Micah P. Hinson

An early evening show at the Bongo Club today.

Support were too country-folky for me & didn't pronounce their name clearly. Two thirds of the Something-Sounding-Like-Andrews Brothers.
Headliner was Micah Hinson (again?). From opener You lost sight on me through his entire oevre (with one new song) to closing The day Texas sank to the bottom of the sea and encore of John Denver's This old guitar (cheesy closing line “I love to sing my songs for you” seemed earnestly meant in context), he was just great, transfixing the quarter-capacity audience even with his first few words. Relaxed a lot towards the end of the set and kept complaining about his guitar strings breaking (three in one song I think) and forcing him to spent loads of time tuning up (including comedy musical interlude by his keyboard player): “Why is it we can send a man to the moon/but we can't make a guitar string hold its tune?” rhymed unintentionally I think. Anyway. You must be bored of me enthusing about him at this stage. Do listen if you get the chance though.

3 hours of MTV XXVII-XXX

Saucy. I of course forgot to point out that the previous batch marked half a year of doing this. Though it was 25 rather than 26, because there were two week in #13. Which is very interesting.

Ash - Shining Light Now this is what I'm talking about (wait, what was I talking about?). A shame that the video to this pop masterpiece basically consists of shots of Tim Wheeler swinning, and shots of him singing to camera (he is of the Owen Wilson school of beauty).

Mary, it turns out, is the Scissor Sisters song that REALLY sounds like Elton John, a mid-level ballad off Goodbye Yellow Brick Road for example. Which ain't nothin. The video is mostly bobbins, like Don Bluth had a fire sale.

Armand Van Helden's My My My is a video with that old getout clause that the ugly man with the pretty ladies is an ironic criticism of something, I genuinely have no idea what. Song's not much cop.

Excellent, it's about time someone used the hook from Word Up. Oh wait, this is a cover. By Korn. The video might be some good, though. Except the video has only one idea (handily beating the song, there) and that idea is to superimpose the band's faces on dogs. Which was a pretty good idea when Basement Jaxx did it two yewars ago, and it didn't look like crude photoshopping.

Benny Benassi - Satisfaction: This is another floor-filler from a couple of years back, and considering its considerable minimal charms, it's saying something that the effect of the video is more powerful and more basic: hot chicks with power tools.

The video for What Are You Waiting For is based around twin axes of "harajuku girls" being cool (that's what the word means) and the director having seen Alice in Wonderland. The curious thing is a visual halfway through, of a writing desk, where the desk opens and gwen stands up from the negative space, like an old magic trick of the soert which was actually made done with mirrors. Which is nothing special, but it suggests that the director has in fact seen Jan Swankmajer's barktastic animated Alice as well. Which is entirely out of place, and so matches the complete train wreck of a song. Basically Gwen Stefani has written a memo to her self to stop being so lazy, in ther form of a song - the ultimate laziness, surely. In fact it does just sound like she ranted into a microphone for five minutes, then wrote it down and sang it into the same microphone - boom, instant track!

These hirsute sons of bitches would be the Kings of Leon, then. The video for The Bucket is made up of a screen showing 16/4 images of them, and makes something pretty out of some basic them-in-the-studio footage. It's not without a cartain energy, but the best bits of the song were done better last year by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The lead singer's voice sounds like Steve Tyler on the choruses and some other seventies icon that I can't remember on the verses.

The camera wanders around an empty stadium, through the turnstiles and the backstage, and then to the Foo Fighters on stage. The rest of the video is just them playing to nothing, a live perfomance fueled entirely by them, and the power that they're pouring into All My Life. Which is the one that makes you remember, yeah, Dave Grohl used to be in this band.. In fact he's been in two other bands, and the quiet loud quiet stuff from Nirvana matches well with the powerage of Queens of the Stone Age here. The lyrics seem to mach the visuals of raging around nothing. "Don't let it to to waste. Yeah, I love it but I hate the taste" suggests that he picked up a thing or two from his old mate.

The release of Jolene (presumably from a forthcoming from White Stripes live album) is back to the start for me: the first I actually heard anything from them was wandering to them playing in a tent at Witnness 2001, whereupon they power of the blues healed my broken heart. And the standout (in fairness because I'd heard the song before) was this cover of a Dolly Parton tune. The video captures well the performance, and the wierd thing between the two of them - when Jack abandons the main microphone for the "shouting at Meg" one, the energy goes up palpably (from an impressive start).

