Big It Up For The Small Towns

I was listening to Lamacq Live (show of November 15th, available here but not for much longer I reckon), where Lady Sovereign was presenting a special report about MCs from the countryside. As they put it, “Can you be street if you live in a lane?” Let me just say that if you’re one of those hataz who can’t take UK hip-hop seriously because of the funny accents, you ain’t heard nuffin (well, nothing quite as funny) until you’ve heard a Scottish MC freestyling to grime.

It was a sweet little program, but a little depressing. There were a lot of exchanges like this:
Lady Sovereign: So wot do you rap about?
Random Cornish/Welsh/Scottish MC: About life and stuff.
Lady Sovereign: Yeah, so, like wot?
Random Cornish/Welsh/Scottish MC: Dunno, really. Not much happens round here.

At least I’ve finally found a watertight argument against Alec ever moving me to the countryside. My future career as a top MC would clearly be jeopardized.

You Realize You’re Getting Old When…

…Gangsta’s Paradise is on the radio, you start rapping along with it in glee (you are studying and very bored), you get to the line “I’m twenny-three now, but will I live to see twenny-fo’?” and you realize that THE LAST TIME YOU RAPPED THAT LINE YOU WERE FIFTEEN AND NOW YOU ARE TWENNY-FO’.

You Make Me Like Charity

A guy and a girl trade verses and half-meanings, some proclaimed, some whispered, all against a background of stripped-down synths and minimalist percussion. That is all. It lasts only 3 minutes 5 seconds. And I am completely addicted.

You can hear You Make Me Like Charity, the song that’s currently ruling my life, here (it’s track 11), as well as the rest of this rather lovable album by The Knife.

Edit: Shit. Looks like they’re no longer streaming the album. Sorry about that. I’ll just have to listen to it a couple of extra times for all of you.

A Taufik/Olinda Final, Please

  • Sylvester was bizarrely bad this week, it felt like watching a car crash. After junking his previous identity (which I actually liked) for a less radical hairstyle and a lot of gummy smiles (while he was about it he might as well have junked the pathetic rocker poses which no one above the age of 12 should find cool, but alas, he didn’t), this week he seemed to have completely lost grip even of that second tenuous identity, and instead just tried to be everything to everyone.

    I mean, Music Of The Night? (Or should I say, Der Music Of Der Night?) Has he heard Michael Ball singing it? And if he has, why did he even think for a second that he could? I haven’t cringed so much since Christopher Lee’s Josh Groban attempt, and even then at least Christopher had the right type of voice and good diction, neither of which seemed within Sly’s reach in this performance. His other two were less embarrassing but still stunningly mediocre compared to what I have come to expect from him. Boyzone’s Picture Of You??!! Ozzy Osborne run for covaaaaa, this man is truly a bad boy rocker. Kiss From A Rose is a nice song, but so hard to sing well that even Seal himself screwed it up when he tried to sing it live at the Oscars, and I think it was also slightly beyond Sylvester’s ability tonight.

    Sly’s biggest mistake this week was in song choice. Music Of The Night and Kiss From A Rose need to sound effortless. Boyzone was actually a pretty good match because there are some similarities between his raspy style and Ronan Keating’s, but out of the cesspool of crap that is Boyzone’s repertoire, he certainly reached right down to the bottom and groped around. Sly is a good singer, who has impressed me many times in the past. But tonight confirmed that his rightful place must be third.

  • Olinda has the best voice in the competition, but I keep longing for her to grow some stage presence. As far as I’m concerned, that’s her biggest inadequacy. Her size and build is fine with me. I’d rather look at bubbly funky-haired Olinda than, say, the surgical (and sartorial) nightmare that is Nicolette Sheridan.

    But it was just awfully disappointing to see a performance of Holding On For A Hero that sounded even better than Fantasia’s, but featured Olinda just…well…bobbing around. Hopelessly Devoted To You was a boring song boringly performed. Olinda is not good at looking dewy-eyed, although she’s fine at conveying less sweetie-pie emotions. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina is a case in point, especially that one brief shining moment (brownie points if you can name the musical those last four words come from) where she thrust the mike downwards so that her (fantastic) high note wouldn’t deafen everyone, and she was utterly compelling.

    I want more of those moments from Olinda, which is why I don’t want her to leave this week. I want to see more of those moments from her in the finals, where she really does deserve to be.

