31 January 2003
I have now lived in the drab world of the non-smoker for two long and sorry years. I promised myself when I gave up that I would not become one of those dreadful converts, whining about their clothes stinking of cigs after five minutes in the pub (of course your togs don’t smell of the ALE you’ve drunkenly poured down yourself, do they? You could wear them tomorrow if it wasn’t for that cigarette’) If you don’t like a smoky boozer then I’m sure there’s an All Bar One or a Starbucks or a Body Shop to suit your requirements perfectly.
Two years on and I have an update: I’m still pro-smoker. I haven’t lapsed back into smoking and I haven’t gone over to the darkside of the anti-smoke brigade.
The other night, however, I found myself in the glamourous West End of London (well, the Glasshouse Stores). I was appalled to see a publogger stub out her cig butt on the carpet, on the grounds that the ashtray was at least a yard away. That, my friends, is deeply antisocial pub behaviour, it contributes in an entirely negative way to the process of a boozer becoming tatty and it should be frowned upon.
Of course, it hardly compares to the other piece of very bad behaviour I saw recently, in which a piqued punter threw his freshly-bought drink to the floor in protest at some (real or imagined) issue. That he lost his own drink was well-deserved. That some entirely innocent and unconnected bystanders had their stuff drenched with booze was not. Certainly the damp innocents will have had more to worry about than a slight smell of tobacco on the tube home.
The worst thing about this incident was that I had broken my rule about not entering a pub with a bouncer on the door. And the miscreant in question still wasn’t ejected. What use is that?
Tim in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
30 January 2003
I don’t drive. I’ve never even taken a driving lesson. This in itself is not of any great interest, but it means that I rarely have the experience of hearing music I like in the car: when I do travel in a motor, I tend to be subjected to the listening choices of the driver.
But one night I’d been to a folky / country benefit show in Hammersmith with my brother. I went to see Emmylou Harris and came away wildly impressed with John Prine. In the car on the way back home to South East London, through Chelsea and onto the Embankment. I was long-term ill and feeling drained, desperate for my bed but with that over-tired awe of London’s wonderland. The brother flicks over to some dodgy country station.
I didn’t know what it was at the time, but they played ‘Drive’ by Alan Jackson. Modern-trad epic country: I couldn’t work out whether it was a come-to-me or a run-away song, but it didn’t matter. It sounded like the greatest, hackiest thing ever, sentimental, spot-on. Dry as dust, maybe not going anywhere much but moving anyway. For that moment, perfect.
More than a year later, bits of the song are still stuck in my head. The next day, the internet told me what the song was, but I decided not to buy it. I couldn’t — can’t — see how I could hope to get anything more from familiarity with the record. As Daniel Williams wrote on Tangents (probably at around the same time), it’s not often one remembers particular instances of listening to recorded music. I decided I wanted to hang on to this one.
Tim in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
29 January 2003
One Line Dismissals of Country Videos, Part One
Drive-Alan Jackson
Daddy songs, no matter how hackish, make me lose all critical skills, and Country has too many of them.
Dean Tuftin-I’m not so little
A bully comeuppance story,
Alabama-I’m in a Hurry
The best selling country group of all time, which proves that danger is not a virtue in Nashville.
Tim McGraw-Cowboy in Me
He’s vain, and the images of him half naked throughout distract from the music.
Willie Nelson -Maria
The latin women dancing throughout the honky tonk is a cliche, but
Luke Wilson as bearded drifter, fucking hot.
When the Lights Go Down-Faith Hill
Darling, CMT means country, take your banal Celine stealing, interchangeable pseudo diva, big haired nonsense to VH1
Anthony Easton in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
28 January 2003
If he’s so full of poetic wonder and awe, why does he sing these lyrics like he’s reading an encyclopedia? What woman is going to be flattered by having lecherous lyrics unemotionally intoned at her by someone who gives the impression that they’d rather be watching football than sing to her as she stretches out naked on the bed before him?
(Further discussion should probably happen in the comments or on ILXOR, I’m guessing.)
