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.

Maybeeee Someone’s Gonna Save Meeeee

Tickets bought to see Stephen Malkmus at ULU on April 12, hooray, hooray!!! But now there’s a dilemma – I assume he’ll sing lots of songs from his solo album, so do I go buy it so that I don’t end up listening in ignorance? I originally intended to wait till it was available second hand at Django, or buy it cheap in Singapore when I go home for the summer. And is it an affront to him as a solo artist to hope he sings some Pavement songs as well? I’m not asking for much, just AT&T, Shady Lane and In The Mouth A Desert. Please?

Now that’s done, I have to go toddle down to various roadside ticketing agents and see what I can scrounge up for Yo La Tengo (April 10). And hey, contrary to my previously voiced fears, I’m not going to have to slink in alone and grit my teeth in envy eavesdropping on everyone else talking to their friends about how much they love Slanted And Enchanted, or I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, because Marten, sole indie-lovin’ friend in London, decided that the gigs were just too good to pass up.

Yay. :) Going to these two gigs will go far towards lessening my genuine pain of missing Bon Jovi when they play here in June!

And hordes of indie readers leave in disgust.

Stardust (Neil Gaiman): Tangents

So there I was last night, brimming with domestic bliss from a successfully cooked dinner (peppery chicken with capsicum, carrots, onions and garlic stir-fried with hoi sin sauce and chilli. And rice with the fluffiness and fragrance that no one does better than Thailand), and I decided it would be a great thing to continue in achievement mode by getting a start on my property essay, due this Friday.

I was convinced of this all the way up the stairs to my room.

Then I came in, saw Stardust (thanks Vikram!) on the bed, and before I knew it I was happily snuggled under my duvet, propped up by Sheep cushion and hugging Butterfly cushion (thanks Esther!) with my warm honeyed lemon tea nearby, Kind Of Blue from the speakers, and the BT Tower with its top lost in clouds through my window.

I don’t know whether it’s just me and my Neil Gaiman obsession or that he really is damn good, but there’s something about his writing that always makes me feel the wonder I felt when I was six years old, and JRR Tolkien told me about an intricate, intriguing fantasy world populated with creatures that had always wandered the fringes of my imagination, but were always one-dimensional caricatures before Tolkien gave them language, culture, mythology, life.

My initial enchantment with fantasy didn’t really last. I love David Eddings (despite his self-plagiarising tendencies), but more because of his humour and the uncanny parallels between his world and ours than because he actually manages to unshackle me from reality. I appreciate the originality and humour of Terry Pratchett, but somehow reading his books always feels like there’s a list of obvious jokes and references you’re supposed to get, and I find myself exhausted within minutes of beginning. I ploughed through six of Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time tomes, and finally gave up when I realized I hated almost all the characters and couldn’t care less about their fate or the fate of their world. In general, most of what I pick up seems to be much of a muchness, and I usually find myself reading for the sake of getting through the book, rather than because I actually give a damn.

Neil Gaiman’s worlds are whimsical beauty with flashes of incredible morbidity. You can read his stories just for simple enjoyment, but if you explore the plethora of mythological, literary and cultural references he throws in, you’re amazed by the richness and diversity of the material from which he draws his inspiration: that amazing repository of the human imagination. The good part is that he doesn’t club you over the head with any of it – his writing style is infinitely accessible, and you almost don’t notice the craftsmanship that’s gone into it.

So that’s how I spent last night: body snuggled in bed, mind roaming the serewoods and skyharbours of Faerie.

Addendum: Reading over that again, I feel the need to say that I am not one of those strange types who swears she has gossamer wings and leaves bits of sugar around for her invisible fairy sisters. I only like Neil Gaiman’s fairies, and most of them look horrible and micro-demonic.

My Manta Ray’s All Right

You know that exquisite pain you get when a fantastic song is in your head, but circumstances prevent you from getting to actually hear it? I don’t know why there’s such a huge difference between hearing it in your head and hearing it from your speakers, but there undoubtedly is. You’re walking around for hours with it in there, and if it’s a song you love, chances are you know it intimately and your memory’s playing every note, but when you manage to get to your room and actually hear it in stereo, it’s like that moment’s a screaming orgasm and everything before was just indifferent foreplay.

At some point during lunch with Tamara at Belgo’s yesterday, Pixies’ Manta Ray started playing in my head.

