WOEBOT

The show goes on.

Two correspondants (Marcus and Julio) who caught the show this Friday assure me that Logan Sama is still on Friday 7-9pm. Apparently at 100.3 I'm at the right spot on the dial (hits radio EXTREMELY hard) but the station is Rinse FM not Desire. Sighs. Maybe next week then.

Whither?

So what's happened to Logan Sama's show then? It used to be on a Friday on Desire 100.3 FM between 7 and 9 and now it's nowhere to be found. And don't ask Simon Hampson because he doesn't know either. Email me if you know.

More Lester.

I'd slowly come to dismiss Lester Bangs. I went back to the Greil Marcus compiled anthology "Psychotic Reactions and Carburettor Dung", practically my bible when I first was reading it, and was pretty disappointed by what I thought was it's tone of suspended adolescence. Lester's nihilism came across like that of a stroppy teenager, and the depiction of his musical taste (here Marcus's responsibility in part) was at heart rootsy, situated between the poles of Free Jazz and Garage Punk, neither of which really carry you beyond 1991.

Just the other day I picked up "Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste" and I was quite delighted to come across a much broader vision of what kind of character and critic he was. I've only skimmed the volume but already some chapters stick out. Lester takes on Bob Dylan for his uncritical romantisiation of Gangster culture; which reads like a (there's no getting around it) a vindictive blog post, an "assasination" of a fellow artist, the kind of piece of writing you'd NEVER EVER IN A MILLION YEARS find in today's music press. Lester's hilarious Black Sabbath piece which starts out epic and portentous and slowly dissolves when faced with the reality of Ozzy and the crew on the road (Bangs disappointed to discover he's the least clean-cut member of their audience, ha ha).

Best of all (of the stuff I've discovered) is a long description of his press visit to Jamaica, "Innocents in Babylon." This is really quite extraordinary. Lester driving around the island with John Martyn (then doing sessions for "One World") where they meet Countryman shambling up a dirt track. Lester hanging out in the Black Ark studios (Lee Perry goes straight up to him and says "You wine man!"). Lester hearing Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus perform (not) a Grounation in a corrugated iron hut. Lester meets U Roy. Lester foaming at the mouth over the wonders of dub to Chris Blackwell. It's all so utterly improbable and larger than life, Lester's own already oversized self-mythology rubbing up against this purely essential historic moment and it's own godlike figures.

And he acquits himself so magically, feeling half the time like a total imposter, but also (the large-hearted soothsayer he is) completely aware of the webs spun by the Jamaican magi (on Lee Perry: this man is no Rasta, he's a hipster) You won't find a more honest level-headed description of that scene anywhere. It's a salutary reminder too that a writer is first and foremost a human being, and that his writing is only as strong as the validity sentiments he's conveying.

Bloglomerati.

Stelfox has a piece in tomorrow's Independent on 'Women in Dancehall' and me and some other twits are being interviewed on Resonance 104.4 FM tonight at 8.30pm. So don't listen to the radio and don't buy any newspapers.

A dark force squats in the corner of my mind as I eat pasta.

Was sat on the table beside Yoko Ono at lunch. Another diner stood up mid-meal and took a flash photograph of her! In the car on the way home the consensus was that it had been vulgar to bother a celebrity in such a manner. At which point I was secretly relieved I hadn't surreptiously snapped her with my mobile.

Woebot Banned.

A correspondent informs me that his dad, upon pointing his browser at this website was greeted with the following warning message:

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How the hell did that happen? Not a tit in sight. It's k-punk with the saucy photos!

The Flashing RealPlayer Icon.

Yeah I hate it too.

Ancient Grime.

"My cousin came over to London town to check out how the people roll down."

Is this the UR-text of Grime? It's not a terribly distinctive record if the truth be told, delivered in an American accent, only passing references to (coughs) indigenous London in the form of complaints about "the boys in blue." But amazingly the aesthetic is quite grimy. The rhythm track even sounds like a Playstation offcut!

I thought the Greg Wilson-compiled UK Electro compilation on Streetsounds might predate this track, but no. That came out in June 1984, the label on this says 1983. As for that being the product of six distinct acts, Wilson sets the record straight here. Apparently the Rapologists contribution was the only one NOT masterminded by the collective of Wilson and his pals (Kermit from Broken Glass, later of the Ruthless Rap Assasins, musicians from Magazine and A Certain Ratio!) The bunch of aliases were concocted to give the illusion of a proclivity of UK Electro. Norty norty!

Here on this excellent site dedicated to UK Hip Hop there are details of other artists who emerged subsequent to Morgan Khan's compliation: ' Junior Gee and the A Team, MC Westrock, Jive Junior, Dynamic Three and Freshski.....etc....." The Newtrament record is on Jive, and subsequently I was curious to know about this record from 1985 also on Jive, and actually which is pretty excellent:

I think Jazzy Jeff IS American, but the record is recorded at Battery Studios, London. I'm confused! Have a look at this again if you have time, Simon's ultra-compressed notes on the Roots of Grime. That's a classic piece. Oh, but no more slagging off Nicky Lockett aka MC Tunes.

CD Mixers.

How totally weird these machines are! Verging on the bizarre, the pointless. You spin the central dial back and forth to make a sound which approximates the sound of vinyl being pulled back and forth through a needle. It's straight out of "Snow Crash" or "The Diamond Age" isn't it? Aftertrails of old technology.

Actually the point about those sonics one can generate through the turntable is they foreground the process, they ritualise the materiality of playing the record and the deck becomes (in the truest sense) an instrument. But these synthesised "record effects" have absolutely no intrinsic connection with playing a CD whatsoever. It's rubbish really. Still, not sure I'd want to hear a CD deck which was deliberately sensitised to compact disc data corruption "glitch style".

Oi yoi!

Macca.

I though it'd be really great to interview Paul McCartney at WOEBOT. The world's most famous musician (?) on a Weblog.

I pitched it with near perfection to his Manager Geoff. I must have spoken to him about 9 times now. Followed up with extremely neat professional emails. Sometimes he seemed really keen. Sometimes less so. But always on a decreasing incline of interestedness.

"Hi Geoff, it's the bloke off the internet again."

"But we just did an interview on the net!"

"Ah yes, but that was in an MSN chat-room and you can't access those in the UK. You can't do too many interviews on the net Geoff, it's the new thing mate, believe! It'll be like David and Goliath. It's a fanzine on steroids, (coughs) WOEBOT is the pre-eminent music blog. The kids'll love it. Just in time for Glasto. It's rock'n'roll innit; yaay tear your hair out, go crazy, give an interview to a blogger."

Macca. He's great isn't he. Though my mate Sacha said the other night there's nothing so unattractive as a really successful musician. Someone who's fucked all the women, taken all the drugs, has all the cars, flown all over the world. Yeah that stayed with me.

Though of course Macca was pretty far-out wasn't he? It wasn't just Lennon was it. Surely everyone knows this? I did a load of background research for this. I read Ian Peel's (pretty weak): "The Unknown McCartney" and AND Barry Miles's (excellent) "Many Years From Now." I'm a fookin' expert on Paul McCartney I tell you. Playing a coin on a radiator at an AMM gig, nearly roping in Delia Derbyshire to score "Yesterday", meeting Luciano Berio, building his own little tape-loops years before Lennon got interested, indeed turning Lennon on to alot of wacky stuff, holding forth on Albert Ayler and Stockhausen, turning in an easy listening version of his Ram LP as Percy Thrillington, a helping hand behing Indica books, Zapple and IT, recording in Lagos, playing with The Meters, putting out ambient techno as The Fireman and post-rock with Youth. Yeah yeah we know.....

"You see I'd also like to touch on Sir Paul's love of Animation. I believe as animator I'd be able to really do justice to this side of his persona. Yeah and all the animals, what's with that? The dogs, the racoons, the frogs, the deer and the blackbird?"

"Well you see he's got a lot of interviews lined up and we're quite squeezed for time."

"Yeah and you don't know WHO I am. I mean I could be some total lunatic. Some gun-toting obsessive. I mean, I could be really fucking dangerous! Let's face it. Though we have met eachother once before on the street in Soho. And, well, I didn't try anything then. But I guess the kind of things I'd want to talk to him about have been covered in a great deal of detail by Peel and Miles. And for goodness sake, Ian Peel wrote a whole book, A WHOLE BOOK, without an interview with the man himself. And of course all this recent exploration of his avant tendencies, well it's probably bad for business in the long-run isn't it? And well, I'm just a blogger. Ha! A blogger. A useless amateur. How could I possibly expect to get an interview. I must be stark raving mad. Yes it's probably best that we leave it like this. Though I'd like to say Geoff, thanks so much for not just telling me to fuck right off in the first instance. That was awfully nice of you."

Pretentious Garage Review.

Gosh it's been a terribly stimulating week for the online amateur garage enthusiast! We've seen the petty sniping of Guardian journalists desperate to shift units by hijacking the Blog nexus (Bo! Bo! Bo!) and the FWD boys bum-rushing K-Punk's Comments box at his invitation. Elsewhere with Heronbone pulling the plug on his Grime coverage, it seems like the only people left writing about Garage at it's only genuinely interesting axis in this "smooth place" are anything but hip. Let us examine the texts in hand:

Wiley: Treadin' On Thin Ice

I was really dreading the Wiley LP, firstly cos I thought I'd be depressed by it's over-enthusiastic reception in the mainstream, also cos I was sure it was going to be lacklustre. That's one of the problems with both promotional material and mp3s being leaked. I got sent a link to download the whole LP on March 29th which I actually ignored. This guy was reviewing it on March 5th. By the time something's in the shops, and it hit the high street before the underground stores, consensus is fractured and the people who are supposed to be enthusing over the release are weary as hell about it. Everyone is like "Yawn!"

As for it being lacklustre, I've made no bones about finding Wiley quite grating and pompous in the past. His self-engineered transformative redemption is an intense deal, admirable indeed, but imagine being stuck in a lift with him! OK Wiley, yeah you're great! Enough already! Was I alone in thinking "Ground Zero", which twinned his feelings at breaking up with his girlfriend with Al-Quaida's attack on the Trade Centre was insufferably self-obsessed? Offensive even? Then the "Wot Do You Call It?" single which Marcello justly skewered was twattish.

