so this the big follow-up, the difficult second album. listening to the kills' second album [in my opinion it is their weakest but still great] and have the context of having emails unreplied too which is a tad annoying, i'll be honest. as well as this i have cracked the thick of it, i am up to date and ready to join in the frivolities of discussing it length in the future-rather than pretending to have seen it. you always look like an arse when people are talking about a film and you for no real reason say that you have seen/heard what is being discussed.
observational comedy, i bloody love it. just like peter kay, rola cola/rain and the big light. genius. anyway...
onwards to get to the point of this post, the isle of wight festival 2009. my first festival, and so far my only one. the reason i got going to the festival in the first place was due to browsing nme.com whilst not doing work/reading for my dissertation and seeing that the pixies would be playing, as would the prodigy.
a small and muso and geeky note here, the prodigy and the pixies. the prodigy are called the prodigy, whereas the pixies are actually called pixies. it really annoys me when people get band names wrong: you wouldn't call the beatles just beatles, and you wouldn't call led zeppelin, the led zeppelin would you? it is partly phonetics and grammar but it's a small the when referring to the pixies. as in the Pixies and not The Pixies. this is nonsense but at least i have removed it from my chest.
so yes, i urgently phone my brother as he was to be the person who told me to listen to them in the first place, and as a kind gesture about this time last year we still hadn't found upon a suitable gift for my 21st birthday-and so we put these two things together and so we would go to the festival together.
i awoke from a short sleep after getting home from the soton gradball only probably about 5 hours previously and so had a resolve and a shower. resolve tastes awful. for the record, and i can't really say that it really cuts through a hangover as promised by popular culture. but anyway feeling quite rough i got up and finished packing my bags that i was too excited to finish packing the night before. i hopped onto a bus and met my big brother at southampton central station. excited, tired and hungover i waited outside the station, even though he had previously stated by text that i wouldn't be able to miss him anyway. this was true.
looking like a nutter, he was kitted up in a fluorescent jacket from his site work. i must explain, he is the one of two [with me being the other, weird that...] sons who had a proper plan as to what he would do with his life. from gcse's took the correct education to become a chemical engineer, which indeed happen. with a degree from gimperial college you would expect him to be employed fresh out of uni, this was true.
he was also clutching our tent, and he said that when on the bus in london the driver asked him whether it was a bomb. personally i love this idea, overt terrorism-let's not hide anything. have a massive bomb being carried by a man in a fluorescent jacket. al-qaede would have reached a new low.
after waiting around at the ferry place we were the first onto the ferry and so just flopped into [each other's arms? no, incorrect. stop being weird] the first seats we saw as we got on. i whipped out the waitrose lunch that i had hurriedly purchased before getting the bus into town. i don't travel well on ferrys, and also i have a crap track record of school coach travel too-however despite feeling like a twat from the night before, when i proudly told my pissing on a bus story to my brother [he was less than impressed] i was not sick at all on either ferry journey to or fro from the island. i remember a previous time we got the ferry to isle of wight for my dad's 40th birthday, choppy seas that time meant that i kept a close eye on the toilet bowl. several times. nasty stuff, as well as school trip's to the continent-where i magically found what i had just indulged in sprayed back into the toilet. in lumps.
dairy milk, that's the main memory from year 9 trip to aachen. feeling fine then eating a lot of it, then seeing it again a matter of two minutes later in the toilet. what a good journey. however once properly there i just remember eating pink panther wafers and tomato ketchup crisps in the youth hostel as the other food was awful, brilliant times :)
but on the bus having arrived on the island, we sat on top behind a group of fucking bellends. honestly, cunts. also the funniest thing was the 'lads' had a typical pedantic whipping boy, who didn't quite fit into the group but still was 'welcome' in the group as he mainly organised everything for the rest of the wankers. my brother and i looked at each other and hoped that these utter nutters, wouldn't be representative of the whole festival. they weren't, thank christ.
after we [i say we, but if i'm honest i was as ever 'gloriously useless' and so just got in the way and got rightfully shouted at] put up the tent, we went for a stroll around the site. it was bloody lovely weather, and as we had set up on the thursday the place was just warming up and people were like us setting up. finding the main food paddock, my brother had now gained sufficient experience of the palce to say that it wasn't as good as glastonbury. he said this only a few times, but it felt like a constant nitpicking. but anyway, i lept to buy a pizza as i was fucking hungry and as we had only brought snack bars and custard creams.
it was good, but it was like £8. i had expected pricey prices, but these prices were indeed that. i also had to buy a toothbrush as i had forgotten to bring one-as i am an official oaf. also as it was a thursday there was no real music on, having checked on the efestivals site aparently the human league were playing on the thursday night but alas we did not attend. i do believe we just played shithead and rested our tired little bodies and minds. to be fair we were 21 and 25 at the time so we are pretty old. i am now a year older [clearly not, that'd be awful maths] and i can imagine that we'd do much the same thing.
so on the friday evening, and by god tiem passes slow when you're with only one person and it is hot and you can't be bothered to get up, and the only beer to buy is fucking carling. honestly, no one likes it-so why the blazes [yeah! i'm old skool like that] is it still available to buy?! i'm not even joking or being sarcastic, i know of no-one on this fair planet who would want a pint of it. it's shite! the only place that it gets regularly chugged is in students unions and also at the tap'n'fuckin'tin, in snakebites.
i have a personal vendetta against this drink. i was watching a programme on beauty in art the other day [yeah, i'm cultured-sue me] and he said that people often pursue vendettas against something that they themselves felt wronged by, and or tricked into believing. i believe this to be true, i despise the idea fervant atheism and also socialism/communism-and i used to be a very hardened [naughty naughty] believer in each-so phrase holds true. but in the first year i remember being bored and wandering down to our jcr bar [it was shit, much like my accommodation and much of my first year in general] and sat and drank 6 pints of snakebite [1/2 lager, 1/2 cider, black currant]. i thought it was cool.
i woke up the next day with the majority of it in a handily and soberly placed bucket by the side of my bed [i do this, i clear a path and make sure 'drunk andy' is safe. this reminds me of a time when we were out in chatham, my friend chris riley got out an extra note and hid it in another section of his wallet, as he knew that when drunk he'd fail to remember where it was and thus not spend too much. i can't remember if he did spend it or not, nutters...] but also a very considerable amount on my duvet and also pillows. that smell is fucking rotten, and so i shall never have a pint of that shite again. and it was made with half carling and half strongbow. massively disgusting, but still at 19 you think you're pretty cool, and that drinking is still well cool. ah, young times.
so back to the isle of wight in june, the biggest act that we were to see on the first real day would be the prodigy in the evening. the weather stayed rather lovely for the entire festival-only a smattering of light showers. so on the friday, more time was spent wandering the place, absorbing the atmosphere and all that sorta jazz. i remember that we got there as the ting tings were ending-not a massive loss. not really a big fan of their simpleton music, shut up and let me go. i am quite probably a music snob, but i simply don't like their uber-simple sound and how they seem to have nothing other than some twat on drums with raybans and a stuck up little bitch singing about nothing.
but we were in the main stage area for a while, as on the other stage were a number of classy female acts-it would have been interesting to see the noisettes as i have heard they are good [they were playing on the big tent, the other stage]. instead we both listened with intense awe to the quite brilliant, wholly original and totally 'not' boring. i do strongly dislike them, and for what i think is a very good reason. in the second year, i had their second album pumped through my floorboards constantly [and i do mean constantly, every single minute] of a weekend. the same annoying d'n'b rhythm with some arsehole wanking onto a keyboard, and also a deformed keytar player on stage. i mean really, they played their top 20 hit-a cover of voodoo people, a cover of THE band of the day. it was ok, but by the end of the day we knew [as if we didn't already] what a fuck-off good band was.
no-one seemed to properly like them, and so all the morons who did like them were up the front dancing like twats but all the normal people were staking our places for later. after the aussie wank bags were basement jaxx, again pretty uneventful. i think they lose some of their prowess [which they may or may not have] on the large stage, and also played a one minute clip of sex on fire, with a bunch of whooping morons going 'yes, this song is amazing'. it isn't, it's overplayed, overproduced and it isn't the kings of leon that many people [oddly, including myself] love. it's shite!
jaxx played the hits, which was nice but still i shall move onto the prodigy.
having discovered their setlist on the nme website, i feel refreshed. it was a great set as they mixed a lot of old with a few new classics [their album invaders must die has got some great songs on it. i didn't even know that warrior's dance is off the album, i thought it was an older classic. brilliant!] i never knew how commercially successful they were as well, at least here in the uk. they have had like 16 top 20 singles and 4 number 1 albums. well done lads, the outsiders are doing it. only the fat of the land album has done anything on the us charts, and it is an exceptional album. they played breath, firestarter, diesel power and smack my bitch up off of it. until the day after the day after, possibly the finest setlist ever. also, neither my brother or i were very drunk but still having a bloody good time-a few people were dancing around quite a bit and purely by accident knocked into me, only a tad. and despite being drunk and drugged-they were hugely apologetic and kept saying sorry, even though we were all fine. it was great, at some gigs i simply want to stab them.
at ian brown on friday there were a few annoying cunts, and also a really weird man. he knew all the words and kept nodding his head [and no i'm not talking about ian brown. god that is HILARIOUS!!!] and nearly hit this poor guy in front, he was only a teenager and looked frightened. to be fair, so would i-the guy looked like an utter nutter. the teenage guy walked away... also at the gig, a really quite attractive female [i would say about 25 years old?] kept smiling at me, it was nice :) chances are that she was smiling at a tall and dashing professional who was standing behind me, but still. probably didn't help that i caught her on the back of the head when i danced like a twat to fool's gold. smooth haha
but yes the prodigy were amazing, the people were quite very friendly and i thought that this really is festival life. it was a great friday night, as we returned to the tent and that was the first day over with really. on the saturday, i believe we didn't do much. time seems to go really slowly when you are in a tent... ipod batteries run out quite quickly and the solar power charger takes ages to work, and as a not to keen reader i remember spending hours sitting and waiting for the time to pass. a bit dull but still.
headlining on the saturday night were the stereophonics, whom we didn't really see as we were both tired and maybe getting a tad irritated with each other's company [i know this sounds odd, but it is possible for siblings to fall out-especially if you spend around 70+ hours in each other's sole company. i know, very odd] and the fact that there weren't really any acts that we wanted to see that day we just found new ways to wind each other up, i can't remember anything specifically but you know how it can be.
fuck the waffle, as i do eventually want to finish this. i mean i have sod all else to do instead, but it has taken for fucking ever.
pixies on sunday were the best. i mean actually the best gig i have ever been too, the crowd singing to where is my mind and dancing to debaser. 10/10.
got up at 5am on the monday to pack away. got home and was very very tired. done. sorry for the rushed ending, but losing ability to function means that i have lost faith in this elongated post.
keep it rockin'
Wednesday 2 December 2009
Sunday 29 November 2009
a green and grey wristband [part 1]
i am currently watching a fine young film. odd phrase to use, and the word 'young' is totally unnecessary and pointless. this must be a new record for me to bore myself and more than likely too. so...
i am watching high fidelity, possibly the coolest film in my collection. this may not be the case, but any film where the boss makes a cameo has got to be pretty damn good. the film is quite clearly the finest romcom ever and is smart, geeky, funny and seemingly realistic. the realism aspect doesn't really apply to me, relationships are pretty much still alien territory. fucking hell, i know how to waffle.
after a good conversation with my brother, he brought up the fact that i am still wearing my isle of wight wristband-and having had a pretty full on drinking evening reminded me of wednesday 10th-monday 15th. i believe that i have only in part mentioned these momentous few days :)
wednesday 10th. twas a long day, but also a very fitting tribute to my uni people. there were about 12 or so of us who went to the cowherds on the outskirts of the southampton common. i was wearing my cool look which included a surprisingly good value for money jacket from primark. and a good time was had, it was film people and also the occupants of 30 shakespeare avenue-it sounds similar to the last supper but with a lot more meat, beer and laughs. they had peroni on tap, this made me smile like a tit and seeing everyone dressed up in their suits, boots and roots [reference to a song that i can't remember at the moment-annoying]
but i remember walking from the pub up to the uni, ready and waiting for a time to be had. and it would.
several weeks earlier, we [can't remember exactly who, at least me and and another] were in the avenue and my tall and silly-willy friend chris was checking his emails and he announced to us that the streets would be headlining the gradball. this was met by a whoop of happiness from myself, and so it was set that on 10/06/09, the almost final gathering during termtime would be the culmination of the year. a bloody expensive one but it was set.
so on the coach we hopped after i believe not too long we were in the grounds of a big house just outside of eastleigh, there was a big top and fuck off queues for everything. it was very easy for people to get lost within the venue-i happened upon a number of people a number of times, purely by chance. texting was futile as we were all basically like excited children and it was a funfair with rides and everything. i failed to go any rides, smooth. in all honesty i didn't want to and never actually tried to, it was about finding people, smiling and finding a place to piss was my priority.
some person was warm up for the streets, can't remember who. twasn't the best, but anyway we were down near the front so that we were placed well for the streets. at this point i believe i had stumbled upon miss k sloan and her boyfriend who happens to share my exceptional name. she was drunk and it was the first time that i met andy, she failed to introduce us. the next day a received a text from her apologising for abusing my ears during the gig, i said it was great fun and not to worry. also i mentioned that andy had helped to break up a fight midway during the gig-she hadn't a clue that it had happened, as to quote the brent-meister 'was a little bit drunk!' but it was all good. during the wavering during the gig, managed to find a number of other friends-namely everyone. also i had my largest brush with success with a female at uni. she has previously got a mention as the annoyingly voiced sexy siren from the film and music library, and i squeezed her bottom. naughty naughty as james would say. it is quite tragic that is the best i got, but there we go. makes me smile in a way!
so yes, back to the streets. rather bloody good, turn the page is always a treat and with a bunch of drunk friends having a laugh, twas epically good. also his version of blinded by the lights moved into a dance number at the end. thus dancing like idiots.
after the gig we were all having a chat and getting drinks in and hello, who passed us by. only bloody mike skinner, so myself and phil horrocks [aka horcrux, this is a reference i have only 'got' having researched it. harry potter. exactly what all the cool kids too] gave chase and managed to each shake his hand and get pictures with him, neither of the pictures came out and so it was effectively pointless haha still we can say that we met him, fucking epic win! also he asked us if we had, or knew anybody, who had any vitamin e. what did he mean? he walked off into the rain as we smiled and returned to the group.
