Dear god. While flicking through the channels, I just found Celine Dion singing, in thigh-high boots, a cover of George Harrison’s ‘Something’, as Joe Walsh plays guitar.
So many things wrong. So many things
Still though, thigh-high boots…
I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits. I’m going to see Tom Waits.
Granted, it’s in a bloody tent in the bloody Phoenix Park and I’m in bloody Row ZZ, Block 99 or something. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to see Tom Waits. Am I allowed an “all fucking righty”?
Granted also, there are some insanely draconian restrictions on the tickets in an attempt to stop touting:
Only two per person and the purchaser has to bring a passport or driving licence to the gig so they can match your name to that on the tickets. Jesus! All are completely non-transferable so I’d better not get sick or something. There may be fingerprinting and DNA sampling. It’s like Gattaca or something.
Still, I’m going to see Tom Waits.
I feel another semi-drunk stream-of-consciousness post coming on. Can’t be good. Really.
It’s Saturday night though, you see. Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers has popped off to visit her folks and taken Baby Trousers with her. Free gaff! So I made a (spicy as fuck) chilli for dinner and settled down to have a few beers. After watching Pan’s Labyrinth on DVD (really good - really, really good), I’ve ended up watching the poptastic channels.
Had Bonnie Tyler on a few minutes ago. That video with the scary, flying, kid with the shiny eyes. Bleedin’ terrifying. Don’t they know I’m in the house alone?
Whitney Houston. Some set of pipes on her before she got shacked-up, knocked-up, and smacked-up with Bobby. Probably too far off her face to do much these days. I had a bit of a crush on her in the late eighties. Then again, I was in my late teens/early twenties and probably had a crush on everyone.
Four Non-Blondes. Jesus. What’s with the stupid hats and goggles anyway. She looks like some sort of weird cartoon character.
Now we’re talking. Bohemian Rhapsody. What more could a red-blooded, half-pissed man ask for? Not much, that’s what. Maybe a kebab. It’s lucky that those Queen blokes were talented ‘cos they’re not much to look at. A good line in white satin jumpsuits in this video though. Brian May’s got his guitar plugged in with a curly lead. You don’t really get curly leads much any more - for good reason. I kind of miss them though.
Oasis. Oddly, this is the first time I’ve ever seen the video for Don’t Look Back In Anger. I hadn’t realised that poor old Patrick McNee was in it. I could do all the obvious stuff about how Noel nicked his riffs and how Liam’s a wanker but I won’t.
‘Look Back In Anger’ - now there’s a good film. Anything with Richard Burton in it is good by default. And Claire Bloom was a fine-looking woman.
Don McLean’s on now (guess which song). I wonder if they’ll play the whole thing. It seems to be some sort recording of a live show. Huh, they played the whole thing. Who’d have guessed?
Peter Kay. Miming annoyingly to Amarillo. I’d better not get started.
Gloria Gaynor. How does something become a gay anthem? Why is Kylie a gay icon? What exactly is a gay icon? Does my heterosexuality preclude my knowing these things?
Ahhhh, Kylie. Lovely, lovely Kylie.
Bleedin’ Coldplay. Yellow, of course.
Pah, I’m going back to thinking about Kylie.
Mmmmmmmm.
I’m just having a listen to some Leonard Cohen as I write. Splendid stuff. I’ll admit that I’m a relative latecomer to Lenny, having only cottoned on in the last four or five years (all of the ‘real’ fans are scoffing so hard that they’ve probably hurt their throats now - fuck ‘em).
Anyway, I’m having a listen to remind myself that I’ll soon be popping along to see him. In June, thanks to some dodgy dealings leaving him stony broke, I’ll be sitting down to see him do his thing. Hurrah for dodgy dealings as I’d never have gotten to see him otherwise.
.
Did any of that matter? Really, though? I have to stop posting when I’m full of beer. I’m not my usual engrossing and erudite self. I also delude myself into believing that I’m normally engrossing and erudite.
Sorry everyone. Normal captivating and learned levels of posting will be resumed shortly.
Ok, my dreams are becoming a little worrying. Last night, I dreamed that some friends were having a bit of a party. It was a fine affair with booze aplenty and there seemed much merriment. There were a few famous musos there and I remember noting them, although I can’t remember who they were now.
One person that I do remember, however, was Paul McCartney. The reason I remember he was there is that, as the party progressed and as the booze continued to flow, he began to slow dance with me to Octopus’s Garden. Now, secure in my sexuality as I am, I didn’t protest at this and assumed it all to be a merry jape. I did protest however, when he started trying to French-kiss me a minute later. That was a little too much and I had to put a stop to things.
