Things That Go Krump in the Night – Part 2

28Nov11

‘Cheers (Drink to That)’ by Rihanna. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “Another idiotic floor filler from the vacuous queen of sex-pop whose last meaningful emotional connection was with Chris Brown’s angry brown first. So what.”

Well not only are you a misogynist, you’re also wrong. As Nate Dogg’s husky hustler voice orders on Dr. Dre’s ‘The Next Episode’, “Hold up, heyyyyyy”. The above song contains subtle hints towards an emotional, spiritual connection Rihanna entered into in the not-so-distant past; a connection that didn’t involve whips, chains, the disgusting smell of sex in an airport, or having Jameson whiskey sink into any of her orifices. Take my hand as I lead you deep into the rabbit hole.

Believe it or not, Rihanna’s top 20 smash single ‘Cheers (Drink to That)’ includes this oft-overlooked lyric:

“Got my Ray-Bans on and I’m feeling Helen Keller tonight, yeah”

You’ve probably heard this song about ten or twenty times over the past few months, but I bet you never picked up on that line. In your defence, it does sound like she’s saying “feelin’ hella cool tonight”. That’s studio wizardry for you. Ignore what the so-called indie press and alternative singer-songwriter types tell you: Auto-Tune isn’t used solely to make squawking starlings sound like choirs of harmonious angels; it is implemented to subliminally sneak controversial opinions and statements into honeyed, glazed, easy to consume chart hits.

But, Rihanna? Helen Keller? Ray-Bans? What can it all mean? Well, having carried out an in-depth analysis of the song’s lyrics, and having studied Rihanna’s behaviour on recent trips to Northern Ireland¹ and Barbados², I have formed the following believable hypothesis:

Rihanna and a harem of close buddies have a few too many drinks from those red plastic cups that Americans use to consume liquor. They drunkenly decide to break out the Ouija board. Not having all the letters of the alphabet – or a pangram – handy, they cut the letters from various glossy magazines that are scattered around Rihanna’s penthouse apartment. (She’s a compulsive subscriber; they get their required 26 letters from issues of Bimonthly Horse Breeder, Pogs Pogs Pogs, Knitting with Nubs, and Aga-Knee Aunt (“Slow Cooking with Slow Aching Joints”.)

Gathered round this hastily assembled DIY Ouija board, they summon the spirit of Helen Keller. (They were actually attempting to reach the soul of ex-Leicester City goalkeeper Kasey Keller, but as he is still alive, the spirit world operator granted them access to Helen instead.) She immediately appears. Her hovering spectre is bright and blinding, like a strikingly white t-shirt that’s just passed the Daz Doorstep Challenge.

"Barkeep, make mine a Jameson and white. And point me in the direction of this so-called 'Pinball Wizard'."

Rihanna instinctively reaches out for her Ray-Bans, but Helen’s radiance has forced her eyes shut. She squints and gropes wildly for them, accidentally knocking over a half full tumbler of Jameson in the process. The Irish whiskey drips off the fine oak table and slowly sinks into her fine Persian rug. She ignores the spillage, and without hesitation, announces matter-of-factly that she is about to switch on the lights.

Her friends and Helen instantaneously berate her. Helen threatens to leave. Bumping around, covering her eyes with a tiny waxed forearm – her own forearm – Rihanna finally locates them, protruding from one of the red plastic cups. (Thankfully the cup was empty.)

They provide her eyes with dutiful shade. Now she can clearly see Helen for the first time. Helen and her glass eyeballs. Rihanna struggles with empathy; she can’t stop herself staring at Helen’s spherical glass bauble peepers.

“Would you like me to take a photograph with a pinhole camera? It will last a considerable while longer,” says Helen haughtily. Despite having now been berated twice by a spirit, the situation fails to overwhelm Rihanna; in fact the situation barely registers. This is a woman who was physically assaulted by a man who dances called Chris Brown. She has performed and writhed for mass audiences worldwide wearing nothing more than some clothes. Being belittled by a translucent, levitating, deafblind American author? Small cheese. No big deal. A piece of a cake.

Rihanna is an automaton. She is a pop music prisoner of war, aloof and devoid of emotion thanks to sexualisation, exploitation and 5-star hotel room service. Still, the evening will conclude with Rihanna cradling that intelligent spectre, both of them silently weeping.

And just how did the evening – so full of promise and wonder – descend into this sappy Kleenex romcom scene? Will Rihanna’s pals sell their stories to the tabloids? Will James Randi give Rihanna a hard debunking? Has Rihanna uploaded the pinhole camera shots to Facebook and tagged an empty chair as ‘my shawty Helen Kella’?

Alas, you’ll have to fill in those blanks yourself. Because this story has run its course.

^{1 Displayed blasphemous behaviour.}

^{2 Displayed sun-drenched show pony traits.}

Filed under: 2011, Chris Brown, Helen Keller, James Randi, Rihanna, Spooky   |  Leave a Comment

Things That Go Krump in the Night

18Nov11

“Spit out the bricks Robinson. What’s this scoop you’ve been concealing?” I hear you wail in unison.

“Wail in unison?” you add after reading the end of the previous sentence. “Your fondness for exaggerated melodrama is both boorish and unnecessary. We merely exclaimed, or at a stretch, cried out in unison. Still, we are highly intrigued and puzzled by your grandiloquent choice of words and wish you would continue, post-haste.”

