Arranging Shelf Music To Suit Head Music

And now the CDs. Brilliantly handy shelf inserts from IKEA have been installed and a provisional arrangement is in place, although it’ll have to be tweaked again when my boxes finally arrive from England with the rest of the CDs.

The Arrangement of CDs is a difficult matter. I could go on and say it isn’t just one of your holiday games, but then I’d have to apologize to T.S. Eliot, and I am adamant that I owe that man NOTHING after struggling through The Waste Land. But where was I? Ah yes, I was being a total nerd. Onwards.

The thing is, the most obvious way to arrange CDs is alphabetically, but that seems to assume the arrangement’s meant to facilitate the locating of a CD I already know I want to listen to, and how often does that happen? Sometimes I don’t realize how much I wanted to listen to a CD until I’m two thirds of the way through. I want an arrangement scheme to detect the music in the back of my head and tell me what it is.

To this end, some sort of genre-based classification seems more suitable (insert obligatory “of course I know you can’t just force music so rigidly into genres and anyone who insists on this needs a laxative pronto, but it’s just convenient, okay?” disclaimer), but that can entail fairly tough decisions. Do I put Elliott Smith under indie pop or singer/songwriters? Should I separate UK hip-hop and US hip-hop? Does The Cure belong with “sound-of-the-80s” or post-punk? Do I even really, I mean really know what the hell post-punk actually is?

While doing this, I’ve been listening to CDs I haven’t heard in a long time, hoping to whittle out deadwood to sell in order to finance future purchases. Some of it’s fairly obvious, like the shiny circle of turd that is the Manic Street Preachers’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, and Beth Orton, who I once liked but now find rather dull, but the search through the less obvious candidates has turned up some fairly pleasant discoveries. Unconditionally Guaranteed 2 (an Uncut compilation) has Prettiest Thing (The Creatures) and My Morphine (Gillian Welch), which I can’t believe I didn’t notice when I first got the album in ’99. Your Sweet Voice, from Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend is the sort of saccharine I hate from most other people except Matthew Sweet, who somehow gets away with it. Unfortunately, as much as I tried to like REM’s Up, it still blows. Sorry, guys.

Post-Masters Bliss

And today it all ended. I wrote my last sentence in my last Masters exam, hoped fervently it would actually be my last Masters exam (last week’s exam was very, very bad. I might fail), freaked out with Gwen a bit about the toughness of the paper and scooted off feeling like I had wings on my heels.

Made a beeline for Gramophone. I haven’t bought a CD in way too long. Found DJ Spooky’s Under The Influence in the used section for S$7.99, and snapped it up goggle-eyed. Was delightfully distracted in Tang’s for the next few hours (note to non-Singaporeans: this is not the orange kryptonite you drank when you were a kid, it’s a department store), and bought shoes and a top. Would have bought a second pair of shoes except for the fact that they made farting noises when I was trying to walk in them.

Met Luke and Yuping for dinner and extended chat. Walked home from the bus-stop by the spooky route because I was feeling inVEENcible. Came to my room and put on the DJ Spooky, which is a daaaaamn fine mix album, great tunes, great flow, great mixing, or admittedly it might just be because I’m feeling great.

You know how you hear a song again when you haven’t heard it in a while and you suddenly wonder how on earth you went all that time without listening to it? Saul Williams’ Twice The First Time is on this album. I’m turning it up, Saul is off on his “and I be riding on the wings of eternity like HYAH! HYAH! Sh-clack-clack, GET ME THE FUCK OFF THIS TRACK!” trip, and now the beat kicks in, now I’m remembering how even Alec (not exactly a fan of what he calls my “hippety-hoppety music”), bought Xen Cuts almost on the strength of this track alone, now I’m hearing Saul say “Not until you listen to Rakim on a rocky mountain-top have you heard hip-hop,” and I’m thinking, Benny? Let’s climb Mount Kinabalu and bring some Rakim.

Junior Senior Whatever

What the hell does it matter that Junior is straight and Senior is gay, and why does it seem impossible to read anything ever written about the band without this fact mentioned? Is it meant to be special in some way that a gay person and a straight person are friends, and work together? For all I care, Junior could be the president of Hitler Youth and Senior could be a one-legged homosexual Jewish gypsy, and this still wouldn’t be enough to compensate for the fact that their music is shit.

Senorita Sucker

Senorita is a perfect example of how production and marketing can compensate for just about anything these days. Take mediocre song, imbue with mild catchiness by way of Neptunes beats, stir in some sultry honeys in clingy dresses gyrating to a song which isn’t particularly danceable in the first place, finally and most importantly add Justin Timberlake, and suckers like me will still be rooted to the screen every time it’s on.

