Friday Fell Asleep at the Wheel
Dear God I never thought of what I do as an endurance sport before – after all, it’s really just a case of endlessly farting on about some tunes which I happen to like – but this year’s Festival is going to become just that. This week has been punishing enough already, and next might be even heavier going.
This week so far I have been to a fucking superb performance by Jesus H. Foxx on Tuesday at Electric Circus, supported by my first real experience of Art Fag, who tortured songs by Meursault and Enfant Bastard with considerable enthusiasm.
Then on Wednesday I witnessed a shambolic performance by the sound guy at the Forest Cafe, presumably determined to ensure that the White Heath EP launch would be dominated by his own World Championship levels of incompetence and indifference, and fuck those arrogant bands and their ridiculous notion that people might actually have turned up to hear them play songs. Someone should point out to him that just because Debutant is only a bloke and a guitar doesn’t mean no-one wants to listen to his music or that a sound guy can necessarily spend the entire gig with his head wedged firmly up his own arse as his sound system totters and staggers around him. Oh, and White Heath have a pianist and a violin player in the band for a reason: because what they are doing is supposed to actually make a contribution to the sound they are trying to make – if they were just there to be like Bez they wouldn’t bother miming away on instruments, would they?
At least he couldn’t ruin the Meursault solo set. With a voice like Neil’s that would be a challenge for even the most determinedly ham-fisted sound guy, and proved to be beyond even whichever distant relative of Coco the fucking Clown had turned up that night. Mind you, the monumentally pig-ignorant pseudo-hippies who seemed to fill half the place were clearly determined to raise their dreadlock-sporting, oatmeal-knitting, soap-dodging, dismally joyless conversations above any and all bands who thought that they might try and play some tunes, their slightly desperate, vacant faces grimly clinging to the last vestiges of the illusion that their particular hollow brand of bovine conformity represents something even mildly alternative. It doesn’t. You’re just another bunch of sad cunts in need of an identity to submit yourselves to in a pitiful bid to avoid having to face your lack of anything much to contribute to the world. Sorry, welcome to real life, we all have to face it at some point. And no matter how fucking loud you try and talk, Neil is louder than you, which makes me feel good about the universe. And presumably cheered the front half of the audience too, who were brilliant, lest it seem that I am trying to tar everyone with the same brush. I assume there are plenty of good people who both run and use the Forest Cafe; unfortunately there also seem to be some pretty bloody depressing ones as well.
Anyhow, the talky hippies and the clod of a sound guy clearly put Neil in a mood, which meant his set was confrontational and fucking brilliant. I am starting to realise that the best way to make Meursault really famous might be to send them on a Hostile Venue Tour of the UK – fuck we’d get some good shows, although we might have to keep the engine running in the Toad Van out the back.
Oh, and yesterday was FOUND vs Cybraphon, which was ace. Most of it was a presentation about the genesis of the moody musical wardrobe, followed by it accompanying the band on about four songs. It was a great talk actually, as witty and whimsical as the project itself. And being in an actual art gallery made me feel like a more worthwhile person for a little. Support the arts and all that, jolly important stuff.
Tonight, Shenandoah Davis is playing at Carter’s Bar on Morrisson Street, and I will be going along to sample her live set in advance of recording a Toad Session tomorrow. And on the subject of Toad Sessions, the FOUND one goes up this weekend too, which is why I was up until 5.45 this morning working on it. Which is why I may be just a little more grouchy than is entirely reasonable this morning.
Then it’s Trampoline on Saturday night, after the Toad Session. Then Retreat the following day. Then Broken Records, Frightened Rabbit, Meursault and so on at the Queen’s Hall next week, and Playing With the Past. And… oh never mind, my body has just given up on me. By the time the Festival ends I may have to sleep through September just to get over it. My Latest Novel have been added to the Broken Records bill on Monday, incidentally, which is good news as I haven’t seen them live for quite a while.
Apparently there are things on at the Festival which are Not Music. At this rate it looks highly unlikely that I am going to be found at any of them.
De-lurk. Oh stop it, just fucking de-lurk, alright? I’m too tired to ask nicely, but I’ll secretly be happy if you do, even if I don’t realise it until I’ve had a good sleep.
Fucking hippies, honestly. SHUT UP – no-one came to listen to your tedious excuse for a conversation.
