I can only walk past so many Nazis.

[alexsarll]

As is usually my habit I am posting this before reading my friendslist, but I'm guessing that at least half of it will be either Snow! :) or Snow! :(, so in deference to your jaded sensibilities I shall avoid the topic.

I've always known there was something bothering me about Klaxons, beyond the praise they were accumulating for fairly mediocre records. Then I read that they wanted to go R&B, 'Ghetto Fabulous' started playing in my head and everything slotted into place. Three post-indie kids who've done dance, done pop and have their eye on R&B? Klaxons are the rubbish Baxendale! And is is so often the case, they're snaffling all the plaudits and sales which eluded their vastly superior predecessor.

The Boys is back in town.

Further to yesterday, it seems I spoke too soon about the Lords: "A Church of England spokesman said: "We...acknowledge that in a house with reduced numbers consideration needs to be given to the appropriate number of Lords Spiritual. We also welcome and agree the recommendation that the wider religious make-up of the UK be reflected by the appointed element of a reformed House". Now, if they meant ensuring that representatives from the National Secular Society, pagan, Satanist and Jedi bodies got seats, fair enough. But why do I suspect that's not going to be the case?

Virgin was full of posh schoolgirls this evening. The world does enjoy its little puns.

Comments

[kitty-collar.livejournal.com]

Or Snow! :/

xxx

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You're a maverick LJ user who doesn't play by the rules!

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

Klaxons are the rubbish Baxendale!

Harsh, but fair.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm just amazed I didn't realise it sooner. I'm slipping!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

bwahahahahhahahaha.

i stil ♥ baxendale, bless 'em.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the last sane man in here.

[giro-playgirl.livejournal.com]

Yes but Bazza, Baxendale WERE rubbish.

You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Baxendale were one of the all-time great lost pop groups, and if there were any justice 'Music For Girls' would have defined a generation.

Re: You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak.

[giro-playgirl.livejournal.com]

Woah there young man. Being wrong I can deal with. But ugly? You've not even seen me for almost a year! My feelings are HURT.

Re: You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

(Chris Morris quote - I assumed you'd recognise it!)

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

This seems like a good place to say that I've always wanted to like Baxendale but never quite managed it, for musical reasons that feel similar to the reasons I don't like the Pet Shop Boys. (As yet undefined, but it's something to do with major chords.) So if I had never heard of them, which songs would you recommend above the others? I really want to like them and I want to know what it is about them I've missed.

E.
x

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

For Baxendale? 'Music for Girls' is the key track, definitely. After that, it gets more subjective. If you're not so keen on major chords (which roughly speaking = cheerful sounds, yes?) then maybe 'Battery Acid' or 'Switzerland'.

I'm always rather surprised when *anyone* doesn't like the PSB, but particularly so given you're a synthpop fan!

Wrongpop

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

No, Baxendale really were the rubbish Baxendale (lovely people, mind). I don't like indie bands doing pop. It's like indie bands who claim they are influenced by Motown and Brian Wilson and Phil Spector and Joe Meek and even modern things like Girls Aloud, but what do you know? It's yet more dodgy lyrics, dodgy vocals, offkey harmonies, cheap synths and handclaps. Rotten. They should be proper pop groups or steer well clear.

Re: Wrongpop

[peacockpunk.livejournal.com]

If I ever hear a band dribble in an interview "We're not afraid of pop, we don't think it's a dirty word. We're not ashamed to be pop." then I pretty much know they're going to be godawful. And I never liked Baxendale. And Barry, comparing them to Klaxons is a stretch worthy of Reed Richards.

Re: Wrongpop

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh sure, most of the time it's a case of 'you wish' - but the same applies whenever a band quotes good influences. Hell, even the bands who quote rubbish influences usually don't manage to match them. Sturgeon's Law, remember?

And yes, like me Reed has a mighty intellect capable of spotting connections not clear to lesser brains - though clearly I'm very disappointed by his position on the Registration Act.

Re: Wrongpop

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Why can't indie bands be influenced by those things? There's no point getting over the snobbery which automatically dismisses 'manufactured pop' if we only invert it and assert that no non-manufacturd/'indie' band can be pop. Sure, most of them are dreadful (hi, the Pipettes!) but so are most 'proper pop' acts - and others, like Johnny Boy, will carry it off.

TBH I find it puzzling that people can even see the boundaries anymore, after McFly managed to make a pop career out of being a fourth rate indie band.

Re: Wrongpop

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

They can be influenced by those things, if they understand what makes those things great and do them right. Just doing a half-arsed version of that thing and calling it indie isn't enough. Crap lo-fi versions of stuff that isn't supposed to be crap and lo-fi is pointless. Johnny Boy sounds like proper pop, though the girl needs the studio trickery to help her weak voice. Still, it doesn't hurt Kylie et al so let 'em get on with it, it's not unpleasant and offkey and yer man with the electronics hasn't chosen to use a VL-tone emulator to make the backing tracks. Talent and production values shouldn't fall by the wayside. The Associates were indie and yet proper pop, non? Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran, Bowie - all fully-realised versions of stuff, not half-arsed, and yet non-manufactured and full of substance (until they went shit).