MC Misogyny

Continuing the shameless dearth of intellectual content on this website ever since I started studying for exams, I just wanted to say I love summer hip-hop videos. Lots of bared skin, abundant booty, dance routines that make the most of all of the above, and, of course, that indispensable ingredient of summer hip-hop (some would say all hip-hop, but that just means they don’t actually listen to enough of it): misogynism.

I want to make a mixtape and call it Misogynists’ Party. It will feature classic tracks such as Baby Got Back, Rumpshaker, Hot In Herre and that new masterpiece by Nelly, P.Diddy and Murphy Lee, Shake Your Tailfeather.

Go Get It They Got It

Reckless Records slashed 20% off everything (everything being already cheap second-hand CDs), and Benny called with the good news.

Queuing up to pay in the dance branch, I met Dave, who I hadn’t seen since our second year in university.

As we were chatting outside, along came Yoichi, who I’d told about the sale. We said hello, David and I parted ways, Yoichi went into the dance branch and I into the rock branch. Soon after this Benny turned up and went into the dance branch. Neither Benny nor Yoichi knew each other, but Yoichi overhead Benny on the phone to me.

Later all three of us were in the rock branch and I introduced Benny and Yoichi. It was one of those rare moments of my life when people I knew from completely different spheres somehow managed to all converge on one spot. The power of music, eh? Or geekdom, I suppose.

—

Purchases:

  • It’s All Happening Now (Lewis Parker, £7.19): BLOODY MARVELLOUS, probably the best UK hip-hop album I’ve ever heard, certainly one of the best hip-hop albums I’ve heard recently from anywhere.
  • Come Get It I Got It (David Holmes, £7.19)
  • Fantastic Damage (El-P, £7.19)
  • Ether Teeth (Fog, £4.80)

Yo La Tengo/Calexico (Somerset House, London, July 2003)

Monday was a brief respite from international trade law into indie music.

I trawled Berwick Street with ever-patient Benny, sold about 10 CDs and justified buying more on the grounds that I’d probably have to pay expensive import prices for these in Singapore:

  • King Geedorah: Take Me To Your Leader
  • Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Pig Lib
  • Manitoba: Start Breaking My Heart

This was all a prelude to meeting Alec (and Benny’s friend Polly, as Yo La Tengo mad as me) for the Yo La Tengo/Calexico gig at Somerset House in the evening.

Yo La Tengo started off, which seemed strange given their relatively senior status in the indie pantheon. They played many songs off Summer Sun, which I haven’t listened to yet, a fun frantic screechy version of Cherry Chapstick, and Tom Courtenay, which I love madly, and which they didn’t play the first time I saw them live. They finished with Sun Ra’s Nuclear War and left the stage with its ending whispers of “Goodbye.” They displayed everything I loved about them the first time I saw them live, and given the same amount of time with them I feel certain I would have emerged in a similar state of gibbering. But that pleasure was denied me. The length of the set seemed distinctly that of an “opening band”, which is really a bit of a travesty given that the marketing of the gig never indicated that Calexico would be headlining, and Yo La Tengo relegated.

I guess it’s a credit to Calexico that they mostly managed to assuage my dissatisfaction with the length of the YLT set by putting on an excellent show. It seemed as if they livened up the Feast Of Wire songs a little for the performance, which worked fine for most of them, but disappointed me for Black Heart, where they opted for Bond movie music razzle-dazzle, glitz and glam and general high campness in the strings rather than the mournful, desert-on-the-darker-side-of-dusk feel it had (and I loved) on the album. It seemed as though they’d decided that the overriding tone of this gig would be a party, which isn’t necessarily a bad decision, especially when you have trumpets and frequently do that country-yodelly “Aiiiiyiyiyiyi!” thing at appropriate bits in the songs.

Leaving the gig, it occurred to me that I’d actually seen both these bands in the space of an April week a little over two years ago, Yo La Tengo headlining (as they SHOULD be, damn you Somerset House) on the Tuesday and Calexico opening for Stephen Malkmus on the Thursday. I saw both gigs with Marten, who was, at the time, the only person in my London circle of friends who had even heard of most of the bands I wanted to see (I had abundant clubbing companions, but only Marten for gigs). I remember coming back from the Malkmus gig and meeting Alec, about to get drunk, in the basement of our hall. Neither of us had the tiniest inkling of any future connection beyond mild recognition of each other’s photos in the hall yearbook.

How things change.

