Tee hee! I'm an imbecile!

I was watching Horizon earlier - presented by Alan Davies. Alan Davies, in case you aren't familiar, was in the mystery series Johnathan Creek. He's a staple of wrist-slashingly unfunny panel shows. And here he is, presenting Horizon. The episode was titled 'How Long is a Piece of String?' - ostensibly tackling the philisophical cliché, but hoping to sneak some quantum mechanics-lite in through the back door before anyone notices and puts 'Britain's Worst Teeth' on instead.

Alan delights in gurning at the camera and tittering about how he never passed his Physics GCSE - yet here he is - of all people! - mouth-agape, investigating the mysteries of the universe, amongst a selection of 'credible' scientists (many helpfully signposted by standing in front of vast chalkboards of equations, or scuttling around in white coats - the only things missing were bubbling beakers full of smoking red liquid, and 'comedy' explosions in the background). The fact that he failed a Science GCSE is clearly intended to add a hilarious dimension to proceedings - 'ooh, I could never understand all those bloody equations either, wasn't it all ridiculous!'.

What if the situation were inverted - imagine Vernon Kaye presenting an hour's worth of literary BBC4 where he grinningly admits that 5 dog-eared copies of Loaded are the only written words he's ever read, but nonetheless slogs through a critical discourse of Steinbeck, reading each line with a ruler underneath and saying the words aloud. The duty log would crumble from the sheer force of bilious rage directed towards it. Quite rightly. But admitting you were no good at science is somehow acceptable, endearing, even.

Science programming can now take an hour to make a single point - and to make this point it's become necessary to 'tell a story'. There was no story involved with this episode - or there shouldn't have been. Instead we're guided on some pointless adventure with the hapless Davies until, 45 minutes in, the programme itself gets bored and cuts to some fireworks footage soundtracked by Coldplay for the remaining 15 minutes, with rapturous applause over the end credits. OK, it doesn't, but it might as well.

Of course it's naive to assume something 'hardcore' would command the millions of viewers a BBC2 property like Horizon does, but it raises the question of whether there is any point - viewers with little basic science knowledge continue to hold the 'it's indistinguishable from magic' viewpoint, whilst the science-literate resort to 'Britain's Worst Teeth' on BBC3 out of frustration.

Blind Date

Ok, so I last wrote something on here back in June. Being truthful, I forgot the login. And then blogged somewhere else for a bit. And then just thought, 'what have I possibly got to say that needs more than 140 characters to explain, anyway?' Let's not even go into the guy who asked me for a contribution to his site back in, ooh, May. Sorry Paul.

Anyway, last week I went on a blind date. I've never done anything like that before, or maybe if I did I got so hammered and made such an idiot of myself I've forgotten the whole sorry occasion. Anyway, this time it was a bloke who answered an ad I'd put on the internet. I guess I'm just not that choosy anymore.

OK, I'll come clean, it wasn't that kind of date - he was a musician looking for someone to 'do stuff' with, and he'd seen my ad on an internet forum. There's actually many similarites with 'real' internet dating, funnily enough - in fact, there's a lot to be learnt from band ads. The same cliches crop up repeatedly as you'd expect, though I'd love to see the denizens of Guardian Soulmates adopting some of the no-nonsense demands made by musos - 'absolutely no timewasters', 'commitment required for a minimum of 6 months' and 'own transport essential'. I guess I'd add 'If I suggest you get in a cold van alone with me and drive to Leeds in mid-December, you will agree'.

Like the people I know who've tried internet dating, I found myself saying things like "I don't normally meet people like this, I just thought I'd give it a go" - and anyway, even if I found myself locked in a windowless rehearsal room in 2 months' time with a 5-string fretless bass player called Pendar, it's the sort of story I'd probably find myself recounting in a pub to other musos at some point. Usually during one of those inevitable times you're hanging around the back of some dive in Leicester waiting to go and perform to 9 people on a Sunday night. Nothing to lose, then. Pendar will never text me at 5am asking who that other bass player he saw me with was, either. Well... I say that now.

I look around a bunch of forums and start writing an ad. I soon realise there's a great deal of second-guessing involved. Keeping it simple and mentioning something 'everyman' like AC/DC is going to attract Kasabian fans, and they will answer any ad mentioning a band they've heard of. This won't do. On the other hand if I try and out-cool everyone with Someone-You've-Never-Heard-Of : 'The Early Stuff', I'm going to attract the guys that actually own that stuff. You don't want to be in a band with them - they've just wasted half their life tracking down Spooky Tooth rarities, so simply having a conversation - let alone playing an instrument, can be a challenge for them. Plus they'll probably look like Gollum. Plus - well, I've just described myself anyway, and opposites supposedly attact.

I'm going to have to write an ad that makes me sound like a lunatic, albeit an approachable one. Like a Soulmates ad that reads 'GSOH, likes walking lonely moors, hates children + swans, loves Neitzsche, Happy Gilmore, Medieval battle re-enactments, screaming myself to sleep'. I write what I believe to be the musical equivalent of this, hit 'submit' and wait.

