Dear Samuel,
I've always thought your clash of civilisations thesis was - as we say here in Britain - a load of cobblers.
However, with your latest project, you really are raising the bar.
I feel I must ask who your dealer is, as I want some of that nice shit, straight Mezz Mezzrow dope, freaky Alice Toklas stylin'.
Funky,
yours sincerely,
scott.
Thursday, 18 March 2004
this piece's flourishes towards the end, from Niall Ferguson - a historian i have great respect for - are disappointing [via crooked timber]
the only problem with Condoleezza Rice opining that the Spanish people understand that they've had strong and good leadership in José Maria Aznar and his government {link} is that, yes, perhaps they had just that: strong, or maybe it was strong-arm? i'm not discussing anything to do with Spanish foreign policy, just observing that Aznar's attitude towards some of his more troublesome regions was extremely problematic and downright unhelpful.
Pseud Watch [soz to that well known brit satirical rag]
London electro night and fashionista hangout Drama dressed up King's Cross club Canvas to recall Berlin in the 1940s for an evening of titillation and burlesque:
ANASTACIA, 19 design student, London College of Fashion
:'Where do you get your ideas?'
"From what's happening in the world around us, things that really affect us. Like the bombs on the Madrid underground."
London electro night and fashionista hangout Drama dressed up King's Cross club Canvas to recall Berlin in the 1940s for an evening of titillation and burlesque:
ANASTACIA, 19 design student, London College of Fashion
:'Where do you get your ideas?'
"From what's happening in the world around us, things that really affect us. Like the bombs on the Madrid underground."
apparently i made a bit of a faux-pas earlier on, as everyone else already knew about Ancona. in my defence, i don't pay attention to Italy at all these days, apart from the top five or six, i must be honest. bad i know but there we are the price of weakened dilettante tropes in effect (or summat).
personally speaking, i know loads of lads that 'support' Fiorentina Roma etc. cause they like the colour of their shirt, or when they were 14 they had to spend half the night with a packet of hobnobs and a mug of tea discussing 'the decameron' or some Dante to a sniffy intellectual girl whose pants they thought they had a chance of getting into but only after they'd massaged their ego for a bit (i suppose this is a bit like opportunistic lads going out to indie discos with Chemikal Underground shirts on for freshness and taste, as some wise wit once remarked), and of course back in the mid-90s of wot i speak (queen's english) Italian footy was popular in the UK if only due to James Richardson and co.'s coverage.
so excuse my blathering and i'll not dissect callous naif romantic posturing from Baudelaire fans no more!
personally speaking, i know loads of lads that 'support' Fiorentina Roma etc. cause they like the colour of their shirt, or when they were 14 they had to spend half the night with a packet of hobnobs and a mug of tea discussing 'the decameron' or some Dante to a sniffy intellectual girl whose pants they thought they had a chance of getting into but only after they'd massaged their ego for a bit (i suppose this is a bit like opportunistic lads going out to indie discos with Chemikal Underground shirts on for freshness and taste, as some wise wit once remarked), and of course back in the mid-90s of wot i speak (queen's english) Italian footy was popular in the UK if only due to James Richardson and co.'s coverage.
so excuse my blathering and i'll not dissect callous naif romantic posturing from Baudelaire fans no more!
fence-sitting for pleasure and profit
can't decide if the bit of 'jesus blood never failed me yet' that's got Tom Waits on it near the end is a sort of triumph of the spirit, and the rigorous repetition of Gavin Bryars' vision and whatever it is he's articulating is vindicated (and if so, how gloriously so!) by the fetid rambling, or if it's not my cup of tea.
also what with all the stick Peter Gabriel has been getting of late (well, alright, a bit of mild fun poking witticisms at him in a particular corner of the blogosphere), can't decide my true feelings on his envelope pushing. the OST for scorsese's temptation of Christ film is a good work. and i genuinely think he's one of the finest white soul singers there is. he doesn't over emote, like Mick Hucknall anyway (i realise Hucknall is the ground zero of completely unfashionable vocalists to name check so it makes me look uncool anyway to even engagedly discuss him, but hey whatever)
also a bit perplexed by how receptive i am to the strange 'Gladiator film score aping-alike' vibe i'm on in appreciating (fmr. Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, probably other sub-goth 4ADisms for all i know) Lisa Gerrard's "Immortal Memory" (elpee only out this year).
all the compression/humidity debates etc. you could get on certain blogs a bit ago, i was really touched and piqued (wossname word) by them.
