hors delai

I was contemplating the wreckage of my bicycle today, and my general ineptitude at maintaining/ riding the sorry beast, when I was struck by the need for a bicycle gang to serve my personal take on bike kulcha. It is time for the slow downtrodden riders of crappy velocipedes to rise up and celebrate a relaxed, laissez-faire approach to their transports of delight. I give you the Whore’s Delay (DFL Cadre). We will embrace rust and reject speed. We will block paths and let our calves go to shit. We will get distracted removing our wheels, catch our hands in the derailleur, and forget the blasted thing while digging for tcp. Our idleness will only be broken at full moon, when we round up hipster bike nazis and garotte them with specially adapted trouser clips.

The admission process is as follows:

1) The Duel. The initiate must take up a mitt thown down by their sponsor, and then ride past them, catching them on the cheek with the glove. Both riders will then pause to exchange spiky badinage on the condition of their respective mounts, family members and choice of footwear.

2)The sixpack ride. The initiates will ride in a group to a local off licence and buy six beers each. One of them will suggest an interesting place to drink the beer. They will ride there, drink, and decide on the next stop and so on. It will soon become apparent that the beer is becoming rather shaken by being kept in a plastic bags slung over handlebars. The initiates will complain that wine would have been more appropriate, although potable wine does not come in six packs, thus negating the valuable point of whole exercise. Shirts will be soaked, and a degree of anxiety raised about catching cold, and people will sulk off home before the booze is finished.

3)The initiate will have a poorly informed and slightly hostile exchange with a teenage bicycle mechanic. Their bicycle will remain shit.

what did posterity ever do for me?

So, late last year everything went a bit pimp skitters, so I got a new job (heaven knows, &c.) and hauled a bin bag full of tea pots and old tights down to South Oxford, many (2) miles from the phantom pube shedder, her chubby lover, and the poor old alkie whose semi-forced incarceration was the final stake in the hole-riddled corpse of my unsatisfactory sleeping arrangements. Now everything is adequate.

I now spend a good chunk of daylight at a large scale reference work which deals with lives of distinguished dead britons. A portion of that is spent recording the time, place, and manner of death. An obvious thing which never occured to me is that nobody every dies of old age; there is no category for recording this in the databases we use. Most people pop their clogs under the category of disease/condition, which covers infarctions and carcinomas and complications and all kinds of medically graphic unpleasantness. Present terminology is nowhere near as nauseatingly lyrical about these things as say, the eighteenth century.  It is all rather morbid, and certaily puts paid to any daft assumptions about shuffling off the mortal coil surrounded by weeping great grandchildren. One is more likely to burst in an unmentionable place in a home, not at home, Nobel Prize or whatever be damned. That said, I’m utterly fascinated.

in collusion with virgin trains…

A little after the fact.

Halloween just ain’t British; when I was growing up, my dear old Ma would grudgingly let us out trick-or-treating with a lecture on how begging door to door for sugary treats was the height of yanqui vulgarity. Whilst more than happy to take sweets from strangers, I’m rather suspicious of anything involving fancy dress; it has a bit of a forced-jollity, hen-night, zaniness-within-socially-acceptable-boundaries thing about it with offends my natural diffidence.  However, All Tomorrow’s Parties’ Release the Bats took the edge off my Halloween reservations. I had a jolly good night of it, even though every Friday evening’s schlepping down to London for an antidote to my provincial seclusion is a reminder of exactly how washed out and prematurely middle aged I’ve bin getting.

Anyway, Les Savy Fav as zombie riot police and Shellac staying in character throughout their set as drumming vampire, bass’n'grunt frankenstein, and wire-framed spectacle wearing mummy were nerd rock child-like delight made flesh. Good, traditional, home assembled, efforts. I call bullshit on about 75% of costumes out there. First against the wall: Shop bought, especially with whimsical pop cultural references, extra-especially those from the thatcherite demon decade in which I was born, super-extra-especially the chap who spent half the evening with his inflatable ghostbusters backpack thingy rammed up my nose. Have the dignity keep your unimaginative, freudian fetishization of the consumer culture trash of your infancy guiltily hidden. Also for the chop: Priggish burlesque girls, who I suspect think themselves rather more clever than the sexy schoolgirls, pirate wenches, naughty nurses and assorted other eroticized types traditionally wheeled out for slutoween.  With the honourable exception those baring themselves as Babe-raham Lincoln or the Willendorf Venus, these pedestrian prurients are about as grubby and arousing as the unfortunates who have put really far too much effort into their Harry Potter costumes.