Paul McCartney. Trying to tongue me. To a Ringo song. It’s not right, is it?
Right. I have now resolved not to post after drinking cheap German lager any more. For reasons, please see the previous post about Ray LaMontagne. Now, while I don’t completely disavow my earlier opinions, in the cold and sober light of day, unadulterated by booze I see now that Ray, while certainly not in the same camp as your Keatings or your Mikas, is probably not the saviour of Folk. I reckon he’s not bad but I shan’t be rushing off to buy the album. Or even to download it on the cheap.
I feel like I’ve woken up, hungover and bleary-eyed, next to a lady that I can only vaguely remember going to bed with. Her make-up is smeared horizontally across her face and has left a Turin Shroud-like impression on the pillow. A memory hits - she’s the one that laughs like a donkey whose genitals have been smashed between two rocks. Now, I have to shakily gather my things and sneak out of the house, figure out where I am and where the nearest bus stop is. Sssshhh. Quietly does it.
Now, while this has never happened me, I reckon that it’d feel similar to my Ray Regret.
Ray, I’m sorry to have toyed with you like this. It’s not you, it’s me. I’m not really a bad person. It was the booze. Don’t blame me, blame Lidl and their fantastic lager-bargins. If it’s any consolation, I still really like the beard.
Isn’t perception (or rather preconception) a funny thing? You’ve probably heard that ‘Trouble’ song by Ray LaMontagne on your radio device as you drove to work or whatever. I’ve heard it on the radio and, for the most part, ignored it. Granted, I did consider that his voice was slightly different to the stuff that I’d usually hear but, being quite honest, I didn’t pay it a lot of attention (in common with most stuff I hear on the radio).
Tonight however, just now in fact, I saw the same Mr LaMontagne on the entertainment box in the corner of my sitting room. Pretty different than I expected. Much different in fact. There he is, as I type, sitting, playing an acoustic, with a non-popstar haircut and a proper folkie beard. No shit, a proper beard, not just a little arsey thing. A proper beard - one that a lighthouse-keeper would be happy to sport.
And he’s done some good shit. It may be the beers talking but I’m pretty impressed. It’s actual music and not the usual tossery that seems to sell records these days. It doesn’t even seem too girly (like Norah Jones’ Jazz For Young Girls). It seems, for all intents and purposes, like music. I’m shocked to hear myself say that it seems pretty good. He even had the common-sense to look embarrassed at the brass arrangement that, in my opinion, arsed up that ‘Trouble’ song that I’ve just watched him do. I could be wrong (I often am) but the brass feels like the work of a producer to me. If I’m going by the beard, I reckon that LaMontagne isn’t the kind of bloke that’s into French horns and the like.
Anyway, like I say, it may be the beers talking. Possibly this will be an important life lesson and I’ll, never again, post after a number of Lidl’s finest (I’m not proud and it’s actually pretty tasty). We’ll see. This post will serve as a reminder to my sober self to try LaMontagne’s music without the beer coloured glasses. There’s a good chance that I’ll hate it sober. Or an even better chance that the album will actually sound a million times more shite than he sounds live. A pox on record company producers and money-men. I know we’re a minority but some people actually like music. You remember music, don’t you?
Christ am I going to be embarrassed if I’m just too cheap-beered to realise LaMontagne is really shite.
Popped along to see Mr. Waters play last night. Pretty damn good gig, for which I’m grateful as the tickets cost ninety-odd quid. Bloody expensive bastards. Still, we got our money’s worth - he played for three hours. Too much for someone of my advanced years though. My lower back is still aching from standing still for that long.
As one would expect from “The Creative Genius Behind Pink Floyd” (which is what it said on the tickets and posters - a lesser man than Roger would be embarrassed), the light show was great. Also had a big screen thing going on. Oh, and a flying pig that was expertly piloted by some unseen guy with a remote control.
He played a ‘new’ song (or, at least he claimed it was new - a claim he also made last time I saw him play) called ‘Leaving Beirut‘. What a load of shite that was. Banging on about Bush and Blair with all the subtlety and song-writing ability of a love-sick teenager penning his first ballad about why the pretty girls don’t talk to him. I’ll go on record as being a big fan of Waters’ songwriting but this was just shite. And, just to make sure we all got the message, the lyrics were projected on the big screen at the back of the stage as he sang. Toss.
