Pete Um Obssession.
03.07.09 - 02:16pm
Some lady has become obsessed with me.
ADDICTED TO SOCIOLOGY
random UM button
which kitten
pete um slept on grime
Powerful indeed.
02.07.09 - 01:38pm
Was trying to think of something to counteract that last post and I thought of Dan Deacon. I don’t much care for his records but I reckon he’s got to be worth seeing live for sure.
This is an interesting insight into Deacon’s thing too.
Poptones/Careering
02.07.09 - 12:52pm
My man Simon Doling just linked this for my attention. I was trying to write a comment underneath but my thoughts spiralled a bit too far. First off I started thinking about just how cool a clip it was, and what a cool and brave thing Lydon does here, and how it feels like he’s somehow mashing the future together with the past to tell the present to hurry up, whilst similtaneously burying other pasts, the ex-Johnny Rotten in a white suit getting black kids to dance to that funky, dubby bass. How he somehow got to play Doctor Who twice by being a poster-boy for punk and for post-punk. All the stuff you know or should know about the story of Johnny Rotten. All the stuff that kind of makes it a shame that he’s always been a tosser who now sells butter. Then I started thinking about the impossibility of something like the two worlds in the clip ever meeting in this day and age, some modern equivalent of the harsh, dirgey doom disco with Lydon’s discomforting warble of a dead, bored soul car-crashing into the wholesome generic teen TV rave-up show complete with cluelessly bland, cheesy shithead older-dude presenter, and I found myself grateful once again for the YouTube miracle. The miracle that happens over and over whenever someone sends you one of these links, or whenever your stoned fingers manage to type in “Can” or “The Monks” or “Funkadelic” or whatever. I felt grateful that I live in an age where these lost cultural antiquities of the past can suddenly be manifested for my private asessment, enjoyment or education at the touch of some buttons. It also gives me pleasure to think that those artists who did that cool thing once in a certain place at a certain time will eventually get their kudos from a wider audience, because that feels righteous. It nourishes the thing inside me that often feels like a bitter lie, the idea that you hold onto the faith, you keep your dreams. Furthermore it should engender a sense that, as long as that all-important recording is made (and not lost), it is worth doing that thing you do, and getting that jam tight, that joke right, that little step to the left… right.
But then, because, like any decent object of aesthetic appreciation, this YouTube clip of Public Image Ltd performing in the Spring of the first year of a new decade of what would become 1980s America, has, of course, a multiplicity of possible meanings and interpretations, and I started to think about it in another way. Because, in a sense, both of the worlds are now as dead and gone as each other. That door we see John Lydon kicking in has gone, and so has John himself. They cancelled each other out. That show would never happen any more. John’s a celebrity, get him out of here. But… I’m floundering here. I guess I’m trying to say that that piece of footage, fittingly for Lydon’s oeuvre, contains the seeds of its own demise. Lydon senses the stillborn thing that the show’s format will produce - a mimed performance to a seated audience, and lays waste to it in a classic act of creative destruction. Good old Johnny, he always wants to destroy. A great moment, very cool, captured forever on YouTube, possibly. But, and there are many reasons for this, that moment will never happen again. Shit, if I was getting paid for this instead of sciatica or whatever it is that’s making my right leg hurt like hell then I’d bother to get this right, or buy another chair or something. But yeah, every time that clip is seen it makes the possibility of the kind of sabotage or detournement or sheer spontaneous fuck-youness of the type John Lydon gets away with a little bit less likely, partly because they wouldn’t let you get away with it, and partly because it’s so been done. I mean, people can and probably will try and do that type of thing, but they’ll probably have something like this in mind, and, even if other people write about it like it meant something and still more fools believe them, it didn’t. Those worlds are mutually exclusive now, and it doesn’t matter if you’re holding up a banner in the American Idol audience or punching your fist in the air at a Wolf Eyes gig. Those days are over.
Hmm, that kind of unravels as it goes along doesn’t it?
