Listening to Burial makes me want to update in the middle of the night

[alexsarll]

From some of the press its minor rebrand received, you'd have thought Rise was being transformed into Nuremberg N4, rather than having its slogan tweaked from "Unite Against Racism" to the cheerier "Celebrating Diversity". I can attest to a disappointing lack of torchlit rallies, lynch-mobs or BoriSS corps. Although the pedestrian Brit rapper on the bill ("before Oysters there was two pound travelcards" - bless) did get everyone to put one hand in the air and chant "One nation, one people", which perhaps could have done with a rethink.
Highlights: Kitty, Daisy & Lewis' old-time rock'n'roll worked surprisingly well in a sunny field at lunchtime (where 'lunch' = 'gin'). The Aliens would have bored me rigid in a traditional gig setting, but as very loud background noise, they were just the ticket. Beardyman is impressive in a way very few beatboxers can manage, and once the Dub Pistols got Terry Hall on (for 'Our Lips Are Sealed', 'Problem Is' and 'Gangsters'), they were glorious.
Also, the man who'd got around the ban on dogs by smuggling his dachshund in a bag.
Lowlights: The aforementioned rappers, comprehensively pwned when the DJ followed their set with 'Witness (One Hope)' to show how UK rap should be done. Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings - even if I hadn't seen them on Jools Holland, I would still class them as 'Jools Holland music'. Everything I saw on my brief tour of the other stages, including one band who sounded like the Brand New Heavies, and some clowns called Yabba Funk with a song whose title translated as 'Victory to Africa' - whatever angle I look at that sentiment from, it's at best meaningless and at worst vile.
But below all that - CSS. Dear heavens. I was never quite as caught up in them as some people - possibly because I only thought Lovefoxxx 'quite cute' rather than collapsing into the same paroxysms as many - but they made some fun party tracks. Since when they've got miserable, learnt how to play, improved their English and stopped being randomly rude - ie, systematically erased everything people liked about them. Oh, and picked up a new drummer from The Cooper Temple Clause, a band I liked but who judging from this and the other one's stint with the tit from the Libertines, have taken some sort of oath of post-TCTC rubbishness so as not to eclipse their legacy. Lovefoxxx attempts to bring some liveliness to proceedings by coming on in hard hat, facial stripes and a cloak, but that cannot disguise what a dreadfully dull band they have become. A couple of songs in, I cannot take it anymore - "If the next song's not 'Death from Above', I'm going". It's not. I go, and sit on the Parkland Walk reading Philip K Dick for a bit instead.

Other than that I have been:
Seeing MJ Hibbett's My Exciting Life In Rock preview;
Reading Ian Kelly's new Casanova biography, which is extremely funny, very well-researched, and was apparently proofread by a dyslexic chimpanzee;
Building castles in the clouds.

Comments

[alexdecampi.livejournal.com]

CSS in "novelty band falling apart at second album" shocker.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

It doesn't surprise me that that's the general sentiment, but I often find myself part of the dissenting minority on such matters. People said much the same about Kenickie's downbeat, polished second album, for instance, whereas I reckon it's twice the record their debut was.
This time, though - it's not sexism, it's not rockism, it's not novelty fatigue - it's just that CSS have gone horribly wrong.

[alexdecampi.livejournal.com]

CSS != Kenickie.

I suppose I never saw the point of CSS, so a certain element of schadenfreude has coloured my view of their current stumble. They just smacked of fad to me.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I know this. You know this. Gillen, McKelvie and maybe a couple of hundred other people know this. But I fear that's not enough for it to show on the official chronicles.

CSS were one of those bands I thought were being praised way beyond their abilities, but still quite liked.