Back in the Game

Has it really been that long since my last post? I am afraid recently my life has been dominated by moving flat and interesting developments at work which mean I have less free time than before. Anyway, those are topics for another day (if ever). I shall ease myself back into the game via the coward's route; a meme from Slaminsky.

1. PICK OUT A SCAR YOU HAVE, AND EXPLAIN HOW YOU GOT IT

Cut to Art class, circa 1984, my friend Neil threads his pencil through the hole that
they have for no apparent reason at the bottom of Stanley Knives. He begins to twirl the pencil around allowing the blade of the knife to rotate in a fashion that would years later become fashionable in the BBC series 'Robot Wars'. Unfortunately, Neil's grasp of physics was not what it should have been. The knife worked its way up the pencil, and with unerring inevitably, came flying off in my direction and sliced a nice gash on my jawline. Being friends and all, and not wanting to be a 'grass', I stuck some tissue on it, kept out of the teacher's way and now I have a tough looking scar.

2. WHAT IS ON THE WALLS IN YOUR ROOM?

Paint.

3. WHAT DOES YOUR PHONE LOOK LIKE?

If you mean the phone in the flat then it is a pretty horrible looking thing like this, only black. My mobile looks like this.

4. WHAT MUSIC DO YOU LISTEN TO?

All of it.


5. WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT DESKTOP PICTURE?



6. WHAT DO YOU WANT MORE THAN ANYTHING RIGHT NOW?

A holiday.

7. DO YOU BELIEVE IN GAY MARRIAGE?

I don't see why not.

8. WHAT TIME WERE YOU BORN?

No idea. But I do share a birthday with Cliff Richard.

9. ARE YOUR PARENTS STILL TOGETHER?

Yes.

10. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?

It was Carl Craig, but now it is drilling and gunshots, typical Spanish Sunday morning fare.

11. DO YOU GET SCARED OF THE DARK?

No, that would make me a Jesse.

12. THE LAST PERSON TO MAKE YOU CRY?

Sting. His continued existence tends to affect me deeply.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE COLOGNE / PERFUME?

Don't wear after-shave (see Q11).

14. WHAT KIND OF HAIR/EYE COLOUR DO YOU LIKE ON THE OPPOSITE SEX?

Brown and brown.

15. DO YOU LIKE PAIN KILLERS?

In the sense that they bring relief from pain (sometimes), yes. In any other sense, no.

16. ARE YOU TOO SHY TO ASK SOMEONE OUT?

Of course, I am not American.

17. FAVE PIZZA TOPPING?

Things from the sea.

18. IF YOU COULD EAT ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Oysters.

19. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU MADE MAD?

My girlfriend.

20. IS ANYONE IN LOVE WITH YOU?

Yes.

Don't Rain on My Parade

Bah! All my records are still in my Mum and Dad's loft in Liverpool. At the moment I don't have a record player because I don't have any records. I am not one of those MOJO reading, Dylan-loving, Techo-hating bores who whinge on about how vinyl is far superior to any other format because of its 'warmth' or 'realness' or whatever other Rockist nonsense people come out with. But, I do like vinyl for the simple fact that LPs, 12 inches and 7 inches in themselves are much more aesthetically pleasing objects than CDs. I need to get them shipped over, especially after stumbling across Rain Parade's legendary September 1985 Whistle Test performance on You Tube. The Waterboys appeared on the same program and played a rousing version of 'This is the Sea', a performance I had on a video that may or may not have been lost - further investigation on that subject is required. Anyway, I want my Rain Parade records (shipping costs permitting).

Waits and Weatherall

I am sitting here watching Warp Vision, a collection of videos by artists from the label given to me as a birthday present by someone with excellent taste, and I have just realised that the promo for Sabres of Paradise's Wilmot contains more than a passing nod to the video for Tom Waits' In the Neighborhood.


Surely Weatherall - and former Jesus and Mary Chain bassist Douglas Hart who directed the thing - are too aware of such events for this to be a coincidence. Or am I just reading too much into it?

The Wonderful and Frightening World....

The World really just doesn't make sense anymore. How can it when things like this happen? What next? John Lydon presenting 'This is Your Life', or Nick Cave reading the Shipping Forecast. I am off for a lie down.

Podcast Number 1: 1981

Finally, I am able to present the much promised inaugural Podcast here at 'Trajectory'. If my speech seems a little - how can I put it? - slurred, the reason is that it was recorded rather late at night. I will allow you to draw your own conclusions from that.

I have chosen three songs, partly for reasons of brevity, and partly inspired by the late John Peel's habit of playing 'Three of the Best' by one particular artist on his Radio 1 Show in the 1980's. The three tracks I have picked are not all by the same artist, but they are all from the same year, 1981.

I thought picking songs from the same year would help narrow the choice - otherwise, where do you start? - and it would allow me to repeat the formula in the future and make it a little more interesting in terms of context. Maybe.



So here we are, 1981 - this is the bit where it gets all The Rock and Roll Years - I was 10 years old when the year began and 11 when it ended. A random selection of events in those 12 months saw an attempted coup d'état in Spain; inner city riots in several major cities in England; the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands; Bucks Fizz winning the Eurovision Song Contest; a Royal Wedding; France abolishes capital punishment; Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is asassinated and last but not least, Craig David is born.

