Month: January 2023

The cassette played… Eurotones?

In the most I’ll-be-damned music news I’ve heard in some time, John Lydon has announced that Public Image Limited are competing to represent Ireland in Eurovision.

John Joseph Rotten and Eurovision are two things I don’t think I would’ve ever expected to associate with, and I don’t suppose most people would either. So maybe, by doing the last thing people would expect him to do, John boy’s doing the most punk thing he can? I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to rationalise something that, on the face of it, doesn’t make a lot of sense me. At any rate we are a long way from Metal Box…

Also, another thing most people probably don’t associate with PiL is the word “lovely”, and yet, that is pretty much what the new single (the one they’re attempting to get into Eurovision with) is. Apparently it’s about his wife, Nora, who is succumbing to Alzheimer’s, and, well, it is confoundingly nice. I would never have thought Lydon would write the words “you are loved” with a straight face, but there you go…

This is all last-night stuff, folks

Revisiting this one tonight in belated honour of Dave’s birthday yesterday. I suppose this is a reasonably representative performance from the Isolar II tour, with the notable exception of “Sound and Vision” making its concert debut at the very end of the tour. George Murray is a pretty solid bassist here, isn’t he? And the intro on “Station to Station” is mad, markedly longer and noisier and more extravagant than the one on Stage.

As opposed to what, fake books?

Spotted this on Mastodon this afternoon. What an odd and kind of infuriating question. What do you think I’m reading, the fucking Necronomicon?

I know electronic copies of books aren’t “real” in the physical sense but they still require a physical device to read them—Kindle, phone, computer, whatever. The issue of audiobooks is a lot more vexed, but if we leave that aside for now and limit ourselves to the words on the page, are the latter any more real in a paperback than in an .epub file? Is it more real in hardback? Is the author’s original manuscript written by their own hand more real? What if they never actually “wrote” it as such and did the whole thing on a typewriter or (perish the thought) a computer? What if the author types it all up in Word then sends it to a publisher to actually print it, is it not real or something until the latter step takes place?

I don’t know, I just find this sort of thing to be bullshit and always have done. Saw it decades ago with cinephilia (I still hate that fucking word), here’s an example from an ancient (year 2000!) edition of Senses of Cinema:

Continue reading “As opposed to what, fake books?”

RIP George Barry

Just read on Twitter that George Barry has passed. He was the director behind a singular film, in both the sense that it was the only film he made and that there’s no other film quite like it, that being the legendary Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. That link goes to my old review of it, and the film can be found on Youtube for anyone who hasn’t already had the pleasure.

Some of my best friends are Bengali

On politics, the singer denied he was far-right – a charge that arose after controversial comments on race and racism, as well as his support for now defunct far-right anti-Islam party For Britain.
“Although the left changed and deserted me many years ago, I am most certainly not far-right, and I have not ever met anyone who claims to be far-right,” he wrote.
“My politics are straightforward: I recognize realities. I am therefore sorry to report to some of you that I am absolutely not far-right.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jan/07/morrissey-says-miley-cyrus-exit-was-nothing-to-do-with-his-politics

Yeah, you know who else uses words like “realism” in this sense? Racists. Honestly, Steven Patrick has been dodging accusations of far-right sympathies since the 80s, you’d think he would know better by now than to think this would be enough to convince people. Especially after lending credence to the late and not especially lamented For Britain party, which even Nigel Farage, NIGEL FUCKING FARAGE, said was full of Nazis and racists…

Shitcoin

This was awfully interesting viewing. I have always been skeptical about crypto coins and NFTs but I couldn’t really pin down exactly why that was… apart, anyway, from general reservations about things seeming too good to be true, especially when there’s some sort of vaguely utopian concept backing them up. Also I could never think of a use for bitcoin that couldn’t be achieved just as well with proper money…

Revolver ’22

Love the Fabs. Love Revolver (if not their greatest album, certainly the best thing they’d done by 1966). Still not 100% convinced by the remix, which I gave another spin this afternoon. I don’t think Giles did anything as egregious to this as he did to “She’s Leaving Home” (changing the speed/pitch of the stereo mix to match the mono version) or “Helter Skelter” (toning down Ringo’s blisters in the mix), but still. Despite the much-vaunted use of Peter Jackson’s audio technology to separate sounds out and all that, there’s still only so much you can do with four-track tape, and in the end it kind of reinforces my belief that you’re better off listening to almost anything recorded before 1969 on less than eight-track tape in mono.

Straight Lathams matter

Alas, Mark Loathsome has been discovered by by George Takei, which means Australia has failed to keep this piece of shit within its borders and thereby protect the rest of the world from him. Sorry, other countries. We evidently did not do our best.

This is the article on George’s site, which quotes Mark thus:

“We love the gays but it’s overdue to recognise the Heteros with our flag, parade, International Day, UN evoys [sic], special footy round and jersey and Welcome to Bed ceremonies.”

“Welcome to Bed” indeed. Couldn’t help but slip a bit of racism into the mix, could we, Mark? Heteros are great, especially when they’re white…

I was reminded of the famous “straight lives matter” rally here in Sydney in 2017, which only about 20 people showed up to. I don’t know, maybe people realised the event was being run by crypto-Nazis and didn’t want anything to do with it because of that. Or maybe not all straight people are as insecure and paranoid about their sexuality as the likes of Latham are…

Nada!

Miguel Abuelo et Nada were a group of Argentine expatriates who gathered in Paris in 1973 and lasted just long enough to record this one album, which appeared only in France a couple of years later. They had evidently listened to a certain amount of Led Zeppelin (Abuelo’s vocals display certain Plantisms) and Black Sabbath but also brought enough of their own stuff to the table (the cello is a particularly valuable part of the ensemble). Net result: a fascinating mix of psychedelia, prog and early metal that was perhaps doomed to the limited success it apparently achieved.

Also, if you’re going to listen to it, do so with headphones like I just did. This is one of those 1970s stereo albums.