Fireplace

2003-11-05T16:38:00.000Z

THE FLAMING LIPS, CLINIC, & STEVE BURNS
Cardiff International Arena, Sunday 26th October

If it wasn’t for the Flaming Lips, Steve Burns wouldn’t be here tonight. His band is engaging but unremarkable; had it not been for Oklahoma’s sunniest psychedelicists, he wouldn’t have made it out of America. And while Burns plays raggedly emotional indie in Pavement’s blueprint, his melodies and arrangements owe all their sparks to the Soft Bulletin, that template of contemporary transcendental pop crafted by tonight’s headliners in 1999.

When compiling their anthologies, will future rock historians wonder why every critic remarked that Clinic sound like the exact mid-point between the Velvets and the Pixies? Perhaps, until they listen to the records. Tonight they’re a chugging drone, and the crowd seem nonplussed, even when they play the Second Line, a tune progressive enough to have appeared on a Levi’s ad.

Yup, seems everyone is here for the Lips. Race For The Prize pounds to life and the place explodes. It’s truly celebratory. There are giant balloons bouncing, indie kids dancing, gold dust glittering, giant cartoon animals bopping, and Wayne Coyne doing his shit: punching the air victoriously, straining for the notes, and pretending to play his acoustic geetar. Seriously now, the guy is easy to love; if Satan hissself ascended from hell and offered you Wayne as your Dad, in exchange for the immortal souls of your loved ones, you’d gladly accept. But this a Flaming Lips gig, and dark shit like that doesn’t happen.

Or does it? Tonight the Lips air their conviction that sometimes, you’ve just gotta fight. After a beautiful, colourful run through the Gash, Wayne introduces Fight Test as being a clarification of the message of the former, ie. if someone fucks with you, fuck them up good. Cue horrific video footage. Famously savage, famously controversial, this clip shows a Viet Cong prisoner get shot in the head, collapse, die, and spurt lots of blood and brains and stuff out of his head. It’s horrible, of course, and the Flaming Lips loop it for about a minute. Now I’m all for promoting political awareness, but within their carnival atmosphere, this blunt adoption of emotive material veered into sensationalism.

Do You Realize? helps everyone recover. Not merely life-affirming pop, this song glints and shimmers like pure crystalline joy. It’s as spiritually uplifting as art gets these days, and this is the best way to hear it.

2003-05-26T01:37:00.000Z

Flaming lips song title of the week: 'i want to kill my brother; the cymbal head'. i can't wait to find out next week's... can you?

2003-05-13T23:40:00.000Z

Oxfam are doing lots of good campaigns at the mo. you can go to their website and fill in protest forms which are sent to evil corporations, governments and the like. their regular (i think weekly) email newsletter is a useful way to keep informed. sign up for the mailout here.

2003-05-08T11:37:00.000Z

Channel 4's 'greatest film stars of all time' poll has been universally condemned by my friends. alan: 'very strange'; jake: 'bizarre'; eleri: 'a wankfest'. i must agree -- kevin spacey & ewan mc gregor in the top 10? tom hanks, the 3rd greatest actor of all time? this, combined with the virgin radio listeners' poll of the best singles of the past 10 years, only reminds us of the continuing irrelevance and hopelessness of such charts. did i say say 'continuing irrelevance'? perhaps 'increasing irrelevance' is more apt; as the chasm between the present day and our last golden era of culture, the 1970s, grows, we are increasingly distant from recent touchstones in both time and quality. as our memories and attention spans diminish, our tolerance of sanitized, vapid, conservative culture grows.

'nostalgic, retrospective shite' is how eleri describes current tv programming. when we finally get to 'i love 2001', i wonder if it will be all about how many 'i love 19**' shows were on tv. this constant dependance on the past really does limit and erode the scope of tv. 6 hours dedicated to channel 4's poll? those 6 hours were low on diversity, insight... and cost.

the result of the virgin radio poll -- which predictably ended up like a greatest hits of the virgin playlist -- painted a picture of a decade indebted to and overshadowed by musical achievements of previous eras. the top 20 included mainstream rock music exclusively, with oasis clocking up 3 entries, and coldplay and blur 2 each. the only black musician on the list, as far as i can gather, is the drummer from ocean colour scene. i would like to contest the suggestion that 'the day we caught the train' is a song of the past 10 years. ok, so it was released in the mid-90s, but was it really a song of the last decade? this tune is so retro that around the time of its release, while i was watching the vid on the o-zone or some shit, my mum walked in and said, 'ooh, the beatles'. now, my mother is a lovely lady, but she knows little about music. however, she was actually around when the beatles were big (which is more than can be said for o.c.s), and she genuinely mistook this song, written and recorded 30 years later, for 'i am the fucking walrus'. is it any surprise that she's not interested in keeping up with music, when examples like this work of pub-rock pastiche shite suggest a scene so pathetically reliant on the past?

