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alexsarllAs a rule, while I'll follow current bands live, reformed bands I only see once. I've always been impressed with them - Bowie, Morrissey, Roxy, the League were each shows which I feared would be saggy, worth it just for the knowledge that one was in the holy presence, and each surprised me by how good it was (especially Roxy, still the best show I've ever seen). The problem is, My Life Story blur the boundary. They're the first of 'my' bands to reform. And really, I think I should have gone with the reformed band model, Last night was great socially - musically, not so much. The selections weren't what they could have been ('Nothing For Nobody' is not encore material), the Crow wasn't there, the whole thing felt a bit like a doomed attempt to recapture a high. And I didn't even realise until I saw a friend's feather boa after that she was the only one. I think that's the last one for me.
With My Life Story yesterday and Britpop night I Can't Imagine The World Without Me tomorrow, this seems like as good an opportunity as any to point out some great lost pop videos of the nineties. Some of them I never got chance to see in the nineties, because they were stuck on the paltry selection of music video channels which we didn't have anyway, and Youtube was not yet a glimmer in the internet's eye. This one from the wonderfully overambitious Ultrasound, for instance - and it is the only Ultrasound video I can find, because otherwise the word just brings up a bunch of ultrasound scans. Yes, as in foetuses. Who all look identical - at least babies are different colours! WASTE OF YOUTUBE. Particularly when set against a video which has THE MOON CRASHING INTO TWENTIES PRAGUE. I mean, does it get much better? Oddly, though you'd think Youtube would not have been kind to gargantuan Ultrasound singer 'Tiny', he looks rather suave there - whereas Vanessa, who was pretty hot, looks a bit Nurse Ratched. Speaking as someone deeply unphotogenic myself, I sympathise. Then you've got all the acts who look exactly as you'd expect indie acts to look - Geneva, say, or Hefner, still singing songs about everything going wrong with girls while all the cool kids were at the Britpop party. And somewhere between the two, Spearmint's 'We're Going Out', a song which should have been at the party but whose invite got lost in the post. Way ahead of The Schema and The New Royal Family with the Dickon cameo, though.
Or consider Puressence, a band who looked like more scruffy sub-Gallagher oiks, but sounded like caged angels. Whipping Boy, too indie for the Nick Cave fans and too scary for indie.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Greg Dulli was still young and hot in the Gentlemen vid - although from 2007, his younger self looks almost as unlike him as the old or black doppels who share his role here. Never mind, he may have filled out since then but at least he lost this beard.
Meanwhile, back in the modern world, I'm not entirely sold on Los Campesinos' 'You! Me! Dancing!' qua song, but the video is bloody brilliant. And if I were ten years younger, their 'International TweeXcore Underground' would probably be my new favourite song in the world.
Between Terry Pratchett's Alzheimer's diagnosis (there are so many authors where their brain turning to mush would have no noticeable impact on the writing - why did it have to be Pratchett?), the death of Ike Turner (undoubtedly a utter sh1t, but also an utter sh1t who had a hand in 'River Deep, Mountain High') and the spectacular ineptitude of our glorious leader, the news has been pretty dismal lately. Unless you know Marvel comics, in which case reading about "A UN worker caught up in the Hydra attack" or that "The AIM probe has now returned the first truly global pictures of these phenomena" is worrying, but at least impressive with it. And speaking of Hydra, I'm up to the fourth episode of Heroes' second season and while I really wasn't expecting them to use Taskmaster's powers just yet, the idea of giving photographic reflexes to someone who looks like an R&B starlet instead of Skeletor is most appealing. Although I never really understood how Taskmaster kept getting employed as a trainer, anyway. Surely if you can copy anything you see, you have no understanding of how learning works for normal people, and so would make an utterly lousy trainer?
With My Life Story yesterday and Britpop night I Can't Imagine The World Without Me tomorrow, this seems like as good an opportunity as any to point out some great lost pop videos of the nineties. Some of them I never got chance to see in the nineties, because they were stuck on the paltry selection of music video channels which we didn't have anyway, and Youtube was not yet a glimmer in the internet's eye. This one from the wonderfully overambitious Ultrasound, for instance - and it is the only Ultrasound video I can find, because otherwise the word just brings up a bunch of ultrasound scans. Yes, as in foetuses. Who all look identical - at least babies are different colours! WASTE OF YOUTUBE. Particularly when set against a video which has THE MOON CRASHING INTO TWENTIES PRAGUE. I mean, does it get much better? Oddly, though you'd think Youtube would not have been kind to gargantuan Ultrasound singer 'Tiny', he looks rather suave there - whereas Vanessa, who was pretty hot, looks a bit Nurse Ratched. Speaking as someone deeply unphotogenic myself, I sympathise. Then you've got all the acts who look exactly as you'd expect indie acts to look - Geneva, say, or Hefner, still singing songs about everything going wrong with girls while all the cool kids were at the Britpop party. And somewhere between the two, Spearmint's 'We're Going Out', a song which should have been at the party but whose invite got lost in the post. Way ahead of The Schema and The New Royal Family with the Dickon cameo, though.
