WOEBOT

Spring Cleaning.

Going through my backed-up files looking for old illustration to tout and came across a handful of JPEGS I've had stashed away.

-----

I saw these records in the Moroccan quarter of Barcelona. The shop owner, who was selling carpets, wasn't offering these for sale. Infuriatingly they were just on display! I'm not even sure if I haven't blogged this up before? The Spanish-to-Islamic North African-to-Middle Eastern-to-Indian continuum as represented here looked kind of fascinating.

Aw! I always thought the Badly Drawn Boy was an example of a wasted opportunity. An avenue which got closed down, the music made safe(r) and homogenous. The third EP and that 10' were great, fraught with possibilities. There was a motorik, deconstructed, machinated, ghost folk thing going down. Points westward to John Martyn's "Big Muff" and East to This Heat's "24 Track Loop". Of course a whole heap of people have sprung into the same gap: The Animal Collective, The Books and Vincent Gallo. But none of them have the gift of being able to pen a great tune like Damon did.

Of course I'm pretty much all alone in holding Badly Drawn Boy in high esteem. That first LP was ruined by it's terrible sub-Intro sleeve design (Why didn't the makers of the Blood & Fire covers sue Andy Votel?) but it's still got some great moments, even if the spookery is relegated to daft interludes. It looks like The Beta Band, who it always cheers me to see Jess Harvell applaud, have gone and made precisely the same fuck up with their latest LP, a pointless concession to straight rock. Woe.

For the record I don't own either of these 7"s but fetishism dictated that having JPEGS was the next best thing !?! Would the mp3s of the music not have been a more useful item to hoard? Evidently not.....

Holy shit Neu! were cool. This quite rare snap of them might have come off the back cover of the Black Forest Gateaux sleeve, but I found it in an old inspirational copy of the Strange Attractor Zine and scanned it for safe-keeping. Notice the little Neu! stencil on the bed-side cabinet.

Cor! Don't know where on the net I found this, but (salivates) gee! I have Volume Two of this, which is the home to Arthur Russell's "Cornbelt", and that's pretty easy to find. I have never seen this in the flesh however!

-----

Back to work!

Posted by Woebot at April 26, 2004 01:20 PM