it all just seems so despondant and pessimistic: 'well, we'll never recapture the glory of the past, but let's try to wallow in its warm, comforting rays before time thins them out and they disappear'. holy fuck! is this really the mindset we want our era to be defined by? historians will say, 'they liked the beatles and scorsese so much that they couldn't move on. they couldn't envisage a new epoch ever being as good.' let's not try to recapture it, let's enjoy it and learn from it and try to move on.

2003-05-01T20:18:00.000Z

Politics today: i voted for labour twice today in cardiff. i was oh so tempted to vote for the pro-life party, after they so sensitively and intelligently described the deaths by abortion since it was legalised as 'the silent holocaust'. that's right folks. holocaust. a strong word... (propaganda typo alert! i just typed 'a strong war'!!! what have they done to my mind? i blame sarah from channel 4 news.)... but fairly used here, i'd say. those evil abortion mums need to know what they've been party to. AND NEVER FORGET FOR AS LONG AS THEY LIVE... 2003 urgently requires a bill hicks.

i've decided to start putting some reviews and stuff i've written on my other weblog, chewie net. it currently has a review of loose fur.

2003-04-29T16:19:00.000Z

AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION BETWEEN ME AND DAMON ALBARN

DAMON: don't you love my new single, 'out of time'?
ME: errr, well, it's ok
DAMON: you must: it's so understated and lo-fi!
ME: what you hear as understated, damon, sounds to everyone else like a quaver dissolving in a pint of fosters. and if you want to hear an arena rock band try to be lo-fi, you should check out 'go let it out' by oasis. in fact... (scuttles off to put it on the stereo) ahh! ace!
DAMON: so you don't think it's a brave comeback single?
ME: no; it's a fucking cop-out. it is a song bourne of one idea. it has no interesting guitar parts, chord changes, melodies, or lyrics. the only vaguely catchy part is when you slip into that hackneyed descending bass-line bit at the end of the chorus, a la dear prudence. what's more, it's only memorable because it's such a cliche. nice xylophone though. twat!
DAMON: well, hang on...
ME: shut yer bitch-hole. if you want to hear a brave comeback single, check out R.E.M's 'e-bow the letter', a beautifully unconventional song: haunting and subtle, with free-association lyrics, and patti smith. or, for that matter, 'daysleeper'; or what about 'pyramid song'?
DAMON: but it's a redefinition of the blur sound...
ME: so what? SO FUCKING WHAT? blur are not important. your continued existence is an embarrassment. even graham saw the band as a britpop curio.
DAMON: can you hear the influence of german experimentalist heroes can?
ME: i think i want to cry. 'out of time' is to can what 'every day is a winding road' is to gram parsons. ooh! (listens to liam wail the chorus of 'go let it out') are you listening to this damon? this is a single with conviction. sure, it's unsophisticated and ambiguous, but it's cool and aware of its limitations. your song is full of pseudo-integrity.
DAMON: i see. any positive comments at all?
ME: at least it's better than 'music is my radar'...

2002-07-16T22:27:00.000Z

Starbucks news #1: chairman schultz has decreed that 'every jew in america' should support isreal in the current troubles. american muslims for global peace and justice have a commendably sober and factual report here. i also found a petition informing starbucks of a boycott in response.

starbucks #2: the telegraph reports today that some american, name of smith, is attempting to visit every starbucks store in the world. drinking one coffee in each, he has been to 2,844 so far (that's 85%). he occassionally hallucinates after drinking up to 30 cups of coffee a day. holy. fucking. god. anthropologists are attempting to discover how the american entertainment industry failed to placate smith adequately. he will now join 32,701 other americans on the fbi's list of citizens pursuing hobbies other than baseball and fishing.

VOTE TIM OUT! i don't care that he's boring, or posh, or preens constantly. i do care that he looks down on the other contestants, is ashamed about being ginger, loves thatcher, and will one day make a fortune in property (he's the sort). i really object to the rascist joke he made the other day.

creative review: i wrote a song today that may become an indie anthem. i also wrote a haiku that the guardian didn't put on their website. fuckers! nb: ref: starbucks geek: bit after 'holy. fucking. god': my source for these details is on crack.