As you wish. Yes, I used the word ‘wail’, and I used it on purpose. For upon completion of this sentence you may wish to accompany that wail with a shriek or a girlish yelp, because the rumours you have heard are true: spiritualism is back in vogue, with the supernatural and paranormal grabbing ghastly tabloid headlines for the first time since a gaunt Brian Harvey was dragged from his reversing Mercedes by a poltergeist.¹

Banshees, zorse, and other things that go bump in the night have intermittently slithered their way into the glare of the media spotlight over the years, stimulating water cooler conversation and freaking out British white van men and builders from Land’s End to somewhere near John o’Groats.²

Sheepish builders were particularly perturbed by the infamous incident of the flying brick of Borley Rectory (pictured below), deemed by many as ‘the most haunted house in Britain’. Brickies across the nation collectively threw their Daily Stars onto their dashboards, shuddered and nervously discussed how this would make working conditions “nightmarishly hellish/fucking untenable”. On the other hand, I thought it would eradicate the need for wheelbarrows and clunky pulley systems. Different strokes.

"The construction industry in Dublin is dead, lads. I'm off to Galway to become a rustic paperweight."

Aside from the aforementioned amazing levitating brick and Brian Harvey’s abusive poltergeist, the most prominent examples of otherworldly phenomenon infiltrating the mainstream media have been:

• Death-defying escapologist (and not-death-defying human punch-bag) Harry Houdini calling shenanigans on Arthur Conan Doyle’s wife’s spiritualism routine, purportedly referring to her as “a preposterous floozy” in the process.
• In the eighties, sceptic James Randi grew a beard and decided to banish a couple of charlatans, namely Uri Geller and Peter Popoff. The former tortured spoons for a living, while the latter tortured terminally ill people, using his supposedly divine powers to not only not cure them, but to fleece them financially as well. Geller’s career nosedived until he was forced to become friends with Michael Jackson, and despite going bankrupt in 1987 following Randi’s meddlesome meddling, Popoff has since regained prominence, using gullible, ill, lonely people (and McDonalds salt) to rake in over $23 million in 2005.
• Most recently, bespectacled clairvoyant Sally Morgan put her foot in a massive pile of spectral faeces by getting caught using a Bluetooth headset to banter with two Irish lads during a show in Dublin in September. She claims it was all innocent craic – general chat about Michael D., Martin McGuinness, her after party down Copper Face Jacks – but those pesky sceptics are having none of it. They seem to think she was being fed information about her audience through the Bluetooth headset, and not actually having a genuine conversation with the two blokes! The cheek! Despite Sally issuing a heartfelt statement denying any fakery or funny business, this wasn’t good enough for the sceptics: they invited her to prove her psychic abilities at a special Halloween challenge, but unfortunately Sally declined. (She was busy bobbing for apples.)

Due to this revival of interest in the ghoulish and spiritual, it surprises me that neither James Randi nor Derren Brown – nor any other chancing would-be debunker with two inquisitive fingers on the faint, fading pulse of commercial pop culture – have picked up on some recent high profile spooky chat. And it’s not subliminal either: this spooky chat has permeated the British airwaves, even scaling to the lofty heights of number 15 in the UK singles chart earlier this year.

These ambiguous lyrics have been absentmindedly mouthed by distracted housewives as they predatorily browse the reduced section at Tesco. The lyrics have been heard on street corners, spewing forth from tinny Blackberry handsets that are grasped tightly by young males in hooded garments who send racist tweets to non-league football players. Lying alone in a tent tonight, the sound of police brutality invading the left ear, and the bubbling grunt of a slumped heroin junkie coming from the right, a desolate Occupy protestor unsheathes her iPod nano, winds its dial to the letter ‘R’, pops both earphones in at once, presses play and exhales softly before laying back, gently returning to the foetal position. It’ll be a long, cold night, but these lyrics will help her see it through.

They ring of positivity; they chime with jubilation. Or do they? Cliffhanger ending: part two tomorrow.

¹ _{This meddling poltergeist has never been tracked down, thus never tried in a court of law for almost ending the life of a nineties baggy pop icon. Metropolitan Police Service AND Crimewatch, hang your collective heads in shame.}

² _{You think people in John o’Groats know what a tabloid paper is? Remove Rupert Murdoch’s moist tongue from your ear and open your eyes, sheeple. 17% of people in the UK think the word ‘coalition’ is something to do with “the on-going miners’ strike”. Coal not dole. Mangles not Wranglers etc.}

Filed under: 2011, Sally Morgan, James Randi, Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle, Peter Popoff, Uri Geller, Occupy, Brian Harvey, Spooky, Paranormal, Ambiguous lyrics!   |  Leave a Comment

We At The Hostel, Hostel, Holiday Hostel

20Oct11

A precursor to this tale: I now live in Toronto, Canada. I am here on a one-year working holiday visa. This is my sixteenth night in a hostel.

When in work, I often find my mind filled with pessimistic, cynical thoughts about my fellow hostel occupants. Not in a Human Centipede or twisted sexual deviant way though. My brain mush can’t help but imagine the fun they’re probably having right now in the hostel: the chortling japes they’re partaking in; and the lifelong friendships they are currently forming.

And what am I doing while all this is going on? I’m sitting with my eyeballs tetchily glued to the three monitors that have been graciously bestowed upon me in work. At my old IT job in Belfast this would have meant one monitor for Facebook, one for Twitter, and one for Miniclip 8-ball pool. (Click that link at your peril.)

(As a new arrival in Toronto, and having only started this job, I’m unaware of Canadian attitudes towards 8-ball pool. Is it more of a 9-ball culture here? Answers.com and the phrase “billiard hall” should be able to put me in touch with some enlightening fellows. Anyway, I shan’t risk it for at least two weeks. Starting off on the right foot, making a good first impression etc.)

