It'd be rude not to stare, really

[alexsarll]

That's two Piccadilly trips I've taken now and I must admit, I was bloody glad there was a pint at the end of the first one. Electrogogo...it may simply be that I wasn't in the mood for it last night, but I don't think it's for me. missfrost says it's not normally that crowded, but it had that typical Central London clubbing mix of a few cool people and genuinely astonishing costumes with haggard clubland survivors, try-hards and random backpackers. The music was a good synth-based mix (albeit perhaps a little one-note, and with a few too many remixes) and the first live act was promising - she looked like suicideally, she was covering 'The Model' and she was accompanied by several poledancers, one with a unicorn's head. This, I realise with glee, is the sort of thing my mum pictures when I mention Soho. But then the Ping Pong B1tches come on...I saw them years ago, coming on like an even more desperate to shock Lolita Storm, and I was hoping against hope that they might have matured in the meantime. Instead, they've just stopped sounding like Digital H@rdc0re and started sounding like Republica out-takes.
Poptimism aside, I think it'll take a lot to get me clubbing in the centre again.

Ayman al-Zawahri and George Galloway seem to be taking very much the same line on who's to blame for July 7th, and the moral position of those prepared to kill while sticking up for extremist Islam. Does anybody still need further proof that Galloway is slime?
Meanwhile, as regards al-Zawahri, I think today's the best Sun headline since the Falklands.

Nearing the end of Psmith Journalist, I realise what's been unsettling me - this is a Wodehouse protagonist who genuinely cares about corruption and the condition of the poor, who wasn't just adopting it as the pose it seemed to be in Mike and Psmith, who isn't just doing it to impress a girl. And then the further realisation hits - he couldn't be doing it to impress a girl, because I don't think there's been a female speaking part in the whole novel.

Many of you will only know Bill Savage from my "dirty volgans" icon. Suffice to say that he was the star of Invasion, a strip which appeared in the first year of 2000AD (beginning before even Judge Dredd) and was a hero in the resistance when Britain was invaded by thinly-disguised Russians. The strip has recently been resurrected by 2000AD veteran Pat Mills, and some of what he's done has been excellent - he's explained why they're called Volgans, for starters, and generally painted quite an evocative picture of Britain under the neo-Stalinist jackboot. But in the new run, which began this week, he has seriously mis-stepped. To have a lairy trucker quote Leonard Cohen seemed a bit unlikely - but to reveal that the Volgans were allied with Britain's aristocracy? I know you hate the ruling classes, Pat, but that simply doesn't make sense.
Still, John Smith and Paul Marshall are back together for space censorship epic Leatherjack in the same issues, and that alone's enough to keep me reading.

Comments

[how-i-lie.livejournal.com]

Today's Sun did give me cause for an amusing chuckle on my way to the bus stop, yes :)

Galloway is slime. Some of my best buds in Scotland find him to be some sort of cult figure, but I say replace the l with an n and you're a lot closer.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I was looking blankly at that and thinking 'Gannoway?' for a moment before it clicked.

I've got friends who I think like him simply for being 'anti-establishment', or for his supposed rhetorical skills. It worries me a little, given he's clearly pro- some far worse establishments.

[kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com]

...and with a few too many remixes

I had a feeling that might be the case. I'm not a big remix fan.

Wow, I read a post of yours and it's not got a hundred million comments already! And I actually read it. Sort of.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You read the Electrogogo paragraph and then drifted off, I'm guessing? There's a reason that was first.

It's later than usual for my first post, what with the half day.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind I came in outside normal rush hour...but yes, for lunchtimeish, Oxford Street and environs did seem pretty empty.

[ex-dumbgenius.livejournal.com]

It is horrid, though. I was going to pop down to Oxford Street but the world was dark so I came home to wallow in the gothness.

[ex-dumbgenius.livejournal.com]

the weather, that is.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The combination of humidity and rain is not a pleasant one, no.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Fridays are always emptier anyway, but this was rather quiet even so. I got the tube to work this morning for the first time in a month and Actually Got A Seat.

Christ, yesterday the canal was teeming with pedestrians and cyclists. Commuters are a bloody superstitious lot, aren't they?

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Getting a seat in yesterday's rush hour was ridiculously easy (though I did end up sat opposite a woman with a Bible. We were glaring at each other intermittently, she presumably because I looked like a deviant and me because I trust the religious on my Tube even less now).

I don't think there's been a female speaking part in the whole novel.

[rentaghost31.livejournal.com]

gheye!

Re: I don't think there's been a female speaking part in the whole novel.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It does rather make one wonder. Particularly given Psmith's habit of hanging around with muscular sporting types.

andy, you're a star

[rentaghost31.livejournal.com]

looks like your gaydar is improving, then

Re: andy, you're a star

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily - for all I know there's a subsequent book where Psmith is happily up to his neck in girls, and this is another misfire on my part.

Anyway, fictional characters are different. You can know so much more about them so much more easily than real people.

[renegadechic.livejournal.com]

"...coming on like an even more desperate to shock.."

this is the factor of electro at the moment which i really dont like. the whole shock to get noticed, stylisation and image over musical credibility thing. i dont wanna see people throwing themselves across the floor tearing their clothes off covered in fake (or real) blood when i see a band. id rather see a band who made genuinely great electro based on just being good. thats my main gripe with electro although my secondary gripe is being somewhat bored of twee electro bands with rather weak drums with little punch and generic female singers.

still, ive been tempted by electrogogo for a while in the quest for clubs i might like. im not sure if it will really be my thing though.