PEAKING OFF
Gorecki's Third.
question
when did Tom Waits actually last play the UK? i know someone who reckons the last time he saw Waits ('Ammersmif' Apollo, about ten years ago, so after 'bone machine' but before something in 1994 but i ain't a waits fan so don't know his discog.)
thought to ponder
i was chatting to a bloke who had a practically vicious antipathy to UB40. bizarre!
can't decide if the bit of 'jesus blood never failed me yet' that's got Tom Waits on it near the end is a sort of triumph of the spirit, and the rigorous repetition of Gavin Bryars' vision and whatever it is he's articulating is vindicated (and if so, how gloriously so!) by the fetid rambling, or if it's not my cup of tea.
also what with all the stick Peter Gabriel has been getting of late (well, alright, a bit of mild fun poking witticisms at him in a particular corner of the blogosphere), can't decide my true feelings on his envelope pushing. the OST for scorsese's temptation of Christ film is a good work. and i genuinely think he's one of the finest white soul singers there is. he doesn't over emote, like Mick Hucknall anyway (i realise Hucknall is the ground zero of completely unfashionable vocalists to name check so it makes me look uncool anyway to even engagedly discuss him, but hey whatever)
also a bit perplexed by how receptive i am to the strange 'Gladiator film score aping-alike' vibe i'm on in appreciating (fmr. Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, probably other sub-goth 4ADisms for all i know) Lisa Gerrard's "Immortal Memory" (elpee only out this year).
all the compression/humidity debates etc. you could get on certain blogs a bit ago, i was really touched and piqued (wossname word) by them.
PEAKING OFF
Gorecki's Third.
question
when did Tom Waits actually last play the UK? i know someone who reckons the last time he saw Waits ('Ammersmif' Apollo, about ten years ago, so after 'bone machine' but before something in 1994 but i ain't a waits fan so don't know his discog.)
thought to ponder
i was chatting to a bloke who had a practically vicious antipathy to UB40. bizarre!
Wednesday, 17 March 2004
THE DON SPEAKS
well, if nothing else, i think he's otm about lukewarm receptions to the latest 'big new york nite' and certainly OTM about rab/r'n'b
well, if nothing else, i think he's otm about lukewarm receptions to the latest 'big new york nite' and certainly OTM about rab/r'n'b
someone (i don't know who: a mogwai fan, to judge from the url?) who has a very good blog called Excuse Me For Laughing here observes, pricelessly, that "So. I was thinking. Seeing Radovan Karadzic's wife being interviewed in the papers yesterday morning. Didn't Radovan look like the product of an unholy union between critic/tosspot Paul Morley and the late Dermot Morgan, a.k.a. Father Ted. Just think about that for a moment."
{spotted via Cathy.}
{spotted via Cathy.}
bloody hell
~
also Sean Acid making sense on 'cool'~
also Marcello making sense about 'World Music'etc, Lambeth/Lewisham council haha!/ although as he says Nick Gold yeah! he did do the stuff with Farka Toure on 'niafunke' after all/
richard henderson (he lives in marin county apparently) once wrote a very concise putdown bitchslap about World Music in one of his global columns in the wire and it summarised everything that marcello discusses really, in the best bitchslap i've read yet on the subject.
not to sound like a snob on fusion etc of course cause personally i ain't got opinions one way or the other but ya can see what Marcello means.
~
also Sean Acid making sense on 'cool'~
also Marcello making sense about 'World Music'etc, Lambeth/Lewisham council haha!/ although as he says Nick Gold yeah! he did do the stuff with Farka Toure on 'niafunke' after all/
richard henderson (he lives in marin county apparently) once wrote a very concise putdown bitchslap about World Music in one of his global columns in the wire and it summarised everything that marcello discusses really, in the best bitchslap i've read yet on the subject.
not to sound like a snob on fusion etc of course cause personally i ain't got opinions one way or the other but ya can see what Marcello means.
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