DJP in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
This isn’t the wonderland you’d find a hyperactive grade-school kid pinballing through — sure, the kid’s happy to pull on pant leg & dress hem screaming MOMMY DADDY LET’S GO HERE I WANNA SEE MICKEY WHERES MICKEY MOMMMMMY!, but what about their flagging enthusiasm? Undoubtedly, their once-boundless happiness at seeing little Horatio geek over Captain EO for the 15th time becomes subsumed by sore legs and crotchety financial concerns and those ever-so-brief thoughts to distract their bundle of joy with nice animated rodentia while exiting stage left for a quick soak and a quicker snog.
No, this is a more reasonable type of wonderland, the sort of place that’s always a joy to explore and admire. For me, that’d be the hilly outskirts of my home state, Connecticut. For the 99% of you unfamiliar with the area — ‘outskirts’ in this plot of land equals any area 25 miles to the left or right of the state capital, Hartford (excepting Fairfield County, of course, which I still think is just a part of upstate New York looking for tax breaks from us yokels). If there’s one road, one general store, actual trees, and lots of rusty dilapidated gas stations, then you are definitely skirting the out. Thompsonville, Moodus, Hebron, Canton, New Fairfield, Lebanon, and so on for another 50 towns. Once in a while, my job would lead me to navigate those winding, inhospitable lanes of asphalt slicing through the thatch surrounding these quaint little hamlets. More often than not, I’d grouse and gripe while beat-up trucks nearly knocked me off the slim little bit of road I called mine, or whine that the street-signs / picket-fence-type posts don’t catch the eye of a working tourist gunning past them at approximately 25 MPH. And when it rained or snowed, I did my best to stay the hilly course and avoid flirting with any of the sleepy hollows abutting the road, while stinking up the plush felt interior with my potty mouth. But, of course, once I shut my pseudo-city-slick pie hole, and business was done, and I took a moment to actually look around at the trees and the buildings and the sky and the snow dappling the scenery and that strange, alluring mixture of openness and isolation — well, it’s a cliché because it’s true.
So when John Mayer is half-whispering about this wonderland, he’s not some randy lothario willing to squeeze out a line of bullshit for some lemon-squeeezing action. He’s not even that overly poetic awestruck artiste treasuring each inch of milady’s skin like the water that passes between the lips of a island castaway. He’s the guy waking up at 1 PM on a Sunday afternoon while his girlfriend of 2 or 3 or 5 years sits up in bed, in her glasses, reading Fox Trot, sipping on some coffee, and the light from the bedside lamp mixes with the way the pillow tousled her hair, and he falls in love with her all over again. The song’s not complacent — it’s confident and it’s comfortable. Maybe a little cocky, too — save that ‘if you want love / let’s make it’ line for the gals you pick up after your wonderland kicks you out of Space Mountain, John — but after all this time together, she can see what he really means to say. Of course she puts down the paper and coffee — wouldn’t you?
David in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
JOHN MAYER – “Your Body Is A Wonderland”
I decided this morning that i would take on the following challenge; I’d pick a song I didn’t particularly like and write about it without going off on a ranting screed. Dear readers, if only you knew how hard this is for me! Even now, I sit here with finger trembling, every nerve in my body aching to type invective and derision as if I was psyching myself up for a pit fight. But NO I SHALL NOT SUCCUMB.
So, this song has been making its way up the top 40 for some time now. What can you really say about it? John Mayer has a passable singing voice, I guess; he doesn’t hit any wrong notes, even though his nasal burr is slightly less soothing than having porcupine quills lovingly stuck in you arms by an evil witch- WOAH I am breaking my rules. Let’s try this again.
To Mr. John Mayer: Really, would it have killed you to invest some energy in the song? From what I can tell, the fact that this lovely lady’s body is a wonderland laid out for your enjoyment excites you as much as looking up the oil company in the phone book. Everything about the song screams “safe middlebrow music”. There’s no bite, no hook, no ANYTHING for the listener to engage with besides vaguely pleasant, forgettable guitar and vaguely unpleasant, forgettable singing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this song, partially because they play it to death on Boston morning radio (and BOY do I regret that our bathroom radio is stuck on KISS 108), but mostly because despite the countless times I’ve heard it, I only have a vague recollection of how it goes. All I really remember is deep irritation and pain while it’s playing; once it’s over, I find myself somewhat puzzled as to why I was so irritated. Perhaps I should give the song points for giving some insight into what it’s like to live the life of the main character of “Memento”, but I’d much rather hope and pray that I never ever ever ever ever ever ever EVER had to hear it again.
