Hey Kids, Rock and Roll

Ever heard of Banksy, the graffiti artist? Don't worry, I'm not going to blow some generic diarrhoea  over your eyelids about the morality of graffiti writers (if it's art or a crime or whatever), but I was reminded of something he said in his book 'Wall and Piece' where he talks about something known as 'Broken Window Theory'. The term was created by a couple of American social scientists. The theory blames small problems in society for the bigger ones - if say, a window was broken in a small community, people would care less and be encouraged to vandalise the area, and the result would be that people would be encouraged to commit more dastardly (isn't that a fantastic word?) crimes. In short, the theory says people would develop a "hey, this area is really shitty, so a few cases or arson or rape won't make a difference" kind of attitude. I've grown to appreciate and agree with this theory over the past few weeks, and not just because I live in a wretched hive of scum and villainy. I've finally locked myself into the habit of vacuuming every week, cleaning my room daily, washing my dishes as soon as I have eaten, and actually hanging out my washing instead throwing it in a damp pile to fester. And as a result, I'm much more productive generally, which is good timing because my course has just started. I don't really have a point to make here, I'm just a bit more optimistic for the future. 

Banksy is fine for his humour and political statements, but
if you actually fancy checking out a decent grafiti artist
look up ROA

I promised that I'd review a more contemporary album, and I was going to until about 30 seconds ago when I changed my mind. But I just remembered that R.E.M  broke up a couple of days ago. This isn't really news, but I'm still a little bit disappointed because they were still producing good music, and I really wanted to see them on tour one day. I can't really say they were my absolute favourite band, and they probably aren't even in my top 10, but they are one of the few major mainstream bands around toda- oh yeah, that's right, shit. Regardless. I like them a lot, and at first I wasn't sure what album of theirs I wanted to spunk over with kind words. Out of their 15 albums, there are many significant releases - 'Accelerate', their 2008 'return to form', their fantastic debut (and possibly my favourite album by them) 'Murmur' or 'Out of Time', when the band hit huge commercial success for the first time. I have decided, however, to ultimately go with my first proper introduction to them - Automatic for the People. Long before I had discovered the likes of Amazon or even record shops, it was the first album I really, really wanted and it took a great deal of effort to find. I paid a ridiculous amount too - £14 (It wasn't even special edition, just HMV being cunts), but it was worth it. 

Monty Clift himself. Looks a bit like the action man
I had, minus the army jacket and the pen and
crayon marks across his face

Automatic for the People is a very approachable album, and could not be considered obscure in any way due to the fact that it featured 'Everybody Hurts' (along with 4 other hit singles) and went to no.1 in the UK album chart. For such a commercially successful album, It's extremely dark, musically and lyrically. 'Everybody Hurts' is of course, about suicide. But other tracks like 'Sweetness Follows' seem to come across even stronger. It's taken from the point of view of someone burying their dead parents, struggling to find an emotion as they remember how distant and hollow the relationship was with their mother and father. The song could easily have broken free from the strumming of the acoustic guitar and the organ chords into some power ballad, but the musical arrangement clearly strays away from this - the track has no drums whatsoever and the electric guitar feedback that is occasionally heard doesn't spazz out into some solo that pisses all over the emotion of the track. 'My favourite song about the actor Montgomery Clift' may not seem like an award where a hard decision is needed, but I have to admit that The Clash's 'The Right Profile' and a track from AFTP, 'Monty Got a Raw Deal' are both fantastic songs that deal with the actor's troubled life. On R.E.M's take, the song is like many on Automatic, dark, but not dull or cheesy in its sympathy. But some rockier songs on the album buck the trend a little, especially 'The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite', an extremely, bouncy and uplifting track. Peter Buck, the band's former guitarist noted -

"Given that the record dealt with mortality, the passage of time, suicide and family, we felt a light spot was needed"

The cover photo was apparently part of a motel sign near
where the band were recording, but this is uncited information
from wikipedia, so it could be a fucking spaceship

Nightswimming, for me, is the best song on the album. As that piano line plays now, I can feel my hands sweating and the electricity running up and down my arms (and no, that isn't my laptop fucking up, I checked). A fantastic string arrangement by ex Lep Zep bassist John Paul Jones and lyrics looking back to carefree times create a wonderful track. It doesn't quite finish the album chronologically, but it's the true emotional closer, with Find the River moving the tone down a notch and meandering it down to an end.

