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Saturday, June 07, 2003
A hastily scribbled scrap of paper says, simply: “you will like this. You will write about this. It will save your day.” The note wraps around a seven inch single with a sleeve printed on an inkjet printer. It appears to be a band called Action Biker, and they appear to be Swedish. At least, the brown paper bag that the single arrived in carries a Swedish stamp. It also has two big red felt tipped stars on it. So now I’m excited about getting home and sticking it on the record player, although if truth be told I’m tempted to just put the record in a box and frame the note. Or at the very least stick the note on my classroom wall. Oh, and I want to stick an ! after Action Biking. You know, as in Action Biking! Like Action Painting! Or Hurrah! Which reminds me of something Matt Haynes once said about every label needing a group with an ! in their name. I guess we’re still waiting for the Shinkansen one… although maybe we could just reinvent Cody as Cody! Hmmm, no, maybe not. That would be as silly as Trembling Blue Stars! Just doesn’t suit the music, does it? And there is no punctuation mark for butterfly kisses in the sunset trees, is there? Well anyway. Another morning, just gone ten, in the Boston tea party drinking decaf. In the immortal words of the Clientele ‘it’s a Saturday.’ It’s meant to rain this afternoon. I can’t believe it’s been a week since the end of half term. It feels like forever. Feels like we’ve never been away from school at all. So already weary and tired and counting down the weeks until the summer vacation. Six and half… sheesh. Kids are so shit and devoid of all, uh, I was going to say passion, but really it’s just devoid of all anything. Fourteen year olds, asked to bring in some magazines, comics, books, ANYthing to do with something they were interested in… I mean ANYthing they were interested in, there were no caveats, didn’t even say ‘and of course please don’t bring in your page 3 collection…’, but hey… So what happens? No one bloody bothers. They’re all sat there with fuck all. You have no idea how depressing that is. Or how depressing it is that no-one seems to be making any kind of effort to push forward plans on the GCSE photography course I’m meant to begin in September, and hey, it’s already June and nothing is in place in terms of hardware, and no-one gives you any answer, any feedback, no-one keeps you informed. It’s all bollocks. And there’s no money anyway for anything and ah, what am I writing about this for when, again in the immortal words of the Clientele, ‘it’s a Saturday.’ So Saturday morning, I suppose I could go and look for some robots or something, but really I cant afford to spend more money, certainly not after recent spending on bike and books and films, and especially after another twenty quid or so shelled out this morning on a book about the Tour. Lots of nice pictures… Well, it is the Tour’s centenary year, so there’s even a bit of fuss in the UK. If you know where to look. And for some reason this reminds me of the strange Highway Maintenance van which I seem to see frequently on my rides and which always seems to honk its horn when it’s behind me. It’s quite strange and annoying. Thursday it did it again when I was coming home from school, and as it came alongside I noticed the bloke in the passenger seat had a note held up against the window. It said ‘alright Dave’. It’s all rather baffling. Maybe they have me pegged as David Millar. Ha ha. As if, and if only… or maybe they do this to all cyclists, and ‘Dave’ is their name for us all. The mind boggles. I guess it must get quite boring working on highway maintenance and they need to invent little games. Well don’t we all? Friday, June 06, 2003
Listening to the lovely new Meets Guitar Ep on Becalmed records, and thinking that the closing track like the theme tune for a kiddies TV show from the depths of the ‘60s or ‘70s that no-one ever remembers until they see some dodgy retro show: Mary Mungo and Midge or Camberwick Green rejigged and given a fleeting repeat on the psyche of thirty forty somethings. And despite the reference to dodgy 'lets re-contextualise the past' TV shows, that's a GOOD thing for it to sound like. Thursday, June 05, 2003
I've been reliably informed that there are loads of bloody shops in Exeter currently selling repro retro tin robot toys; I just dont know about them because I never leave my bloody attic or get off my bloody bike. It's true... all horribly true. I rode to school and back today, you know. Kids always seem to be impressed; they're like goldfish, forgetting they said the same things last time I rode in. It's quite sweet really.
If I had a shed, I'd definately be going to this. Even in my shedless state I am tempted to pop along and enjoy the shed-talk. (Prepare for bloody obvious sad joke) I wonder if Shed 7 will provide the entertainment? Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Duh, so it turns out there are repro X-9 robot car toys available for, like, under twenty dollars. Why don't any Exeter stores stock stuff like this? Oh right, it's Exeter. Of course... Well, anyway, if anyone is doing advance planning and is wondering about what to get me for Christmas, then now you know. I kind of like the look of the smoking robot too. And lavender robot is rather lovely.
Browsing for robots, stumbled upon this, which the sharp eyed amongst you will no doubt recognise as the source material for George Eisner's ace cover art for Blab 13. This kind of little thing makes me so happy. I really am sad...
