UK Watercooler 32: Fall Into The Meaning Gap

I'm sorry, I'm just really not in a mood to be listening to new music at the moment. I'm feeling pretty down on everything.

It's actually got to the point where anyone who starts talking about how "shoegaze" they are... I don't like them. And I'm sick to the back teeth of metal.

That's exactly what happened with "krautrock"... also metal = bollocks, for the most part

http://www.myspace.com/haveanicelife for anyone who wants a taster

I suppose this is what happens when a genre becomes a bit trendy. It's not even so much bandwaggon jumpers as people who just namedrop whatever's trendy.

Or else they listen to said genre, take whatever is most immediately obvious about whatever it is, and don't actually fulfill what it is that you actually like about the original genre in the first place.

Yep

I shoegaze trendy? I never got that memo.

You got it around the time you attended that Seven Dwarves gig! Were you not paying attention?

"I Shoegaze Trendy" - mind if I file that away in my 'possible album title' folder?

(The problem is, a lot of people seem to be either discovering shoegaze through, or thinking that shoegaze = the Brian Jonestown Massacre. A band who haven't been shoegaze in any sense since 1995.)

I was distracted by hot keyboardist from holy rollers.

It's an anagram of:

Heady Stereo Zing

xpost

Wrong gig! That was Freelovebabies! The Seven Dwarves were playing with Kontakte and I didn't think you find any of them hott!

Then you get old fans getting uppity about people discovering their music ;)

aha, I had driven from Belgium to be there and was a little spaced out.

j/k btw
xpost

Look, if people would discover and be "influenced by" stuff like Medicine, SeeFeel, the Pale Saints, Lush even... fine! But they go and listen to one Ride album and one MBV album and then go about making boring floppy music for boring floppy people. If I see one more picture of four white blokes standing in a field looking a bit moody I'm gonna hurl. Not to name names or anything, but a band a couple of my mates have been trying to get me to listen to, but then I go and look at their MySpace and there's a picture of this:

http://a632.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/82/l_228758998cc0d89c774d013d25e057d7.jpg

...and I just think... my god, how boring.

I mean, maybe just maybe I might give them a chance if any of them were hott. But no! Just boring looking.

Yeah, I know, you can't judge a book by its cover. But you CAN judge a band by their promo photos.

They want to be coldplay.

The have a nice life tracks i just listened to on the interweb are pretty tedious TBH. The vocals are somewhat vaguely pale-saints-ish I guess, but there were no good tunes, and they didn't rock. Baffled by the props this band are getting.

I'm going to see some youngish band at the Head of Steam, which Kate might remember, having played there, who bill themselves as "progressive rock"! We shall see...

The vocals are somewhat vaguely pale-saints-ish I guess

Ha ha, it's the hard sell. This quote must be used in their promo literature!

I remember the Head of Steam! That's where I first played the Prunes and Custard! That was a fun night.

I went and had loads of Dahi Puris last night. Oh god, the taste bombs. In the future, I am not going to bother ordering mains, I'm just going to order 3 courses of Dahi Puris and eat them all night.

Dahi Puris! without me! ;-)

Are we going to see Rocktor C on friday? want to get food beforehand?

One of the bands was great, and somewhat crimsonesque, one was, I guess "good at what they did" but not to my taste, somewhat like that vampire whatsisname band that there's a thread about on ilm. headline band was mostly great with a few sketchy bits here & theer. I bought their EPs! They're, uh, OK. They were all really good at playing, no shitty, slack drummers. They were all so young, though! It felt a bit uncomfortable, me & mark were probably twice as old as the next oldest people there. Downsides were that all the bands could learn the difference between singing and bellowing, and it was a bit male. The promoter was a young woman, all the band members were male. I guess Muse and The Mars Volta are to blame for this kind of band being out there & playing & all that.

Bah, there is no branch of my bank anywhere near work and I have a cheque to pay in.

Sorry! it was a girly conference or I would have invited you along. I got lots of good gossip about the psych/shoegaze scene. We can have Dahi Puris, um, soon. I don't know what I'm doing on Friday yet. Depends on how exhausted I am.

I don't understand that - female promoter, all male bands. But hey. Not saying women have a responsibility to promote other women, but you'd think they'd at least be aware of it or something.

There are no banks at all in Mitcham! People would rob them.

My brother just uploaded a whole bunch of family photos to his flickr. Wow. I'm very tempted to post some of the more... colourful ones. There's one ancient Gordon you would really like, Pash. She looks like an extra from a DW Griffiths film!

My great-grandfather. He may looks a bit disreputable, doesn't he?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3238/2327928589_56021c0785.jpg

I think I have settled on Nationwide as my new bak as they do have a branch in Mitchan, although the Morden one is slightly closer and there are a couple on high holborn.

Billy Child-ish!

I love this one! A strange maiden aunt. My cousin looks almost shockingly like her. (Except for the slave girl chains, natch.)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2363/2327926079_601ec5eb51.jpg

I'll save all the dour, dour looking Scots grannies and noncomformist ministers and miserable looking children in kilts.

Not Billy Childish! G30rg3 Gi11i1@nd - he helped run the Empire, you know. Not sure if he was the Rhodesian or the Indian branch.