All I can say is wow - I remembered liking the album, but giving it the first proper listen in years has made me appreciate album twice as much. Experimenting with this multiple images thing now, jazzes things up a bit eh? Well, this tea is stone cold so I better empty it out. 

What I'm currently listening to > \R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction/

Thanks for reading you sly old dog

Forest Gump

Today's current post is done from the university library once again. The wonder of free, unlimited internet, has once again become a glamorous dream because something fucked up. The majority of us have been in a position where we've been on the phone to a call centre with someone barely able to speak English on the other end. For those of you unfamiliar with the scenario, there is nothing satisfying about trying to unscrew a phone socket that has been stuck to the wall with an unholy force, while a voice tuts and clucks impatiently into your ear as you struggle to understand their most basic commands. Predictably, none of their advice helped. So I decided to wait until the end of the call where an automated voice asked how I had found the service, and if the problem had been resolved. I answered with "shite" and "useless" respectively.

Something we can all learn from. Apparently.

In times like those, I loose my respect for humanity a little. So to discover a little about the world away from humans, and to pass the time without internet, I invested in the complete series of Planet Earth for a measly £11. Which I think is pretty impressive for 15 hours of David Attenborough narrated goodness. I've only dipped my toe into the collection so far, so I don't really have material for a full blown review. But nevertheless I'm going to dither on about how breathtaking it can be. Planet Earth took over 5 years to film, with a £16 million budget. On that information alone, it's nice to know that not everything on television is a rushed pile of shit. And in the 2 hours that I watched it, I started to care more about the environment than I ever have done in my 19 years on this planet. The series never directly grabs you with U C THat PoloaR br? itz dieYing from gloBal warminG!!!11 but watching a Snow Leopard desperately trying to make a kill actually makes it seem more real than it ever was in a leaflet posted through my door or a speech make by Al gore (Poet and I didn't know it etc). Overall I'm very glad I'm a human. If you look around, you can see we have achieved stupid amounts. And it's thanks to humans that I've been able to watch Planet Earth. But when things aren't in our own interests, we get absurdly lazy. And we are still a crazily prejudiced (myself included at times) race. In the first episode of Planet Earth, an exotic bird in a rainforest does a display for a female. The female turns away in disappointment.
"It's hard not to be deflated when your best isn't good enough" observes Sir Attenborough. But, unfortunately, in the case of the human race, the same thing cannot be said - we don't exactly try our best all the time.

On a lighter note, I've volunteered for Hospital Radio, and I should be starting that in a couple of weeks. As well as getting me some experience working with radio equipment, it should be fun being able to create my own playlists. If I was a more twisted individual, I'd have the perfect music collection to potentially inflict more misery into patient's lives -
"For the man in ward 16 recovering from that brutal mallet attack here's Peter Gabriel's mega hit, Sledgehammer!"

What I'm currently listening to > \The Who - Quadrophenia/

Thanks for reading.

A Walking Disaster

When I was younger, I was quite the fan of charades. I didn't know, however, that this hilarious game would be an essential tool for a certain period in my life. The period I am referring to is this past week, and most likely more weeks to come. On the 3rd of this month, I moved into my new flat. The landlord of course, had forgotten I was moving in that day. After a number of phone calls (made while dragging a heavy bag and my bass across town for hours on end) I was reassured that it was okay and that the flat door could have been left open. It turned out it was - how reassuring. I mean who locks the doors in a neighbourhood where the shops have thick bars on the windows? Later on I met my 2 flatmates. Elated with relief about actually moving in, I greeted one with a long, babbling introduction. He responded with a blank face and
"Speak English not good".
Since then arm waving, miming, and pointing have been my main forms of communication. And I've just had to show more people around the flat who also don't know much in the way of English. I was advised by the landlord to 'show them the single room'. Upon arrival they told me in broken English that they were told the single room was unavailable and that they needed a double room anyway. All the rooms were locked. And did I mention that 90% of my possessions are locked up in a flat owned by a friend who is away for 3 weeks? And that I still don't have a job? Yeah? Just checking. Anyone fancy a game of charades?

