g r i zz l e d b a r e

How late it is, how late

2009-08-05T22:05:00.003+01:00

"I'm still here, no?"
What's tickling me: Cryptomnesia by El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, a bargain Audi A6 2.5 TDi that's quite frankly stroking my cock, a decent golf swing, the music of Oren Ambrachi, How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman, the recent media appearances of the genius John Byrne, Which? Car Survey Special 2009 ("handsome and refined, and diesel engines are economical" - the 1997-2004 A6. It only got three stars though - "reliability and safety let it down". Hah), The Phantom Band, a new song by Roads To Siam called Batids Wenkaaaaahs Shits Tools Turds Arseholes KUUUUUNNNTTTSSSSSS.
What's not: highly paid cretins, the galloping deterioration of all mainstream media and opportunism.
That'll do for now but that'll finish it man ye know fucking i tell ye that'll do it but
Aye but it fucking
That was me mugging James Kelman, by the way.
"I'm no' now."

Grey matters

2009-05-10T21:46:00.003+01:00

Found this tonight, and apologies to those it completely bodyswerves in subject matter. It's a House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee grilling of the bigwigs of Scottish newspaper publishing. I don't expect anyone to sit through all 137 minutes - life is finite, after all - but get to about seven minutes in, when the chair of proceedings, "Red" Jim Devine, the Labour MP for Livingston, begins to probe the suits on what the profits they claim are rapidly diminishing might be.

Warning: it's no thunderclap moment. It casts no light on the future of Scottish newspapers. It does, though, show such men to be idiots. They baulk at the idea of revealing their profits to a government committee when most of the time that information is in the public domain with no fucking knickers on. So why the reluctance to repeat it?

As Alan Partridge said, unbelievabloodible.

Why analogue still matters

2009-03-19T22:20:00.005Z

I have quite a lot of time for that Ben Chasney, the guy who is Six Organs of Admittance. He makes intriguing records and the one time I saw him perform, in 2004 or so supporting Joanna Newsom at the Grand Ole Opry in Glasgow, he was just on a different plane to most musicians. I've seen artists as good as and better than him, but few.

So when I came across this interview with him I was more than impressed. If you filter out the verbiage and this-is-obviously-an-email-interview tone, you'll find he articulates the basic point about records, CDRs or any physical media in an era when velocity and information are all, when perhaps that isn't the most rewarding way to enjoy music, art or whatever has no essential purpose other than to provoke feelings.

In a nutshell, we might be hurtling towards a point where contemplative appreciation becomes extinct, where you measure the quality of your music collection in terrabytes, but there's still a place for the analogue.

Props to The Quietus, by the way.

V is for vamoose

2009-03-12T23:38:00.005Z

This is almost exactly my level of game-playing expertise. Plus it made me chortle. I should perhaps add that the car on the bottom, the fast one, is an Aston Martin DB9. The other is a BMW M6.

Cinema paradiso?

2009-03-12T22:32:00.003Z

As if news of the upcoming Sunn O))) record Monoliths and Dimensions wasn't exciting enough, the new Jim Jarmusch film The Limits of Control features music by Boris, Earth and my favourite cowled meta-metal duo. Fuck me.

There's no UK release date yet, but it's out in the US in May so expect it to land around then. Here's the trailer.

Cringe benefits

2009-02-09T20:51:00.004Z

Broadcaster and sober rake Hardeep Singh Kohli, a barely passable talent but decent enough sort, meets an otiose provincial broadcaster.

I won't spoil it for you. Suffice to say A) you'll get the title of this post and B) it merely confirms my suspicion that 95% of folk are dim, mediocre cowards.

Put a rock in it (Part 2)

2009-01-16T19:29:00.006Z

In the post below, I think I was trying to say that there's a lot of fun to be had trying to gather momentum as a band. Listening to that recently uncovered rehearsal recording drove it home to me.

Despite the poverty, self-centredness and duplicity that underpins such an endeavour, it's a good way to spend your twenties. In the case of Motor Life Co, the only hard evidence is a CD and a trio of singles. None of these does for a second contain so much as an echo of what we were capable of. But that's all done with, and I'm happy with the memories, the tunes and still counting at least two of them as among my best friends. They're a pair of cunts, like, but good ones. I've also been turned on to all sorts of music that now forms the spine of my life. I might be a corporate cocksucker Monday to Friday, but at home? Man, I'm Genesis P Orridge.

It all came from a passage in Luke Haines's book.

"The fantasy, that's what it's all about. The fantasy of being in a great rock 'n' roll band as opposed to being in a professional rock band. Whatever fame you get, that moment on the cusp of success is always the best."

I can't lay claim to having had any success, but the ATP show, the Peel session, the first (and only) time someone offered to put out a record made by us, those are the best moments.

There's another terrific piece of writing a couple of chapters on. He's banging on about rockers who've flirted with fascism and Nazi imagery. He's on tour in Germany mulling over the idea of calling the next Auteurs record Uber Hate. "Oh God, have I really entered my rock 'n' roll fascist stage so soon?" he asks.

"Don't worry: the mystical lie of the Nazi death camp, Arbeit macht frei - Work shall set you free - is unlikely to be applied by anyone in a rock group. It's just that musicians like to see themselves as outsiders and outlaws. Trouble is, most outsiders are not that successful."

In writing that final sentence, I hope Luke Haines has at least stubbed out one band whose hearts just aren't in it. The world is struggling for oxygen due to the ever-rising tide of mediocre wankers in bands (same as it ever was). I propose a cull.

If you want to rock, be prepared to slum it. Whatever that is in Latin should be the motto of every rehearsal studio in the land. Bands need to know this, especially middle-class ones. Shit or get off the pan. Even if you sell records you will more than likely only make enough to get by and a bit more. Then you might find yourself in middle age with little money coming in from your music career, no CV and nobody remotely interested. In fact, there's no "might" about it. You will find yourself in that situation, unless you're maybe one in 20 signed acts.

Shitters? Mark E Smith, plainly. And Justin Currie from Del Amitri springs to mind. I've never met the guy but I hear from good sources that he's a decent chap, pretty mild (and still pretty, even in his forties. Ooh matron). His career is hardly in the ascendant but still he makes music of wit and depth, and gets paid. "Get paid." That's what the old blues and soul fellas would tell you. "Get paid." Shitters are lifers, and will do what it takes because it's the only way to live. I am also chuffed that the guys in Mogwai appear to be shitters, as in lifers.

As for those who get off the pan, they're driving your Friday night taxi, manning the phones at Scottish Water's call centre, pulling your pint and double-checking your tax return.

Getting off the pan to do something else is as valid a choice as shitting. I look down on neither.

Just don't hover.

Put a rock in it

2009-01-15T23:40:00.007Z

I'm reading a couple of books at the moment, which to my friends will sound insane. I read about two books a year. One is Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, a Christmas gift from my lady and so far - 40-odd pages out of +400 - suggesting an imagination that's up there with George Orwell, Alasdair Gray and Herman Hesse, and the other is Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall by Luke Haines. Haines is the guy behind The Auteurs, Black Box Recorder and Baader-Meinhof, an intelligent if uneducated egoist whose appetite for self-aggrandisement is only overshadowed by his ability to make you laugh at the bitchiness of UK independent music in the early 1990s. It's a fantastic book and I urge each and every one of you to buy it. You'll horse through it - that's what I'm doing. And that's rare. Haines reminds me of me old gaffer Paul Campion from AC Acoustics - a hydra.

That's a long-winded way of setting out the context for my main point. It came up because I'm listening to a very good rehearsal recording by the band I'll always love being part of the most (simply because doing it was simple), Motor Life Co. The tunes are all way, way better than anything we ever released, because they were written at a time when we were actually being encouraged to spend years in pursuit of creative achievement, and what that achievement might be was up to you. When that support withdrew, though, Matt in particular gave up.

Since we disbanded, we always tend to agree that our John Peel session was the highlight of seven-odd (odd) years chasing fuck knows what. Perhaps it's the best recording we did. But there are far greater highlights. There was the ATP 2000 appearance at Mogwai's request that we made without Ben, having knocked back CMJ in New York to do it, for starters. (Hindsight says that might not have been the right decision.)

(Incidentally, Roads To Siam had an abominably good rehearsal last night and we really should get round to making a record this year. There should be no excuses. We jammed a couple of new things, one a taut post-funk-rock-double-bass-drum number, the other verging on twisted classic rock a la Pavement without the weird notes. Good fun.)

My point? I can't remember. Sorry.

Wrinkle, wrinkle, greying star

2008-12-17T21:48:00.004Z

The band I play in, Roads to Siam, did a show last week at Stereo in Glasgow (ironically for me in the former printing room of the Daily Record newspaper), supporting the shouty Eska-Mogwai combo Stage Blood alongside Divorce, four women and the obligatory male drummer - how 1990s! - who make an invigorating racket.

Apart from the fact it was a good performance and a decent crowd turned up, I'll spare you my thoughts on the night itself and reflect only on the rising sense of incomprehension I feel when, after telling people who are unaware of the music I make that I am in a band, they typically react along the lines of "Aren't you a bit old?" . I got a fair bit of that when trying to cajole people into coming along and, days after the gig, explaining what I'd done at the weekend.

Playing music implies making something - creating, contributing, making decisions, negotiating, giving. In many countries behaviour like this is justifiably encouraged and applauded - any socially aware, progressive government would place it at the the top of the educational tree - yet I sit here, aged 37, accused of failing to grow up.

I might understand if we covered songs and generally contrived to appeal to folk, especially if we laid claim to superiority or fidelity, or thought pub gigs doing 1.5 hours of covers in front of lagered-up suburbanites beneath us. But we work exclusively on original songs. It takes a lot of work, time and effort.

I said to my girlfriend the other night, "I really do not understand the appeal of watching us four blokes mooching about glumly on stage. I can understand listening to the tunes, but not watching us play them. There's nothing to look at." Aside the exquisite antics of our drummer Chris, I will continue to adhere to this belief. "But it makes sense of all that time you spend playing together," she replied. "I was beginning to think all you do is fanny about."

Zach Hill, Astrological Straits (Ipecac, 2007)

2008-12-10T00:31:00.005Z

Zach Hill is the drummer in Hella, whose album on Ipecac, There's No 666 In Outer Space, I have rambled about before, though at no length whatsoever. I got back from ATP Nightmare Before Christmas last night and picked up a wee bundle of Ipecac goodies from the depot this morning, all cheap from the quite decent Southern Records website.

I say goodies. Clearing the Eye DVD by Isis, Abandoned Language by Dalek are just that, but Astrological Straits by Zach Hill - a mind-incineratingly unprofitable double CD - is nowhere near. Why? In dumb, instantly understandable terms, it's shite. Musical masturbation. Wank. You feel like the unspeakably unwelcome guest at the party of a recent ex's friend, someone you buddied up with after one too many drinks, or one too many lines. None of it connects.

The Hella record, in my view, is remarkable. It contains hooks besides the show-offy virtuosity and arhythymic fits. The drummer's solo record is exactly that, the self-absorbed gibberish of someone who doesn't appreciate that his best ideas are brought out by other people. Honestly, search online for a song by Zach Hill called Uhuru. It is appalling, and goes on repetitively for something like 10 minutes. Utter, utter shite. Avoid.

Oh, and if you ever read this Zach, bring it fucking on. Sorry, but you're about as mad as Vyvyan from The Young Ones. I will kick your oh-so-crazy exhibitionist arse into the middle of next week if I see your face light up as soon as some decent sort is affronted by your execrable sonic shart. Making people think "That music is depressingly needy and completely unengaging" is not a result. Anyone frigger can do it. Where's your fucking HEART?

Motor Life Co: brackets and ruin

2008-12-09T18:09:00.005Z

(birdstyle) is a record I made in 1997 with three knaves called Matt, Ben and Chris. We called ourselves Motor Life Co., with a dot. We enjoyed playing with punctuation, language and all that. We also relished failure, and sought it out at every turn.

We earned nothing from this record. That was never the aim. Other people lost money putting it out. It's flawed, but you might be interested to hear it, wherever you are.

We made two 7ins before releasing (birdstyle) which I might upload some time - they're rough and ready. Stay connected.

(Thanks to The Worried Well for uploading it in the first place.)

Envy/Jesu split 12in (Conspiracy)

2008-11-10T22:58:00.003Z

I'VE BOUGHT a lot of new (and old) music recently; it must have something to do with the dark. I've been going fairly mental to a remastered, reissued vinyl edition of Aja by Steely Dan (which lays a strong claim to being the best hi-fi recording I own), the debut album by an east London band called Dark Captain Light Captain, a 180gsm vinyl edition of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, Black Mountain's In The Future, and, um, that Kings of Leon single. (I've also been rubbing my chin raw to The Return of Fenn O'Berg, but them's the breaks.)

Don't get me wrong, I've bought some total duds of late. An abysmal record by Moss called Sub Templum. I might have written favourably about it before, but if so ignore that blog, I must have been stoned. Friendly Fires, whose debut album has but one unmissable tune on it. It's called Skeleton Boy, which does not bode well to a man of 37 but which reminds these ears of Chic. In the best way.

But back to the good ones. The most astonishingly cock-warming of the lot is a split 12in by Japanese post-metal soldiers Envy and Justin K Broadrick (not Justin Broadrick) under his Jesu banner. It was in my local independent shop when I visited on Saturday with a nose that needed just one good purchase to satisfy it. It cost a bomb (well, £16), is blue vinyl and plays at 33rpm, which suits ponces like me who have to lift the glass platter off their turntable and fiddle with a belt if they want to change the speed from 33rpm to 45rpm. The tracklisting reads:
ENVY Conclusion of Existence | A Winter Quest For Fantasty | Life Caught In The Rain
JESU Hard To Reach | The Stars That Hang Above You

Why's it so good, I hear you bleat. Let me mention, then, a couple of conditions to this ramble (God knows I wish it were an argument). Number one: split 12ins and suchlike from post-rock/post-metal bands are hardly reason to get excited - they're often a sound and reliable way of exposing your friends'/labelmates' bands to your audience and vice versa. There's a commercial sense, especially so for acts way left of the mainstream and its financial tributaries. (Viz The Chicago band Pelican, who were forced to appeal to fans for their charity after their van was broken into while they took a stroll round the Coliseum on a rare break from duties, ie sitting still at 80mph for hours on end then rocking out to spotty, beardsome people. They couldn't afford to replace the items stolen because they probably make next to fuck-all out of the band, a scenario each and every member has no doubt mulled over in the face of an offer from a potential employer. "To rock or not to rock. That is the question." I gave them a fiver.)

