Senator Bobby

I heard this on a compilation tape someone gave me and for years I thought it was genuine. It's not exactly uncanny but it just seemed an absurd (and too brilliantly scripted) thing to exist in the world. It seemed more likely that it was genuine.

It's not, but it is funny.

The Versatile Henry Mancini

Picture stolen from this little treasure trove, where you can probably steal the album too

I hear the word 'versatile' and it's only ever about sex. It's an unsure word, plenty of slippage. I don't know what we're supposed to imagine that Henry can do... Can we use him as an occasional table, a water pipe, a way to stop motorists speeding through villages?

I want to use him. I do. I'm gonna use him in just a minute, before I get into the shower.

I'm gonna Pink Panther him up.

And then I'm gonna have a crack at that Reynols interview thing, also on here.

Alex Chilton

Well, he died.

Can't pretend to know much about him - his records kept bumping me at Record Fairs until i eventually bought a few. Some friends hurled Big Star records at me against my will until I eventually gave in, and came to love Kanga Roo etc with all those beautiful blends and swells and curls and waves. A great guitar sound, proper surf guitar...

Actual surf guitar doesn't sound anything like the sea, much more like newly laid tarmac and slightly fucked tires.

As far as these things go, Alex Chilton seemed very real, not that I've ever really respected that as such but still... there was no artifice, he seemed to love the music he played and produced to it's very bones... didn't try too hard to be cool, didn't play the postmodernist, just played.

Loved his production work with The Cramps, very, er, uncramped... let them breathe zombie fuzz over everything... let the guitars open doors... let the drums thud like Bargeld's ribs...

R.I.P.

Neon Indian Remixes

Finally getting through all the emails and adverts and sentsongs that have caused ripples and digimountains in my inbox over the Festivities. This one caught my eye for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who ever reads this blog.

Grizzly Bear - Cheerleader (Neon Indian Sega Genesis P Orridge Remix)

Though I think I actually prefer this one:

Grizzly Bear - Cheerleader (Neon Indian ‘Studio 6669’ Remix)

They both remind me a bit of the stuff that Weird Tapes get up to; this hollow, shining sound that's creeping into all kinds of things post Ariel Pink.

No Zombies, though.

May

Bought May on DVD for 75p* at a boot sale on Sunday. Liked it, especially the bit about necks. Sure I've seen this film before and then forgotten it but can't figure out how to test my memory in that way anymore. The mechanic / love interest guy in it looks like someone I knew at Uni who seemed to believe he might be Jim Morrison (or maybe he meant James Morrison) and ended up singing himself into a bout of gangrene. I think he might have played Jesus at some point.

The final scene works despite itself and the slowburnings of the first hour or so make this something a little more than you'd expect from a (sort of ) Zombie and Cheerleader flick.

Slightly disorientating to see Anna Faris in there too; like watching Dawson in The Rules of Attraction. Great stuff.

*no idea why you have to know how much I paid for this but I'm working on it and i'll get back to you... I'm pretty sure I've done this kind of thing before

TAZzing Media Death: Thursday's Glastonberries

...Glastonbury used to make you feel disconnected from the real (RT) world... the festival was a temporary autonomous zones, a dry flip into

Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty

an area sufficiently iridescent and grey to send people off on new tangents, happily waving goodbye to their old lives and jumping on a different bandwagon each hour - "this is the best band ever; no, this is the best band ever...and the best curry... and this guy is the coolest guy ever, with the coolest flag...".

Glastonbury was a semipermeable membrane; every ion, every molecule could travel one way - OUT. Tiny little bands accidentally caused waves. Others realigned themselves. Some bulked up and found themselves a place in the zeitgeist.

Obviously, Glastonbury is a mirror (which is why the 'Glasto' tag to was a hard thing to take; not because it had spoiled Pilton but because the world had been spoiled) but the outside influence stopped on the Wednesday night, as if the media artefacts from the past year hurled towards the Festival and then found themselves trapped, with the door shut and locked behind them, while the people inside mangled them into new shapes.

Kidnap someone & make them happy.

The real world could be let in only very selectively - I can remember a few World Cups, a European Championship, a massive Jeremy Paxman head scaring all the acid kids - and that was partly the point; better not know what's happening out there because this world of mud and songlines and brain-frying sun and fluttering flags and bangles is all there needs to be.

Things are different now, not necessarily worse but irretrievably changed.