So there I am, stuck in an open plan office, fearing the onset of squinty eyes (medical term: cross-eyed) due to the three-monitors two-eyes dilemma. Where I’m certainly not is quirkily introducing myself to Polish exchange students in the hostel, shaking hands and exchanging uproarious anecdotes over a fresh bottle of Gallo. “Whoa you’ve been travelling for ten months without a job and your parents haven’t funded it at all? Awesome socks! I sure hope those malnourished Kenyan orphans were grateful for your visit and the banter you provided. Giggles and shit. Sounds like hell to be honest.”

Just like wearing a watch and constantly having a peek, or staring forlornly at your Blackberry and praying for that little red beacon of hope to flash and provide a welcome distraction, these thoughts – of external hostel-based japery – can make a work day drag.

I exit the office at approximately 5pm. I cross Spadina Avenue and dander along Adelaide Street. The deli on my left looks smoke-stain faded and grimy – like a still from the movie Leon – and condo advertisements plaster high-rise walls. (In case you’re interested – most of the condos start from as little as $300,000.) I turn left onto Widmer Street and climb the small wooden steps up to the hostel door.

This is it. I’m on the threshold. I’m on the threshold in my Topman trousers, Topman shirt, Topman boots, Primark socks, Primark boxers, and imitation Ryan Gosling in ‘Drive’ jacket. I have yet to adorn it with a chalk drawn scorpion, but I have been sketching a few drafts/drafting a few sketches. One is displayed below.

I am perched on the threshold in this attire, my 8.30am to 5pm Canadian chain mail.¹ “Did Wayne Gretzky feel this way after a hard day at the rink?” races around my head.

I’m not exactly sure what lies beyond the door, but I can guess that it will include some, if not all of the following:

• Teenagers who speak broken English doing shots of Jagermeister through any orifice other than their mouths

• Irish labourers in GAA jerseys using a spirit level to ensure the stability and posture of a table (for an arm wrestling contest). The loser must stand atop the sturdy table and admit that his jovial outward appearance and boozy/up for anything attitude has all been bravado. As his hand is forcefully pushed from a perpendicular angle backwards onto a table, his makeup (bravado) is smudged and quickly removed by a burly Irish makeup wipe (the opposing arm wrestler), exposing the simple face of a nervous Irish child (bravado gone; fear now displayed instead). “Yes I am Irish, but I am lonely, and I am scared and I am worried about the future and my smiling mask has been lifted. So it has.”

• Hooters girls

• People cementing lifelong friendships (or at least meaningless Facebook friendships)

• Fun

I take a deep breath, roll my eyes, and push open the door. I glide through reception towards the ascending staircase.

There’s an Irish plumber asleep, sitting up. (And no, he isn’t ‘on the job’!)

Four Germans are sat glumly on Facebook, chatting to each other online. I catch a glimpse of one laptop screen: the Guardian app informs me that they’ve been reading an article titled ‘Die Bedeutung von 9 / 11’s umstrittensten Foto‘. My ‘E‘ in AS-Level German immediately kicks into gear – that’s an article about a controversial 9/11 photo! And not just any contoversial photo – 9/11’s most controversial photo!² Where did they find that? In my mind I wonder if it could possibly be as controversial as Ricky Gervais saying the word “mong“ earlier in the week. I doubt it. That controversial comedian typing a word on Twitter has really made me mad!!

A bunch of Spaniards are engaged in the Spanish national sport – making as much noise as humanly possible and generally getting in everyone’s way.

Others listlessly mill around, drinking endless cups of tea, eating packets of Mr. Noodles, making stunted small talk, and having no money to enjoy the sights and sounds of the city. For now my mind is eased.

_{1 Do genuine Canadian warriors sport chainmail? If so, I would invoke the maple syrup stereotype, pouring vats of it over my rippling armour, passing it off as patriotism and loyalty to the flag. Stumbling enemies would stick to the adhesive breakfast gloop, allowing me to smite them at will. And if so desired, I could walk around with various pieces of corpse sticking to my syrupy protection. Sticking a head to your midriff and strutting through a bloody battlefield is a more threatening and grand gesture than merely sticking a head on a spike.}

_{2 I heard that if you look at 9/11’s most controversial photo while having ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and ‘Mein Kampf’ in your Amazon Shopping Basket you go straight onto an FBI terror watch list. Government? More like Big Bruv-vernment.}

Filed under: 2011, Canada, Hostel, Mr. Noodles, Toronto   |  2 Comments

Ménagerie à trois

21Aug11

Solar Bears w/ SertOne & Miracle Boy
Menagerie, Belfast
Friday 19th August 2011

An epiphany. One of those moments when time stands still. You stop, everything stops, and you survey the situation you’re in. Someone – not yourself – has hit pause on the Sky remote that controls your surroundings. Your skeleton frozen to the spot, you are unable to move. Except for your eyeballs; they dramatically improve in quality, taking on pristine HD quality, presenting you with a panoramic widescreen shot of the situation you find yourself in. If you could rub your eyes you would. But you can’t.

In this moment everything comes together. You are removed from your immediate surroundings and you think about life: What am I doing here? What am I? In fact you get downright existential on this bizarre situation: Who am I? The answers are not immediately forthcoming.

As I stood in a pizza place that 10 days ago was fined for harbouring a dead mouse in its kitchen, none of aforementioned thoughts or questions entered my brain. The only thing my mangled mind processed was the retro Royal Rumble pinball machine they had purchased to somehow raise their credibility as an eating establishment. Well, that and the strange Wild West-style saloon bar they had installed. Strong, impressive wood with the added touch of a little reception bell. A Fistful of Dollars? It’s common knowledge that that name originated from The Man with No Name impatiently waiting to order a medium pepperoni. Presumably he spent his arduous 15 minute wait going for the Championship Belt.