The point of that sub-ramble is this: my hopes weren't high. I expected a few cast-offs. I thought £16 was borderline criminal.

My second condition for you to ponder is this: while I am utterly blissed out by this record, it's still not as good as the shepherd's pie I am in the process of making when not typing this. Going out with a vegetarian makes you pine for meat. Although I am now listening to the Envy side of the record for about the eighth time tonight - mad high-gloss dawncore opener; pretty as ever loud-quiet Envy by numbers, then The Best Post-Post-Post-Post-New Wave cum Dinosaur Jr song ever - it in no way achieves the heights of the rich lamb ragout that awaits a potato puree atop its napper to my left. Few things in my life ever will, I reckon. Maybe it's the lemon thyme (a happy accident).

The upshot of all this is, then, if there is one (and there always is), is that I recommend in the manner of Jeremy Clarkson that you reach into your wallet, go and buy this record post haste and listen to it. If you don't own a turntable, invest in one - they're as cheap as Graham Norton. I doubt it'll come out on CD, so if you have any heart at all you will do as I say.

On this record each band reaches sonic locations they wouldn't be thematically able to do elsewhere. Envy go all Telefon Tel Aviv on the opening track. It's not before time. Flip the disc and you find Jesu entering a patch of dark house/techno territory on Hard To Reach, the sugared vocals and oscillating backdrops intact but backed by a resolutely tuff beat. It simply wouldn't work within a Jesu album, coming close to Broadrick's finest Jesu track ever - Wolf Eyes (on the Silver EP), which I reckon was recorded during roughly the same period - as well as his best work for other bands, with maximum respect going to his remix for Isis, Celestial (Fills The Void) on the Sgnl>05 EP. This track lopes from dream house to analog threnody with ease, and there's not many 12ins I've bought in the last 20 years I can say that about. The second Jesu song features the most bonkers bass drum pattern I've heard but does it elegantly. What beauty.

It certainly puts the download voucher I got with Aja into perspective. Aja is released by music giant Universal and marketed through a bone-manglingly bad website (www.backtoblackvinyl.com) that reeks of corporate democracy with no informed leadership. Does my voucher work? Does it fuck, and I've tried it with two browsers, Firefox and Safari. In another all-too-predictable illustration of the shirking of responsibility that garners promotion within "creative" corporate structures like newspapers and major record labels, there is no contact email address, no enquiry form, no nothing. There's a phone number via a link to the sitemakers - fucking idiots if they want to be associated with it, and you'll see what I mean if you visit it. I'll phone them and complain. If record labels with next-to-no staff and shrinking budgets can organise downloads to people who have bought the vinyl format of a record, surely Universal can do it? Seemingly not. The one thing in their favour, and something I am positive not a single member of the team behind the re-release of Aja gets, man, almost as in "Stan _", is that Aja is made for vinyl, and high-quality black at that. So the chances are I won't complain because the MP3s would add zilch to my appreciation of the recording.

The next record I expect to wax guthrical about is by Earth. Yeah, the band with the guy who bought Kurt Cobain the gun. It's called The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull and I am soon to take delivery of a double 180gsm vinyl edition of it with Bible-styled packaging and an unreleased tune. It'll sound the biz. Bob Weston of the aptly named Shellac made the lacquers. Dude. I've had the CD for a while and love it deeply. I reckon the analogue version will make me love it even more. I cannot wait.

Portishead: unicorn's piss

2008-10-25T00:05:00.004+01:00

Christ, but it's hideous at the moment. Hardly an appealing opening gambit, granted, but one that is built solely on truth.

A fat wing of heavy rain and gales is drifting our way from the Atlantic, portending nowt but grimness and the impossibility of so much as a round of golf. While it perhaps masks the inevitable shortening days and lessening ligament/joint-aggravating temperatures, it fundamentally says: fuck you, I'm in charge. Stop kidding yourself.
So what have I got to offset this belligerent invader?

For one, a few tasty orchids among a bunch of flowers I bought my girlfriend Katherine for her birthday a few days ago. There's me, eternally on the hunt for something which will sweeten the roll-up-tainted air of my flat, knocking back this or that offering from John Lewis and hunting high and low without success, when all I really need is some orchids. It's hardly rocket science, as inarticulate cretins such as I are wont to say.

What else, then, with which to get through the quide liderally dark months? Well, I'll put forward the paradoxically uplifting sounds of Third, the last album by Portishead. About seven months ago I bought the box set - a pair of 12" records featuring the album, a one-sided 12in of Blue-Monday-on-ketamine single Machine Gun, a piece of hand-drawn art by Nick Uff (whose association with the band is completely unexplained in the packaging) and a USB stick in the shape of the band's P logo. This features MP3s of the album and film cuts of the band in the studio and so on. Ignoring some manifest and fundamental manufacturing issues, it's a package without equal. And at its core lies an album of sustained self-belief and focus. This is a band last feted for its midi-hifi-friendly yuppie trip hop. Having amassed an amount of money which I can estimate with a fairly informed brain (bearing in mind royalties, publishing credits, expenditure and so on), the three members of Portishead have inexplicably assembled an album that hangs together and knows its limits with the cunning and wisdom of an old soldier.

Most brilliantly of all, Third is not what I would term an accessible album. It's not The Drift by Scott Walker, but nor is it Born in the USA. If the same people who bought Dummy – the vocals therein setting a template for Beth Gibbons' entire (known) recording career, including the new record – buy Third, you can call any old simian you like my nephew.

I saw Portishead perform the album before its release at the ATP festival they curated in Minehead last December. I was bamboozled and beguiled, as I was by Sunn O))) at the same shindig. I didn't know the arcane tunes both bands were playing as well as I do now, and consequently found the going quite tough. Now I wish I had had advance warning.

What emerges through the stylus of my turntable, passing through my Eighties amp and fairly rubbish speakers, throws me off balance. It's beautifully recorded (probably treason in these days of MP3s and their attendant compression and built-in emphasis on portability over quality), and contains a surfeit of utterly unpredictable, "amelodic" elements. Sure, you hear John Barry, David Axelrod and innumerable obscure soul reference points, the base materials with which Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley constructed the Portishead identity. But more than that you hear a palette so outwith the reach of most working musicians as to be unicorn's piss.

Sunn O))) and digital doom

2008-09-22T21:33:00.005+01:00

This here post has some top freebies for fans of Sunn O))). It's basically lots of rare material that only comes out in foreign editions - Japanese mainly, I think - of their records. I've got some of it on vinyl and this is a mega-easy way of getting them on a format I can whack through my car stereo. (AND I'VE PAID FOR.) Drone and cared-for Mazda MX5s are far from incompatible, I can assure you. When either is done well the world is a better place.

Hauners to Andy Wilson's blog, The Worried Well, which the link will take you to. Some of the tunes he waxes quite excellently about are so leftfield as to be outwith my fairly broad field of vision, but that's no bad thing.

Deconstruction time again: James Houston v Radiohead

2008-09-22T21:14:00.003+01:00

We were too poor to have computers in our house. Having four children means giving the world four reasonably sociable adults, but it also means depriving your bairns and them enduring frequent bursts of jealousy directed at their friends. And, in my case, an almost pathological need to buy the things I once couldn't have.

This leads me to the video/artwork below. Among the apparatus it uses to create an utterly headmangling version of the Radiohead song Nude, from In Rainbows, is a ZX Spectrum. I never had one, but David Ross did. Guess who became my best friend? Guess who I haven't had contact with in more than 20 years?

The creator/artist is a recent Glasgow School of Art graduate called James Houston. It's a superb idea. I think I'll keep tabs on him.

Enjoy.

Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Sun Kil Moon, Stereo, Glasgow 15/09/08

2008-09-16T00:33:00.004+01:00

I'm up to my eyes in music and life and fighting the dying summer right now. Maybe it's because my girlfriend is still away on holiday, I don't know. She's back tomorrow so we'll see then. Maybe I'll find some space upon her return.

I had an unforgettable time on the island of Rum the weekend before last, then I was straight into it: tons of work, rehearsing with the band, visiting my recovering mother, going on the lash. So last weekend I stayed at home (mostly) and played records I'd bought - Black Mountain's In The Future, Dropping The Writ by the utterly overlooked Cass McCoombs (McCombs?), the Jesu split with Battle of Mice, Dropping The Writ several more times. I also sorted shit out, the way you have to do from time to time. I crammed in a good cycle to Clydebank and back and a fucking great game of golf (round in 79) too, plus the routine Sunday visit to the hospital (to the strains of Teenage Fanclub's best of, no less - perpetual, dude).

So far, so good. I duly cycled in today and got through a Monday on yon Harold Margerine before pedalling the five miles home in the pishing rain, gut plump with carbs. I dried off, showered then greedily ate a pile of last night's kedgeree. Yawn. I then got on a 62 bus and went to Stereo in the city centre to see Sun Kil Moon.

As soon as they started I knew tomorrow would be depressing. Make Like Paper from Songs For A Blue Guitar. Crunching like a honeycomb hammer on a weak rock. A bold molar through a dry nut. Then Down Colorful Hill, Cruiser and tons of others. Tonight In Bilbao. Duk Koo Kim. Glenn Tipton. All with the doubled guitars (c/o Kozelek and Phil Cairney from the later Red House Painters line-up) and unrock rhythym section of new boy Eric (I think he said his name was Eric when we were stiltedly introduced) on drums and RHP alumnus and bass stroker Jerry Vessel - a legend - we've come to love. I tour managed the Red House Painters seven years ago and it was remarkable, for many reasons.

Kozelek is seemingly humping about like a young 'un while his girlfriend - a woman he told me he was in love with - languishes back in the US. Whatever. It's never been clear whether his ability to philander has ever had any real bearing on his ability to write love-saturated, subtle but cyclonic songs with melodies that kill you.

It was (better than) the band I tuned guitars, sold merch and drove for back in 2000-01. I told them so after the show but they're so grounded they made me feel like a fool. All bar Kozelek work shit jobs outside their musical earners. I blagged a Ghosts ... CD, a big bag of Doritos, lightly salted (any takers? Not a fan), two apples, a pair of oranges and a banana. And I didn't ask for it - pure honest, but. Kozelek was otherwise engaged, though he did say hello before the show.

Gents.

He's crafty

2008-09-04T22:52:00.004+01:00

I hope this guy goes on making music for many, many years. His name's James Blackshaw, he's about 26 and he comes from a complete shithole on the south coast of England where almost a thousand years has passed since the last notable event upon its soil, Hastings.

So far, so uninvolving, yet he plays 12-string acoustic guitar with a vigour, craft and fluency that simply staggers. And he's self-taught, which to a grafter like me is beyond imaginable.

I know fuck-all about P2P or nicking tunes off the internet, but this link might be worth a go. If you like it, buy the record. It's the kind of music that makes me believe utterly in the fact music is the greatest balm you can ever use, and the finest confidant you'll ever have.

I'm off to Rum, an island south of Skye in the north-west of Scotland, for a weekend's hillwalking tomorrow, and I fully expect Mr Blackshaw's Litany of Echoes to soundtrack at least a considerable portion of the mostly jawdropping journey to Mallaig. Then I'll probably replay it in my head as I go through "the wall" on the ascent of the Cuillin, although if past experiences are anything to go by it'll be The Birdie Song or Atmosphere by Russ Abbott. Oh well.

Plural be damned

2008-08-24T23:53:00.002+01:00

Forums or foria? I prefer stadiums over stadia, but I also favour millennia over millenniums. I like foria for the sheer contrariness of it. Time to get the new Chambers.

Digging: Band of Horses' eponymous LP (Sub Pop, 2007). Warm and glossy.

Crossword? Business? Car ads? Oh fuck off

2008-08-18T22:23:00.006+01:00

I'm getting pretty invigorated by blogs and so on. The choice of what to take in and what to swiftly ignore is absolutely real. You don't get that with newspapers, which are by comparison comedically restrained by budget and creative cowardice, or witlessness. If you buy The Herald, say, and the single arts page is taken over by an interview with an obscure Manillan/Mexican/Sasquatch cellist and some mostly limp theatre/dance reviews, where you gonna turn? You've paid 70p or thereabouts to NOT BE GIVEN WHAT YOU WANT. Crossword? Business pages? Car ads? Oh, fuck off. The only print-based medium with any shelf life is the book.

The web? Access is more or less free and the information is by and large more up to date than the print you read eight hours after it was created as you jostle for space on the 7.30 from Waverley to Queen Street, or the 8.13 from Greenpoint Avenue to 42nd Street/Grand Central. Besides, you can comment on anything you read - within reason - almost immediately. You don't have to be retired and creaming the gin on an hourly basis, as I imagine many people who write letters to newspaper are, keyboard poised for the pounding language of pished inspiration/outrage based on some dreadfully soporific change in legislation at Holyrood.

If not all then at least Scottish newspapers are like shite lovers. I mean, hands off, we deserve better than this. You're not turning me on; fuck off - I've got choices online, in print and on TV/radio.

Digging: Altar by Boris and Sunn O))) (Southern Lord, 2007). After White1 and White2 by Sunn O))). All of it. Just the tonic.

Out of hibernation

2008-01-14T23:20:00.000Z

Forward thinking

2007-11-10T20:21:00.000Z

I saw this outside my sister's house in Cumbria while I was smoking a cigarette in the barn. Pretty straightforward stuff: Snail A wants to get from the bottom right of the photo to the top left; Snail B meanwhile is determined to get from the bottom left to the top right with as few diversions as possible.

So what happens? Snail A slithers across Snail B and both go on their merry ways, none the worse for the contact. If only we humans could be bold enough to be so direct with each other.

Digging: This Gift (LP) by Sons and Daughters (Domino, 2007). A mighty blast.

101 damnations

2007-11-07T00:19:00.001Z

Apologies for the fevered post title. I don't intend to end my recent silence with a "headline" worthy of the Daily Retard, but it's appropriate.