1. Last proper art thing you went to.
2. Favourite grown up art form.
3. Most under-rated form of art which still isn’t treated as being as bloody clever as it is.
4. Most boorish arty attitude you have.
5. Most intellectual and highbrow arty attitude you have (pseudo or otherwise – we’re all pseuds to one extent or another).
Art Brut – Modern Art Just listen to the lyrics – this song is a work of genius.
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Shenandoah Davis – These Rocks
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Enfant Bastard – Landscape Painting is Easy
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Sleepy Jackson – Acid in My Heart
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1. Apart from last night, probably some painting-related business at the gallery of modern art. It was rather good, although I am not sure I pondered long enough in front of each piece for everyone’s liking.
2. Painting generally wins for me.
3. Interaction design – some of it is fucking phenomenal these days.
4. Opera – like a shit play in a language you don’t understand, performed by people who can’t fucking act. Brilliant.
5. I did genuinely love analysing the shit out of literature. That was really fun, although I haven’t done it for ages.
1. Cybraphon last night. Or was that engineering?
2. Would I sound pretentious if I said poetry?
3. Playing the drums.
4. Why would anyone want to sit and watch dancing? I can understand taking part in dancing. Particularly if by dancing you mean drunkenly staggering around the dancefloor playing air guitar and punching the air to Van Halen, but that’s not a spectator event anymore than ballet. Oh, and you know what would be a good idea? Let’s chuck all those ballet dancers in a swimming pool, get them to splash about a bit, and see if we can get into the fucking Olympics
5. I like to try and interpret the artist’s intentions in moder painting. That’s always fun.
1. I went to the Louvre in May. I did all the touristy bits, the Mona Lisa and the Venus De Milo etc. but some of my favourite pieces were in out of the way corners that I stumbled upon while looking for other things.
2. Good writing.
3. Touch typing.
4. Abstract painting. Go visit any kinder and I guarantee that any one of those children could produce a finger painting of equal to greater quality.
5. Analysing literature +1
1. I haven’t been to anything in ages…probably the andy warhol exibition ages ago. oh the shame.
2. music?
3. sculpting mashed potato.
4. graffiti. yuck.
5. reading poetry and actually understanding it
Touch typing probably has more place at the Olympics than fucking darts or synchronised swimming.
I’d pick the Musee D’Orsay above the Louvre, I think, but maybe just because the space is so inspiring. Same with Tate Modern, which is an amazing building. Hopper in Tate Modern might be my ideal exhibition.
Come on, olympic darts would be amazing!
YES!! I may be an Olympian yet…
I’ve not been to Tate Modern or D’Orsay, but I’ll add them to my (very long) list.
Dylan, don’t take the piss. Those men are fucking athletes man!
1. I went to a film festival a few weeks ago. I don’t know if it counts as ‘proper art’ as I saw a movie about Nazi zombies. Although, it was in Norwegian, so I suppose it could be classified as a foreign film…
2. Literature.
3. Twitterature. Because who has the time to read a whole book? Oh wait, you said under-rated , not retarded .
4. Interpretive dance and its blatant misuse of spandex. And the term ‘dance.’
5. When I was a freshman at university I had keen interest in Soviet film studies.
Dianna, if it had subtitles then it’s art. Especially Romanian subtitles, you get extra art points for those.
Any thread simultaneously discussing the great modern art galleries of the world and synchronised swimming is definitely doing something right.
1. Went to an opening at Sierra Metro, which was really cool. I have to admit, though, that Found and White Heath were playing and that helped. My girlfriend works in an art gallery so I’m always at “proper art” openings.
2. Don’t know if this counts, but I love when cartoons/comics are attributed “art” status, like David Shrigley.
3. Porn
4. I get a lot of flack for holding the opinion (though I rarely share it) that music is the only worthwhile artform. I guess I don’t really believe that…
5. Though I’m hardly half as bad as most of you snobs, (just kidding, just kidding), I get a lot of trouble for having no time for anything popular and I do sometimes lose interest in bands if they hit the top 40, which probably isn’t fair, but there you have it.
Jesus. I think I laughed out loud there. Not LOL. But laughed out loud. Hippy bawbags, indeed. I’ve always thought that about a lot of the hippies at that place. Thanks for succinctly slagging them for me.