The Undertaker chows down on a delicious invisible pizza

Anyway, all this Ratatouille business came after the Solar Bears, SertOne, and Miracle Boy triple-threat show at the Menagerie.

Contrary to his moniker, Miracle Boy did not start the show in a miraculous manner. At this stage of the post I’d like to ask you a few questions: Do you enjoy climbing into bed to the sound of gentle ambient loops? Find you fall asleep much quicker when aided by the gentle caress of smooth background music? Yet, alongside these sleepy feelings, you also long for the company and security of another human being? Not necessarily a lover, but simply a physical presence. You don’t merely want to stick the iPod in and lay there by yourself*. If these needs and desires appear familiar, then hire Miracle Boy. Place him and his equipment in the corner of your bedroom just prior to sleepy time, and you’ll soon find he can assuage that sleep-deprived, tossing-and-turning mind. With a live presence that could fairly be described as “nonexistant”, he will easily replace the uncomfortable ear irritation and mild strangulation that comes with wearing earplugs in bed, and he is also a human. Plus, the next time a night terror occurs, it might not even be an imaginary being that’s plumped on your chest. Miracle Boy. He was one man with a laptop playing pleasing, nondescript music in the background while the first people were filing into the venue. This time slot did him no favours.

As a white, ginger-haired male with minimal knowledge of hip-hop, it’s quite obvious that I’ll compare SertOne to J Dilla. As SertOne is stick-thin, white and most definitely alive, this comparison rests solely on the beats that this young Liverpool-based Norn Iron man drops. Despite drawing more of a crowd than his last appearance here – that show’s attendance almost soared into double figures – he struggled to free the Menagerie crowd from their staid inhibitions. People chatted, mingled, smoked, braved the suffocating piss fug that encompasses the latrines, but very few paid attention. Which is a shame, because the beats he was droppin’ were fresher than fresh fruit arriving at Arnotts on a fresh, crisp, dewy Belfast morning. Like most white people attempting to write about hip-hop on the Internet, my lingo is pathetic and embarrassing and I’ll understand if you leave this page now, never to return. SertOne does beats, and he does them well. “Bears eat beets. Bears… Beets… Battlestar Galactica.”

Solar Bears travelled up from the Land Down Under and deservedly stole the show. In the beginning a small crowd gathered at the front of the stage, sucked in by the duo’s aura of slow-burning kosmische; synth layers that teased and tantalised, before the introduction of their bass lines and underlying grooves sent us not so much into a frenzy, but a sort of symbiotic trance. It was some pre-Kool Aid Jonestown type shit. Ladies down the front waved their arms, men down the front waved their arms, and best of all, any chatter was silenced. (Whether this was because people had stopped nattering, or because Solar Bears were quite loud, I’m unsure. I like to think it was a combination of both: twats attempting to spill their drivel and getting rightfully drowned out.)

There is something wonderfully reductive about Solar Bears’ aged sound. Their name is supposedly influenced by the director Andrei Tarkovsky, and there’s something of a Soviet vibe to everything they do. Their backdrop of scientists in glasses, rockets, and general Space Race tomfoolery fits the music perfectly: it is a Cold War sound. Psychedelic yet restrained and sober, exploratory yet weary of straying too far.

Solar Bears are two old men draped in the Iron Curtain playing pong. It is the backdrop to Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky battling it out for hours, in black-and-white. It is Garry Kasparov finally losing patience with Deep Blue and smashing the fucking supercomputer to bits, rebuilding it into a modified synthesiser and releasing an album influenced by Cluster. A brilliant gig.

"Fuck you Deep Blue. I will destroy you once you have finished downloading that Tangerine Dream discography. And fuck you again."

_{* Clarification: stick the iPod in your ears. Not even on the fascinating, horrifying world wide web have I heard of anyone sticking an iPod into their anal cavity. I’m almost confident that it has happened though. Just too many people “love music” for it not to have.}

Filed under: 2011, Menagerie, Miracle Boy, SertOne, Solar Bears, Some Cold War Soviet Iron Curtain Space Race Shit   |  Leave a Comment

Ocean’s Fourteen: The Northern Bank Robbery

26May11

Sometime in 2007 or 2008 I saw a Rat Pack production in Belfast’s Grand Opera House. Ready to be transported back to the heady days of The Sands Hotel, I donned my finest job interview suit, polished my shoes and squeezed myself into the magnificent hall alongside the varicose veins and freshly sheened dentures of the city’s glamorous elderly. And what an adventure it was.

The Dean Martin stumbled around the stage sozzled, swigging various beverages and charmingly slurring sly sexisms. The Frank Sinatra acted like a stylish gangster who had the world at his feet and the 12 incher in his pants. The Sammy Davis Jr. was Frank’s servile butler, stealing shards of the spotlight when he was permitted. And the May McFettridge didn’t even make an appearance (“Farce!” shouts a primary 7 schoolchild from the back of the blog).

Rather than lodge a complaint about May’s no-show – not to mention the absence of Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop – I left with a massive smile on my face (in the process exposing my healthy, real, yellowing teeth to the legions of gummy pensioners. Wartime toothpaste rations, eh?).

I was content that this was how it had played out with the real Rat Pack: that the character traits paraded to me on stage were honest. And I had no reason to think otherwise. Case in point is Ocean’s 11 (the 1960 delight; not the 2001 blockbuster featuring David Holmes trying to drown out Don Cheadle’s cockney accent).

In the movie Frank plays Danny Ocean, the cold, calculating heist mastermind. In Frank’s shadow, Sammy Davis is forced to act as a bin-man who continually resorts to a hilarious dreamer’s soliloquy (“Eee-O Eleven”), and Dean plays a decoy performer, on stage charming the ladies, the men and the bottle.

