Although i have not found the cure to being citybound, last night Lou revealed WinMX to me. With all of the computer troubles that i’ve been having this spring, i was still ignorant of its power. She could probably sense my withdrawal from my record collection, and without anything to keep me busy all day yet, this is the perfect solution. With her superior connection speed, it took no time to check out those other two Strokes tracks. They’re okay. There’s a nice sloppy guitar solo on “Last Nite”. “Barely Legal” might be my favorite of the three tracks, as i just like the way that the song is constructed, continuing along at a rollicking pace, but not monotonously. I don’t know what to add to that. Michael Orr reported that he’s seen them live, and they were indeed exciting, but even he agrees that this recorded tracks lack something. i still think it’s more fun to pretend to be the young Rolling Stones, as for some reason i keep wanting to compare them to the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Not only do you get more songs for your money, with at least twenty revisionist songs per disc compared to a measly three, but cocky arrogance without an overheating hype machine is even more endearing.
Before going any further, i must confess that Lou’s mp3 collection, although much smaller, is far more eclectic than mine ever was. To further illustrate without truly revealing too much, my favorite song of today is the Wombles “Wombling Merry Christmas”
The new SFA single ” Juxtaposed with U” does indeed seem to reference the Avalanches single “Since I Left You”, like Kathleen mentioned. If it was not such a logical extension of “Northern Lites”, i’d be upset. As for the vocoder, it’s been part of their bag of tricks for awhile, and they flogged the hell out of it on “Whereever I Lay My Phone”. Without knowing SFA’s past work, it would easy to mistake it for bandwagon jumping, when it was clearly part of their turf to begin with.
By the way, it doesn’t bother me that a lot of critics are “discovering” that Air is not being ironic at all, to quote the review in Uncut 49, “68 percent MOR, 13 percent AOR, and 19 percent something else with a limp, or camp, twist that might once upon a time been called groovy.” Fuck ‘em. I’ll buy their toothpaste, and my tteeth will shine like diamonds. I get scientific at times too, but it’s been annoying me lately. Another place it annoyed me was in the NME review of B&S’s “Jonathan David” 10 percent more tuneful, they’d be the sort of dross Neil Finn casually sticks in the bin on his occasional bad days. And if they were 10 percent crapper then the sad probability is that B&S probably would have been accidentally rounded up and shot in the fucking head by MAFF slaughtermen ages ago under the erroneous impression that they were sick sheep.” Oooo… he gets to be scientific and macho. Looking at his photo, i see a balding man with a sweaty forehead, a lot like me. I think he’s macho. Maybe i’m wrong. It bugged me when i bought the B&S single on Monday morning, and the guy behind the counter looked at me as if i was mad. I don’t look twee enough. Prejudice. It deeply bugs me that some critics try to pull of statistics (even if tongue in cheek) and rabid partisanship at the same time. It might be preferable that each critic specifies which parent was the favorite, what toy was played with most in childhood, the memory of one’s first sexual experience, and how many drugs have been ingested and what kinds. I’d trust someone who’d qualify music who gave these details than someone who spits out a lot of random numbers. Qualify it, don’t quantify it, you fuckers. Who are you bastards?
By the way, more of the endless juxtapostion and scrambling for a sell-by date for Air and Daft Punk in Village Voice. I’m still not electronically liteate enough to understand or remark. I’m stuck back on Neu! There’s also a piece on the Clientele, but i know little about them either.
Beta Band’s “Squares” seems a far superior single to “Life”. It’s still not the deconstructionist cybernetic fossil i expected, but it’s more… um, melodic? Drifting dreaming rationalization of the fears of the subconsciousness. Sample or no sample conflict, they should have stuck with “Squares” as the first single.
Oh, and another album that i’m eager to hear is the new Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. I felt Gorky 5 and Spanish Dance Troupe didn’t quite hit the spot with me (although i may rediscover them in the years to come,) but Blue Trees reaffirmed my faith.
My current Top Five Favorite Television shows are:
- The Simpsons
- Banzai
- Junkyard Wars
- The West Wing
- Survivor (the American version)
See anything unusual about that? No? Damn you! Banzai is brilliantly insane. I saw it for the first time last night. Of course, I’m probably exactly the type of person that a show like this is geared towards, there must be an audience for it, but it almost seems too weird to exist. Lou was worried that i won most of the bets offered, but i was most embarrassed that i thought that it would take only 30 balloons to lift a guinea hen into the air. Flashing lights. Bad graphics. Bad dubbing. Outlandish costumes. Yelling. Possibly fake or grossly exaggerated accents. It seems to be on every night this week.
It feels a little strange to walk around in the morning, pleased as hell with my mini-adventures of finding out where a dirty little stream goes, or what is on top of a mountain-hill, with a big silly grin plastered on my face. Unfortunately, the people around here are not much for looking you in the eye, let alone smiling back or saying good morning. I feel somewhat homesick when Lou’s not around. Aside from the creaks in my knees, part of the reason why i’m holed up in the house is to avoid inadvertantly smiling at sternfaced people.