Hard to believe we haven't done this one yet. Get The Party Started is more or less The Pink sng (though she probably wishes it was one of her gothy ones). The video does what it says on the tin, Pink and friends making their way to the club, where they tear it up. In a way it's a remix of the Let Me Blow Your Mind - Pink is white and exciting, her friend is black and dull. Pink also works the fisheye to increase her cartooniness.

The video for This Is The Last Time looks like someone was told that they could doi anything they wanted as long as it in someway matched the wholemeal image of Keane - slowing, organic, freed from guitar (though the near-as-dammit bassline this thing that keeps this pacey, airy number from floating away entirely) The result looks like a really good abstract videogame, where it doesn't look exactly like nature, but it looks like itself.

Dans Ma Peau/In My Skin

If any of you have any inclination whatsoever to see this, here's my recommendation that you do so.

The film is an exploration of a woman's relationship with her body through obsessive self-harm that's triggered by her gashing her leg open at a party. Written by, directed by, starring, Marina de Van.
You gotta take a look at a few reviews, and if you sympathise with (say) the IMDb reviewer who berates it for not giving the protagonist some motivation then maybe it's not for you. The film doesn't particularly try to offer excuses. I walked out of it feeling that someone should be able to tell from looking at me that I'd seen it. Not a feeling I remember getting from a film in a long time. To an extent it falls into similar space as things like Trouble Every Day, maybe Process, maybe Tetsuo. Very intense personal explorations of self. Or something, getting all pretentious & anyway stop laughing it's not sick. Just there were points in this film where a cringe-inducing act of bloody autophagy is simultaneously clearly a loving, even erotic, act of self-exploration. Which is just difficult to watch without being kicked into a different headspace.
So whatever, there's material in here that — if you can stomach it — you might find challenging and interesting in a way that most modern cinema just isn't. Rare stuff.

G-Cans

Is this a phenomenal Japanese civil engineering project, or level designs for a new game?

3 hours of MTV XXIII-XXVI

Up to mid-September. I've turned red back on, because some of these I actuially heard elsewhere first.

Bah, I appear to have outgrown Green Day. American Idiot seems to be directed by someone who'se seen the video for Street Spirit, but couldn't seem to figure out how it was done, so just has some of the band play really slow, then sped the others up. Hilarious. The song combines the earestly sarcastic tone of classic american punk rock with the dedication to making the same sound all the way though of.. early american punk rock. Okay, it's not that bad, but lord it's not good. It's also full of lots of bits where the guitar/bass/drums are dropped to reveal the rest of the band are playing: the same damn song still. Like the worst dj in the world. (for all that, it's not actively bad or anything. It sounds nice, but it thinks it sounds astonishing. The video is the same: lots of lovely shots, nothing to stick with you)

Fatboy Slim - Slash Dot Dash: You are taking the piss.

Vice has Razorlight thinking they're Television, but they're actually Tom Petty. But pretty nice for all that. The video hasn't much to do with anything, it looks ike an idea that has been shopped around a bit "We have some time laspe footage of this phone box, right, and we were wondering..."

Weezer are heroes to millions, but they seemed a bit "meh" to me. Hash Pipe is from their last album, I think, and like Buddy Holly has a great first line (though Buddy Holly's is better, a fine chorus (ditto), and the rest sort of slips away. The video seems to be a bit "dude, we know! Sumo, we get it", but has a few nice surprises at the end.

AAaargh! It's Bryan Mc Fadden! No hang on a minute, it's just the lead singer of Thirteen Senses. Eight more than regulation, and it's possible that Into The Fire is a perfect delight to one of them. Aurally, though, it's just one more item on the Coldplay charge sheet.

The video for Scandalous is a classic horror scene, where someone on the run from the police, through London's bad bits, ends up taking refuge in a club. But not just any club! It's Mis-teeq club, in the grips of a fantastically insurgent, insistent song, like Jumpin' Jumpin' in heat (Yes, I know!)

The video for The White Stripes' I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself is a poledancer dancing, from lying on a podium to the pole then eventally back to the ground. This is both inferior to the Massive Attack video for Be Thankful for What You Got, and draws attention by it's pointlessness to the fact that it isn't even that good a cover of the Bacharach and David original. There isn't anything connecting the song to the one screen 'action', leading us to wonder wether she was actually dancing to another song of the same length. Possiblities include Can't Do Nuttin' For Ya Man, Die, All right!, Jackson, Hang on Saint Christopher, Indian Song, White Light White Heat, Roll Over Beethoven, Get Up On It Like This, or most likely Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Motherfucker.

