Hands Up For Röyksopp

Hands in the air! But for the love of God, why?

When house music emerged and bloomed, I was living in London and in my early 20s, so I should have been something of a wild raver. But I already felt too old for such a scene, and I refused to spend the little spare money I had on the drugs that seemed necessary to make the music sound something more than a producer pissing about with a few buttons, for hours on end. But what did I know? Much of the electronic music that evolved from the early 90s was sublime, and I’m still trying to catch up 20 years later. I still don’t get the dancing, though.

It’s one thing to watch rave’s legacy - my dance-floor daughters and their mates jumping up and down on the spot, punching their arms in the air to the meta-commercial, factory-spewed , submusical studio detritus that outsells decency today. But to see men around my age dance in this manner at the 9:30 Club last night was disquieting. Even when captivated by the Norwegian band Röyksopp – who in a live setting combine the cool, electronic genius of Kraftwerk with the sprawling, untamed noise-pop of Mogwai – I can’t help but be perturbed by several new breeds of annoying concert-goer around me. And yes, I know, I should just stay-at-home, but it’s a tradition that at the start of spring Mrs. Pop lets me out of the house for a few hours.

So, here they are:
Fan Who Knows Which Song It Is Before Everyone Else. You know, the one who starts to whoop or shriek before everyone else does, just to show that they already recognise the song a mere two bars in. That would be the super-fan twat directly to my left. Of course he could be just doing it on every song, and we’d have no idea whether he really knew which song this was or not, unless the band announced at the end they’d only written it that afternoon. Which doesn’t happen often.

A Canny Punter In Punta Cana

White people burdened with turning brown

My family thinks that I’m a snob about mass tourism, but they’re wrong. It’s just one of those things  – like fat-necked bigots, hysterical touchline soccer moms, gun-waving pyschotic killers or, worst of all, fans of the Irish popular music combo known as Ucunting2 – that I’d rather avoid if at all possible. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible.

Family life is all about compromise, so after subjecting my kids to several holidays spent in the middle of fields full of mostly wet, British sheep, I consented (or should that be condescended?) to join them for a week in an “all-inclusive” beach resort in Punta Cana, a mainly foreign-owned enclave populated by tens of thousands of revolving, wealthy colonists in the south-east corner of the Dominican Republic.

First, a quick word about the meaning of all-inclusive. It’s all-inclusive in much the same way that the Democratic Republic of Korea is democratic. That is, it’s all-inclusive unless you want to drink wine that doesn’t taste like it was made from grapes fomented in vats of ferret’s piss. Or if you want a steak that it won’t take you a day to chew. Or if you want some spa treatment, or if you want to play tennis after sundown. Etcetera. That is, it’s all-inclusive, except for the bits that aren’t included. Brought to you by Holidays With An Asterisk.

Now, it was by no means a bad resort, if you can stop yourself from laughing at the overall concept – plane after plane of fat, pasty Caucasians flying in as part of a vain attempt to make themselves look more physically attractive by sitting still for hours under a cancer-causing sun, all the while being waited on by handsome, lithe young locals whose very presence taunts the visitors’ expensive but futile efforts to nudge up their Sexy Factor. But there’s always something better, if you’re willing to pay.

Barely Legal Sounds Good

Bordering on bankrupt, financially and culturally

Since writing last year about my revived vinyl fetish, I’ve undergone something of a conversion to modern mores. As with most human endeavours, my incentives were driven by raw economics. A year ago, if people were bemused that I still bought music in a shop, it had no effect on me. But someone telling me about legalsounds.com - where any song out of the three million plus available costs nine cents - has now interminably altered the way I buy and listen to music. That is, cheaply, and without having to leave the house.

Usually I ignore tips like this on the grounds that they’re either a scam, or they make my computer crash, or you need to purchase new software, or they bring angry lawyers and musicians flocking to my front door swinging their guitars and demanding royalties. But Legal Sounds not only works, it’s very simple too, at least on an Apple laptop. The only drawback is that you have to put at least $25 on your account, but I did that weeks ago and am still in credit.

Yesterday I was passing the local branch of Borders, which is about to close down due to bankruptcy and encroaching obsolescence, so I went inside searching for some bargains. This was nothing like the basket-stuffing bonanza many of us enjoyed when Tower Records collapsed – Borders was offering a mere 25% off what was already a thin selection of CDs. I picked up three, but by the time I reached the checkout I’d put them down again. Even in a closing down sale, their total cost would have bought me around 300 songs at Legal Sounds (love the name – you just know they must be illegal or, at very best, barely legal).

