Wake

Feeling a definite sense of loss, especially after posting those two micro-obits yesterday for Stanislaw Lem and Nikki Sudden. Tried to drink it into submission last night at Flying Burritto Brothers, using copious quantities of Herradurra Reposado tequila, but apparently it didn't work.

So let's have a song. Fuck it, let's even have two.

David Bowie - We are the dead (right-click and Save As to download)

Swell Maps - Blam!! (right-click and Save As to download)

The Bowie song, We Are the Dead, is from his at-times testing 1974 concept album Diamond Dogs. It's very beautiful and sad. The concept album purports to be based on George Orwells's 1984, though I have reservations about the success of the project.

"because of all we've seen, because of all we've said... we are the dead"

The Swell Maps track is off their best album, Trip To Marineville, and is a rowdy-if-melancholic anthemn of lost love with almost-gang-choruses and the works. On the LP it's bookended by pts 1 and 2 of the wonderfully upbeat and surreal Full Moon.

"why did you do it... you said you loved me / I don't care, I guess I'm nearly dead"

(By the way, do be sure and let me know in the comments section if you're having trouble downloading or playing the mp3s I post here.)

Sudden

Scottish rock legend Nikki Sudden, guitarist for Swell Maps (1977-1980), one of my favourite bands - and one of the greatest and most fun and original punk outfits - has died.

R.I.P. Nikki Sudden.

Lem

Polish author Stanislaw Lem, one of the greatest ever writers in the science-fiction genre, has died.

R.I.P. Stanislaw Lem.

Buddies

You may have noticed that a couple new drinking-buddies have appeared over there in the sidebar. You may not have, either. Either way, please join me in welcoming Jen "Smacked Face" and Mr. Stephen Rowe's "Food and Plastics". Cheers.

Law pt. 2: The Saga Continues

Gave up waiting to hear back from the fool TradeMe seller of my lemon VCR; just took a couple of minutes to leave some exquisitely-composed negative feedback on him:

The sort of idiot who'd sell you a VCR which requires the remote control in order to be able to be tuned, without the remote control. And then when you complain, suggest you sell it to some other sucker. And then stop responding to emails. And so on. Avoid him like the plague he is; may he never become not "broke-as".

Despite the great joy it would give me to drag his sorry ass down to Wellington - at his own expense - to answer a case in the Disputes Tribunal, I can't really conscionably spend that much of the public's money to do so; guess it's Safe Trader for this whigga for now on.

Feed

Just a quick heads up: If any of you have been "subscribing" to this blog using the 2RSS site, because your feed-managers or whatever don't support Atom-formatted feeds, and are fed up with the stoopid "ADV"erts they insert in the feed, check out for new versions. I know that the new version of the one I use, FeedReader 2.9, happily now supports Atom-formatted feeds. Yay me.

My feeds, again:

PIL

YouTube strikes again: watch video of the very great Public Image Ltd. performing Poptones and Careering (two of their greatest songs, from Metal Box) on Dick Clark's American Bandstand circa 1980. Clark later famously referred to the episode as the worst moment in the show's history.


See John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon turn the farcical mandatory lip-syncing appearance into something resembling a situationist action, or a riot; see him literally dragging people out of the audience and onto the stage; see the New Wave robot-dance guy; see drummer Martin Atkins resolutely ignore the carnage and pull off brilliant live drum embellishment on Careering; see Lydon playing Atkins' drums with his wireless mic, before handing it to an audience member and encouraging her to sing for him; etc. etc. Hell, it's a treat to just see Keith Levene and Jah Wobble on the stage at the same time.

Favourite comment (from the comments section):

So Clark thought PIL was the worst moment in the show's history? I'd say it was one of the best! Dick Clark was too old to understand what was going on there. I always hated that about AB. Their moronic lip-sync policy. They could have had an incredible library of brilliant live performances, instead of square-looking phony performances. Lydon turned this into a slap in the face to that policy, and brewed up his own live performance in the process. Lydon is sharp as a blade.

Podcast

A wee while back, I did a podcast for online music zine Foxy Digitalis. You can find it here (right-click and Save As to download) (the podcast directory-page here). It was a lot of fun; I even, in a move which has been referred to as "inspired", got my robot fixed up well enough to do the voice-breaks.

A podcast is basically a radio show, but one which you can download or stream whenever you want. (Wikipedia: podcasting).

The tracklist:
Robyn Hitchcock "Welcome to Earth" from Spooked
Main "Corona part II" from Hz
Scorn "Black box" from Gyral
Jesu "Sun day" from Jesu
Disco Inferno "Footprints in snow" from D.I. Go Pop
Sonny Sharrock "Blind Willie" from Guitar
Rosy Parlane "#1" from #1-4
John Fahey "Let go" from Let go
Thela "Look out! The fucking hot jet" from V/A Le Jazz Non compilation
CJA "2:23" from Ironclad
Chris Bell "Speed of sound" from I am the cosmos
Red Krayola "Container of drudgery (never had a name)" from Blues, hollers and hellos
The Dead C "The marriage of reason and squalor" from Operation of the sonne
Bailter space "Ore" from Robot world
K-Group + Omit "Slow movement towards the abyss" from Slow movement 7"

Law

Helluva week. Man, this blogging game is hard work sometimes. So's this 'being around other people and not shooting them' game. Actually, the hardest part about that is not having gun. The 'being a part of a vibrant democratic society' bit is a piece of cake by compare. But I digress... so yeah, helluva week. Having narrowly avoided an employment-law wrangle, and staring down the barrel of a tenancy-law dispute, I now find myself in the midst of a consumer-law wrangle.