Boring as it is, there’s something fabulous about trad halloween costumes. The nostalgic rustle of lavatory-paper mummy wrapping, the whiff of corn-syrup based blood, the itch of non-hypoallergenic zombie make-up all set my little booshwa heart aflutter. These wrap up childhood thrills, classic style and FUCK YEAH ZOMBIES without being subject to the irritating vagaries of fashion. Mind you, in the context of All Tomorrow’s Parties, they also give rise to the terrible fear of being done for by hipster undeads. Just too shaming a way to go. If only one could be a zombie every day, life would be so much more fun.

Anyway, the bands. Lightning Bolt was a big draw, so I was disappointed to only catch a fraction of their set, and most of that paltry hit I got in the bloody coat queue. Poor showing by the schedulers, all though I understand that logistically, if one of the bands needs to play from the floor, it makes sense to put them on first.  I would have been more than happy to give up the overhyped nostalgia noise of Pissed Jeans or Wooden Shijps‘ capable but not thrilling psych-garage. The admittedly fantastically named former had a strong trust fun whiff about them, the latter just failed to grab my interest. Might just be being grumpy though, could be the comparison with what came later. Om again didn’t seize me by the collar and shake me. For some reason the vocals put me in mind of the croaky bit in Shakespear’s Sister’s* Stay. Although the comparison didn’t last a playback, it was enough to really put me off; my cousin played Stay solidly throughout 1992. It was a hard year for all of us. Om make claims to being ‘devotional’, play five hour sets and are beloved of marijuana users. Either they’re pretentious or I’m dumb. Oh dear.

Given my Om reservations, Les Savy Fav’s party rock silliness was welcome. Lots of mucking about with balcony climbing, trouser removal, blood smearing, hats and gimmicky showboating that a lesser band would not get away with. The reason that so much Brooklynite white boy nonsense is so loathsome is that when all the navel gazing and referential obsession works, it is amazing. It usually doesn’t, and by comparison, it’s horrid. Les Savy Fav work, and as such are leaders in the field. I want to hate them for it, but they’re just too shiny and danceable.

The nerdiest band in the world are Shellac. They play jagged, acerbic guitar rock, and lyrics tend to detail middle-aged white male anxiety and agression. Steve Albini takes his music very very seriously and can be a bit pompous in his pronouncements.  Despite the general offensiveness of the concept, they’re a truly great outfit and very enjoyable to watch. There’s a rambling eulogy to the barely-deceased Studs Terkel, and lots of swirly noise that switches on the part of the brain that makes one jump on one’s friends and shove them about cheerfully. There’s the communal kick of seeing a cult band live up to their reputation. There’s a real sweetness in their evident enjoyment of the fancy-dress schtick and gratitude to the audience breaking through the studied late-70s disdain. It was lovely.

*The goth Banarama

Liebe and Romanze

Obsessive fans of humourless saucepot weirdo Ayn Rand now have a place to meet ‘n mate.  Hurrah for the internet.

But before going off for some “extraordinarily violent and fetishistic” funtimes they should probably get some family planning advice. I can’t recommend any higher authority on sex education than Spiderman.

twin peaks, the 400 blows, waiting for godot, and the postman always rings twice are just perfect source material for diamond children’s programming

I should really be doing the stoodious thing, but the puns are too good.

bloody motherfiddling martha

Trousers but no cake on the coed submarine

Today I was introduced to the funny/frightening delights of Conservapedia, which touts itself as a trustworthy version of Wikipedia. It loves Jesus, John McCain, and fighter jets, and hates the gays, Gardasil, and Jilly Cooper (who it exclusively reveals was an active member of S.C.U.M.). It has some particularly useful tips on how to spot a femmynazi:

“Specifically, a modern feminist tends to:

• believe that there are no inherent differences between men and women and that all inequality is the result of men oppressing women
• oppose chivalry and even feign insult at harmless displays of it
• view traditional marriage as unacceptably patriarchal
• shirk traditional gender activities, like baking
• support affirmative action for women
• detest women who are happy in traditional roles, such as housewife, and especially dislike those who defend such roles
• prefer that women wear pants rather than dresses, presumably because men do
• seek women in combat in the military just like men, and coed submarines
• refuse to take her husband’s last name when marrying^“

There are also some very sane and measured opinions on th’abortion:

“In Romania, abortion was illegal under two decades of rule by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and the country enjoyed one of the lowest breast cancer rates in the entire world during that time.”

There is also a very good page explaining a propensity to a variety of exotic crimes and misdemenors extant in academia. They revel in Barack Obama, naturally.

