alexsarll: (death bears)
Alex ([personal profile] alexsarll) wrote2010-05-27 10:53 am

My Increasingly Implausible Adventures: Post-its. Also Music and Moorcock

On Monday, as you may have seen in the papers, I went to Stationery Club (although obviously the paper is incorrect in its assertion that I was drinking beer. As ever, it's left to the bloggers to correct Old Media's mistakes). I'm not even that fussed about Post-its, really. But a live videochat with one of the inventors? That's a big deal. There was one point I'd have liked to raise, but I didn't really formulate it properly. Still haven't, in fact. But it goes something like this: there was a Spider-Man story years back, addressing the issue of why someone who could concoct that web fluid without proper lab facilities should be working hand-to-mouth as a photographer when he was clearly a brilliant chemist. So Peter Parker goes into a chemical company and they say, sorry, there's no market use for an incredibly strong adhesive which disappears without trace after an hour. Now, that's self-evidently nonsense, but even if it weren't, the example of Post-its - a use being sought out for a very poor adhesive, creating a product which, if unnecessary, is very lucrative - would disprove it. I suppose I was simply interested in whether Geoff Nicholson was aware of that. Instead, I just ended up with Post-its on my face, my pint and (in one weak visual pun) a heart on my sleeve.

Tuesday: the debut Proper London show by Bevan 17 or, as they're ludicrously claiming to be called in what is obviously a sop to [livejournal.com profile] steve586's rampant ego, If.... The fourth full stop there was to end the sentence, I'm not sure whether that's correct form in such cases or not. Normal practice on liking a band is to compare them to other bands one likes - and I suppose there is a little One More Grain in there, not that I have any reason to believe any of Bevan 17 have heard One More Grain, few enough people did. But mainly I am reminded of bands I don't quite like, fixed. I always thought the Fall might be quite good if they weren't fronted by a bus station tramp; here it's [livejournal.com profile] exliontamer instead, who is eminently presentable and well-spoken. Or Stereolab - I like 'French Disko', but otherwise found them just a bit too Gallic and inert. If they weren't, they might have ended up somewhere near here. They cover John Cooper Clarke with a Scott Walker intro, and get away with it. They come up with the second riff on PIL's "anger is an energy" that I've heard in one afternoon, and even though I really like Pagan Wanderer Lu, Bevan 17's is better.

And last night I played a frankly shambolic game of 40K, but the less said about that the better. So instead I should probably record how much I loved Michael Moorcock's Gloriana, or the Unfullfil'd Queen, a dialogue with Spenser that anticipates Camille Paglia's thoughts on Spenser as precursor to de Sade. I knew Moorcock and Angela Carter had something of a mutual appreciation society going, love across the genre barricades, but even given the pantomime matriarch Ma Cornelius, this is the first time I've read a Moorcock book which I can imagine Angela Carter writing - "the palace glares with a thousand colours in the sunlight, shimmers constantly in the moonlight, its walls appearing to undulate, its roofs to rise and fall like a glamorous tide, its towers and minarets lifting like the masts and hulks of sinking ships". Not that I don't love his outright fantasy and SF, but this would be a great introduction for those more sceptical of such things. So long as they don't mind a fair amount of rather abtruse filth along the way.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2010-05-27 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Of course not.

I shall hopefully be able to find a copy when I hit Camden tomorrow.

[identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com 2010-05-28 07:52 am (UTC)(link)
It seems to be quite widely available, libraries, Sainsbury's etc, but if not you can have mine as I'm not really sure what to do with it now (other than build a slightly creepy Barry-shrine, I suppose.)

[identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com 2010-05-28 11:42 am (UTC)(link)
No, the first one's really creepy. I suppose I left myself wide open, there...

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2010-05-28 12:34 pm (UTC)(link)
So to speak.