Here are my singles roundups for 2009/10's Student Direct: Mancunion Edition thus far.
SINGLES 21/09 Lady Gaga bolts out of the gate with the fourth single off The Fame, and gosh does it sound like it. The former Stefani Germanotta slides out the single crassest sex synonym since R. Kelly’s ‘Ignition’ (“I wanna take a ride on your disco stick”) - which would be eminently forgiveable were it not married to the same sort of anaemic 'future' R&B sludge that cruds up the third quarter of all Gwen Stefani full-lengths to date. People compare Gaga to Madonna; Her Madgesty’s fourth single was the mercurial ‘Borderline’. Just sayin’.
After ‘Now You’re Gone’ seized control of every teenager’s mobile phone on every single bus in the land, the Eurodance arena-shaker known as Basshunter is out to prove he’s more than just a bloody huge kick drum in relentless 4/4 time. On 'Every Morning' his sonic palette also encompasses a sample of an acoustic guitar, and, err, that’s it. The story is pretty much the standard wishy-washy love gone horribly bloody wrong but forget that SHIT because this is Ibiza YEAH. It meets its design brief (“make a club of proles dance”) and clocks off with admirable brevity, which is the best anyone could have hoped for.
In the dumper: A-Ha return for the umpteenth time with 'Nothing Is Keeping You', which sounds grown-up and windswept and several other synonyms for 'profoundly boring'. Sloppy seconds on offer from The Veronicas, whose bland mall-punk '4ever' charted in their native Australia four years ago when it was still three years past its sell-by date. Rammstein show zero career progress, offering the same industrial-rock nonsense as ever on the not-as-funny-as-they-think 'Pussy'.
Finally we have local (well, from Wigan) chanteuse Nancy Elizabeth, who takes a quantum leap away from her pastoral folk beginnings with an immaculate and dark imagining of what trip-hop would sound like if it originated from the woods instead of the inner city. There's not a wasted note here and her 'Feet of Courage' single proves enough to take this week's crown.
SINGLES 28/09 Say what you like about convicted fraudster Lou Pearlman, but when he simultaneously milked and managed US pop behemoth Backstreet Boys, they'd at least manage a high quality single once a year. 'Straight Through The Heart' is conveyor-belt nonsense that straddles a bizarre line between Usher's version of what the future looks like and Ace of Base's conception of the past. One to avoid.
La Roux are so '80s that insiders at their label tell me their next LP will be a recreation of the Miners' Strike played entirely on an Atari ST. Until then we'll have to make do with 'I'm Not Your Toy', a CD so lightweight that when the hacks at the office jabbed it irritatedly out of the stereo, it floated out of the window. Forgettable.
Rudebox was the shame fantasy of his naysayers, but Stoke's version of a charm offensive returns with 'Bodies', which is not The Great Robbie Williams Comeback Single some may have hoped for. Instead, it's more like the boring middle-eight from twenty okay songs stitched inappropriately together. Thankfully none of these songs are 'Rudebox', indicating a positive step forward for all concerned.
Opposite ends of the spectrum represented in this week's British guitar bands; The Enemy return to patronise the working-class a bit more on 'Be Somebody', coming across like the pub-rock Paul Weller manning The Jam karaoke. At least their misguided rage offers some substance; Bombay Bicycle Club have the slender cheekbones, hi-slung guitars and artfully rumpled shoes, but their 'Magnet' single is the lyrical and musical equivalent to a zephyr.
'Save It For Someone Who Cares' is the new effort by The Leisure Society. It won't define any epochs, but will catch you off-guard as you find the work radio tuned to Radio 2. It's chummy, melodic and understated; a parallel world theme tune to The Good Life. The only problem you'll have with this slice of late-summer sunshine is whether you'll still like it when your dad tells you he does too.
SINGLES 09/11 If the singles round-up is a lovely party, then Drunkdriver is your pissed-up uncle whose wife just left him. He needs a place to crash, but not as badly as he needs to urinate or learn social graces. This NYC trio flay a cyclone of abuse and ear-junk on their 7” 'Knife Day', a molecular-level garage-rock band practising behind a man violently querying his phone bill. In short, brilliant.