So, you can listen directly to 1981 here, or subscribe to the feed for this one and future podcasts.

Down Memory Lane

Just back from a lightning visit to Liverpool. Unfortunately, I did not have time to download this rather interesting Musical Tour of the City and then listen to the boy Wylie! guide me around my hometown via its rather impressive musical heritage. I spent most of the weekend in the pub.

2007 and Gigs are rubbish

2007 and one of several resolutions is to blog more. I have finally admitted defeat in my attempts to construct a template that has everything just where I want it and how I want it, and I have settled for a rather more stable and less ambitious version for the time being.

Anyway, reading today's Observer Music Monthly piece on 25 of the greatest gigs ever, I was reminded of just how little I enjoy 'live' music. Predictably, the likes of Bono trot out the usual guff about how the night he saw The Clash at Trinity College in 1977 was 'Year Zero. The shock of the new, where everything reconfigured.' Unfortunately, I cannot claim to have had any Bono-like experiences at gigs that turned me into Pol Pot, and I sadly have most sympathy for Damien Hurst when he confesses that, '..the favourite part of any gig I've ever been to is walking out at the end, or sometimes in the middle.'

It is not that I am getting old; the truth is that I never really liked gigs that much when I was younger. If I had done then I am sure that I would have gone to more of them. There have been concerts that I have enjoyed; Echo and the Bunnymen at the Liverpool Empire in 1987, Autechre upstairs in a pub in Sheffield in 1995 and Kraftwerk in Barcelona a few years ago. However, some have seemed longer than a compilation of Jimmy Page guitar solos. A particularly wretched Soul Asylum concert in the early '90's springs to mind (I was dragged along by a Canadian friend after I had press ganged him into coming to see Teenage Fanclub a few weeks earlier). They were drunk, abusive and incompetent, and I can still remember the relief when the house lights came on before they had a chance to return to the stage and continue the torture with more grunge-lite drivel.

Gigs go on for too long, are too expensive, the sound is always rubbish, and they are more often than not a huge let down. So, instead of going to concerts, I shall instead inflict upon the internet community a first podcast in the next few days or so, taking my cue from the prolific Slaminsky, as she suggested that I should further clog up cyberspace with some more music that nobody wants to hear when I bumped into her over Christmas. Clear your diaries.

Why I Love Liverpool Part I

Wylie, the soi-disant poet-ruffian, is perhaps the most underrated songwriter of his generation. And I am sure that he likes it that way. Pete, please Come Back.

Ghost Box

Whenever you believe yourself to be so jaded and cynical that nothing you hear will ever surprise you ever again, you can be sure that you will hear something that will cure you of world-weary, seen-it-heard-it-don't-even-bother-playing-it to me ennui. I found myself cured the other day when I stumbled upon the work of the The Focus Group, one of the artists on the Ghost Box label.

The founders of the label are Julian House, famous as a design artist having created sleeves for the likes of Broadcast, Primal Scream and Razorlight, and Jim Jupp, a man whose day job bears the rather intriguing title of 'architectural technician.' The Focus Group is the name of House's project whilst Jupp's work goes under the name of Belbury Poly. Both artists look for inspiration not in the traditional nooks and crannies of music's history, but rather in more prosaic corners of the past of organised sound. Library music, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, vintage soundtracks and school music rooms all act as points of reference for the two groups, who alongside like-minded sound preverters such as Eric Zann and The Advisory Circle, form Ghost Box's roster.

For anyone who grew up in 1970's Britain the music has a special resonance; it brings to mind the theme music for scientific programmes on the morning 'Schools and Colleges' slot, and similarly for those of 'Open University', the likes of which you used to have to sit through on Saturday mornings when you had got up too early for the cartoons for fear of missing the beginning of 'The Banana Splits' (Quantum Mechanics was always a favourite of mine).
Unsurprisingly, given House's and Jupp's backgrounds, Ghost Box the label has a strong visual element. CD sleeves and label artwork echo pedagogical text books and Penguin paperback front covers. Blending the romantic pastoralism that has Ultramine's 'Every Man and Woman is a Star' as a reference point, and a more modern evocation of a Britain in the 1970's that was fuelled by the optimism of New Towns, the widening of access to Higher Education, and a Reithian notion of public service, Ghost Box produces music that forces you to look back to places you had forgotten ever existed.

If you are interested there are far more incisive, intelligent and informative discussions of Ghost Box's output by the peerless Simon Reynolds and the inimitable K-punk. And if you want to hear it for yourself I suggest you start with this snippet of The Focus Group's wonderful Activity and Scales.

La Vuelta

Greetings. It has been a while I admit but I am back following several months of inactivity. The place has had a minor facelift, not that I think anyone will notice, and it is not quite yet complete. Thanks to Slaminsky for the inspiration to get going again, and for the contining nods in this direction. By the way, if you are a bemused reader of the good lady then I think this will help to clear up any confusion.