The London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival starts today, and here’s what you’re missing if you’re somewhere else:
Intriguing.
The University of Pennsylvania has got Sonic Youth to headline its Spring Fling concert, with Cat Power opening, and get this – its students aren’t happy about it.
“Who are they?” College freshman Elizabeth Jefferson asked. “I’ve never heard of them.”
Wharton junior Lloyd Thomas said he feels “disappointed,” especially considering what some other schools have performing this year.
For example, Snoop Dogg will be headlining Cornell’s Slope Day concert and Ben Folds will be playing at Brown’s Spring Weekend.
“I think we deserve a bigger name,” Thomas said.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I guess anyone who thinks Snoop Dogg or Ben Folds are “bigger names” than Sonic Youth really does deserve to get them. Hell, why not shoot for the moon and try for Ashlee Simpson?
Other selected quotes from students’ comments posted in response to the articles:
“I am very disappointed at the choice of band. Yea, Sonic Youth was a precursor to the grunge-era but grunge died when Courtney shot Kurt. I understand SPEC is trying to be “different” but I guess they don’t realize that although “bad” is different from “good”, people won’t respect that decision. I am not wasting $20 to see a washed-up grunge band that didn’t even make a lasting impact. I compare them to Ace-of-Base, an afterthought, almost a novelty act.”
“If they really wanted to get a good non hip-hop band what’s wrong with Jimmy Eat World, Saves the Day, The Format, & Taking Back Sunday????”
“nirvana is very influential but just because they are, and sonic youth came out before them and they are relatively the same genre, you can’t say that sonic youth is as influential as nirvana. that’s blasphemy!”
Okay, I’ve decided. I’m laughing. Hysterically.
Yes, I know what you’re all thinking. What a fucking snob. The thing is, I have no problem with people not knowing who Sonic Youth are. But I really do fart in the general direction of anyone who would whine about a band simply because they’ve never heard of them, or spend time broadcasting those whinings on the Internet when they could just type the band’s name into Google (or, like, download some albums – what are they in college for if not to abuse broadband filesharing?) and work on reducing that ignorance. I must say, for a “washed-up” “grunge” “afterthought” with no “lasting impact”, 712000 search results isn’t bad. And I’m even sure that only 711990 of those results are from this blog.
Outside the Joo Chiat KTV lounge where Alec was turning tricks last weekend, this humble altar moved us deeply and reminded us of the profound insights we can gain from other religions. We are seriously considering incorporating certain elements of this beautiful offering into our own worship.
Happy Easter, everyone!
The Attic at Mox is a thoroughly endearing venue, but I can’t come up with any trendy designspeaky reasons as to why. In fact, I have a feeling that what endears the place to me is its almost meticulous lack of trendy design. There are random lights from Mox, random rows of airplane seats along a wall, random stage at one end, random DJ booth on the other, bar with random selection of alcoholic beverages, and lots of randomly dressed indie types. In other words, it was the perfect place for RNDM.
Astreal’s set was marred by problems with their amps, which meant that some songs were played with only two out of three guitars. I still enjoyed it, but it meant less crashing guitar noise, which is never a good thing.
I had been looking forward to finally seeing the much-hyped Tiramisu, but ended up a little disappointed. Apart from the undeniable showmanship of their frontman, there was little I found distinctive or interesting about their songs. Sort of a mix between Built To Spill and Hefner, but without any of what I like about either band. I’d still watch them again, though. Rizman Putra’s eyeballs fascinate me.
After Tiramisu I suggested we take a break for dinner, whereupon Ida suggested we eat the surprise birthday cake she had brought me. :)
I didn’t manage to see many of the later bands on the schedule, for the unusual reason (unusual for me, anyway) that I got caught up socializing. Downstairs in Mox with my childhood fags, upstairs in the attic telling Tessa how much I miss the life she’s living now, here a random, there a random, everywhere a random.
We’d originally intended to leave at midnight for Grandmaster Flash at Zouk, but then Poptart started spinning and there was no way I was going to leave while Sonic Youth’s 100% was playing. As one song led to another, I decided that there was no point leaving somewhere where I was having such a great time for somewhere which almost inevitably enrages me.
Indie club nights aren’t any cooler than 80s nights; they’re all about jumping around haphazardly to songs which were staples of your youth, and screaming “I AM THE RESURRECTION AND I AM THE LIFE!” along with everyone else. Actual dancing is an afterthought, and actual good dancing is virtually impossible. Not that any of this is really relevant while you’re going apeshit to Idioteque. I had a blast.
I’m not even a Tortoise fan, but the gig was pretty damn awesome.
I’d gone in with some trepidation – I bought Millions Now Living Will Never Die some years back, didn’t like it and returned it, later bought TNT too, didn’t like it and returned it. I found the albums overly clinical and very unengaging. Every time I put an album on, hoping that better familiarity with the music would help me “get it”, it faded into the background for me within minutes. So I had plenty of doubts about how well that sound would fare in the Esplanade’s huge concert hall but decided to go anyway, based on the band’s immense stature in indiedom and the added appeal of the Observatory as opening band.