It seemed Frankie called all the shots, Dean drank the shots, and Sammy cleaned up the shots. Fuck knows what Peter and Joey got up to when those three were on the job. I assume they stood around laughing and wearing dapper suits, picking up chicks because they were lucky enough to roll with the lads. It sounds like an alright way to make a living. I recently purchased the book ‘Rat Pack Confidential’ by Shawn Levy, so soon enough I’ll know if these stereotypes permeated their entire being, and I’ll be sure to fill you in. (I’m a slow reader, so give me approximately 2 to 3 years.)

In their movies, their banter and their public persona (as a group and as individuals), they generally exuded testosterone-fuelled debauchery and mayhem, but always with class and an ice cool, untouchable veneer; they were staggering pillars of confidence that would stumble into Vegas and whip the city into a frenzy. The proletariat would be throwing the last of their weekly shillings onto the roulette wheel, pleading for a win to afford them a glimpse into the opulent lifestyle of a Rat Packer, and maybe even enough for them to escape the drudgery of their routine existence; whereas the already-opulent would be hanging on the Pack’s coattails, trying to get an invite to their parties, wishing Dean would dribble on their crotches and urging Frankie to sleep with their girlfriends.

But many of their songs are much different in subject matter. (And yes, I know that they didn’t write their songs. (But did you know that Dean Martin has a songwriting credit on The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sister Ray’?) The bravado is often dismissed and stripped away, leaving heartfelt elegies to loves lost. And despite the fact they probably recorded their vocals while receiving a rimmer from some 50s Hollywood starlet, their pleas sound genuine. If we could hear the groupies and Dean Martin giggling along in the background I’m not sure the music would have retained its gravitas.

One of my favourite plaintive Frank numbers is ‘Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)’, which was recorded in 1944. The songs follows the standard “my baby is gone -> I miss her -> I can’t stop thinking about her -> now I find myself bored and lonely on a Saturday night masturbating to her memory” storyline. But it has fun horn blasts that occasionally jut in, a tinkering piano line that lasts only a few seconds before darting off to the bar, and a wonderful big band finish. Check it out below.

My question is: would Frank’s Saturday night loneliness be as bad nowadays? Because of the pervasiveness of the Internet and the stupidity of humanity with regard to social networking sites, I’m inclined to say his loneliness would be much worse in 2011 than in 1944.

Scenario 1: it’s 1944, Frank’s baby has just kicked him to the curb, and he’s lonely on a Saturday night. The only things connecting him to the outside world are his telephone, a radio, his doorbell and maybe a television. Although the women on hit TV channel Broadstation are now allowed to take off their scarves to reveal their bare shoulders, Frank can’t afford the premium rate call. Unless they specifically contact him, Frank has no idea what his friends and peers are getting up to; in his mind they may be having the greatest time of their lives, but it is only in his mind. For all he knows they could be at home tuning into Broadstation.

Scenario 2: it’s 2011, Frank’s blade has dumped him, and since he ditched all his mates obeying her every demand, he’s now stuck in the house with his parents on a Saturday night. So Frank is solemn, lonesome in his bed at 11pm after receiving no contact from his friends. This boredom drives him to a constant checking of his phone, and because he has a hip, expensive smartphone, a checking of his myriad social networking sites. And unlike 1944 Frank who can only imagine that his friends are having the banter, 2011 Frank logs in to his social networking sites to discover the outside world are actually having the banter: he checks his Twitter and finds out Times journalist Caitlin Moran is getting fisted alongside Lady Gaga in a German sex dungeon; his ex-girlfriend just ‘checked in’ to her new boyfriend’s “massive cock” using that shit Facebook app; and his supposed best friend became ‘the king’ of “getting da shots in” on Foursquare. Driven out of his mind with despair, and now nursing a bad RSI injury due his incessant phone-checking, Frank spends his days tending to his Second Life farm and reining various Battlestar Galactica forums with his iron moderator fist.

Or rather than worrying about their lost loves and the social pressure of having to hit the shower and spring out onto the streets on a Saturday night, both 1944 Frank and 2011 Frank could pick up a book and stop fucking whining. 2011 Frank could switch off his phone and at least then he’d be able to share one innocent joy with 1944 Frank: the ability to chew on his Sunday roast without his mind being invaded by countless idiots proclaiming that they’re “never drinking again”.

Filed under: 2011, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Ocean's 11, Sammy Davis Jr., Saturday Night, The Rat Pack   |  Leave a Comment

In Which Bill Grundy Unfollows Hodgy Beats On Twitter

17May11

Anticipating NME 'Introducing' piece, increasing UK Twitter rah-rah, then pretentious, fawning, pseudointellectual Review Show blah #ofwgkta—
Kyle Robinson (@DonAman) February 17, 2011

I’m not exactly Nostradamus, but it’s close: Tyler finally graced the hallowed front page of the NME a few weeks back; Zane Lowe suffered sputtering fits on Twitter trying to decide whether he preferred Odd Future or our coastal locals And So I Watch You From Afar; technologically astute tweens started circulating the ‘Yonkers’ video faster than topless photos of a haughty art teacher; and rather than the Review Show, it was the Guardian who provided the fawning, pseudointellectual UK thought pieces, with its multi-pronged Odd Future offensive culminating last weekend with three weighty articles, each one choosing a different area of the garden fence and its surrounding grass on which to place their wet, liberal bottoms.

First was Paul Lester’s ‘we are not worthy’ interview with Tyler, in which he states, “(Bastard) is one of the best rap albums ever made, free or otherwise”. Then Hermione Hoby crip walked up to the rape plate, coming across like a teenage girl trying to defend an unruly boyfriend to her parents: “Daddy, I know Tyler is really mean, and he says horrible things, and even though he is black, I promise he’s really good under that tough exterior! ” (Hermione Hoby only communicates with her parents through text messages.) The trilogy was completed by Alex Macpherson, who berates Tyler, says he isn’t shocked or impressed with his pottymouth, then praises Lil B. The Guardian circle of life = complete.