DJP in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
27 January 2003
When I heard Stephen Patrick Morrissey in high school he was the boy I always wanted. Fey, elegant, prone to word play, sensitive and maybe even homosexual. His stories were autobiographical in a way that could be constructed to comfort me. I wanted the stories to be lonely heart tales about the pretty boys on the album covers, so they were. I wanted the sensitivity to be playground reactions to masculine men and it was. It wasn’t only me though, generations of boys who weren’t sure exactly who they were listened to the Anglo-Irish lover on cassette tapes in their lonely bedrooms. The lad had legions of fans, all of whom took him as a bit more than a rock star.
This reading wasn’t completely out of place. There were songs about disco dancers and robin hoods who stole hearts and sailors, about troubles in grammar schools and out on the street. He knew us more then we knew ourselves.
Mexicans sing narrative ballads about the dangers and joys in their lives. Complicated, multi-narrative epics with world-weary cynicism towards love-tales, where the border is as literal as the Rio Grande or as symbolic as the variations of the heart. They sing songs about sensitive lovers pining for the girl, even while sick or away. Gangsters hire bands to play for them, funerals come with wakes soundtracked to these songs, and supper club cabarets still sell out. These songs about love, drugs, borders, the immigrant experience are ancient and ingrained from the birth of a Mexican child and young people have not abandoned them but reclaimed them. Everywhere there is a large immigrant population, the clubs have dance remixes of the ballads of youth.
This lonely Englishman talked to us in code, he never made fun of our political beliefs, he said witty things in interviews that may have been about the status quo. He hated Margaret Thatcher. He made us think we were talking about serious issues. When he wrote about skinheads and Asians, was he talking in character? Did he love working class boys ? Were the songs about rough trade? He was ok to like. He was literary enough to scribble in notebooks and use as yearbook quotes. He was sensitive enough to moon over but wouldn’t be seen in the arms of a Hollywood bimbo. He was handsome enough that he could be. He uses synths, instrumental breaks, his voice has a soothing but almost operatic quality. He enjoyed irony, and we were clever enough to recognize it. He wrote hooks though and I, at least, would breathe the lyrics, all through classes, maybe as a way of protection but mostly cause they were catchy.
At home, I would write the miserable poetry of youth, while hearing his voice. There was an effort to control myself but my toe would tap. Once, my mother told me how much she liked listening to the Smiths because she could hum along.
The elaborate metaphors and romantic heroes of Mexican song tradition are half of the country’s vernacular literature. The heroes of the ballads were heroes of the streets, the robbers and kidnappers and noble murderers. The heroes of God were equally important. These heroes were worshipped because they withstood great pain, their hearts were visible outside their chest like Mary or Christ. Occasionally it was other people who caused the pain, but more often then not it was heroes who hurt themselves. The lives of the Saints are filled with not only acts of physical violence but emotional ones. These are men who separate themselves from both their families and their homes. They wander the desert or become hermits. In the name of God, of course, but also because they felt most comfortable there.
Since High School Morrissey has become nostalgia for me and my kind. I buy expensive concert tickets and he stands me up, promising to reschedule. He shows up on late night television, treating it like Marlene Dietrich treated cabaret work in the mid 1970s, as a way to make money from suckers who lived off her memory. He looked like Minelli marrying David Guest instead of being Sally Bowles. He wears a cardigan and a lavender lace up shirt. He mimes broad pantomime gestures, his face is doughy and he has gained forty pounds.
My hero is lost in pancake makeup and late night television, he is supposed to tour but never does. The gossip mills resurrect rumours that he is dating people who have already come out and I realize Moz never did. The man who was my Manchester Sodomite, a reincarnation of Oscar Wilde becomes another stop on the old queens nostalgia circuit. But we expect old queens to come out, and I’m sick of reading code.
