Five Abject Musical Humiliations
I know I hammer on about guilty pleasure on this blog a lot mostly, I would imagine, because I am an incredible snob and so some of the things I used to listen to horrify me. If you think I judge you by the shit you listen to, just think how twisted and confused that mockery must become when turned inward upon the giant Hydra of Hypocrisy which dwells inside me.
Fuck it though, I am not going on about that today, but that is the reason for the songs I have chosen, so before you start sniggering just think how hard this has been for me and try and show some compassion, you horrible people.
Recently I have been getting into a lot of software trouble with Final Cut Pro and various web streaming technologies, which is most, most frustrating. I fixed everything by doing what you are supposed to do in these situations: head to the internet and read forums where someone, somewhere has almost certainly had the same problem in the past and see how they themselves fixed it.
I still find that kind of daunting though, I have to confess. The idea of all the poking about in config files, which they tend to recommend, scares me just a little bit, as if deleting the wrong file would suddenly make the whole fucking computer go on fire or something. It reminds me of my parents and their increasing disconnect with technology, actually. They simply do not have any of the instincts to fix simple things in ‘preferences’ or to go and find a file which their internet browser may have downloaded to a strange location or something like that. I fear, in my wariness of getting too deep into config and system files, that I too may be just on the verge of letting technology escape me just a little. Not that I was ever a computer whizz to begin with of course.
Anyhow, this site has a number of regular commenters, for whom I am deeply grateful because it gives the place an aura of authority which I myself would never achieve on my own. However, for those of you thinking about making your first comment (and I know there are a lot of you) it must seem a bit cliquey, so on Friday I open my arms to the lurkers out there and suggest you take this chance to say hello for the first time. It’s the perfect opportunity of course, because not one lick of sense will be talked on this site all day, so no matter how silly your contribution, you can guarantee it won’t be the silliest.
That will be Bart.
1. Technology which is getting away from you a bit.
2. How techie are your parents?
3. Favourite low-tech item in regular use in your house.
4. Best really fucking complicated invention.
5. Best really fucking simple and extremely bloody obvious invention.
Cyndi Lauper – Time After Time
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Elton John – I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues
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Meat Loaf – Dead Ringer For Love
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Huey Lewis & the News – The Power of Love It is a simple and unarguable truth that anyone worth their salt loves Back to the Future. And anyone who loves Back to the Future must have at least a sneaking soft spot for this song.
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1. Computer games. I really struggle with non-goal-orientated games, and I can’t get my head around first person stuff either. I still see the pictures in front of me as pictures, and don’t really feel it as some sort of 3D environment. Consequently, I suck at these games.
2. My dad has a degree in computer science from the era of ticker tapes and so on. He can just about use email, but only just. My mum and instant messenger though? Match made in heaven.
3. Erm, I have a really old corkscrew which my brother gave me years ago, and which I absolutely love and use all the time.
4. The navigation on the iPhone and similar gadgets. That’s fucking science fiction surely, and yet it’s right there in my hand!
5. Those little scoopy plastic arms people use for throwing tennis balls a long way for their dogs to fetch, without getting their hands covered in saliva. So simple! So clever! So obvious!
1. I am supposed to be able to teach all sorts of media technologies at quite high levels and whilst I’m quite good at some things a lot of the detail of the software applications is just beyond me. Largely this is because just as we got all of our lovely kit the other year we also got an ex-student who was now a media professional to join the department and he has always been in charge of all of that, all of the final cut and photoshop and everything stuff, so I don’t have to know – except I do have to know because all of our students are now much better at these things than me and whilst I’m always happy to acknowledge what I can learn from them I don’t think they should really all be that much better than me in stuff I’m supposed to have some expertise in.
Also computer games, most of the modern things I see just give me motion sickness.
2. My mum is okay in a ‘getting by in the modern world’ kind of way, and in fact was involved in the developing computerisation of the library she worked in for years. My dad, on the other hand, was the last person who was updating the British Library Catalogue by hand. It sounds like I’m making this up, but he would get the new entries for the catalogue (everything published that day in Britain, essentially, everything, books, periodicals, journals, magazines…) and make sure that they got stuck into the right space in the catalogue books, sticking in extra pages and cutting things to size and all that. He retired in 1986 and they retired his position.