(In addition to all this I’d like to add the rumour that Guardian music editor Tim Jonze supposedly made a sly Charlie Sheen-style “pay per tweet” deal with OFWGKTA’s management company. For a few months every other tweet from his personal Twitter account dripped with unabashed Wolf Gang praise, so the rumour may contain more than a smidgen of truth. I shout “FUCK THE SYSTEM! AND FUCK WIKILEAKS!” if I happen to be unknowingly breaking a super-injunction by dropping that literary bombshell.)

Go read some of the comments on the above Guardian articles. Hilarious, yes, but still I’m not satisfied. And I feel I won’t be satisfied until OFWGKTA are elevated to the lofty heights of The Review Show or Newsnight. I want to see Toby Young stroke his little chin, furrow his brow, and fight for his strongly held, shocking beliefs. I imagine him uttering sentences like, “Yes, since Nirvana’s ‘Rape Me’ in 1993, to Fornicator’s debut album in 2002, sexual abuse has seen a lapse in creative impetus over the past few years. These young kids – obviously learned in the works of the Situationist International and festering gutter-shit of Tracey Emin – are breathing new life into a dying – or should I say struggling? Ha! – genre. Personally,” and here he’ll lift one clenched fist to his chest, “I love it”.

I hope Mona Eltahawy videos calls from New York, thrashing her arms and flailing wildly, upset that Tyler farted out her Ground Zero peace candle. Eerily similar to her linked article, she’ll cry: “Olympic-style chants of “Free Earl! Free Earl!” I could just about take as a freshly minted American. But “Kill People! Burn Shit! Fuck School!” crushed any ambition of dignity for the thousands killed, many of whom had jumped hundreds of storeys to their deaths, their bodies shattered to pieces close to where we stood.”

I want to see Germaine Greer’s jowls shake and I want to hear Kirsty Wark snootily speak “Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All” while trying to control her sniggering. I want to be able to laugh at older people attempting to understand – and then hastily overanalysing – the whims and trends of younger generations while I still can. (Although, at the age of 24, many people who know me would say I have had the attitude and mind-set of an octogenarian for many years. I would say I have the body of an octogenarian: one of these mornings both my legs will fall off while I sluggishly cycle my way up the Stranmillis ‘hill’. You heard it here first. Nostradamus.)

On the subject of ‘Goblin’, I think it’s just alright. About 35 minutes too long, stacked full of overwrought emotional waste, and contains some songs so embarrassingly pathetic I quickly switch to Robson & Jerome when people walk into the room in which I’m listening (particularly ‘Radicals’, ‘Fish’ and ‘Bitch Suck Dick’). Then again, stick in a good pair of headphones and listen to the end of ‘Goblin’. When he states “All you fucking lames don’t have to like me, The devil doesn’t wear Prada, I’m clearly in a fucking white tee” and it segues into that cold, hard beat of ‘Yonkers’. That’s good. But then again, it isn’t as good as ‘Bastard’. And it isn’t as good as ‘Earl’.

This post hasn’t made any point and was originally meant to be about The Rat Pack. Thus, the next post will be about The Rat Pack.

Filed under: 2011, another white person talking about Odd Future, another white person who doesn't know anything about hip-hop talking about Odd Future, Free Merle, Germaine Greer, Goblin, Kirsty Wark, Mona Eltahawy, Nostradamus, Odd Future, OFWGKTA, The Creator, The Guardian, The Review Show, Toby Young   |  Leave a Comment

I Saw You on a Blog, Facing a Cove

23Feb11

Recently I’ve had the opportunity of seeing three very different bands, at three very different stages of their musical lifecycles: one band are currently finding their feet, stumbling slowly forth, adorned in glittery glad rags to attract attention and dark shades so as not to be blinded by the startling limelight; one band who found their feet awhile back but now their once comfy shoes are falling apart, with the soles wearing thin, their callous foot skin is trickling blood and worryingly what appears to be a bunion has surfaced on that freakish big toe, but still they don’t want to throw that cherished pair out – the memories, the comfort, their gnarly look (scuff up those Converse before you take them to the street, son) – and they’re struggling to locate a suitable replacement; and one band who found their feet when Neanderthals were still hobbling around on all fours, and their continuing evolution often baffles their wearied fanbase, yearning for the seminal back catalogue (though scorn to admit it), but evolution won’t allow them to revert to their old ways, and now elderly, they hobble on their hind legs, trying to stay relevant while younger, fresher wolf packs devour their past glories, and stick the sword of modernity through its heart, and run off with it into the night, unashamed.

In ode to the stylistic nature of the latter’s earliest work, I’m gonna keep it brief and to the point from here.

Wire
Spring & Airbrake
Arthritic old men play sloppy old songs for a largely unresponsive denim-clad old crowd. “Saw you in a mag, kissing a man”.

Raise that Pink Flag

Mogwai
Mandela Hall
£25 for a night of hearty Glaswegian ‘entertainment’ – dismal acoustic guitar ‘journeys’ taking into consideration themes such as heartbreak, depression and isolation to first clog the arteries (RM Hubbert), then the past-it post-rockers who spare us the onset of tongue-lolling dementia by finally, thoughtfully rolling out ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’.

