Category Archives: Music

Idiocracy: reasons not to like Kate Nash

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Gemma and I recently watched the 2006 film Idiocracy and I can’t recommend it enough. Luke Wilson plays the most average man in the US armed forces, who is selected for a top secret experiment into freeze-drying humans. He was meant to be awoken after a year but – you guessed it – ends up being frozen  for 500 years. In the meantime, various factors combine to cause the human race to gradually become more and more stupid. They replace water with Gatorade, watch films called things like ‘ASS’ (which features one close-up of a man’s arse farting for 90 minutes) and are governed by an incredibly vain former pro-wrestler. Actually, it felt more like 50 years in the future than 500, but you get the point.

Shortly afterwards, we watched 5 minutes of Big Brother on Channel 4 and switched off, shocked. Yes, Big Brother was stupid before we ever saw Idiocracy but it had always at least seemed funny. Not any more. Society really does feel like it’s getting stupider. Dumbing down, it’s often called. BBC Breakfast has been reduced to a 2-hour commercial for forthcoming BBC television programmes. Car surfing is the new cool pastime. Kate Nash is in the charts.

There are many reasons to dislike Kate Nash. Her popularity, for example, or her chart success. It would be perfectly acceptable to dislike her for sounding very similar to Lily Allen – the dropped-aitches of their mockney accents are particularly grating. But none of these things make me dislike Kate Nash as much as her lyric:

You said I must eat so many lemons
Cos I am so bitter

You see, lemons aren’t bitter. They’re sour.  Now I’m not the first to point this out but I am probably the first to waste half an hour writing a blog post about it. That lyric renders an already poisonously self-involved and poorly structured song so infuriating that I nearly wept when I first heard it. Last time I heard it, I immediately thought of Idiocracy.  I mean, sure, there have always been bad pop lyrics around but this young woman is being lauded on all sides. She’s being given recognition and praise for a songwriting talent that just doesn’t exist.

Another thing I don’t like about Kate Nash is her use of the gender card. Responding to yet another suggestion that she might sound a little bit like Lily Allen, Nash  said:

It’s lazy journalism and also quite sexist that there’s not enough room for more than one female singer songwriter from London

No, Kate: the reason that people are comparing you to Lily Allen is because you sound more or less exactly the same as her. It’s not sexism at all and I reckon it’s pretty low of you to use such a fallacious claim in order to divert attention away from your rubbish music.

So, yeah, I don’t like Kate Nash.

FIBERFIB: Benicassim 2007

Music

It’s that time of year again. Two weeks of holiday carved out of the second half of July could only mean one thing round here: we’re off to the Benicassim festival (FIB) for the 3rd year running. For those who haven’t been, Benicassim is a rock festival like no other. It combines the usual noise, large cups of beer and haze of marijuana smoke with an attractive beach town, lots of sunshine and all the other benefits of a traditional Spanish beach holiday. In the evening (until 6 am), we’ll enjoy performances by Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Wilco, Herman Düne, and Cansei de Ser Sexy – and during the day, we’ll sunbathe and swim. Quite simply, it’s the highlight of the year… and yet none of my Barcelona friends ever go. Losers.

The main downside to FIB is the heat. While it’s great to have a festival by the beach, the temperatures in Castellón in the last fortnight of July are hot, hot, hot. Last year, I nearly died while erecting our tent. Without the help of my stalwart amigos, I may well have undergone a complete mental and physical collapse. So this year, we’re doing things differently. We’ve got an apartment on the beach with a pool and a parking space. No more tents for us. I’m not sure which part I’m looking forward to more: hearing the Stooges play Search And Destroy or relaxing in the shade the next day.

Update: some photos of the festival are now available on my Flickr. More coming soon. http://flickr.com/photos/thebadrash

Exile On Main Street – Pussy Galore

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Pussy Galore - Exile On Main StreetI first really got into Exile on Main Street about two or three years ago. It was the sort of time in a Barcelona summer when you go to xiringuitos, get drunk then head into town and get high. My Monday morning commute would be rendered about 300% better if I could listen to the trashy stoned noise of Shake Your Hips and the bombastic rock of Loving Cup at top volume. Late night sessions got much messier with Keith and the boys as the soundtrack.

But that was just the Stones’ version… I mean they were already millionaires and they didn’t even record it in New York City. They did it in tax-exile at Keith’s château in the south of France.

So at the same time, my permanent addiction to Royal Trux was just continuing steadily. I had begun to get my head around ideas like never believe a word Neil or Jen says in an interview and yes, it is possible for a man and a woman to be the joint incarnation of the Rolling Stones’ guitarist, even if he’s still alive. I’d read that there was some mysterious tape in existence which featured Pussy Galore performing a cover of Exile on Main Street, in its entirety.