after the streets [so technically they weren't headlining, still...] scott mills was dj'ing. can't remember which songs he played, but we were chatting away and drinking, and for some reason i remember popping out of the main tent area to go for a slash-behind the toilets on the waterlogged and pisslogged ground. there was a small area between the barriers and the bogs, and as males can piss standing up there were a number of us doing thus. the area was closed up soon after this piss.
jumping to the journey, there was pretty much all of us at the back of the bus. i was sitting next to mr roland taylor, and i couldn't hold in a piss. i was at that time sitting aisle side and so swapped with roland. and as i couldn't see myself holding it in, i slyly went for a wee against the side of the bus-much to the shock and amusement of a number of my friends. we were only about 5 minutes from the destination, but still upon exiting the bus the piss had ran along the length of the bus and had also ran across the width of the bus. in streaks.
as we got off, phil called me a legend. the party was due to continue at the house of lena/jez/franzi and ben however i had to very sadly refuse due to commitments that shall be explained in part two. now i must play guitar and attention to the brilliant film-walk the line :)
keep it rockin'
i am watching high fidelity, possibly the coolest film in my collection. this may not be the case, but any film where the boss makes a cameo has got to be pretty damn good. the film is quite clearly the finest romcom ever and is smart, geeky, funny and seemingly realistic. the realism aspect doesn't really apply to me, relationships are pretty much still alien territory. fucking hell, i know how to waffle.
after a good conversation with my brother, he brought up the fact that i am still wearing my isle of wight wristband-and having had a pretty full on drinking evening reminded me of wednesday 10th-monday 15th. i believe that i have only in part mentioned these momentous few days :)
wednesday 10th. twas a long day, but also a very fitting tribute to my uni people. there were about 12 or so of us who went to the cowherds on the outskirts of the southampton common. i was wearing my cool look which included a surprisingly good value for money jacket from primark. and a good time was had, it was film people and also the occupants of 30 shakespeare avenue-it sounds similar to the last supper but with a lot more meat, beer and laughs. they had peroni on tap, this made me smile like a tit and seeing everyone dressed up in their suits, boots and roots [reference to a song that i can't remember at the moment-annoying]
but i remember walking from the pub up to the uni, ready and waiting for a time to be had. and it would.
several weeks earlier, we [can't remember exactly who, at least me and and another] were in the avenue and my tall and silly-willy friend chris was checking his emails and he announced to us that the streets would be headlining the gradball. this was met by a whoop of happiness from myself, and so it was set that on 10/06/09, the almost final gathering during termtime would be the culmination of the year. a bloody expensive one but it was set.
so on the coach we hopped after i believe not too long we were in the grounds of a big house just outside of eastleigh, there was a big top and fuck off queues for everything. it was very easy for people to get lost within the venue-i happened upon a number of people a number of times, purely by chance. texting was futile as we were all basically like excited children and it was a funfair with rides and everything. i failed to go any rides, smooth. in all honesty i didn't want to and never actually tried to, it was about finding people, smiling and finding a place to piss was my priority.
some person was warm up for the streets, can't remember who. twasn't the best, but anyway we were down near the front so that we were placed well for the streets. at this point i believe i had stumbled upon miss k sloan and her boyfriend who happens to share my exceptional name. she was drunk and it was the first time that i met andy, she failed to introduce us. the next day a received a text from her apologising for abusing my ears during the gig, i said it was great fun and not to worry. also i mentioned that andy had helped to break up a fight midway during the gig-she hadn't a clue that it had happened, as to quote the brent-meister 'was a little bit drunk!' but it was all good. during the wavering during the gig, managed to find a number of other friends-namely everyone. also i had my largest brush with success with a female at uni. she has previously got a mention as the annoyingly voiced sexy siren from the film and music library, and i squeezed her bottom. naughty naughty as james would say. it is quite tragic that is the best i got, but there we go. makes me smile in a way!
so yes, back to the streets. rather bloody good, turn the page is always a treat and with a bunch of drunk friends having a laugh, twas epically good. also his version of blinded by the lights moved into a dance number at the end. thus dancing like idiots.
after the gig we were all having a chat and getting drinks in and hello, who passed us by. only bloody mike skinner, so myself and phil horrocks [aka horcrux, this is a reference i have only 'got' having researched it. harry potter. exactly what all the cool kids too] gave chase and managed to each shake his hand and get pictures with him, neither of the pictures came out and so it was effectively pointless haha still we can say that we met him, fucking epic win! also he asked us if we had, or knew anybody, who had any vitamin e. what did he mean? he walked off into the rain as we smiled and returned to the group.
after the streets [so technically they weren't headlining, still...] scott mills was dj'ing. can't remember which songs he played, but we were chatting away and drinking, and for some reason i remember popping out of the main tent area to go for a slash-behind the toilets on the waterlogged and pisslogged ground. there was a small area between the barriers and the bogs, and as males can piss standing up there were a number of us doing thus. the area was closed up soon after this piss.
jumping to the journey, there was pretty much all of us at the back of the bus. i was sitting next to mr roland taylor, and i couldn't hold in a piss. i was at that time sitting aisle side and so swapped with roland. and as i couldn't see myself holding it in, i slyly went for a wee against the side of the bus-much to the shock and amusement of a number of my friends. we were only about 5 minutes from the destination, but still upon exiting the bus the piss had ran along the length of the bus and had also ran across the width of the bus. in streaks.
as we got off, phil called me a legend. the party was due to continue at the house of lena/jez/franzi and ben however i had to very sadly refuse due to commitments that shall be explained in part two. now i must play guitar and attention to the brilliant film-walk the line :)
keep it rockin'
Wednesday 18 November 2009
albums and that
as an avid music fan and a lack of real money i rely upon nme.com to supply with info on music, i wish to be able to buy q/uncut/clash/mojo but they are sillyly [this word is now official. in the dictionary and everything. bruv] expensive for what they are [paper with ink on it].
but they are running a poll [this is incorrect, it has already been run] about the 100 greatest albums of this soon to end decade. believe it or not it began in 2000, which seems a long time ago [9 years or so? roughly? sorry this post will be littered with brackets as i am in a mood to destroy true english. by using silly square brackets. and. too many full. stops. sorry!]
but anyway, their idea got me thinking. by this i clearly mean i stole their ideas, and wandered which albums i would place in my top 'no certain number' list [as let's be honest i mostly live in the 60s/70s and look upon anything from since then as gibberish]. i was contemplating whom would make it in. i thought that artists who have only existed in the 2000s are cheating really, the libertines/the streets/kings of leon/regina spektor/the kills etc, as they failed to make albums in other decades. but each of these bands each contribute at least one album-however i could probably make a top 20 list solely based upon these home boi peeps... [and they do make up pretty much all of the list]
so. here goes, in no particular order with my favourite albums of 00-09:
songs for the deaf - queens of the stoneage
streetcore - joe strummer & the mescaleros
the dead 60s - the dead 60s
aha shake heartbreak - kings of leon
original pirate material - the streets
begin to hope - regina spektor
the libertines - the libertines
take off your pants and jacket - blink-182
silent alarm - bloc party
midnight boom - the kills
up the bracket - the libertines
in rainbows - radiohead
a grand don't come for free - the streets
seldom seen kid - elbow
youth and young manhood - kings of leon
kid a - radiohead
a weekend in the city - bloc party
the back room - editors
the man comes around - johnny cash
hail to the thief - radiohead
keep on your mean side - the kills
grace/wastelands - peter doherty
don't believe the truth - oasis
amnesiac - radiohead
thats 24 different albums from 16 different artists, sorta cheating as previously said. only the libertines have ALL [two] of their albums on the prestigious list that at least 1 person will read. that person will be me, very soon forgetting how awful the spelling is and thus checking it out. but there is a list that is pretty much unrivalled and in no real order. i couldn't really name an overall favourite [not that you'll lose sleep over it] as it isn't really a case of a king amongst men from the above list, but there are about hundred songs from that list that are really very good. wow, i am beginning to bore myself.
who am i kidding? the sound of my own voice [i actually 'sing' the same sounds that my macbook (should get some money off apple for that plug) keyboard makes as a i type. crazy] is what keeps me alive. off i pop :)
keep it rockin'
but they are running a poll [this is incorrect, it has already been run] about the 100 greatest albums of this soon to end decade. believe it or not it began in 2000, which seems a long time ago [9 years or so? roughly? sorry this post will be littered with brackets as i am in a mood to destroy true english. by using silly square brackets. and. too many full. stops. sorry!]
but anyway, their idea got me thinking. by this i clearly mean i stole their ideas, and wandered which albums i would place in my top 'no certain number' list [as let's be honest i mostly live in the 60s/70s and look upon anything from since then as gibberish]. i was contemplating whom would make it in. i thought that artists who have only existed in the 2000s are cheating really, the libertines/the streets/kings of leon/regina spektor/the kills etc, as they failed to make albums in other decades. but each of these bands each contribute at least one album-however i could probably make a top 20 list solely based upon these home boi peeps... [and they do make up pretty much all of the list]
so. here goes, in no particular order with my favourite albums of 00-09:
songs for the deaf - queens of the stoneage
streetcore - joe strummer & the mescaleros
the dead 60s - the dead 60s
aha shake heartbreak - kings of leon
original pirate material - the streets
begin to hope - regina spektor
the libertines - the libertines
take off your pants and jacket - blink-182
silent alarm - bloc party
midnight boom - the kills
up the bracket - the libertines
in rainbows - radiohead
a grand don't come for free - the streets
seldom seen kid - elbow
youth and young manhood - kings of leon
kid a - radiohead
a weekend in the city - bloc party
the back room - editors
the man comes around - johnny cash
hail to the thief - radiohead
keep on your mean side - the kills
grace/wastelands - peter doherty
don't believe the truth - oasis
amnesiac - radiohead
thats 24 different albums from 16 different artists, sorta cheating as previously said. only the libertines have ALL [two] of their albums on the prestigious list that at least 1 person will read. that person will be me, very soon forgetting how awful the spelling is and thus checking it out. but there is a list that is pretty much unrivalled and in no real order. i couldn't really name an overall favourite [not that you'll lose sleep over it] as it isn't really a case of a king amongst men from the above list, but there are about hundred songs from that list that are really very good. wow, i am beginning to bore myself.
who am i kidding? the sound of my own voice [i actually 'sing' the same sounds that my macbook (should get some money off apple for that plug) keyboard makes as a i type. crazy] is what keeps me alive. off i pop :)
keep it rockin'
Sunday 15 November 2009
jennifer's body, a review. snappy title.
i could see the review writing itself, 'the difficult second album', 'megan fox: fuck yeah! film: meh' but it was not to be.
i am of course referring to jennifer's body, or let's look at megan fox and her near perfect female form. this is true. if you are going to see this film and not 1 second of your time is spent thinking what it would be like to meet [euphemism] her, you are clearly mentally ill and should be put down. i mean i am the last person to be a lad shouting about boning every woman i see [i of course jest here], but there is a lot of focus on the fine young female. but she nearly has too much going on in her face to be really beautiful [just my opinion]. i mean i know at least no actresses and so what i'm about to say is totally unfounded, but it is almost like actresses are wholly vacuous so that they can truly accomodate the characters that they will become in films. you talk to them and they like music such as muse and guns'n'roses [i hate these people, my blog is a testament to this. i respect them as artists, then the hating begins :)] and are non too fussed about building a full personality because they know that their looks will get them places and money, and so fear not in being vacuous.
this is fact. i mean just as thatcher and blair have done in the past, i'll just repeat the same thing three times-get involved in a war then fuck off and later be resented. satire.
so, 'jennifer's body' was a good film-it had a wide filmic knowledge and sort to pay tribute to a number of films that i've seen and could recognise, namely 'mystic river' [pretty bad film, keanu reeves once again looking perplexed and dennis hopper being the outcast weirdo. i know you sound surprised. it is pretty bad though, murder teenagers yawn yawn yawn. see there is that politican speech kicking in], 'carrie' [a truly quite brilliant film, chilling and just bloody good], 'juno' [which will be returned to] and 'a lot of other american high school dramas' [not a real film but instead a catch all term for a range of good and shite films that i have not seen]. also 'drag me to hell', which i have only just googled sam raimi for as i couldn't raimi-member his name. [hold for applause and laughter]
spot the comedy?! laugh?! no
with a freshly cleaned set of gnashers and a lot of empty bowels i shall continue. the film was not the best thing/horror film to ever be produced [my favourite new horror was the very nourishing 'let the right on in', great film-bleak, nasty and engrossing. yes!] but it had a lot of charm and although much of the plot had been seen before, as referenced above, the film had a charm as delivered by the script by diablo cody. the film smelt strongly of the one that made her, jk simmons, valerie tian [still sporting the same glasses], the very geeky lead [in a way] character and all that business-but the different tone was punctuated by the wit of cody. the line referring to megan fox [jennifer] hovering were very nicely interwoven with gruesome images. i can't think of hundreds of others, but it did make you laugh and the climatic scene was well done.
i felt sorry for the chip character as he was fobbed off with trying to be a nick from nick and norah version of michael cera, and he wasn't-quite very weak as a character. sorry.
the scene of the film was where nerdy needy kissed jennifer, and you could see all the men in the cinema [the grand total of two girlfriends present excepted] squirming as it was fit. i mean come on, just like mulholland drive. the lesbian bits are clearly going to get some press and for at least one person i know twas his favourite bit. bit too obvious, but good nonetheless. i can't explain what it is about two females in passionate throws, but it makes me happy ;)
the jennifer obsessed character of needy [in my opinion a terrible see-through name, see the film and it's writing isn't without faults] is annoying in my opinion and the bits where you like her top and tail the film. however may i add that some of the handheld camerawork at the beginning was crap, there were too many cuts and different angles for what was about 10 seconds. just like beginning of quantum of solace, there was nothing you could get into-just went "mental" too quickly. i know, this is a great phrase, ramones esque ['go mental', track 8, after 'i wanna be sedated', album 4, road to ruin-some really good words in that song, non-sarcasm :D]
the end credit sequence was epicly brilliant, you knew it was going to happen but just really really well done.
overall 7 on 10, let's make love [partridge reference] but really 7/10, and fuel for a character i am working on. ooh, intriguing!
