As ever, mightiest apologies for the recent lack of updates – I’ve been so busy I haven’t even had time up until now to write a post telling you I’ve been too busy to write anything.

Unfortunately, I haven’t, on the whole, been busy doing cool stuff. Just going to work and shit like that.

I have done a certain amount of cool stuff though;

I went to see Richard Thompson play in Birmingham last weekend – it was generally good, but a bit weird. I’ll write more if a get a minute.

I’ve seen four new films at the cinema. Three of them were primarily concerned with childhood trauma and abuse and other such fucked up shit. Just by coincidence, you understand. Three of them were really, really good – but not the same three. Again, I feel I should write more about them all – watch this space.

In my daily ninety minutes or so of spare time, I’ve done some promising new comics, played some guitar and made some mix CDs before involuntarily falling asleep.

I met a guy who does really great absurdist comics and has a website named after himself. You should check it out – www.richardpeel.com .

I saw a Swedish band called The Envelopes that I really kinda dug. They were first on the bill supporting some other bands I wasn’t really bothered about.

And I’m catching a plane (!!!) to Scotland tomorrow, and then next week I’m driving (!) to Wales, so if I were you I wouldn’t exactly keep hangin’ on the line for regular updates over the next week or so.

Once again, I’m really sorry.

Good heavens!

It would seem my Eggstock review (which you may have read here a few months ago) is now on the Plan B Website!

Rock, and indeed Roll!

I’ve been so mightily busy and, er, generally active over the past couple of weeks that I’m afraid I haven’t had much of an opportunity to write anything, despite have stumbled over a typically vast number of things worthy of (forgive me) “blogging”.

So – how much summarised, superlative enthusiasm do you think you can take in one go? Let’s see…

1. The Saturday night before last I came home a few drinks worse for wear, poured myself a big glass of wine and decided to read a comic – volume one of Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Oni Press) – whilst listening to the debut album by the band Witchcraft (Rise Above records). The resulting sensation was the closest I’ve got to Nirvana (the buddhist thing, not the band) for quite some time. ‘Scott Pilgrim’ is the funniest, coolest, most enjoyable and generally BESTEST new comic I’ve read in ages. ‘Witchcraft’ meanwhile is the best unashamed ‘70s heavy metal album anybody’s thought to make since ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’. Both are recommended in the highest possible terms.


2. How fucking fantastic is Big Star’s ‘#1 Record’?? My god, it’s just incredible. Like Richard & Linda Thompson’s ‘I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight’ (recorded the same year?), it’s an absolute dead cert 100% proof no-filler breathtaking classic album which by rights should be topping every tedious classic rock mag’s ‘Best Albums Ever’ poll from here to eternity. I’m not entirely familiar with the band’s history, but weren’t they, like, high school kids when they recorded this? It’s just the most honest and articulate evocation of overwrought teenage emotion I’ve ever heard in my life, shaped via the pristine perfection of all the best bits of the Beatles, Kiss and ‘70s radio rock. It’s ‘Dazed & Confused’ (the film, not the Zepplin song) expressed as pure sound. And it all sounds so, well, BIG! The production is the best I’ve heard from any rock band of that era – those guitar chords crash down like the fucking sky opening up!! The sheer level of these guys collective talent at this point is staggering. Gram Parsons can stick his cowboy hat up his arse – THIS is what Cosmic American Music sounds like!


3. The A Hawk and a Hacksaw gig in Leicester last week was a grand occasion indeed. The first time I saw Jeremy Barnes perform, I was rather taken aback by the fact that this imposing bearded dude who played in Neutral Milk Hotel and Bablicon was attempting to entertain me in a somewhat deranged one-man band set-up utilising an accordion and a wild array of percussion, a hat covered in bells, a drumstick taped to the back of his head for cymbal bashing, more on his knees for the cowbells and god only knows what else. I was somewhat frightened and baffled. Now, a few years later, I’m a little older and wiser and he’s honed his unusual musical muse into a fine art, releasing a couple of excellently received albums and expanding to a duo with the addition of a beautiful violinist lady. And they’re an absolute joy to behold – all traces of ‘indie’ or experimental rock or whatever have long since departed from A Hawk and a Hacksaw’s playing, as they’ve followed their own strange path headfirst into the realms of full-on Eastern European folk, a touch of British folk and tons of other wonderful stuff that I lack the musical education to solidly identify, (though I’d guess Jewish and Romany stuff is pretty prominent in the mix). In the wrong hands, the idea of young, white, western musicians assuming this aesthetic could come across as affected and infuriating in the extreme, but thankfully Barnes and his partner are the rightest hands imaginable. They are great musicians. Obviously that’s a tag that’s impossible to quantify in words, so let’s just suffice to say that their playing is infused from start to finish with that indefinable mix of whatever that leads to the creation of music that’s striking and joyful and beautiful, and really that’s all you need to know, right?