N-Dubz continue their diet pop-hop for the ASBO generation agenda with the admittedly catchy 'I Need You'. Sure, the sentiment is pretty banal (dude needs girl/girl needs dude) but it does contain the line 'look for you on Facebook / will I get a Faceback? / lookin' for you is like a needle in a haystack.' Who says brilliance can't be completely contrived?
What treachery! Girls are all boys! They're burning up the blogs with their sunshine/heartbreak lo-fi but all this hack hears is a reverb-heavy Cast with the American Shane McGowan honking away on vocals. Elsewhere on Indie Boulevard, the brothers Jarman and grumpy cousin Johnny Marr (aka The Cribs), throw out their best effort yet on 'We Share The Same Skies'.
When Britpop was in its pomp, reinforcing ancient 'real rock' stereotypes, Weezer were the ones showing that Americans could do irony without being completely depressed. They were funny and clever and economic – but never at the expense of writing killer songs.
Nowadays they're as cloying as Michael McIntyre's full-bore gurn and a thousand times as irritating. There's a million decisions goes into making an album – literally - and since the turn of the century, they've made every single one wrong. 'If You're Wondering...' is more ham-fisted than Porky Pig. Forget the taxi, this band need a hearse.
A quick album review of state of the EDL-dream nation record, landfill indie comp NME: The Album 2009
V/A, NME: The Album 2009
When octagenarian smut-pedlar Ken Russell (ask yer dad) claimed that The Big Pink were 'Kerouac meets Cagney', every British alarm bell should have been sounded. Beacons lit. Emergency frequencies commandeered by the government. Every man on every ship semaphoring the message: INDIE IS FUCKING DEAD.
Nothing against Russell personally but judging by his films, his artistic sensibility lies halfway between a used copy of Razzle (ask yer dad) and one of those Diana plates they sell in the Daily Mail.
If a journey to the cerebral cortex of Jo Whiley sounds like fun, this is the stocking filler for you. The two discs overflow with chance-free identikit sewage. The only thing that differentiates Friendly Fires, Passion Pit and Temper Trap is the space they take up. Even their names are basically the same.
What makes this truly nauseating: in a year where Jay-Z and Dizzee Rascal annexed rock radio, it doesn't feel remiss to note that there is one black musician on this entire 40-track record. If we take the average members per band to be four, then out of 160 musicians then basically we've got ourselves a self-congratulatory white-boy skinny-jeans jungvolk circle-jerk that makes Caligula look like Jim Davidson.
Worse still, there's so much co-opting of ethnic sounds that it begins to feel like a deliberate up-yours to every ethnicity; afro-beat guitars, drum circles and tribal imagery. Talk about fetishing colonial times: there's even a band called Bombay Bicycle Club. Hand, staple, forehead.
The genre that used support the miners and smash down Babylon has become Scrooge McDuck, backstroking in its own affluence. This is the perfect soundtrack to usher David Cameron into power; youthful, white middle-class, devoid of substance and potentially cretinous.
Anyone can sing. Even the deaf. Go on. Do it. Inflate the lungs. Sing along with me. Even this guy can sing too.
Not like that. Too sharp. Too flat. Too pitchy. Too loud. Too quiet. You sound like a grieving horse. A shot sparrow. A misfiring car. Just fucking stop, ok? You make the birds sick. You make Jeremy Irons cry. Children don't want to follow their dreams. Man will cease to procreate. You killed the world.
Broadly speaking, singing holds a special place in human society. It's social, a ritual, a way of reaching God, a comfort, an accent to grief, communication; its functions too broad and bountiful to name comfortably here.
Within the popular or common idiom, it is a representative device used to 'humanise' the song. As 'lyrical' and 'poetic' as instrumental music can be, sane and rational people prefer music with vocals because they can imitate a specific strategy of the music themselves without any specialist training (unless you're some kind of twat who takes a guitar to a gig).