Low/Radiohead (Bergamo Arena, Italy)

I’d initially been really excited about the fact that Low was opening for Radiohead. I missed Low’s gig at the Union Chapel earlier this year because it was Valentine’s Day weekend and I grudgingly recognized the need to do something romantic rather than drag long-suffering Alec to yet another gig. The sacrifice was more than worthwhile, but I always hoped I’d get another chance to see Low, and this was it. The problem was that their beautiful, deliberative harmonies were completely incompatible with a jabbering crowd of people who didn’t seem to give a damn about them. Little Argument With Myself, so well-suited to late nights alone in my room, lying on the bed in the dark waiting for sleep, just didn’t work in a huge outdoor venue. With twilight more than an hour away, that sublime climax of “Cos there’s nothing as sad as a man on his back counting STARS” fell flat, or at least it was hard for me to feel much while trying to shut out the clamouring Italians around me. Oh well. Great band, wrong place and time. A pity.

So finally, Radiohead. What can I say except that they were a dream come true, and by this I don’t mean the kind of dream where all my teeth are falling out and I can taste the blood but the kind where I’m roller-blading and I’m amazing, I can jump and turn and land and do all the cool stunts, but of course I’m not weighed down by all that pesky safety gear ‘cos I don’t need it, I’m amazing, and at the end I even start to fly.

Here’s a setlist:

  • There there
  • 2+2 = 5 (Thom swats flies which keep clustering around the mike, nice parallel with “I swat em like flies but like flies the buggers keep coming back” in the song although I don’t think he could possibly have planned it.)
  • Lucky
  • Talk Show Host
  • Scatterbrain
  • The National Anthem
  • Backdrifts
  • Sail To The Moon
  • Kid A
  • Bones
  • Where I End and You Begin
  • I Might Be Wrong
  • Fake Plastic Trees
  • A Punchup at a Wedding
  • Paranoid Android (Thom: “This is a song called Paranoid Android.” As if you needed to name it.)
  • Idioteque
  • Everything In Its Right Place
  • The Gloaming
  • Pyramid Song
  • My Iron Lung
  • Like Spinning Plates
  • Exit Music (For A Film)
  • Sit down. Stand up.
  • Karma Police

The feelings of inadequacy that plague me every time I try to write about music are slapping me around the head with a vengeance here. I feel almost, well, unworthy to review a Radiohead concert. We are not on the same musical plane, they and I. They make music and I learn to like it, it’s that simple. This doesn’t require much effort, but I sometimes need a fair amount of time to get my head round the music, which leads me to the first thing I was going to say.

Most of the songs sounded pretty much similar to their studio recordings, which is not a bad thing given that their studio recordings sound bloody fabulous, but I guess I was hoping for more radical reworkings. I’d have quite liked to work more to figure out the songs, rather than recognize them instantly from the start. On the other hand, this may not be the best way to do a big outdoor summer gig which people don’t expect to be “difficult”. So I’m not too sure what to make of their rather happy romping versions of Kid A and Everything In Its Place. They were certainly interesting to listen to, but they featured nothing I’d liked about the recordings. The piano version of Like Spinning Plates, however, was heartstopping.

In general, HappyThom was the order of the evening, dancing like a loon to Idioteque, doing Karma Police like a massive goodbye singalong with none of the claustrophobia or despair of the album version, no venom at all in the middle section of Paranoid Android where he used to spit “Kicking squealing Gucci little piggy.” Dancing crazily is rather endearing, but I’d have rather liked a bit of the old bitterness in the latter two.

This isn’t to say that everything was sweet and fuzzy. Guitars went mad in Backdrifts, which is even more fantastic live than it is on the album. The National Anthem, Bones, and I Might Be Wrong rocked hard, and the buildup in Sit Down Stand Up to the frenetic “The raindrops” climax was brilliantly agonizing.

Would I have changed some songs in the set? Well, yes. I’d have taken out Scatterbrain, Kid A, Bones, Pyramid Song and My Iron Lung, but only because I like them less than Black Star, No Surprises, You And Whose Army (make that most of Amnesiac, actually), I Will and Wolf At The Door.

Okay. Enough of this attempt at objectivity, balance or good writing. I SAW RADIOHEAD!!! THEY PLAYED LOTS AND LOTS OF SONGS!!! I REALLY REALLY LOVE RADIOHEAD!!!

Hail To The Thief – First Impressions

On first three listens to Hail To The Thief, the songs which are standing out to me are Backdrifts, I Will and Wolf At The Door. But anything could happen between now and 7 July (when, after four years of trying and failing to get Radiohead tickets because they sell out in this country within 10 minutes, I’ll finally, finally, finally get to see the band live, although I’ll have to go to Italy for it). Meanwhile, I haven’t been this excited about listening to a new release (by any artist) since, well, Amnesiac, and there’s a whole 56.37 minutes’ worth of fascinating sounds to explore here, plus supercool limited edition roadmap packaging and sleeve notes! (Just grant me this small joy, will you, I’m writing a fucking dissertation.)

