I saw the marvellous and wonderful Elbow in Vicar Street last night. They were marvellous, and wonderful. Guy Garvey is so charismatic that it’s pretty much impossible not to have a good time at one of their shows. Another reason to buy an Electic Picnic ticket, yes?
Strictly speaking no, since I just looked at the lineup and they’re not on it. I’m not sure why I thought they were… but what the hell, Grinderman, a flaming jazz bar* and the best pies in the world will be there, so buy a ticket anyway.
*May be a composite of several blurry memories.
I am seven kinds of wrecked today, so this kind of goes nowhere. It’s my Cormac McCarthy post.
The sweaty ginger apocalypse that is A Futurist Theatre played Doran’s last night and as per usual they raised rooves, wrecked gaffs and mixed metaphors at a rate of knots per hour. Since I’m friends with the band I’d like to be able to say that they’re rubbish, thus proving the Stalinesque ruthlessness of my critical intellect, but they trip me up by being consistently awesome. It’s starting to give me a complex.
Following a night swanning around my flat with a pack of cigarettes shoved up my sleeve, I had planned to blow everyone’s mind and James Dean the motherfucker. Unfortunately, my level of drunken bombast had blinded me to the worrying level of translucency of my one and only white tshirt. James Dean not being famous for subtly flashing his nipples at strangers, a post-work jaunt to River Island was necessitated.
By the ancient and unwrit rules of men’s fashion there was only propely decent shirt there, and that only available in extra small. Now, I’m prepared to call myself a svelte guy – I’m aware of the concept of muscles, but they’re not something I’ve ever got the hang of – so I reckoned I could pull it off. And it worked out all right, although things like eating, drinking, walking, dancing, breathing, thinking and so on were a little trickier than usual.
Plus, on an unrelated note, I accidentally kneed a guy in the mouth. Good times all round.
Over at mybrilliantmistakes, Cynthia Closkey has a post about the decline and fall of the oral tradition:
If I post a story on my blog, it’s captured in words. That’s nice if I want it to be captured. But what if I want for others to take it and run with it, add their own twists? [...] rarely does anyone take a post and reimagine or re-present it in a new light. In fact, I think if someone did, they might be slammed for stealing the originator’s idea.
[...]
I think the Web is a little too good at preserving things, so we can’t experience the beauty and surprise of mutation.
(I’m aware of the irony of dumping all that in a block quote. Whatever, man, whatever.)
I remember a person In The Know telling me that jazz is essentially about two things: collaboration and improvisation. That doesn’t really jive – so to speak – with the modern way of doing things, where bands, authors and so on are seen as monolithic entities with a distinctive style and personality. A lot of effort goes into building and maintaining this kind of image, and recognition and personal glory are seen as rightful rewards.
The upshot is that there’s very little tendency to play around with creative output. That’s why I love projects like Desert Sessions and Goon Moon: it’s a bunch of guys playing around. There’s also a (slowly) rising trend of musicians making master tracks available for their fans to remix and share, which is of course opening the collaborative playing field. What about writing, though? Back in the day, stories were cannibalised left right and centre, with the emphasis on what the writer could build around that. Nowadays that just feels like cheating.
That’s a shame, to be honest. It’s fair point about the level of preservation on the internet – I wonder if we’re approaching a kind of recording saturation – but it’s also an ideal medium for collaboration and/or riffing on other people’s ideas (*cough*), and it’s exciting and fun to be involved in something like that. Cynthia wonders whether the spirit of the oral tradition is “part of the human experience”; yes, I do believe it is.
Trent Reznor’s latest wheeze, much like his previous, has been described in many quarters as “doing a Radiohead”. I don’t know, did people describe every CD release for the first few years as “doing an ABBA“?
It’s worth noting that Yorke & Co. never intended to revolutionise distribution, whereas Reznor most certainly does. The system in place for Ghosts I-IV represents a return to the drawing board after the disappointing results of the Saul Williams experiment; in other words, Reznor is committed to figuring out how to make this work. If someone with his profile can make a proper financial success of such a venture, who knows what it’ll kick-start.
Now obviously, NIN had a hefty fanbase in place before they came within shouting distance of a self-published album, and it’s true that anyone can start vomiting content onto the internet without a hope of meaningful success, but once the trails are blazed it will start to become a more and more viable route for emerging artists. Grim tidings abound, but it seems to me that should the new models be proven, the changes in the cultural landscape will be hard to predict.
1. It’s hard to take flabby poodle-head guitarists seriously.
2. Greg Puciato is built like the Death Star.
3. I’m off to Italy for the week.
Talk t’ya.
Saw the Smashing Pumpkins t’other night and… well now.
The first twenty minutes or so were amazing. As in, I was laughing like a fool and having trouble breathing because they were that god damn good. That opening stretch counts as possibly the best gig I’ve been to in its own right, so I didn’t really mind when they started playing the new songs. Too many of the new songs… ok, whatever, they’re not touring a greatest hits collection. But things really went off the rails with the half-hour noodlefest towards the end. No matter what Mars Volta fans might insist, standing in a cattle pen watching a band practice ain’t a good night out.
I have to repeat though, lest this get too negative, that what dodginess there was merely brought the average down to immensely good night. I was disappointed solely because they set the bar so very, very high with the first few songs.
I also saw Queens of the Stone Age in the Ambassador last week, which was a hoot and a half. No… two hoots. It’s always stuck in my craw that I missed them in the Big (Quite Small?) A in 2002 , so it was good to get another shot at that. Not much else to add, seeing as they didn’t trample on my dreams (aw Billy, I’m just foolin’ with you), except to say that Josh Homme is the man. Science has proven it.
Now for Dillinger on Saturday, We Are Scientists in April, and hopefully Saul Williams and Elbow at some point too. Things are shaping up quite nicely indeed.
(Unrelated: this is fantastic.)
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