Why? Because I have been damning a lot lately. Damning luck, damning lust, damning pretty much everything. Damning every fucker wanting a piece of my flesh bar the fucker I want to give every last ounce to. Hell mend it, I say most of the time.

Put it this way: things aren't in the shape they should be in. Unaligned or misaligned, like my spine. And you can't ignore it when two corrupted bones start rubbing against one another.

I truly believe the next few weeks are crucial; but then I could be wrong.

Digging: In Rainbows by Radiohead (Waste, 2007). Paid £5.45 and it's worth a hundred times that. Awe-inspiring. But not as good as Roads To Siam. Not by a long shot. Oh no.

A happening hundred

2007-09-05T22:31:00.000+01:00

Guthro Tull's 99th Dream

2007-08-24T19:31:00.000+01:00

Before publishing my hundredth blog, not much more than two years to the day since vomiting this library of guff into the world, I am giving it a lick of paint. I'm thinking death metal, but the template he say, "Black with white type." One-nil to the man, then.

And yes, I will sort the links etc.

A hundred blogs to me was unthinkable when I wrote my debut. I could not conceive of sticking with anything for that length of time, particularly when it involves many of the intrinsically dreary signatures of what I do for a living, namely: sitting at a computer, typing, checking spelling etc (Aunt Minnie would be chuffed to bits) and one time in six saying something remotely engaging.

I mean, why do it outside work? Answers on a bullet please to: masochist@desade.ba.ws.

Time for one in an occasional series - ie this is the first and last time - of Guthro's Greats, where I recommend a record I think you can't live without - because it's ... great.

An infrequent visitor to this blog told me about this scrumptious band - namely Andrew Wilson. (He gave me Hella too, which is more music tips than his mucker Chris T'Chotte has EVER given me, and I've been playing music with T'Chotte for almost two decades, more or less without interruption. Come to think of it, Chris T has NEVER turned me on to any bands. In 18 years!!!) Johnnie loaned me a CD but 'twas AW who first dropped their name. Praise fucking be.

Ahead of the rest of you, should you not have already come upon the orgasmically brilliant Boris, lies a path of extreme metal lullabies designed to make you spasm for at least a year or two. And fall in love.

I know fuck-all about them other than they're Japanese, there's three of 'em and according to their MySpace page they've been on the go since 1996.

I won't waffle. If you judge yourself a music lover with a palate for all things raw, rectum-shredding and doggedly contemporary then buy Pink by Boris. But you'll have to find the links yourself, cos I don't get paid for such examples of added value.

Just have a gander at their MySpace, spin a few of the free tunes and take it from there.

Otherwise YOU DESERVE TO DIE.

A Swede cheeses (groan)

2007-08-21T23:29:00.000+01:00

I still look a bit like this, though with a soupcon of the tramp about me after four days without washing or enjoying any shelter other than my fellow soldiers' shimmying lagers and firmly rolled spliffs at The Green Man.

Digging: All Out Of Time, All Into Space by Isis (Ipecac, 2007), besides about six hours of random shuffling of my iTunes library. I WANT A RADIO SHOW.

Into the valleys

2007-08-16T13:04:00.001+01:00

Any minute now I'm off to The Green Man in Wales. I spannered my back last night but shall soldier on in a haze of self-medication, in sole pursuit of Good Times, and I don't mean the Chic classic, matchless though it is. Wish me luck.

A salute to Anthony H Wilson, RIP

2007-08-13T22:39:00.000+01:00

I don't often think it of Paul Morley that he's a good writer. (Did you see what I did there?) Yes, he has ideas by the barrowload but he is hopelessly hamfisted when it comes to sifting through them, guiding you through them persuasively and, worst of all, articulating them. Occasionally he pushes all the right buttons, such as with this, an obituary of the late Anthony H Wilson that appeared on The Guardian website today.

"What's so great about it?" I hear you cry. What's so great about it? That's simple: it says it all.

Perhaps it is the lingering effect of overexposure to ZTT obfuscation courtesy of Morley during my adolescence. I can't abide things I can't understand. But I'm a poetic, quixotic old soak if ever there was one. Tss.

So Anthony H Wilson - a name Morley reveals Wilson insisted on being called simply to wind up those of his fellow Mancunians who thought he "was a flash cunt". Brilliant! - has been snatched away. It's genuinely sad. I can say categorically that he has had a more profound effect than even the last prime minister on the lives of me and thousands of others who maybe learnt how to party in a better stylee through the movements he helped fuel, the bands he blindly believed in, the outrageous penchant for hyperbole and gory regionalism, the sense of informed and passionate abandon ...

He was only 57. If that's me then I've barely got 20 years. Better start living.

Digging: City of Echoes by Pelican (Hydrahead, 2007). A Delicate Sense of Balance has a hideous title but a slack, jowly grace before coming over all anxious.

Scando

2007-08-12T22:32:00.000+01:00

Today I look a bit like this.

Announcement

2007-08-06T23:27:00.000+01:00

ROADS TO SIAM
Nice and Sleazy, Saturday 8 September
with The Mystics & DJ Semi-Colin
Entry £4. Doors 8pm

Christopher Grove ... drums
Mark Guthrie ... basses
Sean Guthrie ... guitars and singing
Terry Nelson ... keyboards

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Roads To Siam break a three-year live silence with a show at the legendary venue Nice and Sleazy in September.
Between them the quartet count among their previous bands Motor Life Co, AC Acoustics, The Supernaturals and Summersalt, all of whom can be heard in the plangent, riff-heavy rock of Roads.
The band's most recent public activity has centred on writing soundtracks, firstly for Bata-Ville: We Are Not Afraid Of The Future – a hit at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and South By South-West in 2005 – and Living With The Tudors (2007). For both, Sean wrote a basic theme and versions were cut in disparate styles, such as a skincrawling waltz, a twisted medieval round and a psychedelic soul groove. For Bata-ville the band drafted in as extra musicians Dave McGowan of Teenage Fanclub and Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson; for Tudors the multi-instrumentalist Terry Nelson, who became a permanent member thereafter.
In contrast to their soundtrack work, Roads' non-film material spans the tranquilised riffage of Dead Meadow, the grunge-pop suss of Dinosaur Jr and the unalloyed rock of Pelican. Their pop numbers push five minutes; anything saucier and you're looking at a quarter of an hour. Per song.
The last time Roads played was way, way back in 2004 with fellow Glasgow underlings Eska and El Hombre Trajeado. Prior to that they played alongside the likes of Sons and Daughters (in 2003 as part of Triptych), the Seattle guitar band Death Cab For Cutie and The Zephyrs of Edinburgh.
Also appearing at Nice and Sleazy are The Mystics, a new band created by Berny McGurk, formerly of F*** Off Machete, while Semi-Colin will be providing the music off-stage.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Roads To Siam MySpace page
Bata-Ville: We Are Not Afraid Of The Future Or buy it here.
Living With The Tudors
Zonules of Zinn (Terry's other band)

For more information send an email.

Reaction man

2007-08-03T21:53:00.000+01:00

Just reading The Guardian's fab Friday Film & Music supplement. Snappy title, I know. What could be in it? Anyway, I was vaguely moved/disturbed by my reaction to a couple of artists featured.

In an editorial piece readers were directed to Supergrass's website for a free MP3 of an upcoming album track recorded live. The writer commended its "mighty guitar riff" and theorised that if it were by the White Stripes it would be lauded to the heavens. I'm in no doubt - think about it and the band have written some of the most colossally enjoyable riff records since Depeche Mode spazzed it all on Jesus and heroin. (I'm thinking Music for the Masses, specifically.) But then I looked at a crap wee pic of the band and recalled reading about the singer Gaz's first band in the pages of NME and Melody Maker about 16 years ago. I can't remember their name, they were shoegazey I think.

Anyway, I looked at that pic and thought, "Lifer." And I felt a bit sad. He doesn't know anything else - he's been a musician since he was a lad.

Then I turned the page and saw an ad for Ian Brown's autumn UK tour. The guy who fronted one of the finest UK goups ever is seen in the foreground with his back turned to what is perhaps a heaving G-Mex/SECC/NEC Arena/whatever (some enormodome anyway), limp mullet bared to his drunkenly adoring faithful, cheeks halfway down his throat. I walked past him in Notting Hill in 2001 after flying back from the Bennicasim festival - I had been teching for Red House Painters - and thought he looked untouchably cool, all tight vest, wiry body and rock-star lambency. Look at him now.

Then I found a piece about the making of Liege and Lief by Fairport Convention. I mean, what are the chances of ever coming across that in your Sunday Herald, Scotsman or Herald? Fucking zero. In the pics the four members look locked in. Playing. Singing. Living. Fighting. Talking. Drinking. Creating. Call me a hippie, but bring on the Green Man. (Do you think Fairground Attraction leached any inspiration from them?)

The piece made me think: never assume every old person's a boring bastard - they might have a story to tell. And in fact they all do, there's no may about it.

Mac's power

2007-07-22T23:27:00.000+01:00

Yep. Roscoe by Midlake is massively indebted to You Make Loving Fun by Fleetwood Mac. It's on Rumours and has the funkiest clavinet this side of Superstition by Stevie Wonder. Christine McVie sounds like she was on some quality cocaine, and she was.

Digging: At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy by The Twilight Sad (FatCat, 2007). "The kids are on fire in the bedroom/The cunt sits at his desk/And he's plotting away." Disturbing words backed with truly grim sounds.

En plein du lac

2007-07-21T00:34:00.001+01:00

This is what I call a quality band. Doubtless many of my former colleagues at Mono would be disgusted if not a tad snooty. The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake is no worse than Fleetwood Mac or thon Rufus Wainwright for predictability and tuneful beauty. But fuck … it's amazing.

Plenty of my old pub chums are doing worthwhile music: Please are especially worth a punt. Wee Michael the Greek – dues paid, jazz chops truly learnt, cool women hung out with … He even hitched his kilt to London. How can you begrudge such an arty wee fuck the oxygen of acclaim?

None though can really hold a torch to the likes of Midlake, at least any I have heard since God knows when.

The storming of Barlinnie Castle

2007-07-19T00:48:00.000+01:00

Odious bragging it is, but let me stink and boast. For today I racked up a near-all-time-best score round a golf course, and by Jove I am going to write about it. In detail.

Lethamhill Park, the east end of Glasgow
Wednesday 18 July, tee-off 4.45pm approx, muggy and still, bursts of sunshine, soggy in places
Partner - David Wilson, 44, aka Wislon of Odd, The Wis

1) 253 yd, par 3
Driver to 10yd short and right of pin. Duff chip. Chip then putt. Bogey 4

2) 315yd, par 4
Hooked drive into trees. 6-iron onto fairway, three-quarter PW to back of green, two putts. Bogey 5

3) 456yd, par 5
Drive leaked right into rough, punched 5-iron under a branch, fluffed half PW short of green, lob with SW then two putts. Chance missed. Bogey 6

4) 114yd, par 3
Clattered 8-iron right of green, tasty uphill chip to 10ft, missed putt. Bogey 4

By this point my hopes are fading fast of carding a decent score. Which always drives the hopeless golfer.

5) 479yd, par 5
Long draw off tee, thinned 3-wood, 8-iron to 30ft, shy putt. Par 5

6) 110yd, par 3
Get my hands right through the shot and knock a PW to 5ft and sink for a didgery-doo. Thought at first it was to be my maiden hole in one. Right at the flag all the way, and I even thought it bounced in the hole and came out, a theory supported by the complete lack of a pitch mark. Birdie 2

By this point I'm confident with how I am hitting the ball, a major plus at any point in one's golfing life. You feel you can give it a good howk without fear of spannering your back or fizzing it off at 45 degrees, which I see otherwise competent mid-handicappers do all the time. Control is what you get when you're confident.

7) 517yd, par 5
Let a pacy pair of nutjobs play through. Then slide a long, low draw 260yd. 3-wood uphill, lucky 9-iron to 40ft, channel the putt. Birdie 4

"Smokin'."

8) 107yd, par 3
Slightly thinned PW through the back, feel-packed lob, two putts. Bogey 4

Hmm.

9) 289yd, par 4
Hooky drive, another feel-packed three-quarter PW sent spinning to 30ft, two putts. Par 4

OUT = 38

And that's with 14 putts. At this point I am feeling pretty good. Then comes ...

10) 256yd, par 4
Severe dogleg, always muddy. I hit a fat and sloppy 1-iron up the fairway. Cut a 9-iron onto the green, two putts. Par 4

Scoring while playing at just 75%? That's decent. Steady. Solid.

11) 230yd, par 3
One of the hardest greens to hit on any par 3 ever. And I have played the Postage Stamp at Royal Troon (found the coffin bunker, couldn't get out for love or money). I belt a driver right of the green but high and drawing. Up to the spot. No ball. Concede hole. Drop a ball and play out for my score. A generous triple bogey 6

12) 145yd, par 3
New ball, a Pro V1. Smack a 7-iron right of the green. Decent strike, bad line. Hit a well-shy putt from off the green after receiving a couple of reasonably unsteadying text messages, throw a bit of a fit and just tap the putt to gimme distance and pick up. Bogey 4

My head is dropping. Looking back, at this point I was just 7 over par, and 4 over for the past two holes (I didn't need to feel so down). Trust me: I dream about playing this well on a consistent basis. It's important to me.

13) 230yd, par 4
This is a beast. Slight dogleg right, uphill, an echelon of big fucking trees at 45 degrees slicing through any decent airborn drive. But you always take it on. I absolutely cream one but it slides right into rough and trees, albeit a good distance. No control. Find ball, PW through the back from trees (my inner Seve fails me on this occasion), Texas wedge to 8ft, sink putt. Par 4

14) 340yd, par 4
Long, snaking draw off the tee, PW just shy of green, Texas wedge, easy 6ft putt. Par 4

I AM JOHN DALY.

15) 496yd, par 5
The longest hole on the course, usually played into an easterly headwind. I actually do the whole "picture the shot" thing, hit the long, snaking draw just right of where I'd pictured it and laugh as Dave pulls a minger into the woods. Hit the best 3-wood of my adult life, three-quarter PW 75yd to 8ft, sink putt no problem. Birdie 4

In the matchplay I am now dormie three. I know I am going to win.

