Best song you heard on New Year's Rockin Eve

Disco stuff - yes, 'Hand In Glove' is grate but I knew that; it didn't surprise me. The Strokes (heard for first time) were fine, but I was disappointed to realize that this decent-sounding track had the rubbish name 'Last Nite'. The rest I have forgotten. Oh - 'Twisterella'.

I'm not sure that any of it really beat 'C'mon People'.

Babs, Send In The Clowns

(Basically though the reason I dislike them is that they are too close to home - they sound very much like what a band I might have formed would have sounded like. But this is also the reason I never formed a band.)

Well put, but I think I may agree with him.

>>> Oh yeah? Dave Q's post = proof that Strokes are disco.

Was Q at the same club as me and Edna?

>>> Rendering a disco cover of them neccessary how exactly? Travis' motivation for covering BOMT wasnt ironic remember - they liked the song and wanted to do it 'properly'. Hence the insult.

I'm sure their version was JUST as bad as hers.

>>> The more appropriate comparison, Tom, is the PSB's version of 'Where the Streets have no Name'. The point being not to do the song 'properly' - whatever that might mean - but to draw out a kind of fantastic dream life latent in the ore of the song.

You yourself told me the other night that that cover was meant as an INSULT and was meant to OFFEND. The original 'Streets' is already ALL ABOUT a fantastic dream life, in a way that the PSB have never approached and never can.

>>> Well I can see your point - but of course the PSB's achievement is on two levels, making an undanceable song danceable and melding an existing and 'profound' rock song with an existing and 'meaningless' pop song.

You're forgetting the third achievement: making the least successful and enjoyable cover version of all time.

>>> quite apart from my personal suspicion that the band just aren't up to it.

You're right - they aren't. (BUT I didn't know that they were covering it cos I don't know the Strokes; but did hear the original AFTER B's set so to that extent can follow the discussion.)

>>> 1) I'm sure U2 are just as danceable as the Strokes

OK.

>>> 2) Ironic recontextualisation is where you find it

I guess so - though that's a bit gnomic as it stands?

>>> 3) You seem to be talking about 'disco' with the same platonic airinesss you talk about 'pop

Oh, my *goodness* - pick *that* one out!

>>> I would probably go along with the idea that anything played in a nightclub is disco, as anything in a gallery is art...

OK.

>>> but I am talking eurodisco, which I think is a pretty well- defined genre.

Agreed (though I don't have a definition).

>>> I quite like the Strokes song, but I prefer it sung by a girl with a big brassy cabaret voice over synthetic string arrangments

And I don't.

>>> 4) I think you're really writing about your intolerance of an 'idea' of a Baxendale pop ideology

Really? Why should he be? I'm not quite sure I see this - UNLESS you're saying that B. are very much about the Idea - which I think is correct, and is their strength. (ie, they're a 'concept band', maybe?)

>>> (it's a pretty insubstantial argument otherwise)

Well, it (the claim that B needn't cover Strokes) is an aesthetic judgment, or something; it doesn't need to be a major developed argument - no?

>>> which seems to be prevalent on the twin beeyotches, which I in turn find quite intolerable, coming, as it generally does, from people with the aesthetic sensibilities of damp cardboard. Present company excepted, hem hem.

If you like the sound of Baxendale (and you do), what does it say for your own aesthetic sensibilities? That they're like mouldly plastic? No, not in general - but you seem to be flinging out the big insults today. (And it's fun to see; ST vs TE is a battle of the big hitters for sure.)

Possibly they qualify as 'meta-pop' which in my world is a fairly exclusive club featuring: Magnetic Fields, Pulp, Lloyd Cole.

However, all this rather goes for nothing, because the ideas are not cashed in at the level of sound. Which really means: I don't like the noise they make. And it *is* a "Noise" - it involves a lot of shouting, a lot of stomping, multiple people delivering the same vocal line rather than harmonizing with each other. I dislike the sound of the lead singer's voice, and I dislike the sound of the rhythm tracks. I dislike other aspects too (eg. the sound of the woman's voice), but these are perhaps less prominent.

So I can just about see why people like The Idea of this band. I can't so easily see why people like The Actuality. Unless people's experience of The Actuality is so steeped in their experience of The Idea that it overcomes the musical ugliness.