Sleigh Bells
Ulster Hall
“I chill with the contents of my rider while roadie slaves assemble my minimal equipment; I press play on the pre-recorded backing track before unleashing my barrage of simple, distorted chunky riffs; I leave stage immediately to savour the remnants of my rider while the roadie fucks clear up and untangle my one guitar cable. I am in a successful indie band while my former bandmates are probably still touring Midwest toilet venues in a Ford Fiesta camper van. Indie is good.” And despite the vocals being so low in the mix they were often inaudible, Sleigh Bells were excellent.

Filed under: 2011, Live, Mogwai, Pink Flag, RM Hubbert, Sleigh Bells, Wire   |  Leave a Comment

Oh We Hate Coleraine, and We Hate Coleraine

14Feb11

Although Ballymena is internationally renowned as a hotbed of metalcore*, pop-punk, and pub rock nonsense, precious few realise its grubby surface conceals a tender underbelly of soulful singer-songwriter types; country bumpkins who have managed to escape the hedonistic trappings of the City of the Seven Towers (e.g. the Minnesota snooker club).

Versed in the timeless prose of Dylan, Young (Jimmy and Neil), Cohen, Fullerton, and Landsborough, with an acoustic guitar slung over their shoulders, and stonewashed jeans bursting out of an Umbro rucksack, these dreamers were heading off to pastures anew before their graduation photos had been even collected from Snappy Snaps.

"I told you "City of the Seven Flowers"! Now we're gonna have to get planning permission for some towers. I've no idea how the budget will stretch. Have you seen the price of hiring extras to populate the Ballymena Show this year? You fucking imbecile."

One such band of outlaws is The Holy Innocents, an alt-country group who split their personnel and time between the Twin Smokes of London and Dublin. With foundations laid in Ballymena – providing them with grit, a steely determination, and the ability to drive a hard bargain hi – rather than further blackening their hearts and adding to the misanthropy that a childhood here can often cause, their moves to the big cities has added a sense of wizened worldliness to their expansive delicate, autumnal songbook.

Just summon your eyeballs upon the below video, a glossy advertisement for the Kia Sportage that is backed by the Innocents’ ‘Freshly Fallen Snow’. As well as paying attention to the great tune, cast a glance over the Sportage. Notice how it manages to be sleek and modern while also retaining a bold style? In this, the 21st century, a pervasive economic culture obsessed with cost- and corner-cutting, I didn’t think it was possible for such a beautiful, affordable motor to contain a panoramic sunroof, 18-inch alloy wheels, a Dynamax AWD system, a Ventilating seat (especially good for someone who can’t burp, like myself), and an LED-DRL. One thing’s for sure: it certainly leaves an everlasting impression.

If this Kia cheque bounces I’m gonna go Adam Ant bonkers.

Find The Holy Innocents at Bandcamp, Twitter, and MySpace. Or if you happen to live in London, catch them at The Albion in Hammersmith this Thursday (17th February). ‘Freshly Fallen Snow’ can be purchased for the tiny price of £0.79 on their Bandcamp page.

_{* My two pioneering Ballymena metalcore bands were The November Revolution, and later, The Satanic Wheelchair. I think they’re almost worthy of a post in their own right.}

Filed under: 2011, Ballymena, Dublin, Kia, London, Sportage, The Holy Innocents   |  Leave a Comment

The Bhundock Saints

03Feb11

As the cream of the Irish music blogging crop convene in Dublin for a prestigious awards ceremony – the Digital Socket Awards (at which that little Adebisi Shank drummer should be strutting backstage in a pimp suit, with a hoochy mama on each arm, rounding up every award that Richer Collective is nominated for, dumping them in a fine leather briefcase, and shimmying outta there while performing the thunder clap) – I am sipping tap water from an Ikea glass and listening to The Bhundu Boys. I first checked out The Bhundu Boys around three years ago, when I was reading John Peel’s (auto)biography. This is the first time I have listened to them since, and I remember why.

The Zimbabwean nattering sitting atop life-affirming, chirpy afro-pop is too vivacious and distracting for background easy listening, but also too vibrant and bright to fully captivate; its effortless rays of sunshine are burning my ears as I type. I could understand sticking this on while relaxing on a Zimbabwean beach – though perhaps not on a Zimbabwean farm as a white man – but here, in Belfast on a blustery, rainy, torrid evening at 21:07, it has no resonance. It makes me want to don a hula skirt and beat myself to death.

Find below two drunken gig reviews: the first discovered on my work PC (obviously transcribed from a Blackberry memo note the morning after), and the latter on this very laptop, with a ‘Date modified’ time of 02:45, meaning I bashed it out single-fingered after walking home from the gig. Both have been minimally edited to save me from complete embarrassment. It seems I like comparing bands to other bands when I’m drunk.

Buck 65 / Holy Fuck
Speakeasy
18th November 2010

Did you ever hear the one about the crowd who were silent at the Speakeasy? No, me either.

Buck 65 is a musical Doug Stanhope. Smart, trashy, grubby, hilarious, and sarky, with the pallor of an agoraphobic alcoholic. He was fantastic.

Holy Fuck – it reached a head-nod, a foot-tap, a sway; but from this type of music I want Donkey Kong floor-punching, barrel rolling, and chest-beating. It was forever stuck in some weird inhabitable chasm, between a rock and a… place: not Battles, not post-rock, not Krautrock. They were at their best when stripped down; when it all crashes in together the best bits get clogged, like forcing vomit down a plughole with a pencil. Arguably their best moment comes when the tape-reel man drops his MGM reel and picks up a guitar. (Why do I say arguably? My new November resolution is to be more assertive: it was their finest moment.) An MBV-style layerscape, then one that started punky, before descending into heavy keys (it was unlike anything else they played. It’s very good when it builds and it builds and it BUILDS and then the noise and background, superfluous nonsense fall through a trapdoor leaving only the steady rhythmic section – which is all we really want. Towards the end they hit some actual funky rhythms that get quite a percentage of the white masses flowing, but really it’s 4 of them churning out grooves that Dan Deacon – one man, with poor dress sense, and a green skull – could exhale in his sleep. The last song starts with a pure Faustian Kraut bass bilge, and as I type this it continues that way, albeit with more snare invention. The first song of the encore was great, but the final final song was easy jubilation.