Volte face! The LP is really sweet. I thought he was going to be over-bearing, even more so at the major label level (Thinks: "Now I made it I'm gonna show the Haters!") Wiley comes over, not as a towering colossus, but all gremlin. There's so much humour here. The lines in "Special Girl" which (as Simon Silver Dollar has already noted) degenerate hilariously. Wiley pledges to find a girl who will understand him, stand by him, who will answer him back and er, give him sex on tap whenever he feels like it. (winks) Are you sure you're ready for a serious relationship mate! The super gormless intro to "Pies": "Hey blud there were five pies on this table.....and when I come back all the pies have gone?" set against a Hans Christan Andersen Fox-in-the-forest style riddim is a bit of a chortle. "Goin' Mad", sports another comedy intro "Oi Mate do you fink I'm a waffler mate? Well yeah you do go on a bit mate!", likkle squeaky crank bugs in the riddim. There is something subtly menacing about this goofing around, as if were you in the room, you couldn't guarantee it wasn't a joke at your expense.

He's evolved as a producer too; Ground Zero (which, when he versions it here as "Doorway" makes the track) is the sonic pointer. "Treading on thin Ice" is as exquisite, so eeiry and understated. The clunky chinois thud that characterised alot of his riddims after "Eskimo" like "Ice Rink", "Rat Race" and "Blue Rizzla" is slightly on the back burner, probably as a result of plods like Skepta offering up carbon copies. It was also cool to find, for a slavish dub-plate junkie, that cuts like "Pick U R Self Up" featured entirely different mixes to the one on the twelve inch which came out on the Target label last year. But, as someone else (somewhere) has already commented, it's a shame "Bastard" didn't make an appearance. That's a funny track too. I wasn't just pleasantly surprised, I was well chuffed about the strength of the LP. Thumbs up!

Funny to relate that Wiley's been poking round a mate of ours' recording studio, getting quite excited. Frank has real drums. Could spell trouble in the frozen wastes ;-)

Demon feat Kano: "Gansta Toyz"

A take on the Frontline Rmx riddim. Demon of East Co and Kano of Nasty say "Gangsta" alot. Another choon on the excellent Aftershock label. Went out for a beer with supercool Marcus from Rephlex this week (I think he was surprised how "normal" I was! Just remember people, all those musicians are chained to their PCs too! Wiley on the Lord of The Decks DVD showing off his Quicksilver Macintosh with Chrome CD Bay!) As I was saying on Mark's thread, I've nothing against the Rephlex "Grime" comp, it's beautifully put together, just that it could have done with some MC-ing (slightly more realistic liner notes might have helped too...)

It's as simple as this these days, I go down the shop and say: "Have you got any new MC stuff?" Imagine buying Ragga Riddims?!? You'd have to be insane! All these dubplates in Garage, they're being released on white labels with the explicit purpose of being bought by DJs to play for their MCs on air. Garage riddims on their own just aren't the thing any more! Even Ruff Squad's riddim's are for MCs! I say this over and over again and no-one plays the blind bit of notice.

It's not as if the FWD scene can't make great riddims (again repeating myself) just check "Popadomz" or "War Wid" or (earlier Menta's "Ramp"), just that their tracks need a good MC. The well informed geezer like Artifact says that Plasticman is using D Double, Wiley and Riko on his solo album (clapping purposefully) well done mate (taps own head) yeah YOU WORKED IT OUT! Virus Syndicate, who are a Mancunian Grime crew attached to Mark One/Slaughter Mob/Plasticman are also apparently well good. In fact someone was saying somewhere on that Old Skoolish comments thread of mine that they're 'pushing the envelope.' Yeah, let's hear some of that!

I was telling Marcus they should just license the After Shock back catalogue and put it out. In his favour he says they're keen to release striktly new stuff. No A&R job yet! Apologies to Rephlex for not swallowing the party line....

Donaeo: "Don't Watch Me Now"

Class Fidget action. The best thing here isn't Donaeo's latest remake of "Bounce" but "Don't Watch Me Now" billed as a bonus track but inadvertantly the hit. "Don't Watch Me Now, Don't Watch Geezer, Just Stay Out of my Business" goes the chorus, it's a bit of low-key mucking around that's presumably not bo(o)mbastic enough for the spotlight. Donaeo ducking and diving, doin' the Arthur Daley shuffle. Absolutely charming, as Brian Sewell might say.

DJ Mexx and Durrty Doogz: Look and Turn
More Fire Crew: Torch Riddim

Both twelves look exactly the same, so this charming image featuring a stack of child's coloured bricks will have to suffice for both of them. Doogzy is on fire! He's a funny cat isn't he, I swear if he sounded any more camp he'd be doing Frankie Howerd impressions. Dude sounds like someone is pinching his arse and he's recoiling in shock: "It's real!" Damn funny. Genius innit! More Fire have been slewing dem all year and stand correct with this "Torch", highlight of which is the mnemonic Public Enemy spinning wheel micro-riff which functions as the chorus, the riddim here is pure dancehall bizniss. There's 3 other MCs on this but the label is giving nothing away. Promos are circulating for the More Fire LP, so watch that space.

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So far this year is looking better than last. Remember that Grime Scene comp I put together last December? Well I reckon I could do one by the end of June this year...

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.

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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!

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Back to work!

Dizzy and The Duchess.

Caught someone reading this in the park out of the corner of my eye, and it was so irresistable I went and bought a copy of The Daily Mail. I don't buy it usually, honest guv!

The Duchess says:

"It is for this reason that we need role models such as Dizze Rascal, the rap star, whose success from humble beginnings is to be so admired - as are the teachers who who encouraged him along the way."

(removes plum from mouth)

Well it was only one teacher who stuck by Dizzy wasn't it:

Mr Tim Smith formerly of Langdon Park, who deuce magazine quite cheekily interviewed last September. Tim was taught harmony by Andrew Lloyd Webber's father.

Dizzy said of him rather nicely:

"Special thanx to Mr. Smith, da best music teacher Langdon Park ever let go (you fools). I'll never forget da way you kept faith in me, even when things looked grim."

On the 55 bus last week I was sitting amid a bunch of really rowdy kids. They were talking about all the MCs. One was at school with Nasty's Armour. Another was explaining that Wiley, D Double and Doogz (I think it was those three, I wasn't taking notes at the time...) were all excellent, nearly professional quality sportsmen. Reminds me of that "Headmaster's Log" joke which usually comes with funny snapshots of a kid becoming scruffier and scruffier:

1) Year One: Good at sport.
2) Year Two: Likes music.
3) Year Three: Needs surveillance.

Did anyone catch Doogz's awesome righteous Grime track "Back to Skool" ("Stop acting the fool and go back to skool")? Love the Grime MC as old testament prophet/font of wisdom that one also gets in Riko's "The Chosen One."

Random Guff.

1. Splutters.

Notice the little safety pin! Unbelievable! The most Golf Punk I've ever got is getting drunk in the bunker on the ninth hole at school.

2. Vincent Gallo Live!

First rate seat as you can gauge by the intimate view of proceedings I got.

Ambling in with colleague French Vinyl Deity Sacha Dieu I spotted his friend Andy Weatherall hiding out in the stalls. Sacha wandered over with me in tow and proceeded to chat to Weatherall for upwards of fifteen minutes without introducing me! Me sitting rather uncomfortably on an arm-rest, trying to look blase, seething. I don't care who he is (ultimately), when I'm in company I like to be introduced. Rude innit! Shame on you Dieu you slipshod import you! I've never been a fan of Weatherall's incidentally. Perhaps in direct consequence I spent the first hour of Gallo's set trying to stop myself from barracking him with oaths. They would have sailed with such force across the pious atmosphere of the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

What is it about Gallo that inspires this weird mixture of devotion and irritation? In the end I just kept quiet, largely out of consideration for the man who seemed to be dieing slowly on stage, apologising to Alt_Rock poster boy Jim O'Rourke for his totally out-of-tune singing and to the crowd for his jittery nerves. Vincent is essentially a righteous dude, as one might infer from this his rather spectacularily positive eBay profile. Hey, I'm a fan!

Gallo usually works on his own, tending the fragile scapes of his recordings like Derek Jarman's his garden amid the desolate shingle beneath Dungeness Power Station. It's all about context isn't it? When you supplant the elegant weed growth it can end up wilting in transit. In spite of this it was cool to hear the mildewed tones of his Mellotron and relish in the dank spacious underplaying of "Honey Bunny" and "Laura." Occassionally Vince was so off he was ON!

One thing which grated on me however was the idiotic celebrity star-turns of Polly Harvey (Who the hell is this useless woman? Why has she not disappeared yet?) and John Frusciante (I've more sympathy for this RHCP guitarist, he's about the only semi-good thing about the band, quite a startling intense history he has...). Why doesn't Gallo realise these people are pygmies, and yet the crowd go bananas as the "supergroop" perform an extremely rote cover of "Blue Moon". You sad people! Next time Vincent get an interesting guest, like er I dunno, Casino-vs-Japan or The Books. Even Weatherall might have been useful on tambourine, though hang-on, he filed out rather noticeably mid-show.

3. Mystery Record.

I'm a diehard fan of the French Label BYG/Actuel and came across this LP a few weeks ago. I was *so very close* to buying it on spec, but at the last minute decided against it. I wonder if anyone knows anything about this rather cool looking French Rock group signed to the label. I remember that Gong and another rock group also released recordings on BYG.

4. Quelling Revolt.
"Yeah but back to Kanye and pushing sampling to limits ... it's noticeable how when people get to raving about his tracks, how it often turns into a list of the things he sampled ? "i love that Luther bit, it's so gorgeous"... it just makes me wonder, yunno?"

Thought I'd better address this humorous elbowing (ouch!) I just got from Reynolds, who incidentally has loads of excellent new stuff up.

1) Firstly. Pray oh master, what exactly are you driving at? All this gentle "wondering" appears to be in search of a punch-line, perhaps one along the lines of: "Write a proper sentence you imbeciles!" Lol.

2) Why do people (and I'm guessing here that you're including yourself amid the spotters, such is your largesse!) list Kanye West's samples? Surely this isn't such a Yeti? It has to do with with the foregrounding process which the speeding-up of said samples creates. Samples in Hip-Hop tend to be mulched, made transparent, obscured for the means of disguising their provenance, made brief so as avoid heavy taxation by their originators. Kanye wants his samples to stand-out, he wants to milk them for all their period wonder. No surprise then that people comment on them. West's modus operandi seems to mimic that of the original Ardkore producers, who sought with samples to create weird juxtapositions and bizarre new contexts. In fact you'll notice the same sample-highlighting when people talk about them in Ardkore: "Oooh I just love it in Trip II the Moon when those John Barry/James Bond strings come in."

3) Why did I (rather gratingly) list ALL the sample in the Kanye West LP. I thought it was funny in a kind of obsessive/goonish way, and I was served rather well by the record sleeve insert which had them all listed. Bah!* I spent ages getting them correct!

