Hey - The Pixies

hey 
been trying to meet you
mmmmmm hmmmmm
hey
must be a devil between us
or whores in my head
whores at my door
whore in my bed
but hey
where 
have you
been 
if you go i will surely die
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)

uh said the man to the lady
mmmmmm hmmmm
uh said the lady to the man she adored
and the whores like a choir
go uh all night
and mary ain't you tired of this
uh
is 
the 
sound 
that THE MOTHER MAKES WHEN HER BABY breaks
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)
we're chained (chained)

When the new year depression starts to set in, when piles of money and gifts and new things start slowly to dissolve into the generic-brown shade of slushy Oh Bugger, sometimes I feel that the world has cheated me with its pretensions of significance. 

To cleanse my soul, I turn up Ornette Coleman and the late works of John Coltrane.

adam

The Pixies - Doolittle

Got this for an exorbitant price at Borders. Can't find it anywhere else (mean looks directed at Gramophone - you have been outdone by a bookstore, what the fuck.) 

This is the album Surfer Rosa should've been, I think. The aforementioned is a bit too infatuated with its own weirdness. Doolittle is slightly less weird (in pixies terms, this still means ridiculously loopy) but has more meat and gravy in terms of actual songs. And they've lost none of the manic energy. 

Notable mentions - Here Comes Your Man, a pop song with a melody worthy of the great punk bands of the 70s. 

Enough has been said about Debaser and Wave of Mutilation, so maybe i'll skip those here.

Dead is quite a corker, and quite the contrast with the punky, melodic side of Black Francis's writing. This is clearly where Cobain got his inspiration from. 

These guys are still one of my all time favourite bands. The weird schtick puts just the right light on what I love to call simple, solid songwriting, which must be the underpinning of any popular music. They have sonic chops too - 'articulate but not clean' arrangements which bring out the roar in their strange but compelling brand of rock n roll.

adam

Here's a thought

Here's a thought: what if, even if we DO believe in individuals and the integrity of the Person as the fundamental unit of being, our cultural advances only come when society is 'ready' for it? Ready not as in being willing to accept a new idea (God knows that never happens) but ready as in possessing the pre-requisite ideas (think of Alpha Centauri here if it helps) that somehow must logically build up to a new development? 

For example, many of the major scientific discoveries of our century, and indeed the last few, were made simultaneously, or within the span of a few years, and completely independently. Calculus springs to mind, certainly, as does relativity. Perhaps Newton and Leibniz only made the last logical leap from the precipice of the mountain of collected human mathematical wisdom. In fact, this is probably almost certainly true, but it does have some implications about culture. I believe it was Newton who said that he had only stood on the shoulders of giants (or was it Einstein? I forget). 

The implication : How can I create in a society so dead as ours? Scientific ideas are transferrable by hard and fast rules: papers and calculations. Cultural ideas are not. Certainly Rilo Kiley's excellent album Under The Blacklight would not have been possible 30 years ago. Neither would The Remains of the Day. Virginia Woolf's majestic oeuvre would have been without a foot to stand on without the works of Austen and the Bronte sisters. Cultural ideas need their prerequisites as much as science and math do, but science and math are universal languages and culture is not. Hence: am I limited to the primevial state of my country's culture? 

adam

What a stupid thing to say. Happy New Year. Say it twenty times in your head and see if you sound silly - I guarantee you will. Happy New Year. Are we hoping for the new year to be happy, or just stating the fact that as of 12.19 am it is still largely happy? Of all the semantically confused idioms we thoughtlessly pepper our speech with, this must be the most incoherent, the most semantically confused of them all. Maybe the incoherence is the only real way to describe the only real way a human being can approach the new year - worn, tired, terrified but perhaps just a little unable to shake off a terrible hope that things will maybe be better. 

adam