keep it rockin'
i am of course referring to jennifer's body, or let's look at megan fox and her near perfect female form. this is true. if you are going to see this film and not 1 second of your time is spent thinking what it would be like to meet [euphemism] her, you are clearly mentally ill and should be put down. i mean i am the last person to be a lad shouting about boning every woman i see [i of course jest here], but there is a lot of focus on the fine young female. but she nearly has too much going on in her face to be really beautiful [just my opinion]. i mean i know at least no actresses and so what i'm about to say is totally unfounded, but it is almost like actresses are wholly vacuous so that they can truly accomodate the characters that they will become in films. you talk to them and they like music such as muse and guns'n'roses [i hate these people, my blog is a testament to this. i respect them as artists, then the hating begins :)] and are non too fussed about building a full personality because they know that their looks will get them places and money, and so fear not in being vacuous.
this is fact. i mean just as thatcher and blair have done in the past, i'll just repeat the same thing three times-get involved in a war then fuck off and later be resented. satire.
so, 'jennifer's body' was a good film-it had a wide filmic knowledge and sort to pay tribute to a number of films that i've seen and could recognise, namely 'mystic river' [pretty bad film, keanu reeves once again looking perplexed and dennis hopper being the outcast weirdo. i know you sound surprised. it is pretty bad though, murder teenagers yawn yawn yawn. see there is that politican speech kicking in], 'carrie' [a truly quite brilliant film, chilling and just bloody good], 'juno' [which will be returned to] and 'a lot of other american high school dramas' [not a real film but instead a catch all term for a range of good and shite films that i have not seen]. also 'drag me to hell', which i have only just googled sam raimi for as i couldn't raimi-member his name. [hold for applause and laughter]
spot the comedy?! laugh?! no
with a freshly cleaned set of gnashers and a lot of empty bowels i shall continue. the film was not the best thing/horror film to ever be produced [my favourite new horror was the very nourishing 'let the right on in', great film-bleak, nasty and engrossing. yes!] but it had a lot of charm and although much of the plot had been seen before, as referenced above, the film had a charm as delivered by the script by diablo cody. the film smelt strongly of the one that made her, jk simmons, valerie tian [still sporting the same glasses], the very geeky lead [in a way] character and all that business-but the different tone was punctuated by the wit of cody. the line referring to megan fox [jennifer] hovering were very nicely interwoven with gruesome images. i can't think of hundreds of others, but it did make you laugh and the climatic scene was well done.
i felt sorry for the chip character as he was fobbed off with trying to be a nick from nick and norah version of michael cera, and he wasn't-quite very weak as a character. sorry.
the scene of the film was where nerdy needy kissed jennifer, and you could see all the men in the cinema [the grand total of two girlfriends present excepted] squirming as it was fit. i mean come on, just like mulholland drive. the lesbian bits are clearly going to get some press and for at least one person i know twas his favourite bit. bit too obvious, but good nonetheless. i can't explain what it is about two females in passionate throws, but it makes me happy ;)
the jennifer obsessed character of needy [in my opinion a terrible see-through name, see the film and it's writing isn't without faults] is annoying in my opinion and the bits where you like her top and tail the film. however may i add that some of the handheld camerawork at the beginning was crap, there were too many cuts and different angles for what was about 10 seconds. just like beginning of quantum of solace, there was nothing you could get into-just went "mental" too quickly. i know, this is a great phrase, ramones esque ['go mental', track 8, after 'i wanna be sedated', album 4, road to ruin-some really good words in that song, non-sarcasm :D]
the end credit sequence was epicly brilliant, you knew it was going to happen but just really really well done.
overall 7 on 10, let's make love [partridge reference] but really 7/10, and fuel for a character i am working on. ooh, intriguing!
keep it rockin'
Sunday 8 November 2009
this is just a tribute...
instead of being a song, this is a blog post. just so you know.
you probably do.
great start, but anyway! this blog post is a tribute to my ickle friends.
i shall thus do a bit of description of this week and why it was good. as it so happens it was the most expensive week [not very much so but still] that i've had in a long while, monday afternoon was work which was simple and fine. tuesday i met a certain cleary man at 0815. yes that is right, it was so early i got to see school children walking to school [didn't want to and didn't get many kicks out of it...] and something that i don't really understand.
i went to rainham mark grammar school which required passing the 11+ to get into, and so usually you are perceived to be one of these 'boffs'. as a school we had a 'rivalry' with the large comprehensive boys school across the road and a bit of a way away. one of the finest moments in our school career was when a small group of howard [comp school name] boys had stormed the field and proceeded to actually have a bit of a riot.
our storming headteacher [twat] marched himself onto the field to confront these uneducated poo boys! [i know, wit! also rainham mark wasn't a public/private school and was in fact state run school so none of this hoighty toighty mocking malarky. also at the end of the day, however good it is, it is still in medway. voted 7th worst place to live in the uk, only place in the south too. victory...]
BUT what happened was an event that has gone down in history, as these howard boys threw a brick [or another heavy and blunt object] at him and hit him slap bang in the middle of the forehead. he was bleeding quite profusely. brilliant! i can't remember much else from that day, that was a highlight. another brief and brilliant memory from school was in about year 10 or 11 during interform football. the referee for the game was our form tutor so he should have been favouring us, but within a minute my friend got sent off for going into a tackle with a high foot. i say going in with high foot, he jumped and kicked the prick on the other team in the chest.
it was amazing, as said prick was just that and maybe deserved it. but watching from the sidelines meant that i got to laugh like hell with two friends-it more than made up for the cold weather and being outside. genius! ah school *sighs and dreamily looks to the sky*
anyway, the point was that whilst waiting for james i saw some of the comp boys walking past wearing one of these. here.
i mean these bags are tiny and on a 14 year old school boy, it doesn't do their coolness much good. but apparently these sort of things are in fashion, as according to my friend matt [who is an ict tech at school in maidstone] loadsa boys have them. i just find it astonishing because if any boy were to have had a bag like that when i was at school, they would have had seven shades of shit beaten the fuck out of them! but now it's cool. it is odd and makes you ponder where masculinity has gone.
please bear in mind, this judgement is coming from a forlorn little rotund monorchid with chronic shyness and no girlfriend, but is this a sign of the decline of masculinity? i dunno. i mean, i am clearly the saviour and archetypal male so i do have a right to talk about such things.
as a small rant, skinny jeans. yes, cos it's attractive to show off the fact that you have the legs of 12 year old girl! i mean how is that cool?! really. i have quite large [a bit muscly and a bit fat] thighs and reasonable calfs and so i require a pair of jeans that don't make me look like a tit. i dunno, i don't really understand holocaust chic in females and think that despite looking cool sometimes there should be female/male boundaries that are drawn up. i know i sound like an old man, but then again implementing these ideas would mean that matt and i would only enjoy ourselves a minimal amount in the tap'n'tin [wait, i hate the place] as we often play the game, would you hit him. more often than not we do want to.
however the joke is on us, between us we have had a total of about 15 months in relationships. i supply one month to this tally. only one gf each, so level there!
but anyway, i did indeed meet james at 0815 and we ventured to the ole greasy spoon on the a2 and enjoyed a hot beverage each. we looked over the daily mirror, which supplied it's dear viewers with two photos of lil ole maddie as she may look now, one with a portugeese suntan and one without. it was amusing, neither picture showed the glitch that she has in her eye-and also the suntanned photo showed maddie with darker iris colour and eyeball [think white -> sepia] colour. i'm not saying it was like this, but it was almost like someone had the one photo and was told to get creative with photoshop. stupid.
so we sat and mocked the world in a highly satirical graduate sense and then ventured to my house for a day of watching pretention. and by this i mean this and this
watching these films whilst drinking coffee [me] and earl grey [james] and then sausage sandwiches was great fun. if you think you have heard challenging music try scott walker's stuff, not the walker brothers as this is quite nice pop-but a lot of his stuff has incredible sounds but his voice gets some getting used to. an interesting character nonetheless, very shy and very avant garde. not for those faint of heart. i had seen the radiohead doc before but it was great to see it again, the almost uncertain breakdown of thom yorke and showing the real life of a group of well educated and middle-class guys doing what they love around the world and having that almost destroy them. interesting, also challenging images aren't the norm in gig films. you can't imagine a band like guns'n'fuckin'roses having this-instead it's more like "look at us cunts". that is my distaste for pompous american twats.
but we went up to rainham town and to be fair, james was dressed like he was a tramp despite being a full time paid member of society and so whilst we were browsing the magazines the man in the shop was like 'don't read them, go to tesco if you want to do that'. he couldn't say much as he was wearing the really round glasses [you know the style i mean] that my dad wore in 1994. twat, and fucking fascist [to quote the best film ever]!
so after a whole day together james went back to lordswood. this was on the tuesday. the rest of the week shall come after i piss and refill my coffee cup :D
on wednesday evening my parents left for devon as they are sorting out my great-uncle as his health is sadly going downhill quite steadily. so since then [it is sunday night now] i have been looking after myself, the house and progressively annoying cats. they are just so fucking hungry all the time, but also quite slim... odd. and wednesday night saw a return to the pub quiz with my friends after a two week sabbatical away from it. we did ok, as per usual and included some joke answers such as 'dj luck' and 'mc neat' as i was the nutter with the wit and the pen :) but that was good, and after a misadventure with some guinness beforehand [was finishing up some with my dinner, chugged too much and proceeded to spray it all over the table-including through my nose. painful but funny at the same time, i hate those ones!] but a couple more drinks meant that i was feeling a little bit drunk, and as i have been doing so little of that recently it was nice. however not that much happened and so i shall just continue onto thursday after a small reference to an answer that we gave in our lost quiz.
once again i was the one with the pen and matt and steve [other team members and 'friends' as they are so called] and the question was: what lives in a drey? the real answer was squirrel, but i was very pleased with my answer of a snoop doggy dogg :) no-one else really got it [outside of our group], but it made me smile.
i am currently listening to bloc party's second album and i am on the song 'i still remember' which is an amazing song :D it is up there as one of my favourite 21st century love songs! also bloc party related, i was playing the main guitar part of their song 'this modern love' in front of my grandparents the other day and they thought it sounded good [because it does] i was going to challenge their somewhat very conservative [big c and small c conservative] opinions by saying it was written by a bisexual black man, but re-thought this as i couldn't be doing with the hassle.
so onto thursday, and i had received the news on monday that i wouldn't be needed for work on thursday and with the knowledge that my parents [who i bemoan a lot, but still they are real people to interact with after all] weren't to be about i feared that i would be bored out of my mind. however i had my day brightened by the announcement that a very good friend of mine would be back in medway for a coupla days-so mainly as a way of fighting off boredom [and definitely not through wanting to meet up with her...] we met up, and as per usual it was fun.
as a total aside, can i just ask why people st*r swear words? it really annoys me, as if you want to be 'offensive' be so and if you don't, use baby talk [eg-'you fucking dick' should either be this or baby talk, 'you flipping idiot' never 'you f*cking d*ck'] i dunno about you but i get bloody upset with vowels! those little fuckers really do wind me up when in words, it is like they are the power behind the offensiveness of the word and by removing them you are showing that you aren't grown up enough to fucking swear. arseholes. i mean come on... this maybe because i am of the opinion that speech should be free, and if you don't like what someone says you can: a) complain about it or b) ignore it. life is too short.
anywho, back to my meet up. the usual wandering happened but as we know i am small and need a wee often, and so we went to the coolest hang out where all the cool kids go. tesco cafe :P also i have cold hands and i am less than sensible and didn't wear enough layers/appropiate clothes to block out the cold. the classic game of what colour are your hands? mine are purple and orangey and blotchy-i win!
so sitting about in the cafe, i was as per usual being a bit of knob [i know that you are all surprised] but still a nice person at the end of it all. there is strong bond between us [in fact between me and almost all of my friends-that's why we are friends... weird that :P] and so she ignored me. we had been chatting for a while when suddenly this old man slowly wandered up to us and said something. i had no idea what was going on, and so i did my usual reverting back to being a quiet tortoise in his shell. sipping coffee.
but off my friend trotted to help out the old man, i was still pretty confused. she returned a couple of minutes later and explained to me that he needed someone to butter his toast for him as he had recently had a stroke and could no longer do it himself. it is the small acts of kindess that make me think so much of her :)
after finishing our drinks we trotted around the spectacle that is the big tesco, with nothing imparticular in mind. i got angry seeing the height of pretention in the charts [muse's album... just look at the titles. jesus] but that was about all the excitement-as well as looking at the masses of christmas chocolates. this sounds dull, sorry!
but after her purchasing jelly babies and me having a slash [i think it was my third of the afternoon :P] we then popped to the pub, where we decided that eating so many jelly babies it hurts was a good idea... i bought a guinness but couldn't convince a student to drink too, other than water... rock'n'roll! nutter :P but eating jelly babies by severely maiming them [biting off the heads and feet. i am so purely evil. sorry guys-also as a note it is starch that is the coating on the lil buggers, who would have thought it?]
but after a few hours chatting usual crap, well mainly me with the crap- it was time for it to be over as it was dark and neither of us wanted to be raped on the walk home-for me it was nearly 2 miles, so a nice long walk.
it was an utterly lovely afternoon, with one of my favourite people in the world. i feel that our friendship now is the most grown up that it has been, and that i am now being myself and not a vague version of myself which is a tad charming. the thing is [why am so honest? damn me! to quote scroobius pip 'over thinking is the chink in my armour'] i do sometimes think about how it might have been, and how it could be now-but within a minute i remember however destructive it is for me, i would want to see her happy and chances are that wouldn't happen if she were to be with me. song. [mainly for the title]
also i probably wouldn't still be yearning [even the admittedly small amount as it is now] for her if i had a shred of confidence and or belief in my 'pulling' abilities, or if the facts/numbers aren't so against me i would be fine, but that's me in my own little ways! still a bit of a twat though. but as james said to lighten my mood once a while ago, at least i am not an insufferable cunt :P
actually having re-read this [james' comments] i have a big smile on my face.
but yesterday my good friend chris returned from university for his 22nd birthday, and we went to the cinema [not just us two, it was a group sex of six] to see 'the men who stare at goats' and i was quite disappointed, 6/10 as a numbered review. it was trying to be a coen brothers film with the cast and overall oddly comic feel to the film, but the trailer showed pretty much everything from the film... i do hate it when they do that-but still a film that had clooney/bridges/spacey could and should have been executed well. ewan macgregor's accent was better than i expected but still he wasn't top drawer, also it was pretty much like seeing the dude later in life-not that inventive. personally i loved bridges in iron man as he was out of stereotype and showed himself to be good... but there we go!