  • Every week I worry about Taufik the same way I used to worry about Fantasia – after such a good performance, how is he going to top that next week? And then I see him the next week and am amazed, and so I start worrying about the week after. True to form, if he gets through this week you can bet I’m going to be worrying about whether he can top Ain’t No Sunshine in the finals.

    Unlike Sly, Taufik did know how to sing a song from a musical, and knew how to change his voice accordingly. Unlike Olinda, Taufik knew how and when to just ground himself and radiate presence even while standing still, and I don’t think anyone can deny that where dancing is concerned, he’s head and shoulders above the other two. The only criticisms I could make are that he did go flat a number of times during This Is The Moment, and his outfit for True To Your Heart was awful, but really, assessed in completion, Taufik ruled this night.

But! DO NOT ASSUME TAUFIK IS SAFE. Sly has crazy teenage minions, and Olinda has money. If you think Taufik’s pretty good but can’t be bothered to vote for him, then for the first time ever on this blog I must appeal to your sense of patriotism. Just imagine Sly representing us at World Idol. Cringing? Good. Text 2 to 43657. VOTE FOR TAUFIK.

Stealth Fighting

The RIAA Radar is an easy way of checking if any of the music you own, share or download is RIAA-released or not. And why do you want to know this? To quote the RIAA Radar site:

“That’s possibly a fairly long answer, but just the highlights of the RIAA’s practices involve price-fixing, blaming its poor financial state on unfounded digital piracy claims (and in turn, blaming and suing its own consumers), lobbying for changes that hinder technological innovation and change copyright laws, underpaying the artists it represents, invading personal privacy to enforce copyrights, and dismantling entire computer networks just because of their ability (of their users) to share copyrighted files.

In order to successfully and efficiently support who you like (or not support who you don’t like), you need to have information immediately available to know who is who. The RIAA Radar works in two ways: if you’re looking to stop buying RIAA releases, it will help tell you what albums to avoid (or purchase secondhand); if you are looking for new music or new alternatives, it works to promote non-RIAA releases by providing similar RIAA-free albums to almost any RIAA release, and RIAA-free popularity charts for several genres in order to showcase viable alternatives.”

Out of curiosity (okay, and extreme boredom), I checked some of the stuff on my iPod against the radar and was quite pleasantly surprised with the results.

Non-RIAA:
A Silver Mount Zion
Adem
Aereogramme
Amon Tobin
Animal Collective
Bedhead
Black Heart Procession
Boards Of Canada
Bonnie Prince Billy
Brother Ali
Calla
cLOUDDEAD
Coldcut
Decemberists
Devendra Banhart
Diplo
Dirty Three
Diverse
Dizzee Rascal
DJ Rupture
DM + Jemini
Edan
Elliot Smith
Explosions In The Sky
Fog
Four Tet
Fugazi
Interpol
Iron And Wine
Jacques Lu Cont
Jean Grae
Knifehandchop
Lambchop
Low (most albums OK except Long Division)
Magnetic Fields (most albums OK except i)
Manitoba
Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia
Michael Mayer
McLusky
Ming + FS
Mogwai
Múm
Neutral Milk Hotel
Pavement
Pedro The Lion
Prefuse 73
Polvo
RJD2
Silver Jews
Songs: Ohia
Soundmurderer
Summer Hymns
Telefon Tel Aviv
The Arcade Fire
The Books
The Czars
The Shins
The Unicorns
Third Eye Foundation
TV On The Radio
Ulrich Schnauss
Unwound
Wiley
Yo La Tengo

RIAA:
Brian Eno
David Holmes
Disco Inferno
DJ Spooky
Durutti Column
Hidden Cameras
Meat Puppets
My Bloody Valentine
Photek
Pixies
Sonic Youth
Talk Talk

Of course, it should be noted that there is a whole lot of RIAA music that would be on my iPod if I could be arsed to rip more of my CDs eg. Radiohead, Velvet Underground, Kanye West, Bob Dylan, Joy Division, Orbital etc. But in general, I think the main point that has become obvious from this exercise is that there is a lot of bloody excellent music around which won’t get you in trouble with the RIAA.

Having said this, I personally believe that if you like what you hear, you should buy the music. This is why I am continually broke.