I tried lots of ways to get it out. I went to Borders and listened to Sigur Ros, Black Box Recorder, Kid Loco, DJ Krush, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Sibelius. (Increasingly strange looks from the guy manning the listening station.) My find of the day: Pinchas Zukerman playing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No.1, Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, and Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No.5, conducted by Zubin Mehta, for 5.99! That’s the great thing about buying classical music that isn’t usually possible with indie rock – you can get so much good stuff for cheap. Supporting an indie rock habit, where every CD you want has an IMPORT sticker on it and costs twice as much as an ordinary CD, generally requires a willingness for turning tricks, drug dealing, organ farming or investment banking.

So anyway, nothing worked. I still kept having to remind myself not to burst out into “Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo, YEAH!” in front of other people, and it was torture not being able to. Then I got home, scrambled to my computer, put it on and turned up the volume, and…

HOO-HOO, HOO-HOO, YEAH!!

:)

Last night was gloriously low-brow

Last night was gloriously low-brow and frivolous. I started the evening off with Celebrity Big Brother. Then Carl came into the TV room and waved the first two episodes of the current season of the X-Files at me, and so we had to watch those. Then the Italian girls came in and put on Cocktail, and we all had a good time yelling “Bastard!” at Tom Cruise and pulling apart the corny dialogue. It was all very Bridget Jones.

The thing which probably struck me the most about last night won’t be a surprise for anyone reading this who actually knows me in real life, but I’ll go into it anyway because I just feel like writing about it.

The X-Files, or its good episodes anyway, reduces me to a gibbering emotional wreck. I loved this show long before it was hip, while it was hip, and still love it now it’s pretty much unhip. I’ll be the first to acknowledge it’s had some laughably bad episodes (killer pussies, Bride of Chucky, Scully Madonna with limpid-eyed alien child…), a large number of hilariously verbose pretentious voiceovers (Chris Carter, lose the thesaurus already), and don’t even get me started on what they’ve done with the conspiracy arc.

But the thing is, there’s just something about the characters that gets to me. I could rehash the usual Mulder-Scully skeptic-believer unresolved sexual tension spiel but everyone’s already familiar with that. I guess what particularly endears me to them is their ability to do the whole undying trust and loyalty thing while generally avoiding Hallmark moments. People always tell me “Oh, Michelle, you’ll be more forgiving about gross couply stuff when you’re in a relationship.”

No, I bloody well will not. I can certainly see Hallmark moments enhancing any relationship I’d want to be in, but only in terms of their comedic potential. I’d be quite fond of a man who could deliver cheesy lines with an expression just one twitch short of deadpan so I knew he didn’t actually think “I love you always forever till the end of the world blah blah blah” would fool me into falling over with my legs in the air.

Er. I was talking about the X-Files. Yeah, the X-Files. Love it.

The surfing, she is good

The surfing, she is good these days…

The time management, she is not.

Alas.

Just when I thought Neil Gaiman couldn’t get any cooler, he went and started writing a blog about American Gods.

Hugely gratifying: Literary critics ‘fess up at Slate about great books they haven’t read. This compilation of Amazon reader comments on the Modern Library’s top 20 novels of the 20th century was reasonably entertaining as well, though given that I’ve only read 4.5 of the 20 (The Great Gatsby, Brave New World, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, half of To The Lighthouse), I suppose I’m not in a position to judge the accuracy (of lack thereof) of their commentary.

Slate performs an important public service with The Complete Bushisms. Some of my favourites:

“Keep good relations with the Grecians.”

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”

“This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It’s what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve.”— Speaking during “Perseverance Month”

“We want our teachers to be trained so they can meet the obligations, their obligations as teachers. We want them to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there’s not this kind of federal—federal cufflink.”

“Laura and I really don’t realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis.”

“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.”

“The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I’ve looked at. I do not believe we’ve put a guilty … I mean innocent person to death in the state of Texas.”

Oh God, I’m just halfway up the page!

3 CDs & Some Wishful Gig-Thinking

More money spent at Django, hooray, alas, whatever!

Death Cab For Cutie: We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes
Starlight Mints: The Dream That Stuff Was Made Of
Kruder & Dorfmeister: The K & D Sessions

The first two are for me, and the third’s for Nick, who turns 21 on March 29, and I hope hope hope he doesn’t go and buy it for himself before then.

A scrounge through the latest Time Out in Budgens revealed more gigs I’d really like to go to but’ll probably end up missing, primarily for lack of company:

Sunny Day Real Estate, March 6
Low, March 22
Yo La Tengo, April 10
Stephen Malkmus, April 17
Sigur Ros, April 24

I may well do a repeat of my Flaming Lips/Built To Spill/Wheat/Smashing Pumpkins lone woman experience for Yo La Tengo and Stephen Malkmus, but it really isn’t much fun. Sigh. All I really want is some rich generous indie-rock loving friends with vast amounts of free time on their hands. And a pony.