16) 315yd, par 4
Your typical mid-distance straight par 4, fairway slopes to the right. I repeat the mental set-up with slightly less successful results: my long, snaking fade (the green is driveable on a windy, dry day like today) starts off to the right then obeys its instructions and fades accordingly into the rough. A tree bough impedes my backswing, so I plump for a steep back and through the ball, wrists forward to punch/coax it onto the green. My inner Seve outlives the real yin. The ball comes to rest 8ft from the pin, a putt I sink eagerly. Birdie 3

My fourth birdie of the day and my second pair of consecutive birdies. Fuck me, I am turning pro next week. I am 5 over par. And I have humped Dave 4&2. £2. Yes.

17) 315yd, par 4
Every drive leaks to the right, possibly into rough. Unless you hit a long, low, snaking draw right up the middle. So I do. And hit a half PW to 15ft. All feel. This is good. By the time we're on the green and ready to putt a quintet of rascals has glossed onto the green and are flinging balls here and there and speaking in the neddiest voices you will ever hear. A mite distracted ("It's only cost you £5," says my inner Seve. Gracias amigo), I thrash the putt miles past, but Dave gives it to me, the gent he is. Par 4

18) 454yd, par 4
Almost sadistically angled dogleg to the right. I bang a draw into rough but open up the fairway along the way. Mash a 4-iron down the fairway. Come to the ball and I can see the pin looming over a bunker. Clearly, I'm aiming for a bogey 5. That's the best you can hope for on the 18th. It's a nightmare. Boggy. Anyway, I slip another heavy-divoted half PW to 12ft and can the putt. Par 4

IN = 37

OUT = 38

TOTAL = 75

Five over par. Twenty-seven putts in all - a pro would be happy with that. And five quid. Shazam!

Digging: The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake (Bella Union, 2006). Fleetwood Mac-tastic, as my mucker John pointed out in his Herald review of Indian Summer. He compared them to Bread too, but even I can't remember them much so ... Anyway, they're splendid.

The bore hole

2007-07-15T22:05:00.000+01:00

Here I highlighted an absurd online petition demanding the sacking of Kirsty Wark from BBC1's Newsnight for essentially failing to do her job adequately on one particular occasion.

As of tonight, there are 236 signatures. Two hundred and 36! That's fuck all in the scheme of things. I mean, more than 1700 people have the signed this petition protesting the appalling running of the Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times by Newsquest.

Could this disparity in support have anything to do with one story being utterly tedious bullshit and the other a demonstration of the inherent sexism thriving in every nook and cranny of Scottish life?

Apologies to the Flaming Lips, whose increasingly tedious sounds are bouncing off the buildings surrounding mine. Indian Summer in Victoria Park, just up the road. I'm sorry guys, and I'm sure it won't make a jot of difference, but please change the record.

Digging: Neon Bible by Arcade Fire (Merge, 2007). A mite bombastic. The memory of Wilco at Indian Summer last night. They rocked a good 'un. It was transforming and forewarned an imminent and brilliant event.

No' jist me

2007-06-24T22:50:00.000+01:00

Here I merely highlighted an appallingly impartial stab at dynamic interviewing. So upset are some people – Nats to a man, no doubt – that they've started an e-petition to have Kirsty Wark sacked from Newsnight.

A) It's a disproportionate response, and b) it'll never work. Interesting, all the same…

Texture message

2007-06-18T21:58:00.001+01:00

This lot are ace. I know little about the Twilight Sad. They're from outside Glasgow; they clearly have excellent taste in music; they got a deal with Fatcat - a quality imprint - pretty soon after forming. But aye, if you like shoegazey, Krauty, doomy songs with a voice you believe, the Twilight Sad are for you.

(Whispering) Y'know, there might even be a bit of Waterboys in there. The big music …

Digging: And She Would Darken … by the Twilight Sad (Fatcat, 2007). A scree-dashed soundtrack to heartbreak. Impossible Germany by Wilco (Nonesuch, 2007). Look, I'm 36.

A Wark on the wild side

2007-06-13T22:59:00.000+01:00

How to be charmless, frigid and rude.

"I don't wanna be a player"

2007-06-03T22:48:00.000+01:00

I missed the Life Without Buildings album launch at Mono last week. Hands up: I was playing golf at Prestwick. But if you need any reminding that their live album is out very soon go to their MySpace page here. If Juno doesn't get you rocking I don't know what will.

Ginger snapped

2007-05-13T17:17:00.000+01:00

Sad news for those of us who like their tunes draped in elegance and brutality. Aereogramme, who have made some of the most uplifting music of the past decade or so (despite an ongoing appreciation of the increasingly irrelevant Flaming Lips), are splitting up, citing a "neverending financial struggle coupled with an almost superhuman ability to dodge the zeitgeist".
My reaction? Frankly I'm stunned they made it this far, what with having quite the hairiest ginger as a frontman and all sporting the beard-and-T-shirt look so beloved of road crews on all continents. But I am glad they did, because they've left behind some glorious music.
If anyone cares, they're playing the QMU on June 1, which they insist fans should regard as their final show. Even though they're playing others, including Connect in Inveraray. Confused? That's probably exactly what they wanted.
Have a gander at their MySpace page here.

Yoti7: Mondays

2007-05-07T20:23:00.000+01:00

Cancel Monday. I've just had one of those unreasonably blank days. The sort where you know there's nothing to be down about but you can't shake off a vague feeling of wishing it was over there and then. I never have days like this on any day other than Monday. If in doubt, houk it out. Death to Mondays.

Digging: Giorno Di Notte by Ennio Morricone (Ipecac, 2005). Crazy. It's My Thing by Marva Whitney (King, 1969). Happening.

Better late than never

2007-05-06T20:33:00.000+01:00

Happy birthday to Helvetica!
The Golf VR6 of fonts.

Yoti6: Weather

2007-05-02T22:20:00.000+01:00

Challenge the big chemical companies to develop an anti-weather drug which will be available for free without prescription to adults. Take two a day and fair to moderate winds will not cause you to drift your way from A to B, direct sunshine will not persuade you to remove 50% of your clothing and give your moles a good grilling, and grey, sunless weather will not guarantee a permanent frown and generally ill-pleased demeanour.

Yoti5: Property management

2007-05-02T22:14:00.000+01:00

Ban factors. If you've ever lived in or owned a flat in Scotland you'll know they are evil, piratical, numb swindlers.
Thanks to Colin and his robbing factors for the inspiration. It makes a change from mine.

Yoti4: Heathens

2007-05-02T22:10:00.000+01:00

Strap every single faceless, soulless artisan rocker into a three-legged chair in a 10ft x 10ft wooden box and blast Anarchists Just Wanna Have Fun by Hella at them through a 30kW PA set up opposite their cuntish faces. Why? Because.

Yoti3: Skin

2007-04-25T21:11:00.000+01:00

Outlaw tanning salons and skin-darkening products. They belong to what is easily one of the shabbiest industries on the planet. Seeing people who use such services to the nth degree make me feel ill.

Yoti2: Work

2007-04-25T21:02:00.000+01:00

Introduce a four-day week. We Brits work 40 hours a week easily anyway, so instead of driving us into the ground employers ought to give us three days off for every four worked. It's not asking much.

Yoti1: Dad

2007-04-24T00:08:00.000+01:00

Make my dad first minister. He's got charisma to burn; Jack, Alex, Nicol et al are as dull as Daves.

Yoti

2007-04-24T00:00:00.000+01:00

I turned 36 today and came to the conclusion, not without adequate supplies of Japanese psych-metal and clean German lager - not that it takes much - that my 37th year will be commemmorated with an as-good-as-daily idea from my head. The year of the idea (Yoti).

Digging: Pink by Boris (Southern Lord, 2005 or 2006). Distorted.

This is a motherfucking rock alert

2007-04-15T21:12:00.000+01:00

Friends, strangers, ex-lovers, fellow golfers, adherents of positive and creative thought patterns, disciples of living, gigglers, forgivers, future lovers, relatives, foes, I bring good news.
Wilco are playing pretty much in my back garden on the weekend of July 14-15. Plenty of other bands are too but I couldn't give much of a fuck about them to be brutally honest. Wilco are playing.
All I have to do is get in. How hard can that be?

Digging: Able Treasury by AC Acoustics (Trans Syndicate, 1994, North American issue). Fierce.

Vanity? That's fair

2007-03-14T21:52:00.000Z

Now, what's wrong with this picture?

Girls girls girls

2007-03-12T22:37:00.000Z

Before anything else, let me state the Arcade Fire's new record, Neon Bible, is wonderful. In particular, No Cars Go is almost everything that clever pop has been building towards since the early 1980s. It knows how good the chorus is, so keeps the verses half the length and twice the opacity. Moodsome, if the word exists (it probably did in early 1980s Smash Hits). Some cracking unison heys too.

But I came here, rapping my knuckles off a large wooden door christened The Electric Rotund Pipe and pooping my pants with delirium at the marvel of it all, merely to ponder this internet dating malarkey, to which I am a willing accomplice. I have had one date, which was educational, and am having three separate games of email love badminton. One girl hasn't even sent me a pic yet – a must – so I haven't yet been in the inevitable position of making a judgment call. Of the other two, one is a 27-year-old insurance worker from Bridge of Weir and really doesn't seem all that. Her chat's fine but, a week down the line, I'm now thinking about drawing an end to it before I end up in a style bar feeling like a prize neep. She started it!

The other is a 31-year-old conservationist who looks quite comely but is hopeless at the momentum aspect of online flirting. Which makes one suspicious. Like Billie Piper, she's from Swindon. But at least I reckon a swiftly arranged drink or two would make my mind up. Whereas with the Bridge of Weir lass I'm increasingly doubtful. After all, I am an odd fucker and I don't think she'd get me at all. I mean, I hardly ever watch TV and smoke roll-ups. Does she have any idea?

Architecture and mortality

2007-03-11T22:32:00.000Z

My opinions are rarely academic. I go with my heart 95% of the time. I can often form strong arguments to support them when required, but those aren't the fuel for my fire. They merely trick some people into thinking I am more rational than I truly am. In truth, I am fond of instincts in most areas of life.

My opinions do not matter. My instinct tells me that, and nothing anybody could ever say (with whatever supporting evidence, God forbid) would dissuade me from believing that.

That aside, I believe the album Any Other City by the defunct Life Without Buildings to be a work of borderline genius, for all that it's old-school indie pop shot through with an art-school savvy. From start to finish it just works. In the same way Blackstreet like the way you work it, no diggity.

Let's try not to let them sink any further, eh? There's more LWB info here.

Picnic at Synth Rock

2007-03-04T22:27:00.000Z

Last night I had the sensuous pleasure of seeing the mighty Trans Am at the ABC2 in Glasgow.

Man.

They still play a hybrid of Rush and Kraftwerk, their record sleeves are still appalling and they have no profile in the UK, but FUCK do they know how to rock.

After the set – plump with ridiculous hooks, grooves like furrows in a field and myriad sonic guilty pleasures – I bought their new album, Sex Change (oh yes, the bad taste extends knowingly through every aspect). Today I listened to it many times and I can assure you it is the equal of previously plugged records in this here blog.

Sex Change comes in the usual Thrill Jockey shite packaging which takes about three minutes to remove (though I appreciate it's cheaper for the label to make the CDs in moosefucker country) and doesn't even name the band members (does anyone think of this stuff or is it just me?). But you've got 4,738 Regrets – everything you could want from a romantic synth-pop instrumental; almost up there with First Picture of You by the Lotus Eaters – and the almighty riffage of Shining Path, where Black Sabbath and Shudder to Think battle it out with King Crimson featuring Nile Rodgers. And Reprieve, Vangelis playing chess with Jim O'Rourke. (A purely reductive logic is on display here, clearly, but TA are just about the perfect band for reductive musicologists.) Few TA albums, and there are many, have more than a clutch of real gems, but this has quite a few indeed. And we're talking the Am, whose "gems" are somewhat more precious than most bands. (Apart from Liberation, which I thought a serious misfire.)

Few bands can thank Jon Theodore on their sleeves and mean it as anything other than greatness by association; the Am can. That's the difference, you see.

For the non-music geeks out there I apologise for the above and implore you to seek out Sex Change by Trans Am. You won't have had as much fun in years. It swings, trust me on this.

The devil's oan

2007-03-01T01:08:00.000Z

If you buy a record other then Insomniac Doze by Envy this year, buy There's No Six in Outer Space by Hella.
Please.
Find your own frigging link.

A stadium crock

2007-02-23T00:55:00.000Z

In rock, as in most performing arts, passing comment on people you either know/knew or once shared a stage/beer/free piss-up with is pretty straightforward. You never slag them off. Unless you're so cocky you couldn't give a fuck or have nothing to lose for whatever other reason. Well, I'm going to break that particular code and say it: Snow Patrol are execrable.

I've never spent much time with either Gary or Johnny, the only remaining members of the original line-ups. I think maybe I once bought grass from Johnny. And I recall they were pretty into Motor Life Co, which was appreciated. (We never had the biggest audience; any acolytes were welcome.) Maybe we played with them once or twice, I can't remember. Maybe even when they were Polar Bear and Richard from B&S was drumming for them. In my memories they were a chummy but uninspiring Sebadoh pastiche.

They kept links with B&S over the years and no doubt played on them, but they've learnt fuck all from them. They booted out their bass player Mark after, oh, a decade's loyal service (bands are odd assemblies so who knows what really went on) and a series of limply received albums. Their success has been exceedingly artless. Say what you want about B&S, but they have conducted their evolution (certainly not anything as plotted as a career) with good grace, vision and lashings of guile. Contrast that with Snow Patrol, who have gluttonously snorted the commercial rock canon and coughed up witless anthem after witless anthem after FM verse-chorus pop-rocker. Done what it takes. I really wish I didn't find this all as depressing as death, but I do.

This is no indictment of the individuals involved, all of whom are probably taking as much of a run at it as would you or I. The fact the international record industry has allowed the success of Snow Patrol is nothing but an argument supporting graft over skill, ambition over character and greyness over colour.

If Snow Patrol were a British town, they'd be Barrow-in-Furness. The likes of Hull, Northampton and Hastings are in a different league altogether.