1 – Last art thing I went to was probably a couple of years ago to see Eagleowl do soundtracks for three silent French films from ye olden times. The best one I can remember was with a a businessman who transitioned into a swimmer and then swam like fuck for ages. Good. And good driving music from the owls.
2 – Computer Games are my favourite form of art. Or movies. Both really. At a push…movies.
3 – Computer games….again. They are ARRRRRT-UUHH.
4 – I hate soaps. Not soap like the majority of hippies but ’soaps’. I had to do a semester studying them and spent my whole time shooting down the foolish woman who ran the course who presented them as a valid art form and valuable piece of modern media. Needless to say I got a bad grade. Cunts. My argument was essentially that it doesnt matter if you can interpret social change through changes in soap shows as they are all fucking pish.
5 – I’m not a “pseudo”. I HATE children.
1. A clutch of whitewashed museums in Ibiza Town.
2. Parkour.
3. Catholicism.
4. Objecting to arts council grants. Either have a market-driven system or don’t.
5. Poststructuralist approaches to… well, you name it. What Would Deleuze Do?
(synchronicitously, I had lunch with scott today where we had a rant about hippies while hypocritically eating vegetarian curry and talking about thailand and ibiza.)
1. On holiday with Mrs. 17 Seconds in Geneva we went to the museums and the gallery of modern art; about three weeks ago.
2. Painting or theatre.
3. Film. [No, I'm being serious; some people still don't appreciate that this is a serious discipline]
4. I have taken to yelling at flyerers during this year’s Edinburgh festival -’Look, if it’s not an all-lesbian mime version of Macbeth I’m not going.’
5. I was accused of being a snob -by my wife, no less! – for daring to suggest I think Charles Dickens is a better writer than Terry Pratchett.
1. We went to see a dance thing at the Traverse on Wednesday (The Red Room), and I thought it was pretty chuffing brilliant, actually, even if I didn’t quite “get” it all..
2. Hm, probably theatre or music, although I’m not averse to a nice art gallery, as long as it’s got a good cafe attached.
3. Music, actually, for real, I get pretty frustrated when people into classical music see all other music as unchallenging/talentless/valueless, when much of the classical canon is pretty vacuous…ooh..
4. see above
5. If I go to see something and don’t quite understand it all, then it must be really deep as I’m so clever.. (or maybe that should be my answer to 4?)
Right, Wednesday’s gig. I am so happy you woke up in a grump today as your words have hit the spot. What the fuck goes on in the heads of those forest cafe fuckers? Do they think the world is actually a better place because they refuse to get a job and sit around discussing inner beauty whilst saving the planet by never going near a bath? And if one more of them had trodden on my broken hooves there would have been a killing spree.
As for the sound guy, not so sound after all. It was hard to judge White Heath, who I suspect may be talented but misguided, as it was murdered by his incompetence.
Thankfully Neil did manage to get away to catch his bus, otherwise we could have been dealing with a second killing spree in the space of ten minutes.
So yes Mr Toad, it would be fair to say that gig pissed me off too.
1) Jim Lambie’s ‘Forever Changes’ at the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art. It was a musically themed selection of sculptures and other visual art. Very good.
2) I enjoy a good sculpture.
3) Cricket.
4) I don’t get the in depth explanations artists seem to have to provide for their work. The preposterous justification they try to give. Particularly the trans-medium, interactive, perceptive changing nonsense that seems to come along with much modern styles.
5) Comedy is, I honestly believe, the most important art form. It’s the most direct, the most cutting and effective, and it’s more likely to have a positive impact than a watercolour. Of course, when it’s bad, we end up with Catherine Tate, Will & Grace, or Jimmy fucking Carr.
1. Cybraphon last night, Cybraphon on Sunday and Cybraphon on Wednesday, I love the little cupboard
2. Would have to say the boyfriends work I guess
3. My job here at Farrow and Ball
4. The only thing I hate is when I have to walk round exhibitions slowly and make pompous ums and ahs when the stuff is shite
5. Thinking that Elvis copied Shakin’ Stevens
I’d like to add Kathy Griffin and Sarah Silverman to your list of comedy wannabes Fergus.
Don’t Farrow & Ball count as comedy wannabes too?
Maybe Dead Salmon does I guess
Monty Python did a sketch about a dead parrot.
They should have done one about Farrow & fucking Ball.
1. Probably Tracey Emin with my sister. We thought she was talentless crap, but that we should check it out to be sure. It was rubbish.