afterwards we popped to the pub and on the way chris was bemoaning the pretty much entirely left-wing people in his college [of the scumbag variety, at cambridge] and said they all hate thatcher but don't mind blair. he said about iraq and i was very pleased to counter him by noting the sinking of the belgrano, as it was going away! i was pleased myself as i had fully countered his argument, something i had never done before. it was not like i was defending labour or blair, i dislike them both and will more than likely be voting tory in the next elections. i know i am a tad mental and bored of the 'left wing' and so, whilst retaining many many liberal beliefs [as i am a total hypocrite. i could give examples, but can't be arsed] the time has come for a change-i dislike pretty much all politicians, but lib dems are pointless and labour are muchly the same. tories are by far not the best, but who else is there who could actually change the country?! i mean actual change, not dreamy idiocy [greens and bnp]. so there we go.
we had fun, joked about gary glitter and people's inability to see the world as wholly laughable. aparently there are things you shouldn't joke about-i totally disagree.
but that is i believe that, a week in under 3000 words. a mammoth :)
truely rambling along on this one, now to spell check the mother!
smiles, contentment and 'don't panic' by coldplay-lovely :)
keep it rockin'
you probably do.
great start, but anyway! this blog post is a tribute to my ickle friends.
i shall thus do a bit of description of this week and why it was good. as it so happens it was the most expensive week [not very much so but still] that i've had in a long while, monday afternoon was work which was simple and fine. tuesday i met a certain cleary man at 0815. yes that is right, it was so early i got to see school children walking to school [didn't want to and didn't get many kicks out of it...] and something that i don't really understand.
i went to rainham mark grammar school which required passing the 11+ to get into, and so usually you are perceived to be one of these 'boffs'. as a school we had a 'rivalry' with the large comprehensive boys school across the road and a bit of a way away. one of the finest moments in our school career was when a small group of howard [comp school name] boys had stormed the field and proceeded to actually have a bit of a riot.
our storming headteacher [twat] marched himself onto the field to confront these uneducated poo boys! [i know, wit! also rainham mark wasn't a public/private school and was in fact state run school so none of this hoighty toighty mocking malarky. also at the end of the day, however good it is, it is still in medway. voted 7th worst place to live in the uk, only place in the south too. victory...]
BUT what happened was an event that has gone down in history, as these howard boys threw a brick [or another heavy and blunt object] at him and hit him slap bang in the middle of the forehead. he was bleeding quite profusely. brilliant! i can't remember much else from that day, that was a highlight. another brief and brilliant memory from school was in about year 10 or 11 during interform football. the referee for the game was our form tutor so he should have been favouring us, but within a minute my friend got sent off for going into a tackle with a high foot. i say going in with high foot, he jumped and kicked the prick on the other team in the chest.
it was amazing, as said prick was just that and maybe deserved it. but watching from the sidelines meant that i got to laugh like hell with two friends-it more than made up for the cold weather and being outside. genius! ah school *sighs and dreamily looks to the sky*
anyway, the point was that whilst waiting for james i saw some of the comp boys walking past wearing one of these. here.
i mean these bags are tiny and on a 14 year old school boy, it doesn't do their coolness much good. but apparently these sort of things are in fashion, as according to my friend matt [who is an ict tech at school in maidstone] loadsa boys have them. i just find it astonishing because if any boy were to have had a bag like that when i was at school, they would have had seven shades of shit beaten the fuck out of them! but now it's cool. it is odd and makes you ponder where masculinity has gone.
please bear in mind, this judgement is coming from a forlorn little rotund monorchid with chronic shyness and no girlfriend, but is this a sign of the decline of masculinity? i dunno. i mean, i am clearly the saviour and archetypal male so i do have a right to talk about such things.
as a small rant, skinny jeans. yes, cos it's attractive to show off the fact that you have the legs of 12 year old girl! i mean how is that cool?! really. i have quite large [a bit muscly and a bit fat] thighs and reasonable calfs and so i require a pair of jeans that don't make me look like a tit. i dunno, i don't really understand holocaust chic in females and think that despite looking cool sometimes there should be female/male boundaries that are drawn up. i know i sound like an old man, but then again implementing these ideas would mean that matt and i would only enjoy ourselves a minimal amount in the tap'n'tin [wait, i hate the place] as we often play the game, would you hit him. more often than not we do want to.
however the joke is on us, between us we have had a total of about 15 months in relationships. i supply one month to this tally. only one gf each, so level there!
but anyway, i did indeed meet james at 0815 and we ventured to the ole greasy spoon on the a2 and enjoyed a hot beverage each. we looked over the daily mirror, which supplied it's dear viewers with two photos of lil ole maddie as she may look now, one with a portugeese suntan and one without. it was amusing, neither picture showed the glitch that she has in her eye-and also the suntanned photo showed maddie with darker iris colour and eyeball [think white -> sepia] colour. i'm not saying it was like this, but it was almost like someone had the one photo and was told to get creative with photoshop. stupid.
so we sat and mocked the world in a highly satirical graduate sense and then ventured to my house for a day of watching pretention. and by this i mean this and this
watching these films whilst drinking coffee [me] and earl grey [james] and then sausage sandwiches was great fun. if you think you have heard challenging music try scott walker's stuff, not the walker brothers as this is quite nice pop-but a lot of his stuff has incredible sounds but his voice gets some getting used to. an interesting character nonetheless, very shy and very avant garde. not for those faint of heart. i had seen the radiohead doc before but it was great to see it again, the almost uncertain breakdown of thom yorke and showing the real life of a group of well educated and middle-class guys doing what they love around the world and having that almost destroy them. interesting, also challenging images aren't the norm in gig films. you can't imagine a band like guns'n'fuckin'roses having this-instead it's more like "look at us cunts". that is my distaste for pompous american twats.
but we went up to rainham town and to be fair, james was dressed like he was a tramp despite being a full time paid member of society and so whilst we were browsing the magazines the man in the shop was like 'don't read them, go to tesco if you want to do that'. he couldn't say much as he was wearing the really round glasses [you know the style i mean] that my dad wore in 1994. twat, and fucking fascist [to quote the best film ever]!
so after a whole day together james went back to lordswood. this was on the tuesday. the rest of the week shall come after i piss and refill my coffee cup :D
on wednesday evening my parents left for devon as they are sorting out my great-uncle as his health is sadly going downhill quite steadily. so since then [it is sunday night now] i have been looking after myself, the house and progressively annoying cats. they are just so fucking hungry all the time, but also quite slim... odd. and wednesday night saw a return to the pub quiz with my friends after a two week sabbatical away from it. we did ok, as per usual and included some joke answers such as 'dj luck' and 'mc neat' as i was the nutter with the wit and the pen :) but that was good, and after a misadventure with some guinness beforehand [was finishing up some with my dinner, chugged too much and proceeded to spray it all over the table-including through my nose. painful but funny at the same time, i hate those ones!] but a couple more drinks meant that i was feeling a little bit drunk, and as i have been doing so little of that recently it was nice. however not that much happened and so i shall just continue onto thursday after a small reference to an answer that we gave in our lost quiz.
once again i was the one with the pen and matt and steve [other team members and 'friends' as they are so called] and the question was: what lives in a drey? the real answer was squirrel, but i was very pleased with my answer of a snoop doggy dogg :) no-one else really got it [outside of our group], but it made me smile.
i am currently listening to bloc party's second album and i am on the song 'i still remember' which is an amazing song :D it is up there as one of my favourite 21st century love songs! also bloc party related, i was playing the main guitar part of their song 'this modern love' in front of my grandparents the other day and they thought it sounded good [because it does] i was going to challenge their somewhat very conservative [big c and small c conservative] opinions by saying it was written by a bisexual black man, but re-thought this as i couldn't be doing with the hassle.
so onto thursday, and i had received the news on monday that i wouldn't be needed for work on thursday and with the knowledge that my parents [who i bemoan a lot, but still they are real people to interact with after all] weren't to be about i feared that i would be bored out of my mind. however i had my day brightened by the announcement that a very good friend of mine would be back in medway for a coupla days-so mainly as a way of fighting off boredom [and definitely not through wanting to meet up with her...] we met up, and as per usual it was fun.
as a total aside, can i just ask why people st*r swear words? it really annoys me, as if you want to be 'offensive' be so and if you don't, use baby talk [eg-'you fucking dick' should either be this or baby talk, 'you flipping idiot' never 'you f*cking d*ck'] i dunno about you but i get bloody upset with vowels! those little fuckers really do wind me up when in words, it is like they are the power behind the offensiveness of the word and by removing them you are showing that you aren't grown up enough to fucking swear. arseholes. i mean come on... this maybe because i am of the opinion that speech should be free, and if you don't like what someone says you can: a) complain about it or b) ignore it. life is too short.
anywho, back to my meet up. the usual wandering happened but as we know i am small and need a wee often, and so we went to the coolest hang out where all the cool kids go. tesco cafe :P also i have cold hands and i am less than sensible and didn't wear enough layers/appropiate clothes to block out the cold. the classic game of what colour are your hands? mine are purple and orangey and blotchy-i win!
so sitting about in the cafe, i was as per usual being a bit of knob [i know that you are all surprised] but still a nice person at the end of it all. there is strong bond between us [in fact between me and almost all of my friends-that's why we are friends... weird that :P] and so she ignored me. we had been chatting for a while when suddenly this old man slowly wandered up to us and said something. i had no idea what was going on, and so i did my usual reverting back to being a quiet tortoise in his shell. sipping coffee.
but off my friend trotted to help out the old man, i was still pretty confused. she returned a couple of minutes later and explained to me that he needed someone to butter his toast for him as he had recently had a stroke and could no longer do it himself. it is the small acts of kindess that make me think so much of her :)
after finishing our drinks we trotted around the spectacle that is the big tesco, with nothing imparticular in mind. i got angry seeing the height of pretention in the charts [muse's album... just look at the titles. jesus] but that was about all the excitement-as well as looking at the masses of christmas chocolates. this sounds dull, sorry!
but after her purchasing jelly babies and me having a slash [i think it was my third of the afternoon :P] we then popped to the pub, where we decided that eating so many jelly babies it hurts was a good idea... i bought a guinness but couldn't convince a student to drink too, other than water... rock'n'roll! nutter :P but eating jelly babies by severely maiming them [biting off the heads and feet. i am so purely evil. sorry guys-also as a note it is starch that is the coating on the lil buggers, who would have thought it?]
but after a few hours chatting usual crap, well mainly me with the crap- it was time for it to be over as it was dark and neither of us wanted to be raped on the walk home-for me it was nearly 2 miles, so a nice long walk.
it was an utterly lovely afternoon, with one of my favourite people in the world. i feel that our friendship now is the most grown up that it has been, and that i am now being myself and not a vague version of myself which is a tad charming. the thing is [why am so honest? damn me! to quote scroobius pip 'over thinking is the chink in my armour'] i do sometimes think about how it might have been, and how it could be now-but within a minute i remember however destructive it is for me, i would want to see her happy and chances are that wouldn't happen if she were to be with me. song. [mainly for the title]
also i probably wouldn't still be yearning [even the admittedly small amount as it is now] for her if i had a shred of confidence and or belief in my 'pulling' abilities, or if the facts/numbers aren't so against me i would be fine, but that's me in my own little ways! still a bit of a twat though. but as james said to lighten my mood once a while ago, at least i am not an insufferable cunt :P
actually having re-read this [james' comments] i have a big smile on my face.
but yesterday my good friend chris returned from university for his 22nd birthday, and we went to the cinema [not just us two, it was a group sex of six] to see 'the men who stare at goats' and i was quite disappointed, 6/10 as a numbered review. it was trying to be a coen brothers film with the cast and overall oddly comic feel to the film, but the trailer showed pretty much everything from the film... i do hate it when they do that-but still a film that had clooney/bridges/spacey could and should have been executed well. ewan macgregor's accent was better than i expected but still he wasn't top drawer, also it was pretty much like seeing the dude later in life-not that inventive. personally i loved bridges in iron man as he was out of stereotype and showed himself to be good... but there we go!
afterwards we popped to the pub and on the way chris was bemoaning the pretty much entirely left-wing people in his college [of the scumbag variety, at cambridge] and said they all hate thatcher but don't mind blair. he said about iraq and i was very pleased to counter him by noting the sinking of the belgrano, as it was going away! i was pleased myself as i had fully countered his argument, something i had never done before. it was not like i was defending labour or blair, i dislike them both and will more than likely be voting tory in the next elections. i know i am a tad mental and bored of the 'left wing' and so, whilst retaining many many liberal beliefs [as i am a total hypocrite. i could give examples, but can't be arsed] the time has come for a change-i dislike pretty much all politicians, but lib dems are pointless and labour are muchly the same. tories are by far not the best, but who else is there who could actually change the country?! i mean actual change, not dreamy idiocy [greens and bnp]. so there we go.
we had fun, joked about gary glitter and people's inability to see the world as wholly laughable. aparently there are things you shouldn't joke about-i totally disagree.
but that is i believe that, a week in under 3000 words. a mammoth :)
truely rambling along on this one, now to spell check the mother!
smiles, contentment and 'don't panic' by coldplay-lovely :)
keep it rockin'
Monday 26 October 2009
newman and hall
a general one this shall be, sounding like that lil green cunt yoda. my mum questioned my dislike of sci-fi but why i liked men in black [as it was on yesterday]. the sly old hag had me against the ropes! i do hate [probably to strong a word, but i shall use it anyway] most sci-fi films but men in black and men in black II [starring the almighty black-white man, mj] are great films. well, they are entertaining and good.
as for other sci-fi, i dunno. it's not like i have a bad education in the field but it must be the fact that the words sci-fi and geek are inextricably linked. and rightly so. i have seen all of the star wars films [i'm pretty sure] and can only remember enjoying the fight scene between yoda and christopher lee in one of them. the rest is babble, the editing is generally bad-i mean swipes in a non-ironic way? i may be missing the point of series of films such as star wars, lord of the rings and the latest indiana jones [which had a shit loada shit twists]
i just don't really enjoy fantasy, except from pixar films. except for cars, i have seen them all. but this is my only real allowance for fantasy. i have an interest in documentary films and real-life tales [like fargo] and there is something so entertaining about tales at least set in this world. as i write i am watching road to perdition with characters called john rooney and michael sullivan, not jabba the hutt and r2-d2. end of moaning about space operas [not even my term, wiki's]
politics now, this is easy. the bnp were on tv and some members of all political parties were outraged to see an elected official on tv. what a bastard. in all seriousness though, the man is a racist tosser who should be allowed to say whatever he wants. the only way of limiting him should be the education of the masses, and not the effortless double standards of the most read tabloids in the country. here.
