Alexis On Fire

Dreamy.

http://www.theonlybandever.com/

*Alexis Corner with added Worzel ingredients*

In decreasing order of annoyance:

1. Worzel, just fuck off and die you racist cunt.

2. Granted, Super Furry Animals full stop hardly make my pulse race, but Petridish has clearly made no New Year resolution to mend or change his ways - why should he, since having a go at "weird old records" is (a) his stock in trade and (b) the type of "writing" which wins awards because when all is said and done stupid people just want to read things which reinforce and flatter their prejudices rather than challenge them?

3. Django Bates groupie attempts yet another apology for past Stalinist crimes.

In next week's shit-packed issue: John Harris explains why the Jews were the worst thing ever to happen to music.

It's all very well to try the "ooh controversy" schtick, but for that to work you've got to have good arguments and knowledge of the subject. Jeez, my Granny knows more about funk than Worzel!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harris_%28critic%29

ha

Maybe I dreamed it.

Stylus - you're getting above yourself.
Remember where you came from.

Haha, yes Marcello, although "employee" is hardly the word.

many xps!

x-post amelodic and doesn't crack many smiles is not indicative of most pop music, Alex!

hurrah, had 'em next to each other! 13 and 14.

for the record my favourite hip-hop album of last year was TI.

eh? i've never heard of prefuse73. my favourite hip-hop album - indeed my favourite album full stop! - of 02 was trina's diamond princess. i would give clipse 4 stars.

Peeling the HALF PRICE sticker off his freshly purchased copy of Rip It Up And Start Again

"what? no stranglers!?"

Rip It Up And FART Again morelike

"I hate the fookin' Stranglers! Change the channel!"

This is grime in its natural state, as heard blasting from kids' mobile phones on buses across London - and, like those kids, the artists here simply don't care what people think of them, which makes for an absolutely magnificent set. There are numerous club bangers par excellence

numerous club bangers par excellence
numerous club bangers par excellence
numerous club bangers par excellence
numerous club bangers par excellence
numerous club bangers par excellence

uh

http://www.mlp.cz/space/opatrilp/Pulp/Do_You_Remember_The_First_Time.jpg

Where the fuck is grime blasting from kids' mobile phones, anyway? Urgent memo to Guardian trustafarians: Soulja Boy and Keri Hilson aren't from New Cross Gate.

i don't know what east end teenagers ever did to get this level of respect and deference really. the skeezy care-in-the-community dude across the street who's always asking after my sister 'simply doesn't care what people think of him' overmuch y'know.

Nick Clegg knows his bassline. "That bass on Money For Nothing - very nimble." Eno was unavailable for comment.

Mr Petridis has his annual go at bloggers.

Although the predictability of his latest ill-informed outburst is perhaps only outweighed by the predictability of this current response, it serves as a salutary reminder of the perils which are posed when journalists are obliged to write against a backdrop of fear rather than love.

Mr Petridis, of course, is a corporate employee of a large trust, in which light it is perhaps obligatory to assess the worth of music in terms of chart positions and net profits alone. As a newspaper with steadily dwindling circulation, largely because of the wider choice available on the internet, The Guardian itself is obliged to act out of self-protection and peremptorily and regularly lash out a feeble fist at writers under no corporate obligation who express potentially threatening ideas (and regular perusal of the rest of the newspaper demonstrates that this is by no means limited to the area of music blogging) - threatening, that is, to the cosy, quasi-Masonic/quasi-cannibalistic establishment in situ whose members ("trained journalists" although such worthies regularly ride roughshod over matters of syntax and punctuation and many seem incapable of distinguishing between a noun and a verb, let alone verbs transitive and intransitive) are secretly envious of independent and articulate writing which they themselves are barred from undertaking, obliged as they are to labour with "criticism" whose aim is to reflect the generality of the status quo/consensus rather than to question and test it; most of the paper's music writing unsurprisingly resembles glorified press releases and I would be surprised if any of it has prompted any reader to purchase a record, or listen to the artist in question; none of these writers could be inspired by a work of music to create a work of literature.