Or consider Puressence, a band who looked like more scruffy sub-Gallagher oiks, but sounded like caged angels. Whipping Boy, too indie for the Nick Cave fans and too scary for indie.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Greg Dulli was still young and hot in the Gentlemen vid - although from 2007, his younger self looks almost as unlike him as the old or black doppels who share his role here. Never mind, he may have filled out since then but at least he lost this beard.
Meanwhile, back in the modern world, I'm not entirely sold on Los Campesinos' 'You! Me! Dancing!' qua song, but the video is bloody brilliant. And if I were ten years younger, their 'International TweeXcore Underground' would probably be my new favourite song in the world.
Between Terry Pratchett's Alzheimer's diagnosis (there are so many authors where their brain turning to mush would have no noticeable impact on the writing - why did it have to be Pratchett?), the death of Ike Turner (undoubtedly a utter sh1t, but also an utter sh1t who had a hand in 'River Deep, Mountain High') and the spectacular ineptitude of our glorious leader, the news has been pretty dismal lately. Unless you know Marvel comics, in which case reading about "A UN worker caught up in the Hydra attack" or that "The AIM probe has now returned the first truly global pictures of these phenomena" is worrying, but at least impressive with it. And speaking of Hydra, I'm up to the fourth episode of Heroes' second season and while I really wasn't expecting them to use Taskmaster's powers just yet, the idea of giving photographic reflexes to someone who looks like an R&B starlet instead of Skeletor is most appealing. Although I never really understood how Taskmaster kept getting employed as a trainer, anyway. Surely if you can copy anything you see, you have no understanding of how learning works for normal people, and so would make an utterly lousy trainer?
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Date: 2007-12-14 03:50 pm (UTC)I'm so annoyed I'm missing the Britpop night (though of course am really really pleased to be doing B-Movie, so it's really not so bad) - how incredibly inconsiderate of people not to arrange their events around my life! Etc. Hope it's good.
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Date: 2007-12-14 04:01 pm (UTC)[ETA: the video's rather perplexing though. Ah well, the song's still brilliant.]
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Date: 2007-12-14 04:07 pm (UTC)It is infuriating about that clash, given the Britpop night is SO YOU. Still, hope the last B Movie is a blast! I've never been to it at Canal 125, I think I like remembering it in its pomp at the Water Rats, but I'm sure you will make a worthy end.
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Date: 2007-12-14 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-17 12:44 pm (UTC)I saw them at Glasto. the wind and the rain was blowing down and sideways like a force 9 gale. I was soaking wet, miserable and slow fried in vodka. Tiny sauntered across the stage and scratched his enormous belly, causing his t-shirt to ride up to his nips. Ultrasound didn't make it all better. But then, I don't think anybody could have.
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Date: 2007-12-17 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-12-14 04:38 pm (UTC)-x-
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Date: 2007-12-14 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 04:54 pm (UTC)Also, I was surprised at how sad I was upon hearing about Ike. For an easy/quiet life I didn't bother mentioning this to anyone though. Louis Theroux painted a different picture of him in his The Call of the Weird book - and by different I mean, not the What's Love Got To Do With It picture of him that the majority judge him by.
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Date: 2007-12-14 05:05 pm (UTC)A girl I know who's read his book and Tina's says he still doesn't come off too well in his own account, so it's interesting that you say that - I don't know the programme you mention. OBVIOUSLY beating your wife is a bad thing - but I think it's sad that this is being allowed to so totally eclipse everything else he did. And there was a lot.
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Date: 2007-12-15 01:38 am (UTC)It's going to be very interesting when Chuck Berry dies (basically in the next 12 months - those ATP guys better have insurance). One of the most important and influential figures in popular music yet no one who ever encountered him has anything better to say about him than he's a vile human being (and not just the ladies he filmed going to the toilet). And if Phil Spector is eventually sent down for shooting a whore in the face, there's no way we'll give up his music in the way that we did Gary Glitter. On the other hand, I remember a conversation with Harvey about Charles Manson's song Look At Your Game Girl. Despite the relative merits of the song, Harvey pointed out that there were enough great songs out there not to have to listen to one by a mass murderer.
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Date: 2007-12-15 09:29 am (UTC)I've always found Charles Manson's music to be a bit poor, such that I wonder if it would have lasted at all without his personal magnetism (not least in that it was sufficient to con a Beach Boy) and subsequent notoriety.