I could have done with the Demolition
 Man himself to help me move.
Unfortunately I don't yet have Sly's
number. One day.

The Police were a band that I hated for the longest time. Or at least, that's what I told everyone. Coming out and admitting I loved them was harder than admitting to myself that I was gay. All I'd really heard of the Police for a while was Roxanne and Every Breath You Take. From this information I came to the conclusion that they were a generic soft rock band that lay slotted in between U2 and Whitney Houston in mothers' CD collections everywhere. But one day I heard the opening jangly guitar riff to Message in a Bottle, and my curiosity was stoked. The discovery that the drummer composed the soundtrack to Spyro 2, one of my favourite childhood games, tipped the scales and I checked their Regatta de Blanc album. I have been hooked on the band's infectious energy ever since. My favourite album by the group has to be Ghost in the Machine. Guitarist Andy Summers once said that "With the horns and synth coming in, the fantastic raw-trio feel—all the really creative and dynamic stuff—was being lost" and I have to say he is talking out of his arse. I have always preferred bands that change their sound. The Ramones have never stuck with me partly because they played the same shit over and over, album after album, which gets boring quickly. But maybe I'm just a slut for synthesisers. 


I always love a good, ballsy, drum injected introduction to a song (see Janie Jones, Born in '69),  and Spirits in the Material World has an extremely brief but nevertheless perfect little burst to kickstart Ghost in the Machine. The biting little bass line that follows is ridiculously infectious, and the chorus hook and bouncy synths create one catchy opener. This is followed by the biggest hit off the album (it topped the UK charts and went to no.3 in the US), Every Little Thing She Does is Magic. I won't lie - it's a soppy little love song. But it's one of the few soppy love songs I actually like and the humming double bass combined with the playful piano weaves it into a lovely little number. Up until Ghost in the Machine, Police songs never strayed away from darker lyrical themes (Can't Stand Losing You certainly didn't beat around the bush with "I guess this is our last goodbye/and you don't care so I won't cry/but you'll be sorry when I'm dead/and all this guilt will be on your head"), but the bouncy melodies always sharply contrasted with these themes. Because of this, Invisible Sun was somewhat of a  departure. The sinister synth bassline and Sting's mournful vocal melody fits the lyrical theme of war torn countries like a glove.


Further on is Rehumanize Yourself, 4 minutes and 50 seconds of Copeland composed joy. Demolition Man (which was later bastardized by Sting for the film of the same name) has one of the most fun bass lines in popular music. Hungry for You is an extremely passionate song about sex, made all the more passionate by the fact that the majority of the lyrics are in French. But the real star of the album (and the Police in my opinion) is drummer Stewart Copeland. Copeland is one of the few drummers whose sound is instantly recognisable. His reggae influenced style is surprisingly fast and punchy, and works very hard to bring the songs to life. He also happens to be an excellent composer and has done many excellent projects outside of the Police. The album itself is a fairly easy listen. The songs have enough pop sensibility and hit singles to grab your attention on the first listen, and the interesting lyrics and fantastic drum parts give the album enough weight to keep you coming back for more. But next time I write about an album I like, I promise I'll do something a bit more contemporary. And should I start reviewing albums generally, instead of just picking my favourites? I'm not really sure if I should. Please let me know.


What I'm Currently Listening To > \The Cure - Disintegration (GITM has had enough spins for today)/


Thanks for reading.

