I’d been overflowing with inspiration in New York. I wrote huge amounts of drivel daily to my portable wotsit. On the flight back it heated up like one of those pocket-warmers and I lost yards of high-tension prose. You should have seen the stuff! (three-part falsetto chorus) Tragedy! I’d been honing those sentences like Narcissus plucking his eyebrows. I’m damned if I’m gonna do it all again, and who knows maybe you’ve been spared. Here’s a (possibly more refreshing) thumbnail of what you missed:
1) A Guide to New York’s Record Stores.
I visited a few, ahem. A1, Other Music, Sound Library, Dance Tracks, Fat Beats, Bleeker Bob’s, The World Music Institute, Academy and a Reggae shop (pissed-so missed the name). This was a pretty crap piece. I tended to veer into poorly backed-up controversial statements about Race. Hardly a comprehensive breakdown either. Best anecdote: Shinge the AfAm Heavy Metal fan asks me how long it takes to drive from London to birMINGham, then Liverpool. Drops the shop’s needle. Queues up in front of me with a Queensryche record. Runner up anecdote: Chatting with Kimmo "Finland’s answer to Tim Westwood" about his journey the previous day into the Bronx; "Man we were deep in the game"
2) A Long Essay about Reynolds' and my trip to a Greenpoint Record Emporium.
This was slightly more amusing. The tale of Tobias, Simon and I battling with 80,000 dusty records. Plenty of scope here for blowing my own horn with the other dudes coming off well, but naturally not as well as me. Much discussion over tactical approaches as to how best parse the depressing number of records. What a pleasure to hang out with Simon my hero! Best anecdote: The black couple with the Aha ringtones. Runner Up Anecdote: Reynolds on the way back to Manhatten musing that there ought to be a moratorium for vinyl eventually, it should be burnt. Smartypants tells him they don’t just version in Jamaica, they melt down and recycle their vinyl. You can see why he gets so sick of me.
3) A lengthy critique of Christagau’s attempt to come over like a World music buff.
Whipped him hard. Loaded with the usual tiresome visual gags. Started off with a thumbnail sketch of the surviving critics of the "Golden Age of American Criticism", bemoaning the standard response of music critics to encroaching age, ditch it. Degenerated into nit-picking as to whether or not Christagau knew the slightest thing about High Life and Calypso. Ended up talking about myself (of course) and how I was resisting an uncritical attempt to have a handle on EVERYTHING, preferring rather to at least have some semblance of an aesthetic. Best Anecdote: Christagau gets a small thumbs up for being aware of Sunny Ade’s Sunny Alade Nigeria-only releases like Chuck E, Bobby and The Message. Runner up anecdote: A lengthy bit of freeform waffle in which the reader confronts Christagau for coming on like a jobbing truck-driver-of-a-critic in his Village Voice office. Bob says "So the fuck what!" leaves, gets a hamburger and fries, comes back, turns on the fan, "What the fuck you still doin here Monkey Boy." Proceeding to throw a regulation 75 percent of promotional material in the bin.
4) A qualified defense of The Cinematic Orchestra’s Man with a Movie Camera.
One side of the four is good. Hey it’s fake! References to other recorded material by David Axelrod, Fifty Foot Hose, La Chanteuse Sauvage, John Fahey. BORRINGG! Best Anecdote: I charmingly and wittily suggested they repackage it with a DeChiciro-esque desert view replete with prismatised goat skull, deeply ingrain a little dust, water-damage the sleeve and wrap it in yellowing shrink-rap. Best Runner up anecdote: Soul Jazz get props for swerving out of a nose-dive and bravely venturing to expand their horizons to encompass Reggae and Electronica (!)
5) An attempt to contextualise The Animal Collective’s work within the Green Guerilla movement reclaiming lots around the Lower East Side.
Quite OK I thought. A bit more integrity to this piece than in my usual heartless waffle. I answer the question why the ILM-centred music obsessives crew seem to conjoin with the Urban Fauna Crew (Luka, Gareth, etc), we’re all a bunch of sensitive kids. Positing a potential Avant-Garde movement occurring at this nexus of Poetry/Music/Gardening. Best Anecdote: I greet the Animal Collective (again) Best Runner up anecdote: The story about the guy who bites this idea off me and I set my lawyer on him.
6) I hang out with interesting people and you all get jealous.
Namedropping. I meet a dazzling array of fascinating folks and wrote small essays about my meetings with them in the form of minutes (sad), vainly attempting to stifle my little-boy delight at being in their presence. Reynolds: ‘nuff said, The Don! Paul Kennedy: A full A4 of spiel covering our 3,000 mile per hour discussion of the Ardkore continuum, Paul’s HEAVY post-punk past and extraordinary lifepath. Dave Mandl: Genius and polymath got a thorough dissection. Dan Setzner (name spelt wrongly): Charged with releasing Branca’s Ascension and Theoretical Girls on Todd’s Carpark subsidiary. With whom I rabbited for hours about the NY/UK meltdown, a shared love for The Black Dog and unexpected connections (namely Keith from Optimo in Glasgow, who I skirted around in the days of Pure). Best Anecdote: I grin too-broadly at Arto Lindsay as he stands nearby checking out the Animal Collective’s playback at Tonic. Whooping at diachronic history. Best Runner-up anecdote: Keiron Simon’s lovely little boy approves of the Spiderman stickers I give him.
The jewel in the crown of my visit was the afternoon I spent with Stuart Argabright, but nothing on this here as I intend to sell the story and photos to the highest bidder. NYC you smiled on me! NYC I loves ya!
Posted by Woebot at June 20, 2003 10:10 PM