Anyone not a regular reader of the Camden New Journal will, no doubt, be pleased to hear that the mighty Kevin Shields is fighting plans for late-night drinking at a local bar, Room 68.
According to the article, near-neigbour Kevin Shields says:
“As a musician I really object to being forced to listen to music I don’t like while someone else make money. The worst are Dido remixes. It’s a classic case of they don’t give a damn. When I built a studio in Camden I spent ¬£70,000 getting it soundproofed. They pump their music out at 120 decibels.”
He’s right about those Dido remixes…
And in at number seven... · 12 January 2006, 08:06 · File under: Distracting Reading
Clearly it’d be a thousand times better if it were Simon Bates reading it out loud but, alas, no… Ah well.
Outside Left magazine has just run what we can only assume is their first ever (last ever?) “Top Ten Art Double Acts” poll.
And in at number seven…
Check out the whole article over at www.outsideleft.com
In The Guide · 5 June 2005, 20:41 · File under: Reading Making
The Guardian Guide on Saturday printed a version of Steve Lamacq’s text written for our Anyone else isn’t you catalogue. It’s also on the Guardian web site which is cool. It’s an edited version of the text that appears in the catalogue, which also has texts by Momus and JJ Charlesworth. They’re available free from the exhibition which is at The Hospital in Covent Garden, London until 2nd July. Contrary to the listing in The Guardian the show is open on Saturdays – from 12 noon until 5pm, and on Saturday 25th June there’s a free gallery talk at 2pm by JJ Charlesworth. There’s more info on our web site.
Further reading‚Ķ · 11 May 2005, 05:51 · File under: Reading
Found a couple of good reading sites recently. So many sites are good for looking, but not so many good for reading. Here’s one: iPod Shuffle Blog.
Lots of good stuff to read. It’s slightly strange that the first thing on the site (top right…) is something about how the site’s existed since 2003. The archive runs back to June 2004 but – hey – guess what? I really don’t care. It’s a detail that probably three people in the whole world care about, yet it’s right there, first thing on the site. A nice, gentle reminder that it’s often best to not assume anyone else cares about your own little hang-ups.
The other site is: Strange Attractor. It’s a journal that describes itself as ‘Celebrating Unpopular Culture’. And it’s much better than that makes it sound. Check out the archives… Better still, buy the journal and read something all proper-printed-nice-like.
Fat Reg‚Äôs Festies · 14 April 2005, 05:06 · File under: Reading Distracting
Stumbling around on the internet the other evening I happened upon a web site called Fat Reg’s Festies. It’s basically a site built by some bloke who’s been to loads of music festivals. What’s really interesting though is he’s got pretty comprehensive line-ups for sad gits to trawl through trying to remember what bands they saw and which they missed. Reading 1990 is a good one, Telescopes on the main stage! The Fall, Jane’s Addiction, Loop, the Bad Seeds and The Cramps all on the main stage, and a load of long-forgotten rubbish on the Mean Fiddler Stage (Man from Delmonte, anyone…) An odd year as well though with Jesus Jones, Neds Atomic Dustbi, An Emotional Fish and Stereo MC’s all taking up valuable mainstage space as well.
The following year at Reading was like a world gone mad, with the main stage engulfed with sheer lunacy… Neds Atomic Dustbin (were no lessons learn’t the year before?), The Family Cat, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Fat Lady Sings, Carter USM (excuse me? On straight after THE FALL on Saturday night?) Try explaining that to the grandchildren. Iggy Pop headlining is clearly right and proper. Have you seen how far down the bill the Stooges are this year? The world should be ashamed, very ashamed… The Sisters of Mercy headlining Sunday night was an inspired choice, but James on the Saturday? At least there was Edwyn Collins on the other stage. Reading hasn’t appealed for a long, long time… and it doesn’t look like the line up is going to do much to change that this year. Iron Maiden headlining the Sunday could be fun… but it’ll take more than that to get me us a tent. Things sure don’t look promising for the future either, with Clear Channel taking over Mean Fiddler.
Reading really never has been a good idea since it became an “indie” festival at the end of the eighties, unless you’re about fifteen years old in which case it’s great fun. You only really need to look at the Glastonbury line up this year to see the difference… White Stripes, Kylie and New Order – now they’re proper headline acts! It’s a shame this Fat Reg bloke didn’t take such a fancy to Glastonbury… that’d be an interesting site.
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Randomiser · 15 May 2004, 22:31 · File under: Listening Reading
Flicking through the new issue of Word magazine we stumbled on a feature called Randomiser. It may well be a regular feature, not being a regular reader it’s hard to say… but it’s in a section called MyPod, that essentially boils down to a bunch of stuff about digital music with a somewhat predictable heavy leaning in the direction of iPod. Well, wouldn’t you if there was a chance there’d be a free iPod in it for you… Anyway – back to the point. This Randomiser feature is fun though. The deal is (so they say…) that someone is asked to hit the ‘shuffle’ button on their iPod and tell them the first five songs that come up and say something about them. Graham Coxon manages to turn up tracks by Pitchfork, Mississippi John Hurt, Yo La Tengo, one of his own tracks and finally one from Pink Floyd. We’ve tried really hard to avoid slipping into the weblog dullard route of writing lists of stuff that are of no interest to anyone else anywhere. Why, really, would anyone care what our top five live recordings of all time are, or our top three Greek restaurants in north London blah blah bah! It’s a bit too tempting to want to have a go this time though, so if you could just indulge us for a moment here:
1. Suzanne by Leonard Cohen
Nice start. Not a favourite Cohen track, but undeniably a good one, so no complaints here. Songs of Love and Hate was the first Leonard Cohen album we had… it was one of those records that you’d buy just by looking at the sleeve, that really bold and powerful block white text against the black and white photograph just makes it look like a great album which, fortunately of course, it is. Songs From A Room would probably never have been bought if it was completely down to the strength of the sleeve, but is an amazing album.
