I wish the ape a lot of success.
Stereo Sisterhood / Blog Graveyard:
- After The Sabbath (R.I.P?) ; All Ages ; Another Nickel (R.I.P.) ; Bachelor ; BangtheBore ; Beard (R.I.P.) ; Beyond The Implode (R.I.P.) ; Black Editions ; Black Time ; Blue Moment ; Bull ; Cocaine & Rhinestones ; Dancing ; DCB (R.I.P.) ; Did Not Chart ; Diskant (R.I.P.) ; DIYSFL ; Dreaming (R.I.P.?) ; Dusted in Exile ; Echoes & Dust ; Every GBV LP ; Flux ; Free ; Freq ; F-in' Record Reviews ; Garage Hangover ; Gramophone ; Grant ; Head Heritage ; Heathen Disco/Doug Mosurock ; Jonathan ; KBD ; Kulkarni ; Landline/Jay Babcock ; Lexicon Devil ; Lost Prom (R.I.P.?) ; LPCoverLover ; Midnight Mines ; Musique Machine ; Mutant Sounds (R.I.P.?) ; Nick Thunk :( ; Norman ; Peel ; Perfect Sound Forever ; Quietus ; Science ; Teleport City ; Terminal Escape ; Terrascope ; Tome ; Transistors ; Ubu ; Upset ; Vibes ; WFMU (R.I.P.) ; XRRF (occasionally resurrected). [If you know of any good rock-write still online, pls let me know.]
Other Place. // One Band. // Another Band. // Spooky Sounds. // MIXES. // Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
LOOKING AT THE ROSE THROUGH WORLD-TINTED GLASSES
-------
So you’ve recently moved to London?
Yes.
And you’ve got nothing better to do than sit around at home interviewing yourself?
Yes.
Well.. why?
It seems to be a fruitful and straightforward way to instigate new writing.
It’s pretty self-indulgent.
I guess.
Fair enough. So what do you think of London?
Well it’s funny, back when I was a teenager I got completely overwhelmed with excitement during my occasional visits to London. Not having much knowledge of, or interest in, places for their own sake, I naturally assumed it must be THE big place where every kind of cool and exciting rebellious underground thing must be happening all the time around every corner, and consequently I wanted to go there a lot and explore and have fun. Then I did not live there.
In recent years I have considerably revised my opinion, and now consider it a hard and often actively unpleasant place to live in which offers less in the way of cultural rewards than a number of smaller and more congenial British cities. Now I do live there. So it goes.
Well why DO you live there then?
You’ve got to live somewhere. My other plans didn’t work out, and like I say, I don’t have much imagination when it comes to places. It’s going ok though, so don’t sweat it.
So I guess you must be looking for a job..?
I’ve got one. It’s boring and the pay is average. Let’s move on.
What’s your favourite part of a working day in your new London life?
My favourite part of the day is getting off the tube a few stops early in the morning and walking across Waterloo bridge listening to Syd Barrett or The Kinks or R.L. Burnside or Husker Du or The Modern Lovers. It’s all downhill from there. I know bridges in cities are basically just streets that go over some water, so why is walking across them in the morning or the evening so great?
And your least favourite?
Getting up in the morning and being duty-bound to put on trousers which are not jeans, thus making me feel not just tired and peculiarly hungry, but also like a total square.
I also dislike how there’s nowhere you can ever go – excepting one would hope your own bedroom and bathroom – where you are out of sight of other people.
Yes, people. There are absolutely loads of them all over the place, aren’t there? So what’s your general opinion of your fellow Londoners?
People in London are on the whole younger and far better dressed than people in other cities. However, a small minority of them dress in a fashion more idiotic than would really be socially feasible in any other city.
Unlike other places, people in London actually seem to buy and read crap modern novels, and can often be seen doing so in public. As a result, all of London’s charity bookshops are also stuffed full of last month’s crap modern novels and very rarely seem to have anything good. Now ask me some more challenging questions before I start to sound like some conceited observational comic.
Have you seen anything of beauty since moving to London?