2002-07-15T20:17:00.000Z

HOW POSTMODERNISM MAKES EMI LOOK STUPID

OR: why do all the best bands get screwed?

1977: evil record syndicate emi drop the sex pistols in response to the furore caused by 'anarchy in the uk', and the band's general out-of-control lunatic antics.

1977: sex pistols release the enduring power-chord opus 'never mind the bollocks here's the sex pistols'. this defining statement of punk—also one of the most over-rated albums ever—features a tune slagging their former record label called 'emi'.

1977-9: the buzzcocks release a string of about 20 classic singles. their work overshadows the pistols artistically, but never commercially.

mid 1990s: bbc2 come up with quite a funny music quiz called 'never mind the buzzcocks', wittily tying together two cultural references.

1999: evil record syndicate emi release a buzzcocks best-of called 'i don't mind the buzzcocks', an obvious reference to the gameshow which referenced the album that attacked emi.

RESULT: emi look quite stupid, the buzzcocks—in contention with the clash for the title of the greatest punk band of all time—are reduced to making sales off the back of a shite quiz show association: another victory for postmodernism. damn the man!

2002-07-15T00:36:00.000Z

Sorry bout the below rant, but hey. what about the chirac assassination attempt? (digression: wow! four 's's in 'assassination'? crazy language... any word with four 's's really should hiss...) it has been the worst year for politics in ages. expect a rant about right-wing european groups around anytime now. anyways... i'm pleased to announce the arrival of the bukowski sound file, sitting over there to the left of the page. probably sitting smokin a fag and drinkin a beer, and most likely tryin to get one of the girls from the greenpeace site (linked just below) into bed. yeh, its rude, but click on it and it'll read you a poem.

i'm also gonna try to get a chatterbox thing wrangled in here somewhere, so visitors (be there any) can leave a quick message, hassle-free style. also coming soon: an 'about me' link. i can see youre excited...

2002-07-14T14:43:00.000Z

Every week the sunday telegraph runs the worst music column in the world. this may sound implausible, but i've read loads of music crit over the years, and since i sometimes write music reviews myself, i always end up assessing the journalism as much as the record i'm reading about. and james delingpole is the worst popular music 'critic' in the world. he's like your uncle who is obsessed with demonstrating that he's in touch. his tendency to fawn over q magazine while smirking condescendingly at the fads of the nme is sickening; the fact that he can't see that these rags directly invented the medium in which he writes is hilarious. no doubt delingpole thinks that his off-the-cuff tone is hip and irreverent, like an informal spanner in the works of the telegraph's elevated letters. oh, the subversion! bound to win kudos with the kids, especially when added to his relentless, desperate name-dropping. instead, the result is an overwhelmingly blasé manner, qualified with hopelessly subjective value-judgements.

i was particularly roused this morning by delingpole's thoughts on the new flaming lips lp - clogged up with redundant terms such as 'off-kilter folk' - and the ms dynamite record. now, while i hate to recommend censorship, this man should really not be allowed to write about urban music. witness his cluelessness: 'why do so many contemporary black musicians feel this compulsion to glue together their catchier songs with pools of turgid syrup?' so ends the review. he's obviously on about the soul-inspired tunes that tend to pop up about 3/4 of the way through urban records. so, why? let's collectively scratch our heads and try to help the esteemed writer with this conundrum. hmmm.... well.... i know! it's the gospel tradition, you fucking idiot!!!! you would never read such an unaware equivalent comment from a black writer: 'why do all these white rock bands feel they have to get down into a mad guitar-psych-wig-out towards the end of the record?' it's about how different genres draw from their roots to define a coherent dynamism and pace in their long-playing efforts. and any nationally-published music critic should be aware of the impact the past is having on the present scene - in every genre he/she wishes to tackle - at the given moment.

2002-07-13T18:46:00.000Z

* This is the first post. this is it. this is love. this is the box. this is the fireplace.

* youre new. youre the kids. youre the sun. youre the idea. youre the dancers goin fucking mental to detroit house one and a half decades ago.

* there is indendiary music. there is incendiary thought. there is incendiary pictures. there is incendiary action.

* hang the chairs to better sweep; clear the floor to dance.

* i will post diary-esque bits, links, maybe music if i learn how, maybe poems and reviews. probably reviews. i think 2moro i'll write the post rhyming :-)