In Bygone Days

Addendum to previous post:
I’d also be listening to Solid Steel and the Breezeblock on Monday night radio, and then John Peel from Tuesday to Thursday.

Living in London has spoiled me rotten. I remember days when the Internet was the only way I could ever hear any music that wasn’t in the top 40. Perfect 10, the Singapore radio station which played the most current music, was ruled by Michael Learns To Rock and Timmy Thomas (pop quiz for non-SE Asian readers: ever heard of either of them? No? I have a feeling they only ever became famous in South East Asia, which is unsurprising because they were monumentally crap).

[Michael Learns To Rock is, frighteningly, still extremely popular. If you’ve got a fast Internet connection or are a complete moron, go download something by them. I recommend Paint My Love or The Actor for maximum flaccidity but any song will do, really, since they all sound the same.]

The first Pavement songs I ever heard were very poorly recorded wavs I found in a newsgroup. Each one took an eternity to download over a 14.4K modem and sounded, well, even more staticky and noisy than Slanted And Enchanted already was.

My first experience of Loveless was 30-second song clips over streamed RealAudio which stopped and rebuffered every 20 seconds, back when one of RealAudio’s favourite boasts was that it could deliver FM-quality sound over a 28.8K connection. The cost of a CD was a big dip in available pocket money, so I’d agonize for ages over anything I bought. I must have listened to those bloody (no pun or subtle-indie-reference-for-those-who-know intended) crackling, breaking song clips at least 20 times per song before I finally ventured to a local CD shop, where of course I was told they didn’t stock it and had never heard of it.

I suppose waking up at 7 am to listen to radio shows over the Internet isn’t that much of a stretch from those days as it feels.

Wishful Wishlist

Music thingies I’d really want to be doing if I were spending the summer in the UK, and am masochistically listing:

To top it all off, Philip Glass is doing three different concerts for the Singapore Arts Festival. But! Given that I’ve cleverly devoted that entire week to being a responsible adult presence (stop laughing) at a student camp for creative writing, and I don’t think it would be particularly in keeping with that to creep off to watch the concerts, I guess I won’t be going to those either.

Oh the aaaarghness of it all…

Yo La Tengo!

It’s wonderful having friends you can impose on. :)

I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One is finally on its way from Django, after months of unsuccessful attempts to snap it up before other people every time a second-hand copy became available. Many thanks to Russ, whose credit card and good nature came in very handy when I realized I hadn’t paid my credit card bill for a while, and couldn’t use it.

The Odelay! Phenomenon

It’s when you love an album on first listening, and consequently play it to bits over the next couple of days or weeks. A few months or years later, you inexplicably feel little or no inclination to listen to it any more, even though you still think it’s a great album. (No prizes for guessing which album tops my list of albums relegated to the bottom of the playlist barrel due to this annoying phenomenon.)

And right now, I’m really worried that Hefner’s The Fidelity Wars might meet a similar fate, because it arrived last Thursday, and I think I’ve just been loving it too much since then.

Is this a strange thing to worry about, or does this happen to anyone else?

One of these days I’ll write about the wonderful converse Loveless phenomenon, although I stupidly left that album in Singapore and haven’t listened to it since last summer.

More random and reasonably shallow music ramblimgs:

I was going to write a little more about the Lift To Experience/Calexico/Stephen Malkmus gig I went to last week, but John Peel beat me to it. It’s a good thing he only put the Calexico and Malkmus sets up for full listening, because Lift To Experience weren’t great to listen to live, and would probably sound even worse over Real Audio.

Last week, while trying to restrain myself from either falling asleep or rushing up on stage and strangling the lead singer of Broadcast, I started wondering if it might have been a better idea to go see Sparklehorse, who were at the Borderline the same night, although this was technically an exercise in futility since their show sold out long before I knew about it. After reading this review, I have no regrets, although it would have been nice to have been able to go to both.

I haven’t heard the new Radiohead song enough times to have an opinion worth sharing yet, but NYLPM, as usual, does.

REM’s new song has firmly established itself in my head, although I haven’t actually decided how much I like it yet. The verses are reasonably nondescript, and I can’t remember what they sound like at all, but the chorus is scrumptious.

Gibber gibber Yo La Tengo gibber gibber

Note to self: Never forget the night of 10 April, because it’s the night you went to indie rock heaven.

Before I get to the part where I start gibbering and spluttering, I should begin by doing what I can manage coherently.

Right, so the Yo La Tengo (gibber, splutter) gig was last night. The supporting acts were Sue Garner & Rick Brown and Broadcast. I’ll start with them.