Anyway, I always thought that this would be the most amazing recording ever… but it was always impossible to get hold of. I mean, this was a limited tape release from about 1986 or something.

Well I managed to get hold of a copy (in digital format) a couple of months ago and it doesn’t disappoint. Of course, you’ve got to like the messy, scabby, Pussy Galore sound if you’re going to dig it. You’ve probably got to know Exile pretty well and not mind hearing it on the stereo in the background as Pussy Galore play, karaoke style.

Just one track from this recording is better than the total output of bands like The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys and that lot. It’s a completely different thing, naturally, but that’s what makes it better.

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Reposted from my Last.fm blog. Listen to Pussy Galore – Exile On Main Street.

Constructing a national myth: architecture in Barcelona

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sant_pau_pavilion.jpgRobert Hughes in The Guardian Review writes a very interesting history of the development of the Catalan national myth through art and architecture. He writes a great deal about Antoni Gaudí but also manages to mention Ildefons Cerdà (creator of the Eixample) and Lluis Domènech i Montaner who designed the Hospital de Sant Pau and the Palau de la Música Catalana. He also draws attention to bourgeois Catalans’ apparent love for famed anti-Semite, Richard Wagner. His mythological dialogue of the Bavarian/German nation was apparently very attractive to Catalan nationalists for whom the only way to create the new Catalan nation was to root it in the misty glories of medieval times.

2006 in review

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Two thousand and six has been a pretty eventful year, politically and personally. While for me, the most important event was my wedding to Gemma at the end of September, numerous moments featuring Lt Gen Aguado, Spain Herald, Reial Madrid, FC Barcelona and Solidaridad Española Con Cuba have added spice, and traffic, to the site.

This has also been a year during which Catalan and Spanish nationalism have been among the top issues discussed on blogs, including thebadrash.com. Much has been written in these pages about how I am not a nationalist, nor a supporter of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya – the left-wing Catalan nationalist party. I have, however, spoken out several times against a series of myths and falsehoods which are circulated and often repeated by their critics. Beyond a broadly leftist outlook, I have no party loyalty here or in the UK. I’m most interested by the ways people use language when engaging in political debate – and this includes popular misconceptions about ERC as well as the PP.

This year’s FIFA World Cup wasn’t the most awe-inspiring tournament in history and I reckon it’ll be remembered as something of a low point for international football. But that doesn’t really matter because Barça won la Liga and the Champions League. I predict another league title for them but the Champions League is going to be much tougher. A final against Chelsea is possible but I don’t think that Barça would beat them. But they will have Eto’o and Messi back, so you never know. Anyway, they’ve got some hard work to put in before we need to start thinking about that.

I’ve spent a lot of time this year delving into the back catalogues of various artists on the roster of Drag City Inc., the Chicago based record label. While my obvious link with them is my passion for Royal Trux (I recently purchased “Hero / Zero” with the prestigious release code DC1), I’ve built a strong affinity for Silver Jews, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Neil Hamburger – who has left a comment on this very blog. We were also lucky enough to see Silver Jews in June on what was their first proper international tour despite a career of more than 10 years. They rocked.

As I said before, the highlight of my year was undoubtedly my wedding with Gemma. We had a fantastic weekend in Tarragona and then a splendid honeymoon in post-coup Thailand. We both fell in love with Bangkok and we’re looking forward to a trip to India next Christmas. Meanwhile, we’re passing this year’s holidays in Modbury, my home town in Devon, England.

It’s been a good year: let’s hope that we can say the same for 2007. Though I should mention that I’m not planning to marry again, just to boost ratings.

Three top BCN gigs for December

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As the winter rolls in, so does what seems to be the best season to catch live music in Barcelona. Don’t get me wrong: the summer and spring festivals are awesome… but I’ve seen some pretty spectacular performances over the last few years during the colder months (such as the Flaming Lips, the White Stripes, the Kills, the Strokes, RTX).

This month, Gemma and I will be rocking out at concerts by Lambchop (cool funk-country with a million-piece band and loads of Curtis Mayfield: Thursday 7th at the Casino d’Alliança de Poble Nou); Albert Hammond Jr. (the guitarist from, and coolest member of, the Strokes: Wednesday 13th at Sala Apolo); and Jarvis Cocker (wise-mouthed northern lanky man off of Pulp: Friday 22nd at Razzmatazz).

If anyone’s planning to go to any of these fine concerts, let me know and we’ll share a beer and a Ducado (if you’re lucky!). Oh… plus, two bank holidays this week and a massive Barça game tomorrow… what a month!