16th Century Boys

2007-02-22T11:37:00.000Z

Go here for an insider's view of Roads to Siam and their valiant efforts to pump out some Tudor reggae, psychedelic soul and motorik doomrock for Living With The Tudors, my sister's upcoming quirkumentary.

Oh, and as a Brucey bonus there's a couple of fat Cumbrians at the foot of the page.

Isle be yours

2007-02-16T22:49:00.000Z

Am not long in from five days on the island of Arran. Where do I begin?

First up is James Brown, the 84-year-old extant owner of Corriecravie Farm, Arran as opposed to the drug-addled, gun-loving recently deceased "godfather of soul". Despite having spent the past year battling cancer and incipient old age, Mary's dad still cuts an authoritative air about the south end of Arran. He's weak and easily confused, but retains a ridiculous amount of prudence. He has a very Gaelic, island way of talking, that is, he uses little epithets, illustrative stories from the past and vaguely mystical ponderances to make his point, which is from time to time less than clear. He's 84 and takes 10 drugs a day, what can I say? James has rarely been further from Corricravie, overlooking the majestic Kilbrannen Sound to Kintyre and Northern Ireland beyond, than Glasgow. He has much to deal with, but I hope to hell he gets the best chance possible. I enjoyed his company. He reintroduced me to the word "ochone", which you don't hear much now. It means "alas", or more Scottishly "ach weel". James understandably suffixes virtually every story with it, give he talks almost exclusively about people, farming practices or events from the 1940s and 1950s. "His wife passed away soon after the long summer of 1955, ochone ..." and such like. I wish him well.

Second up, James's brother Don, a retired anaesthetician, and his wife Anne. Mary, Fiona and Ishbel's Uncle Don and Aunt Anne, to be precise. Though aged 75 and having had triple heart-bypass surgery, a 33-year struggle with a duodenal ulcer and Mary for a niece, Don continues to lucidly and gently look after his big brother. (Don and Anne have a second home just yards from James's farm, though live in Busby, near Glasgow.) Don has the rigour of a trained doctor and the easygoing manner of a benevolent polymath, making you feel at ease within nanoseconds. Don and Anne invited me for dinner last night (the cottage I was staying in is equidistant from the farm and Don's house) and I scoffed the lion's share of a vast penne with a dark bolognese made using local beef mince. Plenty of vino, good chat (islanders actually care about local government) and a roaring fire, which actually made me feel quite dodgy immediately after dinner. Old folk and heat, eh? It was a top night. I went home with torch in hand and was soon sleeping the sleep of the righteous, after having earlier dragged my reluctant arse up to the Giants Graves and Glenashdale Falls (pic below) in the pishing rain for about three hours. It was far from a relaxed holiday, but then I don't really know what that is any more, and am none the worse for it.

A quality nose job

2007-02-16T20:14:00.000Z

Snide chauvinism aside, this has to be the best opening paragraph I've read for a long time. You simply have to read the story after copping this, but I've cut it just to be annoying. Courtesy of Holy Moly.

Beyonce Knowles trudged into London recently to promote the film 'Dreamgirls', and some minutes later her arse also mooched into view.

Rumbled

2007-02-04T23:38:00.000Z

I draw your attention to a comment added to my salubriously titled post "Ain't too proud to beg, the c—s" from someone who claims to be a moderator on Glasgow Freeshare. What can I say other than "Fair comment"? I checked eBay for second-hand XBoxes and it does indeed appear to be the case that the XBox is a fading star in the night sky of video games – it's the 360 people want, apparently. I can get an XBox for under £50.
All this goes to show that A) I am completely out of touch with gaming, and B) when I choose a target I should research it first.

Have you or has anyone you know got anything good from a Freeshare type group, though? I've got rid of stuff but every time I see the emails and there's something I could find a use for the items have gone before I've even got to the foot of the message list. The only solution I can think of is to subscribe to the emails that get sent out as soon as someone posts a message, but frankly my life hath not the spare capacity to accommodate such a low-yield pursuit.

I am just in from spending two days in deepest Lanarkshire in the company of Kenny Macleod, of Eska fame. A recent father, polymath du jour and radiant fellow, Kenny helped the band and me put down some top music for my sister Karen's new film. Tireless, patient, musically aware – THE MAN. Whaddaguy!

Damned if you Delgado, damned if you Delgadon't

2007-01-31T20:52:00.000Z

I'm just in from having a reccy of Chem19 studios, where the band and me are recording some music for my sister's film this weekend (engineered by Kenny Eska! Result!). I was shown round by Paul Savage, who I last saw at the Green Man fest about 18 months ago. Last time I saw him he was handing me a skanky glass containing nine parts Gordons gin to one part flat tonic water while Malcolm Middleton bullied a low-paid hotel staffer. He is a top chap and is thus getting a free plug from me on my list of links. His studios are exemplary, by the way. And affordable! Whaddaguy!

Sorted (letters, that is)

2007-01-29T23:01:00.000Z

"Heroical naughtiness" is an anagram of my full name. At a very rough guess it would've taken 67,415 monkeys three millennia to work that out, even with the help of modern text-editing software and ergonomically designed keyboards. It took www.anagramgenius.com all of nanoseconds.

Colin response

2007-01-29T22:35:00.000Z

A reader of my blog who shall remain nameless, and thus preserve what reputation he retains despite his best efforts, said in response to my post about Freeshare scroungers: "Where's your sense of humour, G-Unit?" (G-Unit is his term of endearment for me; I don't know whether it's a reference to the rap ensemble formed by 50 Cent or my occasional soubriquet Van Gunt – or, in full, The Van Gunt as it was in my latter days tour managing grown men behaving like adolescents for a living. Maybe it's just a play on my given surname. A play on Van Gunt would rock, though, involving such an acute linguistic ploy as elision.)
What I should have written as I posted was that the Freeshare request was made up by me as a parody, an extreme version of some requests I have read.

What does make me laugh about Freeshare, though, is a subscriber who purports to be named karl170 or something who periodically "offers", and I quote loosely but with reasonable accuracy, a "mauve rear plastic bumper cover for Mercedes E180 1988-94". I clearly know nothing about Mercedes Benz production so those years are entirely random, but the offer is so far wide of the target of bargain-happy cheapskates who likely make up the majority of Freeshare subscribers as to surely be a prank. If so, it's a bloody clever one. I salute such subtlety and tenacity.

"There's gonnae be a murder!"

2007-01-24T23:05:00.000Z

Downstairs, that is.
DCI Jim Taggart's words linger in the grimy Whiteinch air as the echoes of another belligerently slammed door bounce around what used to be the dusty vestibule ceiling and is now my lounge.
The lad's always up and about early enough, loudly belittling his poor girlfriend and stomping about in a vaguely cartoonish, The OC/BH 90210-ish fashion. Without the hunkiness. Lots of tats. Muscly. Probably a con at a young age. They drive a newish silver 3-series BMW.
Who knows what will happen …

Ain't too proud to beg, the c—s

2007-01-24T22:37:00.000Z

Like lots of folk, I'm on a newsgroup or whatever you call it for getting everyday or household items you maybe can't afford but quite fancy or giving away stuff you just don't need any more.
GlasgowFreeshare it's called.
And you get some right fucking chancers, I tell ya. Pirates in disguise looking to bludgeon every last penny out of something until it's literally priceless – you can't even give the fucker away. Typical email subject: OFFERED/WANTED: ITEM, condition, Location. So I got rid of OFFERED: 15in TYRE, VGC, Whiteinch last week, to a bawfaced 25-year-old called Stephen who drove one of my dream cars, a VW Corrado VR6. He was as dull as denture oil, though, so I'm better than him in at least one respect.
Anyway, these scroungers. Mail on my Powerbook has a slightly wanky rule applied that has somehow created in me a respect for inbox husbandry, if that is the word. Housekeeping, I mean. So, I don't keep the Freeshare emails, but sometimes you get the most bare-faced requests.
These gypsies get right through the "moderators". Liberalism gone mad, I say.
Anyway, an example.

WANTED: Microsoft XBox, Townhead
From: street.rat@tink.co.ck
To: GlasgowFreeshare@yahoogroups.com

Hi
I am a big computergames fan and wondered if anyone had a Microsoft XBox they didn't want any more. That would be great. One with controllers and games would be even better!
Thanks
Iain

I mean, fuck off, eh? Or even worse:

WANTED: Microsoft XBox, Townhead
From: street.rat@tink.co.ck
To: GlasgowFreeshare@yahoogroups.com

Hi

I am a big computergames fan and wondered if anyone had a Microsoft XBox they didn't want any more. That would be great. One with controllers and games would be even better! My kids would love an XBox too!
Thanks
Iain

MyArse.com

2007-01-16T22:29:00.000Z

Like it or lump it, you can't deny MySpace is a fine source of debate – a good thing, of course, in these times of ours. What I simply can't be hooped with, though, is bands I've never heard of wanting to be my "friend". That, in itself, wouldn't be so bad I suppose, but the pivot upon which this post swings is that none of them seems to have a solitary original idea. I'd be okay if some rejuvenatingly progressive bunch wanted me to ride their wave to profitable popularity – I'd happily bask in their afterglow – but they're shitehawks to a man. Each and every one. They must lead pretty dreary lives if all they do is scour MySpace for people who have expressed an interest or established a link with a label or band they feel an affinity with. And then blitz them with friend requests. In my day we hung about in pubs and met the bands we wanted to be friends with. Much more fun.

I can't recall any of their names, so unremittingly forgettable are they, but tonight I had The Riffs trying it on. So I visited their page, as you optimistically do, where it struck me instantly that they're probably a good gang but have stolen their look and ethos wholesale from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Go AWAY. It confirmed that almost every single aspect of "alternative" music I have always been suspicious of is still alive and well, and always will be. In ye olden days this would have spurred me on to push my merry band even harder, and blow our cornets just that bit louder over the fortress walls. I've lost that pathology, but negative fuel ain't no good for the soul anyway, and my impetus for playing music is now a million miles more positive and less reactionary.

On another note entirely, did you know that the "of" in Jan Venegoor of Hesselink is Dutch for "or", and doesn't literally mean "of"? (Note to philistines: he plays football for Celtic and Holland.) Upon invading the Netherlands, Napoleon forced the Dutch to abandon their traditional system of nomenclature – like many (all?) Scandinavians, they were known solely by their first names – and append surnames to their names. JVoH apparently comes from farming stock near Enschede where the Hesselink and Venegoor families were of equal social status, hence the option given by his surname. Fascinating stuff. As for Frank de Boer, ex-Ajax, Barcelona and Rangers? Frank the farmer, apparently.
With thanks to Gordon Darroch, colleague of mine and all-round expert on matters Dutch, especially his wife Magda.

The new folk downstairs have got a dog. BLOODY HELL. Confirms my worst fears, I must be honest. What a snob I am.

Top tips for keeping busy Vol 2

2007-01-09T23:45:00.000Z

Jesse Owens?

SAM FOX? What about … JANIS JOPLIN!

Feeling the pinch? Top tips for keeping busy Vol 1

2007-01-08T23:18:00.000Z

Alphabeticise your 12in singles collection. It's dirty, mostly tedious and desiccates your hands. But … it's FREE!

Rumination of Guthro on t' cusp of 2007

2006-12-31T21:19:00.000Z

What's going on? There's me making my cottage pie with BBC 6 Music on in the background (witlessly titled "The Biggest Indie Disco Ever") and Iron Maiden's singer (ex-singer?) is having some kind of spin-off with a female DJ I don't know. I'm expecting an avalanche of truly pish music from Bruce Dickinson - the guy sang on some of the worst records ever released and flies a plane ferchrissakes - but no, we're getting Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come, some Latino metal/flamenco lunacy and plenty more besides. He's mega-enthusiastic too - always a bonus.
That pie is going to taste DAMN fine.

New Year? Not too arsed this year, what with it being unprecedentedly foul outside and having to work tomorrow. That's not to say I'm not having a top time, though. I finally hung some art/posters today (after it dawning on me a week or two ago that bare walls are fucking dull and I have a pile of framed posters/art/whatever sitting on the floor - and have done for at least a year). So I feel my home feels more homely now, after just a few hours work. And hey, I'm a Taurean therefore have no need to apologise. Sadly my right hand is blistered to buggery - must get an electric screwdriver one of these days.

As for resolutions, I make them every month or two so hardly feel obliged to create any new ones. Striving for improvement is the main one; everything else snakes off that. Quite fancy a holiday in Brazil, though, chez Mack, so I'd better get the books in order and conduct a feasibility study.

Happy New Year.

The zenith of civilisation

2006-12-30T22:02:00.000Z

You know, sometimes I love the internet.

A kind of blue

2006-12-30T19:46:00.000Z

Walter Smith ends 2006 as a national hero of sorts - the man who revived the Scotland football team. Berti Vogts had turned our side into a joke after the relatively consistent if unspectacular reign of Craig "Shagger" Brown. Football may be a vulgar game, but some of us genuinely care about our national team, and make no apology for it.
Smith's quasi-sanctification is apt, I say (though as a part-time hun I should add this is not meant as an objective post). That's what I believed before I was told of the clip below on YouTube that shows him in his Rangers manager incarnation the day following a shoddy home game just after signing Brian Laudrup. It must be 1994 or so. Chick Young is pursuing an especially cretinous line of enquiry and Smith just isn't up for it. It's grand, and shows Wattie the way I dare say he really is. (And Christ could we do with a Laudo now.)
Enjoy.

Search (and destroy)

2006-12-22T00:43:00.000Z

Right, so a Google search of "Grifting and the Grass" yields but one result, and it's on this blog.
That kind of reaffirms much of my faith in Google. Conceptually interesting, huh?

Roads to Siam is dead …

2006-12-15T23:04:00.000Z

Long live Grifting and the Grass.
Anthropomorphism, detuned absurdism, beauty, ponderousness, pop, drugs, reveries, confusion, contradiction, obfuscation, responsibility, destruction, folk tales, ambition, white Russians, islands, environmentalism, literacy.
To be continued.

Death notice

2006-12-15T22:36:00.000Z

ROADS TO SIAM
Born 22 August 2001, died peacefully 15 December 2006. Cherished father to Grifting, beloved son of Motor Life Co, AC Acoustics and The Supernaturals, and a friend to many. No service. Donations only please (min £20) to R Wolff, c/o Ahmed's Grocery, Shiteinch, Glasgow G14.