5. It's a Family Affair.
Lulu my daughter has just learnt how to put features on the people she's drawing, not somewhere two inches from their face. Last night Catherine was sitting with her while she was drawing and remarked: "Oooh Daddy's got a nice smile!" To which Lulu (only two) replied: "He's been record shopping." They (and Granny) all thought this was hilarious, which I guess it is, but I was a little sad.

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*Bah! is a Trademark of the estate of K-Punk and is used here pending permission.

Shoes.

With the amount of attention I devote to what I listen to, you wouldn't be surprised to know that what I wear is the subject of a considerably lesser degree of thought. In fact until recently, for a few years, I had two identical sets of grey sweatshirts and blue jeans between which I alternated (until it drove me fucking insane, grin) However, in spite of spending less time devoted to it, I am fairly particular about what I wear, and of course the kind of decisions we make about (for instance) our footwear are (arguably) essentially motivated by the same concerns which affect our "consumer choices" when it comes to music.

That might sound both superficial AND narcissistic, well hear me out! The day before yesterday in Glasgow I bought a pair of Converse All Stars, and it struck me that this was quite a significant purchase for me. While the archetypal shoe threshold many people cross is the one in which they abandon trainers (your youth) and don black shoes (get a job), I'm sure that many Woebot readers' lives are measured by a multiplicity of "shoe-shifts." What prompted me to buy the Converse was an old Jesus and The Mary Chain publicity shot which recently caught my eye. Yeah, I thought they looked pretty ace on the Reid Bros, and whilst you could argue about the merits of their music, they had their look down pat. I guess with the decontextualisation of Converse All Star from its skater/west-coast-scruff source into the neo-goth/indie arena they played a pretty nifty style card. Somehow buying the shoes in Glasgow, home of the JAMC, and dance-music death-zone seemed exceptionally apt.

Walking up Buchanan Street my mind underwent that wonderfully psychedelic remapping it does when you get new shoes; grey matter in the saddle. My fading smelly Nike in the bright clean shoe-shop bag. Nike represent dance music in excellcis don't they!?! That pair, which I've worn solidly for a year and a half, were actually an Old Skool revival design. That's pretty much how I've felt about thrusting myself back into Grime over the past couple of years, because between 1996 and 2002 I abandoned trainers. I was picking up the tunes (interest in Garage dieing out sometime in 2002), but didn't really engage with the same level of intensity. It's quite ironic to think that when I went down to Eskimo Dance I was obliged to wear the smartest black shoes I own, a pair I bought for my Dad's funeral.....

My epiphanous burn-out point with dance music came in 1996. I guess, on reflection the heat went out of Jungle, the last Rave music underground, at roughly the same time. This particular timeline posits UK Garage as already a caesura of a kind, a withdrawal into the pre-existing club circuit. Though we talk about Grime as not being dance music, Garage was already not Rave. At this, my aphelion of immersion and insanity I was wearing Nike Air's.

I've always thought the symbolism attached to the Nike Air range is one of pure dis-substantiation. You're walking on air for christ sakes! When the starry dynamo was working at full-tilt and I was being crowded in on by sublime coincidence this suddenly felt of intimate import. I had been hanging out with professed Space-Time Magician Ken Downie of The Black Dog, some of whose insights finally pulled the carpet out from under my feet and sent me spiralling loose into a void of zero reference. One of the first things I did when struggling to grip onto reality was ditch the Nike Air's. I remember the name of the next shoes I wore was incredibly significant to me, a bland black rubber and natural leather brand called "Rockport", with all it's attendant poetic associations of doors in the earth plugged with granite batholiths. From thence I had a brief dalliance with Timbaland boots, trading up to a fragile detente with "street". It chilled me to the bone at the time that Nike's next range turned out to be modelled on Goat's hooves! The Lord of the Air! Devilish stuff!

The Converse feel really nice, you'd be delighted to know. Maybe they signal some kind of shift in my listening patterns/tribal alignment?

Graffiti under Bridge on Bow Road.

Events.

Just picked up this flyer. I haven't done anything in the vaguest indie for too long, and this looks pretty seductive. Yeah I might go to this...

And shadowy legend DJ Wrongspeed (I've asked him what his connection was to this crew...) has given me the heads-up on the Red Zero Radio event. Eden had this posted chez lui, but a little duplication can't do any harm.

Booyacka.

The Original Gangster has dropped in to say hi! Giving him just enough time to have a little dig at me (stifles laughter, only joking Ian!), it's always an honour.

Penman's what you might call "the effortless hipster", he knows that something's crass cultural currency is the third generation manifestation of it's cosmic vibrancy. Yeah I did seem to give "Ingram" the band quite short shrift. There are (you'd be probably be exhausted to know) pre-echoes of some kind of revival of interest in this era. Reynolds going out of his way to tell anyone and everyone of his love for Vicki D's "The Beat is Mine" and Freez's "Southern Freez", Soul Jazz releasing their "British Hustle" Compilation (surely the benchmark of a viable revival when these cats sign on), Honest Jon's have put out a Candi Staton compilation (admittedly from a slightly different era), er, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Though strangely, while the Garage scene is often a key link to those heady Essex Soul Raves, it's never been less slinky or pink than right now.

In terms of the Mutant Disco era (the revival of which the Penster rightfully takes great glee reigning in), the hotly-anticipated "Calling Out of Context" collection of previously-unreleased Arthur Russell material must be the final act of barrell-scraping. I've withheld chiming in on this for the simple reason that I was waiting to get my grubby mitts on the difficult-to-find double vinyl edition of the Audika set (bloody typical!) I have to say I think this collection, in direct contrast to what I was hoping for it here, is a clinker. And everyone's afraid to say so, innit.

More often than not unreleased material is best left that way. If an artist hasn't managed to get past the hurdle of releasing their music, even on the tiniest limited edition run, then I say leave it be. Of course there are exceptions, like The Velvet Underground's fourth LP. There is in fact lots of of quite obscure Russell material, which was once available, which could do with being put out: Peter Gordon's 'That Hat", Peter Zummo's "Song IV", "Sketch for Face of Helen", the Tower of Meaning LP.

It's tragic to reflect that Russell sounds crushed and desperate on "Calling Out of Context" (the only highlight being "Wild Combination"), palpably depressed, you can hear it in the crack in his voice. Where "World of Echo" is windswept, iconoclastic and arrogant; "Calling Out of Context" is worn-down, lonely and courageous. I'm sorry, when I hear these qualities in music I just want to shut the blinds, make the poor dude a cup of tea, tell everyone the show is over and in this instance hand out free copies of Henry Flynt's "You Are My Everlovin'", Caetano Veloso's 1986 eponymous solo LP and Francois Rabbath's "The Face of the Bass."

So yeah 80's Soul. I'll be hastling Kirk Degiorgio again! Personal highlights include Mtume's "Juicy Fruit" (on a loop in my coffin), Chic's "Happy Man" (at my 20th Wedding Anniversary) and Maze's "Twilight" (when, and if he's even writing one, the Penster's book gets published).

Fa Fa Fa Fa Fashion Part 2.

FCUK have filled their shop windows with pseudo record-sleeves. Do they want my custom? I was taking photos on the pavement and an assistant ran out of the store and informed me angrily:

"You can't take photos here, it's not allowed!"

To which I replied:

"Yes, I can. Try and stop me!"

Blood rushed to my head. This was what stealing cars must be like. I'm getting more and MORE pugnacious in my old age. Anyway, why would people want to tune into to FCUK FM on their mobile? It's like that bizarre victorian practice of listening to concerts on the telephone!

Oh and I also wanted to draw people's attention to this:

This Holly Vallance bird wants us to know her favourite ever female artist is Blondie. Right! Elsewhere she's in a red wig trying for Anthony Kleidis's market-share. That last sentence sounded just like SFJ! I came off my bike pulling away from the bus-stop.

Ingram.

I first discovered this record in Paris in the late eighties, and was very close to buying it, cos of course my name is Matthew Ingram. I imagined it'd be fun to have it leaning on the mantelpiece. I came across it once more recently at Uptown Records in New York. It's never been particularly rare (on reflection I must have crossed paths with it half a dozen times and given it the nod) and it's never been particularly expensive. Other Ingram records I've spied have more psychedelic sleeves, and higher prices. I happened to see it again the day before yesterday. Only this time it was up on the wall, and sporting a semi-serious price. Cor!

The only vaguely interesting thing I know about this cool, slickly-dressed family with their immaculate afros (sorry no reverse sleeve here!), is that Arthur Russell used them as his band on tracks like "Is it all over my face?" The stuff I've heard by them however is polished disco-funk, a million miles away from the Killer Whale's stripped-back atonal disco; so don't be getting ideas...

Lots and lots of laughs. Belly aches. Ribs straining at the sheer hilarity of it all. Of course every time this record and I meet I wonder how this bunch of Afro-Americans ended up with the name Ingram! The horrid truth must be that one of their ancestors was once a slave* for a man with the same name as me, maybe a relative of mine...

-
*Clarification 30/3/4

Rinsin' Bare Dubz.

My man DJ Cameo told me I should check his Pirate Sessions on the 1Xtra site. He's got this *GREAT* intro and the set is chocka full of the most wikkid pre-release dub-plates all streaming on the site. Too many highlights to mention...

I've known Cameo for a year. Man I had know idea he was busting out so large! Respect feller! All international crew, you know the ku.

A Brit Raps.

"It's almost as bad as that recent issue of VICE (they think they're SOOO cool!) where they talked about Wiley amidst a round-up of UK Hip Hop."

After I slagged off this piece in VICE (groan) I got an email from John Vanderpuije who writes the Beats and Rhymes column for VICE. It must be under the alias of Mike Gatting, cos thats who the column is attributed to. Anyway John, who says he loves Woebot (presumably to make me feel even worse ha!), has also written the Grime Scene Investigation article for Dazed & Confused. Why the hell are all we bloggers engaging so fruitfully with ourselves and not the outside world? Why didn't Simon, Tim, Luka, Jess or I manage to get a similar article published? It's a fucking shambles! Putting feelings of stomach-wrenching jealousy aside for a moment I was pleased to find John's article was, if not exactly pushing the boundaries of Grime knowledge back very far, a handy and faithful starters guide for the general public.

