Do they have bears in the Czech Republic? It seems like the sort of place that would have bears. And a drinking age of 7, apparently. So yes, I'm leaving for Prague-via-Bohemia in about 2 hours. It's going to be great, I've wanted to see it for ages. I'm going with the yute orchestra I make sound worse for a week of and looking at beautiful countryside (and hunting down Kafka and berating him for ever writing 'The Trial'. I can see why you never wanted that published).
Just realised I haven't posted in ages, but also have nothing to say. This is more a continuity announcement than anything, if I had left it another week y'all might have thought I was dead or something (yeah...). Here are some useless things I have learnt in the past weeks;
Always take an umbrella to Cambridge. In fact, in the British summertime, just always take an umbrella. Come on, fucking hell, it's the END of JULY.
Always take a spare. Condom, lighter, cello string, whatever. But mainly cello string.
Never listen to Joy Division on dark, quiet streets at 3 in the morning. I was a shivering paranoid wreck by the 2nd verse of 'Twenty-Four Hours'.
I know everyone thinks the music they had when they were growing up was the greatest since Jesus invented sound. I don't honestly know if our generation can make that claim (Cyrus, anyone?), but boy, did we have it good back in the day. The day of jean shorts, the day when cool was long hair and loud guitars, the day when we did what we liked and we liked what we did. So, in honour of the Best Era Of Music Ever, I'ma take you through some of the defining tracks of my pre-pubesence.
AQUA - BARBIE GIRL
This, I think, was the first song I ever owned. My dad bought a cassette for me, and I swear I wore that mother out. I mean, is there anyone who doesn't love this song?* My dad at the same time bought that fucking interminable 'Perfect Day' song with Bono and friends, and every week on Top of the Pops we would crowd round and see who was winning the chart battle. Barbie Girl was always winning, and that's the way it should have fucking stayed. Forever. Why are U2 still playing arenas the world over, whilst the members of Aqua are probably selling coke and talcum powder out of a coolbox on Swedish beeches (especially Claus and Soren, yeesh)?
*If you don't love this song you officially aren't human and I'm going to go Ghost Hunter on your ass.
SUM 41 - IN TOO DEEP
After I finished primary school, my friend Felix and I had one last hurrah at a French Eurocamp. It was excruciatingly hot that holiday, and all we did was lol (as in flop around) by the pool and sneak sweets back to our room from the camp tuck shop (my dad was a hard-ass about confectionary). We only had one CD between us, and it was this single. He gave it to me at the end of the trip, and it sums up so much about the primary/secondary transition that one can't help but get a little teary-eyed when hearing it. Also the bit when the Indian guy comes out of the water soloing is SO FUCKING COOL.
AFROMAN - BECAUSE I GOT HIGH
When I was 10, I got Now ... 50 for Christmas, featuring such motherfucking GEMS as this, this, and especially this. But Afroman topped them all. And you know why? Because he got high, and he didn't give a fuck who knew. This was allowed to be top of the charts for 3 whole weeks back in the day. I don't know how the hell that happened, but it was so worth it. My friends and I still sing this song, even now, and not merely for the purposes of getting high (whatever that is...). It is a song for bonding, a song for loving, a song for the good times. I don't know where Afroman is any more, but I was rifling through the CD racks at HMV recently and found this, which might well explain a lot.
BELL AND SPURLING - SVEN SVEN SVEN
I was a big football nut back in the day. You'd forever see me down at the park, my wall of hair and pot belly augmented by a football kit, kicking the ball again and again against the fence and babbling incoherant football commentary to myself like I was getting in some early practice for senility. England beating Germany 5-1 is a great, great memory of mine, celebratory Pizza Express pizza and all, and this commemorative track brings the entire thing flooding back. Sort of. Anyway, it's a song for the lads, with Bell and Spurling looking to lay down a challenge to Chas 'n' Dave's mantle as Terrible Cockney Duo In Chief of British Music with a song that basically sounds like drunk men shouting over a 70s porn soundtrack.
LINKIN PARK - CRAWLING
On the same Christmas I got Now ... 50, I also received Hybrid Theory, which I proceeded to play at full volume in my bedroom for the entire rest of the holidays. We had my 80-year-old great aunt staying with us at the time, God knows what she thought. Anyway - with hindsight, this was clearly a very important stage in my musical development, and this song was the song that got me into Linkin Park in the first place, and so it feels only right it feature it. My dad used to get them and the next band's names mixed up, which was the sweetest thing.