Turn on your TV. People, on shows like X Factor and the musical casting shows are constantly being told that they can't sing. And when people are being told they can sing, they're being told by people who couldn't possibly understand what good singing is and where it comes from.
I blame Stevie Wonder and his melismatic ways. Melismatic singing is that where a syllable is sung as more than one note. This accounts for the 'oooouuuuuewwooooaaoaooaooaoooh' over-enunciating from pretty much every singer since 1966. That said, Stevie's songs were complex and demanded such endeavours. 'She's The One' by Robbie Williams does not.
The voice, even when acting in a representative medium such as song, is capable of sleights of emotion so jarring that the lump in your throat feels like you swallowed a housebrick whole. It can catch you in your most extreme mindsets - of joy and pain - like a mirror and show you back in the most naked state; vulnerable and inexorably human. It's more than simply 'recognising yourself' in song. It's how at once we can elevate ourselves to be more than we've been and yet be isolated, adrift, aware of how futile it can all be. And yet still understand that things matter; that you matter - that this, whatever 'this' is, matters.* Ahem.
Take this example. The second chorus. Two simple words: 'forgive me'. It's one of very few times I have heard an enunciation of a lyric which equates to the sentiment it expresses in reality (ie. not in song).
Think about it. Let's examine some lyrics while you do.
Take a look around At what technology has found Is it what we need? Or are we killing the seed? Dictated by the screen No more following your dreams The world's become a difficult place to be
Fuck. This dude is angry, frustrated, confused. He might even be right. Technology man, all these wasted words and instant communications - but at what cost? The media does act dictatorially; its influence upon the behaviours and motives of individuals and groups is as proveable as almost any cause and effect in science, from race riots to eating disorders. The human voice has ways of expressing the layers of hurt, anger, sadness and nihilism inherent in this lyric. Who is this sage?
Extreme example. Or is it?
Bad singing is not an inability to hit notes in a timely fashion. The Shaggs couldn't do either and yet their songs retain a magical quality.
It's true that I have a suspicion of professional singers. I've been told that I can't sing by my own parents: I was born with a cleft palete, so that may have had something to do with it - I am lucky to be understood even when simply speaking. I later went on to front a couple of bands anyway. As long as the conviction was there, what did it matter? Professionality has so many negative connotations bound up in; mercenary, slick. What can they care about content? It's also true that I adore unconventional singers such as Mark E. Smith, Damo Suzuki and Marion Coutts.
The point is that you can sing, even if you've been told that you can't - or that you have been told you can but you've been doing it wrong all your life - hitting those notes, coming in at the right time and always looking presentable. You just have to be there, understanding exactly what the fuck you are going on about, and showing it back to us: no matter how fragile and small or bellicose and triumphant that is.
You don't even have to look good doing it or even look comfortable.
*smug preening wankers who laugh their sickly laugh and say 'why don't you study something useful?' in their shirt-and-tie, phone-in-a-room lifestyle who have their head up their arse so far they can't see these are the reasons we bother to keep ourselves alive.
PART ONE Could music be contributing to our own ill-health?
Music is a healer. This isn't a soggy liberal notion: the NHS employ music and play therapists. It is science. Music performance as a rehabilitative therapy aids motor skills, cognition and enables a communication form for those who lack verbal skills. Read some of Oliver Sacks' work on musicophilia. Music helps people suffering a range of ailments from Down's Syndrome to cancer to autism. If you need a real-life example - Neil Young's Trans. His son Zeke was born with cerebral palsy and the Synclavier enabled the two to finally communicate in a meaningful sense.
Music can also cause and induce pain. Some artists base their career upon it; Masonna, Whitehouse, Merzbow - to name just three. Some remain at the level of situationist joke: there's a semi-legendary tale about Extreme Noise Terror staging an intervention at Roskilde by playing 'the brown note' through gigantic speakers facing the floor, causing dozens to shit their pants or throw up spontaneously.
