can i get a goddamn timpani roll

recently i was browsing the web and i came across this article about the greatest songs over ten minutes in length: http://treblezine.com/columns/190.html
interesting....

so, here is my own list of favourite 5 songs over 10 minutes long:

The Velvet Teen - Chimera Obscurant
Sigur Ros - Untitled 7 / Untitled 8
Pink Floyd - Dogs
Converge - Jane Doe
Bright Eyes - Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and To Be Loved)

where do we go now but nowhere

i think the only "new" album i bought this year was the fantastic new tom waits; rather ive been catching up on a lot of stuff i missed out on that was released in the past. the bigggg one is nick cave and the bad seeds. i bought "dig lazarus dig" when it came out in 2008 and there are a couple of superb songs on that album and i became a fan. but for some reason i didnt go and pick up his back catalogue at that time.. i think the reason is simple - lazarus was his 14th? 15th? record - so where do you go next?! especially when youre a student and cant afford to buy something youre never gonna listen to again.

its like if someone said they wanted to get into bob dylan, it is impossible to just give them one record, you need at least 4 or 5 to get an idea of what he has done. imagine if a kid went into a record shop looking for bob dylan and all they had was "down in the groove". you see what i mean?

so with nick cave i didnt know where to dive in. thankfully i have a friend from way back who is a big fan and she told me to start with "murder ballads" and "let love in". but shit, i got them and those records were just so good i went and picked up "the boatman's call" and "no more shall we part" and yikes the more i listened the more i loved it. i couldnt stop there, so now ive got pretty much everything he has released, and a little annoyed i didnt get into this before but very very happy to know it now. my album of his changes with the tide, but this week i have been listening a lot to "no more shall we part",  and this song is particularly good:

of course, im also loving grinderman, nick cave's garage band, but i hear they just broke up a few weeks ago. tis a shame, but hopefully it means we get another bad seeds record next year. man, i hope icon girl pistols are still rocking like this when we are in our 50s (and that we are appropriately bearded):

会いたかった

So i hope everyone enjoyed the new song we released last week. For some reason every time i sing the song in my head, the line

やりたいなら、やりたいと言えばいいじゃん

turns into

好きならば、好きだと言おう

Which is from an akb48 song...
hmmm I think ive been watching too much nemoosu tv.

my top five bob dylan songs

because i am listening to bob right now......

1. Silver Dagger
2. Ballad of a Thin Man
3. I Shall be Free No.10
4. One More Cup of Coffee
5. I Want You



[christopher]

colin is a pussy, a very pretty pussycat

if im ever at someone's house and they have itunes up and running it always interests me to see what their most played songs are. i guess it says a lot about someone. i have had my current ipod for about a year and a half, and as of today, these are the songs ive listened to most over the past 18 months:

1. Future of the Left - Manchasm
2. Leonard Cohen - Leaving Green Sleeves
3. Murder By Death - Good Morning, Magpye
4. The New Trust - The Suffering of Fools
5. Leonard Cohen - A Singer Must Die
6. The Gaslight Anthem - Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
7. Cursive - Tides Rush In
8. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Jesus of the Moon
9. Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding
10. Morrissey - You Have Killed Me

if anyone out there hasnt seen or heard future of the left, do it now.


[christopher]

goodbye donuts (hey, statue of liberty)

so most people will have noticed the message on the front page giving a release date of october 22nd for the new record.
hooo yah we are excited about it - NEVERCREW have done an amazing job with the artwork (the current image is just a teaser, the main picture will be revealed later!) and it was great to record it all in 2 days in analogue in a funky little place out in the middle of nowhere. it is the first music we have recorded without takashi (although 'we that remain' was recorded in april, we brought him in to help play percussion!), so the guitar sound is quite different, but we are very pleased with the result.

you see that we have called it an album, but maybe mini-album is more appropriate. more than an EP, not quite an an LP. i was thinking about this a wee while ago, because 30 years ago albums needed to be approximately 45 minutes so that they would fit onto two sides of an LP. if you went over that time, you needed to make it a double-album.
then the CD came along, and suddenly you could make an album 60, 70 minutes long, and a lot of bands did.
sometimes this was a great thing - there are some fantastic albums hitting 70 minutes in length, but unfortunately there are also a lot of records than contain two or three good songs, and a bit of filler just to get it up to the 60 minute mark (im sure some people might say the same about our first album)

now we live in an age where people dont buy CDs or vinyl records (much) anymore, and albums can be as long as one wishes. and i think the listening mentality has changed a little.
i remember getting albums when i was in high school, putting on the CD and listening to it start to finish while following the lyrics in the booklet. i dont think people do that much anymore. nowadays everything is on digital devices, and very often on a random mix with whatever other music is on there.

so, we wanted to put out something with the songs that we have enjoyed playing in practice and those which work best with the sound we are making at our gigs recently. we were thinking about doing a double album this time, but instead cut it right down to more than an EP, not quite an LP. a simple half hour of music.
which is great for me, because that is exactly how long my commute to work is.