Good question. I’m not sure I have any very inspiring answers. I haven’t had a chance to spend much time observing the city’s strange and majestic buildings or art galleries or anything, so, um.. I’ve sure seen some beautiful girls. Many of them have boyfriends who seem like total jerks. Such is life.
If you were one of those boyfriends, and you were observing yourself, wouldn’t you think you were also a total jerk?
No comment.
Comets on Fire were also pretty beautiful the other night by the way; right & proper mighty rock music with heart and soul and freedom… Ethan Miller’s exquisite closed eyes smiling-through-the-hard-work ecstatic Rock Face as he bellowed through the verses of their new big, soaring epic song… what’s it called?
“Lucifer’s Memory”
Yeah.. and Ben Chasny collapsing in exhaustion after busting all his guitars and having a roadie strap a new one over his neck and push him back on-stage just in time for him to lurch straight into his solo like a crashing concorde. Ah, rock music man, can’t beat it.
See, it’s not all bad – you’ve been going to some shows..? You’re a music fanatic and everybody in the world plays London at some point!
Yeah, I guess so. I saw Blood on the Wall too and meant to write it up for my weblog but couldn’t get it together.
I’ve got some great stuff lined up – Acid Mothers Temple are playing next month at some place near Elephant & Castle, and there’s Carla Bozulich, Sir Richard Bishop & Richard Blackshaw, Yo La Tengo, The Dead C & Charalambides, Magik Markers… I’ll probably be going to most of those on my own by the way, so if anyone else is going and fancies making a friend..
God, haven’t you had enough of that crap already this year, you Camber Sands bothering trend-following fucker… in a few years that whole malarkey will seem as dated as earnestly frowning over Squarepusher and Mogwai records, expecting the fat, bald future to jump out from behind the sofa any minute. If you want your friends to give a damn, maybe you should go see someone with some bloody tunes for a change!
Hey, fuck you man! I’ve been wanting to hear music that sounds like Acid Mothers Temple and Charalambides all my life, I just never had the access to it before!
And besides, I forgot to mention that next Monday I’m making a pilgrimage up the Northern line to see one of the world’s true heroes – JONATHAN RICHMAN! He’s got a few tunes.
Will he play of them though, that’s the question. How much did the ticket set you back?
Uh… twenty two pounds.
Alright. And finally – what, in a perfect world, would you like to be doing with yourself right now?
Being an art student in Glasgow.
Ok, last question - have you ever had the suspicion that all the objective power and meaning you claim to find in music is actually entirely self-created, and that far from having any interest in advancing the art-form or widening the audience of artists you enjoy, you actually use music and the phony philosophies you pull out of it in the most conservative way possible, as a safe old emotional crutch to distract you from the gaping black hole that is the utter lack of purpose and fulfilment in your life, and your consistent, cowardly failure to live anything like as varied and inspired a life as any of your so-called heroes, and…
This interview is over!
-------
So you’ve recently moved to London?
Yes.
And you’ve got nothing better to do than sit around at home interviewing yourself?
Yes.
Well.. why?
It seems to be a fruitful and straightforward way to instigate new writing.
It’s pretty self-indulgent.
I guess.
Fair enough. So what do you think of London?
Well it’s funny, back when I was a teenager I got completely overwhelmed with excitement during my occasional visits to London. Not having much knowledge of, or interest in, places for their own sake, I naturally assumed it must be THE big place where every kind of cool and exciting rebellious underground thing must be happening all the time around every corner, and consequently I wanted to go there a lot and explore and have fun. Then I did not live there.
In recent years I have considerably revised my opinion, and now consider it a hard and often actively unpleasant place to live in which offers less in the way of cultural rewards than a number of smaller and more congenial British cities. Now I do live there. So it goes.
Well why DO you live there then?
You’ve got to live somewhere. My other plans didn’t work out, and like I say, I don’t have much imagination when it comes to places. It’s going ok though, so don’t sweat it.
So I guess you must be looking for a job..?
I’ve got one. It’s boring and the pay is average. Let’s move on.
What’s your favourite part of a working day in your new London life?