Some go farther. Here in the UK, shops which have a continued issue with loitering teenagers have installed The Mosquito, a device which emits a pulse only audible by teenagers. We are also familiar with the US military's predilection for subjecting prisoners to mental disintegration by looping Metallica, Limp Bizkit and, err, Barney The Dinosaur at preposterously loud volumes. What you may be less familiar with are special weapons designed to emit violently loud and continued bursts of high-frequency noise, such as the Long Range Acoustic Device. This has domestic uses, such as breaking up crowds of rioters, but has been used in wartime situations to:
The greatest crimes of musical torture, however, are self-inflicted. Chunklet ran an excellent piece of deliberate self-sabotage as the two editors made each other a C-90 tape stuffed with the worst music they could find and subjected themselves to their 'gifts' for 24 hours. You can read the piece here, but here is a quote from the exasperated Brian Teasley after the experiment.
"After a complete 17 insufferable listens of this barbaric, ass-melting retardo music, I’m beyond fucked up. Music is stupid. I can finally understand people who say they don’t listen to it."
Adults, typical adults, everyday working adults - the sort who do not 'get into' music - prefer happy-sounding music. The radio does not knowingly, not least in its more popular slots, play depressing music. The singing contests on the television favour the upbeat, the popular, the universal and the familiar - the inclusive, the people together in harmony. Shops and public places pipe in upbeat, nominally 'happy' music. You can't escape the idea that happiness is supposed to be the norm, and yet it feels desperate, like an attempt to divert you from feeling anything else.
This state of constant beatification is apparent and yet one in three suffer from some kind of mental illness (often depressive or anxiety-related, a worry or acknowledgment that the tenuous balance between the state of fun suggested at in the atmosphere (in visual media also) and the reality of things has been transgressed) at some point in life. Whilst no scientific correlation exists between the prevalence of mental disorders and a society which consensus agrees is overwhelming, rapid, intangible, complex and multi-layered, popular art presents itself as nothing more than a whore, a cultural wallpaper at the cheer-up clinic of retail therapy.
PART TWO Remniscences of a nu-metal teenhood
This morning, my housemate reminded me about nu-metal also-rans Stain'd. Let me jog your memory.
(key moment: 3.24. Durst highlights the lyric via the medium of gesture - if you don't punch your screen through in rage before that moment, that is)
Without question, they run the A to Z of horror. Stain'd are artless, bland, cringeworthy and despicable. They're also egregious, flimsy, ghastly, hateable, insipid & jerkish killjoys - lamentably making nothing new. Ordinary powershite, quite rubbish. Simply toss. Uniquely vile. Wank. Insults beginning with X, Y or Z please post as a comment.
I always hated Stain'd. I never warmed to their grey middle-class frustration, their endlessly dreary songs or their designer angst at a time when I was an angsty, dreary middle-class kid. At least all my friends hated them too and we'd take collective joy in switching their videos off.
My friends did like nu-metal though. It was a genre to which I struggled to adjust; the fashions didn't suit me (based as they were around facial hair which I couldn't grow, tattoos which I couldn't afford and baggy denim which rendered my lower half wider than my top half, like a medieval chess piece) and the music seemed a bit silly. For a few years, at least when the music was on, I felt like a tourist.
One of music's greatest strengths is its ability to bond people, to cement a memory that will remain even when priorities and postcodes change.
Another method of sealing the future of a group's collective memory is to expose them to a period of tumult. Terry Waite and John McCarthy may not now be best friends, but their names are inextricable. They will never forget each other.
If music and tumult can force people together, the two combined must be the greatest adhesive ever. Had my friendships with these people not been as long-lasting, there is no doubt that I would always remember them after one week in 2000 that changed us forever.
Stephen's parents were away, so we spent a week off college playing Athlete Kings on the Sega Saturn, getting stoned, eating Canadian steaks and listening to the same two songs by Disturbed over and over again.
Oh, and by that last part I don't mean 'four or five times'. I mean 'over and over again'. The songs ('Down With The Sickness' and their cover of 'Shout' by Tears For Fears) on repeat. Every eight minutes or so, someone would put down their joypad, get up, walk across the room, skip back to the songs and press play. I estimate I heard each song around seventy times each.
