than I do there. I haven't heard (of) most of these acts! My own small obsession in that direction is David Tibet/Current 93. As extraordinary a non-pop voice as Wyatt or Barrett, or Tiny Tim, and as odd a set of beliefs as Philip K. Dick - but once you get over the urge to laugh at Tibet's very English, very earnest presence, his work's beautiful, exceptionally unsettling, and sometimes both at once - check "While the Night Rejoices Profound & Still" or "The Frolic." alex Username: alex Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 11:23 am:    C93: The new one is really good. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 11:28 am:    This is "Black Ships"? I've read very good things about it. I've really only heard the anthology, "Judas as Black Moth" and a sampler cd that came with David Keenan's book, "England's Hidden Reverse." What else do you rate? alex Username: alex Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 11:42 am:    Yes, 'Black Ships', his best since 'Thunder Perfect Mind' - which is the one I'd direct you to next. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 11:46 am:    I still like Current 93's epic "Imperium" - the found sound and sampled backdrops are very eerie on that one. I've got a feeling that Steven Stapledon had something to do with that album. "Thunder Perfect Mind" has some good choons on it, including "Hitler as Kalki" with Bevis Frond on wah guitar - the two of them meet up again on the "Lucifer over London" album which features a right nice version of The Groundhogs number "The Sad Go Round". But he *is* a strange bird. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 12:00 pm:    No offence to him, but I got this month's "Wire," where he's on the cover, and thought: why are they featuring Jasper Carrott ..? Strange Bird (1): Psychick Youth/"Industrial" with thigh-bone trumpets/thought Noddy was an aspect of God/thought Shirley Collins was an aspect of God (well - almost); now sure Christ is still on the Cross and we inhabit a pocket of stopped time, packed with Satanic illusions. Actually, seeing tv for the first time in years last night and staring at the pyschotic ads. featured in the breaks during the Italy/Germany match, I think he could well be on to something. Strange Bird (2): You mean - like this ..? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnF6aAA1wV8&search= funkadelic iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 12:19 pm:    >>Strange Bird (2): You mean - like this ..? Well, there are clearly many species of strange bird. What does he have to say for himself in The Avant Guardian? And more importantly: what name is he going by these days? I hear he's moved from Glasgow down to Hastings now. If we trace the path from Wathamstow to Glasgow to Hastings I'm sure we can develop a theory about the exact dimensions of the cross. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 2:19 pm:    Exactly so. Judging by his web site - http://www.durtro.com/index4.html - he had some kind of revelation/breakdown last year, and moved from London to Scotland, posting one rhapsodic message after another. Now (for reasons I don't know) he's moved to Hastings: Crowley's buried there, Harry H. Corbett died there, Ian Sinclair has a flat there. "If you're waiting for the Second Coming of Christ, it's nice to be by the seaside," he tells the "Daily Telegraph" - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/ar ts/2006/06/15/bmtibet15.xml&sSheet=/arts/2006/06/1 5/ixartleft.html "Wire" notes he's now converted to Catholicism - though how this squares with his belief in frozen time I have no idea. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 2:39 pm:    There's also a fantastic junk shop in Hastings where I picked up a couple of vintage Casios for under £3! Not sure why The Telegraph feel that Walthamstow is apocalyptic. I find it somewhat idyllic. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 2:42 pm:    And here's a picture of him with Om! http://www.durtro.com/popups/gallery13.html martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 3:10 pm:    >Not sure why ... It's a very metropolitan sense of embattlement, isn't it? You get the same flavour from Clive James - http://www.clivejames.com/ - that English 'culture' only survives because of the writing and painting of a few like-minded people in the same square mile of north London (and, conceivably, a few leafy crescents in Oxford and Cambridge ) - basically, "it's just us and our children - and the rest is just waste ground and *visigoths*." At its best, this feeds a frantic (and genuinely felt) mission to Enlighten before it's Too Late: Read Montale! Look at Sarah Raphael! At its worst, it results in lumbering essays on Isaiah Berlin which only prove, um - that he's read Isaiah Berlin; and curious observations that jazz isn't dead, because of Katie Melua. I'm sure you're happier knowing that. I know I am. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 3:42 pm:    Still, with the-horror-that-is-Stoke-Newington on the other side of the Lea - I'm rather glad that we're still regarded as the Badlands. Resist Islingtonization by any means necessary! Jazz died the moment the first BA Jazz Studies course was approved. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 4:13 pm:    >Jazz died ... I still remember a very old "Pseuds Corner" entry (Benny Green? James again?): "No one can hear a single note played by the Muppet Orchestra without being reminded of the days when Jazz was not just a statement, but a language." Yeah, right. Whatever. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 8:08 pm:    Er... katie Melu of "nine million bycicles" etc? I am quite surprised by the marketing because surely it is pop music? I mean David Sylvian´s nine horses project was pop music and was fairly more sophisticated than that. * Goes back to listening to Blondie records, now the works of a cross-over jazz chanteuse* iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 1:30 am:    >>because of Katie Melua... It so happens that I first heard Katie Melua in Stoke Newington. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 7:38 am:    Ms. Melua seems irresistible to men of a certain age: a marketing factor not to be discounted. I'm quite fond of her singing "Just Like Heaven," too - but, like all the other 'new jazz' performers (except maybe Madeleine Peru) she's too inexperienced/unweathered to give jazz the swing or the sting it deserves. Pop music indeed. alex Username: alex Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 9:17 am:    I first heard Stoke Newington when he was sitting in with Hession Wilkinson Fell at the Blue Bugger. He played saxello and hurdy gurdy with a tuba mouthpiece. Could have been as big as Ayler and as commercial as Bilk, if he hadn't got into the spoiled pharmaceuticals* of course. *not a band arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 12:43 pm:    Madeline Peyroux: I wonder what my opinion of her would be if the voice didn´t sound so much like Billy Hollyday. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 1:14 pm:    Arturo: Hard to say, isn't it? But I heard her forthcoming version of "The Summer Wind" the other week and thought - well, this is just lovely! arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 2:21 pm:    Interesting. It seems she is doing a Tom Waits cover. Un-interestingly She is doing a Charlie Chaplin cover. No points guessing wich song it will be. "Whereas much of her earlier work drew on writers and singers from the first half of the twentieth century, the bulk of Half the Perfect World focuses on artists and writers from the lifetime of the 32-year-old artist, including Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Fred Neil and Joni Mitchell. Peyroux’s knack for choosing the perfect song is again key to the album’s emotional impact, but her continued growth as a songwriter is equally important, and the new album’s four original tunes more than hold their own, raising the groove quotient in the process. Peyroux, Larry Klein and Steely Dan’s Walter Becker collaborated to write the album’s opening track, the wonderfully catchy “I’m All Right.” The album’s other original songs reunite the writing team of Peyroux, Jesse Harris and Larry Klein (who penned the single “Don’t Wait Too Long” on Careless Love). Rounding out the new album are Peyroux’s interpretations of standards from Johnny Mercer, Charlie Chaplin and Serge Gainsbourg. " arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 2:23 pm:    Hold it... I think they are original songs by Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen,Joni MItchel and Fred Neil. Who is Fred Neil? martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 5:03 pm:    Fred Neil was a Greenwich Village folk singer in the early '60s. He wrote "Everybody's Talkin'" (Midnight Cowboy) and "Dolphins" (best known by Tim Buckley). Gave it all up and vanished to the Gulf; died about 3 years ago. http://home.versatel.nl/jim2873/fredneil/chronolog y.html arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 5:46 pm:    Here is the track list. Not original.s http://www.hmv.co.uk/hmvweb/displayProductDetails. do?ctx=1000;-1;-1;-1&ctx=281;1;-1;-1&sku=528116&WT.ac=peyroux _half_frontdoor_side "Smile" as expected. dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, July 06, 2006 - 9:26 pm:    > I first heard Stoke Newington when he was sitting in with Hession Wilkinson Fell at the Blue Bugger. I missed the chance to see Hession & Wilkinson in Sheffield 2 nights ago. Mildly disappointed. I last saw Alan Wilkinson play in the Crypt in Bloomsbury about 12 years ago, jamming with John Grieve. About halfway through a bloke walked through the door and shouted "what the hell is that racket? Can you keep it down please, I've got kids trying to get to sleep upstairs". arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Saturday, July 08, 2006 - 11:58 am:    Some follow-up thougths by Steve Grant (whose quote I put in the start of this tread): "I don't know that modern musicians are any more or less driven by money than musicians at any time in history, though certainly the major record companies are far more driven by the desire for money than at any time in history, though this is the culmination of a music marketing path that began in the '70s. The music business does its best to subtly (and quite often not very subtly at all) dissuade talent of any real creativity at all, preferring the now time-honored Hollywood cliché of "something new and different, but familiar and comfortable." But so does any business, once it reaches a certain point. The point of music marketing today is to convert all product to comfort food, because comfort food is theoretically the easiest sell, and marketing rules the business." I am reminded of Michael Moorcoks bon mot tha all art aspires to the condition of muzak. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Sunday, July 09, 2006 - 6:13 pm:    Seen Dylan already: Here in Spain the attitude towards shows is rather laser passer. If a show is slated to start at nine, it is understood that it will starts nineish. Well, I started at nine sharp with people still queuing up to enter. Twelve long songs in bluesy arrangements played by an excellent band with a particularly strong ritym section. The drummer was excellent. Some on the audience found themselves rather startled to be dancing in a Bylaw show. Most of the songs came from the back catalogue and were not recognized by most of the audience. (Nor by me. I think one of the songs was “Talking world war three blues” but don´t take my word for it). I did recognize a bluesy version of “Mr.Tamourine man” which was sounding quite elegiac. A straight version of “Masters of wars” and a by-the-numbers version of “How does it feel?” Which most of the audience loved and to me seemed the weakest part of the show? The sound was meaty, rithym driven and the voice took a second place to the music. I liked it a lot on its own terms and I liked that Dylan seems to have gone for a sound that it is unfamiliar to most of his audience. Then again, a lot o people were complaining that he didn´t play “Hurricane”, “Blowing on the wind” etc... martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Monday, July 10, 2006 - 8:08 am:    Hi, Arturo - track list for Saturday night's show here: http://my.execpc.com/~billp61/070806s.html Of course, "it used to go like this" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO0gSJGJ7Fs&search= dylan%201966 - but not any more! martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 1:47 pm:    RIP, Mr. Barrett. 