4. And the supports were pretty good too ; the multi-talented Chris Summerlin played solo acoustic guitar under the guise of Last of the Real Hard Men, tempering the inevitable Fahey worship with a free-wheeling looseness and a few off kilter surprises, and Leicester’s ramshackle minstrels The Fabulous Foxes once again succeeded in planting a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

5. Oh inestimable joy of joys – there’s a new Helen Love EP out!!! It’s on Sympathy for the Record Industry, on pink vinyl, and is no doubt limited to some stupidly small number. It is, of course, brilliant. If you’re already a Helen Love fan, hurry, hurry, pick it up! And if you’re not a Helen Love fan, what the hell is your excuse?

6. I think I need dancing lessons. Several times in the past few months, my characteristic tornado-like limb-flailing has – unbelievably – momentarily attracted the attentions of ladies. And the result is always the same; when drawn into more restrained one-on-one style dancing, my fundamental lack of rhythm and total ignorance of the procedures of ‘proper’ dancing immediately reveals me as a stumbling, graceless idiot and I am henceforth shunned. Not that the whole business is any more than a bit of fleeting drunken fun of course, but nevertheless, wouldn’t it be great to actually HAVE THE MOVES for once? Dancing tips to the usual address.

7. It’s also my duty to inform you that there are no less than THREE new releases out at the moment from my hard-working blue-eyed soul brothers Herman Dune. Their new album ‘Not on Top’, the accompanying ‘Jackson Heights’ EP (both on Track & Field) and a ‘proper’ reissue of David-Ivor’s utterly fantastic CDR ‘Demented Abduction / Nova Scotia’ (Smoking Gun Records). All are things of beauty and worthy of your attention – the latter in particular is worth moving mountains to track down.

8. Having never listened to them before, I decided on a whim to get a King Crimson record out of the library this week. Failing to secure a copy of ‘In the Court of..’, I decided a box set of 1969 live recordings might provide a good start. Woke up this morning and thought I’d stick it on….. what can I possibly say except HOLY FUCKING SHIT?!?!?!?! It feels like I’ve just cut off my ears and fried them in garlic.

9. The first time my embryonic band got together and played a few weeks ago, we did a song that sounded like Low. This weekend two thirds of us met again and did a song that sounded like Electric Wizard. Go figure.

Yours in metal,

Ben

Regular readers out there (hi fellas) might be wondering what’s happened to my weird film round-ups of recent and, well, the sad truth is that I haven’t really had the opportunity to watch many in the past few months.

I have encountered a couple of good ones though, so here we go;

The Night Caller (John Gillings, 1962)

This is a really odd black and white British sci-fi – starts off very much in the vein of Quatermass (only less good) as some scientists try to make sense of a mysterious glowing orb found in a meteorite crater whilst being gently hassled by some bullheaded military folk. Stiff upper lips and stern b-movie psuedo-science all round. Things take a turn for the ridiculous when an alien emerges from the orb and proceeds to creep around in the shadows, frightening our plucky lady lab assistant with his big, hairy claw(!) The creature runs off into the night, and – I certainly didn’t see this one coming – poses as a human, rents some offices above a Soho sex shop and places an advert in ‘Bikini Girl’ magazine(!!). He lures teenage girls to his phony modelling agency and proceeds to, er, ‘touch them with his claw’. This unexpected shift in tone from high-minded SF to sleazy weirdness is truly inexplicable. The pretty glum selection of policemen, soldiers and scientists who constitute the film’s ‘heroes’ take it all in their stride however, calmly making plans to apprehend the extra-terrestrial scallywag as if this sort of thing happened all the time. The film makes a really big deal out of the fact that the alien keeps his face hidden at all times, but when he’s cornered at the end and forced to explain what he’s up to (trying to repopulate his dying planet – always the same excuse with these bloody aliens, isn’t it?), he removes his mask…. to dramatically reveal that he’s actually a fairly handsome, human chap with a bit of a burn on his right cheek. You’d have thought hiding that fucking great werewolf claw would be more of a priority, wouldn’t you? Anyhow, a very strange film whichever way you look at it.

The Vampires’ Night Orgy (Leon Kilmovsky, 1972)

No orgy I’m afraid, but plenty of vampires. Spanish horror outting in which a bus-load of domestic servants en-route to a manor house get a bit lost and end up in an eerie, deserted village whose residents turn out to all be… no, really, take a guess. The dubbed dialogue is atrocious, the characters are dreadful and the ropey, half-arsed plotline barely hangs together, but nevertheless, this is a surprisingly well made film with a few imaginative ideas, visual flair, a modicum of tension and an all-pervading atmosphere of general wrongness which is satisfyingly unsettling. The vampires here seem to be practising a pretty strict class system – the village notables swan around elegantly in traditional Euro-horror fashion, whilst the peasants feed on their leftovers like a pack of misshapen zombies. Other highlights include a scary barbarian hatchet-man who goes around cutting peoples limbs off to feed to the outsiders for dinner, and a Jean Rollin-esque sub-plot about a girl who makes friends with a weird little ghost/vampire boy. Pretty good movie overall – I have a hunch that ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ might have ripped off a few elements from it. It looks a bit embarrassing on my video shelf, but as a long-time horror movie / comics fan you’d better believe I’m way past caring about the odd raised eyebrow.