http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 8 Jan 2003 15:53:03 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/08/155303.php Marc RobinsonSince it's the end of the year, and since I vaguely promised a few weeks ago that I'd reel off a list of musical recommendations at about this time, here are my 101 most played MP3 files of the year, at leaast according to the counters on the files, as played in Audion. Doesn't count tunes played on CD, vinyl or tape (all of which have become very occasional) or played elsewhere. These are not necessarily my favourite tracks by these artists, and by no means all my favourite artists, nor even my favourite types of music are represented - I don't think there's any jazz in here, for example, and not very much blues. Still: Leavin' - Shelby Lynne (45) I'll Fly Away - Alison Krauss / Gillian Welch (37) Valentine's Day - Steve Earle Love Itself - Leonard Cohen (36) Tears Are In Your Eyes - Yo La Tengo The Beast In Me - Nick Lowe Cold Cold Heart - Lucinda Williams (34) No Woman No Cry - Fugees (33) Do You Want My Job - Little Village (32) Sometimes She Forgets - Steve Earle Alexandra Leaving - Leonard Cohen Every Grain of Sand - Bob Dylan Still Too Soon To Know - Elvis Costello (31) Angel Band - Stanley Brothers (30) Malaika - Angelique Kidjo You Can Have It All - Yo La Tengo Down To The River To Pray - Alison Krauss / Gillian Welch Guantanamera - Wyclef Jean (29) Carwash Hair - Mercury Rev Dread Heights - Fat Man Rydim Section Why Not Smile - REM (28) Give Me The Flowers - Terry Allen Spinning Away - Brian Eno & John Cale (27) Searching For My Love - Bobby Moore & The Rhythm Aces Caroline - Millls Brothers Bizarre Love Triangle - Frente Devoted To You - Everly Brothers (26) Indian War Whoop - Hoyt Ming & His Pep Steppers Walking In The Rain - Grace Jones (25) Stan - Eminem Rasta Train - Raphael Green & Dr Alimantado Dear Someone - Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch Goodbye - Steve Earle Most of The Time - Bob Dylan Nothing I Haven't Seen - Beck Vincent Black Lightning - Richard Thompson Carey - Joni Mitchell Old Man - Love (24) Bulbs - Van Morrison El Medahey - Master Musicians of Jajouka Tennessee Waltz - Patti Page Pennies From Heaven - Mills Brothers Love Letters - Kitty Lester Don't Stay Away - Phyllis Dillon Fade Into You - Mazzy Star A Thousand Kisses Deep - Leonard Cohen U Don't Dance 2 Tekno Anymore - Alabama 3 (23) Blade Runner Theme - Vangelis La Maison Ou J'ai Grandi - Francoise Hardy Stardust - Timi Yuro In My Secret Life - Leonard Cohen Gone Til November - Wyclef Jean Don't Get Around Much Anymore - Ink Spots Dance of Death - John Fahey (22) Thoughts of Mary Jane - Nick Drake Why Must I Plead - Richard Thompson The Long Road - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Eddy Vedder Let Me Die In My Footsteps - Bob Dylan One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, end titles - Jack Nitzsche Crazy - Patsy Cline Say You - Ken Boothe I Get Along Without You Very Well - Sam Browne & The Lew Stone Band Song To The Siren - This Mortal Coil Verdi Cries - 10,000 Maniacs Caislean na nor / Bobby Casey's hornpipe - Kevin Burke I've Seen That Face Before - Grace Jones (21) Book of Rules - Heptones Allah Uya - Ali Farka Toure Untitled (from Green) - REM Opportunity - George Faith Sail Away - Neil Young Crying, Waiting Hoping - Wreckless Eric Perfidia - Phyllis Dillon Backwood - Shantel To Be A Lover (Have Mercy) - George Faith Rave On - Steeleye Span Anna (Go To Him) - Beatles Next Sens - Beth Hirsh Why Not Smile (Oxford American Version) - REM The Wild Waggoner -- Jilson Setters You And Your Sister - This Mortal Coil (20) You Set The Scene - Love Ohm Sweet Ohm - Kraftwerk Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen Picking Up After You - Tom Waits & Crystal Gayle Red Sails In the Sunset - Spaniels Wendell Gee - REM Moonlight Lover - Joya Landis Things You Say You Love - Jamaicans Baby Mine - Bonnie Raitt & Was (Not Was) Another Dance - Bunny Wailer Never Ever - All Saints I'm Not In Love - 10cc Supernatural thing - Ben E King Sisters of Mercy - Leonard Cohen Downtown Lights - The Blue Nile Truckload of Art - Terry Allen Perfect Circle - REM A Kerry Reel / Michael Coleman's / The Wheels of the World / Julia Delaney - Kevin Burke Georgia Stomp - Andrew & Jim Baxter Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part One - Flaming Lips This list probably reveals all sorts of things about me, the most obvious of which, at least to me, being that I'm no longer particularly devoted to contemporary music, and that for at least the past year I've been using my music collection as something of a security blanket... Music2543@blogcritics.org Wed, 8 Jan 2003 15:53:03 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/11/04/153046.php Marc RobinsonStrange, animalistic squeaking noises on Saturday afternoon roused me from my desk - or wherever it was I had been slouching - to investigate. Sounded like they were coming from the kitchen. Wa-ay too loud to be a mouse though. From the kitchen, they sounded like they were coming from outside, so I peer down into the space behind the flats. A neighbour is changeing a tyre on his car, with his toddler son helping. They have an air pump. The squeaking had evidently been Compressed Air Humour which, when you think about it, may be the best kind. True, I had been watching the South Park movie for the first time that morning, which had probably skewed my values a little. I had been very impressed by South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut. Seriously. (I realise a whole swathe of you are rolling your eyes now and are no doubt toadally like, duh... but bear with me - mkay?) A film which apparently sets out to argue the Healing Righteousness of the Fart Joke and to scorn, furthermore the moral cowardice of individuals who crusade against 'potty mouth', it categorically refutes the idea that 'infantile' and 'obscene' humour cannot have serious intent. I don't remember the last time I used the word 'obscene' (outside of discussing economics, of course), and it feels weird even writing the word, as if I was using parentheses like rubber gloves or something). Word is, very simply: we have more fundamental things to worry about than kids amusing themselves with 'strong' language. Things which are being actively ignored in place of policing our vocabulary. Real things. South Park points the finger and hoots, Displacement Activity! As Kyle has it, dude, what kind of sick joke is that? I laughed so much that it did actually hurt. Video1666@blogcritics.org Mon, 4 Nov 2002 15:30:46 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/25/035555.php Marc RobinsonWatching the K Foundation Burn A Million Quid - strange goings on at the Aberystwyth Film Festival, 11th November 1995 [recently restored to the web at http://www.nexistepas.com/pilgrim/works/kfoundation.htm, which isn't that far from enthusiasm, which is where the new stuff generally goes...]Let it be said at the outset that journalistic objectivity, analysis and critique will not serve here. All the navigational aids are down. Nobody knows anything; everybody knows that. So what did we see? The screening of the film, 'Watch the K Foundation Burn A Million Quid' was to have been followed by a discussion between audience and perpetrators - which many attendees had been anticipating with more relish than they had the film - but KF honcho Bill Drummond and henchman Gimpo took to the stage at the outset, before the screening, and read out a "contract with the rest of the world" which Bill and Jimmy had signed the previous week, under the terms of which they vowed not to discuss the Burning of A Million Quid, or any of the K Foundation projects, for a period of 23 years. Cop-out, murmured some. I don't think so; the Burning is of a species of activity which Debord called detournement, which is neither didactic nor dialectic; you don't stand around explaining detournement. You just do it, and let whoever is affected by it make sense of it, or not, in whatever way they can. So, the lights are dimmed, the screening begins: an hour-long, silent camcorder documentation of bank notes being fed into a fire. Not terribly compelling stuff, although some shots, especially the flame close-ups, could excite the really determined aesthete. Outraged independent film makers - calculating, no doubt, how many small films they could have made with the dosh - left early in disgust, and it certainly isn't hard to see why. Most people encountering the fact of the Burning have probably considered at some point what they might have done with the money, which is very much like imagining how you'll spend your lottery jackpot, when it comes. The easiest journalism in the world. Within five minutes of commencement, there were discussions going on in the auditorium, in the toilets, and afterwards, down the street, along to the festival club, and into the night. It's curious how this film - this event, this subject - gave us license to enter into conversation with complete strangers - which may be (part of) the point, and begs a question: why do we not discuss other films in such a direct and animated fashion, with strangers, immediately? It seems necessary to assault consumer culture head-on, before we shake the walls which separate us from the person in the next seat. For this stimulus, we should be grateful, and we should wonder at ourselves. Where did these alienated abstractions come from, anyway? How did they come to be? Jimmy & Bill made their records, just like anyone else might make a record. Off goes the product into the world, and people buy the product, radio stations play the product, and intellectual property being what it is, royalty cheques drop on the doormat -which are duly deposited in bank accounts, where the numbers get bigger (and further away). What has been lost? In the weird arithmetic of film-making, a million quid isn't an awful lot. It will buy you about 20% of Sandra Bullock - or probably about enough of Arnie for a genetic fingerprint to be made, thus confirming its authenticity. And how "real" is all this? How can anyone prove or disprove it? What sort of a budget would you need? Telephone numbers? The Bank of England is apparently satisfied that the ashes offered for analysis represent the remains of a large amount of "real" money. But how much does it matter whether they really did it or not? The belief-system that says A Million Quid is actually valuable has been challenged; that much really happened. We can have some fun speculating what might have occurred if the Burning had been undertaken in Oxford Circus, or in Threadneedle Street, rather than a stone shack on the island of Jura. We can also wonder how things might have gone if the Burning had been undertaken by famously conventional Mick Hucknall, who is surely much better able to afford it, rather than by renowned anarcho-pranksters the K Foundation. (Maybe Red Mick could have Burned ten million. How much more - or less - fabulous would that have been?) I had a wonderful time. I had three or four of the year's best conversations in one evening, and I made some friends, and for a while there I was reassured that I'm not entirely alone in a horrid, solipsistic nightmare of ghostly simulacra. Which I happen think is worth A Million Quid of anybody's money. November 1995 Culture808@blogcritics.org