More links… pockoville is the offspring of the Pocko books project and is kind of diverting, whilst at Quizilla you can see what Ivy League would be right for you. This assumes of course that you either live in America, go to an American school, or can remember what you were like in high school and can maybe pretend that you live in America and/or go to an American school. I did the latter and this was the result:  Columbia You've worn all black since you were nine and knew, even as a nine year old living in nowheresville that you were a New Yorker at heart. Well, you wont make it in the big city. I'm sorry tike. Still, have fun while it lasts, because the rumor is, most Columbia students don't. But hey, Kerouac went to Columbia, so yay! for Columbia. Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Also just remembered: browsing in MVC (didn’t buy although I was tempted by a Tintin DVD) overheard two youngster lads walking down the ‘Pop’ isle, one saying to the other ‘but the Pixies aren’t Pop!’ When everyone knows of course that the Pixies were one of the Popest Pop bands ever to pop into the land of Pop. That they played Pop so much louder than most was of course their coup de grace. But Pop they most assuredly were, are and will continue to be forevermore until Pop has, um popped its clogs. Which kind of reminds me of before half term when a nice year 9 lad had brought in a ‘classic Rock’ magazine. We were flicking through their ‘100 greatest albums’ list, me making disparaging remarks about almost everything, him saying incredulously ‘but you like the White Stripes!’ as if that meant I should like, I dunno, Guns’N’Roses or Scorpions or whoever the hell else was there. Anyway, there was ‘nevermind’ at like number six or something and I said ‘oh well that’s a great Pop record I guess’, and him and his mates all go ‘Pop record!!??’ like I was talking in some alien language. Which maybe I was. Hopefully. Anyway, it’s funny how re-contextualisation can change perceptions, and how changed perceptions change received histories. Or, to put it another way, how marketing alters history…
Oh, I remembered what I forgot. I was going to mention a few more website things that have caused me some degree of delight in recent days. First off, another bunch of bleedin’ Canadians, the Fembots. At first I was expecting some kind of odd electro-techno thing (maybe it was the Futurama reference and all…), but I was all wrong. Instead Fembots make a sweet kind of quirky contemporary folk sound, and if you don’t believe me go listen to a couple of tracks from their ‘small town murder scene’ record on their website. There’s a song called ‘prison memoirs of an anarchist’… c’mon, how can you resist? Also, check out the MJ Hibbett and the Validators ‘sampler’ site for their ‘this is not a library’ album. It’s old skool teletext style a go-go. Musically, well, it’s kind of a collision between Half Man Half Biscuit, early Wedding Present/loads of mid ‘80s trashy thrashy guitar-pop bands. Lo-fi ain’t even in it. Personal faves would be ‘poetry is a programming for our time’ and ‘holdall is the new name for midland mainline lost property’. Go out and get ‘em boys (and girls). That last line was a Wedding Present reference, incidentally, I case you’re too young or old or disinterested to know. Ahem. I’ve been playing Nico’s ‘Chelsea Girl’ album a lot the last few days you know. I’m assuming everyone else already noticed it, but doesn’t ‘These Days’ (a song by Jackson Browne) bear an uncanny resemblance to bits of Belle and Sebastian’s ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’? Well in case you didn’t already notice that, it does. So there. I also promised I’d mention Flame Books because they sound like a nice idea, and anyway they asked Andrew Gallix for his favourite sites to link to, and he included Tangents, so, uh, yeah… Flame Books will be doing book things online, except there’s not much info there yet, so maybe keep hopping back every so often to see what’s up, and maybe too send them your ideas for projects. Because you never know when someone is going to say ‘yay!’ to your ideas. Now I’m listening to the Foxgloves, and the Foxgloves sound lovely and have a picture of Roland Barthes on the cover of their ‘Lives you didn’t lead’ EP. The lyrical wit and wisdom of Stephin Merritt, the musical bent of Lloyd Cole. Oh, and they do a rather peachy cover of ‘I know very well how I got my name’, originally done by some dodgy old geezer who used to be in the Smiths.
Chance meeting (cue Josef K, one of my all-time favourite tracks ever, incidentally) this afternoon in the Exeter street… So there I was wandering home from the Digital Media Education Centre (where I’d managed to skive off to for the afternoon), just picked up my mail from the post office box, camera at hand, ready to snap any interesting sight when I spied some beguiling graffiti near the Chinese medicines shop. ‘Satan is close’ says one, and, just below it, ‘Thomas will have revenge’. I know I have to record these for my daily diary, so I point and click. Then just as I’d taken the photos, a voice in my ear says ‘Are you familiar with Ian Sinclair’s work?’ and like a dumb ass I go ‘no…’ even though Rupert has written about him for Tangents on several occasions in the past. Still though, I guess I was honest because whilst I have actually heard of Sinclair I’m not actually familiar with his work, so… Uh, whatever. Anyway, it’s nice to have someone introduce themselves to you in such a way and I like to think that I too would speak to someone else I might see photographing graffiti or torn flyposters or general urban decay, despite my natural proclivity for insularity. Whatever, these things are important, make me realise that all the hours spent with thirteen year olds trying to get them even vaguely interested in New York early ‘80s Artists like Basquiat and Haring is really just an aside and that there are others out there in the world who are thinking and creating on similar wavelengths. So yeah, maybe I should take a look at some Sinclair. Maybe I’d be more interested of course if I lived in London, or had some kind of draw to the place. But I don’t, and I don’t, so… Whatever. And actually now is probably as good a point as any to mention Smoke, a publication of London tales published by Jude Rogers and Matt Haynes. It’s a good ole fashioned paper and ink fanzine, only not about music but about London. And despite what I just said about not living in or being particularly drawn to that city, Smoke is still hugely enjoyable. Hell, reading it even makes me kind of want to dash up there just to see the arch through which the city dead once alighted their personal train service to the suburban graveyards in Woking? And I’d kind of like to check out the Empress State Building too. If you live in the, ah, smoke, look out for Smoke and snap it up. A snip at a quid seventy. Oh, and there’s a website (isn’t there always?!) www.smokelondon.co.uk There were other things I was going to write here today but as usual I’ve forgotten them. And my phones keep ringing and interrupting me and I’m sorry but I’m not the kind of person who can just let a phone ring or let the answering machine take it (unless I’m cooking or eating or something…). Maybe I’ll remember some of what I’ve forgotten later. |
