Cover Girl

I don’t actually agree with a lot of the Telegraph’s 50 best cover versions ever recorded, but it’s inspired me to chase some leads down all the same. I have high hopes for Johnny Cash doing One, and don’t quite know what to expect for The Bangles doing Hazy Shade Of Winter. While I’m trying to find those, here are my random thoughts about some cover versions I like and some cover versions I don’t. I see them as falling into three main categories, namely:

Paying Homage:
Indie bands like covering classic indie songs because it gives both the band and pretentious wankers like me in the audience the opportunity to show how we’re, like, totally in touch with Where It All Started by cheering in recognition and conspicuously mouthing all the lyrics. The problem is that unless you’re actually able to do something interesting with the song, there is no fucking point. Grandaddy’s cover of Pavement’s Here is a case in point, as is Death Cab For Cutie’s attempt at Bjork’s All Is Full Of Love. Neil Young gets covered a lot, but while I like the idea of Emmylou Harris doing Wrecking Ball and the Pixies doing Winterlong, the covers don’t sound like much more than people singing very pretty songs very prettily. The most successful one I can think of in this category (although I’d love to be told about anything I’ve missed) is Nirvana doing Lake Of Fire. There’s something about Kurt Cobain’s guttural “Where do bad folks go when they DIEEEEEEE” and “Don’t see ’em again till the fourth of Ju-LAAAAIIIII” which suits the song better than the pleasant harmonies of the Meat Puppets’ original.

Ironic:
This is the cover version where the artist says “I’m totally secure with my existing amount of cred, so I’m gonna sing something incredibly uncool now because I’m subversive that way.” I have to admit that I never find it that hard to enjoy ironic cover versions, because quite often I love the original song too. Travis did Hit Me Baby One More Time as a staple in their live shows at some point, but I prefer Richard Thompson’s Oops I Did It Again because his voice is so much more authoritative than Fran Healy’s and he puts in all these great acoustic guitar solos. My favourite ironic cover of the past year has been Ben Gibbard’s cover of Complicated. Ben Gibbard’s voice gets on my nerves sometimes, but here its winsome, almost overly-earnest quality sounds absolutely perfect. Also, the idea of him singing “Trying to be cool, you look like a fool to me” to a room full of trucker-capped, thrift-store-T-shirted, vintage-Converse-sneakered indie clones amuses me.

Complete Re-Imagining (but in a good, non-Planet-Of-The-Apes-2001 way):
How can Tricky’s Black Steel only be 29 in the Telegraph list? I’m too lousy at writing about music to think up a new way of describing how and why I love this song, but I stand by every word of my past gushing. The Slits’ post-punk I Heard It Through The Grapevine kills me every time with its crazy vibrato on the high notes, and every note of The Darkness’s Street Spirit is basically a crazily vibrating high note. If you haven’t heard Christopher O’Riley’s piano adaptations of Radiohead songs, Fake Plastic Trees is a great place to start. (And Jamie Fucking Cullum’s attempt at High And Dry, now advertised every five minutes on Singapore TV, makes me want to stuff his grand piano up his arse.) Will Young doing Hey Ya and Nick Cave doing Disco 2000 may seem like they should be in the Ironic category, but I’ve decided they belong here because both these covers actually make you realize how melancholy the original party classic songs actually are. You haven’t heard pathetic pleading until Nick Cave’s begging “What do you do on a Sunday, baby? Would you like to come and meet me, maybe? You can even bring your baby…”

How You Gonna Have A Dream Come Truuuue?

And so, on Friday, my life as a student finally ended. As usual, given that I’d had about two hours’ sleep the night before, I didn’t mark the end of exams with anything even vaguely hedonistic. I had a nice lunch with my mum, went to the library (due to exam stress there was a ONE WEEK period where I didn’t have any library books out, and it was terrible. I filled the void by rereading Watchmen, but I always like having something new and sexy along with my old comfy reads) and then to Waraku where I enjoyed ordering my first kaminabe (yes, I still find silly coincidences of language like this funny).

Apart from my fuck-yo-mamma steamboat, I was pleased to find a selection of “froats” in their drinks menu. (Edit: Picture added! Here.) After considering the charms of various froats, I eventually made the mistake of choosing alcohol instead and going with an oolong tea-maccha liqueur mix, which tasted like Pokka green tea I could buy from 7-11 except that it cost about 8 times the price. Ida ordered a dessert called “Pear for the Voluptuous” and I made a cruel joke. At one point the conversation turned to dreams. I said I often dreamt about my teeth falling out, and everyone was certain it meant something, though they weren’t sure what. I said I often dreamt about being chased by a shadowy figure, and everyone was certain it meant something, though they weren’t sure what. Then Fay said she had dreamt about being chased by the shadow of a penis.

