For day four of my ’90s Musical Memories challenge I have gone with a band which was one of the first I saw live, and one I hated for a really long time. They’re a band who negotiate their own twisted furrow, and one almost universally critically adored, yet criminally undersold. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Crow, one of the few bands to have seen the word ‘angular’ appear in almost every write-up they’ve received. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 4/7”
Category: Music
Duh. Nuh. Nuh nuh nuh. Dunna nunna nun nah nuh nah nah.
’90s musical memories: 3/7
Day three, and I figure it’s time to put a bit of sleaze into the mix. So I’ve chosen one of the best: Kim Salmon & the Surrealists’ ‘Gravity’, from the Sin Factory album. It’s true, it’s not the reason I picked it up – that would be the solid-gold riff of ‘I Fell’ and its accompanying filmclip – but in terms of a statement of what that band’s about, I think you can’t go past the opening seconds, where an opening drum snap kicks off a world of full throated fuck-off wailing,
The song demands you listen to it. The Tony Cohen production is great – the drums are like woodchopping, the guitar a fuzzy knife, the bass slinking about somewhere. And the burr in Kim’s vocal is fantastic, as he basically sings about the inescapable notion that you’re gonna fuckin’ die and there’s nothing you can do but (hello, chorus) scream. It’s pretty great.
(I mean fuck, just listen to that rhythm section in the no-guitar part before the first verse repeats: it’s all slinky, pant-sniffin’ Brian Hooper greatness with some super-Cramps style Tony Pola tom work. It’s like flick-knife greasers dancing.) Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 3/7”
’90s musical memories: 2/7
Today’s choice of music is from a band I’ve liked for a long time, who moved to London and fell apart before regrouping years later to produce further compelling work. They were a band that I dragged most of my friends along to see at various places, and they were the first musicians I ever interviewed (for Honi Soit, the Sydney uni newspaper) after helping them load in to the now defunct Northpoint Tavern in North Sydney. They are the only band I’ve dressed up for – in a three-piece suit, no less, as some kind of impoverished student imitation of their dapper numbers – and yet also are one of the few bands for whom my enthusiasm does not, in hindsight, appear to have been misplaced. It’s time for The Paradise Motel, folks. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 2/7”
’90s musical memories: 1/7
Over on Facebook I’ve been nominated for one of those chain things where you post a song each day for a week, with the 1990s being a theme. So I’m gonna do it, and I’ll write a bit more at length over here on what I’ve chosen and why.
The first song I’m gonna go with is one from one of the first albums I remember buying as a uni student, from the CD shop that used to be on the Wentworth side of the footbridge over City Road. It was a place I ended up spending a lot of time in, listening to releases on headphones before purchasing, and I remember buying a lot of things from there – probably at the terribly jacked prices we thought were normal in the ’90s -because it was somewhere to fuck off to when I didn’t have lectures, or didn’t have friends waiting at Manning Bar for me to, soberly, relate my latest romantic failure. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 1/7”
Loving the alien (per album)
A little while ago my friend Andy made a fairly lengthy Facebook thread detailing his favourite David Bowie songs from each of Bowie’s albums. It sparked a bit of conversation, and I figured I’d like to do the same, as it would give me – if nothing else – an excuse to play all the albums again. (You know, as if I needed one.)
What I learned from this endeavour is: 1) post-anaesthesia listening is weird (I did most of the thinking in the days after a brief hospital trip) and 2) that fucker makes it difficult to choose one song on an album. Let alone articulate why you like the bloody thing in the first place
I am a DJ; I am what I play
It’s been quite the week, hence the paucity of postings. However, I’d like to share this years-old Soulwax tribute to David Bowie, called Dave. It’s pretty masterful.
It’s a worthwhile hour, DB trainspotters.
Dirty Three: State Theatre, Sydney
Tonight’s sold-out Sydney Festival show brought one of Australia’s most shambolically brilliant (and beloved) bands to the ornate surrounds of the State Theatre as part of a lightning-quick visit back home. It’s the first time the band have played Sydney in four years – to be fair, they do have a pretty packed playing-with-other-people schedule – and excitement is high, judging by the amount of people who’re already seated for the first act. Continue reading “Dirty Three: State Theatre, Sydney”
When you finally find your jam
Some thoughts zipping around
A thought I had (on Bowie, natural given the past couple of days) has been shared on Facebook a little bit. So I’ll share it here, lest anyone think the dude himself said it.
I expect he’d be a little more elegant. But still.
(Also, this is one of the better things I’ve read in the days since.)
Waiting for the gift of sound and vision
Today is the day I learned that David Bowie had died. So I’m writing some thoughts down to try and make sense of it. This probably seems strange, as I am normally averse to displays of grief over public figures. It’s always seemed a little – I don’t know, a bit weird. Almost unnecessary. But now, perhaps for the first time, I feel it.
I was at drinks and the news flashed on my phone; could it be a hoax, a hacked status update? Later, as I rode a train to meet friends, it was confirmed: Duncan Jones and the Beeb showed that this wasn’t the perennial internet jape of proclaiming someone dead. This was the real thing. And I felt teary, and weird, and like I didn’t want to be anywhere because this was, as stupid as it sounds, about someone very important to me, who I had never, would never meet. Dear, strong friends were lamenting; I’d not felt the tyranny of distance so keenly as when one suggested that we should all be together tonight, with a case of wine and music. But we’re in Los Angeles, Boston, Sydney, Helsinki, Amsterdam… all over the world.
I know, this probably will read as something rather indulgent – no different from the torrent of thinkpieces and reminiscences the coming weeks will bring – but this is my blog, so this is mine. There’s a bunch of obituaries you can read. The NY Times. The BBC. The Guardian. Vanity Fair. Mine is a bit different. It’s me processing this feeling of loss, which is strange. I know nobody’s ever an arsehole just after they’ve died, but it’s weird – I realise today I’d never really entertained the idea of Bowie dying. Because, like the sun, I felt he’d always be there. He always had been, right? Continue reading “Waiting for the gift of sound and vision”
Yeah nah. 