Replikant
01.07.09 - 09:38am
Was mixing my drinks last night, with way more herbal teas than standard. Green tea, peppermint, cammomile. crashed out about 2AM after viewing the enjoyable Royal Tennenbaums with my hand on the volume knob all the way through. I could watch Gene Hackman all day. Awoke sweating after vivid dream just after 4. Dream was in the style of sophisticated and modish American TV program about a military unit engaged in jungle warfare, like a more humid version of Generation Kill. Woke up silently screaming - being pursued by guys in headscarves swarming down a hill. Outside it was a muggy, misty East Anglia.Felix’s thing was fun, although I have some regrets. They are:
Should have taken more pictures because it was hard to take a bad one, especially at the party.
Wish Felix DJed the 7″ singles he asked us all to bring (one each was stipulated, although I brought about 6 and Dave brought 3), or maybe even asked me and Dave to DJ, although he probably doesn’t know quite how talented we are in that regard. He certainly didn’t know I had brought my MP3 player with minijack to RCA phono adaptors just in case.
I regret being totally fucking partied out by about 1.30AM, thereby not getting to actually talk that much to people.
I regret telling Mariola’s daughter that she sounded like her Mum. What I meant was that I’d been trying to discern evidence of her maternal origins all evening and suddenly I caught a glimpse in her manner, in a sudden intensity of expression. Even Bobby, who isn’t synonymous with propriety, was more or less aghast at this gauche error.
Treated Belgium and London as one long holiday and I’m a little tired and bored of myself now. I’m sure burning the candle on and off uses more wax or something. Anyway, you lot babysit the apocalypse for a bit. I’m getting an early night.
Places I’ve performed in/around Cambridge.
20.06.09 - 07:47pm
Long-wanted to get some kind of map with red pins in, cos more is always more than more in the world of grist. The list doesn’t include DJ-ing or performing in other bands. There must be some I’ve forgotten, if you can help? I know I played round the Loop Soup HQ once but I can’t remember the address for that… somewhere in Trumpington?
The Portland Arms
The Junction
The Man On The Moon
The Champion Of The Thames
City Football Club Legends Bar
The Soul Tree
Kings College
The Duke Of Argyle
The Locomotive
The Boat Race
The Museum Of Technology
The Barfly/Graduate whatever
The Boat House
Argyle Street Housing Co-op
Mill Road Social Centre
Strawberry Fair
96 Norfolk Street
The Holiday Inn
Covent Garden Theatre
Cafe Afrika
Gwydir Street Party
209 Campkin Road
The Globe
CamArt, Fulbourn
CB2
The Cellar Bar
Anglia Ploytechnic
All Saints Church
Unitarian Church
The Michaelhouse Cafe
Alex Wood Hall
37 Romsey Terrace
Cambourne Village
Paperjack.
15.06.09 - 08:47pm
When my man Andrew left for the States he bequeathed me about five rolls of printer paper, which he rightly figured I could absorb into the Um CD-R cottage industry, such that it is. Which is great, except that lately I’ve been stuck in some Sorcerer’s Apprentice-style nightmare where endlessly malfunctioning printers (surely the pre-eminent primadonna of computer peripherals) join forces in an axis of semi-inanimate evil with resolutely non-flat pieces of thick paper that have a surface texture that makes my skin crawl to frustrate and mock my amateurish efforts to make my creativity pay to some small degree.
It’s annoying though, ‘cos what with the free paper and the sourcing of some really stunningly cheap deals for ink and CD cases I’d be in a very strong position to clean up, or at least I would be if anyone actually bought the fucking things. Anyway, for the first time in a while, and at the aforementioned effort, there is a full complement of Bumskippers available if anyone is looking to fill the gaps in their collection.
Snappidag 26.
15.06.09 - 12:32pm
Check out Snappidag 26, which is a photo of one Meta DJ by another.
Guess one man’s record boast is another man’s Snappidag.
Servile Civis
14.06.09 - 09:47pm
I was talking with my man Simon Loynes the other day about using normal tape decks to do tape-to-tape overdubbing. This is one of the earliest things that can be called Um. Sometimes people fetishize hiss for its own sake but you gotta love this particular hiss.
More spam fun.
14.06.09 - 05:50pm
Can sexual Capacity Be Improevd byy Chelation?
Deaad? You sgtill have to pay library fine
