11:32, 21/09/2006

Four legs good

I've posted a few new pics of my band Deathline in my photostream. Gig news soon.

Lady singers, don't you just hate it when guitarists wear more make-up than you?

Jennie and a door, yesterday. Join our MySpace friendlist to get news and updates

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Four legs good

In /music/deathline

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16:14, 20/09/2006

Eric, God of discord

Before the mysterious cataclysm that wiped them out, the only sentient inhabitants of the system had named several of the planets, apparently after local deities. It's their naming system I use to describe these worlds.

I've reconstructed the naming as best I can, but as all records, both physical and digital, perished with the people, some exact spellings may be inaccurate.

At the core is a string of rocky worlds. Nearest the sun is tiny, irradiated planet Mary, then mysterious cloud-swathed Vera.

Next is the Homos' own world, temperate blue-green Eamon, with its large rocky satellite, Mona, covered in junk from the Homos' many visits. Finally, there is the angry-looking red planet Martin, where traces of life genetically congruent to that found on Eamon can be seen, indicating common origin.

Outside of Martin's orbit is a slowly accreting ring of debris which we believe to be the remains of a collision event between two or more rocky worlds. There is evidence that over time, this will coalesce into a fifth, larger rocky planet. The Homos named the largest object in this belt after Colin, their ancient god of plenty.

The next object is the most impressive, a huge gaseous world called Jeremy, king of all the Gods in the Homo pantheon. Jeremy, with its huge red spot, a massive storm feature which has lasted millennia, is surrounded by a numerous system of satellites. Of note are the four largest, rocky Camilla and Gertie, violently volcanic Ian, and mysterious, icy Emma, with her deep oceans of warm, liquid water.

Next out is pale, beautiful, Sammie and her rings, the remnant of a collision between satellites. Sammie has a large, atmosphere-shrouded satellite called Tammy as well as many smaller, icy companions.

Further out still are a pair of ice giants formed from liquid and gaseous Nitrogen. Uriah and Noddy are the largest objects this far out.

Beyond their orbit is a massive collection of icy objects of various sizes at the limit of influence of the system's sun. It appears that the Homos had classified and named two of the largest of these bodies at the time of their demise. First named was Peter with its slightly smaller binary twin, Karen.

Later, a slightly larger object was found. I believe the Homos named this after Eric, God of discord, though on this fact there is some disagreement in academic circles.

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Eric, God of discord

In /writing/fragments

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13:58, 16/09/2006

Fall Heads Roll

The Fall, Galtymore Ballroom, 15 Sept 2006 (photo: Pike1957 on The Fall forums)

The Fall, Galtymore Ballroom, 15.09.06

It was a beautiful, cheesy old dancehall in Cricklewood, a distant suburb of London Jennie and I had never visited before and probably never will again.

There was nothing particularly psykick about it, but by fuck the chandeliers were huge. I'll be willing to bet there was a breakout going on in the Bingo complex opposite. Yes, it was a great and surreally appropriate venue for the best gig I've seen in many years, by the best band in the history of the multiverse.

The first surprise was when the band came on and started playing an extended instrumental intro. They were all different (except Elena aka Mrs Smith on one finger keyboards). I read later that The Fall had undergone one of its regular seismic upheavals and the collossally tight, incredibly brutally skilful band onstage last night had only played once together before. It was even a different lineup from the night before, the band having lost a guitarist and then a bass player since the two gigs in Shoreditch at the beginning of the week.

And earlier in the year, the lineup had also changed when the core of the even more previous line-up, which had been together over the course of the two previous albums, had walked out four dates into the US tour.

Mark E Smith seems energised by the turmoil. He was a snarling, deafening presence in the barbed core of hooks and riffs that the band was laying down. He'd cut an increasingly lethargic figure of late but last night he was upright and imperious, surveying the audience and the balcony as if about to address some Victorian space-age British empire in his mind's eye.

