Hey everybody. I've had an absolutely appalling week wherein everything fell apart, sometimes literally, and it's also raining. But nevertheless I'm having a good day today - The Ladykillers is on TV this aftrnoon and !!!ARTHUR LEE!!! is playing down the road from my house tomorrow (I wonder if I can tempt him back for tea and biscuits?), so I'm feeling ok.

Since everybody will have recieved their copy by now, I can open the floodgates of Hornby-esque geekery and reveal to you my mixtape tracklisting for the recent Plan B forum tape trade. It's turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Possibly not enough female led tracks, but aside from that I'm fairly happy with it. Cover art was a still from "If.." and a panel from an old Spiderman comic.

THE NATURE OF THE CATASTROPHE

Side One:

1. Miles Davis getting pissed off
2./3. Lightning Bolt – hello morning / assassins
4. The Mountain Goats – linda blair was born innocent
5. Thee Headcoats - I’m hurtin’
6. Kimya Dawson – the beer
7. Cheap Trick – surrender
8. Thee Headcoatees – wild man
9. Big Jay McNeely – real crazy cool
10. Jack Keruouac goin’ on about jazz
11. John Coltrane – giant steps
12. The Make-up – born on the floor
13. The Leaves – too many people
14. LiliPUT – Die Matrosen
15. Syd Barrett - love song
16.Neutral Milk Hotel - she did a lot of acid

Side Two:

1.Fear & Loathing sample
2.Country Joe & the Fish – porpoise mouth
3.Soft Machine – moon in june (BBC session version)
4.David-Ivor Herman Dune – burn burn
5.Pentagram – Forever my Queen
6.Boris – Korosu
7.Agoraphobic Nosebleed – spreading the dis-ease
8.Oneida – slip inside this house
9.Soda Stream - varkhala
10.Neil Young – borrowed tune
11.A Silver Mount Zion – the triumph of our tired eyes

Woke up late this morning and felt terrible. Needed to spend the morning at the computer getting some stuff done really, but I HAD to get out and get a bit of exercise or I knew I’d feel shitty all day (diabetes, for those of you wondering what I’m going on about). So I’d like to thank the Minutemen’s ‘Double Nickels on the Dime’, and whatever strange force caused me to grab it and stick it in my walkman.
Totally transformed my mood and expectations for the day as I tramped to the post office and around the park, reacquainting myself with the breathtaking joy and ambition and power of this music... If ever there was a textbook definition of musical and lyrical genius, something that stands so above and outside it’s cultural context like an inspired beacon of crazy hope: this album is it. (I keep wanting to call it ‘the Trout Mask Replica of the post-punk era’, which is pretty banal I suppose, but worth it if it gets anyone listening.)

It’s not so much enjoyable as it is just plain inspiring – it makes me remember that sitting around feeling sorry for yourself is a crime, being defeatist and cynical in the face of every human’s inherent ability to create something like this is a crime, it reminds me that this isn’t just a whole lotta foolishness, this is self-definition, creation, cultural resistance, and there’s work to be done. It makes me want to pick up the guitar and the notepad and hammer them until something good comes out, whether it takes all day. Whether it takes all year.

Phew. And it does all this whilst making my tap my foot, and whilst making me laugh. Because if it can’t do that (pay attention at the back there Fugazi!), then what’s the point?


I regret to inform you though that there’s another CD I listened to yesterday which didn’t do any of this.


I spent last week painstakingly downloading A Silver Mount Zion’s ‘This is Our Punk Rock..’ and have finally got it all burned onto CD, finally got to listen to it, ready for the inevitable beauty and revelations contained therein and... My god, what a terrible, terrible fucking disappointment... It’s... I can’t even express it, it’s just... ... UGH. Beauty turned to shit, it’s a horrible feeling. I’m sorry everybody but I just can’t bring myself to put it on again to confirm or deny my initial impressions. Sound & Fury. It sounds like they’ve been eating their own hype for breakfast. It sounds like some whining bombastic Saddle-Creek shit. It sounds like they’ve sat down and made a product. Sound and Fury.