2. Film is swiftly catching up music I think for me. I am growing too fond of sitting down to experience my art!
3. Microscopy photographs.
4. Probably something rude about David Hockney.
5. I have no idea. Being a scientist by trade I have to explain any of my artistic opinions in pretty bog standard layman’s terms, which always makes them sound a bit thick. The Yorkshire accent doesn’t help. If we were to talk about the pros and cons of genome wide association studies and psychiatric disorders, then you’d hit some highbrow nonsense.
What in tits is Farrow & Ball?
They were a comedy duo, popular in the 1980s.
According to Wikipedia, they make paint. This must be some contemporary comedy form at work.
Yeah, Cannon and Ball. What is this Farrow and Ball about haha?
Mule, what are you playing at, man? There are rules for pity’s sake, where are your five?
I think the problem that the Forest Cafe has is a very exclusive sense of ownership by a very small community which has ended up developing its own etiquette. Bafflingly, this seems to include talking over the top of musicians (who’d have thought people who seem to think of themselves as so arty would turn out to have so little respect for artists) and stamping on people who get in the way of them moving their bowels.
I guess it’s ended up being treated as something done by and for a very small group of people, with the wider public increasingly being seen as a nuisance.
And in a far from rare instance of hypocrisy, this is something of which this very blog could easily be accused as well. I think that I (and ‘we’) try to be pretty welcoming to new people, but I could easily understand someone not familiar with the tone of the place completely disagreeing.
No, that’s Cannon and Ball. Farrow and Ball are a really lovely designer paint and wallpaper company which I work for and we like to give our paints silly names, Elephants Breath, Mouses back etc
Do they do one called “Rock on, Tommy!”?
Comedy paints? Like being a pupil at school and being sent by your teacher to get tartan paint?
Or being sent to another teachers class to ask for a “long stand”.
Or someone I heard at a construction site being asked to go to a lady’s house and ask for a “bucket of steam”. And he did. Classic.
1. The Baltic In Newcastle
2. wanking
3. Film photography
4. cough, boorish, moi?
5. no idea darlings
How come, in Cannon & Ball, the little furry one always wore a tuxedo, but the tall miserable fucker always wore a lounge suit?
Pair of wankers.
Dylan I’m no longer painting your flat in Smoked Trout
If you EVER make me listen to Art fucking Brut again I’ll have RCC wax your balls with sandpaper for real. That Eddie Argos idiot is such a worthless piece of…. well, I’ll try to behave and answer the questions, darling. But honestly, such drek on a Friday?!?
1. M.Chut is a proper Upper Class art lover fuck so I’m often dragged along, wherein I grumble loudly in my best working-class manner about it and then resort to making up stories in a false Yiddish accent about each piece as if I were a rich man instructing the artist on every detail of my commission. Last place must have been some snooty little gallery in Evanston where we stumbled into a lovely photo exhibit by Mapplethorpe that featured Instamatic photos of Patti Smith and friends. Lovely actually!
2. Favourite grown up art form.
3. knitting
4. religious iconic art is really gorgeous, especially the googly-eyed ornate stuff you all have in your gaudy little chapels over there. religious art is the most important art form as it represents what we pour our highest aspirations and most cherished resources into. Plus it’s just fucking crazy as all get out.
5. oh, didn’t I just do that? No? Ok, then here goes: having studied art and museums as history in uni, then I’ll tell you the real truth. Museums are simple attempts to civilize the working classes and bring “culture” into our lives so that we may be tamed and further delay the inevitable revolution of the international forces of labor against capitalist aggression. The End.
oh dangit, forgot #2 obviously!
(there’s always one too many of these questions hahaha)
2. yes, wanking it is… or watching others wank, now THAT is art m’dears
Rhian – never mind smoked, why not paint it in half-baked trout, as modelled by Tart?
Tart, your answer to number five is just as bonkers as I would expect from you. I still haven’t decided whether or not to call Poe on your Marxism.
And as for Art Brut, I agree, I am not a fan generally, but a few songs on their first record really are good, and that one really makes me laugh.
“I take three steps back and I…run at it!“
1. Dickey Betts band playing blue sky leads on 3 guitars. (almost wanked it)
2. Classic Rock.
3. These little purses you can buy across the border. They make them out of “chicle” wrappers.
4. When I meet guys who say they are in a band I think they are douches until they prove otherwise.
5. Bullshit as an art form does not get it proper kudos. Like capitalist aggression it goes on unchecked in my office all day, BUT I NOTICE IT!