None of this, of course, balances the continued and unutterable contempt which the proprietors of the paper's music section feel towards their readers; note the "yikes" appended to the link leading to Mr Lynskey's admittedly fair review of the Adele album. where a paper editorially sure of itself and morally secure in itself would avoid such crass fossils of apologia. Such pseudo-sycophancy towards its readership belies an underlying hatred, itself based on fear that the readers may wish to venture elsewhere - including online - for writing which does not patronise their intelligence or resemble the average restaurant waiter's scripted preamble. Thankfully, the current plentitude of articulate, creative and original music blogs is capable of reaching the parts which print broadsheets seem no longer willing to penetrate.

Whenever he brings it up it's always "those jerks in the BLOGOSPHERE like this band but actually they're really good!" At least if he said "...and that's how you know it's gonna be wank" there'd be a bit more equivalence

Well, the fundamental error is in conceptualising "the blogosphere" as a hive mind, I think. As regards the blogosophere as a perceived threat, I do actually think that the Guardian have been more astute than its rivals in meeting the culture halfway. GU is stuffed full of the damn things; GF&M have hired bloggers as writers; and FWIW, a friend of mine got a full-time writing job there on the strength of her blog (which still chugs merrily along in parallel to her paid work). So I think the Petridis pop says more about his own discomfort/disdain/whatever, rather than that of his employers.

tbh, if I worked alongside the dudes that write the music blogs for CIF, I'm pretty sure I'd hate all bloggers as well.

Can we stop pretending he's talking about "the blogosphere" in general when we all know full well he's having a pop at Marcello and maybe one or two others? Even a cursory reading of that article should tell you he's not talking about the wealth of blogs that have spent the last year or so bigging up Feist/Spoon/Ed Banger whatever.

This is total pigtail pulling and the intented targets fall for it yet again.

this band sounds awful.

"... explaining the multi-platinum global household-name success afforded blogosphere favourites Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Junior Boys, grime etc."

would Big Al P care to join the LBZC? with game like this, he's welcome.

as natural as a breath of fresh air

Keywords: original, incisive, journalism

This band are great, actually. As to the Great Puzzle of what African music has inspired them, I'd have though that having a song called "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" was a fairly hefty clue (come on AP, do your homework, they're nothing like Juju, Highlife or the blinking Bhundu Boys!) - but then again, they're as much about cheerfully dicking around with Graceland/Sting rich-boy approximations and mis-readings; that's all part of the appeal.

Mr Petridis' predicted reply:

"It's all Africa/black people innit? What are you, an ANALLY RETENTIVE, JEALOUS, SADDO BLOGGER who should be reported to OPERATION ORE for the sake of my children?"

they're as much about cheerfully dicking around with Graceland/Sting rich-boy approximations and mis-readings; that's all part of the appeal.

boy, that sure sounds appealing.

OK, Lex, you've sold this one to me.

Badu herself is serene and strong, picking a steady path through the turbulence as if guiding her people.

ugh/uh

Yes that was a bit ew-worthy but the album itself still sounds interesting.

Lex's reviews ever-more resemble that "I'M LOSING MY PERSPICACITY!" scene in "Lisa's Rival"

What was this "breakbeat garage" then?

Short-lived and largely ignored 'way out' of garage c. 2000-01. As detailed here. AP didn't make that one up...

I remember it being called that at the time, but by hardly anyone. (If you get the 'Roots of Dubstep' comp CD there's a family tree sort of thing with it that acknowledges that title.) He seems to be talking about 2001 not 2000 though?

xpost

To be fair to the Lex, that line in the Erykah Badu review is pretty much paraphrasing one of the songs.

Sorry to go against the spirit of the thread, but once AP stops wittering on about DJ Dee Kline and actually gets round to talking about the unexpectedly gorgeous new Elbow album, I do find myself agreeing with most of his points...

Alas, I listened to the Elbow-dominant Radcliffe show on R2 and they had to send round Westlife to sing me out of my coma.

I am Elbow-neutral, but thought AP was pretty condescending in that review.

[A duet with Richard Hawley called The Fix sounds like the final stages of a competition to find Britain's most charming northern singer. You keep expecting Stuart Maconie to pop up and call it a tie: racing pigeons are mentioned at one juncture, which is perhaps laying on the aye-up a bit thick, but the song is utterly enchanting regardless]

I doubt it's enchanting at all, but the Maconie moment is cute enough.