However, however, there's a few things in there that rankle. Firstly amongst Wiley, Tinchy Stryder, D Double E, Kano and J2K there has been inserted one "Taz." Taz who apparently produced "Just a Rascal" for "Boy In Da Corner." Taz is, I'm sorry, clearly NOT part of the Grime scene as we know it and tellingly now has an album about to be released by Def Jam UK. Like Jess I have immense problems with "Brit-Rap redux." I don't think this is a puritanical position at all, it's just Grime is a totally different ting.

There are other points in the piece when alarm bells ring, where I sense the same "rolling together" than I rather stridently criticised John for in the VICE piece. On D Double E: "Dee's passion to evolve his own sound beyond existing genres has seen him grow into an acclaimed MC with a solid work ethic who can ride tempo after tempo" Actually D Double himself says: "When you're on the radio by yourself you can't repeat the same lyric over and over again. So being solo made me a better MC." Oh, and here's John on Kano: "Whether it was Bedford, Amsterdam or Ayia Napa, his smooth flow, lyrical dexterity and verbal bite made an indelible impact on the audience, rising above par quality of the scene." This way of talking about MC-ing is exactly the same which blights all that backpacker stuff. You know (paraphrases traditional Hip-Hop fan): "the lyrics are rilly great on this and the production values are excellent."

I guess I'm guilty as hell when it comes to imposing bourgeois values on Garage, the first thing I did on Garage at the other place "A Potted History of UK Bounce" had me holding out for a slowed-down Grime. What I was after was more room for textural beats and more space for the MC, though it amounts essentially to the same thing, a more "listenable" experience. I guess "Birds in the Sky" was a tune I thought might herald a shift to a slower pace. In subsequent things I've done on Grime I've even praised (in a self-concious way admittedly) the production values on "War Wid" and "Popadomz." Then as if to add insult to injury I did that Old Skoolish thing, really attempting to cement the relationship between Old Skool Hip-Hop and Grime. So me taking John to task is like the pot calling the kettle sooty. In my own defense I do believe I was having fun drawing an equation because there didn't appear to be one there. Now it seems that the crossover is so easily digestable and acceptable I'm less keen on on the idea. In fact I HATE the idea. If Grime came to be understood as UK Hip-Hop it'd be a disaster.

If Grime came to be understood as UK Hip-Hop it'd be a disaster. Why? Because, put simply, Brit-Hop has never managed to get over being a inferior version of American Hip-Hop (Grime on the other hand seems mercifully oblivious of America). More than that it's never even escaped the orbit of that critical comparison. Even a brilliant Brit-Rap record like New Flesh's "Understanding" LP. Now John Vanderpuije reccomended this lot to me. This lot have received huge critical acclaim, witness this review Boomkat: "Too powerful. Brain twisting science. Seriously I can't remember any other UK hip hop album to have had this impact on us. Believe!!! A classic in the making." Well that's pretty euphoric innit, but of course lodged within in the same problematic discourse. I went into a store in town and picked up the record and held it in my grubby hands:

Turned it around. Looked at the back. Inspected the sticker on the front which proclaimed that the record featured appearances by members of Anticon, a cameo by Rammelzee and Gift of Gab of Blackalicious. Then I put it back in the bin. Half an hour later I came back, picked it up, and then returned it to the bin once more. No deal!

This may be a great record, in fact some of the things said here have piqued my interest further, but sorry I can't get with it. It's all seems so worthy! The appearances of all these luminaries intending to legitimise the validity of Brit-Rap only end up making it appear a very poor third cousin. OK unity of the diaspora yawn yawn, but do you see the Americans getting UK Hip-Hoppers to appear on their records (Slick Rick excepted natch)? Added to which why on earth is Brit-Rap stuck in this mid-period phase, endlessly mimicking DJ Premier-style beats? OK so Anticon aren't acceptable to the UK Hip-Hop purists, and thus neither are New Flesh as I found out on my visit here:

Mr. Bongo, where you'll find more backpackers than J&D Sports. Where New Flesh were described to me as "not our kind of thing. Actually I volunteered "not your kind of thing" and the dude just nodded. So what is your kind of thing lads? What UK Hip-Hop can you recommend? I went through a small pile of suggestions. The new Ritchy Pitch 12", Secondson's "Taskforce" (not bad actually), The P Brothers latest release, and their "stand-out" Jehst's "Return of the Drifter." Yeah it was all very nice, very faithful, but sorta slightly bor-ring. I asked them if they had anything, well, a bit bashier. "Ooh, now you're scaring me!" remarked the patient dude behind the counter. This vein of Hip-Hop seems to be perpetuated so as to underline the classic canon (Mobb Deep etc) Don't even ask them if they carry this sort of thing:

I bloody WISH they did. It's impossible to get crunk over here. The Ying Yang Twins CD cost me a fortune on import! There's almost no point in even trying to play catch up with Simon and Jess. "Salt Shaker" though, that is a vere vere cool tune. Yeah, anyway, not much in the way of fascinating things to say about this...er, I own it, thus I am cool.

So, carrying on, thwarted by Bongos I went off to find this:

Which I regretted not buying last year. I think John included this in his list of "rated UK Hip-Hop" too. Under the name Fusion. Well it's Fusion feat Fallacy innit! I loved that Big'N'Bashy single, and should have really stuck my neck out and bigged up the LP (coughs) important tastemaker that I am, tooo hip darlings! Yeah this is more like it. If Hip-Hop proper is ever going to work in the UK it needs to be more like this. Highlights include the "The Groundbreaker" (this is really old now!) and "Square Beamer" (a masterpiece). I guess all of this points to a massively fractured micro-market of hangers-on, with the only strong hegemonies being Big Dada (who've put the cLOUDEAD record out over here), Roots Manuva, and actually shops like Mr. Bongo (shops whose lifestyle you can buy into). It's a shambles! Worse than that it's lifeless and fairly devoid of inspiration. No wonder they want a bit of Grime's tang.

So if Grime isn't Hip-Hop what is it? Wot do U call it? Har de har. The thing about the white label scene as it's existed thus far, is that you're able to pretty much project anything onto those blank records. It's driven by the motor of Raves/Pirate Radio/Grassroots enthusiasm. For instance (aah you're gonna LOVE this!) look at this photo I took in the back of the 55 bus today:

Yeah! That's garridge, seen! It's the kind of music that makes you want to get out your red marker pen and deface public transport. It's still just a massive uncontainable energy source, and that's the way I'd like it to stay. And I guess that's why the idea of it being co-opted in UK Hip-Hop bothers me. That and the fact that I'm still clinging (maybe erroneously) to the idea of an Ardkore Continuum!

Besides the way UK Hip-Hoppers picture American Hip-Hop is so wrong, and I'm not just talking about them being stuck on that certain era of music deaf to the power of the brash, evil, mainstream incarnation of their blessed form. I'm talking about the fact that in the US the mixtape and the radio show are at the core of the culture, not the hallowed double LP. This:

Which SFJ kindly copied me into, and which was supposed to be the mixtape of 2003, is case in point. Ghostface Killer freestyles over a whole range of riddims, big tracks and old Wu-Tang classics. It's great. An inspired fucking mess. Such fun and just exactly what one finds in the Grime experience (without even the slightest whiff of emulation).

Have you heard this "Cha Cha Slide" thing by DJ Caspar! Ha! Everyone hates it! But I saw it on the telly recently before it was climbing the charts (it's about five years old actually!) and I loved it. It's Hip-House innit! All that Mr. Motivator stuff, I love that.

Oh and this is great! Love that soft-rock sample.

(reclines)

So many great Garridge tunes out at the moment. Durrty Doogz "Back to Skool" Awesome! Hey that's a slow tune! What else is there? Um. There's "Top Boy" by MC Narstie, the amazing Str8 riddim by Mundi (one 2 watch), Riko's "The Chosen One" (at last!) and there's a brilliant new Wiley tune too which doesn't have a title. I even picked out the Payback EP on Aftershock, the best riddim tracks I've heard in ages just to get away from all these chatty bastards.

Yikes!

Woebot's comments boxes have been ramraided with spam over the last forty-eight hours and Mark Sinker is only responsible for a fraction of it. The new batch of Movabletype spammers have also worked out a way to overwrite existing blog posts via open boxes.

I've been stemming the flow, banning IP addresses, upgrading the MT application, repairing posts which were once celebrating (ahem) me and my fascinating record collection and now are advertising drugs with names like Vicodin and Levitra, and closing down all comments boxes which I've left open.

Yes that's correct non-technical person closing down comments boxes, which is a terrible shame as left open for all time they provide me with little shards of joy, like this recent contibution to an old post by Rolo who used to be in The Woodentops.

In future (sighs) only comments boxes on the index page will be open. End of announcement.

Rant.

At the weekend I picked up one of Earthworks samplers of "Umbaquanga" South African township innit. It's dated 1983. There's a whole lot of great records Earthworks put out in the early 1980s, and they managed to find interesting interfaces with the bleeding edge music of the day. Dubwise there are the awesome Tony Allen "NEPA" Dubs and the thrilling Dele Abiodun "Confrontation" Dub LP. There's also the stunning "Duck Food" LP which is tracks Malcom Mclaren used on "Duck Rock", that's a brilliant compilation, rocks the dancefloor. You can still find all these records easily, and they're never more than a fiver, in part I'm sure owing to their cheap (punky) packaging.

Anyway it got me thinking. A lot of people spun out of Post-Punks orbit into mad crazy shit like Free Jazz (you meet Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry on the road out of PP), Dub and Roots (Prince Far-I and Scratch) Improv (Tristan Honsinger, Toop and Beresford), Electro (Tommy Boy) and most importantly World Music (Sunny Ade, South African Jive, Fela, etc) People like Mark Stewart, Jumbo Vanrennan, Jah Wobble, Ari Up, Neneh Cherry and Adrian Sherwood succeeded in exploding the perameters of insular white indie rock. I don't even think the syncretic music this PP crew made is what's important (some of it's great, some not) it's just that their actions opened up different universes, created possibilities.

Now think of the Post-Punk revival for a minute. Like it or not it constitutes one of the freshest things happening today (still!) in part owing to it's sexy fashion energy. But there is NO TRACE of it spinning out of it's concentric orbit. Can you picture a World Music sampler coming out of the !!! camp? Can you imagine the Animal Collective compiling a Free Jazz record (droll, that'd be GREAT!) Elsewhere (beyond the PP revival, straw-man here) apart from The Bug's pretty good dalliance with Ragga there are no routes out. Like I say I'm less bothered with the quality of music being made than with signposts in evidence. Actually I guess the African music reissue thing has been pretty healthy, but it's all been keyed to the mid seventies era. Hip Hop and "Urban" isn't so fussy mercifully, but bizarrely have been banned from the bourgeous indie spectrum (cLOUDEAD, AntiCon er no thanks). Where are the samplers of modern South African music on the shelves? There's a whole world out there!

