comment or links to three webmags, a blog, a mag

Sherburne on Dark on IDM

i think Pitchfork deserve credit for putting Iron & Wine in their top 50 albums even if The Arcade Fire is a bit too much (though as American indie goes, the Animal Collective are OK i guess). the first two lines of their thoughts for Estelle's '1980' are a bit unfair and perhaps also lazy tho' the same writer loves 'Toxic' so one shouldn't be mean&pompous... [Simon has it]; - 'Strict Machine' into 'Some Girls' too mind gets brainstormed but again that writer likes Annie so one shouldnt etc, but damn there's some good choons in that write-up.

i think Stylus deserve credit for their fine editorialising on lists (and there's a certain rugged charm in putting C-Lo, Stina Nordenstam and John Frusciante above Girls Aloud in their albums chart; i wuv that comment from Nick Southall that "The lettering on FF t-shirts is always backwards. This is because their fans spend an inordinate amount of time observing themselves in mirrors.")

i think Dusted deserve credit entirely for their solid year in review, not least such pieces as Ben Tausig on Ethiopiques: Volume 17 and Matt Wellins' faves.

i don't think the NME deserve any credit for their capsule in the most recent edition about ten things to come out of the ODB's death. tongue in cheek or whatever and presumably over-sensitivity on this part and if you don't know what one means then you won't get any more bored here but
frankly,
offensive
[again i know this is to simplify and create crude problems and juvenile finger-pointing where there is a world of complexity and differences of opinion to be cherished but it was uncomfortable reading that one of their most rock'n'roll moments of the year was 50 Cent getting bottled at Reading: yeah, a load of mostly affluent white camping kids throwing receptacles of urine at ghettoed African-Americans but eh oh i suppose you wouldn't put tv on the radio high up the bill at an rnb festival]

MY LOVER IS A HOOSIER WITH THE MOST REMARKABLE EYES

Geeta means Von's here, which is indeed rather nice.

[partial] edited highlights

- jewels, bangles, baubles, bracelets and smelly stuff
- rather good Neruda anthologies/Pessoa/political thought/Saramago/'Latin American' studies &c
- some bargains to be had in the country, roots reggae and free jazz sections
- staff (well, some of the males in my experience) of both the DANCE and INDIE/ROCK variety wanting to abuse solitary English travellers with good cheer and questions of soccer inc. a genuine interest in reactions back in the day to England losing to the USA at the 1950 World Cup
- free and good (tracky, likes Carls Craig & Cox, quite meaty) mix cd-rs off the techno boy behind the counter who was all about his forthcoming Motor City allnighter with a certain Mr Hawtin
- GO BOILERMAKERS

overheard at the water cooler:

First bloke: My wife's coming tomorrow
Second bloke {w'out missing a beat}: Too much information mate.

Xmas sitcoms

there can be few finer moments in their history than that bit in the Blackadder effort where - on the tale of the Crucifixion - the Prince Regent describes it as

that terribly depressing one about the chap who gets born on Christmas Day, shoots his mouth off about everything under the sun, and then comes a cropper with a couple of rum coves on top of a hill in Johnny Arab land.

"you mean Jesus, sir"
Barabas a rum cove, love it {note also the absolutely perfect timing with which that episode ends}.

speaking of the newspapers i think this past week or so that ol' slum dunk presenting funk carioca [mr bongo] is the first piece of plastic and digipack jewelled case compact technology that all the main UK press (call it overground, call it Delingpole in the Telegraph, call it Marcus Dunk in the Express, call it David Mellor in the Mail on Sunday, call it what you want) has reviewed that could qualify as favela funk or whatever you want to call it.

so at least four people that wouldn't have known - and after the Love Shack burnt down! - have been alerted to Marcello's rather good (OK, frankly brilliant) top ten albums thanks to my badgering and i'm still peakin off the Jess list.