I’m really sorry.

My as yet unnamed band had another preliminary practice yesterday evening, and it was pretty OK. Perhaps surprisingly (for those who know my musical tastes and aspirations), the general vibe is distinctly un-experimental and straightforward – we were, like, learning to play proper songs with more than two chords, properly and in time. Added to this was the fact that I was using somebody else’s guitar and amp, and was thus adrift without any pedals, unable to use noise and scuzz to disguise the fact that I play like a tone-deaf monkey most of the time.

It was really good though. In a lot of ways I’m really glad of the opportunity to learn to play (sort of) properly with other people, figuring out how to do a few decent tunes. I mean, I’m sure I could far more easily round up some shifty noise bastards and record a bunch of disgusting 60 second spazz-outs called things like ‘Rampage Etiquette’ and ‘I Am No Dude Deputy’, but what the hell would be the point, y’know? Not to belittle the many people who are really good at that sort of thing, but that kind of music can be just sooo self-indulgent and obnoxious a lot of the time, and my heart wouldn’t really be it, I’d just be doing it cos I was too lazy to learn to play properly. I’m finding it far more exciting to just play good pop songs with verses and choruses at the moment, although I’m still not much good at it.

TO CLARIFY: I don’t mean to say I’m playing, like, dad-rock or Beatles covers or anything. It’s still cool, honest, we’re just talking closer to, say, the Pixies and PJ Harvey than to Bilge Pump or the Locust, and c’mon kids, that’s no bad thing really is it? I’m setting my sights on the holy grail of that classic Glasgow 1997 Urusei Yatsura sound, but hey, since when haven’t I done?

Off to practice some “doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo”s...

So what have I been up to in the past week?

Well on the weekend I went up to the Plan B sponsored gig/night at Le Pub in Newport and witnessed a performance by Load Records artistes The USAISAMONSTER. And as with every other Load band they were crazed and joyous and amazing and impossible to really get an angle on in print.

They look like just the freakiest guys imaginable... they’re like if Wayne and Garth were huge sci-fi and prog-rock geeks, and if they’d spent 18 hours a day for the past fifteen years locked in a dark basement with cheap drums and guitars and noise gadgets, obsessively writing and practising epic convoluted symphonies telling the stories of, well, god knows what..
Trout Mask Replica era Beefheart and Devo are useful touchstones in terms of attitude and general aesthetic freakery, and musically they mix spooky, droney druidic singing bits reminiscent of Oneida with total Lightning Bolt lunatic spazz-out party action. And I get the feeling they must seem totally at home here in the kind of mixed up scene that more conventionally cool bands must have nightmares about. A small gang of strange, lanky boys lollop around in front of the stage, doing slow spasmodic dances around a naked wrestling mannequin with the head of Ronald Reagan while the rest of the audience, a motley selection of local subcultural misfits, look on dumbfounded. After being informed they’ve got enough time left for ‘a short one’, the USAISAMONSTER launch into a totally straight-faced rendition of ‘Free Bird’ as if they’ve been waiting for this moment for decades. Crazy, crazy boys who’ve forever secured a place in my heart.

The support, Welsh post-rock stalwarts (“look ma! I’m a Welsh post-rock stalwart!”) Mountain Men Anonymous are also pretty great. They certainly didn’t sound like they practice 18 hours a day, but they sound like when they do play they know exactly where they’re going. And where they’re going is straight to the point – intense instrumental emotive rock without the bullshit. Essentially they resemble GS!YBE stripped down to a power trio and graced with that rare advantage in the post-rock world – a great drummer and a solid, forward-moving rhythm. Like your screeching apocalyptic guitar showdowns but can’t stick any of those arsey quiet bits? Well look no further.

