Great line for a sick friend
If you ever find yourself in a situation where someone near and dear to you is down with some medical condition, here is a great ‘pick-me-up’ line :
When will you stop dying?
Get better
I have plans
Its a simple and direct sentiment. Practical and yet full of heart and soul. This is taken from one of the greatest living American song writer, Damien Jurado, from his blog.
Spacemen 3
I have had but one drug experience. It was great while it lasted but the comedown was horrible. I remember swaying in the middle of a bus and holding on to the poles on either side of me. It felt like the entire upper part of me had gravitated to the bottom half and the world around me was a xerox copy of reality. In place of my head was a hole.
Since that youthful folly I have steered clear of any sort of out of head experience except for when I drink. The buzz is only a paltry 10th of what I felt back then but at least the landing was less traumatic. My world be perfect if only I could feel the high without the jarring after-effects. Thats where an English band from Rugby comes in.
Over a handful of albums, a smattering of singles and EPs Spacemen 3 managed to chronicle in monochrome, the peak and inevitable trough of psychotropics. Why? So you don’t have to.
With their backs against an impenetrable wall of scuzzed-up sound, the band plucks out single-mindedly minimalistic guitar chords channeled through smoky layers of warped effects. In the eye of the perfect storm, a skeletal tune hangs on for dear life. It was not all feedback and squall mind you. Interspersed among the psych-rock were delicate almost pastoral tracks with a lot of references to Jesus and drugs. Go figure.
Starting with “Sound of Confusion”, the band expanded their sound beyond what was cerebrally accepted and gave birth to what is largely thought to be their masterpiece in their 2nd album aptly titled “The Perfect Prescription”. “Playing with Fire” consolidated their oeuvre while ironically cracks began to appear between band members. “Recurring” was to be their final release before members took off in various directions to pursue their individual muses.
At the end of the day they left behind a formidable legacy which inspired a lot of other musicians, the most famous example being the mighty My Bloody Valentine. In fact the whole shoegazing scene was founded on the ground that Spacemen 3 broke in the 80’s. Respect is called for.
UPDATE : After listening to nothing but Spacemen 3 for the past 48 hours I have come to the conclusion that they are the culmination of all the cool bands that ever came into being ie the Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Sex Pistol, The Doors and The Byrds.
4st, 7lb
I eat too much to die
And not enough to stay alive
I’m sitting in the middle waiting
Cheeks sunken and despaired
Days since I last pissed
So gorgeous sunk to six stone
Lose my only remaining home
See my third rib appear
A week later all my flesh disappears
Stretching taut, cling-film on bone
I’m getting better
Kate and Emma and Kristin know it’s fake
Karen says I’ve reached my target weight
Problem is diet’s not a big enough word
I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view
I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity
Stomach collapsed at five
Lift up my skirt my sex is gone
Naked and lovely and 5st. 2
May I bud and never flower
My vision’s getting blurred
My hands are trembling stalks
But I can see my ribs and I feel fine
And I can feel my breasts are sinking
Mother trys to choke me with roast beef
And sits savouring her sole Ryvitta
But I can change, my cocoon shedding
That’s the way you’re built my father said
I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity
Kate and Kristin and Kit Kat
All things I like looking at
Choice is skeletal in everybody’s life
I choose my choice, I starve to frenzy
Too weak to fuss, too weak to die
Hunger soon passes and sickness soon tires
Legs bend, stockinged I am Twiggy
And I don’t mind the horror that surrounds me
Self-worth scatters, self-esteem’s a bore
I long since moved to a higher plateau
Just look at the fat scum who pamper me so
This discipline’s so rare so please applaud
Yeh 4st. 7, an epilogue of youth
Such beautiful dignity in self-abuse
I’ve finally come to understand life
Through staring blankly at my navel
An ode to anorexia nervosa done up in something as banal as a pop song. The song is called ‘4st, 7 lb’ by the Manic Street Preachers. Creepy in a artsy way.
Damien Jurado – Caskets
A new video from my fav singer-songwriter guy is always a cause for celebration especially when it is this good. Is one of the actor suffering from Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy?
Mass murderer releases Creative Commons album
Never listened to a full album of songs by a mass murderer? Charles Manson good enough for you?
