Filed under: Listening
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Filed under: Living
In fact, if anyone CAN find me a proper pic of a lunaland / moon dome / whatever, they could win… erm..
I dunno, a namecheck or something
Filed under: Living
i’m really quite sad about this. When I was a kid, definitely my favourite thing of all was the lunaland / lunardome / moonland. A large – or so it seemed – inflatable dome, with a plastic roof over a large bouncy-castle style inflatable bed. Much bigger, much more enclosed and weird, generally much more impressive than a bloody bouncy castle, I remember whenever the fair arrived – at Branksome Rec or once a year at the HUGE Kings Park fair – my first concern was whether or not the lunaland (if that’s what it was called) was present.
You’d climb in through the ‘escape hatch’ and join a horde of other kids bouncing like tartrazine-fuelled berzerkers, colliding elbows with heads, heads with knees or – oh! sweet bliss – slipping down the side where you’d get stuck between the bouncy bed and the plastic dome and convince yourself you were slipping into the sucky maw of a space monster. I’m honestly struggling to think of ANYTHING that made me happier when I was about 8 or 9.
And now? I’m struggling to find anyone who remembers them, and I’m failing totally in my attempts to source a photo. I’ve tried every combination of ‘lunar’, ‘land’, ‘dome’, ‘moon’, fairground and the like, and the best I can find are pale imitations – basically bland old bouncy castles with some sort of flimsy cover. No sense of scale or sci-fi or danger.
This makes me very sad indeed.
Filed under: Compadres
Nordy bastard, PROD-cohort, professional bigot and all-round motherfucker The Snodster sent me this for my birthday:
You can learn more about The Snodster here.
Hot on the heels of the below post, those rockin’ Actionettes have cropped up on youtube.
sadly, it appears to have been shot by a ketaddled belly fetishist, but that just makes it more edgy, innit?
I’ve been more than a bit remiss in not giving props (or whatever the early 1960s equivalent would have been down at the Groovy Tomato Club) to the fabulous Actionettes…
I’ve been ‘aware of their work’ for a few years, firstly from just seeing them around, then by becoming friends with one of their number, the lovely Kitschenette (above right). In fact, they’ve done their thing (sixties formation go-go dancing, I guess) at one People’s Republic Of Disco night and I’ve played at various events they’ve been at. But recently, Ailsa joined (as Marmosette, above left) so I’m even more obliged to big them up!
Anyway, they’re bloody marvellous and I should have plugged the club they had last week – a Bad Girls Special (pics here). I won’t be so remiss about the next one – it’s a Monster Mash! Horror Special, at Bethnal Green’s retro-paradise The Pleasure Unit, on November 11th. Always a lot of fun..
Filed under: Where It's At
now the festival season has drawn to a close, I can start nesting again and spend sometime under roof rather than canvas.. And I can start playing music, reading books and watching movies again.
Reading:
Craig Werner: A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America
a brilliant book thus far, a history of black music from gospel to the present day, pretty much, which shows quite wonderfully Werner (to quote a very pompous review) “has mastered the extremely difficult art of writing about music as both an aesthetic and social force that conveys, implies, symbolizes, and represents ideas as well as emotions, but without reducing its complexities and ambiguities to merely didactic categories.” I.E., he has a great way of tying in the music with the social and cultural forces that give rise to it. So far it’s covered gospel, the birth of Motown and the career of Sam Cooke – the shift from religious to secular, then. It’s got the kind of scope and erudition Greil Marcus has, but it a MUCH easier read (and has yet to mention the Mekons). Anyway, great stuff. Oh, and Werner has a blog too, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet so it might be arse.
Watching:
Soul Deep (BBC)
brilliant, brilliant six-part Beeb series I watched at the time but have just loaded using the wonders of bittorrent. It’s all good, although it rather rushes the last 30 years. But if it cost that to have such excellent coverage of the sixties, then so be it. Best episode for me is the one on Stax, which as well as covering the likes of Redding and the obvious Stax / Atlantic artists, gives some time to James Carr, who fucked up really badly but still recorded the definitive Dark End of The Street, which tends to leave me in bits. Great footage, and a great show. Still no sign of a proper DVD release, which is fucking dumb in my opinion.