Nick Cave (Hammersmith Apollo, London, June 2003)

There are many sorts of gig.

Sometimes a gig’s in a small dingy bar, you’re all about three feet from the band, who is unknown and always will be because face it, they’re mediocre, and people in the front are taking bets on what deodorant (if any) the drummer uses. You’re having a good time partly because the bands are, and mostly because you’re drunk.

Sometimes you’re a notch higher, somewhere equally small but with ventilation and candles and organic ales and bands you have actually heard of, although this isn’t because they’re actually famous, it’s just because you spend way too much time reading music sites on the Internet. After the set, the band still steps off the foot-high stage, buys pints, and mingles with the crowd. I like these gigs. You get at least three bands for less than the price of an album, and you get to feel all indie until you make the mistake of trying to chat to the bands, at which point you make some horribly embarrassing remark and spend the rest of the evening alternately crippled and tickled by your own idiocy. (Okay, so the last bit of this may just be me.)

And then sometimes you see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Hammersmith Apollo.

I’ve been trying, since we saw him on Friday, to write something here that would do the show justice, that would be able to go beyond recitation of a setlist to actually evoking what it was like to be me, so overwhelmed by the power of The Mercy Seat that I was actually on the point of tears. Today I admit defeat – I can’t come up with the review I want to write, I can only churn out badly phrased, probably cliched stream-of-consciousness impressions of two songs amazingly performed, and tack on bits here and there about the rest. So here goes. It’s all a bit convoluted.

He started with Wonderful Life from the new album, sounding overwrought and a bit off-tune and I was suddenly worried I’d just wasted £23, sucked in by a Big Name who could no longer deliver. But then the next song was Red Right Hand, which started off almost playful and loungy, Nick almost whispering “He’s a god, he’s a man, he’s a ghost, he’s a guru” like a conspiratorial secret-sharing, the chorus section surprisingly sedate (I don’t remember even hearing the bell), which made it all the more climactic by the time he was spitting “You’re a microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, designed and directed by his RED RIGHT HAND” with crashing bells, flashing red lights and pounding piano, and at that point I stopped worrying.

Then West Country Girl and a beautiful ballad I didn’t know, Hallelujah, Do You Love Me, Bring It On (a real clunker from the new album, and the low point of the gig for me), Henry Lee (which lost something in its conversion to stage rawk – snarling “La la la la la” just didn’t really work very well as compared to dueting liltingly with PJ Harvey on the album version), Still In Love With You, Watching Alice.

Then he sat down at the piano and started playing something that sounded like it would be a ballad, until he sang “It began when they come took me from my home and put me on Dead Row” and oh my God, it was The Mercy Seat, but dramatically slowed down and every word carrying a horror and power surpassing anything I ever felt listening to the record. Halfway through, the pace started to quicken, tension started to build, I sat transfixed on the edge of my seat as lights flashed, the tragedy unfolded, the violin screeched like a demented banshee (I really must go get a Dirty Three album, if that was Warren Ellis, he was fantastic), and always that voice, thundering in the middle of the storm: “And the mercy seat is waiting. And I think my head is burning.” But somewhere something’s got to give, eventually the condemned man’s spasms too must cease; we gradually returned to the slow ominous gloom of the piano, he sang the final chorus with its agonizing, infuriating last line, then black out, and I sat in the darkness with heart racing, a lump in my throat, and goose-pimples.

Another song I didn’t know. Then From Her To Eternity, Wild World, and they left the stage. We screamed, stamped, whistled and clapped for ages. They came back, played Into My Arms and Tupelo, and left. We screamed, stamped, whistled and clapped for ages. They came back and sang He Wants You and Deanna, and this time it was the last time, and as we left the venue I worried briefly that Califone at the Spitz (gig venue category: small, arty, candles etc.) this Friday would pale in comparison.

What I like most about Nick Cave on record was displayed in abundance seeing him live – his strong versatile voice capable of both punk shrieking and intimate balladeering. What I didn’t realize about the Bad Seeds on record came across blindingly clearly live – they’re a bloody fantastic band, and delivered every song with more depth and texture than I ever noticed on the record (this is incredibly rare in my opinion – most bands struggle just to sound as good as they do on record, and many fail to do even that).

This year has really been a gig goldmine for me, and this was another one to treasure.