Right decision. The sound was full-bodied and assertive in a way it never sounded to me on record, and with the Esplanade’s amazing sound system, detail was never lost even at the music’s most cacophonous moments. I was incredibly impressed by their individual flair as musicians, as well as their tightness as a band, as was everyone else. Standing ovations and screaming brought them back for two substantial encores, and prompted a “Singapore is CRAYYYYZEE!” from one of them.
By the end of the gig I found myself filled with happiness at the sight of other audience members, clearly huge Tortoise fans, over the moon with how great it had been. Watching them I remembered myself at 16, standing in the World Trade Centre Harbour Pavilion delirious with joy that Sonic Youth had come to Singapore and I was there to see it. To this day I can hardly believe that even happened. Similarly, I would never have expected such a difficult-listening, left-of-centre band as Tortoise to be brought to Singapore to begin with; the fact is that the Esplanade not only brought them in but had the balls to put them in the country’s biggest, most state-of-the-art musical venue. It’s the stuff of dreams, and a real testament to the sort of artistic vision that drives the Esplanade. I should never have doubted them for a second.
This new ILM idea – Here, a thread featuring translations of song titles from their commonly known designation and into ACADEMESE, and then involving guess-work as to the original nomenclature in order to make a competition from this endeavor! – is really quite challenging! Here are some of my favourites. The first three are classic oldies, the fourth and fifth are recent pop hits, and the next three should be familiar to any (indie) music geek worth their salt.
Let r1 be defined as the quantification of an undefined locus’ tendency to exist at a great distance from the Earth’s center. Let r2 be defined as a similar quantification of a layer of refractive aberrations in the Earth’s atmosphere, such that r1 > r2.
It is hereby demanded that you will be romantically exclusive with me and assume an infantile moniker.
Immense objects, in which every part is equally distant from one point within, in the state of a rapid, self-sustaining exothermic oxidation process.
I liken the entire material and physical manifestation of your organism to a fictional world inside another fiction, a meta-world as it were; in particular, one put forth by the amateur pornophotographer and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in the title of his most celebrated children’s tome.
The question of investiture is moot.
The central figure of Western religious culture under unique ownership designated to an individual.
Urgently, such that the unstated presupposed occurence will actualize in mere seconds, minutes, hours, or similar temporal measurements which seem fractional (or perhaps even irrelevant) in comparison to normal tests of human patience. [I think this one is impossible unless you know that the artist is “My Sentimental Greeting Thoroughly Mauled”].
Darkly colored iron-based alloy in the moderate time segment of great generalized disorder.
My rather average attempts. I wasn’t so good at academese, so for the second one I tried legalese. The first is a classic covered by everybody, the second is one of the cheesiest songs ever.
At each and every point existing on the continuous surface of a man-made multi-level structure designed for outdoor surveillance, the name of which has also been adopted by a periodical first published in or around 1879 by a religious group or sect characterized, among other things, by its rejection of all Christian doctrine not believed to have originated in the Bible.
I hereby assert my entitlement to copyright and all related authorial rights, including (but not limited to) moral rights insofar as these are recognized by any and all applicable legal regimes, with regard to lyrical and musical arrangements composed by me which induce vocal utterances perceived to be melodic by those emitting them, such vocalizations being emitted by all matter existing on the planet Earth.
(Answers can be found behind the link to continue reading, but it’s more fun if you give it at least a bit of a try before peeking!)
Read More “Insert Cryptic Verbiage Here”
Travels With My Aunt is the first of Graham Greene’s “entertainments” I’ve read, and it’s as wonderful as his serious novels. This book doesn’t just have one good story, it has about fifty. The first excerpt here tickles my funny bone the same way Dan Rhodes’s writing does, and the second is taken from a great story which I have unfortunately had to truncate, and which is much funnier in its completeness.
Read More “Travels With My Aunt ( Graham Greene): Excerpts”
Some of my favourite responses so far from the ILM thread Make A Band Name More Reasonable:
My contributions to the thread:
In the first shot of this film, the camera moves slowly down a cross. The hand nailed to it is not connected to a body but ends abruptly in a severed arm, dangling and swaying in the wind. A grotesque wartime atrocity? No – it’s the remains of a bombed chapel which is now in the no-man’s-land between trenches. The woman weeping at the bottom of the cross only exists from the waist down. It’s a powerful opening, and although you don’t know it at the time, it prefigures much of what will happen in the film. The disfigurement of a hand. The suggestion of violent death, but the absence of a corpse. The hope for a resurrection.
Read More “A Very Long Engagement”
I thoroughly enjoyed this. It had much hotness – Gael Garcia Bernal smouldering in drag, Fele Martinez’s auteur-with-eyeliner aura, and all the priests in their fitting black surplices! – and it spun a great yarn. Any attempt to summarise the hows and whys of this by anyone who isn’t Almodovar will probably make the movie out to be little better than Wild Things with foreign film cred, so I won’t try. Although I suppose it may annoy people who prefer their disbelief unsuspended, I think its surprises are artful and well-orchestrated, and don’t cross that “Oh, COME ON!” line in the sands of credibility.