Thursday, February 26, 2004
Planning to write something in May. Or June, probably.
Monday, January 26, 2004
review of 'The A.M.''s debut (from Stylus)
When a PR invokes Bowie it’s painful because I immediately think of Velvet Goldmine, which sucked and was the film I rented to mollify an ex once after a regrettable incident of domestic violence where I attacked her with what I drunkenly thought was a live chicken. I could tell it was a bad film even though I wasn’t paying attention, as I was too busy applying ointment to her fresh stumps while she reminded me that real chickens aren’t connected to extension cables. The A.M.’s debut is more Human Highway than V.G. though. That was the Neil Young flick with Devo as a radiation clean-up crew. The tracks here are a series of sneaks squirting symphonic curlicues onto a new-wave muffin tray with the doughy shit taken out for maximum thin-ness of tone and at its best reminds me very much of Cars tunes like “Dangerous Type” or “All Mixed Up”. Making a glam version of On the Beach is a great idea. Every dying off-interstate town has at least one resident who painted their nails once and never added another coat so they have chipped bluish residue on their fingers that looks like they slammed a car door on them. This bunch is from New York though, which makes the double-headed asparagus-cross logo on the back even more puzzling. Maybe it’s a reference to phenylthalanine, the stuff that causes odd-smelling urine. Phenylketonuria is an autosomal recessive disorder, caused by mutations in both alleles of the gene for phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH), found on chromosome 12, the most obvious symptom being mental retardation. People with this condition, as well as being retarded, have odd-smelling urine all the time. I used to think that if I ate enough asparagus then I would get to be retarded and then get to take the short bus to the ‘special needs’ class where they wouldn’t give me so many difficult assignments. This review is the way it is because I ate the cover. The best song is the last one (“Colors are Beginning to Deepen”), in which David ‘If I Could Only Remember My Name’ Crosby wakes up, spots a harmonium and decides it’s Nico. Do harmoniums have lids that can slam shut on fingers and make them blue? “Trangression” is a backhanded anti-indie construction revealing the Strokes and Flaming Lips as the same people while “Chanay” does the same for Suicide and Keith Richards solo albums, except with not quite as much vocal belligerence. Perhaps these are the best eclecticians since Spoon. (The band or the record label?)
When a PR invokes Bowie it’s painful because I immediately think of Velvet Goldmine, which sucked and was the film I rented to mollify an ex once after a regrettable incident of domestic violence where I attacked her with what I drunkenly thought was a live chicken. I could tell it was a bad film even though I wasn’t paying attention, as I was too busy applying ointment to her fresh stumps while she reminded me that real chickens aren’t connected to extension cables. The A.M.’s debut is more Human Highway than V.G. though. That was the Neil Young flick with Devo as a radiation clean-up crew. The tracks here are a series of sneaks squirting symphonic curlicues onto a new-wave muffin tray with the doughy shit taken out for maximum thin-ness of tone and at its best reminds me very much of Cars tunes like “Dangerous Type” or “All Mixed Up”. Making a glam version of On the Beach is a great idea. Every dying off-interstate town has at least one resident who painted their nails once and never added another coat so they have chipped bluish residue on their fingers that looks like they slammed a car door on them. This bunch is from New York though, which makes the double-headed asparagus-cross logo on the back even more puzzling. Maybe it’s a reference to phenylthalanine, the stuff that causes odd-smelling urine. Phenylketonuria is an autosomal recessive disorder, caused by mutations in both alleles of the gene for phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH), found on chromosome 12, the most obvious symptom being mental retardation. People with this condition, as well as being retarded, have odd-smelling urine all the time. I used to think that if I ate enough asparagus then I would get to be retarded and then get to take the short bus to the ‘special needs’ class where they wouldn’t give me so many difficult assignments. This review is the way it is because I ate the cover. The best song is the last one (“Colors are Beginning to Deepen”), in which David ‘If I Could Only Remember My Name’ Crosby wakes up, spots a harmonium and decides it’s Nico. Do harmoniums have lids that can slam shut on fingers and make them blue? “Trangression” is a backhanded anti-indie construction revealing the Strokes and Flaming Lips as the same people while “Chanay” does the same for Suicide and Keith Richards solo albums, except with not quite as much vocal belligerence. Perhaps these are the best eclecticians since Spoon. (The band or the record label?)
Monday, January 05, 2004
Hanoi Rocks review
Xmas, NYE over. 2 down 0 to go. NYE 'low-key' w/2 drunk couples and no weed, playing some game involving impersonating weird Brit celebrities I've never heard of.
Unsure about new Bobby Conn CD. Conn/Darkness = Crue/Poison but even the Crue only had one 'Shout at the Devil' in them.
Busy preparing for projected transatlantic journey which is why I haven't been up to shit lately.