3. A wind up clock that needs to be balanced with a spirit level or the pendulum goes off and wound up every eight days, which chimes on the half hour and hour.
4. Cheese. Who thought of that? Brilliant.
5. I would try and think of something else but you’re absolutely right about those dog things, Matthew.
1. Television. I still haven’t successfully switched to digital. Fucking digital.
2. Mom: pretty techie. Dad: not techie at all. I sometimes tell him to check out a band’s myspace. No. He won’t do that. He ignores me, or just buys the CD. I don’t know why.
3. Lube
4. I can’t even operate my TV. Forget complicated gadgets.
5. Bin flippy lid thing. Where you just push on a pedal. Smart. Only mine’s broken.
1. Games consoles too I would say, I’m never really got past Pac Man.
2. Nil points.
3. My little folding table from Ikea.
4. I think old espresso machines look great.
5. The G7th capo. The mechanism is just a simple wrap spring clutch, only three moving parts on the whole device, but it works so flawlessly and beautifully -sweeping away everything that came before it – it’s simply breathtaking.
1. Likewise, computer games or computers. I operate a ‘need-to-know’ policy; I figure out how to do what I need (usually mudic and bloggin related) and that’s it.
2. Not bad, especially for folks in their mid-sixties. Downloading podcasts is beyond them, but email and internet are fine. They use mobiles and text – but can’t do predictive texting, with the net result that being texted by my mum is like being texted by a fourteen year old. I keep pointing out that LOL is ‘laugh out loud’ not ‘lots of love.’
3. Kitchen table.
4. My new USB turntable that I can play the iPod through. Like – having your cake and eating it.
5. The wheel rolls into mind…
Adam, you’re early. The thing about those dog catapult thingies is that I am a product designer, so I get filled with a sense of envy and respect when I see something like that. And no little sense of Homer-esque D’oh! as well.
My dad has a couple of those pendulum clocks too. The bastards stop dead as soon as anyone else has to look after them for a week as well.
Dan, pretty soon you won’t need telly. We’ll all have BBC iPlayer or deluxe YouTube or something like that instead, so your technical retardation should come full circle and put you back ahead of the pack quite soon!
Dylan that bloody thing looks like R2D2.
Ed – USB turntable!!!! You bastard.
1) Likewise on computer games. I am still yet to workout how to use any gamepad with thumb joysticks or whatever they’re called. My parents refused to let us have consoles growing up and made us play outside – looking back I’m actually quite pleased with that decision.
2) My Dad thinks he is a tech whizz which can at times be infuriating as that is quite a long way from the truth. That said, both my parents know their way around email, Google, IM and more recently Skype – so they’re pretty good.
3) Ummm… Books?
4) The computer itself is pretty fucking complicated, and being able to use it to communicate with people half way round the world, and record music, and find porn. Brilliant.
5) Matches
So, when you mention the dog-ball-catapult thingies, you’re basically talking about playing jai alai with your dog?
Matches!
I can’t use both hands at once on those gamepad things either. Seems akin to being a drummer and having to get your limbs to move independently of one another.
Haha! See at 31 seconds that dude gets totally nailed in the arse!
Brilliant..
1. Instant messenger. Never got into it, can’t see the point. Write an email or pick up a phone – IM is just the worst bits of both.
2. My dad’s favourite hobby is restraining himself from flinging his laptop through the window. Though he does have a laptop. Then again so does my grandfather.
3. Hot and cold running water.
4. iPod. Though the new ones that have a built-in radio seem to me to miss the point.
5. The pencil.
1) Social networking. Unlimited technology, unrestricted access to all of human knowledge and experience, unbridled transfer of thought and idea, and what have we done with it? Spread the news of Kim Kardashians haloween costume… I don’t even know what the fuck any of these sites are for.
2) My Mother has an iPod that lies dormant because she can’t figure out how to put songs on it.
3) Wine decanter. I shuddered the first time a friend told me he had one, and sneered at his pretension. But if you have a love for cheap plonk, and I do, it is a wonderful wonderful investment.