An hour later I've got a reply. 'Yes, I'm that much of a hot ticket', I think to myself. It's from a bloke. Let's call him John, in case this mirrors actual 'dating' to the extent that he's already Googled me and is avidly clicking 'refresh' on here awaiting new insight. Hmm, right.

John lives in Woking. He wants to 'collaborate together on an exciting post-rock project'. He sends me an MP3. It's not an exciting post-rock project. It sounds like John, at home, grappling with Garageband. Actually, it sounds more like John, at home, grappling with a complete stranger using a snare drum as a weapon. I actually delete his MP3 as iTunes seems to select it often and it scares the life out of me. He's in London a lot, apparently, so it could work out well. 'John', I write, 'I just don't see it working out between us. I'm rarely (never) in Woking and anyway, the mere thought of meeting you unaccompanied goes against everything I've heard about meeting people from the internet'. Actually, I don't write this at all, I just delete the email and go and wash my hands.

Next up is 'Paul'. He lives in London, GSOH, looking for fun and maybe more, likes going out and socialising, is pet-tolerant and has loved and lost enough to know a keeper when he sees one. I'm paraphrasing slightly, that's the gist anyway. We arrange to meet. Paul suggests a pub in Islington. Already I'm judging him. Last time I played with a band we'd drink in Crobar, The Wilmington, The Mucky Pup - crappy 'band' places - you've disappointed me, I think. Regardless, I agree to the gastropub he suggests, remembering to always meet in a public place and have a get-out excuse - and of course, no matter what, not to get into any vehicle alone with him.

I turn up in a top hat and eyepatch, as is the custom, and nervously stare through the throng, hopefully looking for Steve West out of Pavement or maybe that guy from Rocket from the Crypt who didn't actually do anything, he just danced a lot. I buy a drink - suddenly, a bloke catches my eye, walks over and motions me towards his empty table. I nervously explain that I've no idea what I'm doing with a pina colada, I just thought he'd be impressed.

[to be continued...]

The Wake - 'Here Comes Everybody'

On paper I shouldn't really like this record - Factory pretty much passed me by in the sense that I was't even in England for any of it, and when I came back here the 'classic' Manchester/Factory of the 80s was all over and the likes of Northside were firing up. By this time it seemed a hagiographic smokescreen was already in place for all things Factory, and objective viewpoints to any of it were difficult to find in a pre-internet age. It rendered any random delving into the label's supposedly 'incredible' albums something of a minefield quality-wise - for an outsider looking in (and dwelling in Manchester at the time) it was always difficult to work out which albums on Factory were definitely worth a look and which ones were possible tax write-offs.

This one thankfully falls into the former category, coming across like a more introverted Pet Shop Boys than plodding post-punk also-rans (the default Factory setting in my head), with distant vocals and a hazy layer of echo above masses of airy layered synths. At times singer Caesar sounds so doleful - even on the more upbeat songs like Talk About the Past, it comes as no surprise that after Factory fucked them around, barely promoted their record and the band had enough, they later signed to beloved Bristol C86 quietcore label Sarah records - a perfect fit alongside labelmates such as The Field Mice.

It's the perfect melancholic record to stick on when you've caught the nightbus back alone from an electro-indie night (invariably named after a The Normal b-side) and made yourself a plate of beans on toast - which you later throw at the wall, in tears. Which is a compliment, by the way - that's a coveted slot.

Wakefact: The band featured Bobby Gillespie on drums for a few short years before he went on to get on with the rest of his well-documented career.

The Wake - 'Talk About the Past'

'Downloads Make Music Better', Says Fleet Fox

From today's CMU Daily newsletter:

Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold has said that illegal downloading, far from having a negative impact on the music industry, actually makes music better, because it allows musicians to be influenced and inspired by a wider range of other artists.

Pecknold told the BBC: "The more music a musicians can hear, that will only make music richer as an art form. I think we're seeing that now, with tons of new bands that are amazing, and are doing way better music now than was being made pre-Napster. That was how I discovered almost everything when I was a teenager - my dad brought home a modem. That was how I was exposed to almost all of the music that I love to this day, and still that's the easiest way to find really obscure stuff. I've discovered so much music through that medium. That will be true of any artist my age, absolutely".

Up until my early teens I lived in the US. Not a remotely cool part of the US, it was a small town in Florida called Ft Walton Beach. If you wanted to buy music you went to the Santa Rosa Mall. The mall contained the only record store for 30 miles. I'd love to say I was raised on a diet of rare SST and Blast First imports - but, this being the middle of nowhere, I was lucky to find even a massive mainstream release such as The Beastie Boys' 'Licence to Ill' in the racks.And if I did manage to get hold of a copy, thanks to Tipper Gore's one-woman conquest against profanity it was invariably the 'clean' version.

Fast forward to my GCSE years and I'm now living in a forgettable Midlands town in the UK. We have a record store called Nervous run by an old hippie called Gordon who has the look of someone who had a very short, very intense flirtation with psychedelic drugs at some point in his life - resulting in objects permanently being framed by multicoloured halo, with a faint soundtrack composed entirely on a Gameboy playing on an endless loop in his head. Gordon stocks tons of records. If they were made under the influence of drugs, or made the drug-taking experience more exciting, or simply had a cover designed under the influence of drugs, Gordon had it.

