STOP PRESS

I will be writing something interesting soon.

Promise.

Text To A Voice

I'm really looking forward to meeting you.
More than I can believe is possible.
I'm looking forward to just seeing you,
And you seeing me,
And walking towards you,
And hold you in my arms,
Like I can't let you go,
And kissing your mouth,
Like the last kiss ever,
And feeling your body pressed hard against mine,
Like we're trying to fuse,
And your face in my hands,
Staring into your eyes for the meaning of me,
Running hands over shoulders,
And under your arms,
Cup the swell of your breasts,
And the curve of your hips,
And I want my hands straying,
Between your thighs,
And for you to involuntarily let me in,
Like it's natural,
And meant,
And destiny,
And I want you to feel me.
Inside you.
And I'm longing to feel you.
Outside me.
And I want us to be able to taste each other,
And I want to remember a moment forever,
And over and over and over again,
Wherever and whenever we want and we will.
I love you.

M(y)us(p)i(a)c(e)

Clicking on MySpace links as a means to discovering new music is actually making me feel a bit down.

I remember when I first heard A Certain Romance by Arctic Monkeys. I remember exactly how I felt and what it prompted me to do afterwards. It made me buy gig tickets on Ebay. It made me go to the gig and turn down three times the amount I'd paid for the tickets. It has subesequently made me travel hundreds of miles and write thousands of words in the name of criticism. Here are a few:

___________________________________________________________

Bristol Bierkeller - October 2005

It's sometimes difficult to know where to start. I Bet That... seems a good place. Maybe I don't go to enough gigs but rarely have I heard the assembled masses singing the hook so well it sounds like it's been rehearsed.

I'm confused.

I don't know whether or not to write a little or lots.

Arctic Monkeys are the next big thing right? A familiar blend of youthful exuberance and choons. I mean. At one and the same time they made me feel like I'm 17 and 70. Wanting to be young enough to be "involved". Wanting to claim that I was there. I might be a year late, then, in fact, looking around, I realise that I'm about seventeen years too late.

I knew what to expect. A blitzed set. A gig like a bank job. In and out. No fuck-ups. And so the gig was a blur. A million miles an hour mission statement. Tighter than tights and ten times sweatier.

After Fake Tales... and the double negative rant of Still Take You Home, I stopped remembering the tracks until the conversation that is From The Ritz To The Rubble. I was sucked into Monkey Mayhem. Wondering how anyone could get so good so quick. Thinking that I must have wasted my adolescence, knowing that I had. Reflecting in how utterly natural it all seems. How a voice can sound like another instrument. How its lilts and language and inflections can make you laugh and bounce and take a trip down its melody.

And at the end, or just before, we were told that "We ain't got owt else we can play." I was promised A Certain Romance half way through, and waited until the end before I fell in love.

No need for an encore, and nobody gave a shit.

___________________________________________________________

Today I've listened to about half a dozen MySpace bands and a couple showed a bit of potential, a couple seemed quite accomplished, and a couple were completely dogwank. I actually had to wonder, "How on earth do these people get away with it?" Why are they playing gigs, why do people like them, why do people imagine other people will like them, why do other people have to inflict this on me?

Some of it is just a racket: barely discernable from noise. And I know that there isn't anything wrong with noise, but I'm going with unpleasant or undesired as opposed to sound of any kind, in this instance.

And yes, I know that [whinyvoice]everyone is entitled to their opinion[/whinyvoice] and [screwedupnose]you don't have to click on the link[/screwedupnose] but I quite like listening to good, new, accessible music. It genuinely seems to me that everyone just wants to be breaking the next big thing, or people want to be seen to be listening to music that is increasingly inaccessible. Like it comes with a Certificate Of Exclusivity or an I Heard Of Them First badge.

Why is this?

I don't think people exercise enough discretion when they're recommending music nowadays. I also think The Arctic Monkeys Phenomenon has had a lot to do with that, even in such a short space of time. I'm cool with the fact that people want other people to know what they like, and the fact that they want those other people to like what they like too, and to like them, in turn, for liking like things. I just wish people would try to remember how they felt when they heard something incredible for the first time, rather than touting every other band/artist they listen to who sounds 'okay'.

It's the equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. Or that's at least how it seems to me.