He had his usual struggle with the mike stands, and was clearly feeling the heat, shedding a leather jacket and a weird, spangly black and silver pinstripe jumper early in the set. He seemed to delight in un-nerving the outstanding new guitarist, often standing and singing (shouting) right behind him. There was a lot of amp fiddling as well; the guitarist looking understandably nervous every time Mark disappeared from his peripheral vision to muck about with the settings behind him.

Some of the new stuff was fantastic, with the medley of new songs "Fall Sound" and "Reformation" at the core of the set being particular standouts. "Theme From Sparta FC", that amazing dissociated Greek Football Yob Anthem that is used as the theme for Final Score (↓) these days, was played at about twice the speed of the recorded version and literally left the audience gasping.

Mark reads the football results on Final Score. Priceless. Watch it through.

Every song was a highlight but the encore was especially special, the band rescuing Garage Punk classic "Mr Pharmacist" from the band's 80's past and then bludgeoning the audience into oblivion with an absolutely MASSIVE version of "Blindness" from the last album, Fall Heads Roll (which you would be criminal not to have in your CD collection) which Mark humorously and unusually candidly introduced as being about his "backstage experiences" - blind drunk is somewhere in our personal backstage rooms that we've all been, after all...

It was Jennie's first ever Fall gig and I was jealous of her as she witnessed one of the best I've ever seen (and I've been to a few). We trooped back to the C11 bus stop in the increasing chill for the long journey back to Archway talking excitedly about all aspects of the show, the nagging refrains and tangled web of sound still echoing in our heads on an infinite delay, as fronted by a strange wizened man who knows more than you, sir, and you madam, and you and you about what it's like to lead the best music group in the world.

The gig last night brought home to me how much I owe musically to the various incarnations of The Fall over the years, from the 80's almost-pop sounds,via the 90's eldritch cross-pollination with dance and techno, to the current rocking behemoth.

My Electric Shocks song "Life is Sweet" is so palpably a rip off of "Mr Pharmacist" (which was a cover anyway) that I cringe sometimes (even though I was quite open about it at the time I wrote it).

In fact in every incarnation of my songwriting, I can detect Fall influences, direct or otherwise. The Six Inch Killaz song "Velcro" is pretty much a lift from the early Fall classic "Psychomafia", while several of my current group, Deathline's songs have some debt to pay, especially "Labradoodle", which is three parts "Blindness" to one part 80's track "Living Too Late".

(Having said that, I noticed that there were distinct similarities betwen the Fall's new number "Fall Sound" and our own "C'mon C'mon", so maybe the traffic is finally flowing the other way. Yeah right.)

Elvis Costello once said something to the effect that that great new music often comes from people trying to emulate their heroes' and falling short. My stuff falls very short indeed, but I'm trying Mark, I'm trying.

Cheers!

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Fall Heads Roll

In /music/deathline

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09:29, 04/09/2006

Fame, what's your name?

.net magazine 154 So I was on my way to meet a friend on Saturday morning and popped into the newsagent to buy some fags and a bottle of Volvic when I spotted the latest issue of .net magazine on the shelves.

I used to get this when I was a wee web designer back in the 90s and it wasn't very good - less a British Wired, more Top Gear for websites. I was surprised it was still going, to be honest, but a coverline proclaiming "The top 50 British blogs" drew my attention and I bought it to read on the bus and do you know, it's a really good and interesting creative web industry magazine now (equally as good as the sadly missed Create Online).

I flicked to the aforementioned blogs feature to see which of the usual suspects were in there and almost fell off my seat. There *I* was!

Transgendered z-list celebrity Miss K is a musician, writer, web designer and blogger who thinks about Doctor Who way too much...

(harsh but fair, though I must point out I only think about Dr Who 13 weeks a year)

and in the same sidebar as Troubled Diva and no less a blogger than Mr WWW himself!

All I can say is, .net magazine, and feature writer Gary Marshall, thank you very much! Now I know what that bump in the stats last week was :) No seriously, thanks!

You can see the full list at .netmag's del.icio.us.

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Fame, what's your name?

In /about