By this point I'd started buying import magazines and weeklies, and asking for stuff Gordon simply did not have, or he'd put on back-order and would arrive about 2 weeks later or often not at all, as Gordon had forgotten to order it. Occasionally I'd buy a record from some far-off exotic store like Alan's in Wigan or similar out of the back of the Melody Maker that I'd heard on John Peel, but rarely as it involved catalogues and phone ordering and someone with a credit card. You'd hear a band like Blur or Julian Cope namechecking all these weird and wonderful Krautrock and psychedelic releases, but in a pre-internet age even finding out their names was a huge piece of detective work, let alone discovering anywhere that stocked them. I'd always take a notebook of stuff I was after out to charity shops or day trips, just in case.

Forward again another 5 years and I was playing drums for a band called Mum and Dad - borne out of all manner of esoteric influences, partly from records you stumble across once every few years in tiny secondhand stores that look like they were left there by aliens, such as The White Noise's An Electric Storm. One of the freakiest, most frightening, far-out and forward-thinking albums you may ever get to hear - one of those records that when you hear it for the first time it feels like you've been let in on a huge, monumental secret. I waited 3 years to pick up a copy, which I eventually found in Barcelona, and paid through the nose for it.


To quote their own liner notes:

“MANY SOUNDS HAVE NEVER BEEN HEARD – BY HUMANS: SOME SOUND WAVES YOU DON’T HEAR – BUT THEY REACH YOU. ‘STORM STEREO’ TECHNIQUES COMBINE SINGERS, INSTRUMENTALISTS AND COMPLEX ELECTRONIC SOUND. THE EMOTIONAL INTENSITY IS AT A MAXIMUM”

Which says it all. The record had a profound effect on much of what I did musically afterwards, from approaching recording to having a desire to plug everything in ass-backwards to see what happened. There were plenty of other 'secret' records I gradually got introduced to as years went on, and then downloads suddenly hit. Or at least internet connections suddenly got decent. All of a sudden you could read up on Greek progressive rock online, or find out more about Eastern European film scores than 12 years of lonely crate-digging could teach you. And then own it all, minus the clunkers.

I can only imagine what effect it might have had if I'd been 12 when this was happening. And now there's nothing to stop a 12-year old downloading the whole White Noise album from wherever they might be. Or Aphrodite's Child's 666. Or the entire Carl Craig back catalogue. Or taking a crash course in Basic Channel. It's brilliant - and Robin Peckhold is completely right.

After all that

I never got round to posting anything did I? This nicely illustrates why I should never have responsibility for anything that needs feeding, attention or regular maintenance. The only plant I'm capable of propagating with any degree of success is mint, which doesn't count - it would quite happily do its own thing without me. Indeed it does, all I did was put it in the ground. In fact, I think it may technically be a weed. When I was younger I had a land hermit crab as a pet. It was great, you could leave it around 3 weeks' food at once and it would happily do its own thing without relying on its bungling, incompetent owner. Which was just was well as I often forgot I owned it. I suppose the worst thing that can happen to a neglected blog is that no-one reads it. Which I'm fairly certain is where we are at right now with this one.

I just got a new laptop. It is single-handedly the most expensive thing I have ever bought. There's actually a pretty huge drop-off between it and the next most expensive thing I've ever bought (a large multipack of Primark socks, since you ask). I rarely buy anything to be honest - I've gone from being 8 and having this huge, imaginary list of stuff I want in my head at all times to not even being able to think of anything I would like, even if money were no object.

Anyway, it effortlessly does most things - it says here on this leaflet - so this weekend I am going to record a bunch of banjo, and possibly some drums if I can get everyone in my house to go out for a bit. Depending on how it goes I might post something up here. That's what you do with a blog isn't it? Nascissism. Hitting all 5 of your readers firmly in the face with a needy blast of 'me' every so often.

Obviously there's every possibility I could be following up this post in another month with a 'oh yeah, that weekend I um, got drunk and forgot to hit 'record'. I'll keep you posted. If I remember.

[Subs - try and think of a witty title here]

So, yet another blog rears its ugly head.

There's definitely, definitely not already a surfeit of blogs with titles along the lines of 'here's a bunch of my non-cohesive ramblings tied together with - well, not tied together with anything at all, in fact all they have in common is that they exist as pixels on the same page, tee hee!'

So anyway, oh fuck it - and I assure you this is not just paraphrasing the imaginary blogging cunt I'm pretending to quote above - this blog will mainly serve as a repository for things I write for other places, things that nowhere else will take, the odd rant about music and probably a couple of photos.

You there - take that length of hose out of your mouth and switch off the engine. You will never, ever hear about what I had for lunch.

It'll all probably look prettier at some point if I ever can be arsed shunting little bits of a blog around in Photoshop. Until then, it's going to look like this.