Today magic gnomes redecorated my bathroom with fairy tears and unicorn eyelashes

Either that, or the proliferation of sticky goop and coarse hair  means that my housemate decided to wax her demon hoo-hah lady area, without the use of strips.

This is exactly the sort of information that the internet was made to disseminate and that I was born to blog. Power to the people, yo.

Laughing Cow

Toddling through Salon.com on my way to a tasty hit of God Man, I came across this article whipping the tired old nag of the religious right and their creepy obsession with sex (I mean, I don’t know any heretical secular types who go on about the dirty dirty deed nearly as much as the sort of person who takes dating tips from Leviticus).  What really got me was the following extract from an abstinence only sex education curriculum called ‘Choosing the Best Life’, aimed at 13 and 14 year olds:

“Boys and girls are invited to chew cheese-flavored snacks and then sip some water, after which they are to spit the resulting ‘bodily fluids’ into a cup. After a game in which the fluids are combined with those of other students, ultimately all cups are poured into a pitcher labeled ‘multiple partners’ sitting adjacent to a pitcher of fresh water labeled ‘pure fluids.’ In the final segment, each boy and girl is asked to fill a cup labeled either ‘future husband’ or ‘future wife’ with the contents from one of the pitchers.”

Rather reminiscent of the concerns of one Colonel Jack D. Ripper in the excellent documentary ‘Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’. What sort of convoluted thought process leads to the conclusion that that is somehow a Good Idea as a pedagogic tool.?

i have an opinion on a thing

I miss compulsively reviewing stuff. Maybe its something to do with being a bit dull, but the fascinating chronicle of my opinions has been severely neglected over the past eighteen months or so. Pop culture criticism is trés simple- it all comes down to using a basic set of simile equations; the starter ones are generally (a + b) over x, y, or z. a and b are generally artistes- best throw in obscure band/ intellectual heavyweight to show you’re a serious contender and a kitschy celebritype to demonstrate ironic sense of ‘umour. x is a locale, y a psychoactive substance and z is the outcome of a sexual coupling. For example:

(Band reviewed)’s effortless pop comes over like Swell Maps meeting Joan Rivers at an inebriated Rotary Club Meeting.

(Clever young novelist) writes like the bastard lovechild of Wittegenstein and Roland Rat on Nytol.

Don’t forget to use plenty plenty of adjectives and superlatives.

So, two weeks ago, rather predictably, I hauled my carcass down to Camden Roundhouse to take in My Bloody Valentine’s reunion gig. I wish their performance deserved an iconoclastic kicking, because they are both massively venerated and released their last album fifteen years ago: I am individual and special and I hesitate to fall in with the massed ranks of backward-looking gen-x indie toadies. Alas, they were ace.

Last time Kevin Shields and chums did anything, it failed to register, mainly because I was 10. Still, their albums are part of that treasured canon of teen nostalgia, evoking hormonal summers of heartfelt mix-taping; it lead me to wonder if the material might be a bit worn out; that the live experience would be a massive anticlimax; that it might make one wish that one had spent the 25 quid on something new and shiny and avant garde. It’s testament to how fantastic that material is and how skilled the band are that the gig sounded thrillingly, bloodily fresh and absolutely original.

The distinguishing element of the evening was volume.  It was loud. Loud like being hugged by angry noise until your senses go wonky, like being pummelled by a tornado (instead of going to Oz, you get to visit the magical land of shoegaze). Despite the twelve-high speaker stacks and the swirling fuzz of some of the songs, the mix was crispy clear; the genius lay in giving an impression of chaos whilst maintaining absolute musical precision. Even the band’s stances seemed to reflect this combination; Bilinda Butcher and Kevin Shields standing still, almost rigid on either side of the stage (once you’ve reinvented guitar pop you do not need to move for anybody) generating a woozy maelstrom punctuated with sugary hooks while Debbie Googe and Colm O Ciosoig crashed the rhythm section out with sweaty violence in the centre. Without any substantial change to the content, it was as exciting as hearing Loveless, and a few choice other bits for the first time. The most notable alteration was to the single You Made Me Realise, where the agressive noise bit was extended. To about twenty minutes. It was definitely queasy, should have been traumatic, and was one of the best things I’ve seen at a gig in ages. It turned what should have been a nostalgia trip into something giddily new. I didn’t walk straight for about a week.

I’m off to Birmingham’s Supersonic festival on Saturday, where hopefully I should get a dose of something new and shiny, plus Julian Cope.