Cake

The things I've done
Could make me cry
Or leave you asking questions
Such as why
The effort that we make
To turn a stone to chocolate cake
Result in nothing
But the state
We started off
To contemplate
That is the rock
We tried to change
A task which
(Though beyond our range)
We thought might happen
Via a blend
Of luck
And rules we tried to bend
Then realised
Like common sense
That for the sake
Of ninety pence
The sinful sweet
(Like Cleo's asp)
Was always well within our grasp
Without the need
To find a boulder
Waiting...




Only made us older
And come to terms
Once brains were wracked
That cake is cake
And that's a fact

Eureka #1

Every time someone leaves a comment on a piece on my blog I get an email telling me that someone has left a comment on a piece on my blog.

Which got me to thinking...

I wonder if there's a thing, like a thing with a special name, where you can register your email address on a blog in a special section, like a special section with a special name, so that you get an email every time a new piece appears on that blog?

Obviously if you got an email saying that I had just posted this piece you'd probably be a bit gutted, but at least technology of this kind would stop me having to look at this blog ten times a day just to see if something new is on there.

It probably does exist. I can't imagine that I've had an original idea. So if it exists, tell me where. And if it doesn't exist, invent such a thing. Please.

Thanks.

Guess what?

Guess what?

You can't, can you?

Guess what?

Two words. Two horrible words masquerading as a conversation starter or a pregnant pause filler or a sentence: the worst sentence ever. And the English language is so versatile. Look at the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Ayres, Cartland. Truly English is plural.

"Guess what?" is an unanswerable question. It serves little earthly purpose. It's the equivalent of "ummmmm..." or "errrrr..." and it might be the singularly most useless question in the world. It's like clearing wordphlegm from your throat. What "Guess what?" actually means is, "I'm about to tell you something which not only do I know will be utterly impossible for you to predict but I don't even want you to try and predict the answer which is utterly impossible for you to predict either."

"You'll never guess what" is almost as bad, but at least it doesn't try to pretend to be a question. Its not under the impression that it's anything other than a tedious preamble.

"Guess what?" should be banned, along with the word indescribable. And just once, one time, I would like to be able to say something other than "What?" in response.

"Guess what?"
"You think that your cat leaves the house every night and metamorphosises into an amalgam of Zorro, the character of Arthur Fowler in Eastenders, and a blacksmith, in order to perpetrate an incalculable number of heinous local acts of wanton vandalism."
"!"

English makes me laugh, especially when it's written on pub blackboards.

Three Course Dinner £4.50, Children £3.00

The funniest pub notice though is 'No Jeans'. Is that discrimination, or what?

And there's another anomaly of the English language, adding "or what?" to the end of a sentence. Having asked the question, "Is that discrimination?" there is absolutely no need to fortify it with "or what?" In fact adding "or what?" to the end of a sentence actually means please swap the first two words around, ignore the or what, and treat the whole utterance as a statement of fact rather than a question. Thus "Is that discrimination, or what?" becomes "That is discrimination."

It discriminates against the clothes we wear, our right to self expression, and our individuality. It also discriminates against anyone called Jean.

The thing I love about English is that you can often make up sentences which you can be pretty certain no-one else has ever said. Among my favourites are my bed-ridden God-aunt has a pathological fear of nutmeg, closely followed by the trip to accident and emergency was peppered with detour and comedy. Feel free to use them in any conversations you might have soon. I'd hate to think they had gone to waste. Because words and phrases haunt my every waking moment, and the idea that some people don't ever seem to think about things they say, or the fact that they say things they don't mean, or even understand, fills me with a little bit of woe.

I remember watching a rugby match on TV one day. One of the players, who was a naturally right-footed kicker of the ball, had just kicked it with his left foot, and kicked it well. So up pipes the commentator, "that just goes to show the advantage of being ambidextrous." Indeed, where would any current rugby professional be without being able to use both hands with equal ease? Then, in the same game, and and and this is THE BBC mind, the same commentator said, "Lovely running there. Off one foot, then the other." No doubt any blind people listening needed confirmation that the players weren't hopping around the pitch.

Hang on.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Then again, the world would be a pretty dull place if everyone went around thinking about what they were saying all the time. Imagine a world without spontaneity or instinct. Imagine a world without wit and instant. A world full of people umming and erring or even errming. Imagine a world without ermine. The world needs impulsion, it couldn't survive without it.

Guess what?

Go on, guess.

I'll give you a lifetime to come up with the answer.