lovely stuff. a brief break for marmite on toast snack, the change of clocks has made even hungrier than usual.
a return 12 minutes later, slightly less hungry.
children are amazing, and i realised this through an odd happening. i just walked downstairs and saw the large rubbish bin [we have one exactly the same design but much smaller-for compostable rubbish] and for some bizarre reason i wondered if that is what it's like for a child to see the smaller bin. i know i am not normal.
when getting the bus to work, there is a mum who always get the same bus on a thursday and she has a buggy with a small girl in and a small boy on 'reins' [they aren't reins really but i don't know the correct terms for how you control a child. other than smashing them in the face :P] and as they were getting off the bus, the small boy noticed that his mum's coat had got caught in the folding seat. his mum was trying to maneouvre the buggy in a small space and while this was going on, the boy tried to pull his mum's coat out, but bless him he didn't have the strength. his mum walked the buggy off and thus pulled her coat free, but she tried to hurry the small boy as she thought that he had been arsing about. it was a really simple act but i just loved the fact that she'd never really know that her son was trying to do something for her.
i shall return back to the timewaster letters, which were, to my very pleasant surprise, in the medway library system.
keep it rockin'
as for other sci-fi, i dunno. it's not like i have a bad education in the field but it must be the fact that the words sci-fi and geek are inextricably linked. and rightly so. i have seen all of the star wars films [i'm pretty sure] and can only remember enjoying the fight scene between yoda and christopher lee in one of them. the rest is babble, the editing is generally bad-i mean swipes in a non-ironic way? i may be missing the point of series of films such as star wars, lord of the rings and the latest indiana jones [which had a shit loada shit twists]
i just don't really enjoy fantasy, except from pixar films. except for cars, i have seen them all. but this is my only real allowance for fantasy. i have an interest in documentary films and real-life tales [like fargo] and there is something so entertaining about tales at least set in this world. as i write i am watching road to perdition with characters called john rooney and michael sullivan, not jabba the hutt and r2-d2. end of moaning about space operas [not even my term, wiki's]
politics now, this is easy. the bnp were on tv and some members of all political parties were outraged to see an elected official on tv. what a bastard. in all seriousness though, the man is a racist tosser who should be allowed to say whatever he wants. the only way of limiting him should be the education of the masses, and not the effortless double standards of the most read tabloids in the country. here.
lovely stuff. a brief break for marmite on toast snack, the change of clocks has made even hungrier than usual.
a return 12 minutes later, slightly less hungry.
children are amazing, and i realised this through an odd happening. i just walked downstairs and saw the large rubbish bin [we have one exactly the same design but much smaller-for compostable rubbish] and for some bizarre reason i wondered if that is what it's like for a child to see the smaller bin. i know i am not normal.
when getting the bus to work, there is a mum who always get the same bus on a thursday and she has a buggy with a small girl in and a small boy on 'reins' [they aren't reins really but i don't know the correct terms for how you control a child. other than smashing them in the face :P] and as they were getting off the bus, the small boy noticed that his mum's coat had got caught in the folding seat. his mum was trying to maneouvre the buggy in a small space and while this was going on, the boy tried to pull his mum's coat out, but bless him he didn't have the strength. his mum walked the buggy off and thus pulled her coat free, but she tried to hurry the small boy as she thought that he had been arsing about. it was a really simple act but i just loved the fact that she'd never really know that her son was trying to do something for her.
i shall return back to the timewaster letters, which were, to my very pleasant surprise, in the medway library system.
keep it rockin'
Friday 23 October 2009
p to the r to the o ducers and that
i have a mystery follower, how exciting :)
i shall endeavour to make as many sweeping statements in this little blog as possible. i shall be discussing the importance of music producers, and the reason that this came about was a discussion with the man who really helped to introduce me to the rolling stones.
no not martin scorsese, as his film 'the departed' was the actual reason i started listening to the best band that this country has ever produced. arguments against my view will be carefully ignored :)
but my scumbag college cambridge [incumbent] friend and i were discussing the merits of their 1968-1972 run of albums and how they are held up to be the best albums that the band made. the albums [beginning with beggars banquet in '68] were also the first of the stones' albums to get a us/uk release of the same material, as previously tracklistings had been rehashed out of singles etc. but the run of:
beggars banquet-1968
let it bleed-1969
sticky fingers-1971
exile on mainstreet-1972
is generally considered to be when they were at their best, at least studio wise. i would have to agree, but i believe that a massive factor in this success was the introduction of jimmy miller into the producers chair. before bb [as it'll be henceforth be known], the stones had their manager behind the desk andrew loog oldham and he helped to give them a specific sound. however after the sgt peppers-esque misguided album 'their satanic....', they really got one fuck of an album down. also at this point brian jones was in the arduous process of leaving the band he created, as he was just too fucked up on hard drugs and fit womens.
but tracklisting of bb is still classic lp format of utter tunes to begin each side of the disc and a number of tunes that are there [album tracks as they are known as] to be there. however the two stand out songs are complemented by almost certainly the finest sounding acoustic guitars that i've heard, as half the tracks [if not more] are based around a strummed acoustic and just sound fucking good.
then let it bleed [read previous post on this mother of an album] is halfway between bb and sticky fingers which foregrounds the electric guitar much more. sticky fingers is another album which stands out as being awesome, the single from it again are almost certainly the highlight. until, this is, you reach the last track. it has everything, moonlight mile has made it into the blog title for a reason... the use of orchestral sounds is bloody great as the song winds down [not sure if it really does when strings come in, nevermind!]
i know a few tracks from exile, but i don't know them well enough to write on them.
but anyway, it is almost certainly no coincidence that the songwriting/in studio performance/production on these albums is unparalleled elsewhere in their back catalogue.
another example of the importance of the role of the producer is the ramones. tommy ramone, the band manager/original drummer/producer can be heard all over their early work. their studio albums:
ramones-1976
leave home-1977
rocket to russia-1977
road to ruin-1978
were all co-produced by the weird looking lil man [it's true, google him. that's why i love the ramones though-the bastard beach boys as i call them] and the choice of producer for the 1980 album was inspired. as their first 4 albums are almost certainly their best and delivered well, recorded cheaply and in short periods of time, rough and ready but still awesome. but they never really got big from them so phil spector was brought for the 1980's end of the century. tommy ramone gave up being ramoens drummer in before road to ruin, and it shows that there was little bad blood as he was still integral to the band.
however the 1980 album was flawed as phil spector asked for hundreds of takes and went mental holding the band at gun point and just taking so much money, you can see how the album sounds off compared to their previous 4 outings. it's not even the songs, i heard their live album before end of the century and couldn't place the age of the songs-but the album has too much on it. in my opinion, it is just west coast surf pop crossed with spector wall of sound motown and lacks a rough and ready edge that is the ramones.
being rough and ready is essential to punk music, and i am currently reading up on the libertines, and wider-the other work of peter doherty. i love mick jones and the clash, but what the libertines needed was someone to tell them what to do. their first album is tight and well produced, with their pair of stand alone singles being produced by bernie butler of suede. however i feel that i can draw a strong comparison between the 04 eponymous libertines album and babyshambles' down in albion. both are produced by mick jones, and their is no control. in my opinion the quality of the songs [overall] on the libertines is greater than on down in albion and this helps the libertines album to still sound good enough to be worked into an album. seeing as though the band were fucking themselves up and breaking up, this is obviously reflected in a number of the album's track.
down in albion seems to have two or three songs where the production budget was spent [singles namely] and the rest of the tracks were a case of through ill judged lack of control, you can almost heart the crack pipes and syringes on the album. albion is an exceptional song and is correctly produced, and for me it is this song that really stands out as being brilliant. this shows that mick jones can produce [the clash's latter back catalogue too], but babyshambles weren't as good as the libertines' productions as carl barat was missing and kate moss 'helped out' doherty. he is not an idiot, just trusting and too kind.
as a brief aside, i love the kills and kate moss is going out with jamie hince. the kills are only two people and moss wants in, i hope that this doesn't happen as the odd relationship between hotel and vv makes the band fucking amazing and flying below radar. the best.
if you want a producer that can make things happen, stephen street is the man. he produced 07's 'shotter's nation' and you can hear his strong hand in the album, it is a complete album with full sounds and even though the songs on the album aren't all amazing there are a few that are at least very good. the track french dog blues is a personal favourite and it is with the help of street that it does sound good. the songs may still not be exceptional but they all sound good, something markedly different from the previous album.
doherty's solo album was also street produced, and is also full sounding and the introduction of a little man called graham coxon helps the album to sound like an artistic piece. the songs are higgledy-piggledy [not written as an album, more a compilation] and aren't really a contrived act. there is no, back from the dead and further moss/barat/critic baiting that is present in doherty's other works. in fact street apparently said to doherty to fuck off being a drug mess or he'd walk. necessary :)
i shall briefly touch on radiohead too, as my favourite album of their discography is still 95's the bends. it was produced by john leckie who produced the stone roses' fuck off debut. incredible sounding album that is, and the bends suffers from the same incredible audio-gasm-ness [spicing up my words with nonsense haha]. the bends is also the most obvious album to reflect the importance of the pixies on the band, the bends is still a guitar based album. after the bends, the keyboard and samplers became increasingly more prevalent in their sound. i don't dislike this sound. i actually feel that radiohead are the most consistent band around today, and nigel godrich is one hell of an amazing producer and i would kill a number of people to be able to work with him. but there is such an amazing charm to the bends that still grabs me by the ball and makes me yearn for more.
a final example is the beatles. a band that would have been nothing without george martin, the proof is let it be. phil spector tries to work a few tracks into nothing and is widely described as the worst beatles album. epstein and martin were key to the success of the beatles, with martin pulling together 3 egotistical tits and george harrison and their works to create great albums.
i feel sorry for phil spector as the two cited examples of his productions are weak. ah well in jail for murder, nevermind.
this is quite a beast :)
also magical/mystical blog reader should reveal themselves :)
a plan. the monorchids, thoughts?
keep it rockin'
i shall endeavour to make as many sweeping statements in this little blog as possible. i shall be discussing the importance of music producers, and the reason that this came about was a discussion with the man who really helped to introduce me to the rolling stones.
no not martin scorsese, as his film 'the departed' was the actual reason i started listening to the best band that this country has ever produced. arguments against my view will be carefully ignored :)
but my scumbag college cambridge [incumbent] friend and i were discussing the merits of their 1968-1972 run of albums and how they are held up to be the best albums that the band made. the albums [beginning with beggars banquet in '68] were also the first of the stones' albums to get a us/uk release of the same material, as previously tracklistings had been rehashed out of singles etc. but the run of:
beggars banquet-1968
let it bleed-1969
sticky fingers-1971
exile on mainstreet-1972
is generally considered to be when they were at their best, at least studio wise. i would have to agree, but i believe that a massive factor in this success was the introduction of jimmy miller into the producers chair. before bb [as it'll be henceforth be known], the stones had their manager behind the desk andrew loog oldham and he helped to give them a specific sound. however after the sgt peppers-esque misguided album 'their satanic....', they really got one fuck of an album down. also at this point brian jones was in the arduous process of leaving the band he created, as he was just too fucked up on hard drugs and fit womens.
but tracklisting of bb is still classic lp format of utter tunes to begin each side of the disc and a number of tunes that are there [album tracks as they are known as] to be there. however the two stand out songs are complemented by almost certainly the finest sounding acoustic guitars that i've heard, as half the tracks [if not more] are based around a strummed acoustic and just sound fucking good.
then let it bleed [read previous post on this mother of an album] is halfway between bb and sticky fingers which foregrounds the electric guitar much more. sticky fingers is another album which stands out as being awesome, the single from it again are almost certainly the highlight. until, this is, you reach the last track. it has everything, moonlight mile has made it into the blog title for a reason... the use of orchestral sounds is bloody great as the song winds down [not sure if it really does when strings come in, nevermind!]
i know a few tracks from exile, but i don't know them well enough to write on them.
but anyway, it is almost certainly no coincidence that the songwriting/in studio performance/production on these albums is unparalleled elsewhere in their back catalogue.
another example of the importance of the role of the producer is the ramones. tommy ramone, the band manager/original drummer/producer can be heard all over their early work. their studio albums:
ramones-1976
leave home-1977
rocket to russia-1977
road to ruin-1978
were all co-produced by the weird looking lil man [it's true, google him. that's why i love the ramones though-the bastard beach boys as i call them] and the choice of producer for the 1980 album was inspired. as their first 4 albums are almost certainly their best and delivered well, recorded cheaply and in short periods of time, rough and ready but still awesome. but they never really got big from them so phil spector was brought for the 1980's end of the century. tommy ramone gave up being ramoens drummer in before road to ruin, and it shows that there was little bad blood as he was still integral to the band.
however the 1980 album was flawed as phil spector asked for hundreds of takes and went mental holding the band at gun point and just taking so much money, you can see how the album sounds off compared to their previous 4 outings. it's not even the songs, i heard their live album before end of the century and couldn't place the age of the songs-but the album has too much on it. in my opinion, it is just west coast surf pop crossed with spector wall of sound motown and lacks a rough and ready edge that is the ramones.
being rough and ready is essential to punk music, and i am currently reading up on the libertines, and wider-the other work of peter doherty. i love mick jones and the clash, but what the libertines needed was someone to tell them what to do. their first album is tight and well produced, with their pair of stand alone singles being produced by bernie butler of suede. however i feel that i can draw a strong comparison between the 04 eponymous libertines album and babyshambles' down in albion. both are produced by mick jones, and their is no control. in my opinion the quality of the songs [overall] on the libertines is greater than on down in albion and this helps the libertines album to still sound good enough to be worked into an album. seeing as though the band were fucking themselves up and breaking up, this is obviously reflected in a number of the album's track.