Berry and Spector are good examples of the double standard (I'm not that bothered about Spector killing some no-mark, but he pulled a gun on Leonard Cohen too, and that isn't cool). For me, though, the outstanding one is Joe Meek. Guy killed his long-suffering landlady, yet even eighties Tories were happy to quote his stuff as a favourite!
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Date: 2007-12-15 09:31 am (UTC)If he uses that as his sole defence in court he'll be a god amongst men.
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From:no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 09:31 am (UTC)Apparently Nico also gave her son heroin, on his 18th birthday, so she could share the best experience of her life. As has been pointed out, it could have been worse - she could have made him sleep with Lou Reed.
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Date: 2007-12-17 02:54 pm (UTC)My feelings exactly. I never get myself into the argument in person because I'm not quick or eloquent enough to accurately describe how I feel. But that sentence sums it up. It's just sad.
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Date: 2007-12-17 07:52 pm (UTC)"4. Henry Pym
For all the talk about "women in refrigerators"- talk which, admittedly, I agree with- the case of Henry Pym is still kind of mysterious to me. It does not matter if you are a an alcoholic, a drug addict, a pimp, a hooker, a Communist, a philanderer, a Skrull, or a Life Model Decoy, you can still overcome these afflictions and be seen as a hero again. Here are some other things you can do and still be seen as heroic:
* Betray your species to alien invaders
* Declare war against the Surface World. Repeatedly.
* Kill your wife with radioactive sperm
* Devour your own children
* Cause earthquakes, floods, famine
* Consume whole planets
* Cause suns to go nova
If you do any or all of these things, you can still be a Good Guy. However, if you beat your wife, even once, you will forever more be defined as "that asshole wifebeater", and you have no future whatsoever as a character.
Unless you're Reed Richards, I guess. But I think Reed is a member of the Promise Keepers, plus his wife was possessed by the ghost of an evil feminist or something at the time, so nobody is bothered by that little incident."
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Date: 2007-12-14 05:06 pm (UTC)Andrew out of Vichy
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Date: 2007-12-14 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 04:05 pm (UTC)His piano on the last Gorillaz album wasn't bad either, though I realise that doesn't have quite the same weight to set against his sins.
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Date: 2007-12-14 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-12-15 09:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 05:49 pm (UTC)I LOVE Mark...
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Date: 2007-12-14 06:45 pm (UTC)Just to add my voice to the throng, don't get your hopes up for the quality of the remainder of Heroes S2.
Speaking of Ike, did you see the New York Post's awesome headline?
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Date: 2007-12-15 09:34 am (UTC)OK, fair point about Taskmaster.
That icon still disturbs me beyond measure.
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Date: 2007-12-14 06:50 pm (UTC)You're right about the trainer thing. I can't teach English because it comes naturally and I don't understand the process, whereas I'm quite good at teaching maths because I sucked at it at school and had to reason it all out step by agonising, deliberate step.
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Date: 2007-12-15 09:37 am (UTC)Did you ever hear the final Whipping Boy album, which snuck out posthumously a few years back to overwhelming public apathy? Really good, which wasn't guaranteed given how hopeless the debut is.
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Date: 2007-12-14 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-14 08:31 pm (UTC)Back in the Britpop years I was mainly going to clubs that played early 80s music. I suppose to go to a Britpop club now follows that same logic, although what kind of club this means I should be at in ten - fifteen years time heaven only knows.
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Date: 2007-12-15 09:41 am (UTC)Britpop night's at Trash Palace, 11-3 tonight.
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Date: 2007-12-15 08:09 am (UTC)http://www.amazon.com/52-ANIMAL-MAN-ACTION-FIGURE/dp/B000Q7QRBI/ref=pd_bbs_sr_6?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1197705954&sr=8-6
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Date: 2007-12-15 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 10:04 pm (UTC)I saw them live only once, by accident (they were a surprise band) and it was a pretty interesting night for a lot of reasons.
I am not sure I'd want to see them again today; Then again Babybird is playing my city next year, 11 years after my first bb show (second in 2000) and I am really hyped for that, but in general I tend to agree with you on rather following new bands.
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Date: 2007-12-16 11:45 pm (UTC)'My Life Story' always used to be one of the least searchable of bands, alongside A and .co.uk. Thank heavens for Google, and for the deserved demise of A and .co.uk.
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Date: 2007-12-17 12:10 am (UTC)Jack used to be awfully hard to google, too.
I prefer the solo lofi babybird, too, but that was before my music liking time, sadly.
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Date: 2007-12-17 12:16 am (UTC)If you missed A and .co.uk, which was easily done, consider yourself most fortunate.
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Date: 2007-12-17 10:06 am (UTC)So you should get it fine.