The Revenger's Tragedy

UBUWEB is up and running again and it's as big and beautiful and bouncy as ever.

It even has a copy of A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth of A Corpse for download, a record which got savagely attacked by an ex-girlfriend and ended up with a knife slit down one side that rendered it unplayable (alongside about 100 other records, all neatly slashed and then, this is the weird bit, put back neatly in the sleeves and returned to my record boxes as if nothing had happened! Hundreds of obscurities died that dark night... I thought we'd broken up on okay terms...)

Coil - Neither His Nor Yours

I got her back many years later... in a long-winded and absurdly detailed trans-atlantic plot that lasted three years and involved in a small part the ever innocent and never malicious Psychbloke whom I kinda tricked into being a temporary vessel for evil-doing...

I mean, 100 records, all slashed down one side. Was that supposed to be symbolic?,

Anyway, I've enjoyed Nick's rant on the lack of info on record releases these days - he's dead right: there used to be a time when the odd black label release would slip out with no mention of label or playspeed or anything and then it acted like a Space Odyssey monolith, a beacon for the adventurous, a gateway towards what might be a new beginning.



Now, with so many of the little fuckers around, you get the impression it's just another attempt to generate a bit of welcome and much-needed obscurity to prosaic nonsense - I'm still with The KLF and TG: obscurity should be the last thing any band wants. Everyone should be at least intending to make a pop record, however unpalatable their stew. Preaching to the vinyl junkie white label whoreds is just easy game and is always avoiding the bigger issue and accepting utter defeat in the face of the 'inevitable' bitch:

"I was always more into their early stuff, when they were just doing limited editions of ten in those neat little badger skin pockets..."

"Abs-o-fucking lutely. Heard them on a fucking Resonance last night and it was like the sky caved in. Man, I never thought those guys would sell out so fast..."

C'mon, at least give the guys who might actually play your stuff some help here... take a tip from those indie bands who used to send every scrap they could to Peel (who'd still play them at the wromng speed, perhaps because of this in some unconscious reversal) - this stuff is useful...

And, lets face it, the first time you hear someone play your stuff at the wrong speed (and no, it doesn't play at all speeds, you're not NON) might be kinda funny but, after a while, doesn't the joke sorta wear out?


Elsewhere, I've been liking the fact that Black Dice have started to get funky, albeit a kind of battery degraded, sunburned eye, disco-sleaze-with-all-the-disco-taken-out kind of funky. Hear some of their gibbons over at Banana Nutrament and dance like two bags of elbows and a half pound of chins.

Oh, and if the girl who slashed all my records is out there: I know it's been ten years or so but I'm still not done yet. Scorpio's are like badgers; they never let go* .


*Actually, that's not true: it's the rabies that never lets go.