Ruraidh (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} harmonyrocket) wrote,@ 2009-06-29 01:31:00 |
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Tender is the night/ Lying by your side...
So hello, and oh dear. I've got that 'change the world' feeling again; doubt I'll be to bed tonight. Blur at Glastonbury - at a distance of a few hundred miles - were a lesson in melodic savagery and one of the most emotional performances I've ever seen by any band.
For the past few weeks I've been happy enough that they were just reclaiming what's rightfully theirs - they'd very nearly been forgotten as both pop beasts and leftfield innovators. I was just excited to see people remembering the broadness and quality of their work and pay their respects accordingly. Plus I get to hear favourite songs again. Those sentiments took a back seat when I put on the BBC for "just one song," not wanting to ruin setlists and surprises on myself. Then Al said "are you going to be the man who turns that off?" and I let it run. The first thing I saw was Graham Coxon on the floor during 'Beetlebum'. Sold.
Just as 'Tender' closed my brother sent me a message that said "My god, that was beautiful."
So we watched on and on and I wasn't the man who turned it off and on Friday it will be time to see them. I hope this feeling lasts; I've missed it - not just Blur...
Person 1: What's that noise?
Person 2: I get that too, that kind of whirring sound?
Person 1: But what is it?
Person 2: Beats me.
Person 1: It's quite familiar, isn't it?
Person 2: It sounds almost like... but surely not.
Person 1: No, go on.
Person 2: Well, not eagerness really... more a kind of...
Person 1: I think you're right, actually... that's...
All: That sounds like enthusiasm!
***
"Everybody is becoming like ... " - he pauses - "a Stasi agent, constantly observing himself or his friends." -Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk on social networking
***
The other night, for a few split seconds, I joined the National Grid. This was very stupid. One wire pulled another wire out of an electrical switch. The circuit breakers went. I reset them. Fifteen minutes later I saw the wire that had caused the outage, said something ditsy like "oh a wire, oh boy oh boy!" and picked up the snake-like thing as if it were a piece of lego.
Electricty: "Bzzzzz."
Ruraidh: "Aaaaargh!"
Have you ever been electrocuted? It was strangely more and less terrifying than I'd imagined it would be - and given the number and quality of my electrical repairs, it was bound to happen soon. I supposed one fell to the floor and had a heart attack. This didn't happen, thankfully. Instead I shouted and spent the rest of the night with my hand in my mouth having never felt so timid. I've still got two vampire-like pockmarks in my left index finger from where the wires struck.
Bzzzz.
***
So Old Man Ballard has gone one step closer to mapping the psychogeography of the skies. Old news now, I'm afraid. Full coverage here and here.
JG Ballard, along with Joe Strummer and a few other assorted prophets and naysayers, made my life very awkward indeed. I've a funny feeling that things would have been very much more straightforward if it weren't for hearing certain bands or reading certain books. Ballard's dystopian fiction must be at the top of the list. These things gave me a world view and a set of attitudes which time and time again have made me my own worst enemy. I'm not sorry though.
The first book of his I read was probably The Atrocity Exhibition, the second Crash, and by the time I got to the cruelly underrated The Kindness of Women the damage had been done. I particularly liked his way of surprising me - a line about wanting to fly nuclear bombers carrying "pieces of the sun" lingers.
I won't prattle on, with one exception: some time after his wife died he met Claire, his partner until his death. They had a bust-up in the late '70s and didn't speak for five years. "Then out of the blue I rang him because I had seen a car going down the road that reminded me of his. He just said, I was waiting for you to ring' and from then on we got back together." I think that's pretty wonderful and in some strange way quite unexpected.
***
For a while there was a pigeon nesting in the bushes outside my window; it was there for over a month. Every few days it would rotate by 90 degrees, but did little else. I fed it. then the eggs hatched and there are at least two chicks, little messers, almost full size now... it seems that I've already paved over my country origins by referring to the chick as the 'small pigeons' and the mother as the 'main pigeon'.
***
Also, in recent times I saw a grouse run in the front gate and across the lawn into the long grass out the back. It ran, it didn't fly. Cartoon arms flapping up and down; a funny bird. My application to become one of British Sea Power is surely strengthened.
Despite what one may think, this story is not insignificant. I just want to know where he was going.
***
Lambchop: Hawley of America (note to self: check chronology - possible pigeon/egg situation).
***
And that's where I leave things tonight, to the wondrous sound of my ears ringing because of a gig I didn't attend. No matter. Big news on the way, I feel. If nothing else I've just written the word 'enthusiasm' without any qualifying negative, and that is a rare achievement in these times. Onwards.