My favourite part of the day is getting off the tube a few stops early in the morning and walking across Waterloo bridge listening to Syd Barrett or The Kinks or R.L. Burnside or Husker Du or The Modern Lovers. It’s all downhill from there. I know bridges in cities are basically just streets that go over some water, so why is walking across them in the morning or the evening so great?
And your least favourite?
Getting up in the morning and being duty-bound to put on trousers which are not jeans, thus making me feel not just tired and peculiarly hungry, but also like a total square.
I also dislike how there’s nowhere you can ever go – excepting one would hope your own bedroom and bathroom – where you are out of sight of other people.
Yes, people. There are absolutely loads of them all over the place, aren’t there? So what’s your general opinion of your fellow Londoners?
People in London are on the whole younger and far better dressed than people in other cities. However, a small minority of them dress in a fashion more idiotic than would really be socially feasible in any other city.
Unlike other places, people in London actually seem to buy and read crap modern novels, and can often be seen doing so in public. As a result, all of London’s charity bookshops are also stuffed full of last month’s crap modern novels and very rarely seem to have anything good. Now ask me some more challenging questions before I start to sound like some conceited observational comic.
Have you seen anything of beauty since moving to London?
Good question. I’m not sure I have any very inspiring answers. I haven’t had a chance to spend much time observing the city’s strange and majestic buildings or art galleries or anything, so, um.. I’ve sure seen some beautiful girls. Many of them have boyfriends who seem like total jerks. Such is life.
If you were one of those boyfriends, and you were observing yourself, wouldn’t you think you were also a total jerk?
No comment.
Comets on Fire were also pretty beautiful the other night by the way; right & proper mighty rock music with heart and soul and freedom… Ethan Miller’s exquisite closed eyes smiling-through-the-hard-work ecstatic Rock Face as he bellowed through the verses of their new big, soaring epic song… what’s it called?
“Lucifer’s Memory”
Yeah.. and Ben Chasny collapsing in exhaustion after busting all his guitars and having a roadie strap a new one over his neck and push him back on-stage just in time for him to lurch straight into his solo like a crashing concorde. Ah, rock music man, can’t beat it.
See, it’s not all bad – you’ve been going to some shows..? You’re a music fanatic and everybody in the world plays London at some point!
Yeah, I guess so. I saw Blood on the Wall too and meant to write it up for my weblog but couldn’t get it together.
I’ve got some great stuff lined up – Acid Mothers Temple are playing next month at some place near Elephant & Castle, and there’s Carla Bozulich, Sir Richard Bishop & Richard Blackshaw, Yo La Tengo, The Dead C & Charalambides, Magik Markers… I’ll probably be going to most of those on my own by the way, so if anyone else is going and fancies making a friend..
God, haven’t you had enough of that crap already this year, you Camber Sands bothering trend-following fucker… in a few years that whole malarkey will seem as dated as earnestly frowning over Squarepusher and Mogwai records, expecting the fat, bald future to jump out from behind the sofa any minute. If you want your friends to give a damn, maybe you should go see someone with some bloody tunes for a change!
Hey, fuck you man! I’ve been wanting to hear music that sounds like Acid Mothers Temple and Charalambides all my life, I just never had the access to it before!
And besides, I forgot to mention that next Monday I’m making a pilgrimage up the Northern line to see one of the world’s true heroes – JONATHAN RICHMAN! He’s got a few tunes.
Will he play of them though, that’s the question. How much did the ticket set you back?
Uh… twenty two pounds.
Alright. And finally – what, in a perfect world, would you like to be doing with yourself right now?
Being an art student in Glasgow.
Ok, last question - have you ever had the suspicion that all the objective power and meaning you claim to find in music is actually entirely self-created, and that far from having any interest in advancing the art-form or widening the audience of artists you enjoy, you actually use music and the phony philosophies you pull out of it in the most conservative way possible, as a safe old emotional crutch to distract you from the gaping black hole that is the utter lack of purpose and fulfilment in your life, and your consistent, cowardly failure to live anything like as varied and inspired a life as any of your so-called heroes, and…
This interview is over!
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