4) I switched editing software recently, abandoning the program I have been using for 11 years. Losing all the things that have been instinctive for so long made me realise just how complicated most software is, and how much it trains you.
5) Ground lifts. Sorry to vanish into sound-guy land but anyone who has ever needed one knows how wonderful these are. So simple, so elegant so good at making me look less stupid.
1. For someone who seems to spend most of their waking life on the internet, I’m really bad with technology. I can’t quite get into all this i-phone malarkey. They terrify me a wee bit. They just do.
2. They’re okay. No experts, but can at least e-mail, use skype, and all that stuff.
3. Tape player. I really like tapes. And all my tapes are from stuff I listened to before the internet/mp3s took away the need for tape (eg pavement, jon spencer, elliott smith, etc), so it’s all a nice nostalgia trip musically as well.
4. Flux capacitor.
5. Right. I have an idea for a pyrex pillar. Maybe not pyrex, but some sort of clear reinforced plastic. This will then replace the pillars in: the Electric Circus, Henry’s Cellar Bar, Sneaky Pete’s, and any other of those venues where you can only see half the stage. And – hey presto! You can see the stage while watching the band! And the building hasn’t collapsed!
1. Most things, I can get by on computers and printers (my job) but when I really think about it I can’t come to terms with how electricity actually works. I have recently found out that when I close my fridge the light goes out. This was achieved by the use of mirrors and a camera.
2. My dad can hardly use computers and texts me in capitals which looks shouty “MON THE PARS FANCY A PINT SOON DOUGALDS DROOKIT”*, my mum comments on EVERYTHING on facebook and texts like a 13 year old “gr8 2 c u at wknd”
3. Record player + pack of cards + wine/beer/rum.
4. I have an electic stapler which is overly complicated considering its use, the joy it brings me however can not be underestimated.
5. The screensaver.
*DOUGAL is my dads deaf smelly dog who features in all his text messages (THE PARS feature in less and less as the season goes on).
BART YOU ARE A FUCKING GENIUS!
“Right. I have an idea for a pyrex pillar”
I’ll end up being the first cunt to walk into that.
Yesterday, I was on the bus, and I used my iPhone to set my Sky Plus box to record the rugby.
There’s nothing about that sentence that won’t terrify Bart.
Apart from maybe ‘bus’.
AnotherDave, I like IM. My family all live abroad, so the ability to just chatter away to them without any sort of planning now and again is actually quite nice.
It can also take place at work, which a phonecall cannot.
Maybe the pillars would need to be tinted, or have some sort of coloured band in the middle, to stop drunken idiots walking into them.
1. Technology which is getting away from you a bit.
PC’s. I havent upgraded in an age. I don’t know where to start looking. It used to be all GHz but now it’s all to do with cores and stuff isn’t it? Is it? Ah well.
2. How techie are your parents?
My dad got us a Vectrex. And then a Spectrum. He would make simple programs on it. I dont know if they ever worked – I just wanted him off so I could load up “Back 2 Skool”. Mum is pretty non technical.
3. Favourite low-tech item in regular use in your house.
My glasses. Are they low-tech? I wouldn’t know how to make a lens. But still…..glasses. Make me see.
4. Best really fucking complicated invention.
The LHC? If it works.
5. Best really fucking simple and extremely bloody obvious invention.
The Whee-ul.
*Where are all the fellow gamers out there in Toad land? Am I the only one who whiles his time away in nuclear wastelands and zombie infested towns? There’s a whole world of fun out there waiting for you.*
If you’re such an avid gamer, how are you so shite with computers? I thought they tended to go hand in hand. Although I guess not if you play console games.
AnotherDave, I like IM.
I just can’t concentrate on what is basically a five-minute phone call stretched out over an hour.
Perspex pillars is good though. Is there anyway to change them in exiting buildings? Or would it have to be new builds? What a great idea. Would need a clear plastic as strong as steel and concrete and resistant to heat. Hmmm. I aint no builder.
I sincerely think the G7th Capo is a much more important invention than the wheel.
There’s a very good games thread on the grauniad today here
1. html code
It’s not that I am shite at PC’s. I can navgiate around reasonably well and adjust settings and all that rubbish. It’s just that I have lost touch with the advancement of the tech and what to look for in a “good” pc these days. But yeah – console games are a different and, easier, kettle of fish.
