The Paste That You Love

There's always an unsure moment when a friend introduces you to one of their friends that you've never met. You've heard a lot about this person, you feel obliged to get on with them at the very least. And then they say something rather controversial on the subject of religion, animals, politics, or on their preferred choice of biscuit. Where do you stand in this moment? It's not easy. There's no middle ground. They're looking at you for support. 

You could agree with them. Lay down, accept their point for now. Which would make you a bland, opinionless, arsehole. One of those boring people that just agrees with anything, nodding and saying 'yeah, yeah' to everything. You could refute their point. But there's no middle ground; you'd be locked into a debate. Oh god, they're a twat. They took great personal offence at you disagreeing. The worst part is, two others that are friends of the friend's friend heard snippets of the argument and they side with friend's friend. Great for them. They've ganged up on you and they're kicking you into submission with words. The icing on the cake? They start to use anecdotal evidence. 

"When I was in school I had a friend who got cancer who.."

"Two years ago I had a jewish friend that.."

"WELL, when I visited the factory.."

It's horrible. You got badgered into coming here to get shitfaced and you're locked in with these insufferable morons. When anyone starts using anecdotal evidence it's game over. These stories could be true; they might not be. They are probably exaggerated by emotion, but pointing that out makes you look petty. It's related to them and not the bigger picture in any way. Play it cool, turn away. You're forever a twat in their eyes. 

Anecdotal evidence ruins lives. Which is why it pains me to use it in today's blog which has decided to resurface like a bloated corpse. The point that I'd like to bring up today is that everything physical is slowly dying. And I have barely anything other than personal experience to back it up. Isn't that annoying?

What I mean by 'anything physical' is just that. Humans don't seem to be attached to physical objects anymore. Which actually sounds pretty nice, doesn't it? It's taken a while for things like Spotify and Netflix to appear and grow legs, but they're here now, replacing CDs and DVDs all the time. A couple of months ago, I saw someone on Facebook posting a status that said -

"Felt so retro today, actually went out and bought a CD lol"

The status attracted a huge number of likes (although I cannot confirm the actual amount because the person in question has unfriended me). When I go around to friend's houses, the compact disc doesn't exactly line the shelves anymore. And increasingly, the same is to be said about DVDs. People don't go out of their way to buy their favourite film; it'll probably arrive on TV, lovefilm, netflix or whatever soon enough (and if not they might just sneak in a quick illegal download). A lot of people I know have sold their collections.

My anecdotal evidence continues to slink into view when I talk about it happening already. HMV, one of the UK's largest music selling franchises has recently gone down the pan. It had attempts to launch a download service over the years, but the efforts were half-hearted and completely outmatched by the competition. I won't be too sad to see it go in all honesty. For such a large shop, there was such an increasingly shitty and overpriced selection of music that ended up being hidden behind a wall of t-shirts, mugs, and videogames. 

Aberdeen's biggest independent music shop, OneUp, has also recently closed down. There are mournful comments on the Facebook announcement they made. But we're a generation of Facebook commenters that do nothing; when OneUp announced they had financial problems last year, the sympathy increased, but customers and sales simply didn't. People had good words and fond memories, but couldn't actually be bothered going in. Last year, for an article I was doing on vinyl, I spoke to Yogi, one of the guys at OneUp. Even back then, he was pessimistic about the future of a physical medium. He said that records were for "the true music fans". But when I asked him if there were enough of them, he simply shrugged.

The last piece of horrible anecdotal evidence I will use is the one closest to my heart. The Stool Pigeon is a free music newspaper that was distributed throughout the UK and begun printing in 2005, two months before YouTube existed. In 2009 I picked up my first copy from a record shop in Paisley I frequently visited, as my music taste started to blossom from classic rock into all things new and alternative. 

I'd never heard of the vast majority of the bands, but the off the cuff articles with funny, upside down multi-coloured text that called people 'cunts' got my attention. I went there as an intern last year (and wrote a bit about it here) and spent a very educational two weeks running around and getting a bit sick and eating a malteasers ice cream next to a slimy canal in the punishing heat. The publication has now announced it will no longer continue -

"I wanted to do much more online, but the newspaper sucked up nearly all our resources and time. It's proved impossible to do both as well as we'd like and, to be frank, we're knackered."

But look at me! I'm becoming those people. I'm getting emotional here. I can't argue for physical things any more. They take up room, they burn resources, they're more expensive. I could go on about the sake of art, how everyone wants to sacrifice something good and wholesome for efficiency and better money, but all those things have been done to death. 

