Surely this is the sort of record that should make a young crowd in a dark room completely lose their shit? You could build a set around such a shit-loser, even. I like the way it’s quite simple, but transcendent, as pop music should be, maybe. I’d be tempted to use a cooking metaphor except it isn’t really that sort of song. I notice Loki’s written some good stuff on this and uses the word ecstatic, which I think is a bullseye. Yeah, I like it’s agonised quality, its crowdy-rowdy sense of release, and the way the video does a sort of 80s gothic Greek myth without any sense of detachment or put-on whatsoever. Also vindicates Jonny’s whatever-the-fuck-he-likes release program.

It was suggested to me, about a month ago, that I might like to accompany my girlfriend and her ex along to a talk by this lady. It was all a bit terribly terribly/Cambridge Uni/Radio 4/boomerish for my degraded intellectual appetites but a couple of things she said I thought were quite interesting. She was talking about GM crops seed rights and how corporations were seeking to patent nature for profit, essentially, without regard for social justice etc. I’m not a sciencey person and I’m probably summarising what she said a bit too broadly but I think she linked this to a characterisation of capitalism as this gigantic machine that needs to be fed money to survive, and that now natural resources were dwindling the forces that fed the machine were having to look elsewhere. Therefore increasingly wealth is sought to be created from non-physical things like patent rights etc, which in addition to seeds etc also related to the pharmaceutical industry and financial services. As I say, I might be embellishing her actual remarks a little but this is what my brain decided it would like to hear anyway, and it’s rolled around in my mind like a jagged stone ever since as I’ve been gulping my way through Retromania, which kinda leads me to this fanciful postulation I’m in the business of awkwardly constructing. Actually it was Dom Fox on Twitter that set me thinking, but Retromania was kind of the backdrop. I’d watched The Voice at my sister’s in boozy contempt, so when he started going on about it my ears pricked up, plus I’ve been moaning about the Light Entertainmentalisation of modern reality here before innit.

7 May Dominic Fox Dominic Fox ‏ @domfox

Everything is turning into 70s light entertainment. We’ll have Bernard Manning back in a minute – suitably ironised, of course. Oh, wait…

7 May Dominic Fox Dominic Fox ‏ @domfox

…that’s Jimmy Carr.

7 May Dominic Fox Dominic Fox ‏ @domfox

The Voice is deeply weird, though – every performer gets the same gushing praise, minute variations on a formula. You *owned* that song…

Dominic Fox ‏ @domfox

“Talent” as dominance, as swaggering mastery. You nailed that song; boshed it; hammered it; screwed it; showed it who’s boss.

Now Dom Fox is one of those people who mentions Badiou a bit too much for my, uh, understanding, so I realise that I’m running a terrible risk by quoting him and then bringing in Marx but fuckit I am not pursuing Truth. But yeah, Marx says that the specific conditions of the economic base are reflected in the superstructure and hence my retromanical analogy. Do you see where I’m going with this? The boom times is over! There’s no more gold in them thar hills! This is a ghost town! In fact you might as well re-open it as a tourist attraction! Etc.

Actually I think I need Jessie J here to help me with this one. It’s not really coming together is it? Come on Pete, believe!

I’m feeling sexy and free
Like glitter’s raining on me
Your like a shot of pure gold
I think I’m ’bout to explode

One day I will write about Pence Eleven, perhaps thee great Lost Group, but not today because it’s a very long story and I haven’t got time. It was through the weird influence of PE that I got to know of Radioactive Sparrow, also perhaps thee great Lost Group. I will never write about them because that story is so long and complicated and makes such demands on one’s powers of descriptivity that even Gwilly can’t keep up with it, try as he may. I suppose they were a Improv unit that was also a rock group that was also a joke. I only saw them once, at the pub at the end of the street where I now live, where there’s a sign up that says John Otway, but I was struck by the VIOLENCE of their creation, a permanent revolution of music. I think if Mark E Smith had a different postcode and male siblings he would have probably become Sparrow and not The Fall. Good job I suppose. Anyway, talking out my arse a bit but check ’em out if you have a spare lifetime.

I am a moron using an old & broken thing but still.

Yeah, the Night & A Day thing at the Church.

Very nice to be asked. The gods amuse themselves by making me choose between this and R Stevie Moore at The Portland, which is Bad Timing, but then I have done that once so there you are. trying to pluck up courage to ask for cider on the rider. Serious.

Been trying to make my mind up about the Fence. Bit battle reenactment in places for me to really jump off but you’d have to say it’s awfully well put together. Just thought I’d see what Phil & Simon says 😉

Was looking for Long White Curtain or something else off the Family Perfumes.

Think I forgot to post this before. Somewhat after the event then, but better late than never, I’m posting it NOW.

Pete UM @ PAST PRESENT FUTURE SPACE-TIME Sept 2011 by StrawberryShorts

See also, The Doozer!

The Doozer @ PAST PRESENT FUTURE SPACE-TIME Sept… by StrawberryShorts

More band interviews from the excellent Simon Mullen man with the movie camera here.

There doesn’t seem to be a NOCHEXXX video. Musta got lost or something.