Oh, and the Family Guy. I assumed all those people claiming Family Guy was better than the Simpsons were just trying too hard. They weren’t.
Listening:
Judee Sill – Heartfood / Judee Sill.
As woebot pointed out, it can be a little sickly but there’s so much heartbreak and sense of a hard life lived, it wins you over in the end. And anyway, once you’ve got some Laura Nyro, it gets easier to appreciate this stuff..
Dory Previn – all of it.
Another singer/songwriter type people have been rediscovering. Can’t remember where I first heard Lady With The Braid, but it’s come up a lot in the meantime. This song alone justifies the rest of her sad and curious career - totally unique, it’s one side of a conversation between a desperately lonely woman and the man she’s seducing. She’s nervous, her small talk is awkward, painfully so, and then she blurts out
“would you care to stay till sunrise, it’s completely your decision
It’s just the night cuts through me like a knife
would you care to stay a while and save my life?
would you care to stay a while and save my life?”
And there’s not a dry eye in the house. When you know the back story, it hurts all the more.
Youngblood Brass Band – Word On The Streets
As mentioned in the Electric Picnic write-up below, Youngblood Brass Band are a fantastic live act but it works on record too. An updating of the New Orleans brass band / second line tradition with pretty effective hip-hop leanings – staccato percussion, b-boy basslines from a souzaphone (surely the only instrument you wear?), conscious rhymes from the MC / drummer. But pulled off with enough style to avoid being gimmicky – these guys clearly love both their Nawleans jazz and their beats..
My Morning Jacket: Okonokos
Had a place in my heart for these Louisville hairfarmers for ages – they’ve managed to freshen up a kind of southern rock / Neil Young thing without losing the warmth of that sound. Somehow managed to avoid them every time they’ve played London, but this new live album does the job nicely. It’s a monster 21 tracks but covers all their best tunes – it’s the mental version of One Big Holiday that does it for me.
Mahalia Jackson / Swan Silvertones / 5 Blind Boys Of Alabama
bits n pieces of all these acts and more.
I remember one marvellous Sunday sunrise on the beach in Metaponto last year, playing reggae on the Unsound rig as the sun came up over the sea to a crowd of nicely munted people. As the sun finally cleared the water, it seemed inspired to play Oh Happy Day by The Edwin Hawkins Singers, 5 minutes of sheer joy. A few people got it – arms swaying, yelling along with the chorus, all that. And yet some fools came up and started harassing me about playing “some religious shit” and ruining “their buzz”. Since before that I’d been playing The Congos, Big Youth, Yabby You and Johnny Osbourne, I was tempted to kick sand in their ignorant faces. I settled for pretending I couldn’t hear them.
Can you see them now
Canyou see them now
Can you see the sisters swinging
Let’s go back to church
Let’s go back to church
So damn long since we sung the song
Let’sgo back to church
Let’s go back to church
Let’s go back to church
Anyday now, anyway anyhow
Let’s go back to church
Filed under: Listening
They’re gonna to think I’m obsessed.. and maybe I am, but I just have to give more props to The Kleptones. You really have to hear this stuff, if you haven’t already. They’ve saved the mash-up / bootleg from the cheesy ghetto it was fast sliding into by being wittier, more eclectic and just more audacious than anyone else I’ve heard, AND done it with skill (a lot of bootlegs are just about the idea, and the execution always sucks.. ).
There’s a heap of downloads here, including torrent links which is best for their server charges so use them if you can.. As well as general bootlegs collections there’s some really crazy stuff going on with, for example Yoshimi Battles The Hip Hop Robots, which is exactly what you might imagine it is. That’s the other thing about them – they have fucking good taste (although they seem a little over-fond of the wretched T-Rex, who just set my teeth on edge whenever I hear them.. ). A whole heap of really well chosen audio snippets link the tracks as well, which suggests a lot of patience and minds like magpies.