This post was simultaneously published at talkBCN.com

The King is back

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Many people have previously written Michael Jackson off as a creepy, melt-faced loon whose bizarre antics have directly contributed to his very public demise. Last night, those nay-sayers were firmly told where to go, after MJ (that’s what we, his fans call him) shook up London in a storm of glamour, children and warbled lines.

The rumours started a few days ago. Those in the know started saying that MJ would be making an appearance at the World Music Awards (which sounds suitably vague and meaningless as to have been invented by the King of Pop himself!). As fans and other misfits flocked to London in order to prance and moan in the traditional ‘love you / hope you die’ spectacle, Michael Jackson sped through the city in a black limousine, about to make a triumphant comeback which would rock the pop world and briefly rank as the sixth piece in BBC News’s  ‘Other top stories’ section. Still, he was pursued by uncertainty and mystery… would he sing? would he not sing? if he did sing, what song would he sing? if he didn’t sing, then why not? if he did sing, would he attempt another misguided set-piece to prove how much he loves ‘the kids’? Yes, no, We Are The World, N/A, yes.

The man himself arrived at wherever the venue was and showed off his new face. More angular than previously thought possible, Michael’s cheekbones now appear to have been fashioned from china clay and then kilned for several days – a look which Victoria Beckham will agree is very much ‘in’ this autumn. MJ insisted to staff outside the theatre, or whatever, that he had never planned to sing that night and there had been a misunderstanding.

But that was just another clever trick from The Most Important Man In The History Of Music™! Because he was planning to sing and he knew that all along!  With a choir of more than twenty minors, MJ danced to a tape of his classic masterpiece in fatuous sentimentality, We Are The World. At one point, Michael joined in with the recording, moaning the words to the chorus softly as he was clearly out of breath. Despite being nearly 60, the great man still knows how to feed off the energy of the innocent souls around him. And I think that this is what makes him so great. Cheers, Michael!

BNP in Kaiser Chiefs furore

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The British National Party (BNP), a tiny, ultra right-wing political group in the UK has sparked anger across the music business by using the song ‘I Predict A Riot’ by the Kaiser Chiefs as the soundtrack for one of their propaganda videos on the website Youtube.com.

A BNP spokesman denied that the video had ever contained a Kaiser Chiefs song claiming, “This isn’t the type of music our party would ever want to be associated with, like rap music we think it’s wrong to play this stuff. What’s wrong with Beethoven?” This reminds me of the argument I had with a neo-Nazi in the Red Lion one evening where he tried to convince me that rock and pop music are bad because they’re both ‘black music’. What an idiot.

The Kaiser Chiefs have yet to confirm whether they will be taking legal action against the party. The video has since been withdrawn from the Youtube.com site after complaints were made about its content. Despite this, there remain a large number of unpleasant, racist films hosted at the site as well as hundreds of members actively involved in posting racist, fascist and homophobic comments to videos and fellow users alike.

It strikes me as very odd that the people who run Youtube.com find nudity disgusting but organised, political racism passable. How can it be that the site’s editors can delete a film with a handful of expletives in it, yet films featuring such disgracefully racist material stay intact?

Neil Hagerty, Ian Svenonius: Two pop music heroes you may not know but, like, should

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Pop music can be a difficult terrain to navigate: just what do you feel okay listening to, and can you admit to it? This issue is at the heart of dozens of websites (like myspace.com and last.fm) and grips millions of young people searching for their Pan.

Myself, I pretty much decided that I’d stick with Royal Trux about seven years ago. For me, their blend of free jazz, 70’s opiate-rock, RnB, boogie-woogie and smart, personal, witty, political lyrics was enough. Despite my liking for bands such as The Fall, I am still certain that Royal Trux sum up what it is I want pop music to be: cool, sexy, angry, bored, wasted, wise.

Neil Hagerty, one half of Royal Trux is my first pop music hero. He was a guitarist in Pussy Galore, a band now confined to the ‘most mental album I own’ category (a bit like Royal Trux?!)… and while I’m unsure as to how much influence he had on the values of that group, I’m aware that he was behind their covering the entire Exile On Main Street album. A declaration of intent, perhaps.

Through their albums, Royal Trux have covered enough material for a complete website or two (see the links in my sidebar). Suffice to say, I drank a bottle of vodka the night they broke up. Stupid of me. It should have been juice. Since then, Neil Hagerty has released a series of albums (firstly solo, now with The Howling Hex), all of which I’ve found to be entertaining, challenging and good pop records. My favourites are probably the two solo/band crossover records, Niel Michael Hagerty – The Howling Hex and The Howling Hex – All Night Fox. Continue reading Neil Hagerty, Ian Svenonius: Two pop music heroes you may not know but, like, should →