Tidied that one up for you Adam
Madcow – I am just so out of it with console games that generally I just get a little dizzy from all the fast-moving environments. I guess I’d get used to it quickly enough if I were to devote time to gaming, but it’s not something I really have time for.
I’d be surprised if any of the pillars in the basements you’re talking about are structural. A lot of pillars are. A lot are just decorative. And there are plenty of engineering solutions if they were removed I am sure. They certainly will not be holding the building up on their own.
They certainly will not be holding the building up on their own.
I can just imagine someone saying that when they were standing in a basement with a big sledgehammer just before the building collpased…
Is it a faux pas to respong to someone who hasn’t posted their five yet in any way other than saying “Euan!… RULES!”
1. It has to be camera phones at gigs !! Arrrrg stop it and listen/watch the damn bands you morons ! (phew glad to get that off my chest)
2. both have laptops, although its very basic use of the internet and email I feel.
3. books, I can’t ever see myself using an ebook thing – far to vulgar.
4. Television – how would I have coped on them days when the hangover means all I can do is watch crap old films on telly.
5. buttons -how use full are they ?
I must admit i’m pretty shit at these new fangled computor games. I was trying to play some racing games in wii last christmas and found out how shit I am. Getting beaten by a 14 yr old boy is just humiliating.
Tsk tsk tsk, Euan.
Wilf – yeah, ebooks strike me as a little ambitious, but times change fast I guess. I don’t really see it, for now, though.
1. A remarkable amount of it. I can’t do any web page stuff, html escapes me, I haven’t played a computer game since my friend’s Amiga when I was 8. I would rather read a book or be outside then spend time in with the technology. I can do quantitative PCR, cAMP alpha screens and lots of fun stuff with micrscopes though, so I’m not a complete retard.
2. Mum taught ICT for a while and beats me hands down, Dad’s still a bit of an unknown quantity – not too good at forums etc but occasionally surprises you with a little trick in Excel he’s picked up.
3. The oven?
4. Christoph just came back from Germany with a talk of a microscope that lets you see actual proteins! It therefore must be extremely complicated and ace.
5. The oven? I miss it when I’m in the lab until 10pm every night. Grr…
Oh I can’t be flurble bing rajamthunginjay wibble fleps ark.
I can do quantitative PCR, cAMP alpha screens
Superhero stuff.. Don’t ask.
Any future comments will either be deleted or doctored, Euan, your choice.
Yes Dylan, I think she has a Super Bat cAMP Alpha Screen Device. So advanced that slowing one’s brain down to the level of everyday civilian technology is almost impossible.
itunes just went from John Cale – Streets of Laredo to The Power of Love. That was a bit of a shock to the system.
I still haven’t seen Back to the Future part 2, despite having seen parts 1 & 3 about four times each. Odd how that works out.
Simultaneously one of the best and silliest trilogies out there. Mental, idiotic genius.
Part 2 is great because he is back in 1955 sneaking around behind the scenes of what he did the first time there. It’s really clever.
Huey Lewis and the News will for me be forever associated with that scene in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman kills Paul Allen while pontificating on one of their albums.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwicLgOGJOI
I think the Pineapple Chunks have a Huey Lewis obsession. (Or at least Owen their drummer does). I cant blame them. BTTF trilogy is blindingly sweet. The 1st being the pinnacle. Apparently, the original script had Marty returning to the present to find that he had accidentally destroyed Rock n’ Roll. That might have been a pretty good thing to keep in….maybe….? In fact, no. Its perfect.
1. I’m not really overly good at anything technical – it takes me a while to catch up with anything. Although i do try and ‘fix’ things that are bothering me on my works computer – mostly ending in a call to IT – ‘i broke it’
2. Not bad – they have a computer and Sky Plus and stuff. My Dad loves his games – i just bought him an Xbox for his birthday with Call of Duty modern Warfare. I think i am the best daughter ever – well apart from my sister who chipped in too…
3. My bed – although when i watch movies on my lap top in it, it increases in both technology and joy!
4. Paradox – anything fucking complicated will only ever ruin my day!
5. Post it notes – the only thing i can think of as i have a frikin ton of them stuck all around my screen – best get back to it then!
hahahahaha. that was quite funny for you Matthew. I’d have laughed really hard if the anal beads weren’t quite new and still chafing a fair bit.