2. Troubled Mind by Buff Medways
Not the smoothest of transitions from the last track, but a bit of a change of pace never hurt anyone. A great track from Steady The Buffs that naturally sounds like a dozen other Billy Childish records and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Billy’s one of those people it feels like you’ve always known about, and it’s still just completely mind-bending to think about the volume of records and books he’s produced. We were so excited when he gave us a preface for an issue of Words & Pictures, and still get really excited every time we get to see him play. The last time was at The Boston Arms (of course) with Buff Medways and Armitage Shanks… lots of fun.
3. Guts by John Cale
It really would have been a bit of a disappointment not to have something by John Cale pop up, although there was a pretty good chance as there’s plenty on there. As an added bonus though, this version is from what is most probably our favourite album – Fragments of A Rainy Season. It’s an album we play over and over and over again, never ever tiring of it. There ain’t many albums that you can do that with. A close contender is probably The Frenz Experiement by The Fall, but it’s only close. He’s one of those few people we’d really go a long way out of our way to make sure we didn’t miss every time he plays live.
4. Farewell My Friend by Dennis Wilson
Ok, well is not going to be an easy one to say very much about, for no other reason that we don’t know much about it. It’s one of those albums that there’s no doubt a whole book of stuff to say about it, but we’re certainly not the people to do it! Let’s just say that it’s a beautiful track and Dennis Wilson’s voice on the whole of Pacific Ocean Blue is really something magical, but if it wasn’t for the random thing we’d probably have chosen ‘Thoughts of You’ instead.
5. Silver Coin by Jacobites
Well if only due to basic maths, there had to be something turn up by Jacobites or if not then either a Nikki Sudden or Dave Kusworth track. Again, not the one that would have been ‘hand’ selected, but not a bad one. It’s a shame really that there’s not more Epic Soundtracks on there… just not got round to putting the cd’s in the machine and encoding them. Which is also going to be a bit tricky to do with the albums we have on vinyl. Surely that’s the perfect format? Give me a vinyl album with the ability to get digital files to go on the iPod (a cd in the package or links to download or something…) and that’d be just perfect. There really just is no purpose for the compact disc, it’s a stupid and ugly format.
What is it good for? · 5 May 2004, 15:45 · File under: Reading Hating
I’ve just been reading on the Media Guardian web site about some claims that the photos of Iraqi prisoners being tortured are a hoax. Apparently there’s some bizzare explanation that they were actually taken by MoD investigators who were reconstructing scenes of alleged abuse taking place. Interesting idea. What seems more strange in some ways though is why anyone should care either way. It’s not hard to see why the Daily Mirror would want such an image on their front page, and it ain’t got anything to do with right or wrong… it does seem like they’ve got a little carried away though. On their web site they publish some of these supposedly ‘controversial’ images with bizzare straplines. One says WRONG: Troop boots Iraqi. So it’s okay to shoot him, drop bombs on him, blow up his home and family, but somehow a quick kick is going too far? Or what about TERRIFYING: Soldier puts gun to prisoner’s head for another? What? Really? A Gun? To the head of the enemy? Oh. My. God. Surely not. What could these beasts be thinking of?
It’s got nothing to do with whether war is right or wrong, or even if this war is right or wrong – it’s just about basic common logic. Whatever way you look at it, a bunch of people have (for whatever reason) decided to become soldiers and have been trained to kill by their government. Then the same government tells them who the enemy is and sends them off to fight them. Let’s just roll that back for a second… yep, fight them. Then they do that and it’s ‘vile’. Any more vile than sending them off to do it in the first place? I don’t know… but I think it was a bit unrealistic to expect it was going to be all handshakes and popping your head over the trench to share fags and play football with the Hun. It’s dull, it’s childish it’s tedious and it’s more than a little stupid and the Daily Mirror really should just go away now…
Given the choice (not that it’s a choice anyone should ever have to make or have made for them) would you rather be a prisoner of war or a casualty of war? Would you rather have a gun put to your head or a bullet put through your head? And I wonder which of the big tough boys at the Mirror would, in that situation (where getting a piece of information out of a ‘prisoner’ might just take you a step closer to reaching the objectives handed to you by your country and therefore ending the war and letting you get home to your wife and kids…) would resist the temptation to lash out? Or knowing that the person on the floor in front of you represents the ‘regime’ that’s behind a bunch of your buddies being killed… you gonna stop that leg swinging out and the boot going in, especially knowing he ain’t going to retailiate. Right? No, of course not. Acceptable? No, of course not. Inevitable? Certainly… it’s not exactly rocket science is it? If you wind a couple of dogs up and throw them in a ring they’ll fight. If you hold one of them down the other one ain’t going to stop fighting. Because they’re fighting for survival. A boxer might not stick the boot in when his opponent is on the floor because it’s sport and it wouldn’t be, er, sporting to do that would it?
My favourite bit though, is the Media Guardian quote from Colonel David Black claiming that one inconsistency was that the lorry pictured was a Bedford MK. “The MK … was not deployed by the army to Iraq at all. That vehicle can’t operate with the fuel that was available in Iraq.”
fait accompli.