LIMP BIZKIT - ROLLIN'
Everyone under a certain age knows this song, and can sing the chorus. That's the way it is, so sorry if you're over that threshold. For a pre-pubescent, this is pure unadulterated bliss manifest as rock song - the delicious, forbidden joy of all those "fuck"s, the Angry Young Men on top of a skyscraper, the sheer headbang-ability of it; it's totally awesome. They also had another awesome jam that I loved just as much that seems to have been lost in the sands of time. They've reunited this year too, which should be interesting. Nu-metal, why did you go away at all?
WHEATUS - TEENAGE DIRTBAG
Now this, this was the thinking man's pop-punk smash. A wistful, poignant ode to unrequited love, the complex guitar part and shimmering vocal harmonies blended to startling affect with all those bits about Iron Maiden. What's more, it seemed genuine - the band looked like the sort of people that would be lonely on prom night (a dizzying and barely understood prospect at this early stage of development), and every chorus seemed sung with genuine passion. There was a depth here that the likes of Blink-182 and Green Day just couldn't reach. But I'll mainly remember this song for the time I spend giggly with Olly Clements about how funny it would be if, in the video, everything that was regailed in the second verse came through - the bully portrayed as a walking penis, carrying a gun through high school, kicking every ass he could lay his dicky little hands on. Good, good times.
ANDREW WK - PARTY HARD
The king of all songs: The purest rock music will ever get: A yardstick by which to measure all future rock songs, a great towering Babel casting it's shadow over all guitar music that has ever been or will be. This is a song that unites philosophies, hearts and minds of every creed, race, religion and disposition. The unadulterated joy held in that riff, in those full-bellied cries emanating from sweaty throats, in that huge "WWHOMMM" of sound that ushers in the second chorus (surely the most exciting moment in recorded sound) - every element of human nature combining in three and a half minutes of ecstasy and love. It is about life. It is about freedom. It is about PARTYING. THE FUCK. HARD.
Phew, effort. If y'all have any suggestions/disagreements/pearls of wisdom, don't hesitate. xxx
Ok, so this week I'm interning at a magazine I occasionally write for. By the end of the week I plan to have wormed my way into the top position, fired the people that have been working for the last decade to make it a respected publication, and to have turned it into a ruthless corporate money-making scheme getting 100,000+ hits a day and hiring ex-Sony employees that consider The Hoosiers "a bit edgy". Just try and stop me.
I morally object to spending £7-fucking-50 a day on a travelcard that would save me about an hour on my journey, so I'm getting up to Kings Cross each day by a complex and time-consuming system of buses and tubes. At some point in the near future I think I'll have a rant about South West Trains, but that's another post.
Anyway, so I got onto the Piccadilly Line at South Kensington this morning. It was pretty packed, as one would expect at 10.30, so I was standing for a few stations before a seat became readily pounce-on-able. Before it could be taken, I swivelled in what I thought was an expert manner round the pole and towards the seat. I had quite a few odds and ends to carry at this point, and was also engrossed in my book and my Bach, so I didn't really look when lowering myself into the point of contact between bum and seat.
Basically, I sat on one of those hard plastic seat dividers. And not just clumsily, lazily even, with one cheek momentarily resting there before drooping clumsily off, but with a hard and firm "clunk" of my coccyx. Some Asian guys laughed at me, and I sort of gave them a sheepish grin and said "that didn't go well, did it?", all the while distracting both myself and others from the fact that I have NEVER KNOWN SUCH PAIN. Maybe I need to man up (I'm pretty sure I do, I'm told so on a daily basis), or maybe I just have an unusual spine, but seriously, every movement throughout today from that point onwards has been a desperate battle against a violent and malicious twinge rearing up from the base of my spine. It knows no bounds, this pain - it's hard to sit down, hard to walk, hard to even stay motionless, and totally immune to painkillers. It makes me waddle like the old Muslim lady I see tottering around my hometown like a fucking pendulum on legs, and made me break out into a rather fetching cold sweat on one of the many legs of my journey home.
Have y'all got any witchdoctor cures or anything? Would be appreciated.
In other news; I miss Glastonbury, still. And I'm listening to a lot of Olivier Messiaen at the moment, check him out, as well as the new Basement Jaxx joint. I dunno, those plugs'll probably increase their last.fm playcounts by maybe half a dozen. Nothing really, but every little helps.