On a similar groan about cultural insularity I thought I'd have another bash at the Rough Trade shops (brought into focus by a chat Marcello, Mark Fisher and I had last night). This is supposed to be the most exciting store for new music in the UK! Last weekend I was in there and on the wall they were reccomending some electronica 12" as: "Really dirty, one for fans of I Monster and Dizzy Rascal." I can't explain how rubbish I think this is. It's almost as bad as that recent issue of VICE (they think they're SOOO cool!) where they talked about Wiley amidst a round-up of UK Hip Hop. OK now I am being a snob, wink. The Rough Trade store has become such a ghetto. They managed to pick up on Jungle circa 1995, that wasn't too bad. Anyway I despair. It's not anyone's fault, I'm just picking on them, but beatnik kulcha (electronica and rock) is at it's lowest ebb, it's most insular. Makes you want to set up your own frigging label.

Shopping in Soho.

(Sipping Bacardi on chaise longue) In the spirit of meta-criticism I will no longer be reviewing records, only record stores. Following in this same vein we won't be talking genre, only distributors. We'll be discussing pressing-plants, audio software, and styli. It's blowing in the wind ladies!

Does Soho need any more record stores? There's a ridiculous amount at the moment. Walking south down Berwick Street there's Wotsit, Selectadisc, Reckless Dance, Reckless Rock, Soul Jazz, Koobla, Daddy Kool, Vinyl Junkies, the Music and Video Exchange and Sister Ray. On D'Arblay Street there's Uptown and Black Market. Walk South down Poland Street and you have Mr. Bongo and now ANOTHER store, Phonica.

I thought Deal Real (the Hip-Hop vendor) had shut down and tut-tutted to myself about the areas over-saturation with stores, ruminating (gleefully!) about the collapse of the dance music market and then found it had only moved round the corner to Carnaby Street! What's that all about?

Phonica is quite a handy shop, the typically "eclectic" round-up (ie no Garage or Gabba), and healthy selection of Kompakt/Perlon/Playhouse. In this manner it reminded me of Koobla. The store has a much better design finish than Koobla (upmarket like Soul Jazz innit) replete with coffee table littered with Tufluv's FACT magazine and retro furniture for the punters to "chill" out.

My friend tells me that Phonica was set up by the same team (Heidi and Simon) who were originally charged with setting up Koobla by a wealthy backer, before finding themselves swamped in his chosen staff. So they found themselves a backer of their own and set up their own store. More power...

Express Yourself (Correctly).

I just got an email from Mrs. Charles Wright. Eva tells me that:

"Charles Wright is not related to Easy E in any way or fashion."

My sincere apologies.

Desi.

Wiley's Hats.

Fugs Love.

Just picked up Ed Sanders's book on the Manson Family for a song. Sanders was in The Fugs. I remember Lester Bangs raving about this book, knocked out by Sanders' post-Fugs acumen, and doubly impressed by a story Sanders told in which he claimed he had broken into Brooklyn Zoo and had sex with a gazelle. They were giants etc etc.

Black Comedy.

Franklyn Ajaye isn't that funny, but I love the LP cover on this. Ajaye manipulates nine foot high stereotypes; makes hardcore culture risible for safe white middle-class folk. He sounds like he's high on grass, giggling effervescently, having SO MUCH FUN on stage! To be fair he is pretty amusing at times, if deadeningly incorrect. Fr'instance the skit in which he assumes he's gonna "whup the ass" of the chinese ping-pong player, who (obviously) pastes him. This goes out to two of the crew who are fighting back the weed.

And I also dug out this. I love Richard Pryor. I like the way he pitches cynical up against cuddly. Isn't he great in Superman too? Pryor, unlike Ajaye, is no performing monkey. I guess I should have an Eddie Murphy record here too to make up a trilogy. People are always telling me to watch "Raw." This week there's going to be a few other non-musical records too.

Nick Cave, you pussy.

Got a text message from my brother the day before yesterday:

"Just saw Nick Cave buying a cashmere scarf! Pussy!"

Then another text 5 minutes later:

"Fuckin aussie sell out batty man. Nice scarf, mind."

Interlude

Then yesterday he admitted he'd gone and said hello on the basis that I (his brother) ALWAYS pester celebrities. His exact words:

Toby: "Sorry Mr. Cave, I'm going to pester you."

Nick: "Aw, no warries mate."

Toby: "I just wanted you to know that I once won a 40 quid prize at school for a poem in which I plagarised some of your work."

Nick: "I'll ave arf of that."

You're joking right!

Phew! I thought the prices for old Ardkore records were going down (Sell! Sell! Sell!), but clearly not. It's time to crack open the champers!

Random Jpegs.

My nutty mate Gwen has been sending me JPEGS recently.

Gwen says of this: "heres what i'm listening to right now, unknown 10" issue with full music, cut-up text, sound fx. very nice." Mmm, I didn't know Goddard had put out a record. He's a bit of hero Goddard isn't he? Could I afford it? Was it even being offered up for my purchase? Like hell it was! Jamois you bastard.

I've a feeling he's mentioned this lot to me before. 1960's French maverick builds musical robots years before Kraftwerk?

Pope taps foot.

Gwen's in town this week and he's threatening to get me drunk.

Woebot on Toast.

I've been wanting to comment on this for ages. In it Tom weighs up the pros and cons of various approaches to talking about (ahem) Garage. I thought it was a really straightforward, honest, heartfelt reflection which had much wider ramifications. I think he pigeonholed me pretty accurately too, not as "Someone who has dug into the context" but probably "someone who I can relate to as a listener?" Tom's reflection has come at a time when I'm undergoing a lot of criticism for what I'm doing here. Not just at the hands of celebrity bloggers hiding behind pseudonyms on discussion boards but also via a stream of "bashment-googlers", like this one. The message I'm getting LOUD and CLEAR across the board is that what I do isn't properly researched enough.

Not properly researched. The thing is, this is JUST a weblog. It's not a manuscript in the making. (grooms himself) I'd flatter myself by saying that it uses the medium of both the web (graphics, downloads, animation) and the blog (fleeting daily digestables, the personal angle) okay. I absolutely love doing it, but I'd make no claims for the earth-shattering importance of it. I'm just fucking about; having a laugh. Actually (here in response to Marcello) the Sun Ra thing wasn't really a proper bit of research. You were right. It was OK. It was alright. It was put together from what I remembered, what a few friends told me. I didn't go to bed thinking "Ha ha now I've showed them who is the greatest!" I went to bed thinking "Thank fuck I've got that one out the way." In fact relative to the shite I usually post (titter) it WAS quite well researched. The best thing I could say about it was that it mapped out the terrain pretty accurately. I didn't ask anyone to say nice things about it, on the contrary I asked people to come up with suggestions to improve it. Anyway I'm sorry if you (Marcello) thought it was crap, some people liked it.....er, I think.

As for the "bashment googlers"** who are on my case, again sorry folks. In fact Luke was the first to pick me up on my inadequate coverage of Garage. Since then Deuce's*** Chantelle Fiddy has also had a crack. And subsequent to that I've had 2 or 3 wideboys pitch into me. I've followed the "Ardkore continuum" pretty intensely since 1991. I've wandered off from time to time to check out other scenes (in 1993, 1997 and 2002) but I've been buying these records since then. I've never read in depth about these scenes. Certainly before the loqualisation of 2003 (when everyone started speaking in tongues) there was no real surfeit of language anyway. Now, along with super-chatty MCs, we have an explosion of gossip, where once there were just dumb monolithic 12"s and cat numbers. Previously, in the absence of the kind of social theatrics which you could always find rock scribes banging on about (ooh Jack White punches out a member of the Von Bodines!), the super-detatched poetic/philosophic approach which Reynolds and Eshun practised made a lot of sense.

The way I guess I talk about Garage is almost entirely from the perspective of the vinyl junkie. I'm not tuned into the pirates (often) like Luka, I'm not exploring the textureology in purple prose like wot Tim does (and yes I guess we do have a similar approach in that we're both detached). I'm certainly a less useful commentator than Reynolds too (of course, natch!) because he brings a depth of philosophical understanding to what he's talking about. But I know a good record when I hear it, I believe through sheer investment of interest I've earned the right to have an opinion and I try and impart some of the excitement I feel. Have you ever read an Urban magazine? (rhetoric innit) They're murderously dull as a rule.

I don't mind criticism that much. I didn't enjoy the wholesale writing-off of music-blogging as a practice which Marcello was keen to make us swallow when he shut down COM. That implicated too many people's endeavour in his desire to declare "It is finished!", but I'm not averse to constructive criticism. The worst thing about criticism however is that it builds up your own self-conciousness, and if I'm self-concious when I'm writing I find I get bogged-down. I start "writing" and the moment one starts "writing", in my opinion the energy, life and interest of whatever it is that you actually thought you were doing evaporates. It starts to become boring to write and boring to read. Thankfully there aren't many "writers" in the blogosphere.

I do TRY and get my facts straight (were there many glaring innaccuracies in Ra piece?), because essentially that's laudable, but I'd warn readers that what I'm up to is imparting my enthusiasm. I don't really want to get mired in research and I'll freely admit that sometimes I haven't got a fucking clue what I'm talking about (er, Italo for starters). Information only becomes "facts" when the last bit of energy it represents had has been sapped from it. A five word news flash which sucks you into your chair is followed 6 months later a 10,000 page tome which you struggle to read. If I was to take a more clinical approach, rather than proceed with wide-eyed innocence and enthusiasm you'd find this blog increasingly brittle. You'd also find me staking out territories jealously (facts here as the gatekeepers of the monographic academic), my ass freezing in some cultural backwater. On the contrary I'd like to remain impartial, free-roaming and to keep having fun. Even if it means I talk a little shite and fail to ever be an expert on anything.

-----------------------

*I enjoyed Marcello's 1985 thing, and was about to post a friendly remark along the lines of "plenty to agree with here" then found him slagging me off anonymously on ILM. Sighs.

** Put "Eskimo Dance" into Google. Hey presto. Woebot!

**There's a vibe at Deuce. I'm now a subscriber, so maybe my facts will improve...

Back to Skool.

Was delighted to come across this ad in the back of yesterdays paper. I called the number and they said come on down. Which was on the floor above Office Angels on Oxford Street. I waited 10 minutes in the lobby (Aspidestra and a coffee table straining with back issues of Mojo and Q) before I was called in to see Tony.