down in albion seems to have two or three songs where the production budget was spent [singles namely] and the rest of the tracks were a case of through ill judged lack of control, you can almost heart the crack pipes and syringes on the album. albion is an exceptional song and is correctly produced, and for me it is this song that really stands out as being brilliant. this shows that mick jones can produce [the clash's latter back catalogue too], but babyshambles weren't as good as the libertines' productions as carl barat was missing and kate moss 'helped out' doherty. he is not an idiot, just trusting and too kind.
as a brief aside, i love the kills and kate moss is going out with jamie hince. the kills are only two people and moss wants in, i hope that this doesn't happen as the odd relationship between hotel and vv makes the band fucking amazing and flying below radar. the best.
if you want a producer that can make things happen, stephen street is the man. he produced 07's 'shotter's nation' and you can hear his strong hand in the album, it is a complete album with full sounds and even though the songs on the album aren't all amazing there are a few that are at least very good. the track french dog blues is a personal favourite and it is with the help of street that it does sound good. the songs may still not be exceptional but they all sound good, something markedly different from the previous album.
doherty's solo album was also street produced, and is also full sounding and the introduction of a little man called graham coxon helps the album to sound like an artistic piece. the songs are higgledy-piggledy [not written as an album, more a compilation] and aren't really a contrived act. there is no, back from the dead and further moss/barat/critic baiting that is present in doherty's other works. in fact street apparently said to doherty to fuck off being a drug mess or he'd walk. necessary :)
i shall briefly touch on radiohead too, as my favourite album of their discography is still 95's the bends. it was produced by john leckie who produced the stone roses' fuck off debut. incredible sounding album that is, and the bends suffers from the same incredible audio-gasm-ness [spicing up my words with nonsense haha]. the bends is also the most obvious album to reflect the importance of the pixies on the band, the bends is still a guitar based album. after the bends, the keyboard and samplers became increasingly more prevalent in their sound. i don't dislike this sound. i actually feel that radiohead are the most consistent band around today, and nigel godrich is one hell of an amazing producer and i would kill a number of people to be able to work with him. but there is such an amazing charm to the bends that still grabs me by the ball and makes me yearn for more.
a final example is the beatles. a band that would have been nothing without george martin, the proof is let it be. phil spector tries to work a few tracks into nothing and is widely described as the worst beatles album. epstein and martin were key to the success of the beatles, with martin pulling together 3 egotistical tits and george harrison and their works to create great albums.
i feel sorry for phil spector as the two cited examples of his productions are weak. ah well in jail for murder, nevermind.
this is quite a beast :)
also magical/mystical blog reader should reveal themselves :)
a plan. the monorchids, thoughts?
keep it rockin'
Thursday 10 September 2009
"phoney beatlemania has bitten the dust"
it clearly hasn't, well done joe strummer- you are a crazy nutter!
personally i am bored of the hype granted for the beatles in the past few weeks. i used to love the beatles, when i was younger i absolutely adored their '1' album but now as an actual grown up adult man, [aparently] i ahve grown onto love other and better things. i choose my words carfeully here as the beatles are clearly the biggest band ever, undoubtedly, but for all their great popular music and pazazz-i want a bit of bite not just bark.
i enjoy pop music, and i think that the beatles covers of tracks such as 'rock'n'roll music' are great, and the 'with the beatles' album is bloody good. but in this post, i wish to celebrate the past 50 years of music with a close selection of my favourite albums from a year ending in 9.
ok as a start, 1959, there are in my opinion no stand out albums from this year. hit singles however include: el paso- marty robbins, a teenage in love- dion and the belmonts, only sixteen- craig douglas, it doesn't matter anymore- buddy holly etc etc. brilliant songs, check them out. i was basically educated on fifties music by my mum.
1969, my choice for an album from this year is easy. as the beatles were collapsing in on themselves and working with phil spector, the rolling stones released 'let it bleed'. 9 tracks long, originally two sides of an lp. i often wonder how albums are properly compiled and if the opening track is a sign of things to come for the album, martin scorsese is to blame for my love of the stones. 'gimme shelter', as featured in pretty much everything by marty is such a stonkigly great song that is hard to describe its full power, so i shall sum up the dark and brooding nature of the track with the lines: 'war children, it's just a shot away' and 'rape, murder, it's just a shot away'. they are delivered with such incredible intensity, and merry clayton the female voice [this is an apocryphal tale] even miscarried during her pregnancy due to the performance.
a cover is next, and covers are something that the stones do very very well and i genuinely can;t understand why modern bands don't do more covers of classic songs-re thinking them for themselves. the beatles did it, the stones did it and the clash did it. oasis tried but as they are just a cover band anyway, this doesn't really count. the original robert johnson 'love in vain' has nothing on it bar his bluesy acoustic and his captivating voice, but the cover has weaving sounds and his brilliant-jagger's voice is potent and rife with whatever makes his him the best, in my opinion at least. him or mercury, there are no other contenders :)
then a cover of themselves, a true bluesy song named country honk. when the clash covered one of their own songs [career opportunities on sandinista!], it was fucking awful. simply the worst idea they ever had. but the stones put a lot more of a country vibe on country honk, fiddles sounds rich and jagger has much more of an american lilt to his voice. it isn't as good as their 'honky tonk women' single, of which the track is a cover, but sounds good. however it is probably the worst track on the album.
track 4, live with me. the saxophones are really quite prominent on this little number, and blast through the rest of the guitar and rhythm work. it has a big sound, that has now become the stones' live thing and sounds great with the duelling guitars and all the other bits.
to close side one, we have a filthy song that is only beaten by 'star, star' in terms of lyrically nasty songs. a tad crass with the words, 'we all need someone we can cream on', but that is the rolling stones for you. i can only really think of 'kiss my cunt, oh kiss my cock' from pixies u-mass as a filthier line from a song. the song is down tempo as albums a re built to be, but really i can't wait to talk about the next song.
'the midnight rambler', the intrigue of the central character is what pumps the song forward as well as the fucking marvellous break down a good way through the song. the writing of this song is clear that they wanted to make the figure an elusive and nasty bastard strolling through the south of america, much like max cady in cape fear. my opinion. the guitar work is very good as it is so relatively simple, but it is the harmonica that helps to give the song a great sound. 'i'm gonna hit-and-run rape her in anger', nasty and observational of the nasty america that was unfolding. whereas charlie manson deduced satanic meanings from beatles stuff, if he listened to the stones there is no deduction needed. the closing lyrics 'i'll stick my knife right down your throat baby, and it hurts', pure evil. amazing!
you got the silver, love/blues and keith richards. richards lead vocals are very nice, not as good as jagger's overall voice but again, my opinion. also my friend wiki says that this was the last track that brian jones worked on with the stones, because he was going mental mental mental on drugs! so the man that formed the band was fired for being a lay about and being to drug addled, this coming from keith richards too.
i am getting tired now. monkey man, great track. listen to it.
the final track from the let it bleed album is the uplifting ditty [a 7.5 minute long ditty] called 'you can't always get what you want'. it is a moving track, again just listen to it.
the album will have it's 40th anniversary in november, will it get any coverage? no. should it? yes. it is every bit as good as anything the beatles put out, but as the outsider band the rolling stones will not grant the same publicity. still the band still has three of its original members, and they still work as a band. lennon is dead, ono is not. justice? no. but was lennon a dick? probably yes.
keep it rockin'
personally i am bored of the hype granted for the beatles in the past few weeks. i used to love the beatles, when i was younger i absolutely adored their '1' album but now as an actual grown up adult man, [aparently] i ahve grown onto love other and better things. i choose my words carfeully here as the beatles are clearly the biggest band ever, undoubtedly, but for all their great popular music and pazazz-i want a bit of bite not just bark.
i enjoy pop music, and i think that the beatles covers of tracks such as 'rock'n'roll music' are great, and the 'with the beatles' album is bloody good. but in this post, i wish to celebrate the past 50 years of music with a close selection of my favourite albums from a year ending in 9.
ok as a start, 1959, there are in my opinion no stand out albums from this year. hit singles however include: el paso- marty robbins, a teenage in love- dion and the belmonts, only sixteen- craig douglas, it doesn't matter anymore- buddy holly etc etc. brilliant songs, check them out. i was basically educated on fifties music by my mum.
1969, my choice for an album from this year is easy. as the beatles were collapsing in on themselves and working with phil spector, the rolling stones released 'let it bleed'. 9 tracks long, originally two sides of an lp. i often wonder how albums are properly compiled and if the opening track is a sign of things to come for the album, martin scorsese is to blame for my love of the stones. 'gimme shelter', as featured in pretty much everything by marty is such a stonkigly great song that is hard to describe its full power, so i shall sum up the dark and brooding nature of the track with the lines: 'war children, it's just a shot away' and 'rape, murder, it's just a shot away'. they are delivered with such incredible intensity, and merry clayton the female voice [this is an apocryphal tale] even miscarried during her pregnancy due to the performance.
a cover is next, and covers are something that the stones do very very well and i genuinely can;t understand why modern bands don't do more covers of classic songs-re thinking them for themselves. the beatles did it, the stones did it and the clash did it. oasis tried but as they are just a cover band anyway, this doesn't really count. the original robert johnson 'love in vain' has nothing on it bar his bluesy acoustic and his captivating voice, but the cover has weaving sounds and his brilliant-jagger's voice is potent and rife with whatever makes his him the best, in my opinion at least. him or mercury, there are no other contenders :)
then a cover of themselves, a true bluesy song named country honk. when the clash covered one of their own songs [career opportunities on sandinista!], it was fucking awful. simply the worst idea they ever had. but the stones put a lot more of a country vibe on country honk, fiddles sounds rich and jagger has much more of an american lilt to his voice. it isn't as good as their 'honky tonk women' single, of which the track is a cover, but sounds good. however it is probably the worst track on the album.
track 4, live with me. the saxophones are really quite prominent on this little number, and blast through the rest of the guitar and rhythm work. it has a big sound, that has now become the stones' live thing and sounds great with the duelling guitars and all the other bits.
to close side one, we have a filthy song that is only beaten by 'star, star' in terms of lyrically nasty songs. a tad crass with the words, 'we all need someone we can cream on', but that is the rolling stones for you. i can only really think of 'kiss my cunt, oh kiss my cock' from pixies u-mass as a filthier line from a song. the song is down tempo as albums a re built to be, but really i can't wait to talk about the next song.
'the midnight rambler', the intrigue of the central character is what pumps the song forward as well as the fucking marvellous break down a good way through the song. the writing of this song is clear that they wanted to make the figure an elusive and nasty bastard strolling through the south of america, much like max cady in cape fear. my opinion. the guitar work is very good as it is so relatively simple, but it is the harmonica that helps to give the song a great sound. 'i'm gonna hit-and-run rape her in anger', nasty and observational of the nasty america that was unfolding. whereas charlie manson deduced satanic meanings from beatles stuff, if he listened to the stones there is no deduction needed. the closing lyrics 'i'll stick my knife right down your throat baby, and it hurts', pure evil. amazing!
you got the silver, love/blues and keith richards. richards lead vocals are very nice, not as good as jagger's overall voice but again, my opinion. also my friend wiki says that this was the last track that brian jones worked on with the stones, because he was going mental mental mental on drugs! so the man that formed the band was fired for being a lay about and being to drug addled, this coming from keith richards too.
i am getting tired now. monkey man, great track. listen to it.
the final track from the let it bleed album is the uplifting ditty [a 7.5 minute long ditty] called 'you can't always get what you want'. it is a moving track, again just listen to it.
the album will have it's 40th anniversary in november, will it get any coverage? no. should it? yes. it is every bit as good as anything the beatles put out, but as the outsider band the rolling stones will not grant the same publicity. still the band still has three of its original members, and they still work as a band. lennon is dead, ono is not. justice? no. but was lennon a dick? probably yes.
keep it rockin'
Thursday 20 August 2009
friends and film
i am watching a mighty wind-it is brilliant! christopher guest is one of the finest comedians, actors and directors of our time... a better woody allen than woody allen! what he does in his films [guest this is] is use a similar formula and makes people laugh, woody allen makes exactly the same film over and over again...
my opinions only [also i've only seen a couple of allen films-but reviews also suggest that maybe you should let things go a bit]
i spent a day at work and it was much better than last week's thursday, where it wasn't much good at all... details are a tad too personal so i won't say any more.
anyway, this is gonna be a short post as i'm lacking of words as i'm in a weird mood due to coffee/tiredness/excitedness/happiness etc etc
thanks: thister, thield, thlood, tharkson, thillespie, theary and most importantly thamp!
more when i'm not weird, or as weird... lad!
my opinions only [also i've only seen a couple of allen films-but reviews also suggest that maybe you should let things go a bit]
i spent a day at work and it was much better than last week's thursday, where it wasn't much good at all... details are a tad too personal so i won't say any more.
anyway, this is gonna be a short post as i'm lacking of words as i'm in a weird mood due to coffee/tiredness/excitedness/happiness etc etc
thanks: thister, thield, thlood, tharkson, thillespie, theary and most importantly thamp!
more when i'm not weird, or as weird... lad!