So hello, and oh dear. I've got that 'change the world' feeling again; doubt I'll be to bed tonight. Blur at Glastonbury - at a distance of a few hundred miles - were a lesson in melodic savagery and one of the most emotional performances I've ever seen by any band.
For the past few weeks I've been happy enough that they were just reclaiming what's rightfully theirs - they'd very nearly been forgotten as both pop beasts and leftfield innovators. I was just excited to see people remembering the broadness and quality of their work and pay their respects accordingly. Plus I get to hear favourite songs again. Those sentiments took a back seat when I put on the BBC for "just one song," not wanting to ruin setlists and surprises on myself. Then Al said "are you going to be the man who turns that off?" and I let it run. The first thing I saw was Graham Coxon on the floor during 'Beetlebum'. Sold.
Just as 'Tender' closed my brother sent me a message that said "My god, that was beautiful."
So we watched on and on and I wasn't the man who turned it off and on Friday it will be time to see them. I hope this feeling lasts; I've missed it - not just Blur...
Person 1: What's that noise?
Person 2: I get that too, that kind of whirring sound?
Person 1: But what is it?
Person 2: Beats me.
Person 1: It's quite familiar, isn't it?
Person 2: It sounds almost like... but surely not.
Person 1: No, go on.
Person 2: Well, not eagerness really... more a kind of...
Person 1: I think you're right, actually... that's...
All: That sounds like enthusiasm!
***
"Everybody is becoming like ... " - he pauses - "a Stasi agent, constantly observing himself or his friends." -Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk on social networking
***
The other night, for a few split seconds, I joined the National Grid. This was very stupid. One wire pulled another wire out of an electrical switch. The circuit breakers went. I reset them. Fifteen minutes later I saw the wire that had caused the outage, said something ditsy like "oh a wire, oh boy oh boy!" and picked up the snake-like thing as if it were a piece of lego.
Electricty: "Bzzzzz."
Ruraidh: "Aaaaargh!"
Have you ever been electrocuted? It was strangely more and less terrifying than I'd imagined it would be - and given the number and quality of my electrical repairs, it was bound to happen soon. I supposed one fell to the floor and had a heart attack. This didn't happen, thankfully. Instead I shouted and spent the rest of the night with my hand in my mouth having never felt so timid. I've still got two vampire-like pockmarks in my left index finger from where the wires struck.
Bzzzz.
***
So Old Man Ballard has gone one step closer to mapping the psychogeography of the skies. Old news now, I'm afraid. Full coverage here and here.
JG Ballard, along with Joe Strummer and a few other assorted prophets and naysayers, made my life very awkward indeed. I've a funny feeling that things would have been very much more straightforward if it weren't for hearing certain bands or reading certain books. Ballard's dystopian fiction must be at the top of the list. These things gave me a world view and a set of attitudes which time and time again have made me my own worst enemy. I'm not sorry though.
The first book of his I read was probably The Atrocity Exhibition, the second Crash, and by the time I got to the cruelly underrated The Kindness of Women the damage had been done. I particularly liked his way of surprising me - a line about wanting to fly nuclear bombers carrying "pieces of the sun" lingers.
I won't prattle on, with one exception: some time after his wife died he met Claire, his partner until his death. They had a bust-up in the late '70s and didn't speak for five years. "Then out of the blue I rang him because I had seen a car going down the road that reminded me of his. He just said, I was waiting for you to ring' and from then on we got back together." I think that's pretty wonderful and in some strange way quite unexpected.
***
For a while there was a pigeon nesting in the bushes outside my window; it was there for over a month. Every few days it would rotate by 90 degrees, but did little else. I fed it. then the eggs hatched and there are at least two chicks, little messers, almost full size now... it seems that I've already paved over my country origins by referring to the chick as the 'small pigeons' and the mother as the 'main pigeon'.
***
Also, in recent times I saw a grouse run in the front gate and across the lawn into the long grass out the back. It ran, it didn't fly. Cartoon arms flapping up and down; a funny bird. My application to become one of British Sea Power is surely strengthened.
Despite what one may think, this story is not insignificant. I just want to know where he was going.
***
Lambchop: Hawley of America (note to self: check chronology - possible pigeon/egg situation).
***
And that's where I leave things tonight, to the wondrous sound of my ears ringing because of a gig I didn't attend. No matter. Big news on the way, I feel. If nothing else I've just written the word 'enthusiasm' without any qualifying negative, and that is a rare achievement in these times. Onwards.