Tart is that a black helicopter on your lawn?
Andrew, I demand your phone number and perhaps home address.
marry me? xoxo
and yes.
Seriously Matthew, trace that man’s ip addy.
want want want
Tart, I only have a T1 line and a disposable cell phone @ my safe house.
1. Yes we did indeed go to see a Dance show at the Trav plus last night going to see some theatre. All mighty fine and definately a tad high-brow.
2. Its got to be music although as Becky already said sitting down for the cinema is becoming more of common occurence for me, (although we have been known to go to gigs early so we can get a seat)
3. Stuckism
4. Stuckism
5. definately not stuckism. probably Opera, although ive never been to an Opera i’m sure it would bore me stupid.
1) As in painting art? I went to a showing of a young lady in recently. Even discussed buying a piece. He said while twiddling his mustache and adjusting his monocle.
2) Opera. Lovely stuff.
3) Er, no idea. God I’ve turned into a pleb.
4) I hate large swathes of the minimalist movement in classical music. Give me a damn tune, and make sure it takes me somewhere.
5) Classical art really moves me when it takes on big stuff. If I go to the opera, someone had better get dragged to hell, or betray their loved one and suffer the consequences. In Ballet there had better be a doomed love and it had better end badly. If I wanted to see something that works out for everyone I’ll go and be sweaty palmed at the back of a Scarlett Johansson movie.
Oh and I meant to compliment your rant, Matthew darling. For a while there I was worried you’d gone soft on us with that George Pringle post (well, mentally at least) but it’s good to see you back to your full foul-mouthed vitriol for the masses. It also seems that your hipsters have been at the American finishing school for overprivileged asswipes as they’ve all learned to gaggle over the music. Go Neil!!
Ben is still the funniest man on this site despite the fact that the fucker only comments once in a blue moon.
Cheers Tart, I was wondering a bit about it when I wrote it, because I don’t specifically want to annoy any well-intentioned people at Forest, some of whom are really nice.
But as a gig venue it really fucks dogs because the sound guy was a spaced out, useless cunt, a good half of the audience were simply self-involved vanity-whores without the barest shred of social skills and the actual space was a sweaty, horrible mess.
And I feel for the bands, because Debutant are freshly arrived and trying to establish themselves in Edinburgh and for White Heath it was their EP launch and you could only hear half the band. Meursault I don’t care about so much – Neil can take it, and I knew his set would be fun, which it was.
They aren’t hipsters though, Tart, it’s all a bit more try-hard arty than that. I fucking hated art school for all these reasons.
You know. A bad sound guy can really fuck up the show.
::distant sound of feet shuffling, suppressed memories::
Well I was horrified and I have no clue what to put right. But White Heath have at least two decent sound guys in the band, their sound guy Alex was in the audience and Neil and Phil (Meursault & Debutant) are also perfectly capable. So the guy behind the actual desk was probably the least qualified person in the room to actually be doing what he was doing.
I can totally relate to the try-hard arty Matthew, I too survived art school. I get the same vibe from the soy bean/Prana pant crowd here in so-cal.
good post.
I was actually remebering when I’ve had bad nights. Believe me I was not defending crap sound guys. There are a lot of people working that have no business collecting a paycheck!
Did nobody pay any attention at the soundcheck?
Apparently not. Also being stoned as fuck didn’t help.
Matthew, my apologies, I got so carried away I forgot about my 5!
1) Union Gallery opening, where I drank lots of free wine and claimed at least 3 of the pieces were mine, even though they were by different people. One of these folks was actually the artist of said painting.
2)Pilates
3)Late night drunken urban free climbing
4)Musicals. What the fuck is the point in musicals? Any situation where people spontaneously burst into song for no apparent reason is too daft for my liking.
5)Wine making is an art, as is wine tasting. I have qualifications in it, thus separating me from the average drunk. I do like an ‘03 Meursault to be honest.
Wasn’t there a new Toadcast up here a while ago? Has a post been removed?
There was a fuck up. I have had all sorts of problems getting fucking Vimeo to upload the videos, but as soon as they’re ready it will be published – probably early tomorrow afternoon.
Thanks – reassuring to know I’m not going doolally.