Your great-grandfather is almost:

http://www.indiewire.com/biz/twbbSTILLtwoactors.jpg

Another for the mustache hall of fame. Malaysian branch of the family here...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3200/2327927493_57f00aa6cc.jpg

I have no idea what's going on here...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3062/2328746562_a0c837be7f.jpg

I'm sure The Empire is opressing the natives in the form of more aunties.

Oncle Ian, letting the mustache side down.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3253/2328747596_2a743797d2.jpg

Actually, it might have been an RAF thing, because another uncle from the Indian branch didn't have a mustache either. Maybe the mustaches weren't aerodynamic enough.

There's some funny pictures of my brother leading a party of Vietnam War vets through some mountains in Russia to meet some Afghan War vets. He looks quite disappointed that he has neither An Empire nor a mustache.

Think he is a marine paratrooper rather than RAF.

"Righty-Oh! Empire Administered! Natives Converted! Who has time for a spot of golf, then?"

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3090/2328745104_8bdf16e892.jpg

OK, enough of this. I shouldn't poke fun at my relatives. It's my DNA, too, I suppose. But people from THE PAST always look funny.

x-post you might be right. The RAF uncles had much jauntier hats I think.

At least one auntie, I discovered, got sent to Bletchley Park!

ahem.. Not wanting to start owt, but he does look like the one on the left in this pic:

http://83.166.160.167/images/uploads/main_images/Might-Boosh-Large-Web.jpg

Well, I probably imprinted in some way.

(Even though all of the people in the photos ... oh, except Oncle Ian... were all dead long before I was born!)

Shall we have some ladies with outrageous Edwardian hairdoes?

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2112/2328746842_1ca146e447.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2124/2328746346_272417b3f8.jpg

WHOA where did you get these, Kate?

Have also been at the ancestry, tying up some loose ends after demise of dad. Grandmother's 'French' family came to NY in late C17. Greatx5 grandfather and his brother were serious Revolutionary War heroes before they decamped from NYC to found a county on the NY/PA border after the War. I did find a letter from George Washington to one of them!

Ed, Nationwide were *brilliant* when I got hosed by that ATM in America over Xmas; couldn't do a thing about getting hosed while in US but they'd grabbed it back for me w/in 3 days of my complaint once made here (it's supposed to take more than a week).

My brother has been posting them to his Flickr.

My personal favourite... I think this is a great, great, great grannie? (My great grandfather's mother?)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2177/2327927283_01e0ae5b2f.jpg

Don't those kids look terrified of her!

No! Great grandfather's GRANDMOTHER.

It's the EARS that always get me. How they managed to run the country with those ears. Or perhaps such superflaps provided some kind of evolutionary advantage.

barackobama.jpg

The pictures are all great! The one with granny and the three kids is the best one. She is almost archetypally "edwardian granny".

Yay! I has something to do today. At last.

...except while I've been on other projects, the developers have dropped the table I was working on! argh!

Probably not helpful to your lenten ways; but I have discovered that you can by south african pepermint crisps by the district line platforms at wimbledon.

You can sometimes buy them at London Bridge, too. I think when Lent is over, I shall go and indulge in a big bunch until my teeth turn lime green and fall out.

Oh, what have I just done? After saying I'm not going to do music journalism any more, Tzr just wrote and asked if I wanted to review Silver Apples... and I said yes without even thinking about it.

It's always like this, isn't it? "OK, one more time..."

Depressing. I am very glad that Kaet went sensible about Boris as soon as he started actually being political, as I am at least thankful that (*fingers crossed*) I don't know anyone who voted for him. I do feel slightly hypocritical about the rest of the country, as I really hate the New Labour government... but I am actually starting to feel sick to my stomach...

In the interests of "change", "entertainment" or whatever, a bunch of people just landed everyone in London with the conservative equivalent of derek hatton for the next 4 years. WTG, idiots, bah. What a depressing day for the UK.

Asda are bringing back ltd edition Opal Fruits but only for a few weeks

So in the interests of trying to divert my attention from the horrors of the mayoral election, I have found a blog with what purports to be the entire Derek Bailey discography. Anyone have any recommendations where to start with this?

Ask Tom D, he once had a letter in The Wire about him!

Maybe everyones away to Asda now.

http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/emails/opal_fruits.html
http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/emails/OpalFruits.jpg

Opal Fruits or no Opal Fruits, Asda are still evil.

From now on, I am just going to pretend that the Japanese Noise Metal band are running London.

Meet the new Mayor:

http://thephoenix.com/onthedownload/content/binary/boris%2007%201.jpg

I used to have no boys to draw, now I have entirely too many! I'm drawing the pretty guitarist from Youthmovies tonight! Life is good.

Is it time for a new 'Cooler, or is there just not enough traffic any more?

I say go for it.

Any luck with the head hunters?

Thirty Three? and a third?

No luck with headhunters. :-(

Yeah, new thread time.

bah well at least the weather is nice. I am going to go an eat my cuban sandwich in morden hall park.

UK Watercooler Thirty-Three (and a third) : Revolutions Per Minute