McFly's first album was pop, as was their third. Their second was third rate Kendallindie, but we can't have it all.

Re: Wrongpop

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

The Associates, like Roxy Music before them, had the good fortune to precede the deleterious 'pop'/'indie' dichotomy - just like Bogart or Powell & Pressburger were lucky enough to live before Hollywood split into 'the blockbusters' and 'the arty stuff', both of which were painfully incomplete.

I have heard plenty of McFly, and not one second of it belonged anywhere but third on the bill at the Dublin Castle.

Also, I love Johnny Boy live.

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

More baxendale fans - I knew there must be a pocket of them somewhere...

I presume that Tim Benton has got bored and decided to do something else?

Last time I saw them was at Cherry Red, I think, and can't even remember where that is now...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Not Cherry Jam, in West London?

I believe they're still going, as a studio project at least - the website was recently resurrected, albeit in fairly spartan format.

[the-elyan.livejournal.com]

Probably Cherry Jam then, yes, as it was some shoebox-sized club in west London somewhere (probably the arse end of Notting Hill, as most of these things were).

I also saw them at 93 Feet east, RoTA at least once, and at a very peculiar gig in the studio at the Union Chapel. And probably somewhere else I'm forgetting...

When I was a Londoner, I went to quite a few gigs in that general vein, especially things involving Bob Wratten in his many guises...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

We seem to have been to an awful lot of the same Bax shows there. Though I've only ever seen Mr Wratten in Oxford.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I thought she only liked metal?

As regards the Myspace message - because I've no idea how to do replies on there - I wanted to have a track up from one of the bands I actually knew, the better to plug them, and given my January reclusiveness 'Leave The House' seemed like the best choice!

[darkmarcpi.livejournal.com]

Baxendale are OK but Schmoof are better. And talking of groups on the London Synth pop scene, Trademark have a new album out soon.

To my knowledge I've not heard The Klaxons, but the descriptions of them in the press haven't made me interested. Apparently they play Altern-8 rave tuebns, but on guitars. Which sounds awful. What next? Synth-pop played by an indie guitar four piece? Fvckanory.

[johnnybrolly.livejournal.com]

Klaxons are a band made of 3 white instrument playing blokes. There are fairly elastic limits to what you can do with that, but limits nonetheless. They aren't rave, nu-rave (as a term) means precisely f#ck all, and all that one can say about the genres being associated with the Klaxons is that The Klaxons are arch bullsh!tters. None of this should mean an awful lot to anybody...but...Golden Skans is brilliant. It definitely transcends the 3 white blokes limits. Baxendale, unfortunately, never sounded any better than what they were on paper.

Baxendale, unfortunately, never sounded any better than what they were on paper.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

But given that on paper they were a bunch of reformed indie kids who were going to save the world with MUSIC FOR GIRLS*, that's like saying that the Cure for Cancer was never any better than what it was on paper.

*An angle later adapted and adopted, with greater success but similar brilliance, in Franz Ferdinand's mission statement.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Schmoof are better than most of London's electropop acts, largely through being rather more pop and rather less caught up in the sterile end of electro. But they're still a band I tend to think of as part of the scene, rather than a band who deserved to be supermassive.
Trademark...entertaining enough if they're on the bill at an event you were attending anyway, but the idea of actually going out of my way or investing money for them is a non-starter. Apart from anything else, for me they will never better the Fan Club where they out Gary le Stranged Gary le Strange, without even trying to be funny.

"To my knowledge I've not heard The Klaxons, but the descriptions of them in the press haven't made me interested. Apparently they play Altern-8 rave tuebns, but on guitars. Which sounds awful. What next? Synth-pop played by an indie guitar four piece? Fvckanory."

Has already happened plenty of times, though normally as an aberration rather than a career - witness the long-standing trend for indie/rock bands to do covers of pop tunes, either because they believe they're rehabilitating the song by getting rid of those nasty synths, or just for a cheap laugh.

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

Even McFly are guilty of this, having covered Mr Brightside and removed all the synths. I don't even like the Killers much, but I still see the pointlessness of this exercise.

I blame Whiley and her cvnting Live Lounge. From Travis doing Britney onwards, most of those covers originated on her shitey show.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh, it far predates that - I remember local indie bands in Derby doing it, back in the mid-nineties.

One good thing did come of the Whiley business (which I'm otherwise agreed is pestilential) - Franz Ferdinand's 'What You Waiting For?'. You can tell they respect the original, but not so much so that their version is too polite.

[myfirstkitchen.livejournal.com]

Oh I know Whiley didn't start it, but she has encouraged the practice to spread. Legitimised it, if you will. I like that Franz cover better than most of their own songs.

I'm possibly doing a collaborative cover of History Repeating soon, but that's mainly 'cause I'll take any chance to do a bit of Bassey. It won't be drenched in bloody guitars, either. "Real music" my arse.