Oh I can’t be flurble bing rajamthunginjay wibble fleps ark.
Thank God other people read that as well. I just assumed that Euan not posting a ’5′ had caused me to have a stroke.
No, it caused me to cease to behave myself.
ONLY YESTERDAY I was walking around with ‘I guess that’s why they call it the blues’ in my head for no reason that i could find. It’s a guilty pleasure par excellante.
I have never seen any of the Back to the Future films. This is in some ways the most interesting fact about me.
1. I spent this week trying to make google reader work ‘for me’. Most things that are personalisable require more effort than i can be bothered to put in. This is slightly true of all computers in general.
2. My mum is not great with computers by the standards of your average sixteen year-old, but is quite a bit ahead of the curve in her own age group i think. She uses email and internet forums and things. I don’t know if she is on facebook though because i’ve never tried to search for her. Is anyone facebook friends with a parent? Is it weird?
3. I have a nice ‘portable’ record player my brother gave me. It lives in my flatmates room now because he has loads of vinyl and i don’t, but it still counts.
4. Language.
5. Stairs.
1. Any phone beyond one of those nokia brick jobs. I am now oddly fond of mine and will not give it up despite it’s cracked screen and generally battered appearance. Always finds its way back to me when I leave it in the pub as everyone knows it’s mine, and is totally indestructible. I dropped it in the mud at Radiohead last year and inadvertently stamped on it, after a night drying out on the radiator it’s um, not exactly as good as new, but works fine. You could probably run it over and it would still work.
2. My mother keeps mentioning “the internet” in ways that make me think she’s been on it. Which scares me. If the whole thing breaks, we’ll know it was her.
My dad, on the other hand, went from being a total luddite to doing absolutely everything online – shopping, banking, the lot, seemingly overnight.
3. The kettle
4. The internet.
5. Yeah those dog things win hands down.
On the see-through pillar thing:
The problem is that it’s not easy to make something which a) is strong and b) doesn’t bend light rays a lot. No matter what shape you make the perspex it’s not gonna be very transparent from most angles. The optimum solution (which also gets around the walking into-thing) is to have the bottom four feet and the top bit be pillar as normal, but to put a nice metal frame in the middle, so there are only some thin bits of metal which you can kind of see around mostly. And you can make like an extra table bit as well so people can rest their drinks on it.
I just thought of this now.
Fez – Samamidon tells a rather weird story about his grandma showing up on Facebook, but not using the name ‘Grandma’, which rather freaked him out.
The problem with the pillars in both sneaky petes and henrys is that they are most likely to be structural given they are both basement rooms with a lot of floors above. This means they will in all likelyhood have large steel or cast iron pillars within them. it would have to be bloody strong perspex to hold the weight. It has to be said i don’t really like either venue very much. give me the wee red or the bowery anyday
Henry’s is nasty, and you never get the impression anyone there gives a flying fuck about anything that’s taking place around them. That’s where Colvin (Wee Red), Ruth (Bowery) and Nick (Stinky’s) win by miles – they genuinely and obviously give a shit.
I mentioned the pillars in a text to Bart earlier, but I mistakenly called them ‘Pyrex’ pillars.
Again, that probably wouldn’t help much in terms of structural support, but you could heat them to much higher temperatures in the oven.
And all those measuring lines up the sides would only interfere with your view of the stage..
When my brother was a kid he once asked for a Durex when he meant a Kleenex.
1) Any computer based sound recording equipment. Play, pause, stop and big red button with record on it are all thats needed.
2)My dad mastered the internet really early so he could bet online. Addictions overcome everything.
3) Chess
4) I love Photoshop, complicated as anything but magically crap pictures can turn out great.
5) A spoon with a hole in the bottom so you don’t get too much milk with your cornflakes.
1. Cars. Living in NYC for 15 years, one rarely drives. Took me 10 minutes just to figure out how to start my parents’ hybrid last time I was home.