I’d never heard of Sue Garner & Rick Brown before, but was very pleasantly surprised. Imagine Sarah McLachlan’s voice singing with Ani DiFranco’s attitude accompanied by Sonic Youth remixed by Tortoise. Kinda like that. I’m definitely going to look around for their album.

Broadcast, which I had heard of, were extremely disappointing. In terms of presentation they were far slicker than Sue Garner & Rick Brown, but their music paled in comparison. Maybe I’m just a nitpicky classical musician, but when the melody line is the same as the bass line and all other accompanying lines, the song sounds boring. I only realized last night how right that particular rule of SATB (soprano alto tenor bass) music theory was – about avoiding a situation where the different elements of harmony carry the same tune such that you’re basically hearing the same tune simultaneously over a couple of octaves.

Quite often, they’d be constructing this interesting soundscape, and then their lead singer would start singing, and I’d get pissed off. For one thing, the melody was usually boring, as I’ve said. Another thing was that her voice reminded me of the Corrs, which meant it blended so effortlessly into the background that I forgot I’d ever heard it. And then almost all the songs seemed to involve her singing “Aaaaaaaaaaaah” and swaying from side to side and then going “Lalalalalalala etc.” I can’t really describe it in writing, but it really was immensely irritating. Which is a pity, because other than her singing, and the melody she was singing, the rest of their music was reasonably interesting, especially towards the end of their set where they started going a bit wild with squealing feedback and dissonance and thunderous drums.

And now we come to Yo La Tengo. Oh. My. God. I’ll just abandon all pretence of being cool and cynical and laid back now, and say that it was one of the most amazing gigs I’ve ever been to, probably second only to Sonic Youth, and second only because Sonic Youth are very slightly more charismatic as performers.

Yo La Tengo: Thank you. Thank you for alternately rawking and whispering your way through the show, and being equally compelling for each. Thank you for taking Blue Line Swinger and making it into an expandable universe both screaming and serene even better than you did on the record – it must have been at least 15 minutes long but I was entranced. Thank you for effortlessly switching instruments and kicking ass with whatever you picked up. Thank you especially Georgia (BRILLIANT drumming) for doing that while looking sweet and dumpy and motherly and nothing like the rock star you are – and forgive me if I ever meet you in a small-town supermarket and don’t recognize you while we both stock up on drain cleaner or something equally domestic. Thank you for responding to our clapping, stomping and screaming by coming back out twice to play encores.

Thank you for your beautiful noise.

Roadside Haul

I will never walk past roadside CD stalls in disdain again. The Goodge Street one I mentioned a few days ago now has a devoted rummager. For the princely sum of £18, I now own:

  • A Grand Love Story (Kid Loco, £5)
  • Code 4109 (DJ Krush, £5)
  • Field Studies (Quasi, £4)
  • Breath From Another (Esthero, £4)

They were closing up, so all I had time to do was find the ones I’d seen the other day. There remain lots of tacky plastic baskets of uncategorized CDs marked “Pop Rock CDs £5 & Under!” for nosing through, and I can’t wait.

So You Wanna Fake Being An Indie Rock Expert is hilarious (and sometimes informative, blush) reading. (Thanks Jerm!)

I admit to owning and enjoying Sarah McLachlan albums, but this Onion article about Lilith Fair is a must-read, even if you’re not terribly interested in synchronized ovulation.

“I’ve never been around so many people who share my interest in women’s issues and social justice,” Jewel said. “It makes me want to ride my horse bareback through a forest stream.”

HMV + Roadside Stall + Django’s

Lots of things are bobbing around in the stew.

Yo La Tengo tickets have been bought, and groupie glee is building within me. Next major gig quest: Depeche Mode in October.

On the way back from the Stargreen outlet on Argyll Street, HMV just had too many racks of CDs with Various Percentages Off! to resist, so I zipped in and got Nick’s birthday present (Bent: Programmed To Love – I’d originally planned on Kruder & Dorfmeister’s The K & D Sessions but the idiot went and bought that for himself despite my strict instructions to check with me before buying any CDs), as well as This Films Crap Lets Slash The Seats (David Holmes, £5.99).

On the walk home, I passed a roadside CD stall on Goodge Street, and due to my physical inability to walk past potential music bargains, I had to stop there as well, and was astounded – A Grand Love Story (Kid Loco), Code 4109 (DJ Krush), Field Studies (Quasi), Fear Of Fours (Lamb) and Breath From Another (Esthero), all at £5 or less. I didn’t have enough (or any) cash with me at the time, but I’m going back today, and there will be spending.

Last stop on the way back was the computer room, where I checked my email, and found that Django had been kind. Doolittle (Pixies, $7.99) and The Fidelity Wars (Hefner, $8.99) are on their way to me from that wondrous land of affordable music that is the US. Although this sounds like a day of little restraint, I’d like to say that So…How’s Your Girl? (Handsome Boy Modeling School) was available for $9.99 but I controlled myself.