It's difficult to explain the sensations experienced ten years removed. We live in and enjoy a culture where something that displeases us can be excised, ignored or switched off. Sometimes you might have to experience something bad a couple of times, maybe even half-a-dozen at worst.
At first it was mildly irritating, as ever it is when a song you dislike will not be turned off - no matter how much you protest. After a few listens, it became funny.
After a dozen, the humour seemed distant, eventually replaced by anger. A dozen more and it became full-blown apoplexy. The anger fatigued me so that my body became a giant raft of shit afloat in a turgid sea of piss.
There I was: drowning in the living room, the curtains closed for days, flaking away. Everyone else seemed rather buoyed by the songs instead of being terminally stricken by them. Nobody else wanted to give up all scheduled bodily functions and become a puddle of enzymes. When I emerged into the light after those three days, I was broken and have never since recovered. Take a listen for yourself. Perhaps even give it 70 spins. See what happens.
(is that not the worst song intro ever?)
Episodes such as these help teach why criticism is important and why the well-meaning rejoinder 'if you don't like it, ignore it' is knuckleheadedly reductive.
circular argument ago-go; short attention span bonus of two videos
I am a hypocrite. No, let me try that again. I am a complete fucking hypocrite. You know those people who moan that 'this bloody country' is dumbing down, getting stupid, lazy and contrite? That's because of me and people like me. I am a louse, a weed in a coat. A one-man surrender unit. I should be brutally done away with. It's only a million hypocritical shitguards like me who prevent me being found face down in a landfill 2000 years from now.
I have a job at Manchester University's weekly student newspaper as a music editor. I sub-edit, and occasionally write, copy - dealing with the dozens of gigs, records, interviews and other sundries the mega-conglomos deign to send us (I remember Sean Paul's management sending signed string-vests a few years back).
Last week, I reviewed the new Alice In Chains record. It was predictably duff. Here is what I said about it.
Grunge was over-rated. It grunted, griped and groused without grace, gumption or guile. At best it was a regional scene fussed over to a ridiculous degree. What began as disaffected outsider musing became backward-capped rock for middle-class jocks to blast in SUVs on the ride to the mall.
Alice In Chains were also-rans in the Great Grunge Boom of those early '90s, their shtick being a heavier, oblique take on the genre; hits included the indulgent dirge 'Them Bones' and the dirgily indulgent 'Rooster'. Variety and fun? Not in their navy!
Black Gives Way To Blue is their first full-length release in 14 years. Original vocalist Layne Staley may have shuffled off this mortal coil but he remains curiously present, not only in terms of subject matter, but because hired hand William DuVall can do an uncanny impression of the dearly departed.
There's no reason a fan of the original line-up should dislike this; it's as self-regarding, bloated and rigid as the group ever was. 'A Looking In View', the first single, serves as overture; plodding, over-produced and hopelessly irrelevant. Of course, it's immaculately performed and technically very adept; musicians as smug and macho as this demand it at the expense of any form of recognisable human expression.
The chainsaw-speeding-up-and-slowing-down riff to 'Check My Brain' is wasted on a song that doesn't get anywhere. The circular melodies and understated harmony on 'Private Hell' begin to mark it out as a diamond in the rough until the instincts to rock out – whilst kicking absolutely no ass whatsoever – take over.
The sad thing about this florid review is that it is absolutely nowhere near the truth of this despicable piece of shit. What I wanted to write was as many furiously hate-filled synonyms as I could, perhaps outlining some manifesto wherein bands who make systematically cynical and god-awful music as this could theoretically be sent to some kind of musicians' gulag for crimes against the human ear.
But then I started to think about the spurious notion of 'decorum' and how my inate sense of British politeness prevents me from being completely ruinous. Invective is poor show, old bean, pithiness is the way ahead.