Nicky xxx

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You say that, but Fischerspooner were more concerned with spectacle than music first time out, and they played the second best concert I've ever seen.
But with that caveat, I suppose in general I'd agree. The Noblesse Obliges and PPBs of this world...it's all a bit gruesome, isn't it, and slightly embarrassing?

[renegadechic.livejournal.com]

slightly embarrassing is the side i would err on. i mean not only is it more than a bit silly, theres no longevity to it, and it puts more people off than attracts them to it.

with fischerspooner, it felt like it was original on a mainstream level. yeah so the club kids were years ago but we hadnt really seen stuff like that before and the original is always better than the subsequent things. also as they seemily brought that kinda thing to the mass market they kinda did it better with higher quality music than any of the bands since. id be happy for there to really just be one of them rather than that be the only way electro gets anywhere. i get the feeling that the real reason electroclash died was because people jumped onto the image and style too much and ignored the music which actually had a lot of potential and instead got diluted into indie with the killers and the bravery

Nicky xxx

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Even in the first flash of electroclash, I tended to get a bit bored by a whole evening of the stuff. There was a lot of good music, but it tended to get a bit monotonous because almost everyone was using similar sounds and similar ideas of cool.

[renegadechic.livejournal.com]

yeah, i guess thats because of the whole bandwagon thing though. you end up saturated with chaff and have to hope you dont get sick of the good stuff. sadly i dont think theres a good enough musical climate for bands doing things a different way to be brought to the mainstream. im still holding out on electro having its time again one day though, i think its only a natural progression. it seems like synths are having their comeback in a more 70s way at the moment with guitar bands adding some synths to their sound, its just more david bowie/joy division than depeche mode/new order/kraftwerk at the moment

Nicky xxx

[capitalflash.livejournal.com]

i hope you're not having a pop at peaches, young man ;)

seriously though, i think i get what you mean. so many mediocre artists out there trying to shock. it bores me to tears.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Peaches is fun as club music, but I very seldom get the urge to listen to her at home.

[rentaghost31.livejournal.com]

soulfluff has anabsolutely cracking upskirt photo of peaches

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I really want to see up Peaches' skirt.

[rentaghost31.livejournal.com]

hmpf - you don't know what you're missing

[rentaghost31.livejournal.com]

i can't believe i just wrote that - to you of all people!

[renegadechic.livejournal.com]

actually peaches was quite far from my mind. i dont know her stuff that well but shes not bad. much in the same way she was more original in what she did, even if not completely to my taste. ill still dance to it i just like something more synthy :)

i find it frustrating because ultimately every single time electro has been considered a joke, its because of fashion and because of performance art. people go on about 80s revival listening to certain bands more because of their haircuts and suits but equally people slag off electro for the very same reason. its association with embarrassing fasion statements makes the music and medium embarrassing by default where as guitar music and real drums has always been stamped with a label of cool. i think i just want to see an electro band come out who everyone can respect and who dont get dogged by really dodgy stylistics that people will laugh at in 5 years time!

Nicky xxx

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

You mean that they're not just called Volgans because their country/empire/seat of power is located next to the River Volga in Eastern Europe?

And what's the Sun's headline?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I think it was "Get Back In Your Cave", or similar.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The Mirror had a less forceful (and thus lamer) take on the same approach. Whereas Metro led with his assertions, rather than a denunciation of same. I was not impressed.

[ex-dumbgenius.livejournal.com]

aye, the Metro was decidedly crap on headline front this morning.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

GET BACK IN YOUR CAVE.

And yes, that's the basics, but I like the whole alternate timeline Mills came up with where Vashkov's Volgan party took power, Labour got rid of the American bases over here and so forth.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the interesting thing about the whole VOlgan thing is they became part of the 2000AD canonical timeline; they're the enemies that Hammerstein used to fight against, pre-RO-BUSTERS, and I think they're the direct precursors of Dredd's nemeses, the Sov-Block Judges.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

But the hybrid 2000AD timeline is, even by comics standards, an incoherent nightmare! Pat Mills is, alongside Terry Nation, one of the very few people who can singlehandedly screw up his own chronology in a way which normally takes a whole stable of writers.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the fact that they set things far too close to the present day, thus invalidating them too early. What was that Alan Grant Megazine story that was set in 2001, which was named something apocalyptic or something? I keep thinking Armageddon 2001, but that was a terrible DC crossover. But anyway, it meant that the apocalyptic wars that led to the Mega-Cities took place 4 years ago now...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I do recall some mention in an old prog of an upcoming story called something like Armageddon, which was going to explain how it all fitted together. However, I have never actually seen said story.

Such anachronisms are one of the reasons I do like 'Another England. Another 2004' in Savage.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, dat's der bunny. Alan Grant and Carlos Ezquerra story, in the first few Megazines after the relaunch in 1991. They did the first part, a six-part story about which I can only remember an Ezquerra picture of a bloke who looked a bit like Rutger Hauer in sunglasses and the phrase 'jovus witless', and which was IIRC about someone trying to start a nuclear war. I was very excited (I was a continuity geek par excellence aged 13) and waited with bated breath for part two, which never arrived...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Wha? Even by the standards of 2000AD's lean years, to begin a story and then never print Part Two is quite astonishingly poor going.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

By part 2 I didn't mean the second five-page installment... they had the first six-part story arc, which ended with some sort of cliffhanger, then there was some sort of delay, then two years later they admitted in the letters column that they weren't going to bother printing the rest of the storyline...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

ARGH.

[suicideally.livejournal.com]

As I am very vain, I am intrigued to know what "looked like suicideally" means...