it's {probably} just my prejudices ["probably" : - who am i kidding? shyeah right!] aligning with his but damn right to all the boo urns for dance-punk and electro (but you're so cool electro, oh yes we're still cool), the bigs up for Infinite Livez and Lil Jon (this year's Neptunes is right tho', innit, although if you only read the likes of the NME, Guardian, or [free commuter] Metro you'd think it were Kanye...) and DJ Target and Ted Leo and Futureheads [the actual noise that has made me happier than any other this year is quite possibly the l/c shouting WE COULD HAVE A FEW DECENT DAYS AND NIGHTS]

and TBquiteH i don't think any sentence in 2004 has made more sense to me than 'was anyone honestly waiting...the new Chingy?' {sorry Chingy, i like your videos but let's get down to tacks}

Geeta on Justus Köhncke

I very much hope the Government won't appeal - that would be a callous act
+
an editorial in yesterday's Daily Express commenting about legal opinion on events at the military base in Darul Dhyafa last September where hotel worker Baha Mousa was allegedly tortured to death by British troops was particularly foolish and embarrassing.

something else that's a bit embarrassing (for the UK govt) - as well as long overdue - is this.
coupled with this it's not been the best couple of weeks for the Home Office (ahem).

"Other Music Yuletide Special ...

TUESDAY 21ST DECEMBER, 8pm
!! FREE ENTRY !! Well, it is Christmas.

Kelham Island Tavern, 62 Russell Street,
Sheffield S3 8RW (see below for venue details)

TATSUYA NAKATANI (percussion)
MARTIN ARCHER (reeds etc)

New York-based Japanese percussionist, has recorded with
Assif Tsahar, Billy Bang, Peter Kowald etc.

"infallible intuition ... a brilliant percussion improvisor,
capable of a wide range of sounds and qualities ... His work
dances full of thought with an overall easy clarity and
earthy groundedness." - Maria Klein, Boss-Improv

"Discussing all that beauty would take more roses than would
fill this space" - Stu Vandermark, Cadence Jazz Magazine

http://www.hhproduction.org/TATSUYA_NAKATANI_WORKS.html

Tatsuya will perform a solo set, followed by a duet
with Sheffield improv maestro Martin Archer.

--------------------

VENUE INFORMATION:

http://www.kelhamislandtavern.co.uk/

The pub is near to both the Shalesmoor tram stop and bus
stops served by numbers 13, 14, 81, 81A, 82, 87 etc. The
web site includes a link to a map of the immediate area.

It's also been deemed the best pub in Yorkshire, by CAMRA!

The other room in the pub will be hosting a traditional music
session, just in case you have non-improv-liking friends."

[actually this is still] a good idea

back then WoP was the astronaut's notepad of course (taps pipe on sideboard, stirs dying embers, trails last of stew from whiskers)

oh 4 x 4

grime

i geddit

oh mrs grime
how your children so good

+

I DON'T WANT TO ARSELICK BUT

when Matt Ingram recently wrote "It's with great sadness that I reflect that that small part of my brain where I'd go looking for the blogging thrill, the part of my cortex which glows in excitement when I ponder the fun I'm going to have writing here, feels like a spent ember. If this particular neck of the woods had a demi-semi-historic moment it lay between the dominance of NYPLM and the ascendancy of the mp3 blogs, pretty much coinciding with the rise of blissblog."
it really struck a chord with me.

it was at Luke's suggestion this blog was started and in the early days of this blog's existence the quartet of blogs i really looked up to were WoP, blissblog, heronbone and woebot, soon followed by an appreciation for lots of your other faves (naming no names but if i've ever read a music blog then i keep it up so that's loads of folk, though admittedly mostly of an continental Euro-Brit Isles-Aussie-Yank-Canuck flavour).
of course more recently there's hundreds and hundreds of ace music blogs you can check, all over the place, but on what you might call the 'familiar with the (peerless) dj martian/freaky trigger [i certainly read a recent Tom Ewing lament w' a sympathetic eye]/peking_o cathy's favourites/people who've heard of so and so or etc' list {well i do, that is my blogging fix save a few politics blogs etc such as my boy Harm}

i don't want to sound like a brown-noser above btw!