December 13

2006-12-13T22:25:00.000Z

It's easily the most Teenage Fanclub day of the year, innit but though.
The following comes to you courtesy of Sans Context Pictures, I'm afraid. I haven't the energy.

1. The Big Lebowski
I finally watched it all the way through, after years of glimpsing snatches (steady on). It's brilliant.

2. 21 Grams
Yer man Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro et al in a fab flick made by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the flabbergastingly imaginative and assiduous Mexican director. He made Amores Perros, which was ultra-chouette, as the French would say, and his new film Babel has just come out. Inarritu's films play with sequence and context without seeming disjointed. The discontinuity between scenes in 21 Grams actually contributes to the telling of what is a profoundly miserable story. I can't wait to see Babel. If you haven't clapped eyes on this, do so. I'm also looking forward to Pan's Labyrinth, directed by Inarritu's countryman Guillermo del Toro. A bit of a genius, I reckon. He made Hellboy and Blade 2, but his new film looks a much less compromised affair. GFT, here I come.

3. Cottage pie
Made on Sunday night to a Delia recipe. What can I say? It was a delicious winter meal.

4. Mark Kozelek "Little Drummer Boy Live"
Double CD, the Koz on acoustic with Phil from Red House Painters. 'Nuff said.

5. Pain-free
Yep, sporadic stretching and exercising (have you looked outside? It's almost too grim to walk to the bus stop. I've resorted to joining a gym so I can use the pool and sauna; thing is, I always fall asleep after the sauna, mostly making me rather late for my return to work) have thus far kept my spine in satisfactory, if not ideal nick. That, allied to a wee Xmas bonus courtesy of BT -- to whom I pay an extortionate amount every month -- kept me calm as I waited in pishing rain and howling gales for a bus tonight after work. Time and again 62s and 9s flew past, packed to the gunnels. So I just fought on towards home, keeping a soaked eye out for a taxi (thanks BT, you cunts), and eventually caught a bus (and probably a cold), ears buzzing to the mighty Envy as all around me people sighed, whined and looked utterly exhausted. Who needs the London underground? As I say, I was quite chipper. It's a simple matter or priorities, but then I didn't have a crying child or a hungry spouse waiting for me to get home and calm them or feed them.
And that's after an 8.5hr day, which followed a 12hr marathon and a straightforward 8hr day on Monday. Normally I'd be pumped -- and I am now -- but not when the weather's a dog and you simply must get home.

6. The girl
Yes, I'm smitten, besotted, enchanted, gripped, beguiled by a girl. It's complex, but it's more than splendid to feel this way, however long it may last or wherever it may go (if anywhere).

7. The other girl
But the immediately above didn't stop me getting busy with someone else, and that was grand too. I've morally justified it to myself, but tell me if you think I am in the wrong.

8. A new riff / an older one honed
After about 11 months' intermittent work the band has finally glued together the parts of a song I began writing in Spain last New Year. It's instrumental, pretty out there for what Roads to Siam typically do (other than nothing, that is), and top fun to play. Struggling as ever with titles, but I'm thinking of stealing a title I had years ago for a Motor Life Co song that sadly never made it onto tape. It paraphrases a very sweet poem by Emily Dickinson and is called Bred Among The Mountains, which in a roundabout way makes me feel better about living inland when I was raised with sea salt in my veins. The poem is called Setting Sail.

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea, --
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep eternity!

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

And I think Bred Among The Mountains would suit the tune. As with pretty much all of my songs there is no literal meaning. I don't see the use in pointing out blatant aspects of living. Suggest, allude and flash upon them but never state the obvious. Anyone can do that.
And I cranked out a lovely sequence last night that has the feel of the Motor Life Co song Bred, As We, Among The Mountains, as it happens. A vaguely folky progression that, if my bruv is up to the task, could go literally anywhere in a Siamese fashion (ie quite dynamically limited but somehow more gutterally powerful as a result).

Heaven and dearth

2006-11-28T23:03:00.000Z

Fuckwits, eh? Don't you just love them?

I'm just off the back of a 12-hour shift so forgive me if I sound a tad manic. My day began wonderfully (after a top night of grub and film). I saw my wonderful physiotherapist, Sinead Molloy, she of Partick Health Centre, at 9.30am. In I strode, freshly shorn of beard and head hair, with a hint of sunshine glinting off the paintwork of my trusty BMW 320i Touring (E30 since you ask), parked on Dumbarton Road.
Digression:It's cool round the west end of that particular street. Reminds me of lower Byres Road in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Stuart Murdoch will know what I mean): a mite neglected and jumping with shysters but essentially rock solid and home to specimens of fine early 20th-century architecture (try the baptist church or just the tenements themselves, many adorned with likely Masonic flourishes above the doorways). Like everywhere in and around the west end of Glasgow (including my own enclave, growingly), developers are developing and contemporary tastelessness is creeping in (alongside, to be fair, contemporary tastefulness -- just in a lesser proportion). I'm glad I live here, though, and feel quite a part of it; at home.
Sinead, then, didn't even have to thole me dropping my keks and desocking my cheesy feet. Nope. "How is your back?" the colleen said brightly (she's Irish).
"A1 other than the usual twinges," I said honestly.
"And your leg?"
"Good. The numbness comes and goes."
And so it went on. Not seven minutes later I was sashaying out the front door feeling on top of the world, some sensible muscle-rebuilding exercises and yoga advice fresh in my usually depleted morning mind.
Now that feels like it was a different life, such has been the fuckwittery I have had to put up with and churn through via disguised expressions of contempt and pity, besides the usual vulgarity that never fails to raise a chuckle from those who typically repress their puerile love if it.

Some people just don't have a clue. Then there is the other sort: those who care for and about others for a living. Sinead definitely falls in that category (fuck your Florence Nightingale cod-Jungian analysis). She is methodical, articulate and competent way beyond many people I know, if you catch my drift. And she seems to derive profound pleasure from having sent another spinally deficient character back out into the Partick damp, hobbling just a wee bit less.

The physio made me think about what I'd been leading up to since summer and the threat of love, or something at least. Sinead and I talked about the pain-mood relationship which you simply don't spare a thought for when you're laid up. You're beyond introspection; consumed by the physical. And since the nights began to lengthen I had felt more and more at odds with life, no matter how much golf I played, good work I did or miles I pedalled on the bike. I interpreted it as a sign I was smoking too much weed, disregarding financial management as the preserve of the poor and simply not taking control. Undoubtedly all three played a part, but I reckon the build-up of my back trouble had a more pivotal role.
Sinead herself told me the damage was not the result of any one incident, but rather the culmination of a whole series of events and behaviours. So I need to learn good habits. And slouching about on settees isn't really on the agenda if I want to be free of the kind of back pain that makes you fear for the next time you have to get up and pish, call NHS Direct and almost shout your pain down the line, and spasm uncontrollably when all you want to do is make a cup of tea. You can't even stand up.

And since Trish died -- what, two or three years ago? -- I've heard her east-end, half-pished voice in my head often when forced with decisions. "Whit the fuck ye daein'?" "Yer talkin' fuckin' shite." Never shit, always shite. And I usually was, not that I'd let that get in the way of a good argument. "Quit fuckin' moanin'." She had a point.
I first met her when we were all in our twenties and the pubs, clubs and venues of Glasgow were our playground. Then she got married to Paul, had their son Sam and died from breast cancer but three or four years later. She was quite like my mum: 5ft 1in or thereabouts, short hair and handsome but far more gallus than Mum has ever been. I hear her a lot, especially when faced with choices, such as whether to chase X when X is officially out of bounds or say Y to Z because you won't sleep if you don't. Either from lust or loathing. I think watching 21 Grams last night didn't really do me any favours, though I'd urge even the most cynical film fan to see it. It's pretty drab and concerned with taboos such as premature death, born-again Christian criminals and child death. It handles them all wonderfully. (I'd always pinned Sean Penn as a pompous little prick, but it turns out I am wrong.)
So Trish is sort of my moral compass, even though she's simply not here, and even if she was she would be raising Sam with Paul and probably living in Dalry or somewhere, completely removed from my dwindling social circle. (Excellently, Paul has subsequently fallen in love with another lass and moved with Sam and her to Lochwinnoch. I bumped into him at a Teenage Fanclub concert at the Barras and he was in fine form, bearded and lugubrious as ever.)
Everything with Tricia was more or less black and white. She'd lived a bit. The back? "Stop sitting about on yer pishy sofa smoking dope and get a life, that'll sort it." Women? "Stop bein' such a fuckin' wimp, she obviously fancies ye and her man sounds like a prick." Exercise? "Nonsense." Nothing held fear. When sober she was of the same mindset only less disinhibited.

On the upside I know when she'd approve of my actions. Which makes the right ones even sweeter.

The world is just one great big onion

2006-11-26T21:26:00.000Z

It's been an evening of food and sodomy. Well, "inside of me/inside of me/inside of me/inside of me/inside of me" sung by Van Morrison on the live version of Listen to the Lion on It's Too Late to Stop Now, where he was backed by the incredible Caledonian Soul Orchestra. The way the boy Ivan mangles his words so inventively across all four sides of the record -- and it's irrefutably glorious -- allied to his intrinsic humourlessness (he should meet Mark Kozelek -- Van would feel normal within seconds) gives rise to an extended scat on anal coitus that is utterly at odds with the smooth R&B underpinning the vocal.

Mmmm, french onion soup. That was tonight's peak, making the stuff. Followed by conjuring a kiwi fruit, clementine, banana and natural yoghurt smoothie that I trust will have me feeling like Freddie fucking Mercury circa Another One Bites The Dust come the dawn. Then I made my actual dinner -- hours slaving over a hot stove, I've been. Punctuated by various telephone conversations. It's not easy, right?

Big interview on Wednesday, but am I sweating it? Not at all. More concerning is my imminent hosting of Raoul and Gyll, who had me as a guest for months on end during our magazine days. In a big house, right enough; and here's me with my allium-scented bachelor pad. For once I will slum it on the couch, back willing.

It's Too Late to Stop Now. It revives in me the awe I felt when I first heard some of Van's truly transcendent music. The gutteral vocals, tempered dynamics and seeming oneness of audience and performer are hot to the point of erotic; painfully climactic. I usually think of "old" music as being irrelevant, and I imagine as with today's output much of it is, but there are seams of gold in there. It's Too Late to Stop Now is as good as it gets. Relearning it sort of makes me sad I left it unplayed for so long.

I just remembered why I started this post in the first place. It was to wank on about Listen to the Lion, one of the final tracks on It's Too Late ... And now I can't be arsed because, between unsettling flashbacks to Courtney Love's vapid appearance on Jonathan Ross the other night, bidding on pish on eBay (Sunday's great for a half-drunken raid) and enjoying the album I've been banging on about, I haven't the energy. I will say, though, that as an expression of masculinity, vulnerability and spiritual inarticulacy/confusion it is unprecedented, unrivalled. The way the chords and lyrics change menacingly together is as simple as life itself, yet expressed so unconventionally as to be gripping beyond my ken. Stick me in Pseuds Corner for all I care. It's an incredible song, in the original sense of the adjective. If I knew how he did it I think I'd simply stop caring. Strange how it works, isn't it?

Insomniac doze

2006-11-21T23:41:00.000Z

It's the new record by the incredible Japanese band Envy on Rock Action. Even if you're not into the proggy shoegazing noise they make you can at least admire their chord work, which for my money is as unfathomable, visceral and consistently inspired as Nick Drake's Pink Moon, as disparate as the two may be. Maybe I'm just tired.

I doubt it's just that, though. I've been playing Insomniac Doze for days on end and, alongside a very unwolffly Muse (Black Holes or whatever) and Pelican's 23-minute March Into The Sea is just about getting me through.

November in Scotland: miserable, defeated light and people struggling just to breathe through the myriad privations of high autumn. An apt time for the delicately crafted riches of Envy, one of the loudest bands I have ever heard either on record or in the flesh. (The only time I saw them was at ATP a couple of years ago and they'd blown one of the PA's bass bins during the first few songs by the time I got there with the Macks and Kearno. What I saw sounded a bit lopsided, clearly, but it felt sooo good.) They're a bit like the most rocking and sumptuous bits of Sebadoh and Mogwai put together - that sort of goose-bump music that makes you feel grateful for music itself and your continuing love for it, no matter what storm rages or heatwave sulks around you. The older you get the more you appreciate it. And Envy reward that investment, that lack of condition attached to your love.

I'll put it this way: if it doesn't tickle your soul, I don't want to know you. Buy it, go straight to Crystallize, sit down, give it your attention (make sure you've unwound, and headphones are ideal) and allow it IN.

Please.

I feel obliged to wee Simon Stuart (so sue me - he IS wee), who's almost family through Mary Cock Fixer Brown, Consultant Phallotician but in cold terms is but a colleague, for informing of me the album's very existence. Off I blagged ... Shameless.

Stubble and strife

2006-11-17T23:00:00.000Z

I switched on the telly with the sound off while listening for the fifth time in succession to the newish album by Envy, Insomniac Doze. Kate Dickie and some other tartan tart were singing, I think, 500 Miles by the Proclaimers, a pish song by everyone's standards that celebrates, reveres and extracts from sadsacks everything that is wrong with modern Scotland. (I would have thought Dickie would know better than to be associated with the hideous Children In Need. Follow that nomenclatural logic and you may as well call Live 8 Starving Africans In Need and The Big Issue Homeless People In Need. Then again, that thought could be a logical revelation -- are we so shackled to political correctness, spin and PR hype that we can't even have charities that don't subscribe to contemporary marketing tropes? Whatever, Dickie should know better.)

The Envy album -- blagged gratefully from young Craig Hargrave, Mogwai henchman and Rock Action Records rock action man, from what I gather -- is absolutely stunning. (My editor Kathleen would have the baby she's due with in three days' time if I wrote that in something, and rightly so -- there must be a better phrase or word. Anyway …) It follows the template they established on their last two albums pretty strictly, and is none the worse for it. Fuck it's powerful. Being Japanese, the singer -- I have no idea what his name is -- clearly whispers, murmurs, hectors and speaks in Japanese. There is a translation -- on the CD sleeve? Artwork? What do you call CD packaging? -- but I glanced at one song and got the immediate impression it was a completely literal translation and without function. The pictures they paint, though -- what pictures. If I was a woman, I would be drawn to them. Craig, if you're reading: thank you to 11.