Then I started to think about the press company that sent the record in good faith; they may be in the hot air business, but they're just normal men and women in jobs, trying to do their best for the lazy rich gits that appoint them to do their bidding.
After that I started to think about the newspaper itself; what if the press people stopped sending us records? It's not like they need to send shit to us anyway, we're basically just a student paper when you boil it down - students being the most likely to steal records, much as they are likely to steal other intellectual properties, such as entire fucking essays - so why bother marketing to the most morally corrupt of the demographics? We can't review fresh air.
And don't think that record execs and their nabobs can take the joke. The saying - 'any publicity is good publicity' - you know that one? Utter shite. Polydor refused to send a Robbie Williams record to us in the past because I'd slated another one of their acts weeks previously.
Then I started to think about the editor, and my fellow music sub-editors. They willingly entered into social contract with a normal person, not a person who thinks that an appropriate punishment for Mika for his crimes against music would be to suffer a similar fate as the man in the glasses in the video below. I like the relationships we have.
Other thoughts spiralled; what if I have a career in this and I ruin it by getting a reputation as someone who only stokes up controversy and bad relationships? Should I engender a better relationship with readers by slowly dragging them into my 'style' and then bring out the 'real opinion' later? What do I really think anyway? Do I even fucking know anymore?
By now, the copy is so imbued with outside concerns, second guessing and your basic level of flim-flam that it's basically as compromised as the godawful music it covers; lobotomised, hampered and kneeling. Why don't I just give them five stars and a hearty pat on the back for all the self-censorship it has endured?
Of course, this is the reason that everyone apart from the terminally insane is hypocritical to some degree; instinctual decisions in developed humans do not exist. All our decisions are to please someone else, or to present a version of ourselves that is more pleasing. The amount of times you could have left the house wearing a 'Macho Man' t-shirt and shorts, smelling of fetid kebab meat, only to think that someone you fancy might be around and potentially showing interest, marks you too out as a walking compromise too.
(Have you honestly heard such pointless cock in your life? Fucking plodding sex-free, humour-free US flag arsewaving...I could go on)
It is possible to live with yourself, to look in the mirror and be fine, because it is a natural state of living; deeds at odds with words. What really marks a person out as special is if they can cohere the two when it matters - and this daft rock record isn't one of those times.
It's that season where the cinema is full of the kind of stuff you'd save for possible DVD rental. From an idle forum post about the Academy awards comes a fully-formed moan.
OSCAR - Only Seriousfilm Considered And Rewarded self-reward for hilarious opening gag sets tone about meaningless statuette rant
As much as it's still a remarkable achievement to win, or even be nominated for, an Academy Award (more so, given the democratisation of technology), it appears that to win Best Picture these days, you have to adhere to a strict criteria:
- 'Middlebrow'. Tackles an 'issue' rather than a 'concept'. - Weighty lead roles by middlebrow actors; actors who have never, even accidentally, appeared in a screwball comedy. - Preferably a veteran of Hollywood directing. - A relative marriage of scale and tastefulness. - Major studio backed.
Other caveats that come into play often are some notion of reward for culmulative effort (Danny Boyle this year), the well-made biopic/film that retells a moment in a famous person's life that allegorises their life (the last five years have been very heavy on this: The Aviator, Ray, Capote, The Queen, Michael Clayton, Frost/Nixon, Milk) and occasionally a musical will squeeze through the net to placate various groups.
To think that this year's nominees are the pre-eminent 'superior pictures' is somewhat misguided, it's just that this year's best films fall into the net assembled by the Academy to catch those excellent works not meeting the criteria above. And don't think this is some pro-independence/anti-Hollywood diatribe; Hollywood and other 'large system' methods are increasingly finding money for alternative voices, whereas independent cinema seems stuck in a rut, at least in its English-speaking heartlands.
The Dark Knight, for instance, despite its flaws, is a better film on every conceivable level than The Reader. The former is exciting, keen, visual, metaphorical, exploratory and tumultuous whereas the latter is dour, safe, pseudo-intellectual, literal, flaccid and smug. The former is a cinematic experience, as much as the tale stands on its own merits, it takes advantage of all of the things the anti-piracy/pro-cinema adverts want you to believe. The latter would struggle to look classy on The Hallmark Channel. However, The Dark Knight wins recognition for everything apart the film itself or its director; shoved into a niche, a number to put on the poster.