[christopher]

in malaysia

enjoying some sun and seafood and sand and sunburn
on the plane listening to the new rhcp record/// i do like josh klinghoffer
but anthony still has some rubbish lyrics.
dance dance dance might be the worst song i have heard this year
but ethiopia and maggie are both very good
chad plays a cowbell!
i told you, ken! cowbells are cool!!
last month we recorded a song with cowbell, oh yes, there WILL be cowbell on the next icon girl pistols record
i get back sunday morning. sunday evening we rock the nob with the planets and the mootekkis.
hahaaaaaaa yes.

my top ten favourite albums of all time

Last year a young lady asked me what were my top ten favourite albums of all time. I cannot remember what I wrote down back then, but as of today the list is (probably) as follows:

1. Leonard Cohen - New Skin For The Old Ceremony
2. The Good Life - Black Out
3. Cursive - Domestica
4. Bob Dylan - Live 1964
5. Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible
6. The Velvet Teen - Elysium
7. Two Gallants - What The Toll Tells
8. The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound
9. Bright Eyes - Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground
10. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik

And I've only just realised this, but I've seen all of these artists live. It is a wonderful thing for the musicians you love to still be touring and putting out records.

[christopher]

working man blues*

it has been over a month since i started the drag of businessman life, and that makes me what the japanese call a "shakaijin", which literally translates as "member of society".

now, i have a really big problem with this word.

perhaps it originally had a broader meaning, but recently being a "shakaijin" means that you wear a suit, cram onto a rush hour train, work 9-5 monday to friday (in theory; of course japan is notorious for overtime and weekend shifts), read the financial times and vote conservative.
there is absolutely nothing wrong with this idea, but my problem comes with the fact that for some reason, not fitting into the above stereotype somehow exempts you from being a "shakaijin" in the eyes of many people.

it reminds me of when i was a student and people would often use the term "tax-dodger" (although to be honest we mostly used it to talk about ourselves). I always felt this term was erroneous because
a. we are still paying tax on everything we buy, and we still get taxed for our part time work; and
b. "dodge" suggests that any tax benefits we do get wont come back around to haunt us in the future. If somebody dodges a bullet, then the bullet goes safely over their shoulder and buries itself in the wall or some other poor chap. you dodged the bullet, well done. you're safe now.
however, "tax-dodging" is a complete misnomer, because as soon as you finish studying and get a job you then have to pay taxes sufficient to support the next generation of students. it all comes around again; those few years when you didnt have to pay property tax as a student means that when you start working you have to pay more. it all balances out. it is more like avoiding a heat seeking missile - it is going to catch up with you eventually.

this then leads older people to grumble "my taxes, paying for your education" as if it is some great sacrifice. it isnt. when they were students, someone else paid for them. even more in fact - 20 years ago university in britain was covered by the government for many people; now kids are having to pay more and more out of their own pocket.
working people seem happy to pay a pension, because it is a benefit they will get in the future, but like to grumble about paying for education, something that they have already finished in the past. but it is exactly the same system. people working right now pay for the young and pay for the old. it all balances out. there is no dodging the tax, it all comes around again.

anyway, ive gone off on a bit of a tangent. back to my initial point - .
"shakaijin" is a ridiculous term in japanese, because it excludes shop assistants, sewer workers, gas station attendants, rubbish collectors... the list goes on.
these people are still paying their taxes, and without them society would be fucked. they are "shakaijin" too, and I respect them because without them, nothing would work.

we need students and we need construction workers; otherwise the system collapses. a lot of people dont seem to realise that. we are all equal - i might work in an office, but i sure as hell dont know how to make a moccha chocca frappucino. thankfully there is somewhere i can go and someone i can ask when i need one, so i am definitely not going to think i am any better than them, or dare suggest that they are not a "shakaijin" too. we are all cogs in a machine; i do my thing; they do theirs. that is all.

excuse my ranting on this humid saturday morn.

*this was a good bob dylan song. he may not be a "shakaijin", but he has achieved more than any prick in a suit. rock on bobby d.

dreamsdreamsdreams

I know that it is frightfully tedious to hear someone relay the experiences of a dream, especially since there is a tendency to forget the plot halfway through, but I had one the other night which was just fantastic and so wish to record it for my own amusement if nothing else.
I was in a grand theatre hall, the kind with billowing red curtains and velvet seats and gold leaf on the bannisters of the royal booths, and I was watching Roger Waters performing "The Wall". However, after the first song (which was 'Mother', strangely, completely out of order), Roger disappeared and a play began that was filled with bizarre political commentary. Then I noticed I was sat next to Christopher Hitchens, who had written this play, and who was now bellowing with laughter as people around him heckled the play and began leaving the theatre.
Well, as you may have guesssed I cannot remember what happened next, but good lord it was fantastic to see Hitch on fine form yelling at everyone. It is a sad sad thing that he has lost his voice, but we can be grateful that he has not lost the power of words. He writes about losing it to cancer in this essay:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/06/christopher-hitchens-unspoken-truths-201106
in which he also quotes from one of my very favourite Leonard Cohen songs.
I do hope he kicks cancer's arse in the same way he has so many politicians and religious figures.