If you had to pick a song for Marilyn Manson to cover, Personal Jesus would probably be top of the list, but to be honest he doesn't bring a lot to the party. The deadpan vocal on the original was scarier than anything in this kitchen-sink mess. The video looks like Silent Hill, which I assume is standard for Mr. Manson.

Fatboy Slim remix of Groove Armada's I See You Baby? FatBot Slim, more like! This is barely a remix of barely a song. The video isn't overburdened with ideas either. He's the security guard, with cameras in the bathrooms. So he sees them (Do you see?) shaking that ass (do you see?)

Reasons to love the video for Blinded By the Lights:

1) it's set at a wedding reception, the one place on earth more seedy and miserable /happy than a club.
2) it "promotes" drug abuse.
3) it promotes the wanton use of mobile phones
4) its the video for Blinded for the Lights! By The Streets! and it hits the same notes of frustration and confusion and drugs and mobile telephones ansd the relationship they have with each other and how the last two can't really control the others except they vcan.

The video for Predictable starts with a cartoon house on a cartoon hill, and then a cartoon lead singer of Good Charlotte leaves, and makes his wasy down the drive to the town. where upon hthe whole thing turns real, and goes wrong. The town appears to have been directed by Cartoon Tim Burton, as is the creepy room that the band are playing in (they actually waste a dozen frames on a shot of a skull on a bookcase, because although someone would be fired if the skull wasn't there, someone would also be fired if there wasn't a shot of it). Otherwise, it's a standard nu-metal business with a rush at the chorus that might have been nicked from green day/blink-182, except the chorus, along with the rest of the song, is about how someone's left him, only you now what? He knew you were giong to do this. It wouldn't be so embarrassing if they were whippet-thing indie kids, but these are big bulky corn-fed lads. You're grown men for crisssakes (see also the bassist from Lostprophets, who looks like RanXerox with a floppy haircut)

The video for The End Has No End is the tales of two losers. Or possibly one loser, it's a little unclear. Thopugh not as much as the new look on (some of) The Strokes. At this point I'd like to engage in a sarcastic review of the strokes new look in a fake teenbeat / marketing proposal stylee (retro-Velvet Julian contrasts well with unchanged unflappable Fabrizio), spiraling downwards into further snark. But truth is, I love it when bands do shit like this. The shaven-haired Damon, the slightly less manky Pulp, everything Andre 3000 has ever been involved in; it's great pop, and maybe the only reasion that I feel like using it as something to bludgeon the strokes with is their refusal to admit that they're pop. Whcih is a fine pop stance in and of itself, so maybe the other real reason I'd do this is the far more prosaic "I don't like them". And the new song does little to change my views, it's one of those where the vocal keeps on plowing through the chord changes and occasional speedups.

Stereophonics - Have A Nice Day: No verdict registered. Possible causes of total system shutdwon: THE SUCK

Black people are from outer space! Or so Outkast would have us beleive. Prototype is off the Andre 3000 half of the album, and it's basically a slow gloopy funk number that I can imagine skipping past on the album, but makes a decent aural backdrop for the video, about a spaceman who came travelling, looking for LURVE. it's tweeness will prevent me from watcing it again, but I'll always treasure those four minutes.

You will hear nothing from me about how the dancing in the video for Praise You is a double bluff, a fantastically innocent response to a song in an ironic wrapper. That is spike jones, those are professional dancers and the whole thing is a vicous joke at the expense of poor dancers everywhere. Which is why it is so fuckin cool. Well, that and the Fatboy Slim tune attached, but I don't remember liking it nearly so much before I saw the video.

"Dooo you have the time / to listen to me whine". It's only for about twenty seconds at the start of Basket Case that it's just vocal and guitar, but the video makes it seems much longer. Though considering the song is quite pacey, having as it does two instrumental breaks and still under three minutes long. the video is directed by someone who's a) got a lovely sense that bright primary colour are perhaps Green Day's best match but b) has decided that the scary baby masks from Brazil aren't seen often enough.