but anyway, er,
yeah!

but hundreds of brilliant music blogs on many different areas abounding is still something good and even though i've been personally really unenthusiastic about blogging for ages and ages (and even though this blog itself was never anything it did at least use to have more energetic and longer and more frequent posts etcetc) now i'd like to think the incomparable Erase The World might have jolted me awake with his round-up of the other day,
especially the sentence

Someone even said, I overheard him in a popular indie dive, saying that The Zombies were a better band! The Zombies!...go boil your head and hang out in Mono less, you vegan cunt

=
which just made me crease up/

so, er, yeah,

big up your chests

are the people that matter listening to what Shelter have to say?

are they fuck.

here's a must-read from Alexis Petridis [what other morsels in the graun review this morn: Rob Da Bank was a teenage goth!]

he would sport crimson

when i was 18 i had a Dimebag Darrell poster on the wall of my room.
the damson and purple hair streaks and the big smile made for a cheerful face.
from Texan titty bars and enjoying his bourbon to the appreciation of barbecued food and providing much of the crunch in 'Walk' Dimebag clearly knew what he was on about.

here then, was a bloke who could play guitar.

(there was an Anselmo interview in Metal Hammer once which memorably described as "horseshit" some demos he and some buddies had made when they were messing around, with Anselmo on drums. he was always interested in the New Orleans sludge scene.
now there went a band)

I'm not caught up in politics
I'm no black activist on a so-called scholar's dick

- GZA

the personalised landscape painting of Cecily Sash, "a white South African," informs Trustram, lest we forget there are some decent white South Africans.

er yeah, thanks for that mate

i didn't know it was 20 years ago today and yesterday but then 'there is a victim every day'

reading Simon's piece on 679's grime comp, firstly in the editor cut to be fully invigorated, i was reminded why - like a fair few by the numbers music publications (i bet that man 86400 is with me on this) - i've not got a massive amount of time for the OMM.
it's not the smug little pen portraits or the general lameness/one's-trumpetness of such asides as, re. grime, we were far from lagging behind the times, but a 65-year old grandfather had beaten us [let's be fair, you and Peelie were lagging behind 1Xtra and the blogs though], i don't really know what it is.

it's all just too much, er, much.

anyway, back to blissbog and the night advertised sounds rather tasty; for a Chi spin on UKG saw an interesting flyer {front, back, more details here} t'other day, bit intrigued by the flyer line-up (no one didn't make it), "speed garage and 4x4", "grime/sublow and 4x4", what is that 4x4, house?
i dinnae understand (tho' DJ Sushi is known as a Stateside UKG head it's true).

oh, btw, if you're into fanzines then this from the same site sounds niiiice

out of other rote mags (as, you know, opposed to always good ones like URB or songlines or the wire yea despite its faults), i think my fave recent moments in some of them include a recent Q if only for a notable/funny Stipe interview (in which he gets in a huff cause they rudely ask about his orientation), a Spin from last summer (July, if memory serves), in which someone compares M.O.P.'s 'Ante Up' to Carmina Burana, and seeing Dele Fadele wax lyrical about Go Betweens re-issues in the NME was nice, for memory's sake anyhoo.
i must admit, re. the NME, although slash is nice and all, not being someone who is overly enthused to hear which male member of the NME staff is making it with which bassist from which London guttersnipe punk outfit at the mo, the last genuinely exciting NME moment (i apologise for repeating myself) for me was quite possibly a frankly inspirational and really rather good review of that Big Youth threefer Blood & Fire once put out, by Dele Fadele (and that release is a few years old now i think), so...

speaking of Big Youth, the wonderful Simon SDC has a fab tee shirt with the mug of said chap on it that his mate made and i want one

having said that, the re-issues page here, on some Ali Farka Toure products, i know it's a honest mistake but "How very November 1967. But this was their masterpiece, and deserves its lavish repackaging, complete with outtakes, albeit no original acid blotter."
er, Ali being a solo artist, but hey nevermind...