Xmas, NYE over. 2 down 0 to go. NYE 'low-key' w/2 drunk couples and no weed, playing some game involving impersonating weird Brit celebrities I've never heard of.
Unsure about new Bobby Conn CD. Conn/Darkness = Crue/Poison but even the Crue only had one 'Shout at the Devil' in them.
Busy preparing for projected transatlantic journey which is why I haven't been up to shit lately.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
SPIDER (d. D. Cronenberg, 2002)
I didn't even know that all of the chicks were the same person until I read some reviews after watching this. Not only does that mean I shouldn't review films ever but it means there's something seriously wrong if I can't even recognise people's faces. I've had this problem before, once I spoke to somebody for 20 minutes thinking it was somebody else and it turned out to be a really good friend who'd I known for 10 years. The next day I apologised and told them I was on acid at the time, but the damage was done. This non-recognition thing really fucked me up as I realised that I've probably misunderstood everything that's ever happened to me where another person was involved, especially since this flick is about some crazy fucker who wanders around London's various shitholes (near the canal mainly like the one I live close to!) talking to himself and carrying around notebooks filled with hieroglyphics and ends up going back to the nuthatch. The guy seriously can't cope but sees patterns and recurring themes in everything. Which one leads to the other? All of Cronenberg's other films were uplifting but this one just pissed me off, not that it was bad but it just made me wish I was somewhere and somebody else who didn't have the tendency to see recurring patterns and themes in movies about fucking wingnuts all the time. If the intention was to make the viewer feel as nuts as the character then that would be a relief, but the overly schematic nature of the flick would leave me to believe otherwise, which means that not only am I completely hopeless but impressionable to. I'm going to have to watch 'Crash' again just to feel like a normal person.
I didn't even know that all of the chicks were the same person until I read some reviews after watching this. Not only does that mean I shouldn't review films ever but it means there's something seriously wrong if I can't even recognise people's faces. I've had this problem before, once I spoke to somebody for 20 minutes thinking it was somebody else and it turned out to be a really good friend who'd I known for 10 years. The next day I apologised and told them I was on acid at the time, but the damage was done. This non-recognition thing really fucked me up as I realised that I've probably misunderstood everything that's ever happened to me where another person was involved, especially since this flick is about some crazy fucker who wanders around London's various shitholes (near the canal mainly like the one I live close to!) talking to himself and carrying around notebooks filled with hieroglyphics and ends up going back to the nuthatch. The guy seriously can't cope but sees patterns and recurring themes in everything. Which one leads to the other? All of Cronenberg's other films were uplifting but this one just pissed me off, not that it was bad but it just made me wish I was somewhere and somebody else who didn't have the tendency to see recurring patterns and themes in movies about fucking wingnuts all the time. If the intention was to make the viewer feel as nuts as the character then that would be a relief, but the overly schematic nature of the flick would leave me to believe otherwise, which means that not only am I completely hopeless but impressionable to. I'm going to have to watch 'Crash' again just to feel like a normal person.
Sunday, November 30, 2003
NEBULA, ATOMIC RITUAL (Sweet Nothing, 2003)
“I’ve got an urge that I accept/ Live in the moment...everything’ alright…now or never”
– Nebula, “Now or Never”
Existence is a series of actions, each one negating the preceding. Individuals are not free, however their actions negate the actions of other individuals as well as their own. Individuals are not free so there is no basis for imposing moral logic on the series of actions comprising any individual existence. Individual existential conflicts cannot be resolved with coherent moral logic. This is an evil record.
“Stand/ Don’t you know that you are free? Well at least in your mind, if you want to be”
– Sly & the Family Stone, “Stand”
Stoner fans will know that the Vertigo label’s emblem was an ever-decreasing circle. The career of Jesus the carpenter was an attempt to produce an antidote to the screw. Last week due to an abscessed tooth I spent the night awake in extreme physical pain, then it stopped and I realised that had I died it would be months before anyone found out. All of my movements have been in ever-decreasing circles. Geographically I have moved to the most distant point and am plotting a course of return. Financially I am ascending towards tenuous solvency. Socially I am retreating from a quantifiable accomplished identity through a period of moral and perceptual indeterminacy towards complete passivity in terms of definition. Existence is the process of nullifying which sustains it. In the future everyone will be famous for as long as they are alive.