Water With Stuff Floating In It

This is the photograph I have been trying to take for years. To all my long-suffering friends who have had to stand around patiently while I interrupt whatever we’re doing, stare intently at water with stuff floating in it, and start snapping away, this is what I was actually trying to achieve.

And now that I’ve seen the promised land, I’m afraid I’ll just have to continue asking for your indulgence. If, one day, I take a photo like that one, it will all have been worth it, won’t it?

Dancing To Autechre

I sometimes bob around my room a bit while listening to Autechre, but I never thought of them as a techno act anyone would really dance to until I saw this mindbending video of some Korean-American guy dancing to (what sounds like) their song Eutow.

Mustafa’s Macho Masala

So after The Vagina Monologues on Saturday we headed to Little India. We wandered down the main thoroughfare and found ourselves on Desker Road, where some of our number insisted on seeing the back alley “sights”. It was quite significantly more sordid than Geylang, and was one of the rare situations where even I felt uncomfortable. After dinner we eventually ended up in the wondrous temple of consumerism that is Mustafa Centre. While staggering through the food section, I found these Indian instant noodles and bought them in a fit of endearment.

indian instant noodles

I had the Macho Masala this morning. It was pretty spicy, but I was man enough for it.

The Physicists / godeatgod / The Vagina Monologues

I just realized I’ve seen 3 plays in the past 3 weeks but written nothing about them.

  • The Physicists (Friedrich Durrenmatt) (luna-id production at DBS Arts Centre): I’m a little tired of Cold War “our knowledge will be the death of us because we can’t be trusted to use it properly” themes by now, but that isn’t Durrenmatt’s fault. Anyway, I still enjoyed The Physicists for the most part. I found the directing especially clever in the little sequences which began and ended each act, where the cast ran around madly under strobe lighting (to produce that “frozen with each flash” effect that I’m still not tired of), banged random implements around Stomp-style, and lit matchsticks in rapid syncopation at various points on the darkened stage to simulate a chase through tunnels, all to music that sounded like Autechre. Acting was generally competent enough, but there was a rather stark divide in quality between the local actors and the Caucasian actors – the latter brought a presence, a range, and frankly, a “not sounding fake while talking”ness to their roles which the local actors weren’t able to.

  • godeatgod (Haresh Sharma) (The Necessary Stage, Marine Parade CC): I don’t doubt that this play’s attempt to grapple with serious questions that everyone should think about is sincere and heartfelt. However, its failure to ask those questions in terms any more complex than a mediocre GP essay¹ meant that it was unable to sustain my attention for very long. In a worrying continuation of themes from the previous play, the only actors here who didn’t irritate me were the foreign ones, Rody Vera from the Philippines, and Eriko Wada from Japan.

  • The Vagina Monologues (Eve Ensler) (New Voice Company, The Arts House): Okay, this rocked much more than I’d expected it to. It didn’t equate celebrating vaginas to scenting the room with patchouli as you enjoy your Rampant Rabbit, although that “If your vagina wore clothes, what would it wear?” question did rather make me cringe. In general, though, it was well-written, entertaining without hamming it up too much, and all three women (Nora Samosir, Anita Kapoor, Cynthia Lee Macquarrie) pulled off their respective roles with panache. The audience was also pleasantly responsive when urged to yell “CUNT!” (We wondered later whether, in the Chinese adaptation of the play staged here earlier this year, people were asked to yell “CHEE BYE!”, and whether they obliged.)

¹ GP stands for General Paper, a component of the A’level exams in Singapore which requires argumentative essay-writing.

What Kind Of Elitist Are You?

HASH(0x89b0860)
Your CD collection is almost as big as your ego,
and you can most likely play an instrument or
three. You’re a real hit at parties, but you’re
SO above karaoke.
What people love: You’re instant entertainment.
Unless you play the obo.
What people hate: Your tendency to sing louder than
the radio and compare everything to a freaking
song.

What Kind of Elitist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Spot-on about the relative sizes of my CD collection and my ego, spot-on about my instruments, but totally wrong about the rest. I don’t see myself as a big hit at parties or instant entertainment (I wish!), I never sing louder than the radio unless it’s playing Wuthering Heights or Manta Ray, and I am SO NOT above karaoke. Also, I’m far too self-absorbed to compare everything to a freaking song, I usually prefer to find a parallel experience in my own life to bore and annoy other people with.