A better film than all nominated was Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End Of The World. As good as those were Waltz With Bashir and the peerless Wall-E. But they're niche films: documentary, foreign and animated respectively. And no clever marketing strategy, 'culmulative effort' pleas or implorations of the work's gravitas is going to crack the hegemony of the Best Picture nomination circle jerk.
Largely, it has always been this way. Post-war exceptions to the rule, and possible explainations for it, are:
Marty (1955) - a weak year, a reaction to a true heavyweight the previous year, Paddy Chayevsky on board. - The Sting (1973) - other nominations split the vote, marquee cast. Noteably this year saw a Swedish film (Cries and Whispers) nominated for the central gong, so perhaps everyone went mad in this year. - Annie Hall (1977) - weak opposition, a 'coming of age', - Shakespeare In Love (1998) - weak opposition, strong cast, no apparent flaws, not strictly a 'comedy'.
As alluded in my glib sub-heading, these awards are ultimately meaningless. It's just that the idea that people are talking about essentially decent-or-not-even films such as The Reader, Frost/Nixon or - and I hate to say this, as a fan of Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire as 'the best picture' makes something in my throat feel a little dry. One is reminded of those god-awful Q Awards where the 'best act in the world today' is some dreadful guitar-slinging white bunch for Mondeo drivers. Coldplay indeed.
The first in a weekly feature investigating some of the less familiar parts of the Art In Macro physical collection; from demos, to limited editions, bootlegs and vanity presses, unusual sizes, shapes and colours of vinyl. Basically the kind of stuff you can't find in the shops anymore, or never could.
Riding Shotgun By Starlight...With The Ominous Sigh!, "Just Trying To Find My Way Home" TECHNICAL INFO: CD, self-released (Cheguevaraisnotdead Recordings), 2005
Scott Coleman, the brainchild of RSBSWTOS, is the subject of one of my favourite rock and roll stories. Whether it is urban myth or fact, I don't know. Importantly, it doesn't really matter; it was a perfect way of deconstructing the milieu of the man himself.
A friend, who was recording the debut LP (this one is the follow-up), set up the click track for Scott to play along with. Record is hit, and Scott plays the first guitar track. The rhythmic constant of the pulsing metronome is flatly ignored, the music wandering behind and then suddenly leaping ahead. The friend was tearing his hair out, anticipating a lengthy and irritating session of tracking and re-tracking. When finished, the friend, looking to tread lightly, informed Scott that it could do with recording again. Scott declined, preferring to record the second guitar line without the click. Obligingly, my friend did as instructed, despite how abstract and seemingly error-strewn take one was.
What happened next was magical; Scott played the counterpoint track in exact time with his first track. Whilst, to 'common' hearing, still seemed arhythmic and microtonal, it was all exactly as intended. His music had developed its own language, its own logic; it made perfect sense, it could be replicated endlessly, but only by him.
In the early days, his performances were the stuff of legend. Taking to the stage armed with voice and a Fender Stratocaster with ten pedals, billed as 'a one-man art rock explosion', he'd proceed to lay waste to the night. Simply ignoring the man was not an option; he either stunned you into attention or drove you fleeing from the room in sheer terror. This sense of room-bursting horror was heightened when he landed an opening slot for Monitor Records band EZT on a UK tour, bringing doses of sonic ectoplasm nightly.
The record I own is a later effort, when a rhythm section was added. Whilst it does reign in some of the more outre parts of the early material, the lengthy psychedelic/hard-rock tendencies remain, the shifting dynamics and heart-on-sleeve vocals remain. 'Fairfield, Iowa' is more plaintive, mourning a distant love.
He was in our life and is out again. Currently playing in a London-based band White Shoes, Black Heart - a more conventionally rocking affair.