1817952%2C00.html,http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/ obituary/0,,1817952,00.html "He's getting rather old - but he's a good mouse ..." iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 1:55 pm:    Poor Syd. And you can bet that the rest of Floyd will capitalise on his death, as they did with his breakdown. Arseholes! martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 2:01 pm:    Poor Syd indeed. And, over on one of his official appreciation sites, they've been planning a "memorial" to him in Cambridge. As one post put it a few days ago: >>>I will refer to this Project as a The Syd Barrett Tribute Monument from now on, as one member seriously questioned the name of a memorial being more a name for something reserved for the dead, and Syd is far from that!<<< Not so fast, sonny ... "I'm nothing that you think I am, anyway." - Roger Barrett, 1971. alex Username: alex Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 - 2:21 pm:    Ah, Syd. Well, he made one of my favourite albums so that's memorial enough for him. dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 - 2:11 pm:    Back in the nu-folk groove, last week I saw a band from London called "James Green's Ship of Fools". Can't find anything about them online, but they were very very good. dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - 10:31 am:    Oops, I got the name wrong. James Green's Weary Sea Dogs, not Ship of Fools (actually, I was told the wrong name). This is James Green: http://www.myspace.com/jamesgreenmusic iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - 10:48 am:    Certainly looks like a nu-folkie. And seems to half at least half-a-dozen of the same contacts as me. I'm almost inevitably going to run into him/end up on the same bill as him some day soon! On a similar tack: if you get the opportunity to see Alex Tucker playing, do so. Lots of looped acoustic, very English solo choirs which blossom into Sabbathesque fuzz or Canterbury-ish pastorales. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - 7:04 pm:    On a completely different track: I´ve found myself enjoying King Crimson´s 03 cd " The power to believe". was put off by what I had heard by them in the nineties ( an awful by-the-number cover of , of all things, "Heroes")but this if fine, if by now familiar, fare) dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - 8:46 pm:    > Certainly looks like a nu-folkie. And seems to half at least half-a-dozen of the same contacts as me. I'm almost inevitably going to run into him/end up on the same bill as him some day soon! Actually, when I first saw him I thought he was you. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - 8:56 pm:    Oh so he looked like David Baddiel, did he? mjp Username: mjp Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 8:08 am:    No doubt this will be album of the year. Pere Ubu's 'Why I Hate Women' will be coming out late September. Here is a note I received from David Thomas about it: "I think you will find WIHW quite an experience. We are veery pleased with it. See as well notes on our remix album for it: http://www.ubuprojex.net/wirw.html" They are the best band in the world. The Big Wide World. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 9:10 am:    You're in contact with Mr. Thomas? We are not worthy, etc. Dipping my toe back into folk (hi, Alex) I've just been listening to this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000C4A1EY/026- 1961664-6462826?v=glance&n=229816 and Sweeney's Men, "Go By Brooks" is one of the msot beautiful things I've ever heard. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 10:22 am:    Me and David, well we chat, we share ideas, we just talk, we converse about this wood block or something, and he says: "John, I'm tired, how would YOU like to be The Boss for a while?"! And I say ... weelll - yeah! iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, August 31, 2006 - 10:32 am:    On the folkiness: Bridget picked up a 1970 Vashti Bunyan album yesterday, which was so rural it smelled of wet straw. Hi MJP. Nice to see you back on The Manor. martin Username: martin Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - 1:05 pm:    Found this in the sale at Borders: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blues-Blonde-Blonde/dp/B00 008RV1Q/ref=sr_11_1/026-4941499-1315608?ie=UTF8 - Mostly what you'd expect (blues artists covering songs that were written as - well, blues), with one astonishing exception: "One of Us Most Know(Sooner or Later)" turned into a rueful waltz by Clarence Bucaro, graced by stand-up bass and a Benny Goodman clarinet. If you like Dylan to begin with, this version is surely in the top four or five covers of his work to date. alex Username: alex Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - 1:44 pm:    Picking up this thread... James Green - nice bloke, got a couple of his rekkids. Going to see him in a few weeks supporting James Yorkston. The new Pere Ubu sounds fab - I'll be giving it a whirl. dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 13, 2006 - 10:32 pm:    My James Green photos in among these: http://www.sumption.org/life/20060810freenoise arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - 11:33 am:    Finally listened to Miss Peyroux´s new cd. The same companies that did absolutely nothing to promote "careless love" because there was no reason to believe that it could be a hit (And never mind that dance me to the end of love was on heavy rotation on Paris radio...and I mean Paris, France...Not Paris, Hilton) are putting out now a storm of hype that includes full page ads in the Spanish papers. The interesting thing is that she is covering songs by Anjani Thomas released (blue alert and half the perfect world) earlier this year. When asked by journalist the reason she is chosen those songs, she answer, with a straight face, that those are songs that have taken the test of time. Not a single journalist has challenged that statement so far. Anyhow. Lovely songs and good covers - and even thought she is very good indeed I am no sure that she is better than Miss Thomas -and Anjani Thomas (and Leonard Cohen) can use those royalties right now... And the journalist not paying attention deserves to have their legs pulled, no doubt. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - 11:36 am:    >>heavy rotation on Paris radio...and I mean Paris, France...Not Paris, Hilton !!! arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - 11:40 am:    Ups... Brother José told me that last winter you could not get away from that song in Paris, France. Silly joke on what that heiress may or may not be listening. (rap by the sound of it) My point is that record companies don´t have a clue. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - 11:53 am:    >> My point is that record companies don´t have a clue. Oh very much so. All part of the same dumb circus. Found someone on Plan B Magazine, which is normally a halfway decent journal, getting excited about the fantastic-ness of the Paris Hilton album. I hate that. When music journos fall in love with something crap like that because it makes them hip and populist. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - 10:40 pm:    I think that the "so bad it´s good" is a routine mostly employed by hacks, geeks or cinics that must justifiy a marketing goal. Now for a porn album from a genuine porn star!(Miss Hilton original clain to fame) iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - 9:24 am:    >>mostly employed by hacks, geeks or cinics that must justifiy a marketing goal. Which is why I'm slightly appalled to find it in a venue which I normally associate with none of the above. Slipping standards. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - 9:51 am:    Either that or they want to boost sales including Miss Hilton on the cover and some pictures of the video that brougth her to reknown ( with stars and circles of course inside). If that, file under shameless marketing ploy. On the other hand,there is a tendency for music journos to patern a persona of being "in" to the next big thing. If so, the writer of the piece is obviously an idiot. Not for championing Miss Hilton record but for believing in "in" and out. dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 6:44 am:    I've seen that Paris Hilton record praised in a few places I wouldn't expect to, although most have been keen to point out that it's not Ms Hilton's contribution that makes it any good, but the production. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 10:00 pm:    Er.. I wonder why it´s not highlined by the production. You know like "warner brothers presents..". The fact is that when Nelly Furtado got a hip producer ( Timabald I belive its the name) it is widely advertised and no one but pundits know who has produced the P.H. cd. mfu Username: mfu Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Saturday, September 23, 2006 - 7:44 pm:    OK, whos with me on killing the Scissor sisters? arturo Username: arturo Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Sunday, September 24, 2006 - 12:45 pm:    As far as killing goes the only killing I go for is killing somebody softly with song, but the scissor sisters just brought out a singles that is little but a knock-off of the glory days of the Bee Gees. I have only listened it a couple of times but I don’t think it is anywhere close to the fluid vocal harmonies and dynamic bass of the original. And it will be bought by people who would never go close to the original because they were considered uncool by journos who were too busy praising the darkness. And now Paris So... I see your point. dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Monday, September 25, 2006 - 7:28 pm:    More folk-ish wonderment: I saw Thomas Truax on Saturday night. Absolutely magnificent! A musical genius, words cannot describe, etc etc etc. Here's a photo I took of Thomas and his Hornicator: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gulch/251678517/ And here's his website: http://www.thomastruax.com/ dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - 7:00 am:    And one more: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gulch/252758633/ iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - 9:48 am:    This one's a fine picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gulch/253138819/ dave Username: dave Registered: 8-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 2:21 pm:    Hey Dan, Truax is a New Yorker I believe. I'm always hearing good things about his shows, but I've never made it to one myself. Judging from your rave review and (excellent!) photos, I think I need to see a show when he gets to town. On a less folky note, I saw The Clientel play not too long ago. And Tortoise as well. Both shows were great. I've been listening to the Clientel quite relentlessly at work these days. You know they have a Machen quote in their liner notes? That guy just seems to inspire everyone. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 2:45 pm:    What are Tortoise doing with themselves these days? I saw them several times around the period of the first two albums and they were really quite a bundle of energies. Only saw them once after that and they'd become more serious and virtuosic but much less joyful. Did they get their joy back? dave Username: dave Registered: 8-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 2:46 pm:    Oh! I forgot. I finally have recommendation that you guys might enjoy: go out and buy The National's most recent album Alligator. It's sublime...nearly perfect. It makes you feel drunk to listen to it. dan Username: dan Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 3:03 pm:    Yes, Truax is a New Yorker, although I believe he now spends most of his time away from there, a wandering minstrel (he's holed up with friends in London at the moment in between excursions across the UK). It seems, from some of his comments at the gig and on his website, that he sees Sheffield as some kind of second home. Which is a little odd, but I'm very glad to hear it (and he certainly gave Sheffield an excellent show). Truax is a true one off. Various reviews have compared him to artists such as Captain Beefheart, Viv Stanshall and Tom Waits, and I think that, in as far as you can compare the incomparable, that is pretty spot on. dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, October 04, 2006 - 11:09 am:    Full set of Thomas Truax photos (and a few others) here: http://www.sumption.org/life/20060923thomastruax mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 10:04 am:    I have been listening to Why I Hate Women, the Pere Ubu album, on and off for a week. At first I decided I didn't like it. David Thomas's aged warbling burbling voice and unclear annunciation along with the slow warbling burbling electronic background didn't immediately endear it to me. No, I thought the best of them was over. Then, magic! You start to pick up the little tunes, the melodies, the signature sounds, you begin to hear the rhythms more clearly and it starts to work. What a record! I especially like Love Song. Their blandest title for a song that - despite or maybe because of its restraint - is electrifying, incandescent. It should be released as a single. And what unpromising lyrics it has!: "My eyes are tentacles for to grab you. I live in a room without windows" but very tenderly sung. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 10:27 am:    "My eyes" - now that's what I *call* lyric writing! Did you get/have you heard the bonus thingy, "Why I Remix Women"? *Wonders when SelectaDisc in Berwick St. are going to get this* mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 - 11:27 am:    The lyric actually begins: My eyes are growin tentacles for to grab you My eyes are growin hand grenades for to have you My eyes are growin tentacles for to grab you I live in a house without any windows - sung in a fluttery tender voice. Understandably, if you announce the album title to a room full of women it doesn't go down well. It produces an air of depression. It needs to be explained that Thomas is speaking in the voice of a Jim Thompson low life, rather than in his own voice. The new Marcus Greil book devotes a third of its content to David Thomas: “Crank Prophet Bestride America, Grinning: David Thomas”. I would have said that Thomas is unfathomably melancholic, rather than grinning. Humorous, yes, but piratical too, normally, oddly. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, October 23, 2006 - 10:17 am:    Yep this little ditty should be released as a single. It has real power. I rarely turn the volume of my music above whisper level. This morning I had to have it full blast. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 8:46 am:    No, no, no, no, no, no, no - *please* don't do this! But they did: their greed knows no bounds. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/ar ts/2006/10/25/bmbeatles25.xml - And I love the way they list the Beatles' albums at the end, for all those "Telegraph" readers who might have forgotten them! "I just looked round/And my youth it was sold" - Mark E. Smith arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 9:36 am:    Brother Alvaro went to see the Cirque du Soleil. He was fast sleep in some ten minutes. I remember that the Beatles where not to happy with Sir Goeorge productions because it made them some bland. So in the doubfult case that I went to see that I think that I will easily beat my brother´s mark on getting the snores on. I suspect that it is what they consider "tasteful" innovation. When Migthy Mouse tried to pull a similar stunt mixin, if memory serves, The White album with Jay-z´s the black album ( the result was the grey album) they called the lawyers pronto. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 10:30 am:    >Bland ... I don't think Lennon was ever satisfied with anything in life, actually - but Martin's productions were wonderful: you can't imagine (ha!) a classically trained 40-something today listening that sympathetically to (say) Wolf Eyes or Babyshambles, and then creating a sampled collage like "I Am the Walrus" that not only redefines the group but also redraws markers for a whole zone of music. But I do hate stuff like this, and Circue du S., and that vile Dylan musical clip I've posted on the YouTube thread. It's necrophiliac, Vegas floor-show merde, catapulted squarely at sucker fans with no creative imagination - in this case, just warming them up before their flexible friends are contorted to breaking point yet again with the grand *r*e*m*a*s*t*e*r*e*d reissue of the Beatles' catalogue next year. All this used to be about opening your mind and changing the world. Now it's about opening your wallet and changing your CDs. "Under the paving stones - Broadband." - G. Glitter (attrib.) arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 10:43 am:    That makes me think that pretty soon now the music industry will have to shift to another support to make us buy everything *again*. Memory cards with pre-recorded mp3s maybe? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 12:13 pm:    Oh, I'm sure they're just dying for nanotech chips to slip into our heads - 24/7/365 SkullCast (tm): those inner voices that called poor Jeanne d'Arc to the stake will be EuroTeen (tm) normal by 2020. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 12:25 pm:    And surely that same voice will remind you to pay taxes and will tell you what a brilliant job the government is doing. *shivers and cringes* iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 12:27 pm:    How about a technology that makes you forget the song just before you listen to it, so you can enjoy it afresh every time? Naturally, at the end of the track it also makes you forget that you've bought it so you have to buy it again. Perhaps call this technology GoldFish (tm)? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 12:35 pm:    Zali, as ever you keep your finger on the pulse. Come to think of it, I got sacked from my job in a lentil shop for that very reason! I thank you. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 12:39 pm:    Do you do jokes involving the words "culture" and "yoghurt" too? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 12:59 pm:    *Reappears from back of secure ambulance* Possibly. "This culture's gone to pot, y'know." Cheque, please. Usual Swiss account. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 1:19 pm:    Perhaps later. I have to rush off and replace my corset, the sides on this one seem to have ruptured from the strain. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 1:40 pm:    Don't worry - I quite understand. *Considers possibility of full face transplant - or future career as garden gnome in quiet corner of Sax in Alicante* mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 1:43 pm:    I quote: "As they gave up touring and retreated to the laboratory of the studio, it was the Beatles who started the game of what you might call 'intertextual' songwriting" Newspaper journalism: it's gone to pot. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 1:52 pm:    *Blanches in face of unconscious plagiarism* Actually, the Beatles got into pot a long time ago! And so on ... mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 2:19 pm:    I tried at least. Does anyone listen to Steely Dan? Donald Fagen? Morph the Cat is pretty good, as was Two Against Nature. I alternate between these and Pere Ubu. Pure very American music. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 2:23 pm:    Tee-hee. SD: yes - but I'm one of those who loved them up to "Aja" and not too much since. "Hopeless Case" off Becker's solo album is a great, overlooked song, I think. I still haven't caught up with Morph. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 2:51 pm:    Here is something strange, I think. They have a Kraftwerk-like interest in the qualities and atmospheresof sounds. Also, in very simple drum patterns. Odd comparison. I think this is the way David Byrne should have gone. Creating this kind of eerie Americana. The three Donald Fagen albums are good. Maybe the first is the most distinctive. (Sf music.) arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 10:59 pm:    Morph the cat and the Nigthfly I like a lot. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, October 27, 2006 - 8:03 am:    I think David Thomas is an Englishman in a large American suit. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, October 27, 2006 - 8:15 am:    A memorable image of Thomas for me is when I saw him warming up for a gig in a small pub in Mornington Crescent. The venue was a long low ceilinged room. He arrived early (as I did) and sat at the room's back practicing on his accordian. He seemed to me to be some piratical Neptune-like figure, some weird looking chap from the bottom of the sea testing out the fangles of his tunes, surrounded by unfathomable mystery. That was perhaps his first Two Pale Boys gigs. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, October 27, 2006 - 8:34 am:    I should add that Thomas is of course gigantic. Huge, roly poly with a tiny black goatee. Somehow he doesn't seem obese; it looks as if his body is the natural consequence of the size of his imagination. Big monster walks the winter lake size. I am intrigued by the thought of what different music's have in common. E.g. both David Thomas and Kraftwerk's Ralf Heuter (?) love the Beach Boys. The way this music creates the feeling, or the image, of a whole way of life. Similarly Steely Dan and Kraftwerk have a lot in common in the way their music evokes images. That Kamakiriad (a science fiction concept) 'lonliness on the dunes' song. The "pretty boats sweeping along the shore ..." and so forth. Totally evocative. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 10:42 am:    We live in a culture of distraction. People have no focal point in their lives apart from an abusive sense of what they don't like. That's thought for the day. Compare and contrast. The way that these groups are interested in the image as much as the thing. The way that the limits of music are expored. E.g. Thomas's utterly unmusical unharmonic rendering of Surfer Girl on Ray Gun Suitcase. Or the more recent Caroleen, which has him screaming, not singing, the word Caroleen. The ideal shades into the symbolic which shades into the concept of our fallen-ness. (Sorry io) martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 10:51 am:    Mr. Thomas as gnostic shouter - I'll go with that. I still haven't seen him live since the first Ubu tour back in the '70s - which was astonishing. Any UK dates planned that you know of, MJP? mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, November 01, 2006 - 11:33 am:    There is a London gig, which oddly I don't fancy. It's at the Astoria where I have seen them before. But - honestly - eugh! Don't like the place. The black love lyrics in Thomas are like negatives of the idealities pictured in the Beach Boys etc. The strange thing is how really really enjoyable they are. How pleasant despair is! Despair, lonliness, desolation. How very very positive. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, November 01, 2006 - 2:19 pm:    I only really grasped Thomas (oo-er) when I saw him perform with Two Pale Boys. He makes great comedy out of despair. I remeber him telling a story about a man who built a gas station in the hope that the freeway would be built alongside, only to find that the freeway was build on the other side of the mountain. He spends his evenings sitting on his porch watching the lights of the cars come over the ridge. Hilarious, and tragic. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, November 02, 2006 - 10:22 am:    I really am amazed by the new album (WIHM). For the first couple of listens it didn't sound like much at all. For instance when I first heard Caroleen I just wished that he would stop screaming "Caroleen". Now I feel like screaming it myself. The album as a whole is actually very catchy and tuneful. It just doesn't look that way on first listens. With familiarity one starts to see the artfulness of it; for instance the way that they abruptly end songs is often laugh out loud funny. A deliberate joke. I don't think they have ever played with more cohesion drum bass and guitars and that weird little tweedlophone they use to evoke mood. The way Thomas has written a kind of noir low life novel in songs is brilliant. Again at first I thought that his voice lacked its usual brio, the kind of inventiveness one finds on Monster Walks the Winter Lake, or Not Happy ("I love my tiny voices") but in fact the brio is just more subtle. One last thing. The dynamic of Love Song is interestingly simple. Structurally it has a affinity with say the Buzzcock's Harmony in My Head. Soft slow - loud fast - soft slow - loud fast. Very melodic tender soft slow - harsh axe-like guitar jungle rhythms for the loud. A cornucopia of strangeness. Thomas has made it his own. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, November 02, 2006 - 12:49 pm:    It's on my Christmas list. I thought it might make good post-dinner listening for the whole family. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, November 02, 2006 - 1:40 pm:    Enjoy every last bleep. Your family will love it. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, November 03, 2006 - 11:55 pm:    I thought I should post something pleasant on the board today...maybe it'll make up for all the gibber jabber about fish. I got the new Sparklehorse album, Dreamt For Light years In The Belly Of A Mountain, today and it's great. Not sure if anyone here's familiar with him, but it's a grimey rural-gothic sort of affair that oozes atmosphere and mood. And Tom Waits guests on a track. Anyway, it's well worth a listen. And if you haven't already, check out the National's recent album Aligator. It's sublime. One of my favorites. Later all, have a good weekend. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, November 06, 2006 - 11:24 am:    Listened to a bit of Sparklehorse: nice goshtly pop. Thanks for the tip,Dave. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, November 09, 2006 - 11:23 pm:    Tom Waits new album http://www.anti.com/catalog.php?id=69 martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - 11:07 am:    If you've a few odd thousand to spare, Christie's are have a Rock Auction, including handwritten Jim Morrison poems ($12,000, please), and Hendrix's leather waistcoat (just about the same). Tucked away are a few items that must be from from Dylan's old-time girlfriend, Suze Rotolo: the beautiful woman you see on the cover of "Freewheelin'". Times must be hard. Poignantally, the sale includes this: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/search/LOTDETAI L.ASP?sid=&intObjectID Except in extreme and dire need, I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to part with this. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - 1:25 pm:    Just enjoying Cathal Coughlan's new album, Foburg. it's a song cycle set in a shopping mall that used to be a mental institution. Very good: shades of chanson, Scott Walker (then and now) and all sprinkled with Coughlan's customary bile. A queasy listen but very good. File next to The Drift. People like Coughlan should always be supported. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 5:27 pm:    Shame about Bonzo - wonder why he can't make it ..? http://www.voiceofkorea.org/ dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - 8:52 pm:    >>Foburg That looks really interesting, but I can't get it here in the US without paying an arm and a leg for it. Might have to risk shipping from the UK again... martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, November 28, 2006 - 11:50 am:    Or is it classical: http://www.calendarlive.com/music/classical/cl-et- beethoven27nov27,0,2729762.story Anyway, verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry, verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry long! arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - 10:59 am:    I am listening to Bojan Z "Xenophonia" It has a jazz cover of "Ashes to ashes" wich has an interesting audio trick: the vocals are whispered just in the treshold of hearing. Quite eery. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007 - 6:07 pm:    Just curious, but what do you guys think of this band? www.myspace.com/ursulapoints They need a bass player...I'm considering it. Apparently, they have digital distribution deals in the UK. Anybody here ever heard of them? iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 11:00 am:    Sounds good, Dave. A bit like Galaxie 500, The Cocteau Twins and other late eighties points of reference. None of this is a bad thing. Haven't come across them before. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 11:38 am:    Sorry, no. (Then again I don´t listen to this kind of music that much nowadays) They sound good. I like the quitar, reminds me a little bit of the national( thanks for the tip)but the singing does little for me. Is there a burgeoning scene around this kind of sound? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, January 22, 2007 - 11:55 am:    I'm with Zali - a lot of Cocteaus, a bit of Everything But The Girl, definite '80s vibe of 4AD in its pomp. Wouldn't turn it off - but, like Arturo, I wouldn't turn it up, either! arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 12:15 pm:    But I do think you should join them, Dave. A band where there is room for improvement and where your creative imput can be valuable is the rigth place to be. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 4:31 pm:    Hey guys, thanks for the input. I agree with the late 80s references. I hear a bit of Jesus and Mary Chain too. I'm not sure there's a big scene for it, but I like it. Actually...that's not true: shoegaze is making a comeback as nugaze. (Genre and sub-genre labeling is worse in indie-rock than in sci-fi/new weird type debates.) I did decide to join up with them. There's yet another plus: the drummer from the last few Guided By Voices albums and the last Shudder to Think album is coming on board. My god, I'd better get practicing... I'm so excited...and a little nervous. I hope I can hang with that guy. Arturo, I'm glad you like the National! And you're right, there's a lot of room for growth once a full line up establishes itself. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - 5:08 pm:    Yay! Name in lights, Carnegie Hall, yards of YouTube - we want it, Dave! arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 1:03 pm:    Hi, Dave. The National sounds to me like a more personal version of Interpol´s sound so that made me wonder. Mugaze? I am lost on labels. The last one I got was post-rock and that was ages ago. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 3:34 pm:    Yeah Arturo, the labels are lame. Nugaze is translated thus: Nu = new. Get it? The new shoegaze movement... Lame, eh? iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 3:39 pm:    I'm tempted to start a "new rave" project. Mostly because I hated rave the first time around, so it'd be a sort of revenge. Well, if you're nugazing you'd better make sure you've got a well developed floppy fringe, atrophied neck muscles and fascinating footware. al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 3:52 pm:    >> a "new rave" project nurave surely? dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 3:54 pm:    >>Well, if you're nugazing you'd better make sure you've got a well developed floppy fringe, atrophied neck muscles and fascinating footware. Personally, I can't imagine looking listlessly at the floor for a whole show. How weird is that, anayway? Even if you have a boat load of pedals... I don't anticipate any special behavior being prmpted by genre labels. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 4:31 pm:    I'd say something of incredible perception at this point - but I'm still reeling from the discovery that I share my birthday with Ron Mael from Sparks. *Checks for moustache* *Looks worried* iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 10:16 am:    >>I don't anticipate any special behavior being prmpted by genre labels. Some genre cliches are more fun than others: if I joined a black metal band I'd absolutely *insist* on burning down churches and making blood sacrifices. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 12:13 pm:    shoegazing: Back in the eigthies I saw Fripp play live. His gaze seldom left the floor but if it rested on his well polished oxfords ( he wore a natty suit, a white shirt and what looked to me a real bow tie,not snaped on but tied) or in his array of pedals I would say that only he knows. Then again he was letting loose such and avalanche of higly distorded sound that those familiar only with the more usual guitar hero poses where suspicious of the little man with the polite expresion on his face. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 1:08 pm:    You're Pete Townsend! You've recently been acquitted of downloading vile stuff from the Internet!! You have a blog!!! So you'd think twice about even mentioning the future of online pornography, wouldn't you? ... Wouldn't you? http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/diary/display.cfm?i d=480&zone=diary martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, February 21, 2007 - 9:40 am:    Personally, no. 10 will do just fine: http://music.aol.com/feature/sexiest-songs-list-8 - no. 33, though : Liz, Liz, this is a truly *dreadful* piece of writing! martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, February 22, 2007 - 12:59 pm:    http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/features/ article2294721.ece "The real occult's in the pubs of the East End ... strikes a chord with me!" martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, March 07, 2007 - 1:08 pm:    Posting this: http://poundforpound.blogspot.com/2007/03/visions- of-johanna-covers.html - for anyone who's never heard Lee Renaldo's astonishing version. Hitchcock's are pretty good, too - the closest we get to Syd Barrett doing the song. Garcia, etc., though - well, I always think the Grateful Dead sound quite interesting while they're tuning up. But then they start to play. I know, I know - millions feel otherwise. But there we are. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 08, 2007 - 4:13 pm:    Today I have been mostly listening to Grinderman (fucking ace!) and growing a Zapata moustache (ill advised). arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 09, 2007 - 1:51 am:    I´ve been listening to Songs I heard by Harry Connick Jr. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 09, 2007 - 9:22 am:    "Frozen Borderline" by Nico - songs I thought edgy and disturbing in the 80s now seem some of the most beautiful I've ever heard: or, perversely, some of the most amusing. Also, Mr. Catra - Rio Baile Funk. I could be impossibly cool and say - Whaddya *mean*, ya never of him? But, as an ignorant Englishman: I hadn't, either. It's a track on the cd you get with this month's "Songlines" magazine (I found my copy in HMV), and a Brian Eno favourite: http://www.songlines.co.uk/news/news.php?id=63&PHP SESSID=edbe9d62df9abbe65163bd49e051b8c3 iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Friday, March 09, 2007 - 11:25 am:    Listening to the Vampi Soul Traffic Sound compilation today. Fantastic sixties Peruvian prog-soul-funk-rock. Yesterday I dug out the second Spacemen 3 album in the first time in a million years. The Perfect Prescription. Muted, low-key Velvetsy blues with the customary Spacemen force field drone. Forgotten how much this album describes my teens. The day before it was a Son House compilation. Beefheart eat yr heart out! Other than that, it's been Arvo Part and John Adams, the legendary Tangerine Dream Rheims gig and Gentle Giant's Octopus album, which sounds like the stuff by Faust which didn't turn into industrial rock. al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Friday, March 09, 2007 - 11:44 am:    Hmm, I remember that album... very cool stuff. My teens more Smiths / Joy Division / Velvets, only really branched out from that as I hit late teens and was then swept into the Madchester / dance nexus. Today I have mostly been listening to Burial (gloomy ambienty bassy), a bit of Bob Dylan live, and am pondering some Public Image later on (been grooving substantially to Jah Wobble basslines) martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 09, 2007 - 11:56 am:    Dylan live: a friend's desperately given me his copy of "Budokan," but I haven't quite summoned up the nerve to play it yet. Any good? PiL: "Metal Box" still leaves me speechless. I keep wondering where Lydon's talent went after it - not simply for performing "Memories" or "Poptones," but for the insight to describe modern life as "a layered mass of subtle props." Either the drugs or a happy marriage must have sorted him out: or else Wobble wrote everything we hear, and never told us. al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Friday, March 09, 2007 - 1:55 pm:    Hmm - haven't heard it. Have mixed feelings about the one I've been listening to - official bootleg of the Rolling Thunder Revue. On the one hand, bits of it have all the stale irrelevance of Jeremy Clarkson's jeans - on the other, some of the songs on it (particularly the version of Isis) are ferociously, astonishingly brilliant. Very impressed by his habit of just dragging in random musicians to play with him. We should all start hanging out in Crouch End... On PiL - been enjoying the sound as much as the lyrics - dub spaciousness turned into something bleak and paranoid but still propulsive and intensely groovy. Funny how the Wobble sound works as well with that as with all the trippy dubby stuff he was doing with the orb etc in the 90s and with William Blake et al now! martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 - 4:38 pm:    Toss, basically: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/opinion/12smith. html/partner/rssnyt?_r=1&oref=slogin "Human history abounds with idealistic movements that rise, then fall in disarray. The children of light. The journey to the East. The summer of love. The season of grunge. But just as we seem to repeat our follies, we also abide." - Cherie Blair said that. You can be in my dream, so long as I don't have to be in yours - I said that! arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007 - 5:13 pm:    Rigth now I am listening to the Klezmatics "wonder wheel" martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 - 9:25 am:    Sometimes you hear something, and you don't want to listen to anything else but that one thing, all day long. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1kL568eg1w "But his massive genitals refuse to co-operate" - the greatest line Sparks never wrote! dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 4:14 am:    Hey all. Sorry to have been MIA for so long, but I've been working quite a lot. Anyway, I'm back to share some good news. The band that I joined up with, Ursula Points, is currently being offered a UK record deal. If all goes well (fingers crossed) we'll have the album in stores soon. Also, there's likely to be a moderately sized UK tour in October...maybe I'll catch up with some of you then. Also...and this has nothing to do with pop music...work is going well and I hope to have three new manuscripts under review by the end of April. If anyone wants to read some depressing social science, I'll be happy to let you take a peek once they're done. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 9:24 am:    excellent news, Dave. Make sure your tour gets to Manchester. al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 9:42 am:    Rock'n'Roll Babylon awaits - congratulations! al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 9:48 am:    Incidentally also, going to be in New York over Easter - are you guys doing any gigs, there, then? arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 10:14 am:    glad to hear it, Dave. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 11:40 am:    Yo, Dave - see you soon, we hope! iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 3:01 pm:    That's great. Hopefully catch up with you when you're in the UK. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 3:30 pm:    Thanks all. Alex, I'm pretty sure we'd stop in Manchester. Al, we have a show on Tuesday, April 10th - will you still be in town then? I think I'll be in Pennsylvania visiting family over Easter weekend, but we should see if we'll be in town at the same time. Maybe grab a drink. Ever spend any time in Brooklyn? PS - does anyone know what the hell happened to the TTA board? Where did all those great MJH conversations go? dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 3:36 pm:    And Sheffield. Get to Sheffield too! I can put band members up for the night if needed, and take some nice photos of the gig. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 4:06 pm:    >> PS - does anyone know what the hell happened to the TTA board? Where did all those great MJH conversations go? I think they decided to have a rejig. Probably to make it more spam-proof, but also to make it more Interzone-centric. Which I guess if fair enough since that's their business. As to where the MJH posts went: Andy Cox *might* have archived it. Otherwise, might be worth looking on the archive.org Wayback Machine in a few months. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 4:22 pm:    Dan, thanks for the offer. You're in a band too right? Maybe we could share a bill? Io, how might one get an archive from Andy Cox? And what is this mysterious Wayback Machine that you've mentioned? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 4:40 pm:    TTA - I really was trying my darnedest to be nice to a Tolkien fan: but someone "just don't approve of my strange kinda wit." (D. Thomas). I got barred. But never mind. Hey, let's have the party right here -! iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 15, 2007 - 4:42 pm:    Wayback Machine: http://tinyurl.com/25hd9a They don't seem to have anything for 2007 as yet. But interestingly you can go back to 2003 and read a load of the old New Weird discussion. Andy Cox: you can probably get hold of him via the TTA site. I can't recall whether he's very good at answering though! martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 10:12 am:    None more pop. Still amazing, but - oddly - they've missed one line out of this reissue: http://videowatchdog.blogspot.com/2007/01/more-wor ds-on-performance.html Anyone who's read "Light" might guess Sprake clipped that bit off the master reel for use in some ritual against Urizen. Bloody conjurors ... al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 10:38 am:    Hi Dave - >> we have a show on Tuesday, April 10th Alas, I'll be back in the UK by then! Flying out to arrive on the 5th, returning overnight on the 9th. Up for a drink tho' - how do my dates fit in with your movements? Staying with friends on Prince Street, unsure which part of NY that's in.... iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 11:38 am:    Hey, it's music journos talking shite! And today's episode is: "From the Velvets to the void" http://tinyurl.com/3yb6s7 "Hearing The Marble Index for the first time after knowing the singer through those three lovely tunes on The Velvet Underground and Nico is disorientating - where on earth did this harrowed sound come from? The style invented by Nico and Cale had nothing to do with everything else going on 1960s music." A-hem! Tony Conrad? Minimalism? What the fuck do they teach in schools these days? dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 12:05 pm:    Dave - yes, I'm in a couple of wildly different bands, don't know whether either would be suitable for bill-sharing but I'm up for that, also I know quite a few promoters & venue owners in Sheffield, so I could probably find you a slot. Sheffield is a very happening city, musically and otherwise, at the moment, there's a hell of a lot of truly wonderful stuff going on here. My two bands: http://www.myspace.com/karenmulcahey http://www.myspace.com/thetajallivortex Like I said, musical worlds apart, and neither of them 100% what I'd really like to be playing, although both lots of fun and good practice. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 12:42 pm:    I've just been asked to join a band whose keyboard player is Julia Nagle, ex The Fall. Not sure if I've got time to commit to it though. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 2:41 pm:    Obviously, Mark E. Smith felt exactly the same way ... Tony Conrad: - liked what I've heard, but never known what to seek out. Ideas? dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 3:12 pm:    Al, our schedules don't seem to leave a lot of room for meeting up. You arrive on a Thursday and I'm planning to leave for Pennsylvania on Friday. I could push it back though. Maybe we could meet up on Friday night or do a Saturday brunch in Brooklyn. I assume you won't be wanting to do too much on the day you get to NYC. Dan, I'll have to check the links later. I can't get onto MySpace at work. I think its safe to say that we can work something out though. It'd be great to play with you given that you know the scene (and fun to hang out with someone who knows the city). If the deal goes through, we'll be booking with 13 Artists, but we would still be able to coordinate with you I bet. And we'd be more than willing to return the favor should you ever need help in NYC. Alex, do it! iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 4:38 pm:    >>Tony Conrad: - liked what I've heard, but never known what to seek out. Ideas? Only really know Outside the Dream Syndicate. But I hate the way that Simon Reynolds seems to think that there are no precedents for the sound on those Nico albums. It sounds *very* sixties to me. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 4:52 pm:    Ah - the man who wrote NME's "Book of the Year," a history of punk called 'Rip It Up & Start Again' - apt award and an apt title, since those of us of a certain age had already read most of it as other people's journalism in, um, the NME 30 years ago. So I wouldn't worry about his "expertise" too much, if I were you! arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 16, 2007 - 7:01 pm:    Brian Ferry has come out with of all things a cd of Dylan covers. Much to my surprise I like the cover of The times they are a changing. dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Sunday, March 18, 2007 - 8:04 pm:    I caught a couple of minutes of Ferry talking about it on the radio - waxing lyrical about Dylan. He said that ever since he (Ferry) released his first solo single (A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall) some 35 years ago, he'd wanted to do a whole album of Dylan covers. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 8:40 am:    Just so long as he doesn't 'interpret' Visions of Johanna he can do what he likes. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 10:15 am:    You needn't worry: Lee Renaldo's version apart, I think it's an uncoverable song - sometimes, even by Dylan hismelf. Ferry's "Positively Fourth Street" seems the best thing there. I haven't heard what he does with "Gates of Eden," and I'm not sure I want to! He'd have to do a lot to touch the best Dylan covers, anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E42eiqo_3oE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu1X1jP5d2E - and one that may be out there as an mp3 - Pascal Comelade's great Richard Strauss take on "Like a Rolling Stone." al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 10:49 am:    Or what about Smiths covers? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5cS0bZiJ1Q martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 11:06 am:    Some girls *are* bigger than others ... al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 11:40 am:    Indeed! You know all those reggae albums covering classic albums lately? Have just realised that there should be a Smiths one, 'The Queen is Dread'. The name demands it... martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 12:01 pm:    Toots & the Maytalls, "Frankly Mr. Shankly," clearly - a Johhny Jah production ... martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 2:02 pm:    John Cale, HMV Oxford, 20 minutes ago - Fantastic in-store gig with inventive drummer, class bassist and excellent acoustic guitarist:"Gravel Road," "Set Me free" (I think), "You Know Than I Do," "Gun," plus one new song I didn't know. Cale himself in astonishing form with Beefheart goatee and red and yellow Lydon hair. Another great role model for when I turn 60! martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 2:07 pm:    Those of you who, um, know more than I do will already have inserted the "More" into that third song title. al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 2:16 pm:    But was everyone else in black polo necks? iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 2:17 pm:    >>Fantastic in-store gig with inventive drummer, class bassist and excellent acoustic guitarist Cale: cool! martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 2:25 pm:    Al: Ho, ho! The band were obviously told - wear any jacket and scarf combo you like. Cale turned up in a well-street trackie top, and looked outrageously healthy for his age. Audience: not just the middle-aged and balding. Several mums were there, with their equally entranced children - Cale has an unlikely (not say suspicious) demographic of 12 year-old girls. One 10 year-old kept pestering his dad for information. "Dad, how old is John Cale? ... Dad, how old was John Cale when he started singing?" Then he spotted the dvd rack. "Dad, when John cale's finished singing, can you buy 'The Spy Who Loved Me'?" Lyric for the next album, I'd've thought. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 5:54 pm:    I´ve listened to most of the Ferry album now. Pretty good, if somewhat monotonus, set. For a change it is not overproduced.The built-in rawness of the songs does wonder to get Ferry off the elegant snoze he´s been having since "Avalon"? I make a point of listening to his releases but the only one that has made a lasting impression is his cover of "Taxi". I must admit that I have lost track of Cale in latter years. ( Since the cd with Brian Eno and songs for drella) Is there anything I should track down. al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Monday, March 19, 2007 - 10:00 pm:    Hi Dave - sorry for not replying to your post, my friend in NY is being a bit elusive. Emailing him again just now... martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 9:38 am:    Cale, Pt. 2: Zodiac, Oxford last night - highlights here were "Heartbreak Hotel" (stripped to a doo-wap skeleton and vocoder - we all want oen for Christmas), "Buffalo Ballet" (rearranged to include an echoplexed cello that smeared the whole song with mournful drones); 2 new songs "Mr. Ray" (ho,ho) and "A Day in the Life of A Common Cold," which morphed into "Big White Cloud"; and best of all, a 10-minute shuffle-beat medley of "Strange Times in Casablanca" and "Leaving It All Up to You" which verged on Mondays-type trance - just wonderful. I ran off for the last train before "Venus in Furs" and a couple of other new songs, but I'm told they were pretty great, too. >Is there anything ..? Cale's touring to promote this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Circus-Live-%2BDVD-John-Ca le/dp/B000INAWXY/ref=pd_ka_1/026-4924400-2348454?i e=UTF8&s=music&qid=1174383239&sr=8-1 - but I haven't heard it yet. Minus point: the girl who kept up a shrieked conversation with two friends through at least 3 numbers, before I left them to it. SOmeone else who heard them tells me she was reviewing the gig. But you could guess that, couldn't you? iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 11:57 am:    >>"Heartbreak Hotel" (stripped to a doo-wap skeleton and vocoder - we all want oen for Christmas) Dead cool. You didn't notice by any chance if it was a MicroKorg vocoder? They're dead cheap and fun for all the family. >>SOmeone else who heard them tells me she was reviewing the gig. There's a name for people like that. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 12:00 pm:    Maybe pointless but let me say that Cale is a gipsy word for gipsy. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 1:11 pm:    Arturo: Not pointless at all - I never knew, anyway! Zali: wasn't close enough to tell - sorry. Small silver box fixed to the keyboard, phasing, pitch yaw, and sustain at the touch of a button, though, if that conveys anything. >A name ... Sadly, yes. In one of those " you couldn't make it up" moments, she was wearing a t-shirt with the sequinned slogan: You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover. Want to bet ..? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 2:30 pm:    Meanwhile, in another part of the audience (but not reviewing last night's gig): "John Cale is a fucking elitist. He did not like the people he was playing for. He's Welsh, and they're all nasty bastards." - Cheers, mate! iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 2:36 pm:    >> He's Welsh, and they're all nasty bastards. But so is everyone. Welsh, I mean. Wondering if the box on the keyboard was a Kaoss Pad. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 2:46 pm:    When I went to see Dylan last summer I heard the same kind of comments. He is not nice, he is not jokey, he does not pretend to have an empathy for the audience that is is not there. He just tried to play the best music he could I wonder where this kind of confusion arires. The job description is not stand-up comedian with empathy theraphy trown-in. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 3:09 pm:    Zali: some equipment listed here - http://www.xs4all.nl/~werksman/cale/equipment/inde x.html - but scarcely in depth, and no Kaos. To this rank amateur it looked/sounded pretty state of the art. Arturo: maybe it's a Pop Idol mentality - "Anyone could do that - so why aren't they like anyone I know ..?" The fact is, though, that no one else does do that - and they aren't like anyone else we know. Through personality, vanity, or simply the odd life they've indulged in all these years ( working alongside him in the '80s, Rupert Everett noticed that Dylan no longer had any conception of clock time - he simply slept, ate, or worked when he felt like it, regardless of night or day) they've removed themselves from a great deal of normality, and result isn't to everyone's taste. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 3:21 pm:    You may be rigth, Martin. But my point is that it doesn´t matter nor should we care. The important thing is the music. Besides I dont´ set much store in such concepts as normal. As my sister once pointed out there are two kinds peopLe: weird people and people who hide how weird they are. I think that such comments arise from a shift in the public attitude toward music. If you think that music( evn pop music including rock) is or may be artistic, the personality of the performer doesn´t matter much. if you look for entertaiment the personality is paramount. I do think that british pop press, always on the look-out for a new culture hero, has much blame on that. I mean you hear a lot of the in-fighting in Oasis and whatnot but precious little of whatever creative process the may have. So I pretty much suspect that a dense listening experience can put off someone looking for a "good nigth" out al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 22, 2007 - 11:56 am:    Hi Dave - looks like things are pretty loose in New York, so could do either Friday or Saturday. What's best for you? Flying in all day on Thursday, so (fingers crossed) should be reasonably together Friday daytime as well... dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, March 23, 2007 - 9:55 pm:    Al - Cool, so why don't you just send me an email (dhorton79 AT gmail DOT com) and we'll see if we can get our schedules to work out. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 - 1:41 pm:    For you Londoners: May 22nd, The National are playing a show at the Astoria. Go! martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 - 2:34 pm:    I saw Southside Johnny there last year ... shortly before everyone got herded out to make way for the gay disco. Wock'n'woll, eh kids? iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 - 2:40 pm:    Noticed that Sonic Youth are playing the whole of the Daydream Nation album at various venues. Is this some sort of tacit admission that it was the last good thing they did? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, March 26, 2007 - 3:11 pm:    "Hey, it's just like the record!" As with other "rawk events" - REM's version of "No. 9 Dream" vomits into view at once as an example - you just think: oh, for f*ck's *sake* ... alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 7:49 am:    At long last, I've got a copy of Tom Verlaine's Flash Light. Can't understand why I've not owned and treasured this before - it's astonishingly good. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 10:16 am:    "Flash Light" I haven't heard - but I love this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Songs-Other-Things-Tom-Ver laine/dp/B000ELJ8WQ/ref=sr_1_3/026-4924400-2348454 ?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1174994052&sr=8-3 - "Earth Is In The Sky" is just sublime. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 12:54 pm:    Fine musics. I am still waiting for Verlaine's remastering of The Wonder. Magazine's four albums have been remastered for 2007 and are on sale. The Correct Use of Soap is possibly the best but they are all good. I find it hard to get enthused about new groups. But one real fairly recent enthusiam is for the Strokes' First Impressions of Earth. Very Good. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 2:55 pm:    well I just got hold of a copy of John Cale´s Hobo sapiens from 2003. So far so good. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 3:50 pm:    I now think Flash Light was Verlaine's best since Dreamtime, and I don't think anything after really matched up to it. The Wonder was okay, I guess, but not consistently great (I love Stalingrad and Ancient Egypt though). Did I mention I saw Verlaine on tour recently? Just him and Jimmy Rip - great stuff. Came away thinking how big his hands were. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - 5:06 pm:    "The Wonder": 'Pillow' - one of my favourite songs, ever. But, we're all made differently. "Hobo Sapiens": matter of taste again. I love him with just piano or viola, but the ProTooled songs don't really do it for me. Or perhaps it's one of those cds I'll come back to in a couple of years, and suddenly hear what was there all along. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 8:53 am:    I undestand that you migth prefer his more austere works. The thing is I had lost track completely of his work ( boilining it down to an occasional spin of Paris 1919, usually at the same tiem that Lou Reed´s Berlin) and for me it is a wellcome return. Maybe If I keep looking at later works I will change my mind. But as of now I enjoy the voice and the lyrics (wich strike me as dark whimsy). mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 2:25 pm:    Magazine still sound good. Cut Out Shapes; Permafrost. Model Worker. "I'm tired of working on the land. I want to work machines and look handsome. I've been indulging in an ostentatious display doing little more than eat three square meals a day." Story of my life. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 3:16 pm:    I´ll see if I can pick a copy of that. Parade is one of my favorite songs ever. I´ve been thinking about artists that I am no longer familiar and I realize that I don´t have a clear picture of David Byrne´s solo carrer after Rey Momo. Let alone his bandmates, I know that they had a record as just heads that was pillored by critics and that´s it. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 7:49 am:    Parade: "Sometimes I forget that we're supposed to be in love/sometimes I forget my position." In many ways, the story of *my* life. The live version on "Play" is the one, I think. Permafrost: a song I always associated with the Yorkshire Ripper, actually. "Sugar's sweet some of the time" - Dosteovsky would've been proud of that one. Byrne: "Look into the Eyeball" is his only cd that made me want to play it again - especially "The Accident." As for his band-mates: well, lest we forget - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypVLtlXy_No mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 12:06 pm:    I think all David Byrne's work is worth listening to apart from his last, really, where he uses orchestration as a key in the song-making. It tends towards a 'softness', like those LSO versions of the Beatles. Not to my taste at all, slow and ennervating. Maybe not as bad as that might make it sound but still not good. The single Lazy is illustrative. Great single as produced in its original version, but witness the version on Grown Backwards. Unlistenable. Gross. Byrne needs a rethink. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 12:39 pm:    I stopped being interested in David Byrne around the time of Little Creatures. I liked him edgy. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 1:46 pm:    Alex if you stopped back then you have missed quite alot. By Little Creatures he was getting stuck. It is a mixed bag. He did better albums by himself, such as an eponymous one and Uh Oh. On that there is a song about a shopping mall that is one of my favourites. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 2:29 pm:    He now tends to be someone who records precisely one song per cd that I really like. So, most of "Feelings" was neither here nor there to me - but "Finite=Alright" was great. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 02, 2007 - 7:52 am:    Byrne's songs - the lyrics - are very striking for me. Also the staccato music. It has an appealing clarity. Fear of Music usefully summarises Byrne's lyric newness. "Hold the paper up to the light. Some rays they pass right through." "And all I see are little dots - some are smeared and some are spots ..." "We dress like housewives. We dress like students." "Memphis. Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks." But for example Lazy shows he can still do it. At once clear, funny and mysterious. I have been listening to the remastered Magazine albums over the weekend. They sound terrific. Devoto has a very different but perhaps equal talent. "Now you are leaning on a fountain with the sunshine on your shoes." mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 02, 2007 - 8:01 am:    Lazy when I work, lazy on the bed Screamin' all you like, but it only fades away I'm lazy when I'm prayin', lazy on the job Got a lazy mind, a lazy eye, a lazy lazy father Hard men, hard lives Hard keepin' it all inside Good times, good God I'm so lazy I almost stop! *cough* That cough is important. An important cough! But what does it mean? It means nothing! alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 02, 2007 - 8:19 am:    Ah, coughing in pop music. It does a lot for a song. Thinking particularly of Jackie Leven's tubercular cough at the start of Rainy Day Bergen Women (or it could have been a guest cough by David Thomas); then there's Lee Perry "what a lot of coughing"; Mark E Smith coughs, I'm sure; what else? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 03, 2007 - 9:22 am:    Coughing ..? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpZD8DVTXPU dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 03, 2007 - 9:28 pm:    Al, any notion of how your travel plans are shaping up yet? al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 04, 2007 - 10:27 am:    Hi Dave - Well, same as always! Did you get my email the other day? Basically saying I'm pretty easy, we're going to be working out what we're up to once I'm out there so can fit round your Easter plans. Vague possibility we're going to Peter Luger's steakhouse (in your hood I think) on Friday for lunch, but that's really it for fixed plans. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 04, 2007 - 7:32 pm:    Al, hey never got the email. Do you have the address right? dhorton79[AT]gmail.com Peter Luger's is great (but pricey). I think I'll be leaving for Pennsylvania early Saturday morning though, we'll have to see about meeting up Friday night. Try the email again and I'll giv eyou my phone number...Hopefully we can sort something out. al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Thursday, April 05, 2007 - 5:18 am:    Hi Dave - email sent, now I'm off to the airport! Be in touch once I'm in NY! martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - 12:49 pm:    You buy a cd of Cale, Conrad, and LaMonte Young from the early '60s! You don't like it!! You review it on Amazon!!! "I would love to give this a higher rating but it's incredibly monotonous. It just goes on and on and on." Is water wet? Can the Queen get a parking space? Do most shirts come with two arms? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Dream-Syndicate-Vol -1-Niagara/dp/B00004SR1R/ref=sr_1_19/026-4924400-2 348454?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1176209139&sr=1-19 martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2007 - 3:56 pm:    I could've done without his mum, actually: http://www.jambase.com/headsup.asp?storyID=10321 arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 13, 2007 - 9:37 pm:    Vow! This opens a whole new line for reviews: I would like to like this queen cd but it is too campy and theatrical.. I´d like to like 2001 but it just doesn´t make sense. I´d like to enjoy The wizard of Oz but it is only a lightweigth fantasay. And chocolate is too sweet for my taste.And of course that old favorite about that MJH that writes weird and nasty things. I mean you just can´t go wrong judging any work of art *out of its own terms*? The kind of person who doesn´t get the jokes and stands there very seriously and mutters that it isn´t really funny seems to have found a place of their own in the net. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 16, 2007 - 12:54 pm:    I have been listening to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and Sketches from Life or whatever it is called along with Listening Wind from Remain in Light. Amazing albums. Byrne's song sounds as if it were recorded yesterday, thinking about Iraq. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 16, 2007 - 3:01 pm:    yes. Great song the Listening wind. I don´t think it could be released today. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 16, 2007 - 4:18 pm:    This: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Circus-Live-+DVD-John-Cale /dp/B000INAWXY - older songs stretched into 10 or 12 minute electro-medleys, "Mercenaries" updated into a murmured, nightmare lullaby: "Let's go to Tehran/Find the back to door to the Majlis/Knock it down and walk right in/Saying, howdy-doody howdy-doody how-dey/Let's go, let's go ..." Whispers from the way the world is. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - 9:09 am:    But there is life after pop, you know: http://www.billwymandetector.com/ mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 - 11:29 am:    All Pere Ubu's Fontana albums have been remastered and are now on CD, with added material. Highly recommended. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 20, 2007 - 1:56 pm:    http://www.glennwolsey.com/2007/04/19/interview-wi ll-friedwald-owner-of-the-worlds-largest-itunes-co llection/ - but only two ears. Tragic when you think about it ... mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 23, 2007 - 1:07 pm:    My philosophy in life - these things are hard won through experience - is this: You can only drink one cup of tea at a time. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 23, 2007 - 1:16 pm:    If you want to get complicated you might add the rider: There is an awful lot of tea out there. What taxes me at the moment is transparency. "I spy with my little ego something beginning with me." Who sees me? Logically since nothing intervenes at the front of my eye between me and me seeing it, it follows that nothing intervenes between the back of my eye and its (what I see) being seen. In other words, no opacity. Logically therefore if someone were to look in my eye he could see out the back of my head. One could construct a model. Two tubes, like two pieces of pipe forming a wholly transparent twin set of tunnels. Or perhaps two sets of binoculars, facing each way. Question is: who is in the middle? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 23, 2007 - 1:39 pm:    Logically, perhaps - but only if we were built like box cameras. In fact, if you look in anyone's eye, the first thing you'll see is yourself, reflected: your transposed idea of their unprocessed image of you before humours, rods, cones, optic nerves and cerebral cortex get to work deconstructing your image and reassembling it in a recognisable, synaptic form. As all of this is process is unitary, there is no middle - there's only the viewing mind. iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 Posted on Monday, April 23, 2007 - 1:47 pm:    >>There is an awful lot of tea out there. I often have a great deal od difficulty drinking one cup of tea. Forgetting to put water in the cup, forgetting that it's brewing, remembering where I put it, remembering that I haven't already finished the tea. It's a minefield. al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 Posted on Monday, April 23, 2007 - 2:49 pm:    I'm a coffee person. Much simpler. Cafetiere or granules. My only real question is whether the milk has gone off or not. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Monday, April 23, 2007 - 3:43 pm:    For me, most English tea has the simpering, V. Stanshall taste of boiled kneecaps. And plain milk makes me gag. So it's coffee - strong and black, just like the obvious joke. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 9:02 am:    >>>humours, rods, cones, optic nerves and cerebral cortex get to work deconstructing your image and reassembling it in a recognisable, synaptic form But I am baffled as to what that looks like. What does the mind look like? And - rods, cones, etc - they have all to be *transparent*. After all, you don't see their vague shadows or outlines imprinted on the world as you look do you? No, they are wholly transparent. Like a brick wall made of glass blocks. So why can I see out the back of my head when I look in the mirror? Besides which, who is this 'me' bastard who drinks all my tea in the mornings? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 9:31 am:    Rods and cones: better operating metaphor than transparency is a live wire - you're not aware of the cabling in your PC/laptop that transmits these pixels as you read them on the screen. We don't see out of the back our head in a mirror: we pick up a transposed representation of light reflected from objects in an optical field, and transmitted to the nerves at the front of our head. What does the mind look like? Well, perhaps like Schroedinger's Cat turned inside out, with its grin detached at its feet. Or a rubber band made entirely of quarks. "You" get the idea! mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 10:39 am:    >>>you're not aware of the cabling in your PC/laptop that transmits these pixels as you read them on the screen But with my computer I am aware of looking at the screen. But I am not aware of doing anything like that inside my head. Sich images always demand a separate observer. So while they appear logical they are actually nonsensical. However I did have a dream where I looked both ways. I woke up with my eyes in the pillow fringed by hair. Very uncomfortable. Then I realised I could open my Janus like eyes frontwards, as normal. So I opened my eyes - asleep - looking at the curtains and at the whiteish texture of the pillow simultaneously. Or is he am I lying again? Not for all the tea in China. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 11:52 am:    Back to pop music. I tend to think as does arturo, who began this thread, that the present's music isn't as good as the music of the late seventies. The stuff that really makes me think is from that time. Magazine's four brilliant albums. Talking Heads' More Songs... Fear of Music; Remain in Light. Those three albums and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. The Buzzcocks. Wire. Ubu's Dub Housing. Joy Division. XTC. There is a certain amount of old fogeyism in that, I am aware. Kings of Leon are ok. I like First Impressions of Earth. But there is not much that cuts as deep as the earlier music. Is that fact? martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 12:19 pm:    I'd agree - though I've no idea if it's a "fact." Those albums came out when we were at our most receptive, after several very dull years of pop, so they made a great impression if you were tuned in to them. Today: we're so saturated it's difficult to hear anything "new"; and - sadly - there's no equivalent of John Peel to bring it to our attention. I don't think any planner in the BBC would now countenance a 2-hour, 4-nightly programme which would feature (say) Von Sudafed, King Tubby, 3 or 4 dubstep plates, Tuli Kupferberg, a demo tape of two 15 year-olds from Scunthorpe mucking about with an echo unit, and a choice bit of Max Miller. Russell Brand seems the altogether more "entertaining" option. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 12:48 pm:    That is when album design matured. Was it Malcolm Garrett who did it? The one who designed all the Buzzcocks and the Magazine album covers. That is when I began to like these things as objects. Before that the covers seemed mostly to be conceived in gimmicky ways or with aspirations to art or painting rather than realising that here were sui generis artifacts : products of design not painting. I suppose one should include Never Mind the Bollocks and London Calling, too. Jon Savage connects here with his book Teenager which investigates the origins of youth culture. Looks very good. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 1:13 pm:    Garrett/Linder ("Orgasm Addict"/"Real Life")/Peter Saville in the UK - but find a few copies of the NME from those days and you stumble back into all the imagery invented by Kevin Cummings (just as most popular images of Oxford derive from Turner's, most images of J. Division are his - it's actually a slight shock to see colour pictures of Ian Curtis and realise he didn't live in b&w), Kate Simon ("London's Calling"), and Anton Corbijn (Beefheart and U2). A beautifully designed gallery of 4AD covers here, too: http://www.fedge.net/~desiderata/4ad20.html martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 - 1:35 pm:    This on vision, too: http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn11692-de ep-brain-implants-show-bionic-vision-promise.html mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 - 10:17 am:    Reading that I get the image of pair of binoculars on a set of crutches looking down a street along a row of telegraph poles. It doesn't show that we know anything about consciousness only that we know how to give it crutches. If I were a telegraph pole and received the intermittent conversations along its wires from various parties all at once as birds twittered and flew I am sure I would feel as wise as I do today munching my prawn sandwich and listening to 'Mr Wheeler'. "Mr Wheeler, I have an old light bulb. It's been in my family for 75 years. Seventy Five years. Seventy five years." mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 - 10:48 am:    All those metaphysical "where is it-s" "what does it look like-s" "is it inside/outside-s". "Mr Wheeler this light bulb has been in my family for 75 years." On crutches it looks through binoculars at each telegraph pole in turn; antsy; but does it emit light or receive it? Life to a Tea. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 - 12:15 pm:    We can cross that Tea when we come to it - and why not dot this Eye, too? http://www.fisheye.demon.co.uk/homepages/simonings theeyea.html mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 - 1:00 pm:    When I look at someone I don't see inside their head! I don't see an electric machine or a heap of coins balanced on a spoon attached to a cogwheel that pulls a piece of thread that works a lever that opens a small hatch. No. I see their face! Strange how the eye that expressionless thing, that ball of white, can be so expressive as a black dot inside a circle of blue. Yet that black dot has a soul! Tea leaves! Yes I can see the future in those shapes. That funny nose. That bit of candle wax on a bifurcated trunk with stuff growing out the top it it like strands of grass! Those two dots that follow me across the road. Strange that the eye is opaque but I can see through it! Both ways. That smile! The charm of charm. Through it and into it even though both are dumb as posts! alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 - 1:03 pm:    On pop music: I think it's stopped being exciting because it's all been done, sadly. On vision: I'm reading D.E. Harding's On Having No Head, but I can't get my head round it. I think it's because I wear glasses. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, April 26, 2007 - 1:42 pm:    >>>On pop music: I think it's stopped being exciting because it's all been done, sadly. That is partly true. But just recently, listening to the remastered Magazine albums, and now the Pere Ubu Fontana remasters, all of which were intensely enjoyable for me to listen to, to hear them again anew as it were, they all sound fantastic, what I have been thinking is that the new new stuff, such as the Kings of Leon, lacks a political edge to it. Not that I believe in 'political music'. The politics should be wholly integrated, invisible, but present. Kings of Leon don't have it. What they have rather is a concept of the soul - a stupid thing to go for I think. Anyone who starts singing about their soul is in trouble artistically. Even Echo and the Bunnymen, with McCullough who specialises in the pop cliche in a big way, AFAIK don't mention the soul. God forbid. It's a heavy metal fallout thing. alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 - 8:25 am:    My love affair with pop music has not faltered, despite there being very little to excite me in the way, say, Dub Housing did when I first heard it (and that's because of over-familiarity with the genre and its forms). But still, like in any solid long-term relationship, there are moments of gentler excitement even though the head-spinning rush of first love has largely gone (good thing too at my age). I love Pere Ubu, but I've learned the language now so the big thrill has gone. Today, I am consistently interested in what Bill Callahan (Smog) does, and his new album is no exception. His work is largely about sexual politics and the politics of the ordinary, but there is also a (warped) pop surface. Joanna Newsom, love her or loathe her, has just done something new with pop music. Scott Walker, bless him, did something strange and terrifying with pop music on his last album - it's genius, but I can't play it much. There's plenty of other examples: I like what The New Pornographers, The Apples In Stereo and Midlake are doing with fairly conventional pop forms. I like what Spiers and Boden do to trad folk. I like A Hawk and a Hacksaw, they way they blend eastern european folk forms with American singer-songwriter-tronica. And I also like the rise of singer-songwriters with looping pedals - that's a bit new and I'm personally trying to catch that wave before it loses energy. But there's still nothing NEW new. As for singing about the soul, why not, but do it intelligently. I'm looking forward to the first gnostic pop group. Sophia is a great name to write a pop song about. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 - 9:13 am:    like scurf the size of leaves beaten to airy thinness covering the mild squares of london ... Spring's tinct shines urinous on the heart shaped leaves - something like that, sticking parts of two poems together, the human soul according to the poet Jon Silkin in the Psalms and Their Spoils. I quite like the first three songs of The Kings of Leon's new album but they seem to run out of steam a little after that. They seem a little too comfortable to realise the degree to which they are lost and start singing about something which they think they know their way around. Unlike in the lyrics say: ..we syllogise, theorise ... in the dark (in Dub Housing). I am going to make a note of some of the people you mention alex. In my teensy weensy sphere of life I have never heard of them. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 - 9:19 am:    Perhaps going back is a way forward, too: http://fest07.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=7 3 Click on "Watch." alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 - 10:21 am:    mjp - have you tried emusic.com? It's a good download music site (something like 50 tracks amonth for around £14 and it's legal). But I believe that if you sign up you can get 25 free downloads before your subscription kicks in (and you can cancel before it does). You could sample the folllowing: A hawk and A Hacksaw Smog Bill Callahan New Pornographers Apples in Stereo Midlake Joanna Newsom Scott Walker and more for nowt. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 - 10:42 am:    Scott Walker - not sure about the visual interpretation, but this fractured elegy for Pasolini, from "Tilt," is wonderful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxUvgkYG0do alex Username: alex Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 - 11:30 am:    Wonderful song. mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 - 12:46 pm:    Alex, thanks for the suggestion, I'll give it a try. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Friday, April 27, 2007 - 4:43 pm:    I am afraid I am no listening to pop. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sq l=10:kzftxqwaldte The thing is I never expected a decent flamenco guitar player from Germany yet. Then again the people in all music get it wrong: it was done first bye el Lebrijano and the Tanger simphonic orchestra. By the way Joanna Newson´s whinny little girl voice gives me the jitters. martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 3:01 pm:    >No longer listening ... But, bizarrely, some small children in LA have no choice: http://www.nypost.com/seven/05032007/gossip/pagesi x/easily_scared_pagesix_.htm - but perhaps he just plays them "Froggy Went A-Courting" or something. dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 - 2:31 pm:    Good music news for the Londoners: The National are playing an in-store performance at FOPP in London on Monday 21st, the day of the release of their new album, "Boxer". They will be playing at 6pm at the 222 Tottenham Court Road location. You can pick up wristbands for the performance that day starting at 9am. Also, they're playing the Astoria on the 22nd. They're well worth catching live if any of you can do so. I think they're the best working rock band currently. Absolutely brilliant. arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 12:40 pm:    Here you can hear some from the current boy wonder ( el niño Josele, Josele the kid) of flamenco guitar http://www.guitarristajosele.com/ingles/ingles.htm l