2. On same visit, gave my mom an iTunes gift card for her iPod touch. That night, she was overheard cursing out iTunes.
3. Tuning fork. But also, manual can opener, corkscrew… so many good answers already, but pretty much everything in my kitchen. When it comes to cooking, old-skool is almost always still the best route.
4. iPhone. Finally relented and got one this year. Still piecing my brain back together. Its absurd.
5. Mini flash drives are fckng genius.
That’s weird – cos I once asked for a kleenex when what I wanted was a durex.
Worst. Birthday. Ever.
What’s the difference between a Kleenex and a Durex?
Two pumps and a squirt.
You sure you’ve got that joke right?
Well strictly speaking it’s backwards, but the answer is the same whichever way round you ask the question. I don’t need to explain what it’s about, do I Dylan? Because your dad should have told you about that a good few years ago.
Dev – I have an 8GB drive which is about the size of my thumbnail. I don’t know what to use it for yet but I take it out of the drawer and admire it a lot because I remember when people would happily sell you an mp3 player with a whopping 256KB of memory – barely enough for a single album.
Dylan, you sure that was a joke?
Matthew – I know the flash drive is approaching antiquity in this day of ubiquitous connections and virtual FTPs but, as one who is moving shit around a lot between computers (home, office, laptop, studio… especially the studio, and printers too), I find it way easier to transport stuff on that little tiny smaller- and lighter-than-a-bic-lighter gadget than uploading/downloading/emailing files to myself. I sometimes do both, so I have back-up when I get somewhere, especially when traveling. But it’s just so simple, and so remarkably handy… ok, i’m done.
Kleenex, Dev?
1. Technology getting away – Think I’ve got a good handle on this stuff. Any Final Cut Pro issues just email me. HTML? piece of piss. But I do look enviously at those kids with wheels on their shoes.
2. Techie parents – Both owners of iphones and mac laptops.
3. Low tech item – I flush my toilet and somehow it disappears never to be seen again. Amazing.
4. Best complicated invention – The internet. When I was at Edinburgh Uni, I couldnt even pick up the student radio station from Pollock Halls. This week I was sitting in my office in Manhattan listening to your show clear as day. Then I leave a comment on your website and 2 minutes later I get a mention. This is science fiction.
Seriously, if they’d had that technology in Star Wars, Princess Leia could just have left a message on Obi Wan’s blog about the Death Star and saved a lot of bother for the Skywalker family.
5. Best obvious invention – Twist off beer bottles.
By the way Matthew, I need your thoughts on who should be in the final five of our Scotland’s Greatest Ever Drummer poll?
1. When one of my students started talking about ‘going home to play with his wii’ I was somewhat confused. And disgusted.
2. My dad is a network systems analyst, sets up entire networks and servers and whatnot so he’s doing ok technology wise! My mum discovered the wonders of hotmail in April this year when I went overseas. She learnt how to text a year ago as well AND knows how to send picture messages as well!
3. Hairtie.
4. Gravity.
5. Water.
“Don’t take money… doooon’t take fame…. don’t need no credit card to ride this train….”
You are very judgmental Matthew.
Sometimes and an 8-year-old just wants to get his hole, and needs his brother to hook him up.
cogstar… “1) Any computer based sound recording equipment. Play, pause, stop and big red button with record on it are all thats needed.”
This is why I like Audacity.
Little bit tipsy and LOVING the comments.
You’re a witty bunch, I hand it to you.
Adam….that’s brilliant thankyou
cogstar, Adam
if I may:
!#@YU@**(!!!!!
That is not “all that is needed”!
Fucking… Gah! Bollocks.
Sorry. DAW’s are the best thing that has happened to music since the gramaphone. The depth of these programs means that musicians are going to be able to document their ideas and art in unprecedented clarity and accuracy, than ever before.
hurumph!!!
Yes yes, I have no doubt at all that you’re right, but all I want it for is to record the odd podcast intro, with about one in twenty being more than just me making it up as I go along so some very basic editing stuff is occasionally handy and also, going right back up to one of answers to the five, it means I can actually teach how to use the fucker.
Ben: so upset those aren’t even sentences! Good work lads.