Wednesday 5 August 2009
another day another dollar
i start work at half 10 today, the alarm was set for half 8. i woke up at 7, damn body.
to keep a reader happy, kirsty and donnelly... expect a few more of these as the certain reader is a demanding bugger!
but at the arse end of the day yesterday, i enjoyed a moment that lifted me from the previous squalor that i'd let myself into. as some/all/none of you know i work as a part-time carer for a family friend who has ms and this week i've been working full-time due to the fact that his full time carer is having to sort out family business.
usually stuart, fulltime, would take iain, my employer, out and about and that-however as i'm nowhere near as strong and steady [as i was thinking about this yesterday, i'm not that strong in my arms but my core strength is ok-i just have bad co-ordination and balance due to dyspraxia... yes i'm officially special] as stuart iain has been house bound and i can tell is somewhat frustrated at this and rightly so.
iain's long time gf emily [whom i help by doing the cleaning/ironing etc] came home from work, and it was at this point that something just clicked as i saw her helping iain up and into his wheelchair to examine the new decking layed out the back of their house. it was a simple and day to day act for them, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary [for them, for quite a few other people it would obviously be so]
the true love and dedication that emily showed at this point in time just made me smile so much, as ms is an utter cunt of a disease and inflicts truely disabilitating pain on people for no good reason and can majorly disrupt lives. however i feel that they way iain and emily have dealt with it is with true grit, the carry on regardless stiff upper lip of a large section of the british population.
i loved it. i smiled and walked into a fine summer's day-or what was left of it and then got on a bus home which i gave the soundtrack of ian brown and joe strummer. brilliant!
i shall briefly return to the main subject of my last blog via the song 'everybody's free (to wear sunscreen)', which jo whiley played on the radio yesterday as some scottish school results were being announced. i refuse to lose contact with penelope cruz [referring to last blog, surprisingly not a real name haha] as she is great and i simply want to see her happy and prospering in life, i can be stuck in my rut forever but i feel a strong need to remain friends as she swayed my life a lot [not only the fact that the word pjizzles is still the coolest phrase that deals with pyjamas i've ever heard hehe]
the tragedies in life [me, joking] are levelled up by the pure beauty of poetry in motion of a couple remaining solid and content or a young life just starting on the road to more love, success, smiles and good times. i'm happy to observe these things and know these people. the sad fact that i often don't experience the full passion and precision of love and life is overruled by the fact that i know that out their throughout this fair land there are millions that do. ace bananas.
as i always do with my blogs seem to ramble on and then towards the end briefly deal with other subjects. i shall do the same here.
whilst writing the above i've listened to radiohead, dan le sac, the prodigy [for whom i had to pause from writing to dance along to voodoo people] and now the streets. which is further nostalgia feeding kirsty haha
the gradball and being physically assaulted and having my ears destroyed by an uproarious miss sloan, classic :)
the pissing on the bus on the way home did make me somewhat of a legend amongst my contemporaries and then jetting off to iow festival the next day whilst hungover was all good fun
its only a few weeks til my birthday meet up in london. i pray for fair weather so that we [uni people, mainly film people] can hang out, get drunk, chat and smile away the day :) i shall arrange the details soon and so check up on your facebook inbox
a final piece to finish with. facebook people, learn to not put drinking/hangover in all of your status updates. well done, you drank a lot and had fun but we've all done it... it doesn't make you cool bragging about it. james suggested that i add 'the gospel according to stella' to my facebook profile as a religious view.
it is ironic and sarcastic. do the same.
smiles
keep it rockin'
to keep a reader happy, kirsty and donnelly... expect a few more of these as the certain reader is a demanding bugger!
but at the arse end of the day yesterday, i enjoyed a moment that lifted me from the previous squalor that i'd let myself into. as some/all/none of you know i work as a part-time carer for a family friend who has ms and this week i've been working full-time due to the fact that his full time carer is having to sort out family business.
usually stuart, fulltime, would take iain, my employer, out and about and that-however as i'm nowhere near as strong and steady [as i was thinking about this yesterday, i'm not that strong in my arms but my core strength is ok-i just have bad co-ordination and balance due to dyspraxia... yes i'm officially special] as stuart iain has been house bound and i can tell is somewhat frustrated at this and rightly so.
iain's long time gf emily [whom i help by doing the cleaning/ironing etc] came home from work, and it was at this point that something just clicked as i saw her helping iain up and into his wheelchair to examine the new decking layed out the back of their house. it was a simple and day to day act for them, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary [for them, for quite a few other people it would obviously be so]
the true love and dedication that emily showed at this point in time just made me smile so much, as ms is an utter cunt of a disease and inflicts truely disabilitating pain on people for no good reason and can majorly disrupt lives. however i feel that they way iain and emily have dealt with it is with true grit, the carry on regardless stiff upper lip of a large section of the british population.
i loved it. i smiled and walked into a fine summer's day-or what was left of it and then got on a bus home which i gave the soundtrack of ian brown and joe strummer. brilliant!
i shall briefly return to the main subject of my last blog via the song 'everybody's free (to wear sunscreen)', which jo whiley played on the radio yesterday as some scottish school results were being announced. i refuse to lose contact with penelope cruz [referring to last blog, surprisingly not a real name haha] as she is great and i simply want to see her happy and prospering in life, i can be stuck in my rut forever but i feel a strong need to remain friends as she swayed my life a lot [not only the fact that the word pjizzles is still the coolest phrase that deals with pyjamas i've ever heard hehe]
the tragedies in life [me, joking] are levelled up by the pure beauty of poetry in motion of a couple remaining solid and content or a young life just starting on the road to more love, success, smiles and good times. i'm happy to observe these things and know these people. the sad fact that i often don't experience the full passion and precision of love and life is overruled by the fact that i know that out their throughout this fair land there are millions that do. ace bananas.
as i always do with my blogs seem to ramble on and then towards the end briefly deal with other subjects. i shall do the same here.
whilst writing the above i've listened to radiohead, dan le sac, the prodigy [for whom i had to pause from writing to dance along to voodoo people] and now the streets. which is further nostalgia feeding kirsty haha
the gradball and being physically assaulted and having my ears destroyed by an uproarious miss sloan, classic :)
the pissing on the bus on the way home did make me somewhat of a legend amongst my contemporaries and then jetting off to iow festival the next day whilst hungover was all good fun
its only a few weeks til my birthday meet up in london. i pray for fair weather so that we [uni people, mainly film people] can hang out, get drunk, chat and smile away the day :) i shall arrange the details soon and so check up on your facebook inbox
a final piece to finish with. facebook people, learn to not put drinking/hangover in all of your status updates. well done, you drank a lot and had fun but we've all done it... it doesn't make you cool bragging about it. james suggested that i add 'the gospel according to stella' to my facebook profile as a religious view.
it is ironic and sarcastic. do the same.
smiles
keep it rockin'
Tuesday 4 August 2009
i am a ladies man, and here is the proof...
i'm watching a film that has steve buscemi, john goodman, philip seymour hoffman, jeff bridges, peter stormare, flea, john turturro and aimee mann.
such a hilarious film. my favourite film ever, the coen brothers' 1998 motion picture the big lebowski. i've written about the film at every stage of my film studies career.
this blog however will not deal with the film, it shall deal with me and my female friends. the sort of female friends that are more than just friends, girlfriends and those i look at from afar.
when dealing with my former success [notice the singular here haha] i shall refer to her as penelope cruz, partially because we are still friends and i've linked her to this blog before... it is a subtle ploy because she'd have no idea i was talking about her if i referred to her by the name of a ridiculously fit spaniard! [on the off chance, if you are reading this the 'real' penelope cruz ( as in if you've the initials mc) i say this all in complete honesty and with love with regards to our past and future etc etc! smile like you always do :)]
so, yes. i'm notoriously a ladies man, with a long long list of ladies that i've looked at and admired. the 'won over' list contains just one name, penelope cruz. [i like how this works, it makes me sound like an actual international playboy]
after wimping out of talking to an attractive female that i've been keeping an eye on [this sounds bad... i havent spoken to her in 3-4 years, and never really spoke much to her then much (in sixth form) anyway, but i thought that if i can woo her its all good... i failed] and being so annoyed at myself that i didnt try anything just really makes a light of my success with the ladies.
the reason penelope cruz and i got together was because of work and the fact that i had to speak to her as i was her 'supervisor' or whatever on her first day. i thought [this is the truth] that she looked like a russian immigrant [or spanish, as she is penelope cruz after all :P], a fit one nonetheless :)
but it was a weird and wonderful day, and from little acorns a brief and lovely lil relationship grew :)
my one success seems to prove to me that i have to be forced into a situation where i can share my personality with someone, for any sort of a relationship to happen-my looks and inability to present a strong first impression of myself means that anything other than this and i fail... majorly!
i have zero confidence as since my relationship with penelope cruz was terminated nearly two years, i have been turned down a number of times and so my wave of mutilation [pixies] crashed into the cliffs. since then the tide has neither gone out or in [continuing with the sea/relationship thing] and is stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
the mutual breakup [a break up is hardly ever mutual, and usually if the phrase is used it means the other person broke up with them. this is true with me and penelope cruz] hit me hard, and still two years later makes me think what once was. penelope cruz is and was lovely.
i'm not sure whether to go for broke and say i've never had a girlfriend however as i'd not want to embarass penelope cruz by her saying that she once went out with me [harsh truth]. she'd be a chapter in my autobiography and i'd be a footnote in hers :)
no proper thoughts other than just hmm'y ones! i dunno, just how one person can affect you-and that multiple failures really do grind you down. i'm simply too cool haha
in other news, i was entertained by radio 1 today. radio 1 is just full of pop music and is basically what you'd hear at oceana on any night of the week!
heard more of muse's new stuff, sounds ok but still just not good really. even the fact that it was recorded in lovely italy doesn't sway me!
ah well.
"take the four dollars..." i <3>
keep it rockin'
Saturday 25 July 2009
this, that and this again
i've been having a but of a reminisce recently, due to my music listening becoming more stagnant... pixies, the streets and the prodigy.
i also have a massive yearning for mexican fast food, as this is once again part of the reminiscy-package haha more references will be abundant! but the fast food and the good music, apart from pendulum.
they are an annoying bunch of arses who make drum'n'bass that is just middle of the road and poppy. tarantula and all that bullshit. i simply don't like them, at iow they played their version of voodoo people and it was dull-a matter of hours later the boys came on and did the original and dear god it was good :)
the main reason that i went to iow was due to the pixies but also my brother needed another reason for funding both of our tickets [cos he is nice to me sometimes, so that he can also still wrestle me and breath vinegar breath in my face like a grown up 25 year old should do] and the reason came in the form of the prodigy.
they were 9/10, a dark field with a fucking loud sound system and a loud of people who i suspect may have not been just drunk :P they played mainly the hits [tits] and also stuff off invaders must die, which sounds quite similar to pendulum but they are also a lot lot more betterer than those aussie wankers.
only the pixies could better them, and they pretty much did. but this is only because they were the finest band i've ever seen live, and i've seen waking aida!
but having realised i've not yet blogged on the festival i thought i'd burn your eyes and ears regarding how good it was. saw blur a few weeks ago and i was informed by a friend that it was her favourite gig ever-but she doesn't particularly the pixies but she does like muse. ignore her views then.
i'm fortunate enough to be seeing the pixies again in october, an occasion will make me go a bit week at the knees. they are playing all of their incredible 1989 album doolittle, so much happiness will occur.
cheese on toast time.
we don't have any cheese left. sad banana times. in fact this isn't completely true, we have some edam but thats just not cheese is it! i just had a roule sandwich, best of a bad situation.
this fucking band. i won't say anymore, but simply it is tripe. awful awful business.
integrity and being pop is a very interesting/contentious issue within music. i say because of my feelings on the latest kings of leon album, it simply isn't up to scratch. it is such an annoying sounding album, to my ears it sounds like they have buckled and gone-lets make some money. they sound more like u2 than they've ever tried to before. use somebody is a good song, but the bass sound is shite! it sounds like they've got flea to do it for them, this is not the kings of leon. as my good friend matt noted as well, the track 17 is a xmas song for christ sake and he is getting equally annoyed at them after seeing a pair of teenage girls sit in front of him at the o2 who only went to see them play sex on fire and he said that scores of people in the audience who weren't singing along to anything before only by the night.
i'm not sure about this, they are slipping from being brilliant to being middle of the road. however they've promised fans [like i and not radio 1 listeners] that the fifth album is a return to the bluesy background they come from. yes please.
i feel that i'm becoming more vitriolic in my growing annoyance towards some people and their views on the beatles. let it go, just a band. and get a tad dull.
i realise the hypocrisy here, but the beatles do start to bore me. stones have so much more attack and nastiest. i prefer them, they are not better [the term better is stupid, i like looking at some polls that rank bands as i just disagree every step of the way].
to bed, more in the future.
keep it rockin'
Saturday 18 July 2009
the cunt and the veteran
bono.
end of. but not the end of, obviously!
my friend chris had as his facebook status "[name] wants to know why it wasn't Bono. It's never cocking Bono." on the day that mj died. i wish the man wasn't so much just of a fucking arsehole :)
example of this is when is when u2 covered beat on the brat, the ramones classic off their first album. i mean the original is just a powerful song that reflects the revved up nature of basically new york teenagers high on glue and wanting to dance, and the u2 version is destroyed by bono's vocals-the rest of the music sounds ok, a bit plain but a guitarwankery version of the song would be even worse.
he just sounds like a poo.
another example of bono and how people dislike him, when i was watching the future is unwritten [ joe strummer, who's dead, documentary] his annoyingly little face made an appearance and the two middle aged guys in front of me said words to the effect of-what a fucking cunt! which was nice... i laughed to myself as i quite agree with them, but also they did interrupt the film for a bit, but then again they were right.
he also popped up in a lil documentary on the pixies, it was like i can't escape the man. also pixies supported u2 on one of their tours-the wrong way around, by far. i like some of their music, but still pixies made nirvana/radiohead/placebo etc etc.
in other news, the world's oldest man henry allingham has died at the age of 113! thats pretty mental, i've been doing a bit of reading up on him and he sounds like he was an incredible man :) i can't fathom living through through 3 centuries, fighting in a war and more stuff... i haven't done much reading up on him and i'm tired so won't go on, but the guy was good!
small piece-on bbc news website frontpage, "Lenny Henry: My big surprise for Dawn", what is the surprise? he's actually fun?
no.
done.
keep it rockin'
Friday 17 July 2009
language and battery
i am currently listening to some vintage 21st century punk/rap in the form of transplants debut album. i enjoy it muchly, thats why i'm listening to it-obviously.
in the past few days i've allowed myself to slip into a two year old crater, i shall not whinge about this as it is totally my fault and all that blar. i shall begin with an attack on poor grammer...
see what i did there? grammar not grammer, i wented to a grammar school. but anyway yes what annoys me about facebook is that people have some terrible grammar and spelling in their statuses [stati?] and i can say that i'm now paying a lot more attention to my own as it really winds me up... i don't know why, as i have just stated i'm by no means perfect but [tries and fails to cite an example of bad grammar... well done] is just terrible.
point unproven. but also within the media [bbc news website, as its basically all i look at] and the spoken word, there are too many americanisms! the 7th july terrorist attacks are just that, they are not 7/7... i cannot stand this phrase, its an ugly and horrible journalistic term and has taken such a massive cue from september 11th [american date here, please note this] and the subsequent squirming to save column inches by journalists who wish to call it 9/11.
examples that i don't like hearing, and if i do i might go a tad mental, butt [no thanks, its arse/bum], ass [same, arse/bum], oh my gosh [say god-baby talk is boring], you do the math[s] and the final and most annoying one, tuxedo.
fuck off. we british people say dinner jacket, you've watched too many movies [another word i dislike, put that on the list. its lazy and sounds like a childish and retarded form of moving pictures-which is what it is] from across the pond!