Seduced, Beaten, Spent

More things you must have.

“Here, your favourite magazine,” Mrs. Pop said as she thrust the latest glistering incarnation of the Financial Times supplement How To Spend It towards my shaking hands. Some months I toss it disdainfully into the recycling pile. Other months, I can’t resist. The desire to feel morally superior to the overwhelmingly wealthy is just too great. That’s right, this magazine exists to help me feel good about myself.

As I started to read the February 11 edition, I became more convinced than ever that it’s entirely written for my amusement. It’s a subtle but vicious parody, inventing people that could not possibly exist in the real world, nor survive without having their heads kicked in by the indignant normal folk they happen to bump into. For it’s just not conceivable that an actual human being, “executive chef” Alain Ducasse, say, would go public with news that “the best gift I’ve given recently was a gold and diamond ring from Lorenz Bäumer for my wife, Gwenaelle, to celebrate the birth of our son Arzhel”.

Alain explains with a hint of apology that the son’s name “is from Brittany”, though that’s not going to stop Arzhel’s future school yard contemporaries from wilfully mis-pronouncing his moniker, especially if he’s anything like his old man and his penchant for bragging about having picked up stuff like “a folding tea-ceremony table from a gallery called Mitate in Tokyo”.

After The Fire

Charred times.

Another example of what our energy supplier Pepco calls a “winter storm event” knocked out our power for four days last week. A letter in today’s Washington Post thanks Pepco for adding to its customers’ sense of certainty by ensuring that lengthy power outages have become as much of a sure thing as death and taxes. Another indirect consequence was that our house almost burnt down. Had the fine fire-fighting men of Montgomery County not been quick to jump out of bed at 3am on Saturday, it’s hard to see how the side of our house (see picture) would have avoided  more serious damage.

It seems the neighbours’ tool shed caught fire thanks to an undetected crack in their chimney, through which heat and/or flames must have escaped as they burnt wood to keep warm. The neighbours woke up when the flames reached up to their bedroom window. The Indie-Pop family had abandoned the neighbourhood in search of a warmer, electricity-driven house, so we were summoned by cell phone at 4am to come and enjoy the last stages of the drama. We suffered no internal damage, but became a local tourist attraction for 48 hours as people we’d never met before were flushed out of their houses to come and ask, “What happened?” Maybe we’ll see them again next Halloween.

Saucy Stories Etc.

Is this what you were after?

The technical masterminds behind Blogger at some point over the past few years added all kinds of tricks and buttons that allow you to see how many people actually read this nonsense, and where they’re from. For some reason, outside of the US and the UK, I have a lot of readers in Denmark, even though I don’t know a soul who lives there. Maybe they’ve heard that when I’m drunk, I’m prone to break into song and warble “Wonderful wonderful Copenhagen/Salty old dog of the sea.” Though of course that song’s about a boat, not about Copenhagen itself, which I visited once on a press trip. I’d love to tell you more, but the memory’s lost in a fog of hard Nordic liquor hastily downed to try and shut out the sound of British businessmen telling jokes as dull as their pre-tailored polyester suits.

There are also a few visitors from Germany, but that’s just the in-laws checking up to see if I’ve written something derogatory about Dresden again. Every time I visit them, any woman in the state of Saxony who does not have aubergine-coloured hair is pointedly pointed out to me. I would just like to say for the record that Dresden, in particular the suburb of Hainsberg, I love you.

The other thing Blogger lets you see are the search terms that lead people to your blog. It turns out that the lead search term is “saucy stories”, thanks to this rather meandering entry almost a year ago about a trip to Safeway to buy Worcestershire sauce.

Great Suburban Traditions No. 11 - Failing To Take Down The Xmas Lights

Jesus gets ready for Easter

Unlike leaf blowers, dog turd and piano recitals, this is one suburban tradition that I love – January comes and goes, and still there are people who have not bothered to take down their festive decorations. In every neighbourhood, there will be at least one garden with a sad, deflated Santa, a defiantly glowing reindeer, or a crib scene missing Jesus, who has long since grown up and absconded with his mates to smoke pot and drink stolen Miller Lite in the nearby woods.