But - this review starts off, in AP's usual would-be wise and synoptic mode, by speculating that 2000 was the worst ever year for music. 69 Love Songs was released in 1999; it wasn't, I think, widely heard in the UK till 2000, and TMF were still playing the whole thing live in 2001; so it's fair to say 69LS was part of the pop landscape in 2000. I think 69LS is a contender for the greatest pop record ever made. So I think AP is wrong again.

Furthermore, Elbow only released one EP in 2000; the debut album and hits came in 2001.

You know, if you're going to use the worst-year-in-history meme it helps to get the year right, as proper, trained journalists would not hesitate to do.

There are things in Stock Aitken and Waterman's 80s oeuvre so unspeakable that even the US military would have thought twice about playing them at prisoners in Iraq, but Never Gonna Give You Up isn't one of them. By comparison with, say, Let's All Chant by gormless local radio personalities Pat and Mick (a record of such quality that its authors' names later became cockney rhyming slang for vomiting, as in "that lager made me Pat and Mick")

nice research re the rhyming slang - sounds like total Jackson to me tho

original 'let's all chant' is a fun track

We rehabilitated SAW six years ago; do try to keep up, Grauniad grandad.

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/comment/story/0,,2272378,00.html

Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll

'What I like about churches is what I also like about musical instruments - they only truly come alive with human contact'

Laura Barton
Friday April 11, 2008
The Guardian

The Chapel of St Barnabas sits on Manette Street, between the scuffle of Charing Cross Road and the bluster of Greek Street, at the very edge of Soho. Past the Borderline, before the Pillars of Hercules, a nondescript metal gate leads to a low, huddled doorway and on through a dim passage to the chapel itself, where stands an altar with soft red marble pillars. From time to time, musical performances are held here, before the rows of chairs set out in lieu of pews, in the space beneath the blue semi-dome painted with golden stars, in a small, calm clearing that somehow makes me think of that Lorca line: "The still pool of your mouth, under a thicket of kisses."

A little while ago, I was here at St Barnabas for a showcase held by XL Recordings: there were videos from the Raconteurs and Vampire Weekend, Phill Jupitus played jovial host, and the evening culminated in a live performance by Cajun Dance Party. I have, it occurred to me midway through the evening, probably been to more gigs in churches than I have religious services. From a bill featuring Belle and Sebastian and Arab Strap, to a more recent lineup of Emmy the Great, the Mountain Goats and Micah P Hinson at the Union Chapel in London. And they always enrapture me. I remember going by myself to see Sigur Rós play such a gig one early summer evening, many years ago. The air was still warm, you could hear birdsong drifting through the open chapel door, and as they played, I remember a feeling more transcendent, more glad-hearted than I had experienced at any harvest festival or carol service. It appeared to me then, as it appears to me now, that it does not matter whether it is Silent Night or Svefn-g-englar that fills those church walls; the thing about music in churches is that its performance feels like a celebration of creation, an affirmation of how damned glorious it is to be alive. As Stravinsky put it: "The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament."

What I like about churches is somehow what I also like about musical instruments and lyrics and songs - that they only truly come alive with human contact. Cold marble, hard pews, stained glass, share much with guitar strings, piano keys, CDs, sentences, syllables, that in their inhabitation, in their playing there comes the sense of the inanimate made flesh. To hear the heave and huff of the church organ, to hear the swell of the choir and the congregation, to feel music and voices rising to the rafters, is to see life breathed into the building itself. And so to hear Jonathan Richman at the Union Chapel, or Patti Smith incanting at St Giles, or even All Things Bright and Beautiful sung with glory and gusto in a small Lancashire church, brings to me a similar shiver as that first snap and crackle as needle kisses vinyl; the sense that something has been resuscitated.