'oh that is a nice dinner jacket john'
'thank you jane, you look pretty fucking fit in you're dress too' see this is a prime example :)
i was going to say something else, but i can't remember what. wee wee and then a hopefully triumphant return.
success, i remembered! stop sweating your little butts...
corporal punishment and the police. i'm not 100% behind heavy handed control of rioting crowds, but i'm genuniely happy that they beat the rich and the hippies... this of course relates to the separate occasions where the police beat the living shit of the countryside alliance people and also hippies on annoying mayday things. but which is brought up as a breach of human rights? hippies.
nothing is made of hitting some well off people, as they deserve it as everyone is on the moral highground as they don't like hunting [obviously] despite more than likely not eating all the free range and/or organic meat on the market [quite broad sweeping].
but some smelly annoying people who do nothing but smoke weed [sweep, sweep] get a battering from police and amnesty international weep like they are animals. as you may have guessed, this is once again non-sensical... but basically my rough point is the police should hit no-one, but if they must do it, hit everyone.
i want to moan about suburbia, but i'm now watching south park [a 10/10 show]
keep it rockin'
Tuesday 14 July 2009
sellers and more
is it wrong that i'm already thinking about what i could put in my autobiography? the reason for why is that i watched 'the peter sellers story' an epic documentary over three parts and three hours, i downloaded it off the internet and it just reminds me of how amazing the man was and how i'd like to be.
i always see a lot of myself in some documentaries [on influential and major stars], mainly due to wish fulfillment... i also thought things through, and i reckon that i could be a really influential performer-now to do something about it
that was my brief foray into comedy right there, you missed it! but anyway the man was brilliant and so he is a hero of mine... not a recently found hero that i've suddenly fallen in love with but instead from a while ago, i mean if you've seen the first pink panther film you'll know what i mean-the bit where he gets his violin back and he plays it just simply creases me up, i'm in pieces with his little face.
contentious issue, any better comedy film actor? with such a diverse range of work? steve coogan is quite close and a very modern alternative, but from what i know he doesn't seem to be such a nice guy as sellers, who is the most talented actor [after finishing the ladykillers in 55 he gave an audio tape to each of his co-stars of him imitating each of them, and he was spot on with each... just amazing]
but for a little vagabond book, where would the highlights be? i can't just end every anecdote, needless to say i had the last laugh [partridge please] but i find it an interesting idea with what stories from a monotonous life would be entertaining at all, i dunno. but if miley cyrus has one, so could i... i'll make up some wild stories, fact becomes fiction.
utter bollocks this last bit.
but i've also had a bit of time to think about life and death, as you genuinely never know when its gonna end and also what happens after the terminal breath... its really not a nice thought, and this has been brought into perspective with my current employment.
looking after a ms sufferer, you can see how it is a fucking cunt of a disease and is utterly horrible. being 21 you feel blessed with the total use of your body, in all its ugly forms, but then you see that you may well be struck down by a freak injury or disease which means you can't move... i'm soon to buy diving bell and the butterfly, a film that deals with a similar feeling of being stuck in a body that they can't get out of. i'd not wish to be in this position, and wouldn't want to see anyone else like that either.
i can't articulate my complete feeling regarding more stuff atm, so i won't
keep it rockin'
Monday 13 July 2009
a note
-less, -ish, -centred, -pitying, -depricating, -involved, -deluded etc etc
consider this as some form of a redundancy note, an excuse ridden explanation of my self. an evaluation if you will- no lies, all truths.
i'm getting progressively closer to fully and finally admitting defeating and throwing in the towel, the looming 'tortured artist' status may be applied without the upshots that the title provides to the poor fucker has. i don't want to be one, but i seem to fittingly fit the bill-but once again as previosuly noted without any artistic merit. almost giving in and just become part of the disgusting society that i comment on and despise and promised myself to not join.
but i can now see the appeal. it isn't living, it's waiting.
welcome in the cliches, it's better to have loved and lost. its ok to grip your 15 minutes of fame and nostalgically shine light among the minutes, deluding yourself into thinking that the minutes meant something. 99 times out of 100 they will not be remembered by no one.
honesty comes in many forms. fact based truth is unfortunately the realm in which i live, the brutal world where failures are real, demeaning and fucking hard hitting. the childlike innocence of seeing the world as a magical place where anyone can be a success, the ugly happy.
[james, i hope you read this as unfortunately i'm close to saying that i've been defeated. i've been broken, i failed in trying to deduce meaning and life from medway.]
dealing with the dark.
and so, as i don't know-i really don't. there is still a chance, the future is unwritten.
keep it rockin'
Wednesday 8 July 2009
music money and vietnam, or thriller?
so michael jackson is still dead... his memorial service was 'awe-inspiring' and caused me to shed a tear. had you fooled, i just watched the highlights and it looked like boredom over 9 hours or so.
also recently dead; allen klein. who is he you say? you are right to ask this question as he was a very important background player. allen klein was in fact one time manager of the beatles and the rolling stones-so only the biggest pop band and biggest blues/rock'n'roll band that there have ever been [respectively].
so why was he important? because he fucked over the rolling stones and the beatles, mick jagger suggested to macca that he would be good and was then part of the reason the band broke up. [i think that jagger did this on purpose :P] but yes, klein owned abkco records which did at one point own the stones back catalogue before 1971, and i think that this is still the case.
but he didn't work for the rolling stones, and once released from his contract sued the band and won, resulting in the acquiring of the rights to their music. though it seems minor, he got rich off the back of the band-and sued the verve for their use of 'the last time', thus giving sole credit for the song to jagger/richards. the rolling stones did not sue the band, management did.
but klein was described as the price of an education by keith richards, as they seemed to get screwed over so much. joe strummer also cited richards when discussing contracts, as aparently richards prescribed reading glasses to bands-as contract details are often in the tiniest print.
since the stones, bands such as the clash, radiohead and also factory records have protected their own interest. the clash's manager bernie rhodes set up a company called nineden records who bought the rights to the clash's tracks-which the band have said was so so important as otherwise they'd have been completely fucked.
[the clash, 1976-1983, were in debt to the record label from conception until 1982 due to their drive to be true artists-and release what they wanted taking massive losses on their sandinista album-for which they received no money at the time. it was only after they were strongly told to play the u.s. festival in 1982, for which they got paid $500,000, that they would finally see them out of debt]
but factory records had a 50/50 split between artist and management/label and this was so important-you can't have one without the other. and now radiohead's manager brian message is/has/will be launching polyphonic records which will allow bands to retain their own copyright-splitting profits the same way factory did. well done to him.
so klein provided a dramatic swing in the change for band management and all that stuff, the almost as important backroom drama. but nothing is made of his death, a shame as he seems like an interesting guy, if a bit of a knob.
death number two. robert s mcnamara. again, who is he? he was a former ceo of ford, introduced the seatbelt across the ford range and later had it made manditory, youngest lecturer at harvard university at the time, leader of the world bank and between 1961 and 1968 was the u.s. secretary of defence [spelt in british english, as we invented the language].
for anyone who has seen the fog of war [or is james cleary] needs to read no more as a way of receiving an education on the man. for those who haven't, you should watch the documentary on him by errol morris. i can't review the film strongly enough-its the finest documentary that i have seen [that isn't on a subject i know about, and so i'd have bias].
basically mcnamara [from here on in just rsm] led the u.s. into the vietnam war, and has since come to realise that he may have been a tad heavy handed and not have been justified. his life lessons learnt from the war are the main subject of the film. but he gives a reason for his decisions to do with the war, and his anti-communist feelings. this man helped put his home country into a war that was poo and very fucked up, pitting ideology versus ideology-something not seen before or since [complete lie].
i'm sort of running out of steam of what to say, because partly there are builders right outside my bedroom window who woke me at 8am, i smell as i've yet to leave bed and other factors such as mild boredom setting in. just watch the fog of war-its a brilliant film, despite the forest of mirrors as the sight and sound review said.
but please, take heed and take an interest in these two men.
allen klein and robert mcnamara ftw! mj, just...
keep it rockin'
Sunday 5 July 2009
how can you defend the undefendable?
my day has reminded me of a day a month or so ago (this is absolute toss, i've in fact been mildly badgered into describing what happened by my friend davesimondavesimon)
but we [me, 5'5'' and dave, 6'4'' or so] were walking down the street, we were discussing what we would be doing with our lives in the near future as we were at this time neither graduands or graduates. we were students. so taking a merry wander we were saying basically that we wished to find jobs and the like and we rounded the corner onto portswood high street.
it was a lovely day, i can't remember what day it was but still, and we moved slightly apart to let a man through. there was ample room as we are both nice guys. the man, being in infinite wisdom passed through the gap slightly bumping into my right arm. he was carrying a bag of seed. as dave and i continued on he turned and began to hurl abuse at us-and this isn't even an over exaggeration, people were turning round to see what was going on and purely by chance my flatmate ben was passing by on a bus at the same time.
the mentalist, henceforth called the seed-bag-mad-man, verbally abused us for being students and apparently walking along a road like, i dunno a student? apparently we each walked with a swagger that blared out that we were students-maybe it was our t-shirts that read: look at the way we walk, we're horrifically in debt and will be entering the worst job market in over twenty years- AND WE LOVE IT!
or maybe not. maybe the seed-bag-mad-man was in fact just, as his name entails, a mad man who was in a rush and annoyed that he couldn't feed his mum the seeds that he had purchased.
so here's to you my friend [not dave, he is a stinky willy poo face], but instead the seed-bag-mad-man. i'm no longer a student, i'm on the dole! how dya like them apples?
job seekers allowance. a small amount for doing little, so in actuality it is a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. the daunting task of signing on in chatham happened on thursday, and was made better by the welcoming sight of around 10 chav twat wankers hanging out the front of the building smoking and drinking stellas outside at 11am-nice!
but entering was intimidating, like sex ;) but after getting help up [by this i mean directions-not being carried up the stairs like a lame wimp] to the 1st floor for new claims you escape the real shitters of society and are greeted by people who simply help you out and are great... i was very impressed.
so next friday i must attend and officially sign on and prove i'm looking for jobs, lying time! who knows i may well get something... not likely!
now to assault pop music, a favourite hobby of mine :D
muse. i've had at them before, but this time i must assault them further. at rainham mark grammar school [especially the sixth form] i was nearly the only person to not like them, and i stand by this claim. i appreciate they are technically good [as in good on there instruments not technically technically etc] but here is their new album title... ready?
the resistance
and the tracklisting is thus:
1. uprising
2. resistance
3. undisclosed desires
4. united states of eurasia (+collateral damage)
5. guiding light
6. unnatural selection
7. mk ultra
8. i belong to you (+mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix)
9. exogenesis: symphony part 1 (overture)
10. exogenesis: symphony part 2 (cross pollination)
11. exogenesis: symphony part 3 (redemption)
delete tracks 4, 7 and 9-11 :) and i'm happy, the rest are bearable
matt bellamy stop trying to be a poo radiohead, thanks!
but having discussed previously with friends, what is pretentiousness? is it the clash doing a hip hop/rap song before any other white artist? is it morrissey with his impassioned yet annoying manc singing voice? is it me with my mild guitar playing and poetry writing abilities? is it mick jagger singing like an america and hailing from dartford? is it david lynch never describing his films? is it the dark knight escaping a harsher certification simply because it was 'fantasy' and had no swearing?
the pretentiousness is generally the antithesis of what you like, if it challenges you and you don't like it you can write it off for being pretentious. its not trying to better yourself or do something different is it? i say this because i don't like muse and find their naming of songs utterly shite and uber pretentious. i also hate being told to listen to them saying they are good. i appreciate them, that is the end.
same with michael jackson. i appreciate him, but when confronted with a statement suggesting that his death was worse since lennon-just no. i won't even get started-i shall simply name three names, johnny cash, joe strummer and george harrison.
in terms of michael jackson-it seems to be that you can't make jokes about him, it's too soon! and also that you shouldn't see his professional career through his personal life. ok, that's fine.
wait no! if this is the case, gary glitter is a great singer and never a paedophile twat, brigitte bardot is the former beauty queen of the world and not a horrific human being [she was married to the leader of french national front, and has been in court for citing racial hatred].
in the case of michael jackson, he was acquitted of his charges-however once you are termed as a paedophile you will never lose this term. especially when you are a race changing man who held his child over a balcony and is clearly not in his right mind. his childhood was fucked up, but the victim doesn't have to turn to be a victor [couldn't think of the correct opposite phrase].
you could instead of having children sleep in your bed, ya know instead set up a charity foundation... use your talents (which i've never doubted he had) to raise money for the cause and not take media attention surrounding your family life.
but he is dead. his talent is gone and will be missed, but his eccentricity and questionable behaviour will not-and in fact he shall be the butt of many a joke because of this. something that i agree with.
i have more to say, but i wish to not bore.
keep it rockin'
Friday 26 June 2009
this is the med-way
icanhascheezburger.com, what a site!
on a morning where the world is mourning for michael jackson-you can always rely on lolcats... what is the appeal though? why is the juxtaposition of pictures of cats and internet slang phrases so funny (it is before you question it)?
they seem to make me laugh like a total arse, it makes me act like a total child, just kittehs looking straight into the camera is funny... too cool!
my internet browsing is so poo, my list of websites that get a regular viewing is pitiful... nme.com, wwtdd.com, news.bbc.co.uk, facebook.com, sussed.soton.ac.uk and hotmail.com. such an extensive list...
right! onwards in a not so rambling way, the above is scatter shot.
so medway, i'm back and enjoying it. the pub quiz being a focal meeting point for all us lads (oop) to meet up and that, with my parents, and from what we've learnt i was right about the term pebbling-it IS to do with curling... so thats that. signing on next monday, getting a cv sorted as well, to get some money (mother dearest just informed me of how much my parents have spent putting my brother and i through university, and simply fuck!) and start to live again.
in the mean time, i shall have a bath and then head to the rainham library for a writing session, who knows what my weird, wonderful and frankly pretty damn sexy mind shall come up with! ego trip, thanks!
re-watching the documentary, boys and girls alone, which is great! watched blue britannia also yesterday, gorsh darn i love keith richards-his voice is so intriguing, like a real world weary bluesman :) the delta folk seem inclined to pick up a guitar and spin a web of sound! estuary punks for the win.
more ramblings when more stuff happens...
keep it rockin'
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