The same day I finally picked up a copy of Mclusky’s ‘difficult’ new album, wherein they embrace the twin virtues of bile and awkwardness in a way that would make Mark E. Smith proud. Working on a review, but it’s an uphill struggle.

And then, REJOICE! Issue#0 of Plan B dropped through my letterbox this morning. Proving the extent to which this coven of cranky exiled music journos rule my life at the moment, I’ve spent most of the day engrossed in it, or merely just.. looking at it (aside from a short period when I felt inspired to strap on the guitar and blast through some tedious Velvets/Spacemen 3 “we don’t need to change chord, we’re on heroin” style action). And … hmm… it’s a bit like Careless Talk really, isn’t it? Not exactly the grand revolution in magazine format I’d been led to expect by preliminary gossip. More like going back to school after the summer holidays – a few new faces, a new coat of paint in the gym and a new biology teacher, but otherwise business as usual. Not that that’s a bad thing of course – lest we forget CTCL has single-handedly raised the bar for worthwhile paper & ink based musical discourse to previously unimaginable levels, and IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT.

Obviously it’s full of amazing stuff, that almost goes without saying, and the new bits – film/comics/books coverage and mini trad-magazine style ‘items’ which aren’t shite – are very welcome indeed. Haven’t actually read most of it thus far, but the overall quality of the bits I have read is very high indeed.

Track it down and buy it for fucks sake, so they can persuade some suit-wearing squares to give them money to make more issues or however it is it works.

So I’ve finally got round to printing up copies of my new comic. ‘New’ being something of an anachronism, seeing as how the some of the stuff inside dates from 2002.

It’s 24 whole pages of incomprehensible can’t-draw-style belo-fi comix fun, featuring, in no particular order, beatniks, big explosions, dead cats, rock n’ roll music, teenage alienation, graveyards, mysterious voices, eerie apocalyptic cityscapes and armed robbery.

I’ll send you a copy for £1.50 or in exchange for something cool, or probably for free if I know you (which, let’s face it, if you’re reading this is probably quite likely). My email is to your right. -->

CURRENT LISTENING: Black Sabbath – The Warning. (PEOPLE OF EARTH: THIS IS HOW YOU ROCK. Do not be afraid of unaccompanied guitar solos that sound like they’re being played to fill in while the rhythm section pop out for a smoke.)

I bought a 7" the other day by We Rock Like Girls Don't, and am happy to report that they rock like girls do. Nothing you won't have heard before, but nevertheless, the kind of stuff I'll always enjoy hearing again. Fab surly gear with nice chugga-chugga guitars – PJ Harvey, Elastica, latter day 'Mary Chain - you know the score. "I’m just a rock and roll freak / when I'm near it I go weak" they sing, and I think I can relate.

Phew! Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been away for the weekend and I've got a list of "things to do" as long as my arm..

In the meantime though, please enjoy (and don't steal) this list of possible great Stoner Rock band names (you may think they're beyond parody, but hey, so's the music):

WITCH HONEY
STREET WIZARD
ELECTRIC WARRIOR
BEARD OF LIGHTNING
FLAMING SARCOPHAGUS
FLAMING WITCH
GOLGOTHA*
SKY MOTHER
STONER WITCH**
HEADSTONE


* surely there MUST have already been a band called Golgotha at some point, but I’ve never heard of them, so it's allowed.

** with apologies to the Melvins

You'd think I’d have used up my year's worth of Ian Svenonious sycophancy with that post the other day, but..

OH MY GOD! I just listened to the new Weird War album, "If You Can't Beat 'Em, Bite 'Em" and it’s amazing! It sounds like... it sounds like...

Well let us not beat around the bush here:

It sounds like if George Clinton and Jimi Hendrix formed a garage-punk band, pledged allegiance to the Baader Meinhof gang and chewed down a few sheets of blotter acid to get them in the mood.

Full review coming soon, maybe.