Tony asked me if I'd had any experience of this kind of thing, whether I had any University qualifications (not that I needed them he said). I said I'd done some writing on the Internet, where I'd written exclusively about music for OVER A YEAR! Tony said: "Oh you think you're that bloke who's got a publishing deal do you! Wise up sucker!" He said you don't know anything sonny. Tony had apparently interviewed some of the big acts in the eighties: McCartney, T'Pau, Peter Tosh. People who had shifted serious units. Oh so you like that funny music do you Matthew! Tony proceeded to tell me some toe-curling stories about life on the road with Stiff Little Fingers. It's not what you know, any monkey can shuffle around on Google, it's WHO you know, and he hinted that previous graduates had been able to rifle through his little black book. One guy apparently works for Sky's magazine on the back of a phone-call Tony had made to a mate.

For the first 120 quid Tony would tell me what gigs I should attend, and he would mark 5 gig reviews. He'd also provide me with 3 recent promotional releases (2 Rock and 1 Dance) which I would have to review. One 500 word review and one 100 word review of each gig, again for his perusal. We laughed about the 500 review, apparently that gives the students a right headache. Tony said he could sort me out with a cracked copy of Microsoft Word if I needed one ("Word is your friend Matthew!") and even a laptop ("not the latest model, but satisfactory") I might even be able to get some things published through the course, not for money, but it always looks good on the old CV. The Academy has strong links with a load of mags.

Okay, that's not true.

This course is actually the brainchild of me, Dave Stelfox and Mickey Toughlove; and if you've got a blog or are a regular contributor to ILM you get a 25% discount (not applicable to over forties). We've got some big names down as Course Contributors; none of whom we've asked yet, but hopefully we'll get clearance before we publish the sylabbus.

Okay, that's not true either.

Dido...

...or Dildo as we refer to her in my house. Well, it makes us laugh. Isn't her career supposed to have tanked? Yet I noticed on TOTP that her Album is Number One! Will TOTP please sort out their bloody graphics; what's with these minute-long interstitials shown on horrific angles? And while they're at it they should sack that Kash idiot immediately. (As per k-punk's recent demands).

I have connections with Dido in a 6-degrees-of-separation fashion. Nothing to be particularly proud of, so I can boast of them freely. The house she lives in in Islington's previous occupant was my Dad's best friend; which was (a factoid for all the Grime fans) in the same square she was brought up in. Also my ex-girlfriend (may she rest in peace) introduced me to Rollo, her brother, at a Warehouse party a decade or so ago. That was before he was Faithless. I was interested to meet him largely cos of The Woodentops. I reckon The Woodentops, with their balearic take on The Feelies "Crazy Rhythms", might be entering the hip zone any month now.

Dido appeared in a dream I had last night, and all very chaste it was too. A local Jewish Deli had asked for a photo of her outside the shop holding some of their food. Later in the same dream I teased her (metaphorically pulling pigtails I guess) about being famous. Am I revealing more about myself than I should Dr. Freud?

What's Dido's recipe for success? Look at her new LP's title (and no I don't own a copy): "Life for Rent." You might as well call your record: "I am *AVAILABLE*" That's pretty canny mass-psychology, she looks like the kind of girl you wouldn't have too much trouble asking out for a drink either. Girls like her as well...

There was something I wanted to say to Dido (shaking fist at the sky): "Stop playing with my mind beyatch!"

Wazzup!

A picture of a Banana by Dick Bruna, author of the Miffy Books. Ring any bells?

A minor "State of the Blog" address I'm afraid.

1) Yay, I got mentioned in Ben William's Metacrit round up at Slate! Thanks to all the Slate massive.

2) Hi to Stephen Pastel, who I bumped into in Woolworths in Glasgow at Christmas Eve. My first words were, "Oh Yeah, you know my friend Jon Dale!", to which Stephen replied, "Isn't he that BLOGGER?" They'll write it on our gravestones Jon.

3) I hope everyone's enjoying their CDs and such. I've burnt through a stack of 50 or so blanks keeping up with the demand for sounds and thanks to David Laister in Austria for sending me the Sharky Major tune on vinyl. What the hell was doing out there?

4) There is an absolutely HUGE piece in the pipeline at the moment. (Cue embarrassed shuffling by Woebot readers; er HUGE, doesn't that spell like *really boring"?) Let's hope not folks! I've actually put more time and energy into this than any other previous post either here or at TWANBOC, it has required alot of R'n'D. Hope you enjoy when I finally deliver.

Milkshake.

I was driving down the Portobello when I came across this poster, illuminated in bright sunshine, red pitched against a deep blue sky. What an awesomely arresting image! I stopped the car and snapped it. It's a bit of genius design, utterly uncluttered by marketing microtype; just Kelis in pink sitting on top of a gigantic milkshake.

Very naughty of course, and in keeping with the high-school imagery of the song:

My milk shake brings all the boys to the yard,
and their life, it's better than yours,
damn right it's beter than yours,
I can teach you, but I have to charge!

The single came out ages ago in the USA, and for some reason it's only been available over here as a Star Trak Import, only now gaining a British release proper. I think it was the only good Neptunes record of 2003; Snoop Dogg's "Beautiful" had it's fans, but it does nothing for me. And "Milkshake", what a strange song! It reminds me of nothing so much as the curious "left-footed" club tracks on Sleeping Bag records, like Nicky Siano's "Tiger Stripes" and The Jamaica Girls "Need Somebody New", too artful and sexy to groove conventionally, even seeming to move backwards. Another reference point must be Eve's "Gotta Man" which also pimped a naive, insouciant, lollipop-licking chorus. I mean, lets be frank!

I thought The Neptunes had shaken off Kelis. I read interviews with her where she dropped Pharrell's name one too many times; telling how she was involved in helping to conceive their clothing line. Unlike Missy, who *wrote* a massive amount of Timbaland's material, she seemed a dispensible pawn in The Neptunes fame game. I that found really sad. I liked her attitude alot, she seemed sufficently courageous to hold on to her gentle sexuality in the media glare. I thought she dared to be tender. Look at a woman like Madonna, and I'll probably be labelled sexist for this, but is she not a bit TOO ballsy? I respect powerful individual women, but isn't softness an incredibly pursuasive tool?

Trying to think of precedents for the kind of imagery Kelis uses here within the field of pop, I came up with a few leads, but none which had the same psychological depth.

Here for instance is Janet Jackson off of her debut LP cover. There are similarities here with the "Lolita" imagery Kelis is manipulating, though obviously (well it is the Jackson family!) there are more complicated overtones. Janet was probably very young here, whilst Kelis is a fully-grown woman.

Iconographically this is my favourite pairing:

Donna Summer from the reverse sleeve of "Love to Love You Baby', obviously a head-to-head combination of Black Southern Belle (itself a powerful detournement):

Vivien Leigh in "Gone With The Wind"

and Fragonard pastiche:

There are mildly disturbing overtones to "Milkshake", not just owing to it's US High School Disco trappings, but also (in this poster) of the commodification of women. "Take a lick" the image says. The project's head keeps it's head above water largely because we trust in Kelis's control over her own image. However none of this could be conceived as shocking in a culture dominated by the likes of Britney Spears and Girls Aloud and their desperately cynical use of similar imagery.

Of course K-Punk (at the old address) discussed with reference to Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty" and Adolf McGrrot, the notion that women pimping their sexuality who were under the impression that they were liberating themselves, were sadly deluded. I have strong sympathy with the idea when run alongside Kylie Minogue and Ms. Aguilera, but such is the understatement of Kelis's tack that I'm more than inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. Certainly I can't bring myself to get overly worried about it in this instance.

But take a look at this!

The similarity is undeniable, well OK she isn't wearing any clothes... Mel Ramos had, early on, a profile matching Lichtenstein's and Warhol's. It always amuses me to see his paintings in the same tomes alongside more knowing self-reflexive "sexists" like Tom Wesselmann and Allen Jones. Ramos is the Russ Meyer of Modern Art. I think he's an interloper, someone who just happened to share some approaches to the construction of pictures which filtered through from Graphic Design as Hockney et al. Ramos's later work really shows him up to be the tawdry (yet funny and fascinating) artist he is.

Very similar image to the Kelis "Milkshake" layout though producing very different codes. Oh, and have a laugh at this! It's really so wonderfully awful!

Kelis got married to Nas. Did you hear the story of what happened what they met? He said: "Wow, I'm so glad to meet you, you're the girl I'm going to marry." And she said: "Well that's funny cos you're the guy I always wanted to marry." The lady knows what she wants.

Euro Disco.

Frequent readers might remember a feverish craving I had for Italo Disco. Actually the mission to put out forgotten classics from this period is well under way. Beyond recent, official, releases of music of the era on the "The Secret History" comp, there are avilable semi-legal things like the boot of Scotch's "Penguin Invasion" on Dig-It International, shadier records like the Automan bootlegs (which feature stuff like Kebekelektik's "War Dance" and disco edits like "Preaches and Prunes", rumoured to be a Ron Hardy-style cut-up executed by K. Alexei back in the 80s). Furthermore there are the Music Box series of bootlegs (dedicated somewhat spuriously to reviving tracks played at the legendary club of the same name), quite a number of which I picked up early last year.

I did a little more research and tracked down this earlier series of reissues put out in the mid-to-late eighties by the ZXY label. From 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 right up to 15. That's a hell of alot of music, and surely just the tip of the iceberg. Scary really. The thing is, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that what I've heard through recent forays "in the field" (ya dig?) doesn't really put parmesan on my fusili. There is a slight emptiness to the sound. That's never really upset me in Detroit Techno but somehow the emptiness in THAT music conveyed an ontology, a philosophy; it's a thrilling void that one finds in those records. Italo on the other hand seems a little gormless, a bit bland. I'm still hoping that the tracks (ahem) I've been promised by my esteemed colleague Dan Selzer change this perspective. I'd MUCH rather it was a goldmine of inspiring tunes. It might be worth mentioning that Optimo's DJ Twitch was sharing his own lukewarm feelings towards the genre with me the other night in Glasgow. Maybe this is one point where the retro impulse might run aground; likewise it's rumoured that Belgian New-Beat (which is currently garnering support) is also not all it's cracked up to be. How can one make such broad generalisations about Genres? Easy really.

