It’s a strange day. Last night i was dreaming as if my brain cells were various subdirectories in which i was trying to compile all sorts of Belle & Sebastian rarities and demos, but an incomplete file of “Welcome to the Jungle” wound up in there somehow, in which Axl just kept howling and howling. After awhile, it bled into “A Century of Fakers” and made complete sense, with Axl’s howling instead of the swirling keyboard. My waking hours have not been that much better. I ran down to the Tesco to pick up a head of lettuce and some sugar this morning, but felt people staring at me. I feel like anyone any moment will somehow recognize me as an American, but it didn’t explain why they would be staring. It turns out what i was walking about the store muttering that “Hot Tamales” song by Robert Johnson again. One day, that song is going to get me institutionalized.
Tom Ewing has his Death of Pop piece on Barbelith? I found this on Plastic, where’s there’s even more responses to it. Freaky Trigger is getting around. I don’t really have anything to comment on the article or the responses, as i don’t care for those kinds of pop icons. They mean as much to me as the packaging of a bottle of Coke, and what matters to me is that it doesn’t taste as good as it used to. I’m thrilled to stumble onto Barbelith (which probably means that it’s doomed) which has all kinds of quirky links and interesting points of view, as i saw the links before, and thought that they had something to do with Jane Fonda.
I agree with this Pitchfork review on the song selection of that Apples in Stereo EP, as i hate too much repackaging and alternate takes, but aside from the increasingly lackluster, unspirited reviews, this dreadful seriousness is getting even more wearisome. So they hate cloying children’s music… fine. They just love those imperious, scowling artists, but try to play childish music, “a completely soulless Jackson 5 groove and an annoying, beeping synthesized rhythm?” Does anyone think that sounds like a description of Stereolab? That’s as bad as my hamfisted description yesterday of the Gorillaz mp3s i downloaded, making them roughly analogous to the Beta Band, which is absolute blasphemy.
NME has a tracklisting of the new Spiritualized album. It mentions “heavily orchestral” and that a hundred musician were used for the recording of the album. Yes, i’m eager to hear the album, but i still have to type it… Emerson, Lake and Palmer, anyone?
I feel all weird and awkward about getting into Radiohead again. My brief history with the band: Caught first single “Creep”, and loved it for that moment, but now it seems tame compared to my memory of it. Didn’t care much at all for the album Pablo Honey. Liked the singles from The Bends, but didn’t want to get burned again, as i was relatively broke in those days, and too busy spending what music money i had on getting CDs of stuff that i had taped from Damien’s vinyl. I bought OK Computer only after Zane’s urging, and found it too miserablist for the giddy guitar pop and fetishist lo-fi that i preferred at the time. Thus, even though i have listened to the band for nearly eight years, the rest of you reading this page probably know the band far better than i do. While i get the jokes and the references with Radiohead, i now feel like i’m in a remedial course of some sort with the band. I’ve now downloaded a double-fistful of B-sides, all profiled and examined in the Q feature, and scratching my head once again over what left me cold about the band, as even the B-sides seem to shimmer. Here’s a list just in case anyone else cares to find them, but i’m just not ready to say anything about them, especially when there’s also Amnesiac to listen to:
- Killer Cars
- Banana Co.
- The Trickster
- Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong
- You Never Wash Up After Yourself
- Maquiladora
- India Rubber
- How Can You Be Sure?
- Talk Show Host
- Bishop’s Robes
- Pearly
- A Reminder
- Palo Alto
- Trans-Atlantic Drawl (okay, i can write about this one. It’s the B-side of The Pyramid Song, and even though it just seems to be pissy little rant about music magazine, but it’s an abrasive micro-Frankenstein monster that almost seems like a sop for those still aching for the guitar rock album that many expected Amnesiac to be. I rather like it.)
New albums i long for… Pram and the new Bonny Billy EP. I shall confess nothing else right now.
There’s a most interesting article on Salon about the future of the Internet… not about teleporting cups of coffee through fiber optics or , but about the ever-nastier war between Microsoft and AOL. for all of my paranoia about the government, corporations, even extraterrestrials, i have not been terribly worried about the Web being hijacked just yet. Most of the sites i read are independent, and i probably will stick with Netscape for awhile when i get back to the States, eben though that browser is deader than a doornail. However, this matter of Smart Tags is pretty nasty. There’s no way that this fits into fair trade laws. Passport is no better. Windows XP is not nice at all from what this Salon article says, and in all likelyhood, it will crash constantly too. It’s about time to switch to Linux, and i cannot wait to build my own server.
The General Accounting Office is continuing the pressure on investigating cheny’s Energy Task Force? Oh, come on! he’s never going to stand for this. Cheney has a nasty temper. That’s why that poor buffoon Bush is the front man.
Article on how bodies might be “incorruptible” on Discover.
the Pyramids built by big kites. Bullshit. What they are ignoring is that the Pyraminds were built before there was a desert there to have desert winds. However, no Egyptologist wants to acknowledge that, only geologists. Via Plastic. I’m glad to read in the comments that most readers see the hollowness of the claim, but to claim “ethnocentricty” that the ancient Egyptians could not have built it with Stone or Bronze Age technology? Moron. No, the Egyptians were even more advanced than us “Westerners” give them credit for. Most likely they fell upon another dark age. Even today, we probably could not pull together the resources exactly right to recapture the precision of the Pyramids. Civilization most likely fell with a global cataclysm, and when it falls again, we’ll be lucky that it will rise again. Oh, and even if i want o play conservative, it was NOT done by slaves, but by a citizen workforce in the off-season from farming. Slaves? they’ve been watching “The Ten Commandments” too much.