It is probably a popular opinion that you don't know Feeder's Just A Day, but you'd be wrong there - DEAD WRONG! It's the one that goes variosuly "all! by! my! self!" "I don't wanna drag you down, drag you dow--n" and "do-do-dodooo" and generally makes no attempt to diguise it's true nature as a Gim Blossoms song in nu-metal clothing. It came out three years ago, which is why everyone knows it, but back then, Feeder were not the stadium monsters they are now (note: check if they are stadium monsters). So for their video, they got people across the world (possibly wales) to film themselves accompanying the song, and send it in. There must have been quite a deal of shite, but the resultant video is the best thing I have seen anywhere, partly because it acknowledges that people love music for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways. They thank the people who made it at the end, and if there is any justice, these people will be the entertainment giants of the next century. I want a Kasei & Kos show now!

Bit of tabla, spot of spoken word, and then into the nassty squenchy bass. It's the cover of Bobby Brown's My Prerogative. Though of course Britney Spears might want to consider why it's safe releasing this now: because Bobby Brown has so faded from memory that he's just his guy that's best known for considering it his perogative to slap Whitney Houston aorund. A cautionary tale, not something to play while you get married in your undercrackers.

Dude! Queens Of The Stone Age rocks, and the song (Go With The Flow) rocks, and the video is in black and red with occasional white, like Sin City if that didn't suck.

I never actually rated Bootylicious the first time round, I just filed it along with the other disappointing singles off Destiny's Child's second album. Clearly it's great in concept, but to be honest I only started rating it after hearing Smells Like Booty, the mashup of it vs Nirvana's anthem. So I wasn't really sure what the actual tune behind the vocals sounds like. The answer appear to be: a lot like Eye of the Tiger. The video is dress-up for all concerned, and has a bit where the artists pull apart a bit of the set to reveal a dancefloor, as all videos should. You listening, Embrace?

The sekrit history of Bandaid.

From NYPLM, which everyone should read anyway.

Audioscrobbler

Audioscrobbler (http://www.audioscrobbler.com) is a service which collects data about what you're playing (on Itunes, winamp etc) then makes recommendations based on users with similar tastes.

Have only started using it (and you need to play 100 songs thru iTunes before it will make a recommendation) but this is better than giving you a recommendation based on a list of artists that you (supposedly) rate (but never update the list) or based on what you buy (from one particular shop when you buy from a few shops and listen to lots of stuff that you just download/borrow etc)

Bit of review of The Earlies

from the Guardian.
'In an age of subtle product placement and stealth marketing, there is something laudably direct about the Earlies' sales pitch. "Oose bought our new single?" asks keyboard player Christian Madden in a lugubrious Mancunian drawl. A few hands are raised. He shakes his head. "Piss-poor," he says. "For Giles 'ere to validate himself to his mother, we've got to get into the charts." Giles Hatton - a burly, bearded man in a cowboy hat - looks up from his keyboard and waves cheerily. "She likes Cliff Richard," nods Madden. "A good review in The Wire magazine means nothing to his mum.".

Have you heard that Bright Eyes (prolific alt country band from US led by wunderkid Conor Orbst) are at no 1 and 2 in the Billboard top 100? That is the most shocking piece of chart news since the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses started getting on TOTP.

BTW the Earlies sometimes back up Micah P. Hinson who was brilliant in Whelans last week.

Delicious

Delicious Monster's Delicious Library is one of those great applications that you've been waiting ages for. There's a lot more written over in the review at Ars Technica, but basically, it reads a barcode via your webcam, adds it to your library, and lets you search, speak, lend, arrange, get recommendations, and hopefully, let me pop a whole bunch of stuff in boxes and find them again later.

(less boring things coming soon, allegedly)

3 hours of MTV XIX-XXII

Or 1st-22nd August. I'll dispense with the funny coloured text because it would all be funny coloured: all these songs came to me first through MTV

Soulwax's Any Minute Now in video as in song seems to be waiting for soemthing that never happens. I like the fact that it's the same poppy indie band as produced Converstation Intercom, nothing like 2 many DJs

A word of advice to Franz Ferdinand: by and large, if you're going to be Hitler Youth, black shirt, red tie, eye makeup, you'd hope that the song is going to make Gary Numan envious. Michael isn't going to cause anyone any worries in the auditory department, nice though it is, but the video might make for creepy viewing for Gary.