One of the reasons I was disappointed to find Italo Disco not living up to my hopes for it was that I had finally worked out a way of getting to grips with Micro-House through it. Micro-House, I flashed, at it's best and most proper is the living extension of Italo Disco. Not a tributary of Techno as had been previously thought. Micro-House is an urbane, cosmopolitan, existential, sexy dance music. The same attributes characterised the colder European end of Disco. Just picture the Italo Disco fantasy of glitterball discos in exclusive ski resorts, of fur and yaucts, of upwardly mobile philosophy graduates from the Sorbonne dancing clutching champagne bottles; and map that onto Micro-House. Makes perfik sense dunnit. OK sure this generation of mainland Europeans are cautiosly camoflagued in combat gear, but the accoutrements of "the street" are a millimetre thin veneer. I guess it's an apposite symmetry, because I struggle to get any pleasure from Micro-House too. We'll see.

Oh yeah whatever.

(screams) aaaaaaaaargh!

If i want to write a load of shite I bloody well will. So here goes:

It's been an unusual few weeks at Heronbone my first suspicion that something was "a brewing" came on December 23rd, 2003. Part the cloud of your festive hangover and think back to that day just before Christmas. Young Luke, or Luka Vandross (as he quite occasionally refers to himself) accused senior dance music journalist Mr. Simon Reynolds of being "a moany old bastard". He proceeded to pepper his prognosis of the direction of the musical movement foreigners are referring to as "Grime", with what looked like cyrillic icons. Huddled amidst the more recognisable text were euro signs, letter "a's" appended with the french circumflex, dollar signs and the trade-mark icon. How very curious! I checked the esteemed Mr. Reynolds own daily journal and there seemed no attempt to rebut the young pretender's insult. No hint of annoyance, no sly post explaining that he was neither "old", nor "moany" nor "born out of wedlock". It seemed that young master Luke had failed to arouse the ire he seemed desirous of.

A few days passed. Mr. Davis presumably became involved with the business of Christmas. I'd hesitate before drawing comparisons between the firebrand and shit-stirrer we know and love and Tiny Tim from Dickens' Christmas Carol. Still loosening his belt from his hearty turkey dinner Davis took time to draw our attention to a squabble that had occurred a few weeks before between a Mr. Robin Carmody and a Mr. Nick Southall. It must have seemed to Davis that there was yet more fun to be had at goading these two highly-respected intellectuals into further infighting and mutual recriminations. Davis was careful to provide hyperlinks so inclined people would be enabled to soak up each person's arguments and mull over which polymath they would be most advantageously aligned with. Davis iced the cake with a scurillous truc of his own invention, a fight the two great thinkers were accused of having in the past: "sparked when an argument concerning the merits of Talk, Talk's maudlin magnum opus 'laughing stock' reached boiling point, Carmody accusing Southall of being 'a pussycleet' and Southall respoding in kind, calling Carmody 'a battyhole.'" Nestled in there, lest Southall assume he was the recipient of Davis's support (hinted at earlier in Davis's description of Southall's response as "spirited") was a below-the-belt jab at Talk Talk, widely understood to be Southall's favourite pop group.

On the following day, Sunday 28th December 2003 Mr. Davis started his "blog-du-jour" by tossing a compliment to Australian Blogger Mr. Jon Dale. Feeling perhaps that, amidst his already commited and subsequent posts, he would be wise to have the good Mr. Dale "on-side". Keen on this day as well to maintain his own "internet-image" as a high-minded gentleman, an intellectual at heart, Mr. Davis discussed a book he had been suggested might be worth perusing by one "jamie." There, however, once again, was that charmingly underhand heronbone compliment: "pretty (good/fascinating) as it goes" suggesting Davis, whilst aware of the book's virtues, might not feel to compelled to pack it with him on a long transatlantic cruise.

Yet Davis's hidden agenda reared it's ugly head once again on Wednesday December 31st, 2003. He backed Mr. David Stelfox into a metaphorical corner with this: "stelfox says 'I'm not particularly down with narcissistic, anarchic, undisciplined, self-indulgent ranting, wherever it may appear.' b-b-but, but, dave, i thought you liked heronbone!" Presumably Mr. Stelfox felt duly bound to approach the maverick Davis and insist that he did in fact "like his writing," that he was actually "down with the heronbone thing." Davis cackling from the sidelines, confident in his own daily journal, unconcerned (susbsequent to this political artifice he had constructed) of Mr. Stelfox's opinion of him. Very wicked! And then, dear reader, I too became sucked into Davis's psychopathological vortex. Upon first confronting Davis's comments: "matt's right of course, if you want to pretend to be a music critic this is the place to be" I felt delighted to receive such approbation from a colleague. To be linked by means of hypertext. Especially from a mind as sharp and widely-respected as Mr. Davis's. Then, however, the sentence, or "nearly sentence", as it was deprived the dignity of a full-stop, sunk past my outer-defences and troubled my own self-worth. Pretending to be a music critic, but, but, but... Davis went on to remark: "sometimes i like pretending to be a music critic, but it's not a role i inhabit with any conviction. sometimes i like pretneding to be a poet, and sometimes, when i'm really excited i like to be pretend to be divinely inspired." And yes, at that moment I too saw the genius of heronbone. All the other bloggers, why they're just "writers", wordsmiths, pen-pushers, plodders, ham-actors. The word "writers" i kept returning to. Yes, I'm just a "writer". I'm not touched by divine fire! I'm not a radio, dammnit, I'm a filing cabinet! All these dense feelings of self-doubt bore down on me.

The next day, Thursday 1st January 2004, Davis returned, not to wish us the best of festive cheer, but to threaten us not to "bite" his style: "for the new year, if any boy gets paid for ripping off heronbone i'm coming round your yard and busting up your hands with a nine pound hammer, you'll be typing up articles with your nose for the rest of your life. don't think i'm joking either, thats my resolution." Actually I was momentarily relieved, for though it was blunt I knew from whence this statement was issuing. I myself had recently expressed a thinly-disguised unease at being an amateur surrounded by the cream of the world's music journalists, and like Davis, seemingly unable to secure a proper writing attachment. Davis rounded off his day by remarking: "i had a couple of beers and a couple of zoots on me own last night and left it at that, and thats the way i wanted it so fuck off," which was, once again a legitimate expression of his own feelings. I myself had been in a nightclub in Glasgow (Optimo if you're curious) on my own, where I made the mistake of writing a post on my handheld communicator describing the scene as it unfurled before me before posting it on the internet, whereupon I discovered I was in the bar of the club, not the main room. Thus that the broadcasted statement was not only inaccurate but potentially hugely embarrassing. Yes, I too like Mr. Davis knew what it was to be "abstract" on New Years Eve. I noticed a day or so later Mr. Stelfox "big up" Mr. Davis, saluting his sound method of dealing with the worst night of the year. Perhaps here was David's heartfelt approach to Mr. Davis's earlier remarks.

On Friday January 2nd 2004, Mr Davis lay his cards on the table: "here's my prediction for 2004, the breakup (acrimoniously preferably) of the blogsphere. we'll alkl splinter off into little subgroups, which will split again and agin, getting smaller each time, like fundamentalist protestant sects, with a new schism each week. people will write things like, of sourse,now there is no 'blogspohere' as such, just a series of small sattelittes without a planet to orbit." Plain as day. And I'll wager the machivellian thinker Vandross sees his central roll in the coming the year as engineering this collapse in our wholesome communication. One might not like his dastardly tactics but his nerve is breathtaking. Davis proceeded by issuing a spine-chilling statement to the broader inkies: "the other thing i'm dreading is the amount of pure bollocks thats going to be written about grime in the magazines and the newspapers ('you can't defeat the griminess') i'm seeing it already and my heart sinks, please please please do a little research before writing down your ill-considered, ill-informed opinions to paper, if you don't know your plasticman from your wiley, your dubstep from your griminess, your jammers from your digital mystics", which undoubtably must have set many teeth on the "so-called-blogosphere" on edge. I know I was worried. Why? Because I quite patently know NOTHING whatsoever about Grime. I buy the records, oh sure, but when the chips or down that just means I have(n't) expendable income. People are now really worrying. Deuce magazine's subscriptions double in a matter of hours. Argos sells out of sturdy FM Radios. Davis proceeds by lauding the widely respected Spizzazzz crew, a husband and wife team, widely acknowledged on the Internet as well-versed in their particular topics, and thus a safe political harbour for many an internet skirmish. Once again I marvelled as Davis's acumen and astuteness, covering his rear so superbly. Finally, and bringing you up to date, Davis lambasted the press (and thus perhaps tacitly the Internet Grime contingent, Reynolds spared here): "hipsters were laughing at this music last year, don't forget that, probably still would be if it weren't for reynolds and the 'trickle-down effect' so if you realise that you're like that, that you have no real love for the music, you just namedrop it to seem like you're still down with the kids then you really need to take a long hard look at the contents of your soul, maybe take a couple of months of work, think about the direction your life's going, how did you become reduced to this? grubbing degenerate, pederast by proxy..." My lord he's scary.

Where all this is leading I have no idea, though don't be surprised if you see a serrid line of second-string internet music music fanatics swinging from ropes o'er Tower Bridge, the furious Mr. Davis roaring with delight and pinching prostitutes at a nearby tavern. Oh yes, I'll be there too, swinging in the chill January air, my tongue lolling from my mouth while seagulls peck my eyes.

New Years Resolutions.

1. No to Profesional Envy.

I've never read music journalism in the broadsheets. Like, er, why bother? Surely it's just third-hand insights, the party line by proxy? So why pick on the poor shmucks who practice it?

I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to earn a regular crust from writing (as those people do); but then again it might NOT be nice. It might ruin a decent lark in the pursuit of a few pennies. Besides, writing on music in the regular press would fail to enable me to do a number of things I'm wont to do. There's no talking about music unless it revolves around the #new# or recently reissued. The kind of music one's expected to cover is largely dull, dictated by what you'd expect to find stocked on the high street (though kudos Reynolds and to warriors like David Stelfox and his broadsheet ragga ting) There's no space for personal digression (surely that's what made someone like Lester Bangs's writing so compulsive, the thrilling autobiographical subjectivity of it). There's no room to just pin-up a record sleeve and invite folk to drool. Certainly there's no room for Flash, QuickTime Movies or downloadable mp3s. Doesn't leave much left that is enticing to my mind...

Also (try as I might) I haven't managed to acquire an inferiority complex about *BLOGGING*. As if somehow it's a disgrace to NOT be in print and an amateur to boot. This is a conviction that has grown, rather than lessened during the past year. Curiously enough, going hand-in-hand with it, a respect for journals like The Wire. I used to be openly jealous of it's regular contributors and rather down on it's direction. Now I think it's great that they're there, doing their own thing and surviving.