Actually it's not very like a Smiths' song at all - Voice Stroke has been listening to Morrissey for sure but Guitar Stroke hasn't been listening to Marr, I think.

Pfff. Baxendale. I was hating Baxendale back when you were in nappies.

it is a FACT that if i had sene the vid to "teenage d.bag" i would not haf been moved to wuv it so much: wot a smackable young fellow that is!!

I can't believe I just used the word "riff". I need to have a bath now.

THIS is my problem with Baxendale, they DON'T aspire to anything other than that. They say they do, they sing about how much they do, I believe they really think they do but they DON'T. They sing about wanting to be on the Pepsi Chart but then release mega-limited edition 500 copies only 7" vinyl on import from France. This is NOT how to get into Smash Hits. Baxendale did the EXACT OPPOSITE of selling out, when selling out always seemed The Point.

I wasn't there at the Strange Fruit NYE Baxtravaganza (this is the point, before I'd never have missed a Baxengig, I don't think I missed a London gig for about two and a half years, even though I was living in Manchester for part of that time) so I can't comment on their cover of Last Nite but seeing as this is just as much a Baxendale: C or D, I can comment on Baxendale. Up until about two months ago, I was an enormous Baxenfan but they don't do anything for me now. As a Baxenfan, the Idea and the Noise become one and the same thing. The Noise is the manifestation of the Idea, the Idea is formed by their (and other people's) Noises. The Idea gets you excited but it's the Noise that makes you dance about.

Now, the Noise seems embarrasing and I'm not sure if there really is an Idea. They've got some new(ish) MP3s on the Baxensite but they just made me laugh. Live With Me sort of sounded OK-ish in a sub Transvision Vamp kind of way until the end where they chant "Bax-en- dale! Bax-en-dale! Bax-en-dale!" over it. Developing Hooves just sounds dumb and the other one is even worse.

Now, all those criticisms that people used to make about Baxendale and that used to annoy me so much (his voice sounds stupid, the music's all cheap and tinny, they're just plain silly) are all ringing true. I agree with them, I make comments like that myself.

Truth is I guess, Baxendale haven't changed. I have - I just don't need them anymore.

NB: None of this is relevant or makes sense I know

But ANYWAY: best thing I heard on NYE was also the best thing I watched which was the Adam Ant video that a friend of mine got for Christmas

I recall, towards the close of that night, wandering around and telling strangers and soon-to-be-strangers that it had just occurred to me that "Watching Baxendale is one of the few times that I'm completely and utterly taken, that I'm truly happy". Try it, kids - it's a tremendous conversation-closer.

The most wonderful pop moments are those in which you forget about context and meta-narratives altogether, in which there is only This Moment and This Feeling and it is RIGHT. So that selling-out or selling-in ceases to hold an inkling of import; so that there seems no difference twixt SClub in front of 60,000 at Wembley or Baxendale before 17 twee-dle-dumbs at the Bull and Gate.

The new single was played during their later dj set. "The gall of it!", I thought. "The gall of doing such a thing! Of..recording a Proper House single. Of making it sound RIGHT. Of (at a guess) sending it on white label to the clubs, to the djs, to those outside of the ugly indie ghettos.. God bless the gall!"

I've always been an Asterix fan.

Monsieur PF quoted thusly: So I can just about see why people like The Idea of this band. I can't so easily see why people like The Actuality. Unless people's experience of The Actuality is so steeped in their experience of The Idea that it overcomes the musical ugliness.

..which is exactly what I did with Comet Gain, whilst my brother was doing the same with Slayer.

Thus, I win.

Or, as I am beginning to suspect, he does.

t'cha t'cha a contender

Tracer--I wanted to go to Motherfucker, but I had to leave on the 4:45 bus. Plus my money had run out. Darn. Anyway,if it's anything like Squeezebox used to be, they always play the same stuff.

I was the "DJ". I put on:
The Best Bootlegs in the World Ever
Cornershop - Handcream For a Generation
The first two songs from New York Dolls
a few songs from Hello Nasty
--late night--
Orchestra Baobab - Specialist in All Styles
1/2 of Erykah Badu - Mama's Gun

Vs

Missy Elliot 'Work It'

Vs

??? Some Random Happy Hardcore Thing

hahaha!