So yeh – they’re better than your favourite DJs, you might as well give in to Kleptonemania now.
So, the last proper festival of the summer, and it was a beauty. The Electric Picnic is a 3yr old event just outside Portlaish (which in turn is about an hour from Dublin). 30,000 very very pissed people and one of the finest line-ups I’ve ever seen at a festival..
We were there, in the Pussy Parlure spiegeltent, in a Juke Joint capacity again – we managed about 3 Juke Joint / play what we want slots, a couple of ‘Lovely Morning’ slots and a pop quiz (which went really badly – the crowd were all a little young to know who the Crucial 3 were.. ) – and for a change, the Pussy Parlure wasn’t one of the main attractions because there was so much other stuff to do.
Having said that, some of our slots were pretty rocking (I think it was one in / one out on Friday night) and even our Saturday lunchtime slot was pretty rammed (see above)..
Electric Picnic does have quite a few problems – the provision of toilets and showers was pretty poor (especially outside the main arena where the majority of the tents and stalls were), and the running orders were a shambles, the worst I’ve ever encountered. Waiting 40 minutes or longer for a band to come on wasn’t unusual. A festival with line-ups as brilliant and busy as this simply can’t function this sloppily (we missed Richard Hawley because things were running so badly and we wanted to catch The Earlies, for example).
The biggest problem was the shambolic licensing arrangement, however. There was a pretty generous attitude towards people taking their own booze (I believe 48 cans per person was considered ‘reasonable’) but you weren’t allowed to take it into the main arena. However, all the bars shut at 10pm every night. Which meant that from 10pm till anywhere between 2-4am, depending where you were, you couldn’t get a legit drink. We were laden with hipflasks and waterbottles and the like (added to which, crew passes tend to get you frisked less) and most people seemed to be managing, but it’s a fairly dumb state of affairs. Perhaps it was to limit massive drunkeness, particularly after the horror stories about the recent Oxegen Festival (stories of tents being torched by drunken gangs and the like), but it was ultimately really frustrating and stupid. The mayhem at 2am each night when they closed the main arena (save for Lost Vagueness) could probably have been handled much better too…
But.. it’s only the festival’s 3rd year (it was a one-dayer 2 years ago, a 2-dayer last year) and it’s a learning curve, I guess. Everything else – the site, the line-up, the atmosphere, the security – was absolutely spot-on. As ever, Lost Vagueness was the most fun to be had – it looked great, it was as debauched and fucked up and varied and crazy as ever. Lots of rockabilly and country and ska bands, dancing flappers, gorilla costumes and weirdness…
The DJ set by the Kleptones (absolutely insane, witty, imaginative mash-ups by a Brighton DJ Crew) and the 2nd set of the weekend by the inestimably brilliant Young Blood Brass Band were probably the entertainment highlights, but with LV it’s the vibe you go for..
Amongst all the drinking and shouting and rather low-key drug use (man, supplies were scarce.. ) we managed to see a lot of bands.. The aforementioned Young Bloods were as great as ever – a brilliant fusion of New Orleans second line brass band and a hip-hop sensibility… they were first on at the main stage, to an initially small crowd, but totally won everyone over in the end..
Friday night was an embarassment of riches – Mogwai were blinding as ever, they got on stage late so weren’t on long, but it was magnificent. PJ Harvey’s first ever (i think) big solo slot was unbelievable – she was nervous as all hell but played out of her skin, egged on by a totally adoring audience. It was pretty dumb putting her in one of the smaller tents, and things got a little lairy at times – so much so that I beat a retreat to the back of the tent – but I guess the atmosphere was more electric for all that..