In Los Angles the Latin community has discovered a new hero. He is a second generation immigrant, Ireland to England becomes Mexico to the USA. These songs are filled with pain longing and lovers crossing borders. They are filled with martyrs, heroes, hermits and thieves. Like ballads they have long solos to show the musicians’ prowess. He is macho as well, showing a rockabilly element that modern bands don’t even try to ape. They latch on to this singer, his voice echoing from their homes and cars. This is a new thing for them – although he hasn’t recorded an album in seven years. There are rumours that he is queer, but he has never really said anything and a man’s silence means as much as his words. This outsider tells them stories they want to hear and they go to the conferences, learn all the words and get his name inked on their shoulders.
Academics noticed this and interviewed participants for theses, write think pieces complete with pictures. Spin, like the bloodhound it is, sends a writer and gives the latino/as a five page spread. Internet gossip ratchets up and so does mouth to mouth. Some of it’s about a new album or a tour
where he doesn’t cancel most of his dates. But within this speculation are ugly gashes of queer hatred and racism.
There are questions being asked that contextualize this as a kind of freak show. Isn’t it weird that these Latin folks like an anglo artist? Why do you think that would happen? Is it weird that Ricky Martin sells ten million albums to white folks? Is it weird that my university, in the Canadian prairie, features salsa dancing, and that dancing is done mostly by white people? In our postcolonial world, is culture not transferable? Does it not move both ways?
The other myth, the homophobic myth, is the myth of vampire as inspiration. You see it in Sunset Boulevard, where Norma Desmond regains her energy at the expense of the young writer Joe Gillis. We all know what happens, this vampiric energy cannot hold and someone ends up dead. You see tt in the ludicrous book and movie Gods and Monsters where a lecherous James White gets a hard-on for a gardener that could be his grandson. This hard-on leads to posing naked for sketches, garden parties, panic attacks, guilt, flashbacks, and then erotic breath games with a World War Two gas mask on a dark and stormy night.
Writing on Morrissey in the last couple of years has concentrated on the Latin Boys who love the English Fop – some of them assume that Morrissey’ s apparent new energy comes from a desire to please these new fans, and by extension fuck a few groupies. There he is in a crumbling mansion, high in the Hollywood hills luring members of the Latin Kings to be his harem. They write his material and he records it. None of this is said but connect the innuendo and it’s there. There may be something to this though, not in the latin heartthrob servicing the Irish Saint – but a cult audience that still cares about the artist – especially one whose main fanbase has either moved on or grown up.
For the sensitive people who played him in middle class high schools, Morrissey is no longer the pin up of choice- there will always be sensitive boys with floppy hair that black-clad goth girls and bedsit homos can swoon to in unison, it’s just this year its called emo. When an artist is replaced in his fan’s hearts he could live on residuals or try a new sound or keep recording the same album ad infinitum. Without doing anything but moving to Los Angles, Morrissey has become a dying vegetation god of sensitive boy pop. Like all dying vegetation gods from Adonis to Elvis, this has awarded him a cult and imitators. The thing is he did it without dying – that’s the miracle.
Anthony Easton in FT • No Comments
Every time I do a Pop-Eye (and it has been a while) I learn something new. This time I have become increasingly sure that despite the idea that this is a rundown of the most popular records in the country, the top three are a bit of an anomaly because by far the worse songs in the top ten are the occupying those slots. That means David Sneddon is still at the top. But even though he came out of that awful Fame Academy thing – its okay – he wrote this song himself. Which may explain why no-one has slagged off this sub Del Amitri mid-tempo blah tune as much as they should Hence he is literally living the lie that he is a good songwriter. David, back to the streets with you.
Jay-Z does not knock Sneddon off the top. Which is a mixed bag because Bonnie & Clyde is not all that good. Beyonce does not really do that much here except watch Sex And The City and get soppy about being girlfriend and boyfriend. True there is a brief discussion about the difference between loving and humping, but beyond that hinting how much better an old Prince song is than the one you are listening to is a pretty bad idea. Almost as bad an idea as a trance tune called The Opera Song (Jurgen Vries featuring Charlotte Church). Its probably not getting many plays on Classic FM. Hopefully, its not getting many plays anywhere. Note that on the Opera Song Charlotte has no vision of the future – unlike the much better single at number four – where there is a strong vision of the future.