“Well I discovered that this life that was getting’ to me/ Was not really mine/ If it was mine/ I’d have fun all the time”
– Funkadelic, “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow”
Punks are Islington lawyers now. I was smoking dope with one yesterday. He was seriously pissed off when I put Van Halen on. I asked what was wrong with it, and apparently it didn’t say anything to him about his life, unlike Stiff Little Fingers. A machetero of the abstraction thicket, I attempted to maximise the cane harvest and said “but what does it SOUND like?” “Clean.” This record is better than Room on Fire like U2 was better than Television. Punks hated Van Halen more than they hated Pink Floyd. Fear of dirt is an obsession with death. Nobody really wants Jim Morrison to be dead because he invented New Wave and that’s the sound that’s happening now. Stiff Little Fingers recontextualised the counter-reformation at the root of the Sex Pistols’ rejection of the anarcho-syndicalism of Van Halen. “Religion” was a response to “Runnin’ With the Devil.” Dispensing drugs to affluent professionals is a good way to guarantee legal representation if necessary, though I am reluctant to test this assertion. Perhaps that’s the lie at the heart of attempting to listen to music.
“Please get some medication, it’s simple. Simple.”
– Rev. Jim Jones
The killer took a mask from the ancient gallery and he walked on down the hall. The cleaner noticed this but the killer was unconcerned because the cleaner had no documents and had another job, singing for Mazzy Star. ‘Simon Moon’ was the name of a film character who had “no thought processes”. U2 devoured Television and the Strokes devoured U2 by integrating Rory Gallagher. Van Halen’s “I’m the One” confirmed the continuum that Gallagher was outside of through juxtaposition of antitheticals thus predicting a future they could exclude themselves from. “Freeing one’s mind” can also free it from its corpus. When Bono met Bush he asked that Nirvana be stricken from existence. This record is better than (What’s the Story) Morning Glory.
“I am one I am none
I love that which loves not”
Nebula, “The Beast”
“I’ve got an urge that I accept/ Live in the moment...everything’ alright…now or never”
– Nebula, “Now or Never”
Existence is a series of actions, each one negating the preceding. Individuals are not free, however their actions negate the actions of other individuals as well as their own. Individuals are not free so there is no basis for imposing moral logic on the series of actions comprising any individual existence. Individual existential conflicts cannot be resolved with coherent moral logic. This is an evil record.
“Stand/ Don’t you know that you are free? Well at least in your mind, if you want to be”
– Sly & the Family Stone, “Stand”
Stoner fans will know that the Vertigo label’s emblem was an ever-decreasing circle. The career of Jesus the carpenter was an attempt to produce an antidote to the screw. Last week due to an abscessed tooth I spent the night awake in extreme physical pain, then it stopped and I realised that had I died it would be months before anyone found out. All of my movements have been in ever-decreasing circles. Geographically I have moved to the most distant point and am plotting a course of return. Financially I am ascending towards tenuous solvency. Socially I am retreating from a quantifiable accomplished identity through a period of moral and perceptual indeterminacy towards complete passivity in terms of definition. Existence is the process of nullifying which sustains it. In the future everyone will be famous for as long as they are alive.
“Well I discovered that this life that was getting’ to me/ Was not really mine/ If it was mine/ I’d have fun all the time”
– Funkadelic, “Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow”
Punks are Islington lawyers now. I was smoking dope with one yesterday. He was seriously pissed off when I put Van Halen on. I asked what was wrong with it, and apparently it didn’t say anything to him about his life, unlike Stiff Little Fingers. A machetero of the abstraction thicket, I attempted to maximise the cane harvest and said “but what does it SOUND like?” “Clean.” This record is better than Room on Fire like U2 was better than Television. Punks hated Van Halen more than they hated Pink Floyd. Fear of dirt is an obsession with death. Nobody really wants Jim Morrison to be dead because he invented New Wave and that’s the sound that’s happening now. Stiff Little Fingers recontextualised the counter-reformation at the root of the Sex Pistols’ rejection of the anarcho-syndicalism of Van Halen. “Religion” was a response to “Runnin’ With the Devil.” Dispensing drugs to affluent professionals is a good way to guarantee legal representation if necessary, though I am reluctant to test this assertion. Perhaps that’s the lie at the heart of attempting to listen to music.
“Please get some medication, it’s simple. Simple.”
– Rev. Jim Jones
The killer took a mask from the ancient gallery and he walked on down the hall. The cleaner noticed this but the killer was unconcerned because the cleaner had no documents and had another job, singing for Mazzy Star. ‘Simon Moon’ was the name of a film character who had “no thought processes”. U2 devoured Television and the Strokes devoured U2 by integrating Rory Gallagher. Van Halen’s “I’m the One” confirmed the continuum that Gallagher was outside of through juxtaposition of antitheticals thus predicting a future they could exclude themselves from. “Freeing one’s mind” can also free it from its corpus. When Bono met Bush he asked that Nirvana be stricken from existence. This record is better than (What’s the Story) Morning Glory.
“I am one I am none
I love that which loves not”
Nebula, “The Beast”
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Friday, November 14, 2003
Jefferson Airplane
"Crown of Creation"
In loyalty to their kind
They cannot tolerate our minds
In loyalty to our kind
We cannot tolerate their...OBSTRUCTION...