Up Where He Belongs

I didn’t vote for Will in Pop Idol 1 because I was running a debating tournament on the day of the finals. I couldn’t vote for Fantasia in American Idol 3 because duh, I wasn’t in America. I’ve never voted in an election in Singapore because until recently my MP was the Prime Minister and my constituency was walkoverland. So tonight I took all the votes I’d never cast in my life and threw them all at Taufik.

Taufik Batisah, for the amount of money I spent voting for you tonight I could have bought a brand new Devendra Banhart CD at HMV’s usual exorbitant import price BUT IT WAS ALL SO WORTH IT BECAUSE YOU WON, CONGRATULATIONS TAUFIK BATISAH!!!!!

NON-MALAYS FOR TAUFIK, BIG UP YOURSELVES!!!

[The final was actually rather bad. Both of them seemed worn out, and who could blame them. I would be worn out too if you expected me to sing The Reason and All For Love and look as if I was enjoying it. Sylvester was unmitigatedly terrible on It’s My Life, Taufik’s voice sounded strained for the first time ever on the new song, and oh yes, the new song is really lousy.]

But anyway. In every Idol competition I’ve watched, my favourite has won, which is nice. It must suck to lose. Then again, I’ve always thought it must also suck to appear on national television doing incredibly moronic smirks and juvenile rock posturing, but apparently that didn’t seem to bother Sylvester much. As much as I cuss and swear along the way about the superficiality of the Idol public, it does usually seem to get it right in the end. Yay for talent!

Meeting People Isn’t Easy

I envy people with great stories about meeting people they admire. Benny has his about meeting DJ Shadow in a London newsagent. Jordan at said the gramophone has this lovely two–part tale about his odyssey to see Cat Power at a festival somewhere in Switzerland (he didn’t actually know where in Switzerland, though, which is what makes the story even cooler).

I, on the other hand, am unable to interact with people I admire without appearing like a complete idiot. I chickened out of saying hello to Zadie Smith the time I saw her on Torrington Place on my way home from the supermarket. I stammered something excruciatingly inane to Malcolm McLaren when he came to speak at a UCL Debating Society event the time he was considering running for London Mayor. In front of Neil Gaiman my mind went blank, and it didn’t help that he was drawing me a rat because then all I could think was NEIL GAIMAN IS DRAWING ME A RAT OH MY GOD.

Even my brushes with almost unknown indie musicians descend into humiliation the moment I try to tell them (sincerely) that I like what they do. I am aided along this expressway to embarrassment by Alec, who either makes things worse or laughs at me.

Take, for example, the time we went to the Arts Cafe for a Ladybug Transistor gig, and were extremely impressed by the (unadvertised) opening act, Bart Davenport. Emboldened by alcohol, we approached him later to buy his CD. Alec, whose memory for names leaves much to be desired, had forgotten the guy’s name but inexplicably decided to try and address him as something anyway.

Glancing quickly at the CDs on the merchandise table as he extended his hand in greeting, my favourite Alzheimer’s patient saw “BART DAVENPORT” but only the first four letters of the surname registered. Hence – “Dave!” said Alec enthusiastically to Bart Davenport, “Great performance Dave, I really enjoyed it!” etc. and with every “Dave!” more and more bits of my composure crumbled into a little mortified pile on the floor. Luckily, “Dave” was so sloshed that I’m not even sure he noticed he was talking to a pair of nimrods, and thank God for that.

I accomplished the next indignity all by myself, and this still smarts so much I’m not even going to name the band. It was the first time we went to the Water Rats, and I was really impressed by one of the opening bands. They looked really young – they were wearing the sort of clothes I associate with teens who desperately want to scream their indieness to the world – but they had catchy songs, strong vocals and lots of energy. Sadly, only about 15 people were watching them, and most of the people who weren’t us looked like their friends from school. This upset me a bit, as it always does when people don’t get the appreciation I think they deserve, or the credit they’re due. I thought they had real promise, and I was hoping they weren’t discouraged by the tiny audience. I wanted to tell them I thought they were great. I didn’t want them to give up on music.

So later on, when I was on the way to the bar to get my third Snakebite (you see the problem already) and saw the band hanging around, of course I went up to them and started a conversation.

Me: Hey, I really enjoyed your set.
Band (different members each time, we’ll just call them Band): Thanks very much!
Me: You sound great, how long has your band been around?
Band: About three or four years.
Me: Cool, no wonder you sound so good. If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you guys?
Band, giving me the first of many strange looks: Late twenties, mostly.

(This is where it all started to go pear-shaped for me. Late twenties??! Their dressing screamed 17!)