In the future not much will have changed except we will live underwater. Year 3000 by Busted has taken the silly that was What I Go To School For and squared it. Every line of this song is lyrical gold – joyously daft and Busted prove they are the male Daphne And Celeste. And yes, I obviously like it because his time travelling, great, great, great, grandaughter shagging neighbour is called Peter – which is not a name often mentioned in pop. I need to get hold of one of those flux things.
Anyway Busted starts a solid run of great records. Its has been proved elsewhere that Sound Of The Underground is the best Popstars related hit, and also that it is a Frankenstein’s monster of well over eighty other songs. Punjabi MC is still in the top ten, and we’ll see if this is just novelty value or breaking a new wave of Bhangra in the charts. I’d love it to be the latter, but it is probably the former. There are tracks this goof out there, but this has only made it where it is with the sly hip-hop connections the song has. Still sounds brilliant on the count down. Especially next to Lose Yourself (which ought to add to its worldwide number one status add best song from a film Oscar). Go B.Rabbit.
At ten – Craig David and we ask ourselves – is he relying too much on his mate the guitarist? He has proved he can do it live and a rhythmically plucked acoustic guitar can approximate nicely for a garage beat. But its the garage beats we want on the tunes Craig, plus lyrics we can take the piss out of in the pub. So instead Jameison and Angel Blu gives us the best UK garage can offer us at the moment in the charts one higher, and it is a pretty good approximation of the Artful Dodger with perhaps too much going on. Daniel Bedingfield - another so called UK G player is still in the top ten at eight with exactly the reason why he is the best British popstar at the moment. A softies charter of a ballad where he doesn’t mind sounding like the most craven man in the world. The kind of song that could never come out of the Popstars process by the way. And if it had come out of Fame Academy it would never have sound this good.
And so to the new entries that didn’t make the top ten. Lemon Jelly at sixteen with Nice Weather For Ducks. Oh look, a pleasantly wacky pastoral sample. This comes from the Mr Scruff comedy track school of dance/ambient tunes – the sad thing being that these tracks are often the best thing on otherwise pretty insipid albums. Also about as danceable as Lemon Jelly gets – this is plenty of fun, mainly for its High Chaparal strings. There is an air of the kitchen sink about it though. With Stormy In The North, Calmer In the South at seventeen, who says the British aren’t pre-occupied by weather? Considering its been about seven years since The Wildhearts had a single, this sounds surprisingly fun and fresh. They aren’t exactly the future of rock’n'roll anymore though, and this certainly does not sound like and future rock’n'roll would ever aspire to have..
Which finally leaves us with Darren Hayes : 1980 Me. A tribute to the decade that gave us famine in Africa, war in Afghanistan and ridiculous Republican politicians in the White House. So how Darren managed to get into the mindset of the eighties one cannot fathom. Actually the sum of its pastiche is a few cheap synth sounds, and a lyrical hint which is about as culturally specific as a talking head on I heart The Eighties. ‘I wish I was eleven again when ET was my friend’, Hayes says – accidentally tipping the wink that he is now 31. Or a million years old to the teenage girls who ought to be his constituency.
Pete Baran in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
23 January 2003
Ah happy daiz. I used to work in a dodgy Local Pub which catered to Local Squaddies, visitors from surrounding more middle clarse villages for our ’3.99 meals (extremely good value if I say so myself and OOH the curly cumberland sausage – why o why have all pubs stopped serving them??) and old meng – the landlady was a bleached blonde lady who gave me the job waiting on without asking any questions – HOORAY!
Then one day came an UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT sign – no-one told me – and the first sign of new management that I got was the sight of New Landlady sharpening a huge knife and larffing to herself over a sizzling hot plate.
I got the fear – I did not last a lot longer whilst Under New Management.
And she was the one who got rid of the curly circular cumberland sausage.
May I recommend you visit Crackling and purchase a sossidge of your own?
Mmm.
Sarah in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
‘ You know someone said that the world’s a stage
And each must play a part.’
Someone said that did they? Just some old Joe Soap knocking around so that you Elvis Presley, self styled King Of Rock’n'Roll and the man a well known burger chain was named after, could quote it in a song. That someone was fucking Shakespeare you illiterate, greasy, corpulent dead guy. And you got the quote wrong.
Tanya Headon in I Hate Music • 4 Comments
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