insomnia (a haiku)

the blank tv screen 
humming freezer ticking clock
boring boring bor

tokyo tohyo

to all my japanese friends, just one request: please vote for someone other than ishihara this sunday at the tokyo governor elections. the guy is a prick, and since foreigners like me are not allowed to have any influence in who runs this city, i need you good people to kick him out for me. he is a racist sexist homophobic old cunt.
 
everyone enjoying hanami? oh wait, no, we can't do that because ishihara has banned fun this month. we must "self-restrain" which is going to cripple the economy even further.
and answer me this,
if we are being ordered by the government to restrain ourselves, where does the 'self' part come in? who took the ji out of jishuku?

popularity blows

I'm trying to understand why, when I go to a shop to buy something, clerks in Japan are always quick to say, "This is very popular". Do Japanese people actually like that?
I was out with the missus looking for a wedding band and we went into a jewellery shop where we were shown a ring that is "very popular" this year. Why would we want the same ring that a thousand other people are wearing?

Am I alone in thinking this?

a digital death

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a while back that came to mind again today as I copied a new CD onto my computer. We had been reminiscing about our high school days, when we would drink beer and talk nonsense at one or the other’s house, all the while listening to our favourite CDs. By the time I was eighteen my copy of ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magic’ had been completely worn out, and various other soundtracks to my youth had also spun their way towards near oblivion – ‘The Battle of Los Angeles’, ‘Word Gets Around’, ‘Nevermind’, ‘Without You I’m Nothing’, ‘Relationship of Command’, and others too embarrassing to mention here. I guess it was the same for millions of other kids born in the 80s. But no matter where the house party, how late the hour or how many cans of Strongbow lay empty in the sink, the night would always end with a run through of the Manic Street Preachers’ ‘The Holy Bible’ for the few remaining stragglers sprawled out on the carpet as the grey morning approached. From the opening dialogue of ‘Yes’ to the desperate voice at the end of ‘PCP’, the room was silent but for the album and the occasional cry chiming in with James Dean Bradfield’s ‘who’s responsible – you fucking are!’ or ‘so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything!’. The record would finish, the CD would spin out, and silence would descend.

My friend told me about having recently listened to the Holy Bible again through an iPod on speakers. It sounded fine, and the songs were as brilliant as ever, but there was something important missing from the experience – he was talking of course about that sound at the end, after the music stops. For my parent’s generation, it would have been the scratch of the needle as it wound its way towards the centre of the turntable before rising and returning to its bed. For us it was that whoosh as the spinning of the CD came to an end. That sound has now been lost, thanks to digital playlists and shuffles and iTunes and all those other inventions which are killing the concept album.

I remember the first time I saw an iPod when I was seventeen or eighteen. One of the kids in my school had one set up with the radio connector which allowed you to play it through a stereo. I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen, and I wanted one immediately. I saved up my money, and the summer before my first year of university I bought an iPod. My oh my, who’d have thought it would have ever gotten so huge. Who’d have thought that only a few years later you could instantly buy any song online and have it playing on your phone in seconds? Steve Jobs maybe. When I was a kid, if there was one song you wanted, you had to buy the entire album. Hence my possession of a Smith’s cover album just for the Cursive song; of the Godzilla soundtrack for ‘No Shelter’; of the Good Will bloody Hunting soundtrack just for Eliot Smith. If only I had grown up in this age of pick ‘n’ choose, I’d have been a far richer teenager.

So, maybe I’m an old fart. But I miss the excitement of going out, buying a record, coming home and flicking through the artwork for surprises. Remember the hidden booklet in the Kid A album? Anyone else line up to get a numbered edition of Maladroit? What about hidden tracks? There is no mystery if you can already see that the song is 14 minutes long before you start listening to it. Super Furry Animals put a hidden track at the beginning of ‘Guerilla’, so you actually had to wind back from track 1 in order to hear it. That’s impossible now that everything is sold per song, and all the information is given away before you have a chance hear the record. What about short interludes, such as those in ‘The Wall’ or even as recent as ‘The Ugly Organ’ – do people just not buy these, opting to spend their money only on the song-length tracks? What is the point in even making full albums anymore?

This new CD is the first I have bought in 2011. In 2010 I think I bought only two or three, and only because they were from bands not available digitally. Icon Girl Pistols hope to make our second album this year, but a big question facing us and every other indie band is ‘do we make a CD or just sell downloads online?’ As a music fan, I want to make albums, tangible objects that you hold in your hands, flick through the pages of, discovering things you could not see when you bought it. I want people to hear the scratch of the vinyl or the whoosh of the CD when it finishes. But realistically, I know that when the album ends, the music will just keep on running straight into the (International) Noise Conspiracy. Although to be fair, that’s a great band to be opening for. 

-christopher-