That aside though, it was damn, damn good. He eschewed all but a couple of his solo songs and did mostly Pink Floyd songs. Played through Dark Side in its entirety and threw in lots of other Floyd stuff. All things considered it was a good night.
Those things that needed to be considered however are these…
Still though, good gig.
I’m worried about music these days. For many reasons. To the casual onlooker, the most obvious reason is that today’s music is bland, insipid, homogenised tripe designed by insignificant, insincere, inadequate little men in expensive suits (I’m looking at you Louis Walsh). Bands’ images are also being put through the same machine (similar to the machine that company canteens use to remove all flavour from food). Years ago, bands were dangerous. Rock and roll was the work of the devil and all his little goblins. If a rocker didn’t like you, he might pull a knife. Or something. Anyway, the point is that there was some personality to bands and music. Possibly because they were bands and not just a collection of tone-deaf tossers that happen to conform to whatever the ‘look’ of the moment happens to be and are therefore made into a ‘band’ by those little men mentioned above.
Even bands that are trying to be ‘hard’ are pretty sad. Punk is no longer punk, it’s pop-punk. That bloke from Greenday with the mascara? My mam could beat him up. I hear when ‘Preston‘ of the Ordinary Boys walked off Buzzcocks recently because they slagged off his (made-up-celebrity) wife’s autobiography, he said “when someone bad-mouths your wife, you either leave or knock him spark-out”. What? His name is Preston for fucks sake (actually that’s his surname but he thinks it’s cool to just use that).
It’s all a pile of shite. A steaming, stinking pile at that.
But anyway, that’s not the only reason that I’m worried about music these days. It’s the marketing. Basically, won’t somebody please think of the children? Now, Baby Trousers is, so far, too young to care about much other than her nursery rhymes CD but what happens when the time comes that she looks further afield in search of musical entertainment?
What am I blathering on about? At a recent children’s party in my neighbours I observed a group of three or four girls aged, I’d guess, between six and eight all singing Shakira’s “My Hips Don’t Lie” and teaching each other the dance routines to accompany the song. Dear God. So wrong.
Maybe I’m insane on this and maybe it’s all ok. Am I overreacting in worrying about this? Is this just what my grandparents worried about when those mop-topped popsters, the Beatles burst on the scene? I realise that the first half of this post and the second seem slightly opposing but I still can’t reconcile the Shakira thing in my head.
It just don’t seem right.
Yours
Prudey McPrude
Well, I’m back from a few days helping some friends record their new album. Excellent progress made - 10 songs tracked and a couple of jams recorded too. Drums, guitar and bass all recorded. Good work. Long days and very long nights. Pretty grueling sessions. Lots and lots of beer. Late nights, no lie-ons. Well, no lie-ons for me anyway - my damn body clock wakes me no later than ten and won’t generally let me get back to sleep (it used to be even earlier but I believe it’s had pity on me since I’ve become a father).
Ten o’clock, I hear you shout, surely that constitutes a lie-on? Not if you got to bed four hours earlier after consuming a pond’s worth of Stella. It’s a young man’s game, that. A game that’s fine if you’re able to lie in the bed until two in the afternoon without a problem (as were my colleagues). Not so fine if you’re up and about at ten however.
This pattern was repeated for the duration of our stay. I wiled away these solitary morning hours before my colleagues’ rising by feeling like I was wearing someone else’s head, drinking a small plantation’s worth of tea and reading. Got to finish my book (the excellent John Banville’s “Eclipse“) and start a new one (the so far excellent “Fugitive Pieces” by Anne Michaels). I’ll long remember those woolly-headed, hungover mornings, shivering in the chilly conservatory (as it was the only sitting spot that wasn’t covered in beer bottles and fag-ash).
As to the recording, any ‘engineering’ I had was a doddle. The boys know what they’re doing so once levels were set and the record button hit, I usually had very little to do until the track was finished. A bit of rewinding/overwriting here and there. A bit of tweaking for the odd clip. A little shouting of ‘break now’ over the talkback if they weren’t 100% on the song. The occasional kicking of the Mac as Pro Tools complained about holding off interrupts or some such. Other than that, all I needed to do was press the right buttons at the right time. Easy-peasy.
And, contrary to my previous boasts, the time there was groupie and limo-in-duckpond free. The only vices on offer were beer, a little pot, some serious shite-talk and many, many cheese toasties. I’m sure Keith Richards would approve. I hear he loves a nice toasty.
All this stuff is copyrighted - really, I know you wouldn't think it, but it is. - © Gerry Hayes 2008