Friday 30 July 2010
Tuesday 27 July 2010
Monday 26 July 2010
Truck
Can'r find the Masks video, appears to have vanished from my favourites
An effing trek from Kington to Steventon, but worth it for the 'Artist and Entourage' wristband if nothing else. Although there were other else's. Heard the last four seconds of the band Masks (or maybe MASKS), which fulfilled the minimum requirment of hearing them for at least one second, being as they got me in free and all. Otherwise got to see half of Islet's set, I would describe it as impactive (!). The girl drummer/bassist/crazy howling lady was simultaneously Hott and terrifying, which is a confusing but charming combination, and they are probably the most comitted live band I've ever seen (including a moustache guy running through the crowd with a tambourine. Also saw Los Campesinos who were aces and managed to get the local Oxford tweens mega-pumped and crowd-surfing. There was also Blood Red Shoes, who were a bit lame and (apparently they've been told this before) need to recruit more members, and watching the lead lady play I felt like I was witnessing a catwalk show in which one of the models has suddenly started playing guitar. And Pulled Apart By Horses invaded the stage, which is all I got to see of them unfortunately, because I hear from multiple sources that they are 'the best live band in Britain'. Last but not least was were Veronica Falls, who were supposes to play about 3ish but got held up and ended up having to play an empty tent at 9ish. They were great, paranoid girl-garagey stuff, which would have been wonderful were it not for the drunken tween stage invasion, but still the band did their best to pretend it was an invasion in their honour, not a group of mentally handicapped morons looking down from a stage into a crowd of approximately half their number like they'd 'made it'. Great day out Truck, a very friendly festival. One negative issue; that health-endageringly HOT lime-pickle at the indian food stall. The second most painful experience of my life so far.
Friday 23 July 2010
Wilder Beasts
I'm not sure if it's just because I watched Milk the other day, but once I'd got past the first couple of tracks, and at least by the time i reached the last few on the album, not only was I tolerating the vocals of Hayden Thorpe but even enjoying them. I don't want to give the impression that I'm some sort of biggotted misogynist, but Thorpe's vocals are really camp and theatrical. To give an example, he makes Kevin Barnes sound like James Earl Jones. The music itself sounded great, I think, although I was generally to distracted by the vocals to notice much of anything else. I need to give Limbo, Panto some more listens and try Two Dancers too. But whether or not I really end up enjoying them I think I'll definitely give them a look at Green Man (providing there are no clashes with a must-see), it should be quite something.
Thursday 22 July 2010
Wednesday 21 July 2010
Another.. Song for the Day!
Enjoyable, but I think the Dirty Projectors guy should decide if he wants to sound like one of the Beatles or an R'n'B/Soul singer, or just let the girls sing.
Sunday 18 July 2010
Splendo(u)r
Earlier this week, tuesday night to be exact, I was trawling Amazon for film recommendations and found American Splendor. It's a film about cartoonist Harvey Pekar and his comic American Splendor, essentially it's a biography of his life, briefly (like, real briefly) covering his childhood, before moving swiftly to the point at which his second wife leaves him, he meets cartoonist Robert Crumb, and eventually decides to do his own comic. As it happens he can't draw, but he finds a plethora of artists (beginning with Crumb) willing to illustrate his quirky tales of his mundane life working in admin at a veterans hospital, the first issue was published in 1976. The comic series was essentially a roving autobiography written directly about Pekar and the people in his life, including his battle with cancer in the 'Our Cancer Year' issue. It became a cult hit, despite never selling enough to allow him to quit his day job, it did allow him to feature regularly on the Letterman Show until he pounded the shows network NBC live on the show.
Anyway, the film was great, Paul Giamatti does a great job of playing Pekar, and the interludes during the main plot, which feature Pekar and numerous other characters from the film, are awesome. I started watching the film some time after midnight (so technically wednesday the 14th of July), and finished watching it around 2ish. At 1:00am that morning Harvey Pekar died. There's no need to elaborate on how surreal that coincidence is, it's entirely possible that i was the only person in the world watching that film at the exact time, watching him talking about his life, as it was simultaneously ending. There will certainly be a lot of people much more upset about his death than me, not to mention the obvious family and friends, other fans who might have been following the comics for decades, but i enjoyed the film and felt a really affinity for Harvey Pekar in it. It makes it neater in terms of getting to know his life from head-to-tail, but that hardly makes up for the loss. Anyway his comics are pretty cheap on Amazon (right back to were it started) so I might buy one with my few remaining pennies. RIP Harvey Pekar
Tuesday 13 July 2010
Quote for the Day!
"In absolute terms, I am the most legally persecuted man of all times, in the whole history of mankind, worldwide."
Silvio Berlusconi
Sunday 11 July 2010
Thursday 8 July 2010
The blight of Andy Samberg
As if it wasn't galling enough, this picture was labelled 'sambergnewsom', his name first
Whatever your opinion on Lonely Planet and Hot Rod, and I loved Jizz in my Pants as much as the next bloke when it came out, Andy Samberg dating Joanna Newsom is wrong. Plain and simple. He's in novelty wrap act and spends his days away from the SNL studio shimmying it up with J Trousersnake and (probably) KanyeISGODWest. Joanna Newsom meanwhile is the spokeswoman for a generation of quirky, alternative, indie-culture, anti-folk youths, who generally take her music pretty seriously. No rational computation could be made, not even by NASA, to explain the existence of this relationship. So, why?
Wednesday 7 July 2010
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