Science fiction is a genre based on the all-conquering 'premise' so what happens when people identify with the 'characters' instead? Sickly misfit children (like myself) retreat into the life of the mind, derive sustenance from tales of Slans and mutants and frelks, persecuted for the superpowers they dare not use! As a spindly young waste of space I derived great comfort these tales between my periodic hospital visits, as the protagonists were inevitably kindly, sensitive souls who would finally turn on their slavering subhuman tormentors with their psi-energies or pyrokinetics or whatever. (In 'More Than Human' the psi guy was subtly named 'Lone'!)
Leading a reclusive life surrounded by sci-fi paperbacks when young means you have some sort of latent artsy inclination apparently but you always feel a bit nervous doing it mid-life. Imagining yourself as a Slan at age 10 = 'healthy imagination', doing it at 34 = 'guy everyone in the street looks at funny'>>>'potential Unabomber' etc. A good psi-kick defense for this is to convince yourself you're reading subtle satires, digging for the sociological content. Of course, what happened to me is in 'researching society thru sci-fi' I've managed to substitute 'research' for actual socialising. Although most professionals state that as long as you KNOW you're not really a clone or an alien and that you can't make people's heads explode by looking at them then you're OK. I got that from a website actually, I won't see a real one, cuz last time I did the guy said he 'had to leave the room for a few minutes' and after 30 minutes I got suspicious and went to leave but the door was locked! I escaped out the window just as I saw a van pull up in front the clinic with some huge guys carrying nets jumping out.
(The above incident was stolen from 'A Question of Madness' by Zhores A Medvedev about his experience as an institutionalised Soviet dissident. One of his fellow incareratees who later defected to the UK was my landlord when I lived in Camden Road!)
Re "CoC" -
a) If one was in a psychedelic rock group during the free-love era, surely one would be getting so much 'action' that they wouldn't feel so persecuted? Unless of course they were doing a SHITLOAD of acid. Then again, acid gives you psi-powers. When I was tripping in the Mission once some psycho attacked me with a garden rake. I just stared at him. Obviously my telepathic lasers made his head explode cuz he ran off. At least, I think that's what happened.
b) Kiss should've covered this instead of attempting to copy it with "100,000" years. Blue Oyster Cult's copies were fine.
"Crown of Creation"
In loyalty to their kind
They cannot tolerate our minds
In loyalty to our kind
We cannot tolerate their...OBSTRUCTION...
Science fiction is a genre based on the all-conquering 'premise' so what happens when people identify with the 'characters' instead? Sickly misfit children (like myself) retreat into the life of the mind, derive sustenance from tales of Slans and mutants and frelks, persecuted for the superpowers they dare not use! As a spindly young waste of space I derived great comfort these tales between my periodic hospital visits, as the protagonists were inevitably kindly, sensitive souls who would finally turn on their slavering subhuman tormentors with their psi-energies or pyrokinetics or whatever. (In 'More Than Human' the psi guy was subtly named 'Lone'!)
Leading a reclusive life surrounded by sci-fi paperbacks when young means you have some sort of latent artsy inclination apparently but you always feel a bit nervous doing it mid-life. Imagining yourself as a Slan at age 10 = 'healthy imagination', doing it at 34 = 'guy everyone in the street looks at funny'>>>'potential Unabomber' etc. A good psi-kick defense for this is to convince yourself you're reading subtle satires, digging for the sociological content. Of course, what happened to me is in 'researching society thru sci-fi' I've managed to substitute 'research' for actual socialising. Although most professionals state that as long as you KNOW you're not really a clone or an alien and that you can't make people's heads explode by looking at them then you're OK. I got that from a website actually, I won't see a real one, cuz last time I did the guy said he 'had to leave the room for a few minutes' and after 30 minutes I got suspicious and went to leave but the door was locked! I escaped out the window just as I saw a van pull up in front the clinic with some huge guys carrying nets jumping out.
(The above incident was stolen from 'A Question of Madness' by Zhores A Medvedev about his experience as an institutionalised Soviet dissident. One of his fellow incareratees who later defected to the UK was my landlord when I lived in Camden Road!)
Re "CoC" -
a) If one was in a psychedelic rock group during the free-love era, surely one would be getting so much 'action' that they wouldn't feel so persecuted? Unless of course they were doing a SHITLOAD of acid. Then again, acid gives you psi-powers. When I was tripping in the Mission once some psycho attacked me with a garden rake. I just stared at him. Obviously my telepathic lasers made his head explode cuz he ran off. At least, I think that's what happened.
b) Kiss should've covered this instead of attempting to copy it with "100,000" years. Blue Oyster Cult's copies were fine.