Wed, 25 Sep 2002 03:55:55 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/11/071621.php Marc RobinsonNot The End of The World (Christopher Brookmyre, 1998) is, on the face of it, pretty much your standard millennial doomsday thriller - there's a dastardly plot to cause a massive tidal wave to engulf Los Angeles (I don't think I'm spoiling anything here: the True Nature of the Dastardly Plot is pretty obvious to anyone who reads say, the first three chapters) but the point of the novel is a tirade against religion in general, and Christianity in particular, and it is the tirade aspect of the book that is by far the most effective, imho. The plot's... just a plot. There are missed opportunities, of course, in both story and character devolopment - not that there is ever much point in whining about missed opportunities when reviewing a novel - and some of the dialogue falters badly (LA cops using words and phrases that I doubt very much LA cops would ever use) but when Brookmyre gets into rant mode, the writing really takes off. The porn star's withering denunciation of the TV evangelist - don't worry, you'll know it when you see it - is an absolute delight. I think I might have had to wipe away a tear. Would I read more? I might. Brookmyre gives good outrage, and the rhythm of the sections told from the viiew of the Scottish photographer (with whom Brookmyre clearly and unapologetically identifies, no blame there) are more successful than some others. Perhaps I've just started with a book in which he's slightly over-reached himself; I've seen suggestions that this is actually the least successful book that Brookmyre has published, so I'd very much like to see what he did with subject matter that's a bit closer to home. (thanks to Charlie Stross for the recommendation. An earlier version of this review, with more typos and curious punctuation, is to be found, amongst a great many other things, at enthusiasm) Books540@blogcritics.org Wed, 11 Sep 2002 07:16:21 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/08/12/221057.php Marc RobinsonI'm not sure what I'm getting into here. I don't mean the music reviewing part; I used to to it for a living. What I mean is, I've jumped aboard Eric Olsen's blogcritics.com wheeze, without any clear idea of where it's heading. After reading his and other people's posts on the subject, I'm not that convinced that anyone else has much more of an idea than I do, either, but let's roll with it. I've assured Eric that I'd put up some kind of music review by Friday, and Friday it is. Why not start with an album that did more than any other to broaden my musical (and intellectual, and possibly political) horizons?"Her influence today is undeniable," said Michael Stipe of REM, "There' s not anybody I know in a band anywhere who not revere the records that she put out. There was a rawness and energy to Horses that I had not heard in any other music. From then on, my life was changed."My introduction to Patti Smith was Charles Shaar Murray's review of Horses in the NME, November 1975. That would have made me, ooh, sixteen and a half at the time. I probably had no more than a couple of dozen albums to my name back then, and a third of those would have been Bowie (so the sexual ambiguity - such an important part of what made Bowie so striking in the early 70s - was already a feature in the landscape). It took two months for copies of Horses to appear in the shops in Liverpool, and when I got it home and played Gloria for the first time, I was anxious, first of all, that I hadn't put too much faith in CSM's persuasion. This was the first time I'd ever bought a record by an artist I'd never heard, simply on the basis of a piece of rock journalism, and a brand new release at that. I probably paid what, two and a half quid for it, which was money in those days...Well, the music was ragged: guitars thrust out at peculiar angles, the piano sounded like it was actually prowling around the studio. And Patti's voice, my God, and the things she said. "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine..." no-one has opened their debut album with such a radical (and true) statement of intent, before or since. It was quite a shock to the system. It completely shattered whatever preconceptions I might have had about what rock music could do, what it could contain, what it could promise and more to the point, what it could deliver: passion, poetry and intelligence all at the same time - and once the strangeness had subsided, it became perfectly clear that you could, after all, dance to it. Patti Smith turned out to be the flip-side (good grief, I'm regressing into vinyl-speak!) of glam: literate, allusive, predatory and strident, in a good way. She was utterly unlike any woman I'd ever seen in rock music before. Even if I'd known of Janis Joplin at the time (I probably didn't), any comparison would have been fatuous: Patti was totally in charge of herself, she projected a vision of deliverance and redemption through rock'n'roll, and unlike Bowie, there was no trace of ironic distance - bear in mind that at this point in Bowie's career, Young Americans was the latest release, and while it was all fine and interesting, he seemed to be receding into thinness (and whiteness, and erm, dukishness) it looked like ironic distance was all we had left of him. Horses provided a set of clues that continued to unravel and offer leads into unknown territory for years afterwards. (Oh and the second album, Radio Ethiopia, is just as good, except of course that you can never experience that shock of awakening in quite the same way, after the first time...) Music22@blogcritics.org Mon, 12 Aug 2002 22:10:57 EDT