There was a television series first screened in the mid-70s, named A Passion for Churches, which saw John Betjeman waxing lyrical about the churches of Britain. I've only ever seen it on YouTube, but in the clip I like to watch when I'm far from home or sick of the city, he is rhapsodising about Norfolk churches. There are shots of Wymondham Abbey, the rich green of the churchyard, and stained glass windows showing bewinged and halo-ed angels engaged in silent, motionless musical pursuit: lute, violin and horn; cymbal, trumpet, tambourine and triangle. And then in the final moment comes a clutch of pale-skinned, blue-clad choirboys rehearsing Ye Holy Angels Bright. "Behold! Behold! Behold!" they sing, as the choirmaster tuts, and the piano wheezes, breathing life, suddenly, into their stained-glass friends. And above it all, in its well-articulated chug, rises the voice of Betjeman himself, reading a line from Psalm 150:6: "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord."

The Chapel of St Barnabas sits on Manette Street, between the scuffle of Charing Cross Road and the bluster of Greek Street, at the very edge of Soho.

lawks-a-mercy.

she does not wear her learning very lightly.

[somehow makes me think of that Lorca line: "The still pool of your mouth, under a thicket of kisses."]

yes - things make me think of that, also... somehow.

[As Stravinsky put it: "The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament."]

Ah he did, of course, good man yourself.

Her last line seems to be, possibly, hypocritical and half-baked in the way that James Wood said George Steiner's *Real Presences* was: borrowing religious glamour, such as it is, without actually believing it. If you don't think there is a 'Lord', why end your article resoundingly on that word?

most of what she says seems either untrue or just pretentious verbiage -- does she really feel that something has been 'resuscitated' when she puts on a record? as a professional music critic, this is quite surprising -- how many times a day does this happen?

It appeared to me then, as it appears to me now, that it does not matter whether it is Silent Night or Svefn-g-englar that fills those church walls; the thing about music in churches is that its performance feels like a celebration of creation, an affirmation of how damned glorious it is to be alive.

this hasn't been my experience of, say, funerals, but there we are i suppse.

It's just sad that they continue to employ a Church Of Me impersonator because they can't afford the real thing.

Much better to go crazy with Lex going crazy about the OTHER MC MC.

Carey's voice has been mocked, bizarrely, as being a triumph of technique over soul - an argument that fails to comprehend that technique and soul are intertwined, that technique primarily exists as a means to convey emotion

beggars the question rather.

Carey's voice has been mocked, bizarrely, as being a triumph of technique over soul - an argument that fails to comprehend that technique and soul are intertwined, that technique primarily exists as a means to convey emotion

So for lulz do we replace "Carey" with "Joe Satriani" or "Yngwie Malsteem"?

actually, silliest line:

[A little while ago, I was here at St Barnabas for a showcase held by XL Recordings: there were videos from the Raconteurs and Vampire Weekend, Phill Jupitus played jovial host, and the evening culminated in a live performance by Cajun Dance Party]

When I watch a Vampire Weekend video, in a church, with Phill Jupitus, I feel that something has been resuscitated, and I am filled with the magic of just being alive.

I think she was using that anecdote as a means of introducing her broader point, although it wasn't really necessary IMO.

I remember going by myself to see Sigur Rós play such a gig one early summer evening, many years ago. The air was still warm, you could hear birdsong drifting through the open chapel door, and as they played, I remember a feeling more transcendent, more glad-hearted than I had experienced at any harvest festival or carol service.

This might be because you're an agnostic who likes Sigur Ros?

^^^^read that as "I remember going by myself to see Sugar Ray" at first.

To Lex's views re. technique/emotion interface, I would add that the existence of technique as "a means to (sic) convey emotion" might usefully presuppose the existence of some emotion in the first place.

I am actually really fucking annoyed that the Lex has fucked off to Japan for a fortnight and therefore I can't have an argument about this in which I remorselessly mock him.

Mariah Carey is the one artist who brings out my inner Alex in NYC. I don't do ridiculous divas, send them all down the mines for a couple of days.

(I mean, that's overlooking the point that every classical musician in the world would laugh at that particular line).

I'd still much rather read him reviewing the new Madonna album than Petridish with his laboured 180-word preface about the role of tweeds in pop.

Petridis on some "You might expect me as a cool trendy urbane music critic to not like folk... but I do! Ahhhhhh." tip in the latest GQ.

Thank God one music hack is sticking up for Tunng and Adem, I'd hate to live in a world where they were critically overlooked.