It doesn't take long for the ripples about MJ's death to start; people's phones are flashing information at them at a pace too fast for them to take; the slowburn of Glastonbury is being assaulted by the information, a Burroughs word virus, spinning off through the fields - shops start playing Jackson records (everyone can see him in the Thriller video; a media zombie at the beginning of his zombification - an image that reminded me of Bill Hicks:

“A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fucking cross? It's like going up to Jackie Onassis wearing a rifle pendant.”

Gossip rifles past: "Samuel L Jackson is dead? Michael Barrymore is dead?" Information is streaming over the membrane, contaminating the performers - Dizzee Rascal, the Black Eyed Peas - shout outs everywhere. T-shirts and badges are being printed and by Friday the disrespectful ones (MICHAEL JACKSON WAS ALREADY DEAD, I KILLED MJ, WE KILLED MJ, MJ IS SNIFFING COKE OFF PRINCESS DI'S BARE ASS (WITH SHERGAR)) they are already being vandalised by bloodshot, shelled fans armed with Sharpie pens and recently whittled Drune daggers...

The Festival is glistening with change: ghost music is everywhere - the Thriller bass, the Billie Jean guitar, the generalised ums and ahs of Michael's electrified inarticulacy...

But still, other things push through:

Kap Bambino is the first thing I see and the crowd jump around like Skins extras - these guys are flashing like strobes, a 32 bit Crystal Castles...

Kap Bambino - Dead Lazers (Maton Remix)

Then we hear just a drifting of Billy Nasty's dubstep set before kicking off towards the odd Neverland that is Shangri La where I seem to have lost the hours between 1 and 4 AM...

Lux Interior RIP

Lux Interior has died. People won't be that surprised. The last time anyone I knew saw The Cramps was about 5 years ago and they said in the first 5 minutes he'd stage-dived off an amp stack and landed on his head with the microphone wedged into his mouth. They've got blood flecks on their jeans to prove it.

The Cramps were one of my first 'indie' groups; an ideal introduction to life as a 13year old, a transition between the tubthumping and camp clowning of childhood (late period Adam and the Ants) and the easy worthiness of The Jam. The Cramps were both Pre-Cardinal and Cardinal for me and there must be a least a dozen of their songs that have distinct memories attached to them; burned like flashbulbs...

I'll get to them later.

The Cramps - I Aint Nothing But A Gorehound

The Cramps - Goo Goo Muck

The Cramps - Surfin Bird

Great stuff about these guys at Uncarved.

Hallam Foe / 2 Days In Paris

Finally got round to seeing this on DVD and I guess Hallam Foe is exactly like you probably imagine it will be, if you've seen any trailers or interviews or read anything about it. Not bad but not something I can be bothered to write about. Mice hat, which reminded me on an old Yeovil saying 'Badgers never let go'.

A few tracks from the soundtrack here



2 Days in Paris on the other hand was tremendously unsettling since it seemed to be an only slightly skewed transposition of conversations I've just had onto the screen in a film which lopes around like it's been made by Woody Allen's younger cousin. I can't honestly tell you if this film was good or bad (and why would you care?) but it made us giggle like drains, even if I'm guessing that for almost everyone else on the planet it could be a little annoying.

Like my own life, this definitely would be improved by some zombies and cheerleaders.

Juno

I'm normally a kind of miserable person to go to the cinema with. I've probably seen about ten films where I haven't been distracted / depressed by some flaw or absence or gentle intrusion. Normally, I come out and say things like: "It was really good until..." or "If only they'd not bottled the ending..." or "Maybe if they'd added some zombies or cheerleaders...". But I went to see Juno and I have to say it's more or less perfect. Every character is likeable and more or less believable, every performance a little lesson in how to kook-out without turning into an emetic. It's what I want to think all Americans are like.

It's exactly the kind of thing I like in music and film; something that gets so close to utterly rubbish that you can almost feel the tension between the characters - one false move, one missed cue and this is the kind of thing that might make me queasy, in the same way that Orbital sometimes got so close to Jean Michel Jarre it could be frightening listening to an album for the first time. Even the soundtrack works with the characters rather than against them - it's fey as hell but it fits perfectly with the gentle rolls of the film, bouncing along with Juno in neat little quantum Converse jumps.

It's never annoying, even when I wanted it to be. It ends like you'd want it to end, not like other people think you'd want it to end and it deals with the potentially tricky problem of teenage pregnancy with a delicacy and charm that gives another perspective entirely on a woman's right to choose. I'm not even sure if it'd be improved by extra zombies and cheerleaders.

The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You