As winter wears on, bulbs blow and storms tear down the strings of lights, rendering the displays increasingly sad and shabby. And I’m left with the warm inner feeling that beyond the front door sits a family too lazy to do anything about it. Mum, Dad and the kids – all of them too reassuringly sane to stand around in freezing weather wrestling with wires and step-ladders. Hell, just leave it ‘til Easter. Maybe by then someone will have found Jesus and nailed him to the tree.

Albums of the Year, 2010

Bonnie Prince B and his funny folk.

The following are in no particular order, a glance at previous years’ lists having confirmed that allocating a number next to any one album results in an arbitrary ranking of no long term significance. Fewer ‘reviews’ this year too, as finding fresh rhetorical ways to convey a pleasure in what are often the same bands (reflecting an increasingly static taste) becomes an annual challenge I’m losing the will to confront. Also, when I read a year-end list at a worthy, knowledgeable website like The Quietus, I get the feeling that, in any case, I’ve probably been listening in all the wrong places. Or maybe there really is nothing much of note released nowadays that can impress a mid-life indie-pop. After all, my favourite release of the year isn’t on this list because it was the boxed set re-issue of the entire Orange Juice back catalogue from the early 1980s, Coals To Newcastle. So it’s a rough Top 11, followed by a list of secondary choices.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy & The Cairo Gang - The Wonder Show Of The World (Drag City)
Another year, and another wonderfully realised record of melodic narratives cloaked in raw, emotive beauty. Track to try: Troublesome Houses.

Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises (Caldo Verde)
Shhhhhh... Soothing gorgeousness now comes with sporadic flamenco guitar riffs. But they work wondrously, as do most things created by a man in a perennial audition to play the soundtrack to Eternity. Track to try: Third and Seneca

Gayngs – Related (Jagjaguwar)
A gift box of styles and surprises built on a glowing fire-bed of compelling hooks. Track to try: The Gaudy Side of Town

Phosphorescent - Here’s To Taking It Easy (Dead Oceans)
Wins the award for least agit-prop album title since Black Lace’s last party LP. This record also more than makes up for the absence of any Jason Molina/Magnolia Electric Co. output this year, though it’s inspired enough by the latter to stand alone as an Americana landmark. Track to try: Los Angeles

Laura Veirs - July Flame (Bella Union)
Seventh album of fluttering, quirky brilliance could even be her best yet. Track to try: Life Is Good Blues

Books of the Year, Part 2 - Non-fiction

Some books,
 earlier today.

I used to read nothing but novels. Then I veered in the other direction, until I realised that much as I enjoyed biographies and history books, I could never remember much about them once I’d finished. So now I mostly read fiction again, and the non-fiction I pick up is only stuff that I really, really want to read. And that’s why this list is shorter than the Fiction list. And why I don’t know as much as I should do about important historical events, but I can tell you the names of all the albums that The Raincoats released on Rough Trade records.

Document and Eyewitness – An Intimate History of Rough Trade by Neil Taylor (Orion Books)

Clearly you’d have to be more than interested in British indie-pop in the late 70s and 1980s to get much out of this. But the anecdotal rewards are deep if The History of Rough Trade would be your chosen specialised subject on the fading leather jacketed saddo’s version of Mastermind. Once you’re past the ponderous intro (and I’d rather have had an index than the footnotes), the stories and their characters take you right back to a time when you didn’t have to give a shit about anything besides drinking, music, and appearing to know what you were on about (I gave up on that one in the end).

Books of the Year, Part 1 - Fiction

Not yet a Kindle convert

I’m usually about three years behind current releases, but due to a more conscious effort to read The New York Times Book Review (rather than putting it in a pile to be ‘read later’ - another phrase for ‘recycling’), and a couple of nice presents, I somehow managed to read a lot of novels this year that actually were published in 2010. Before this thrilling news completely overwhelms you, let me get on with recommending them, in approximate order, and adding a sample quote from each book that may lure you to further exploration:

Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead Books)

I like post-apocalyptic books, if they’re not too apocalyptic. This book takes place in a tiny southern Indiana town after a flu pandemic has wiped out millions worldwide, and follows Cole Vining, a 13-year-old orphan of liberal, urban parents, in his new life with ex-alcoholic, self-appointed Pastor Wyatt and his kind but ill-educated wife. Despite all the anguish of death, separation and relocation, the likeable but complex kid still has the hots for an unattainable 16 year old, and that keeps him as mentally busy as multiple other conundrums of faith and fate. Beautifully written.