BATS
Auntie Annies
28th January 2011

I remember when I was 17/18 – perhaps younger – and constantly listening to bands like Dead to Fall, As I Lay Dying, Unearth etc. All metalcore repetition and aggression. I’d grab my cheap Sunn Mustang axe and constantly reinterpret the same style of riff – palm-muted breakdown chugs with the intermittent high notes. That sharp staccato note would break the tension for just a split-second, like Daughters did to the nth degree, and The Red Chord would do for a more lasting effect. BATS also do this occasionally.

BATS are all the bands you wish you loved, meshed together for the sake of handiness. Circle Takes The Square? Isis? Remember listening to their albums a few times and then them slipping away like Flubber through a cow-grid. BATS are ever changing – huge Pelican style crushing guitars STOP noodle prog fingers fly along the frets STOP wait, is this a bit of GlassJaw influence STOP I wish Daryl didn’t have Crohn’s disease so he could’ve toured more when I was younger. BATS don’t take themselves seriously. BATS are good.

Filed under: 2011, Auntie Annie's, BATS, Belfast, Bhundu Boys, Buck 65, Digital Socket Awards, Holy Fuck, Live, Richter Collective, Speakeasy, Zimbabwe   |  Leave a Comment

Mm.. Food #4 – Lonely rivers flow to the sea

31Jan11

‘Unchained Melody’
Robson & Jerome

I begin this entry with a confession: right up until I sat down to write these very words, stuck the exceedingly English names of the featured duo into Google, navigated to their Wikipedia page and slowly wrapped my brain around its first sentence, I had assumed – nay, totally fucking “I would bet you a whole 10 pounds sterling they were in it” believed – that Robson Green and Jerome Flynn were the main stars of every housewives’ favourite heated, sweaty 90s fireman drama London’s Burning.

I can vividly remember men, women, tabloids, and even the big papers screaming wildly and masturbating in unison at its gloriously gritty depiction of life within Blackwall fire station. As the show’s influence spread, pyromania became the hippest new trend, and many female fans would stalk the streets at night, striking off matches at random and wearing t-shirts emblazoned with slogans such as “Spray Me with Your Meat Hose Robson”, and “There’s Been a Backdraft in my Panties!” After all, you can’t spell depravity without the letters ITV.

So just as I was getting ready to jot down this tale about the influence of firemen in my childhood – Fireman Sam, being able to get ready for work in less than 7 seconds, remains a shining beacon of motivation and cartoon idolatry – I discover that the pop heartthrobs Robson & Jerome weren’t in London’s Burning after all, but instead were the burly heroes of no-nonsense army garbage Soldier Soldier.

Soldier fucking Soldier. Was my entire childhood a lie? I couldn’t believe it; my mother just phoned me and she confirmed it was true: “Who told you there were in London’s Burning? It definitely wasn’t me”. She wouldn’t even admit to having owned one of the aforementioned t-shirts.

Panicking slightly, I had to reaffirm my sanity by delving into childhood places of joy and solace; I needed to ensure they existed exactly as I remember. Wikipedia has somewhat reassured me: Kenan and Kel were genuine human beings and not simply Drake and Josh blacked up, and Chuckie from Rugrats did have ginger hair and was cool as fuck. I’m calming down already (although just discovering that Sylvester Stallone wasn’t in the movie Backdraft has thrown me somewhat out-of-sync again. I swear I remember that voice, like a muffled tuba, shouting through a burning doorway. Turns out it was Kurt Russell).

Jerome, with his massive face that looked like it’d been sculpted from Play-Doh by an alarmingly uninterested two-year old, and cheeky chappy master angler Robson, were responsible for a handful of mid-90s tunes that still occasionally plague me in my sleep. ‘Up on the Roof’, ‘Little Latin Lupe Lu’, ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’.

Just typing those words was akin to fighting the effects of my own personal Ludovico Technique; my hands were jerkily wrestling each other from the keyboard, slamming the laptop screen down upon themselves, attempting to scratch my own eyeballs – because they know I should not type them. The above seemingly inconsequential string of letters – mere song names – has reawakened spirits; infectious choruses of torturous manufactured pop that have lay dormant for years, and now, by thinking them, and typing them, and seeing them, and feeling them, they have sneaked back into my living conscious. If you soon see a man shuffling down the street, weeping, and tunelessly wailing out “SHE’S MY MASH POTATO BABY! LITTLE LATIN LUPE LU!” try to ignore him. It’s my self-inflicted Robson & Jerome Tourette’s.

In an episode of Solder Soldier the duo were required to sing ‘Unchained Melody’ (and for many years afterwards I was convinced they had composed it themselves; firemen, fishermen, why couldn’t they be songmen? Was it that unrealistic?). Simon Cowell, that smart bastard, immediately recognised its potential, hired Stock and Aitken to produce it, and flung it at the baying masses: it stayed at number one for seven weeks in the UK singles chart. A useful commenter sums it up: ‘Knobson Green’. Succinct and perfect, unlike this hellish song.

Filed under: 2011, A childhood built on a foundation of lies, Fireman Sam, Jerome Flynn, London's Burning, Mm.. Food, Robson & Jerome, Robson Green, Simon Cowell, Soldier Soldier, Unchained Melody   |  4 Comments