All that remains of Newspaper Music Journalism as a stand-alone ambition (I'm highlighting it in, ahem, my New Year's Speech, cos it's clearly SUCH a bugbear for many of my colleagues) is the will to be a self-appointed pompous turd (replete with toadlike personality shot) with a sideline in TV "Rent-a-quote." There's nothing particularly wrong with that, it's just a bit lifeless.* You see folks, THIS is where's it. THIS (throws back head dramatically, arms outstretched) is the frontline of style and insight.

*Though AOL/Warner I'd sure LOVE a slice of your pie ;-D Bearing in mind I'd need at least two lawyers, one for copyright, the other for slander.

2. Yes to New Words.

In 2004 I'd like to use new words like "malodorous" and "obloquy." I will be examining Heronbone and the Oxford English Dictionary for fresh text to plunder.

3. No to Bumfights.

No to locking-horns with other homeless drunks. Readers may have noticed a mellower approach in my dealing with the "charming" offhand insults of my peers recently. I aim to continue this less heavy-handed tactic in 2004, and with any luck I won't be picked on by any old dudes.

4. Yes to Repeating Myself.

In 2004 I'm aiming to repeat exactly what I said in 2003. Expect to hear the same anecdotes dressed up, the same pop trivia regurgitated and the same Reynolds-derived musical angle duplicated. I've come to the conclusion that (coughs) an artist can't be expected to "do other peoples styles," and so look forward to an identical image of last year's hamfisted guff.

You can't say fairer than that.

Nonsensical 10.

1. First bit of nonsense:

Paul, who it seems has completely given up blogging (Well dahling it's so 2003!) sent me this requesting I post it. Presumably Eden, who also seems to be somewhat switched off, told him to fak off, that he wouldn't put it up at Uncarved. This isn't NYPLM you nutter Paul. It's Me Me Me striktly. As I'm being asked to edit it I thought I'd take a few liberties with the material:

Engelbert Humperdink at Bed, Sheffield on Friday

I was too knackered to stay til the end, but the standout of what I heard was Jus a Rascal, which was a blitzkrieg-like, its overwhelming, massed-voices monstrosity had everyone screaming. Quite fantastic. Though his freestyle over the Diwali rhythm was also excellent. I left when Semtex tried to get him to rap over PIMP -- I don't think Engelbert Humperdink was much into it, and three times in one night for that track was too much for me, so I wandered off.

2. Second bit of nonsense:

That Kylie Minogue track "Slow." The only bad thing about it is, er, Kylie. I thought maybe some other people could version the same riddim. Firstly I had the idea that a few older women might want to have a crack. Grace Jones or Diamanda Galas maybe. But then thought, nah, too many vocal histrionics, like that daft Bjork bird. Then I thought, Alison Statton (of The Young Marble Giants/Weekend) would be good. She nearly can't sing! Then I thought what about someone who really can't sing. What about Scott Somedisco? Top idea eh!

3. Third bit of nonsense:

My favorite piece of music this year (hands down winner) has been "Let's go fly a Kite." From The Mary Poppins Soundtrack. I have heard this more times than any piece of music EVER. I'm being entirely serious. You have a baby and you'll see. They want the same thing over and over again. Every time I hear it (we all dance to it in a circle in the living-room holding hands) shivers wrack my body. It's just sheer loveliness.

4. Fourth bit of nonsense:

Heard Wiley (was it or was it the BPM crew?) on Delight 103.3 FM spinning back-to-back dubplates. The excitement was almost unbearable. The following were incredible:

D Double E on a cut-up of Dead Prez's Hip-Hop. Lunacy. The original was caned at Eskimo dance actually, which slightly surprised me as Dead Prez (if I'm not mistaken) have a slightly boho rep. They never come across as _that_ street. I adore it regardless, nuff bass innit. Bought it at the time (natch) and slightly disappointed to see them fail to deliver on it.

A re-version of "Know We", called "Know Mix" the riddim sporting what sounds like a loop of Bulgarian Gypsy Violin.

A re-mix of Doogz's "Hold Me Down"

Another new Doogz tune.

5. Fifth bit of nonsense:

Word on the grapevine is that there exists a Calypso version of Gary Numan's "Cars" made in the mid-eighties. Someone find it, reissue it and put a stop that Senor Coconut rubbish. At once!

6. Sixth bit of nonsense:

Heard Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs interviewing Emmylou Harris (sweet selection: Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Neil Young, Springsteen, er, Daniel Lanois). Sue Lawley, who used to live beneath my dear brother, made *SUCH* an arse of herself everytime she said: "Graham, or Gram, Parsons..." It was received pronunciation purgatory.

7. Seventh bit of nonsense:

Just been round at my friend Steve's house. He showed me this photo which he took in Togo*.

It's a group of people gathering around a secret drum. This drum was taken in war from the neighboring Ashanti tribe 150 years ago. You have to have special status to see it, that's why it's being hidden. As recently as ten years ago, someone who looked at this drum, who wasn't supposed to have, was beaten to death.

*Scan courtesy Blogistan

8. Eighth bit of nonsense:

Except in truth there's nothing nonsensical 'bout this. Stuart Argabright has a blog.

9. Ninth bit of nonsense.

Go see Jess's great end of end of year wrap-up.

10. Tenth bit of nonsense:

Juicy, juicy mix being posted tomorrow which'll be the last worthwhile post of this year. 'Appy Xmas all crew.

Regular Bollocks.

Just discovered Jon Dale's "review" of of the Les Vampyrettes 12" (stifles own laughter). What's with the "reviews" thing that's biting blogdom right now? What's wrong with half-arsed, poorly-researched, badly-punctuated rants? Like wot I do innit. Dale remarks: "Hmm. I think Matt’s gilding the lily a little with this 12”, but only insofar as I think it’s quite good and he thinks it’s freakishly wonderful." (sides literally split aside with mirth) Jon you bastard! (shakes fist) I think that calls us quits after my general slaughtering of the Hobbits-with-Acoustic-Guitars massive.

Big up to Robin Carmody for picking up some of the points from my Delia and Daphne spiel, and also check his spellbinding thing on Westwood. This made me laugh: "The middle-class self-loathing...of Ingram's Radiophonic piece gets to me somewhat.." (winks) Gosh, I'm terribly sorry!

I would like to pick up Robin on one thing, he remarks:

"I wouldn't be afraid to call Delia Derbyshire's best work Art and call "Get Low" or, indeed, Keith Mansfield's "Teenage Chase" Art *at the same time*; there's no contradiction to me, they can both co-exist."

My point was not aimed at the "reception" of culture, and I'm not concerned with discussions of high-vs-low per se, rather how the creator describes him/herself. I guess I don't have much truck with ANYONE calling themselves them an artist, though I'd probably be happier to hear Lil Jon & East Side Boyz call themselves artists than Delia. Ya get me? Surely that's the prerogative of the consumer anyway, to decide what is art and what isn't? If it vibrates it's art! It simply bothers me that official culture, safe and funded (with tea-breaks and biscuits) so easily gets treated like art while the real stuff gets flushed down the loo.

Maybe that makes me a Nazi? I hope not, though I'd be curious to know.

The Les Vampyrettes Saga.

I must admit to being continually amazed by the distances involved in this Internet malarkey. Just like a kid. I hope I never get blase about chatting to folk dotted all around the globe. The Les Vampyrettes 12" which I've been championing has been a case in point. By-the-by, put "Les Vampyrettes" into Google!

As a result of reading about the record here, my pal cAREFUL kID from San Francisco (who works in Amoeba records there) picked up the record in Japan, where he was on tour playing bass in an Emo band. Jon Dale at Worlds of Possibility picked up a copy on his recent trip to Melbourne. Both were good deals by the sound of it.

You may remember Michael Manners (from Germany) emailing me trying to buy it off me, and subsequent to that Holger Czukay ripping him a copy onto CD. My friend, notorious record-dealer Sacha Dieu found one in London the other day (he called me on his mobile from the store: "Is this the REALLY DARK one you played me the other day?") and so I fixed him up with Michael. Sacha's price was too high apparently. The deal fell through.

Just last night I was having a beer with Sacha and he revealed that he'd sold the record to Jerry Dammers. Apparently Jerry loved it. Sacha told Jerry he thought he might have found it too dark. Jerry said nonsense, and put on Bruno Nicolai's Soundtrack to "Marquis De Sade." Word!

Missed in 2003.

The following I tried desperately hard to track down this year but failed. I haven't heard Rat Race, but the others are all absolutely frigging amazing. And the bad news with the Grime is that the chance of finding them in the future is practically zero, though I heard a rumour (direct from one of Wiley's entourage) that upon the release of the LP they're going to reissue all his back catalogue. Place your orders folks!

Harry Toddler: Donkey Kick
Sharkie Major: It Ain't A Game
Danny Weed: Rat Race
Matthew Johnson: Typerope

Typerope is without a doubt one of my top five tracks this year. If you liked Isolee you HAVE to hear this.

Not 2003.

Records I didn't buy this year.

The Luomo LP.
The Outkast LP.
The Pitman LP.
The Ricard Villalobos LP.
The Rapture LP.
The Basement Jaxx LP.
The Kylie Minogue LP.
The Herbert LP.
The Prefuse 73 LP.
The Four Tet LP.
The Belle & Sebastian LP.
The Justin Timberlake LP.
The White Stripes LP.
The Sean Paul LP.
The Neptunes Clones LP.

Which I wouldn't refuse as Christmas presents, but wasn't compelled to own.

2003.

Not a best of 2003 but constituting a "warts'n'all" list of EVERY new release I bought (in the sense of paid money for and smuggled home in a plastic bag) in the year 2003:

Grime Innit:
J2K feat Wiley: They Will Not Like You
Durrty Doogz; Hold Me Down
Wizzbit feat MC Riko: Popadomz
Ity: Wait a Minute (Sticky Remix)
Wiley: Ground Zero
Mad Sabre: Kung
DJ Marsta: Gridlock
Simon Sez: Shut Your Mouth
Ice Rink: MCs Vol 1 EP
Ice Rink: MCs Vol 2 EP
Special Delivery: Countdown
Boo Kroo: BK Theme
Donaeo: My Philosophy (Bounce) Miami Bass Mix
K2/Dem Lott: What!
All Out: Live Caller
Aylesbury Allstars: Buss Red Light
Shystie: I Love U
Jon E Cash/Black Ops: Westside
Wiley: Lockdown
Roll Deep: We're Still the same
DJ Target feat Wiley: Pick Yourself Up
Crazy Titch: I can C U, U can C Me
NASTY feat Crazy Titch and Rico Dan: Cock Back
Jammer+: Destruction