So I bought this piece-a-shit VCR player off of TradeMe. It was a fucken lemon. No remote control.. and guess what? You can't tune it without the remote. Needless to say this wasn't mentioned in the 'auction' listing. Here's the guts of my most recent email in the discussion:

Dude, you're required under consumer law to sell goods in working order. Selling a VCR that can't be tuned without the remote - which you didn't supply - isn't in correct working order.
[...]
So... refund please. Or I'll see you in the small claims court. And guess what. I hope you like Wellington, cos you'll have to come here to answer the case.

And then I was like, "Holy SHIT! I hope I'm right.." I mean, I know I'm right about the guy having to come to Wellington; I've been told this by a kick-ass lawyer who knows his shit. But, does the Sale Of Goods act second-hand gear protection apply to internet transactions? Hmm.. I guess I'm-a ring the hotline tomorrow and find out.

Meanwhile, hit me with your TradeMe/eBay horror stories. Or, am I the only whigga with one of those (first one, y'dig, after hundreds and hundreds of transactions, me still Mr. 254/100%).

In other news just to hand, the new Ghostface Killah album Fishscale dropped recently, and it kicks serious ass. It harks back the the heady heights of his debut Ironman, or 2000's Supreme Clientele. I'm not gonna post a mp3 from the album, tho' - we gonna nod to some of what many consider his finest hour - I Can't go to Sleep from the Wu Tang Clan's 2000 album The W. Featuring conscious, emotional rhyming from Ghost, a huge hook from Isaac Hayes' version of Walk On By (from 1969' s Hot Buttered Soul) and vocal stylings from the big guy himself, it's truly a sublime slab of modern soul-jive. The RZA aka Bobby Digital even chimes in with the final verse.

Wu Tang Clan - I Can't Go To Sleep (feat. Ghostface Killah, Bobby Digital and Isaac Hayes) (right-click and Save As to download)

Enjoy.

(look out for Law pt. 2: The Saga Continues shortly)

Which post-punk band are you?

I literally couldn't resist.

You scored as The Fall. Manchester's The Fall are one of the most prolific and enduring of the original post-punk bands. Mark E. Smith's surrealist rants and idiosyncratic brand of 'Country & Northern' continue to command a large cult following, their debut, 1979's 'Live at the Witch trials' is as good a place to start as any. The Fall 90% The Slits 83% Public Image Ltd. 83% Throbbing Gristle 83% The Teardrop Explodes 83% Gang Of Four 80% Wire 80% Joy Division 73% Cabaret Voltaire 63% The Pop Group 43% Which Post Punk band are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Fall

A wealth of Fall tidbits, courtesy of WFMU's Beware of the Blog.

The Fall vs. Jools Holland: The "Heads Roll" Fall lineup on Later with Jools Holland, ripping through "versions" of Pacifying Joint, I Can Hear The Grass Grow (cover of the Move tune), and Blindness (right-click and Save-As to download REALMOVIE file) (WFMU link here). "Under giant hulking letters spelling out 'Fall', Smith warbles, barks, tampers with his wife's keyboard, and is, in other words, great". Check out the end of the clip - he really can't leave that Korg alone!

And here's Mark E Smith participating with someone out of The Undertones in a TV panel eulogy for John Peel (right-click and Save-As to download REALMOVIE file). And if that wasn't fun enough, here's him reading the football results on a TV sports show (right-click and Save-As to download REALMOVIE file) and taking the piss out of one of the presenters' haircut. (WFMU link here).

BTW, in case you were wondering, Fall Heads Roll is a fantastic record.

Bully

In light of the ongoing David Benson-Pope tediousness, I'm considering composing a letter to the Director of Operations at Stagecoach Wellington, demanding that one of their drivers be immediately dismissed. I had heard through the grapevine that "Mr. L", the maths teacher and notorious "bully of F Block" at my old college, had been fired for his inappropriate disciplinary methods; on having recently ridden in a couple of downtown buses driven by "L" I'm pretty confident that the rumour has been sufficiently substantiated.

I was actually lucky; my 5th form year occurred only just after the mandate for corporal punishment was taken away from teachers. But if even only a few of the stories that went around about this guy were true, he demonstrated enough 'poor judgement' such that he should not, in my opinion, ever be allowed behind the wheel of a bus. How on earth could he be replied upon to demonstrate good judgement when it is called for now; when required, for example to drive the correct way down a one-way street. Or to answer competently when enquired of whether or not his bus goes "down Courtenay Place".

Given his history, it's simply farcical that this man be allowed to continue serving the public.

Meanwhile, Bully is also the name of the 2001 film by Larry Clark (he of Kids and Ken Park fame|infamy), which is based on the true story of how seven Florida teenagers conspire to murder one of their mates, the titular bully. Somewhat chilling, kinda clinical but at the same time kinda raging angry - and despite the frequent and explicit sex scenes and the at-times seemingly meandering plot - it's quite a good film. Not everyone agrees though; I recall one review which insisted that Mr. Clark never be let behind the lens of a camera again. There's another review behind the image; IMDB entry here; Wiki here.

Spanky

This is cute. I don't really get it, though.

(click image to enlarge)