New Order were also in unbelievably good form – a huge crowd, the band in buoyant mood, a greatest hits set (including a couple of Joy Division tunes) and just a brilliant atmosphere.. The other two main stage highlights were The Skatalites, who brought the sun out on a Saturday afternoon and had the whole field moving, and Alabama 3, who somehow managed to be almost as brilliant as the other times I’ve seen them this summer, but not quite good enough to be the overall highlight for once. Dancing girls, twatting about, brilliant songs, incredible ideas – there isn’t a live act to touch them most of the time.
However, most of the time they’re not up against Sparks. Who were just astonishing. Wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see them again after a breathtaking Royal Festival Hall Meltdown show a few years back, and I dragged some of my posse along under a bit of duress, but the risk paid off. They didn’t have the room for the full video-assisted showbiz sets they’ve been doing of late, but they were phenomenal nonetheless. The new stuff is as insane and exciting as you’re likely to hear (especially ‘Can I Invade Your Country’) and we got the hits too.. They looked genuinely freaked out by the reaction they got – which was pretty rabid – and even Ron managed a slightly moved, slightly creepy half-smile.
They’re also not usually up against The Pet Shop Boys, who were an absolute revelation. I think a lot of the crowd were there for some kind of kitsch / novelty kicks, and they certainly were that, but they were so much more as well. Just exemplary pop music, with real style and bite. The stage show was hysterical – lots of faux-serious theatrical twatting about (“chavs” stepping to each other during Suburbia, lots of cowboy costumes and look-a-likes and vogueing around by the backing singers and dancers) and we got all the hits. By the time they finished with Go West, everyone was hugging everyone else, singing along and dancing like twats.
What else was good? The Earlies were very good, although I missed most of their set to go and play.. wasn’t sure they could pull off their pretty intricate sound live, but they managed by having about 40 people on stage (OK, 10, but they all played about 5 bloody instruments)… I was surprisingly impressed by Saul Williams – I’d always written him off as a piss poor cross between Gil Scott Heron and DJ Spooky, and I wasn’t that wrong. The poetry was pretty poor, the beats (kind of Fisher Price breakcore) were whack, the DJ looked like an extra from a terrible 80s dystopian sci-fi movie. And yet, the whole was significantly greater than the sum of its underwhelming parts and I thoroughly enjoyed it – I guess Williams has a helluva lot of charisma and that goes a long way (having said that, i downloaded a few tunes when I got home and my initial impressions about his recorded output were bang on.. )
The amount of stages around the site, and interesting little bars and boltholes, that was good, even if a little too much had been lifted from all the UK festivals and perhaps they need to get their own thing going (as a feisty Irish woman I chatted to pointed out, the carpark was full of London plates). A lot of thought had been put into things – having tents like the ever-brilliant Laundrettas, and lots of ‘areas’ – even if one was called the Body & Soul arena and was full of unforgiveable hippy filth. The foodstalls and facilities were good, and the fact that there stages I never even made it to was good – genuinely something for everyone. Even the bastard Bacardi B-Bar had the kind of line-up most festivals would have been happy to have as their main dance stage running order.
What was bad? The weather was occasionally very bad (Eire in autumn, it’s a no-brainer really). Elbow were pretty bad (but accompanied a visit to the mighty Pieminister stall and a 3litre flagon of scrumpy, so it wasn’t TOO bad). People pissing everywhere – even on food tents – was bad, as was me nearly getting punched for trying to stop some lairy fucker pissing on the Pussy Parlure catering tent. Cutting a big hole in my finger trying to slice a bagel and making the tent look like Mai Lai, that was pretty bad.
But nothing, nothing was as bad as Amp Fiddler.
This awful, awful cunt has a following. He’s heralded as being at the front of some kind of nu-soul boom, like his accursed cohort John Legend. My kidney has more funk than this goon. A stiffer, less joyful, less enjoyable experience I can’t even begin to imagine. We got stuck with him because of crazy running times, and I wanted to kill him in the face within minutes. What a fucking clown…
i reckon next year will be even more blinding. See you there..