Do we really deserve to be nostalgic?  Is it worth getting attached to everything when it'll go away at some point? Reality is a turd-fest, so we may as well deal with it. We're a generation of emotional bloggers that will comment, upvote, retweet and like everything before we lift a finger to take action. If we truly become a nation that has bare shelves and little more than laptops and TVs to furnish our homes, will it really matter? Will we miss it? 

My prediction is that we will. We'll miss our new book smell. We'll miss inhaling record sleeve dust. But as soon as we remember how much effort it was to open a plastic case, lift the silver disc, plop it into a tray, and press play, we'll get exhausted and slouch back in our fart-powered chairs. Bliss.

A crusade only of the brave



Watching this kind of film - a great way
to let off some steam. Hahaha!
Kudos to you if you actually got that.



Back in the library my dear readers. I've barely been away from this place over the past week and a bit, chipping away at essays and making announcements about sexually transmitted infections people have when strangers leave their facebook profile left open. There is also no doubt any more about whether or not someone will give me a job. I am now officially employed by the home and leisure section in ASDA (for the yanks that read this, ASDA is a part of Wal-Mart, I think it's essentially the same shop except the only guns we sell are water pistols), working nights. It drains my soul, but the pay is good and the people are nice. I've heard many painful stories about working with customers in retail, but I unfortunately don't have any such tales to tell due to my working hours (between 10pm and 6am) and the section I work in. I only ever see a handful of drunks per night, staggering in to buy a cheap Arnold Schwarzenegger DVD. Or the occasional parent who woke up in the middle of the night in a blind panic, hellbent on ensuring that their spawn had a Christmas present sorted at 1.25 in the morning on the 9th of December. Interestingly enough though, the store I work in sells more alcohol per square foot than any other Wal-Mart owned* store in the world. To say the least, that says a lot about the area that I live and work in.



Ever heard of Primus? Green Naugahyde was their 7th studio album, and it's been one of my favourite albums of the year so far. It's nice to see a band that is still making fantastic releases when they've been around since the eighties. Although never coming particularly high in the charts, the band have popped up in popular culture from time to time, making appearances in guitar hero and Tony Hawk game soundtracks, and composing the South Park Theme. There's something very unique about Primus and their sound. People hopelessly trying to fit them into a genre have simply sighed, given up, and fixed an 'Alernative Rock' sticker onto the band's forehead. Imitation is near impossible, mostly due to the impressive musicianship Primus displays. Very, very few bassists can play Les Claypool's incredibly precise and fast string slapping, let alone imitate it and manage the feat of singing over it. The band's sense of humour is also a unique part of Primus, and a very odd one at that to say the least. You don't even need to listen to them to discover this, with song titles such as 'Pork Chop's little ditty', 'Professor Nutbutter's House of Treats' and 'Last Salmon Man'. Here's a list of their albums and my personal rating



The band's 'in person apearance' didn't go
down too well with the fans



Frizzle Fry - 7/10
Sailing the Seven Seas of Cheese - 8/10
Pork Soda - 6/10
Tales from the Punchbowl - 6/10
Brown Album - 9/10
Antipop - 8/10
Green Naugahyde - 8/10

For a band with three members that uses little more than a bass, vocals, a guitar and drums the majority of the time, the sound varies so intensely between each album. Frizzle Fry and Green Naugahyde have a heavy brand of funk and post-punk flavours, Sailing the Seven Seas of Cheese and the Brown Album have a tight, pop friendly sound, while Pork Soda and Tales from the Punchbowl are full of hazy jams with a dark sense of humour and menace.



This guy is admittedly a little creepy. But he has a bike
replacing his hands. A bike. Where his hands should be.
Jesus.



Guaranteed for every album, however is Claypool acting like every stereotypical circus ringmaster you've ever heard of - standing outside the tent with a toothy grin, encouraging all to roll up and witness the wonders of a Primus release. His eccentric personality perfectly compliments the often silly lyrics, slipping between a nasally whine and a "C'mere boy" type of southern accent. It's hard to comment on the other members due to the fact there have been almost too many to count - constantly leaving and rejoining. I am, however, very pleased to see the return of Jay Lane, one of the original Primus drummers. His funk inspired style was a huge part of the early Primus sound I was particularly fond of, and his reinduction was almost entirely responsible for Claypool's renewed interest in the band.

And this time you are left with no excuse for not at least trying out the band, I've compiled a small selection of some of my favourite Primus tracks for you to listen to right here. Bear in mind that it's a zip file so you'll need winrar or something like that to open it. Have fun!

That's all my coursework done for the Christmas holidays, so I'll try and update this more often. I'd like to get a post in before Christmas actually, but if not then I'll be celebrating a year of this blog on the 25th.

What I'm currently listening to > \Primus - Frizzle Fry (just realised that the opening track mentions Christmas, so you actually have no excuse now)/

Thanks for reading!