Me, thrown off now, clearly gobsmacked: Oh, right, right.
Band: You look surprised.
Me: Oh, er, no, I, uh, thought you looked a bit younger than that.
Band: Oh, really?
Me, gabbling stupidly while I tried and failed to move on: Oh, er, it’s nothing, I must have been mistaken. I was, uh, just noticing the people watching just now looked really young, I thought maybe they might have been your mates. (Inner monologue: What the fuck are you saying, Michelle? WALK AWAY NOW.)
Band, giving me the second of many strange looks: No, we don’t know them.
Me: Oh, right. Heh. Hmm. But anyway, you guys sounded really great!
Band, smiling tentatively: Thanks, we’re glad you enjoyed it.
Me, clearly possessed by some demon of dorkness: Do you have a good sound guy, or is the venue sound system just really good? (Inner monologue: WHAT THE FUCK??! WHAT THE FUCK?! Ground, swallow me up now, I mean motherfucking NOW!)
Band, giving me the fuckteenth strange look: Well, the venue system’s pretty good.
Me, now completely in bits: Right, right. Okay, gotta go deliver the drinks. Best of luck and all! (Walking away rapidly, not daring to look back.)

So I walked back into the other room, plonked the drinks down, grabbed Alec and started banging my head repeatedly on his chest.

Every day I thank every deity that could possibly exist in this world and the next that I haven’t met Sonic Youth or Salman Rushdie yet, and I hope I never do.

Jibba-Jabba

Mr T Vs Everything is a repository of links to fictional fights between Mr T and, you guessed it, anything and everything. The complete shittiness of the Photoshopping involved in finding and altering pictures to storyboard the fight is part of the charm, as is the repetitive use of key elements such as youth centres, his helluva fast van, milk, and how far he can throw someone. There are too many fights to browse through, and most are really mediocre, but I think Mr T Vs Hitler, Mr T Vs Shakespeare, and intriguingly, Mr T Vs His Own Abstract Thoughts were a little above the morass.

Graham Greene: The Power And The Glory

Again I am brought to my knees by Graham Greene. Again I find myself fumbling for words that deserve to be used in a review. Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is an incredibly audacious book; perhaps one day I’ll write an equally bold one about Graham Greene – because in my life so far (narrow-horizoned as it admittedly has been), I have not read a writer who can equal his understanding of what it is to be human.
Read More “Graham Greene: The Power And The Glory”

This Is KNN

My Civil Procedure paper was wild. Two fiendishly long questions and 40 short questions in 3 hours, each one of which involved frenetic flipping and re-flipping through voluminous notes and statutes, with an exhausted mind that had gone completely blank. I don’t know why anyone even bothers with extreme sports when they could be getting their adrenaline rushes from doing death-defying examinations in Civil Procedure.

So anyway, after an indulgent dinner at Michelangelo (Me: This panna cotta is so wonderful, it’s solid cream! Everyone else: Michelle, that just sounds really gross), I was reading IS on the bus home and found finally, finally, a DJ at Zouk who I’d bother leaving the house for! Meat Katie! He was there last Saturday. Kan ni na.¹

I have to echo Laces’ plea for Zouk to bring in some interesting DJs and stop being so goddamn pedestrian. I want Diplo and Michael Mayer too. Also DJ/Rupture. Also Akufen. Amon Tobin. The Scratch Perverts. And world peace.

As I do every now and then, I was surfing around to find out how London is, and found out that DJ/Rupture was at 93 Feet East with Supersoul on Sunday, Ty is at Cargo tomorrow, and Eclectic Method are doing weekly video mashups at Herbal.

Again I am reminded of my grim theory that if the amount I saw and did over four years in London is anything to go by, the amount I’ll have missed this past year and over the next six is just…depressing. Then why, you shriek in aggravation, do you keep CHECKING UP ON WHAT YOU’RE MISSING, MASOCHIST? The answer is: because one of my biggest fears is ignorance. I would rather know what’s going on where things actually happen, even as it makes me chafe at my limited options here, than escape back to London years from now and be completely out of touch with everything that used to excite me so much.

In the meantime, I’m sitting at my computer listening to Amon’s Solid Steel Presents and shouting KAN NI NA to a funky beat.

¹ Definition here

Pint-Sized

If only I’d had a pint glass close at hand when Casey was still kitten-sized.

Backs Up Backs Up Back Off The Wall

During previous exam study periods, my walls have been adorned with post-its bearing various motivational messages such as “A 2-1 IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH”, “YOU CAN’T WRITE ESSAYS ABOUT ____________ (whatever book I was absorbed in at the time) CAN YOU??” and “STOP PLAYING DOPE WARS”. They worked.

This time I wanted to quote Dizzee from Stand Up Tall, but then realized that my mum wouldn’t take too well to “Can’t run the marathon without training or stretch the arsehole without straining” whenever she comes to my laptop for her Solitaire fix.The poor woman already takes issue with the photos I paste on my desk wall (of my life in England):

My mum: From these photos it would look as if you’ve had strings of boyfriends!
Me: Mum, two of the men with me in those pictures are priests, and another one is the preserved corpse of Jeremy Bentham.¹
My mum: That’s even worse!

¹ Upon graduation, I thought it was only polite to pose for a picture with the subject of my dissertation. (Jeremy Bentham, not his corpse.)