Advertising and Cocaine

Come Saturday, I shall no longer have to bend to the will of a little blinking light wedged into my laptop. No, I don't have robotic genitalia that I enjoy inserting into my usb ports. I am currently using mobile broadband and it is the source of much stress in my life. Not content with charging me ridiculous amounts far too often, on days like today it will connect me to the wonderful world wide web for an unknown period of time. Perhaps it will be 5 minutes, perhaps it will be 30 seconds. U R conekted!! thnx 4 using our serviC3s! But then little dongle grows weary. Lol joaKing!!1 there i5 no netWurk! lol! I am usually then disconnected, and have to spend 10 minutes moving around the room, removing and reinserting the dongle, where maybe, just maybe, my almighty master shall grant a mere mortal the possibility of 30 seconds more internet time. Who else loves technology? But yes, I move in on Saturday, woo. The flat comes with internet which is paid for by my future landlord, a decision he will probably regret upon seeing the Terabytes of porn illegal music lecture slides I download.

Advertising at it's most evil
and dishonest.  

In the the immortal words of Minutemen's D.Boon, "let the products sell themselves, fuck advertising, psychological methods to sell should be destroyed". As you probably already know, I hate people that try to sell you things. Sometimes the subject of adverts comes up in conversation when I'm around others. They might discuss their favourite advert. I have no favourite advert, because quite simply, I hate all of them. Okay. I confess that occasionally an advert will make me laugh, or maybe I'll be impressed by how clever it is. Although it may entertain me, it's not going to decide if I buy a product or not. Even if I am won over by a particular advert's wit, I'll get sick of it when I inevitably see it another 50 times before it runs it's course. And it will be wedged in between the other 99% of adverts that annoyed me from the very beginning. And those of you reading this may be nodding your heads. Which apparently means fuck all, because we're being showing time and time again that some of you idiots are going out and proving that advertising gimmicks work. And in turn, this makes me look a bit silly. Increased sales means more jobs for everyone and a better economy. Which is good. Very good. And without revenue from advertising, many newspapers and magazines would be left floundering financially. It would be nice if adverts were a bit more honest, though, wouldn't it? Yes, your cereal may be wholegrain and it may have no artificial colours, but it's 35% sugar and it's turning your children into a gaggle of Jabba the Hutt lookalikes. I suppose honesty doesn't sell though. And I suppose moaning, 19 year old Scottish bloggers don't run the world. 

I can't use my fingers to count the amount of places I've slept in the past few weeks. I'm a lot less fussy when it comes to finding a place to rest my head now, but all the same I'm looking forward to a bed that I own. So a big thank you to anyone reading this who has let me crash at theirs from the last month. I'll pay everyone back in some way, I promise.

What I'm Currently Listening to > \Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime/

Thanks for reading!

P.S - Let me know what you think of my new banner and my new layout in general. 

Another Record

I keep getting annoyed at myself for not updating this often enough. The days have really been going by pretty quickly. And it makes me think about what I have achieved in the summer. In terms of enjoying myself, it's been fantastic. T in the Park was excellent. I've secured myself a great boyfriend. I've been putting my past self to shame in terms of alcohol consumption. I've watched acclaimed motion pictures such as Zombie Flesh-eaters, Sharktopus, and Hobo with a Shotgun (courtesy of said boyfriend). And I've found a flat to move into soon. Fantastic. Hours of looking up shady adverts just so I can plunge myself into debt more. And at the start of the summer I told myself I'd start learning French again. Past me is an idiot and he needs a punch.

I don't even know what they are talking about,
but it's probably something you've never heard of