The reason I bothered to boot up my Powerbook, to get to the point, was -- Newsnight Review now, annoyingly addictive critics (and the odd brainiac) dissecting James Bond (surely they'll love Daniel Craig?) -- I shaved off my beard tonight then worried about where the face detritus would go: which river, which estuary, which sea. Does it break down? Is it a microbe's dinner? Will it become a coral-hugging algae or a walrus's shite?

I mean it. Everybody and their partner (man) is shitting their breeks about, or being actively cautious in behaviour as a result of the enviromental effects of previous post-industrial activity. Or in plain English, the world's been force-fed a rancid poo for too long and has lost its freakin' mojo. We've got to tickle Earth's balls and prime it for action.

And where does my shaving stand in the carbon footprint league? I rarely drive; I recycle; I buy as much "green" household stuff and food as I can afford; I buy green power; I cycle. But then I go and dump a fistful of hair down a drain, regardless of where it's going or how it's going to rot.

A nanosecond of pontification leads me to wonder whether a hair tax would be practical, just and affordable (or if that's too clear, economical). Those of us with fewer follicles, particularly about the body, know all too well the unavoidable irritation of living with a hairy partner. Clean bath? Forget it. Do they sweep the bathroom at least once a week? You must be a loon. Hairy people are selfish, there's no getting away from it.

Myself, I am my father's son: my hairs are wispy and only glint in strong sunlight. I make Tony Parsons and Charles Kennedy MP look like Chewbacca and Henry Winkler respectively. On a pay-as-you-go model, I would pay very little, and as I am cretinously meticulous in cleaning my new shower enclosure, would have the best of both worlds. Obviously growing a beard has less impact on the planet's ecosystem: you don't shave and use less water. However, I contend -- apropos of nothing, I admit -- that bearded men tend to be loners, thinkers and more self-destructive than conventional men. They behave more randomly than others, going through more refuse, glass and carry-out trays than well-ordered greenies. They are suffering. So, to my mind, shaving is greener than not shaving. Just look at Daniel Craig. Plus, a good sesh with a quality razor is actually quite a pleasure with fancy gels and no appointment to keep.

Me? Down to the stubble. The smooth comes tomorrow morning, at leisure.

Jools fucking Holland now. Razorlight. Enough said. Delete. Delete. Delete. I'm going to puke myself inverse.

Home-made maps (think about it)

2006-11-06T23:08:00.000Z

From: xxxx.xxxxxxx@madasafish.com
Subject: query
Date: 6 November 2006 22:59:37 GMT
To: info@usablewebsites.org

Regards.
This I first Saturday on saw website your I it and revisited on the wide world web evening. Fuck over text who weekend the the the rewrote? Now pish it's!
Nake Hunt
You a of bunch must cretins guys what be. A I please have can website?
Hello,

It's amazing what you can cook up with some basic ingredients.

Disc not working

2006-10-31T17:04:00.000Z

Indulge me.
It's very odd living with intense back pain. The main thing that spurs you on is the knowledge that you are likely to recover in good time and resume your life as was. What's gettng me through the housebound days - both interrupted with a trip, yesterday in the car to the doc and today in great pain to the postbox and grocery shop on foot - is strong drugs. There's nothing else for it - doing anything else just fucking hurts and gets really boring really quickly.
When you wake up, you see, you have to endure 40 minutes to an hour of sussing out how the spinal land lies and adjusting accordingly. By the end of that the drugs should be working and you start to feel a mite more flexible. But a jolt is never far away, of that you can be sure.
And today is just a constant battle to find a comfortable position, and when you do, you know you're going to have to get out of it painfully at some point. Bugger.

Cock rock is dead

2006-10-31T16:43:00.000Z

Tell thee what, as I listen again to Mogwai's soundtrack to Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, other than thinking 21st century should be hyphenated as its use is adjectival, it strikes my monged napper that I never had any idea they were going to become as brilliant as they are. Ever. It is a lovely surprise. I cannot wait to see the film, though I've likely missed it, knowing my affinity with the zeitgeist.
If you haven't heard it, I can tell you the album bodyswerves the usual Mogwai album template and replaces this with a truly painterly set of ambitious, daring and cosmically sumptuous pieces. Prosaic titles like Half Time bely winding, peaking laments articulated by sounds rarely encountered on this planet, let alone others. I suggest they have reached a peak, maybe THE peak. Which only means one thing. We can, though, be utterly grateful for this record. That cretins with no love of music apparently choose every Mogwai release to emit a chorus of "Isn't it about time they chucked it?" is a pity, but a surmountable one.
To be frank, I don't think there has been a period of time in societal terms which has been better framed in "rock" music than the last 10 years, during which the band have to all intents and purposes made consistently "now" records. And they just keep getting better. It's a wonder. Let's put the days of the rock singer to bed, shall we?

The bends, not

2006-10-31T12:55:00.000Z

I can barely get my socks and shoes on. Ow!

Disabled excess

2006-10-30T18:38:00.000Z

These bones of mine pipe up from time to time. "Man, give us a bloody break, will you?" they huff, and on occasion I haven't the strength of will to deny their request. Such a time is now. On Friday I pulled a muscle in my back or harassed a disc or something. All I know is now I'm off work and doping myself with a drug called Tramacet.
Basically my lumbar region is throbbing like a soon-to-burst cocoon, and I told the doc ibuprofen was doing next to nothing. He sent me hobbling home via the chemist's clutching a note saying "Get this man legally high". £6.60, cheaper than a carry-out. I popped two about five hours ago and have since been rather happy spannering about on the web and listening to tunes. You see, I Googled this pill and learnt its primary effect - like that of many strong painkillers I suppose; I've just never taken any - is on the brain, encouraging the release of endorphins. The pain remains, you're just so elevated you can ignore it better (hopefully tomorrow I can beat the two hours it took me to get coffeed, showered and dressed - pensionable behaviour, I'm sure you'll agree).
So you could say I've popped my painkiller cherry. On my tod in a darkening Whiteinch, with the plangent and luminous soundtrack to the Zidane movie by Mogwai churning and streaming from my Danish loudspeakers. (There's a mountain of sound lurking at the very end of the final track, hipsters.)
And yes, before you point it out, I do realise loads of people get addicted to painkillers. It's easy to see why! See you in rehab!!!

Steven Purcell

2006-10-17T23:24:00.000+01:00

This will mean something to perhaps two of my three regular visitors (can I call you readers?).
Councillor Steven Purcell, the Newest of the New New Labour leader of Glasgow City Council.

WHAT A FLANGE.
Keir Hardie would turn in his fucking grave, I swear.

In poor taste (apparently)

2006-10-17T23:20:00.000+01:00

I received this today. It made me quiver a modicum.

A Glesga burd walks into the local dry cleaners. She places a garment on the counter. "Ah'll be back ra morra efternin tae pick up ma dress." she says. "Come again?" asks the counter assistant, cupping his ear. "Naw" she replies. "This time it's mayonnaise."

Am I evil?

If I were PM for a day …

2006-10-17T22:53:00.000+01:00

I would:
A Get the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, both futile and unfulfillable missions.
B Get the UN to pull its finger out over Darfur and send some fucking soldiers to help the indigenous people who are being roundly wiped out by government-supported Janjaweed psychopaths. Why try to intervene in sectarian battles in Mosul when you can't be arsed with the same thing happening in Darfur?
C Back any UN move to throttle North Korea until Kim Jong-il loses his grip. The guy is patently criminally insane to the core of his DNA and his people are abused beyond emphasis.
D Get to the bottom of the phenomenon of fat smokers. They're like albinos or something.
E Ban all commercial intra-European flights. This would: cut the UK's carbon emissions, encourage people to appreciate their native country and obviate the need for me ever to have to say to a woman, "But there's no point going to Turkey - my skin is made of phosphorous." Who on earth truly enjoys flying?
F Set up my own radio station and ensure it was funded to run without adverts for a minimum of 10 years. How good would that be? The virtually-unheard Real Babe by Sweet Jesus followed by Kicking Televisions (Live) by Wilco, some top audio clips from the likes of Nighty Night, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Zoolander then a session from, ooh, Tors Laguna. That would rock.

Fog me, it's Monday

2006-10-16T22:19:00.001+01:00

Today brought nothing much other than some stunning weather which started with a Dickensian pea-souper through which I rode happily to work and blossomed into scorching hot sun for a few all-too-brief hours in the afternoon. Exemplary. It also brought a steady stream of cigarettes made with liquorice papers, my present skin of choice. There's something satisfyingly dad-ish about them, much like my beard (a short boxed, as it turns out, following yesterday's leisurely grooming session, one of my first ever). Lord knows what a psychotherapist would make of it all. (Did you know there is a word liquorish? Look it up - it's a belter.)
And afore I forget, if anyone's looking for an utterly brilliant, beguiling, clever, visually rewarding, forward-thinking film to rent, get American Splendor. It's as good, if not better, than anything mentioned in recent posts. Paul Giamatti is a god.
That aside, I only signed in to post this email I just sent to Chris and Anna in Brazil, judging it quite a good way to shine light on, well, whatever. So here it is:
From: sean.guthrie@madasafish.com
Subject: bolg
Date: 16 October 2006 22:11:40 BDT
To: betterthanpuppies@hotmail.com, jamesorrcomplex@hotmail.com

Yo!
I trust thee and thy spouse are fit and well of mind? I guess there's a big part of me that thinks you live on the moon, when in truth you are but a medium-length flight away. The same sun, different magnification. Ditto the moon.
I am well, very well I would dare to say. Other than looking rather like a junkie thanks to having given blood a few days ago and being dealt with by a hamfisted young crone, I am in good shape. I had two weeks off recently, wherein I did a wee homer for the art school's alumni mag (thanks to C Kearney esq) and ponced about seeing garden mag Raoul, my sister in glorious Cumbria and my chums. Teenage Fanclub played Bandwagonesque at the Barras and as you can imagine it was a case of damage limitation. Holidays are good for allowing yourself off the leash, but I couldn't do it full time. Met up with Marty Bulloch's wife Kim that night, actually - hadn't seen her in >five years and the banter was top.
Now I'm back in the saddle in more ways than one - holiday = no bike and yes, I think I am rather addicted to the easy workout of cycling to work as much as three days a week, It works out at 30 miles a week, and is top fun with decent weather and a freshly boosted iPod. There's a brilliant new bridge at the Finnieston Crane - they call it the squinty bridge - the development of which I've been lucky enough to see on a weekly basis from scratch but a year ago. Hilarious. Haven't used it yet, right enough, but then I doubt the BBC would employ a slob like me. So anyway, yes, I think I am addicted to exercise. I certainly feel low when I'm not getting any. Dolphins, innit.
Before I forget, new blog address I've been meaning to send you for yonks(ish): http://ronniewolff.blogspot.com
I was getting a little worried that my realname one was a tad detectable in case I wanted to pan the paper which I kind of have done in my darker moments ("It's just a ride"). It gets you down if you take it seriously, it really does. But I have my armour! A Claud Butler hybrid, to give it a name. I'm also slashing my weed intake quite severely, mostly on account of financial responsibility, and am feeling a thousand times fresher. Will it last? Depends. I see it like this: we all use something - call it XX - to get out of our heads. We often use XX casually, almost through habit. XX does different things to you depending on the circumstances. We need to be alert to when XX is doing good things and when it isn't, and act accordingly. "Bad habits," Mark Eitzel once sang (and I think I posted on it a while back), "make our decisions for us." So yes, I bloody love a good piss-up as much as the next man, and I love getting blasted to kingdom come too, but I don't think I should attempt to do 20% of either on a regular basis, ie daily. I can be productive and happy and fruitful sans dope of whatever form.
And Coca Cola are panicking! Sales are actually shrinking. I certainly think, in the sense of I perceive, a greater number of fit people around me, but then I don't even give a second's thought to the number of fat or obese people I see. And the UK is just getting fatter and fatter - we've got more fatsos per head of population than any other country in Europe. So what are Brits getting fat on? A dozen lettuces a day?
Work is no longer the braintanglia it was. I think that, after three or four years of knocking my chuffing pan in, I have reached a kind of plateau which was at first frightening but is now something of a relief. There are challenges to be met outwith work, that's for sure, and one, I hope, will be providing some soundtrack music to my sister and her colleague's next film over the coming months, if she - Karen - wants me to help. I refuse to let myself get dragged down with something that isn't intrinsically ME. It's work.
Tunes? Easy: A Lazarus Taxon by Tortoise, Halfway to a Threeway by Jim O'Rourke, Anodyne by Uncle Tueplo, Promise of Love and Set Free by American Analog Set, Hall & Oates (oh yes - She's Gone, Rich Girl and others of that ilk), Climate of Hunter by Scott Walker, You're Makin' Me High by Toni Braxton (an R'n'B orgasm), The Loon by Tapes 'n' Tapes, I'm not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass by Yo La Tengo. I could go on. I'm sure Kearney would have me down as worthy of a lifetime's membership of Britannia Music Club, but they make me happy. The Siam are hard at work - weekly rehearsals, ye gods - and we hope to be on a stage in the next few months. All I know is my pedals are multiplying. No big deal, you think, but I have yet to mention that two of them are volume pedals, another two distortion pedals, one a digital delay and the other a less-is-more Electroharmonix filter toy. You can appreciate that doesn't give me many options. Loud; louder; even louder; dirty even louder; dirtier even louder; even dirtier even louder; really, really dirty and even louder; really, really dirty and really loud; really, really dirty and really, really loud; and deafening. A bit of modulated squawk and echo in there and that's yer lot.
Okay, enough rambling. Fare thee well and furnish me with your tidings if and when you have the chance,
Be happy,
Sean

YLT

2006-10-15T14:18:00.000+01:00

While I'm in the mood, I can't do anything other than say how utterly brilliant the new Yo La Tengo albnum is. It's called I'm Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass and is a million times better than its title.
They must've been going for longer than I've been alive, and still they up the ante with every new album. BASTARDS.

