Let me tell you what I hate: I hate people with no sense of humour. I hate people who simply don’t see what is so wonderful about not owning, having never owned and having no intention of ever owning a Beatles record. I hate people who mange to take that as some kind of personal insult and feel the need to defend themselves in their boredom. I hate people who make out that actually it matters in the slightest, and I hate people who think it DOESN’T matter in the slightest. I hate people whose last resort is to make jibes about being male, fifteen years old and having no friends.

No really, let me tell you what I hate: I hate people who insist on being so condescendingly GLUM and objectively open-minded about music, and about Art, and oh, about life maybe, I can’t tell really but it seems so this evening…. I hate it when in the face of the only intelligent, soulful and inspirational thing to say being bold-faced LIES, people insist on being diplomatic and telling the boring truth regardless.

I remember when I first heard Buffalo Tom, on their eponymous debut album, and I heard all those songs, and especially ‘The Bus’ (with those guitars warping like the hole on the record [or the whole of the world] was off-centre – hey! maybe it was… not having heard a CD version I wouldn’t know – and the genius simplicity of the lyrics, even the obviousness of going home and listening to Billie Holliday) and ‘Impossible’ (with its J Mascis geetar spiiiiirrrrallllllling melodic interludes) and ‘Flushing Stars’ (with that line about brushing stars down her back, and a great grunge of noise that went around and down like My Bloody Valentine at their murkiest)… I remember telling everyone who would listen how this was a great SOUL record and strangely no-one seemed to agree. I remember saying the same about the first Pixies album and similarly being ignored, but that’s another matter.

But Buffalo Tom were a great Soul band, and that’s no lie, and Buffalo Tom remains my firm favourite of all their albums because, and it’s the only because that counts now or EVER, is because it was the first I heard, was the one that kicked me awake and tore out my heart, left it for dead on the beach with the tide coming in and the lighthouses blinking, blinking, blinking out over there and above me the stars on my eyelids.

Just like that.



posted by duke harringay at 8:33 PM