Today's WTF monent: the first beat on Triple Trouble, followed by the rest of the song. It sounds not so much retro like Jurassic 5 as just plain time capsule. There is nothing on this track that needs post-84 technology. The video is almost cartoon Beastie Boys (why isn't there a Beastie Boys cartoon?), with it's monster suit and boiler suits (and hats. The backwards baseball cap on MCA particularly looks like baldness awareness prevention) and the fish-eye. Always with the fish-eye.

J-Kwon - Tipsy: Errbody in the club get tips'! Is he really under age? Doesn't change much that the vcideo is in his house rather than an actual club. St. louis appeats to be a real party town, but none of the usual suspects. I imagine that the people who turn up at his house are a different class of usual suspects.

I don't know what it is about the first sample useed in Girls that is so specifically old school, perhaps there's a specfic accent that I associate with The Sugarhill Gang or something. The second sample, which is the same lines from a female voice. is definitely electroclash, and the bass is from god knows where. That's more or less it for The Prodigy's comeback, just round and round for four plus minutes. The kid in the videom looks entertained by the flashing lights and strange sights, anyone else may well lose the plot at some point. I wouldn't mind hearing it "out", mind. The bass seems important and lovely though my Sennheisers are, I don't think they're doing it justice.

Buggering Jesus, do they still make Embrace? Closer inspection reveals that the singer does actually have a pretty good voice, crooner-wise, but there is no excuse for this ploddy piano-loaded music in a world which alreeady has Coldplay and Doves. And that's if you like those two. The video (for Gravity is them in record studio, surrounded by friends. The Beatles have a lot to answer for there.

Lostprophets's Last Summer starts by sounding like like boys of summer, then the video warps to 74, where it reveals itself to be Boys of Summer with a slab of emo for a chorus, then forward to 85, time of the Henley, then forward to... 2004? Ah now lads, it's not like we can't count. If you're not going to face up to grunge (and specifically the fact that it is to your fans what the punk explosion was to grungeheads, the perfect thing that they just missed), then maybe you shouldn't be playing this game at all. It's not like the video has anything to say other than "some things change, some things stay the same".

Sunshine begins with a bit of Bill Withers, worse ways to start a record. And then it's on to a bit more of Bill Withers, and Twista ryhming about getting paid for three verses. And who is this Anthony Hamilton that the song is apparently featuring? it's some guy that they hired to sing the chorus from the original "lovely day", presumably because it was cheaprer than paying the estate. How.. shit.

Christina Milian is no Beyonce, and Joe Budden is no Jay-Z, but on Whatever U Want, they manage. If you close your eyes Christina could be Janet Jackson as seen earlier this year. In fact, if you open your eyes and squint... The video is pure sauce gold: oh no, the beach bunnies have broken down and have to socialize with Joe's auto crew until they get on the road. How will this work out? Hint: with sexy results.

The lead singer of The Killers has cleaned up a bit for their new video, he now looks like a seventies sharp lad, an Alfie, as he and the band wanders through the streets picking up followers. Along the way the All These Things That I've Done occurs: a big anthem about, let's be honest here, nothing much. I can't quite figure out what it reminds me of, other than maybe the verve if Richard Ashcoft was interested in other people. The song soars ever upwards (at one point it even sounds a bit gospel - they've just picked up a choir on theri travels), never entirely losing the resemblance to Marion. As it winds down at the end I realise: it's Fat Les's Vindaloo!

I know, I know, the softer bigotry of high expectations, but I'm really disappointed by the video for Stand Up Tall, the first single off Dizzee Rascal's second album Showtime. Apart from the whole hard boy gone bling shocker aspect (did the first record really sell well enough for that?) including the only London taxi with spinning rims, the hoodie is swapped out early on for a big yellow shirt that accents the Jay-Z resemblance. The lovely laydeez are another stumbling block: at first they appear to be a saucy version of standard Englishness (punks, bobbies, beefeaters), and taking the piss out of strippers. Then they get to the club (and I don't think Jay-Z ever appeared as the sole male in a club) and it turns out they are strippers. I suppose I had been hoping for an reverse war of independece; This is the the first global British rap scene, the first time that you could mention British rap to a reasonably up-to-date outsider (I may mean American, they do run the game), and they won't say "oh yeah, that guy and that guy and that guy", but "oh yeah, those guys", and I had been hoping that they'd take the best and leave the rest. A fucking harem is not my idea of the best. I had also, as a matter of personal preference, hoped the lyrical focus would stay paranoid rather thean triumphant. The track is great, like a garage remix of a videogame theme tune with a bit of a childrens adventure program theme thrown in.