Tupelo honey

2006-10-15T13:53:00.000+01:00

The inside cover states: "This album was recorded entirely live at Cedar Creek Recording in Austin, Texas, in May and June 1993."
The disc in question, Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo, is a 12-song saunter through US country-folk. I have had it on cassette for years but, spurred on by something approaching an absence in my stomach, picked it up for £2.70 or so on eBay last week, thus bringing the majesty of Uncle Tupelo into the 21st century and its digital dependence.
There isn't a duff track on Anodyne. The title track was one of the main reasons I re-bought it - a wispy, depressed and rueful dream. We've Been Had, one of Jeff Tweedy's finest pre-Wilco songs, jiggles forth from the mouth of a disillusioned, pessimistic rock musician ("Every star that shines in the back of your mind/Is just waiting for his cover to be blown"; "There's a guitar leaning/On a Marshall stack/Used to sound like the sun on the horizon/Now I think we've been had") and Acuff-Rose pays beautiful homage to the benchmark in country music publishing.
Tupelo have long been credited with helping spawn the alt.country movement, some of which has proved to be music of substance and endurance, but I can't help thinking Anodyne would've been the ultimate full-stop on the roots revival, for the simple reason nothing else can compare with it.
Perfect for a Sunday afternoon.

The power of Cat Power

2006-10-12T22:46:00.000+01:00

If music with few peers and film-making that twists your heart are your cut of choice, you ought to watch the Ensemble video you can find ici.
Chan Marshall sings on the song, Disown Delete, and the video consists of hurricane footage.
I love it.

How can you feel anything but loathing for Gordon Ramsay? He is an insult to the human race.

2006-10-03T22:31:00.000+01:00

It crossed my mind that Gordon Ramsay used to play for Rangers until he was found out as a useless, self-absorbed cretin. By extension (of the playing-for-Rangers bit, I should stress), I wonder: is he Scottish? Because if so, I think Duncan Bannatyne may be facing a serious rival for the title of Scotland's Biggest Tosser.
If I met Ramsay in the street and he'd just been shot in the knob, arse and armpit I would walk swiftly on and let him suffer.

Tortoise groove like a bitch

2006-10-03T22:12:00.000+01:00

I was in Mono, the bar-restaurant-record shop in Glasgow, today to have a quick chat with Craig Tannock (he of Tannock's Tea Cake infamy) for an article I'm writing. What a day for it. Rode the bike in, fetched up at exactly the same time as Craig and had a slightly deranged but highly entertaining blether about art and music. (And Cylinder, a really good band I'd utterly forgotten.)
I then had a good chinwag with Ranter over cigarettes and genuinely nice vegan coffee (you heard) as the warm, early autumn breeze dandered across King's Court. What I'm most impressed with now, though, looking back, was that I exercised restraint in Monorail. Dep and co keep such an amazing record shop it never ceases to amaze me. What's he doing when I approach the counter with my two choices (restraint, see?), Halfway to a Threeway by Jim O'Rourke and A Lazarus Taxon by Tortoise (three CDs, a DVD and hunners of ace tunes)? Polishing a CD before placing it in its case, of course. As ever. You rarely see care like that. I doubt you ever did in the past either.
And the price of my two purchases? A mere £17.09. With a shop like that you can stick your Amazon, HMV or whatever up your ring, you really can.

A sudden outbreak of acme

2006-09-27T23:29:00.000+01:00

I have arrived at the pinnacle of my musical career.
Think I'm bullshitting you?
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2094204/
Hee hee. So far I share my given name with a black American football player (defensive quarterback, whatever the frig that is) and a US racing driver. Little do they know their namesake is Shiteinch's highest paid 5ft 10in spellchecker.

(Not) Colin Jevons above

2006-09-27T23:02:00.000+01:00

Bloody hell.
For months I've had no neighbours, the flats above and below having been on the market then sold to people with the urgency of a hibernating sloth. Now the dude upstairs has moved in thanks to his generous parents. Seems a sound type, a mite grungy for my liking but nevertheless a welcome addition to the building. Youngish. Long-haired, a bit diffident, you know the type. Rock T-shirts. And that's all fine, but being the type he is, the concept of normal waking hours seems as slippery to him as a confit of eel. Donk donk donk, up and down the pishy laminate flooring. Probably shifting his vast collection of Judge Dredd comics from dusty corner to stained skirting board.
I've been a bit of a layabout in my time, in the mercifully distant past, so I dig where Brian - for that is his very apt name - is coming from. But dude, sit on your hoop after 10pm, eh? That or go to the pub then stagger in after midnight, there's a good chap.
To be fair, I've got a fortnight off as of Friday and am fully planning to play havoc with my tediously strict regime of work, rest and play. I won't, though, bugger about making a chuffing din after Trevor MacDonald has bade me goodnight. At that time, rest must be pursued.
Oh, and I've gone and sold my hole, sorry soul (and maybe my sorry old hole, too) and started a Myspace page, twat that I am. (See Martyr Jarvis post below for context.)
You can find it at http://www.myspace.com/guthrotull
Lot of nonsense, patently.

Pondering alone

2006-09-11T22:40:00.000+01:00

Hmmm. Over the past few days, a footballer with Hamilton Academicals technically died during a match (he was saved), a teenager was raped in the grounds of Stobhill hospital in Glasgow and a woman was found staggering along the M8 motorway with a severed arm, which was found in a cemetery nearby.
This all represents nirvana for Scottish media outlets, yet the fact all three events happened in a 48-hour period - and over the weekend, annoyingly enough for daily newspapers - must make some news editors sick to the back teeth. I for one hope it makes them think twice again about their motivations for doing the job. It'd be impossible, wouldn't it? I mean wanting to provide an exciting mix of news yet also not wanting to lose touch with your empathy. I suppose it's much the same for doctors, having to plough through the waiting room - often populated by the same faces, either chronically ill or hypocondriacal - at a decent pace yet wanting to understand patients' discomforts, real or otherwise.
Hmmm.
And here's me, happy with my burgeoning beard and recently decluttered pad in a former place of Christian worship. The beard's the biz.

Scotland's biggest tosser

2006-08-30T00:20:00.000+01:00

Duncan Bannatyne.
Unless you can suggest a better one.
I wonder if I can persuade my editor to run a four-part series of
glossy A1 posters - "Scotland's Cunts", counting down the top 100
Scottish horrors-made-flesh. As voted for by a panel of experts.
We're having what marketing types would call a blue-sky thinking
session on Friday. Maybe I'll run the flag up the pole and see if the
bee shits in the woods, or something like that. I'd need a panel,
though.
My dream panel for Scotland's Cunts:

1 Colin Hardie
Strong on vitriol, sociable indignation and bullshit-detection after
a beer or so, Hardie has all the hallmarks of a consistent,
relatively injury-free team player. Always up for a debate, the tall
gobshite offers strength across the board. On the downside, his
versatility means his true strengths can be overlooked from time to
time.

2 John Williamson
Now managing pop band Belle and Sebastian and respected as a sober,
thoughful gentleman, Williamson possesses insight of such acuteness
and sporadic wickedness that comic-book superheroes are known to have
been based on him. Daredevil isn't one of them. With experience at
the highest level - he's currently helping choose the winner of the
Mercury Music Prize - and sweeping Scottish cultural knowledge, the
38-year-old from King's Park would be a bonus to any team of
judgmental satirists choosing the 100 biggest wankers in Scotland. EVER.

3 Abigail Wild
A former staffer at The Herald and now a full-time student at Glasgow
University, what Wild lacks in experience she compensates for with a
perspicacity beyond her years. Still young enough to appreciate pop
music, the Yorkshirewoman would contribute cutting-edge Scottish
cunts and offer valuable dialogue on Scottish cunts from all walks of
life and epochs.

4 Matt Gilfeather
To keep the good times rolling, then - when he's twatted enough -
articulate some of the choicest observations you'll ever hear. Might
supply a useful London perspective on emigrant Scots, for example
Fran "Where'd My Hair Go? Never Mind That, Where's My Chuffing
Career?" Healy, lots of shite actors and Ewan McGregor. Hang on a
minute …

5 Chris Mack
Living in Sao Paulo gives the man behind The James Orr Complex and
Eska an essential vista of Caledonia and its myriad twats. Often
accused of ballwatching, if Mack had to be substituted he would
concede graciously and without complaint, then proceed to help
Gilfeather out working the vibe control knob.

6 Karin Goodwin
Three years or so at the Sunday Times Scotland has bulged the Prada
wallet of Goodwin, from Prestwick, Ayrshire. On the other hand, it
has wanked her cynical gland so eagerly she's handed in her notice,
meaning she could be on the lookout for a fun, if unprofitable non-
executive position. Well-connected, a charmer and, most
significantly, perceptive, Goodwin is best in a defensive midfield/
holding position, providing a sturdy and deadly supply of useful
contributions.

7 Sam Bartlett
Representing the "looney left", ecotastic Bartlett would provide an
endless supply of possible Scottish cunts, good or bad, zillions of
tenuous double entendres (however weak) and an instinctive,
borderline-feral response to cretinous suggestions, of which there
would be many. Only the truly dire should be highlighted, after all.

Granted, it's a bit male-heavy, but I'd argue men - or at least the
majority of those I know - are keener than women to waste their
precious energies fulminating about or spazzing out over matters they
have no control over. They get angrier more easily. And good hairy
hunters get angry when their inferiors become their superiors.

Duncan Bannatyne. Scotland's Biggest Tosser (TM)

Summer summary

2006-08-28T20:45:00.000+01:00

It's been donkeys since I updated this rather bizarre conceit, or blog for short, and I feel a modicum of words on the memorable highlights of the past four months would be apt. Indulge me.

Golf in the Outer Hebrides
A week to remember. You'll be able to read about it in fuller form soon - when my article on it is published - but the best bits include: Harris - the golf, the land, Rodel Hotel, the tranquility, the ferry to Berneray, the biddie we met in Leverburgh who was cycling south from Lewis to Barra; sealwatching on Barra after teeing off on the most westerly tee in Europe, dude; blasting balls into Castle Bay on Barra at midnight after a bellyful of booze; leaving the shitey Benbecula Golf Club; watching a golden eagle hunt on South Uist. There's nowt much wrong with the Western Isles.

Blowout
I was driving back to Glasgow from Braemar after a stag night for Allan Burnett, a fine Benbeculan and super-smart writer/historian/hack, when the rear-passenger-side tyre exploded. Luckily nobody else was involved and the car was the major casualty following a fairly unpleasant rut with a central reservation. What fun. Two months on the BMW is back on the streets but wearing slightly dented armour. She'll be back.

Prestwick Golf Club
Blow me if it isn't perhaps the best golf course I've played in aeons. Better than Balcomie at Crail. Better than Royal Troon, which I was blessed enough to play recently. A friend I've made over the summer, Scot MacRae, is a member and has been decent enough to drag Colin and me on a few times on Wednesday evenings, and I can't express how grateful I am to him. Utterly top marks to him. (One playing partner last week got his middle and wedding fingers pinned, though, while picking up a flagpole. Who says golf's safe?)

Sweden
I had a rare hoolie to Varnamo, in central southern Sweden, to attend Burnett's wedding to Linda, his beloved of seven years. Spent good time drinking in the sun with people from as far afield as South Africa and Finland. By a warm lake. Outside a scout hut. Some good friendships were made, many of them, I am happy to say, with other people as daft enough as to earn a living from toying with ink on dead trees as me. I'd had my cousin Susan and her fiance Scott's wedding in Largs a fortnight previously (another highlight but not for expansion here) and it was summer, so by the end of the Sweden jaunt my body was beginning to creak. I'm better.

The Green Man Festival
What is there to say? A brilliant hotel, a great gang, gallus music, good times, a trip into a parallel orbit.

To be balanced, there has been crap stuff this summer. Outweighed, though, by the good.
I'm off to grow my beard.

Re: Martyr Jarvis

2006-08-27T11:24:00.000+01:00

I am aware the last post contains ridiculous assumptions, dreadful generalisation and kneejerk opinions based on next to nothing, shot through with a vulgarity of expression and the sort of pinheaded logic that makes most people shiver.
What can I say? From time to time the flavours and hues of my chosen profession puncture my consciousness and choose the strangest times to depart.

Martyr Jarvis

2006-08-25T22:33:00.000+01:00

I'm not a stripling any more, and I have only just cottoned on to a phenomenon they're calling MySpace. It sounds to me like the socialweb equivalent of the world's largest impossibly inescapable crater filled with the world's most insecure people reaching out through the medium of music. They all just want to fuck, or know that they could if they could switch off their computers and go to gigs. Every page I've seen is either impenetrably elitist/cliquey/wilful or dripping with stunted, misdirected lust.
Except for the page set up by Jarvis Cocker. It's www.myspace.com/jarvspace and yes, Rupert Murdoch undoubtedly has free access to use 12 seconds of the Sheffield soothsayer's only song on his page, Running the World, in an advert for his racist, bigoted, chauvinist newspapers. Rupe may struggle, though: reduce the chorus to it's basics and he's ruing, with measured weariness, that "those cunts are still running the world".
And you have to wonder exactly what that means. About the state of things. Some folk are born chilled. I count among them my mate Andy McIntyre, the west's most unflappable (least flappable?) man, Pavel, the Czech manager of the hotel I stayed in last weekend during the Green Man 2006, and - at my acme - myself. And Jarvis Cocker, an articulate, learned, open-minded thinker who for a time bestrode pop while bawbags like Damon Albarn and the Gallaghers were snorting their avaricious way through kilometres of crap Camden coke. Cocks.
So go for it, Jarvis. And while you're at it, let Graham from Bark Psychosis produce your solo album. I look forward to hearing it; I just pray you can find the motivation to complete it.

Simple text

2006-05-05T00:11:00.000+01:00

I have a plan.
Seven nights and seven days on the blag in the Hebrides with a BMW, golf clubs, ample provisions and a new frontier.
I'm going to rip off an idea first mooted to this mind by my sister Karen and her colleague Nina Pope many moons ago. I recall they did a Boswell and Johnson-style journal -- posted online -- of a Highland fling.
Now I have blagged this trip on the strength of writing a piece for my newspaper, and it's a brief I look forward to following.
But I think perhaps I can use this blog nonsense as a kind of notebook.
If I can find a internets in Lochboisdale, that is.
(I would say stay tuned, but I know you aren't there in the first place.)