In lieu of any new content here, it occurred to me that readers might be interested in the somewhat music-related content of a piece I just put up on my other blog, telling you more than you probably ever wished to know about Hawkwind’s adventures in the field of paperback fiction.

Labels: Hawkwind, self promotion, spacefiller

Frightwig.

Ok, so I wasn’t really planning to leave that last dumb post at the top of the page for more than a day or two, but life got in the way, etc.

To give you a taste of the kind of urgent investigations that have been consuming my spare time when I should have been writing new stuff here, here’s another dumb video post.

Specifically, here’s a band called FRIGHTWIG, who’ve previously escaped my attention, bringing sloppy, f-ed up downer-punk and unhinged singing-drummer mania to Berkeley, California, 1987.



It’s a shame they didn’t have ladyfests back in 1987 - these guys’d hit the joint like a cheesegrater.

A brief survey of their later (presumably ??) recorded output on Youtube reveals ‘the grunge sound’ and a lot of immoderately applied wah-wah, but no matter - this video shreds.

Labels: Frightwig, lameness, spacefiller, videos

Rockin’ Chairs.

So I was going to put up a new post this weekend based on my observations re: a forty minute video of sessions from Alex Chilton’s “Like Flies On Sherbert” period that someone put online a couple of months back.

Unfortunately though, the video has now disappeared, and posting my stuff without reference to it wouldn’t make much sense. Oh well. Maybe I’ll rework it into something else at a later date.

I’ve got a bunch more singles reviews to post, so I’ll get through them this week – thought I’d start posting ‘em one at a time from now on rather than in big batches, now that I’ve got a pretty constant pile awaiting review.

In the meantime, it has come to my attention that Stereo Sanctity has been presented with some kind of award by a company who sell theatre seating.

There is nothing I can possibly add to that.

For the record, I like ‘70s style cinema seating, with very low seats, leather seat covers and big moulded plastic and metal frames with chunky drinks holders that give the impression that each seat is sort of armoured and separated from it's neighbours. Downstairs at the Prince Charles cinema in central London is a good example.

Labels: awards, lameness, spacefiller, theatre seating

Genres are Silly.

I enjoyed reading Marceline Smith’s post about the iTunes genre box over at Diskant today, and it reminded me that I’d been meaning to do a similar post on genre-related silliness a while back.

I download a lot of mp3s, and borrow/auto-recognise/create a lot more, and looking at my list of genres always gives me a chuckle.

I typed *very few* of these in myself I should add. That would just take the fun out of it, wouldn’t it?

“Girls” is my favourite genre, I think, although “Strut” and “Terror” are also quite pleasing.

Labels: genres, lameness, nerds, spacefiller

Blah, Blah, Blah.

So I was going to wait until we got a decision on who's in charge of the country before writing a new post, but I'm bored now.

So, seriously, how great are Shonen Knife?

The chorus of that song has been playing in my head continuously since I watched the video three days ago, which really shouldn't come as a surprise, given my history.

When I saw Shonen Knife at The Windmill last year, they played a new song about barnacles. Yeah, that's right, barnacles.

Naoko said that she admired the tenacity of barnacles in clinging on to rocks and so forth. The song went;

"Barnacle
HEY!
Barnacle
HEY!
This is a song about the barnacle!"

Shonen Knife are fucking brilliant.

I suppose at this point I could heave in some unwieldy metaphor comparing Gordon Brown to a great big barnacle or something, but... let's just not.

Labels: politics, Shonen Knife, spacefiller, The Ramones, videos

Being Awesome = Putting In The Effort.

Myself and a couple of friends went on a quick jaunt to Amsterdam this weekend (I know, leaving the country twice in a month - very uncharacteristic). And look who we found in the hotel visitors book...


*swoon*

I mean, the rest of the book with just full of drunken, incoherent biro scribbling, but look at the effort Those Dancing Days have out into it - the colours they brought along, and the amazing lettering! No half measures there. Another perfect demonstration of why TDD RULE.

Speaking of half measures, some proper posts are forthcoming as soon as I finish writing them, but in the meantime, enjoy one of the better pop videos of recent years:

Labels: spacefiller, Those Dancing Days, videos