You know when you get in one of those moods? Well I’m in one. And not for any good reason at all, either, just in a mood.
You know one of those situations where absolutely everything irritates you? People have been unduly enthusiastic about fucking crap music on the internet this week, and it infuriates me because they are obviously and clearly wrong. My back hurts again; fuck you, world. There’s laundry to do; is there no end to the injustice? There’s a new Florence and the fucking Machine album out soon and people are actually acting like they fucking care! What the fuck is going on in this country?
On another note, I played football yesterday and I was fucking shit. That pissed me off. And even though I went to bed at eleven last night I still couldn’t get up this morning. And I’ve started to tackle the label accounts for the year, which is a load of old cock and balls.
Fuck off, world.
With which underwhelming complaining, we finally come to the Friday fucking Fives for this week. Can you really be fucking arsed, even if you’re delurking for the first time, and all the unutterable excitement that brings? Ah well, it’s better than actual work, I suppose.
1. What’s irritated you today?
2. Who has fucking annoyed you this week?
3. What do you think will salve your irritation (no, not that kind of irritation) but never does?
4. Which piece of entertainment or art do you wish you could commentate on live, just to express your disgust.
5. For fuck’s sake, give me a happy fucking thought before I start in on the gin before lunchtime.
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[I am off to Eigg this weekend for the Fence Away Game and, well, Egg Song... sorry.]
Do all of you buggers follow my inane rambling on Facebook as well as here? Well if so then this little tale will probably sound a little familiar, as I couldn’t resist making snide comments about it when it happened, but I reckon I am still just a little irritated by the whole thing so, well… there’s more, you know I can’t just let things drop.
Apparently some anonymous but quite impressive sounding production company in London is making a documentary about music fans and the passion they have for music. They phoned Kevin from Avalanche who rather kindly pointed them in my direction.
Anyhow, during a brief conversation with this lot it very quickly became clear that what they wanted was not passionate music fans, but music fans who jump around a lot. Now, I can see their point of view, and they were very nice about it, but there is still something pretty depressing about the whole thing. Obviously some retard flailing about at the front of the mosh pit like an electrocuted octopus is going to make for some pretty compelling viewing. I mean, let’s face it, what could be more compelling, in film terms, than some drunken douchebag barging about like a fool during someone’s show? I know, essential cinema, I was thinking the same thing.
Anyhow, at the time I was phlegmatic enough and pointed the nice lady in the direction of some people I thought might jump around a bit more, seeing as that was her number one and clearly most non-negotiable criterion, and thought no more of it. But over the week it has continued to come back to fucking irritate me again and again. I think about all the musicians I know who can’t get a proper job, because they couldn’t work as hard at their music if they did, who constantly irritate their other halves with the time they dedicate to music, or who traipse to one shitty twenty-person outhouse gig after another just in case the next one is the buzzing wee venue we all hear so much about, and a fair number of whom have seriously damaged their future prospects in any other careers because they have devoted all their energy to one of the most ungrateful ones of them all, and it all just pisses me the fuck off.
Is ‘passion for music’ really manifested in jumping about like a fuckwit on a Friday night and getting so pissed off your head that you can’t remember a single thing about the actual show the next morning? Really? Or is it manifested in deciding not to go to the cinema tonight and sitting in all day and all evening with a cup of tea, watching mind-numbing telly because you’ve got a gig to play in Dundee tomorrow and you need to be able to afford the price of the fucking Megabus?
Mrs. Toad lets strangers crash in our house whenever I ask her, and she lets the living room be turned into a recording studio for weeks on end, and endless drying prints for record sleeves litter the place every month or so. That doesn’t sound like much, but every single other woman she works with and every wife of every man she works with has a nice, normal house and has dinner parties and coffee and wouldn’t for a fragment of a second entertain allowing that kind of encroachment into her personal life.
Fuck it, I myself just waved goodbye to a credible ten-year career as a design engineer – a career which meant that pretty much no matter what happened in the future, I would always be able to support myself – to do this nonsense full time. And I still work into the small hours most fucking nights.
And to think that, really, to demonstrate passion for music all I really needed to do was leap around a bit more… well fuck, I would never have invested all this time and money if I’d known that’s all it took. And I know this company don’t care what’s really going on here, and that they are making a specific film with a pre-determined narrative, and they were nice about it and all…
But I still get fucking angry as fuck, I can’t help it. Fuck all the people, including myself, who work so fucking hard at this shit but are deemed not passionate enough about music simply because we don’t act like the front three fucking rows at a Bon Jovi concert. And ironically enough, if you get pissed and hang out with even the quietest musicians around here for long you’ll find out that there actually is a fair bit of drunken jumping around, just rarely in the middle of someone’s fucking show (depending of course upon the band).
They are making the film they want of course, but any arse can tell you that you don’t start a film about passionate music fans by checking how much people flail about at gigs first. Fuck off. Fuck you. Your film isn’t going to tell anybody anything interesting or new about music, or about being a fan of music. Fuck off.
1. Most intense gig at which you didn’t dance at all.
2. Most fun you’ve had leaping around like an arse at a gig.
3. Longest you’ve held a grudge.
4. Where is your passion for music most evident?
5. Person whose intensity of feeling you most underestimated.
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One of the almighty perils of mp3 blogging (it’s a perilous business I tell you – fraught with danger…. now where was I? Ah yes, forgot to even close my brackets didn’t I. What a muppet… here you go:) So erm, anyway, one of the side-effects of mp3 blogging is that you get so utterly swamped with new music, by zealous promoters, eager bands and your own enthusiasm, that it can be hard to actually remember to listen to old stuff. Not so much the old classics, just the really excellent albums from about two or three years ago which you still love, but which are neither new enough to warrant urgent attention nor legendary enough to have indelibly permeated into your consciousness.
So today I am going to have a little look at my first ever internet Best Of list. I started regularly writing about music back in 2004, long before I even knew what blogs were, and 2004 was my first ever Official List. That was the year Wilco released their masterpiece A Ghost is Born, which was narrowly pipped to the top spot by Nick Cave’s equally stupendous double album The Lyre of Orpheus and Abbatoir Blues. Even Tom Waits released one that year. Real Gone may not have captured me at the time, but it’s one that has a surprising number of excellent songs on it when I take the time to look back.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Cannibal’s Hymn
Wilco – The Late Greats
Tom Waits – Trampled Rose
Looking back at the reviews themselves from that year, I am actually surprised by how steadfast my opinions have been. I can’t say I seriously disagree with anything much I said about those 2004 releases. The Walkmen is still a storming album of fuzzy, guitar and chiming piano-driven brilliance. That Killers album is still an indie-pop classic which, despite whatever failings they might have, caught the mood of the nation perfectly that Summer. And The Dears were one of the first in a new wave of superb Canadian music who, in the track I have chosen, married indie with cabaret, somewhat oddly.
Marianne Faithfull released a record in 2004 too. It wasn’t great, largely because most of it was penned by the dismal PJ Harvey, but Nick Cave wrote a couple of decent tracks for her. The best of the lot though was Last Song, which was written by Damon Albarn who himself recorded a version for last year’s The Good, the Bad & the Queen record. I think I might prefer Marianne’s version, actually. So yes, that’s how I started. It all shifted over to Song, by Toad a year and a bit ago, then I migrated to WordPress in about May and here we are. Let no more albums get lost in the avalanche of newness! I sometimes need to remind myself that I am a fan, not a machine.
The Walkmen – Little House of Savages
The Dears – The Death of All the Romance
Marianne Faithfull – Last Song
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 You know when you get in one of those moods? Well I’m in one. And not for any good reason at all, either, just in a mood.