You know what was a huge disappointment for me? The book/motion picture High Fidelity. The story has its  moments, but it failed to live up to my odd little expectations. Having heard a little about it, I assumed it was going to be about 3 guys in a record shop that made top 5 lists all day and got up to a whole load of hi-jinks. And to an extent it was. But then it decided to slide down the piss covered little chute of a romantic comedy. And the protagonist's constant moaning got on my tits (fair enough I moan on this, but by christ I don't go out and make a whole book of my my smug little views  on whether eggy bread should be called french toast or whatever the fuck). But despite my disappointment it made me want to work in a record shop. I've given up on this pursuit due to the fact that whenever I ask such places if they have positions available they snort derisively and look up from a stack of limited edition Sonic Youth records just so they can say 'no'. Nevertheless I love the whole atmosphere of these places. Sometimes I'll hear something that's playing on the shop's sound system, I'll ask about it, and I'll be opened up to a whole new world of bands/musicians. No matter how much music you listen to, there's always going to be doors you haven't checked out. That band you don't like that much? You might just start to love them. Or you could just hate them even more. But it's good to be informed about bands you don't even like (this comes from someone who has been late more than once because he was looking up the discography of a band he'd never even listened to before). Another thing about record shops I love is the fact that the experience isn't just an audio one. Walking through the second hand section can be like walking through an art gallery. The more inspired album artwork is something to really admire. And it's probably something I do as a complete creep, but I just love the smell of that cardboard and vinyl. The scent of a record shop isn't one of 'buy this' it's one of warmth and history. Or maybe febreeze.

My last blog makes out that I think news stories are pretty close to fantasy, which isn't really what I aimed for. I just think that it's hard to grasp the concept of goings on in space when you are sitting in your living room, and that despite the fact that news outlets usually make every efforts to stick to the facts there's always the possibility that they fucked up or exaggerated, so sorry if I didn't make that clear. It's incredibly hot in here, so I might just watch some b-movie horror from my boyfriend's massive pile to entertain myself for the time being. I also have the horrible feeling that I've done a blog exactly like this before, but if that's the case then maybe I just really like record shops so fuck the police.

What I'm currently listening to > \The Clash - London Calling/

As always, thanks for reading!

Faith No More

Now there have been riots going on throughout the UK recently and the subject has been blogged to death. Just about every single opinion is out there for everybody to hear, so I'm really not going to bother with a post about it at all. I've been a little inactive on here recently, but I actually have an excuse this time. I've been extremely busy trying to find a job and a flat. I signed the contract for my own room yesterday, and was contacted about a job interview, which is tomorrow. The whole thing has been a real growing up experience. Which is rather ironic, because me and some companions were doing the least mature things we'd ever done a couple of nights ago at a friend's 21st birthday party. These included such shows of adulthood as a game of pass the parcel, lifting someone out of their room bollock naked shouting TOGA TOGA TOGA (while dressed in bedsheet togas of course), and lighting fireworks wedged in the groin and the gluteus maximus. I'll let you guess which one resulted in injury.

WOOOOOOOO - a recreation of the
events that took place outside my
bedroom door 

If you've read my blog for a while, you'll know I'm not particularly religious. But we humans generally have a lot more faith than we'd like to believe. If we hear something on the news about a meteor that's hurling itself across some galaxy at 50,000 miles per hour, a lot of us, probably even the majority of us, will just believe that it's happening. The only evidence we have is that someone on the news told us about a number of folk that live thousands of miles away who apparently saw something happening billions of miles away. But we don't really have to go that deep. I was watching a documentary on otters not so long ago. Apparently in the UK there are people that get employed to walk up large areas of river to check for signs of otters and make sure everything is okay for them. And I just believe this, even though I've never met someone who does such a job. So why the sudden deep blog about belief? I suppose it was partly inspired by what I saw, or what I thought I saw last night.

Not long after I'd gone to bed, I was distracted by something out the corner of my eye. Through the frosted glass of the room door, I saw a tall, white-grey shape moving past the door. Now my first thought was this - the window behind the bed is right beside a road, so fairly often a car will go past and the light will reflect off the opposite side of the room and glide across. But in this case there were no cars outside, the curtains were pulled shut, and there wasn't really anything outside that could produce such a light. So I watched from my bed as it walked from one side to the other and then back again, and it suddenly dawned on me that this shape was rather like a a person pacing up and down the hallway. Turning away for a while, I wasn't too bothered because I figured it could be anything. I then looked at the door again - there was a huge black shape just behind the door. Again, this could be anything, but I've slept in that bed for almost a month and I'd never seen anything like it. As my eyes adjusted, I was more disturbed as I realised the black shape was pulsating. At one point while I was watching it my skin turned cold in a way it had never done before and my penis shrank a little. I can safely say I was freaked out. This happened for about 5 minutes until I realised I couldn't stay up all night and that I wanted to sleep. So I said;
"I've had enough of this, please fuck off"
Still scared out my wits I ran across the room and turned on the light. I checked the hallway and there was nothing there, which means little I suppose. Now most of you will probably snigger. There are probably a hundred explanations for what I saw and I was probably being an idiot. But it just made me think that people are quick to laugh at things like belief in a god or spirits or whatever, but they'll happily believe something they saw on TV even when they have nothing else to back it up. Whether it's a ghost in your hallway, or the belief that otter shit smells like jasmine tea, it's faith, ladies and gentlemen. Faith.