Watershed by k. d. lang – A review
Up to now, there is only one kd lang song I know, “Constant Craving“. In a regretful short-circuiting of my usually spot on musical radar, she slipped away from my sphere of consc
iousness. On a whim, I picked up her new “Watershed” album and after a few listens, it clear blew my mind.
Possessed of a silky, perfectly toned voicebox, she makes amazing seem as easy as a walk in the park. Preen and pose as they may, those American Idol wanna-be’s will never come within the gravitational pull of the galaxy that is lang’s voice. Its pure singing, no less, no more.
For the calibre of song-writing that is evident on this collection, it comes as a surprise that she would confess to a decidedly difficult birthing process for them in recent interviews. Perhaps like Emmy Lou Harris who at 50 bloomed into a stunning and prolific writer of aural gems, lang is experiencing a similiar jolt to the creative juices. Lets hope she continues in this vein. The world can only stand to gain from it.
How to write a song without a chorus
They are the Go-Betweens. Listen and learn people.
Lake Michigan – Rogue Wave (Video)
Is it possible to bottle sunshine? This band just did – the best thing after sliced bread; canned sunshine!
For more info on the band Rogue Wave go here.
Why Paul Potts will always kick Il Divo’s ass
I am cynical to a fault. Don’t ask me when I became like this. Perhaps I am surrounded by too much duplicity to actually believe in something pure and good. And that saddens me no end.
For the past 24 hours I can’t seem to stop thinking about this Youtube video.
The man is all wrong. He is the anti-christ of the fashion world. All those magazines say to you is how shit you look. But suddenly the shit opens its mouth and out pours this voice that fills all the shallow puddles with pure honey.
Not that I am an aficionado of operatic music but I have a sneaky suspicion that he may not even be anywhere near the top of the pile but his glory does not lie there. And thats the power of Paul Potts. He does not have to be the top opera singer to gain fame. He just has to be Paul Potts.
Paul Potts is a carphone salesman. He is also the overweight man with bad teeth who shuffled into an audition wearing a shabby coat, all nervous and looking as if he wished the earth would just swallow him up. He is the everyday man who sang with the voice of an angel and brought an audience of 2000 to its feet. Like me they knew they were witnessing the very embodiment of our collective secret desire; to be possessed of a talent so out of proportion to our physical appearance that it must be a divine joke.
Yes, Il Divo are very talented and they look great too. But they will never ever hold a candle to the flame that is Paul Potts. Why? Because he is the rest of us.
‘In Rainbows’ Bonus CD – a review
By now people should know that I love Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’. For the record I was among the 40% who actually paid for the download. Of course GBP 1.45 is way lower than what I would have to fork out for the-soon-to-released discbox. Today I want to talk about the material on the bonus 2nd cd that will come in the box.
Out-takes are out-takes for a reason. They are usually bad ideas which seemed half-way decent after that 5th beer but do not stand up to the harsh light of reason the morning after. However we are talking about Radiohead here. Some lesser bands’ careers are based on songs of the same quality as Radiohead’s most throwaway tracks. For a bunch of stuff rescued from the editing room’s floor the bonus cd stands up respectably well to repeated listening.
“Banger & Mash” is a cantankerous call to arms. Fueled by a funky bass line, the song bursts out of the starter’s block, all chrome and gleaming steel. “Down Is The New Up” slows things down with a fluid piano coda followed by its morose elder brother “Go Slowly” which moves at a glacial pace with the trademark Yorke falsetto hovering over proceedings like an angel in heat. “Last Flowers” opens with a traditional piano passage framing a simple melody fleshed out by some beautiful singing again courtesy of Major Thom.
“MK 1″ and “MK 2″ are short sonic interludes san vocals culled from tracks in CD1, positioned as a bridge between the 2 discs. “Up On The Ladder” is a welcome tip-of-the-hat to the progrock of “OK Computer”. Whether knowingly or otherwise “4 Minute Warning” which closes the disc, sounds amusingly like a Christmas song replete with tambourines and a mutated strain of jauntiness shot through with custom-made Radiohead foreboding. How about that folks? We just heard the followup to “In Rainbows”!