In other news, friend, future colleague and travel freak Yan Bin has come up with a detailed itinerary for what looks like a smashingly exhausting 18-day odyssey through Greece and Turkey, to be attempted in September. I just hope I don’t run into residential difficulties for the next academic year, so I can enjoy this trip as much as it deserves to be enjoyed without having to deal with the looming spectre of homelessness.

Stress Surrounds In The Muddy Peaceful Centre Of This Town

I spent the night singing along to five albums worth of Pavement instead of studying, which is quite absurd, given that I don’t know the majority of their lyrics.

The other day I said I’d be content if Stephen Malkmus would just perform three Pavement songs when I go to see his gig next week.

I lied.

After spending last night listening to the five Pavement albums I own, in chronological order (with a break for West Wing between Wowee Zowee and Brighten The Corners), I have come to the conclusion that I also want Here, Silence Kit, Range Life, Fillmore Jive (hell, all of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which I’ve just decided trumps Slanted And Enchanted on my desert island disc list), Rattled By The Rush, Brinx Job, Half A Canyon, Stereo, Transport Is Arranged…oh, I just want Pavement never to have broken up…

And when I did study, this is what I had to snuggle up to. Try this excerpt from EU Law (Craig & De Burca), which is a very, very thick book:

“The semi-communautairisation of the third pillar and the simultaneous infiltration of the Community Treaty by third-pillar features emphasise the increasing complexity and mixity of the European Union constitutional order, and an inevitable move away from the clarity and simplicity of the Community legal order of the past.”

These writers regret a move away from “clarity and simplicity”? Could’ve fooled me.

Matthew Sweet Tangents

Does Matthew Sweet deliberately think to himself, “Okay, you’ve got a couple of rather unhappy dark songs, so make sure you give them the catchiest, happiest melodies you’ve got”?

Sick Of Myself (which, of course, is the ideal song to begin an album called 100% Fun with) is exuberant and rollicking from the get-go. It’s a song for convertibles, and the wind in your hair, and turning the volume up on the car stereo, and even as you sing “But I’m sick of myself, when I look at you” you can’t help but bob your head. There’s that playful, percussive guitar which starts it off, and there are those multiple false endings, and the entire song does actually sound like lots of fun, as long as you don’t listen to the words. I could go on and on about it, but I did a little digging and found someone else who loves it as much as I do and wrote about it better.

The dark songs on Altered Beast are, at least, in a minor key, but I still find myself swaying and smiling and singing along with gusto because they’re just so thoroughly pleasant.

Devil With The Green Eyes starts off like a lightweight 80’s big-haired rock ballad, with the sort of keening guitar feedback you expect from November Rain or a song by the Scorpions. But then the drums and harmonied vocals kick in, and you think the intro was meant to throw you off. But then he’s singing “The devil with the green eyes said you were never meant to be mine/’cause I came up from a dark world and every love I’ve ever known is dead/if you come close enough to see I am inhuman, I will tell you why you’re feeling so uncertain/Every word I say has a way of turning evil in you”.

And then of course there’s Someone To Pull The Trigger, where he sings “Well I’m waiting and willing/The clarity is chilling/But I’m not turning back/And neither can you/I need someone to pull the trigger…so if you’re what I think you’ll be/if you’re who I think I see – shoot”, and the quietly jangly country-laced guitars sing along.

This intrigues me because it makes me wonder about the songwriting process. I guess different people have different ways of doing it, but I always thought that whichever came first (melody or lyrics), the writer then tries to make the other components of the song suit what he’s already got. So both the lyrics and the music of Good Vibrations convey exactly that. And everything in You Oughtta Know echoes “And when I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it”. And She Don’t Use Jelly is as silly and lovely and weird as you’d expect it to be.

But then for each example I think of there, counter-examples jump out at me. Mack The Knife. Most stuff by eels.

Oh well, yet another train of thought skipping merrily off the rails and dangling its bare feet in a countryside pond while munching on buffet car sandwiches and throwing crisps to frustrated ducks…

Ggggah

I don’t check my email for one day, and I miss arrival alerts for used copies of Endtroducing and Doolittle, and of course they got snapped up by someone else by the time I got to them today. I think the word is GGGGAH. Said with ggggumption.

Pitchfork reckons the new Wagon Christ album is 0.1 point better than the previous one (which was reasonably scrumptious), which means it’s going on my wishlist.

Randomly: Switch the first letters of words around in a goofy referential fashion a la Smog’s Dongs Of Sevotion and Pastor Of Muppets, and you have a strangely giggling Michelle.