Apologies for the length, hopefully y'all still liked it. I think I'll wash the dishes and read up on this place that's going to interview me. I'd like to go out to the shops to get some decent food, but my flatmates have the keys, and they are elsewhere so half a tub of this was my brunch for today.

What I'm currently listening to > \Faith No More - Angel Dust/

Thanks for reading!

Elegance and Decadence

Things are much the same as last week. The days are beginning to blend into one another, much like the buildings and the sky in this city which are both the shame shade of depressing grey. There are some events that stuck out though. A hundred metres or so away from where I am typing, a seagull was trapped on a roof yesterday, stuck in some wire. Normally this wouldn't really be noteworthy, but the fact that someone grew concerned about the bird, and the fact that two fire engines were summoned to remove the avian from the roof was a little ridiculous. Some Mormons also approached me after going for a booze run, and they gave me a free Mormon bible. Now I like to think of myself as open minded, so I promised them I'd read a passage. They even wrote down their number and used it to bookmark the chapter they wanted me to read. Then Kim, my flatmate and primary lasagne maker approached me.
"Can I rip this up for my art project?"
I hesitated for a second. But then I realised the truth - I'd never bother reading it. So I told her to go ahead. God can wait, there are more important things at stake. Like getting an A. Or lasagne.

Yes, they do look like a bunch of child molesting accountants.

Today I'm going to talk about one of my favourite groups, and specifically, my favourite album by them which nestles comfortably in my top 5. If you've listened to any kind of electronic music, then technically you've listened to Kraftwerk. Their melodies, bleeps and bops can be heard in Depeche Mode, Daft Punk and New Order. In fact, you can probably blame them for the vast majority of electronic and dance music today, which may or may not be worth boasting about. Their popularity arguably started with the hit from the album of the same name, Autobahn which reached #11 in the UK charts in 1975. The four Germans in matching attire went on to create 4 more highly influential albums, one of which is Trans-Europe Express. The album opens with the upbeat Europe Endless, the melody of which was inspired by the sounds a train makes. It also gives us the haunting number 'The Hall of Mirrors' which starts off with a cascading series of chirps, and gives way to a an echoing drum beat and a dark synth bass line which still gives me goosebumps. Their deadpan delivery of "even the greatest stars discover themselves in the looking glass" should be laughable. But the tale of a celebrity who falls in love with his face and then continues to change and rework it feels eerily familiar. Not taking themselves too seriously however, the track 'showroom dummies' opens with a 'eins zwei drei vier', a parody of the Ramones countdown. The lyrics are based on a review of Kraftwerk's live show which described the band as 'barely moving showroom dummies'. The track 'Metal on Metal' has been sampled many times, most notably Afrika Bambaata's song 'Classic Rock'. 'Franz Schubert' and 'Endless Endless' drive the Express to a gradual close, ending one of my favourite albums.

Trans-Europe Express simultaneously sounds modern and retro, and perfectly captures Kraftwerk as they were sifting from a progressive and experimental sound to one more bouncy and minimalistic. It is completely timeless; it doesn't sound like it was made in the noughties, the nineties, the eighties, and definitely not 1977, its original release date. I highly recommend it, but please don't listen expecting catchy chorus filled pop, it's not quite that.

The librarian is harassing me to get off the computer. I could finish this at home but I want to challenge myself. Time to get an image and think of a witty caption

What I'm currently listening to > \Please get off the computer - The librarian/

Thanks for reading!