Hey ho, let's go.

This is going to be one of those intractable posts about my continuing inability to be at peace with the world. Incidentally, I'm at the mess computer in camp and it's been a long week.

My capacity for responsibility has worn thin. I've pretty much stopped caring about anything that happens in the army, for the good reason that it's mind-crushingly pointless. But I used to be able to do my job... and I consider that one of the attributes a non-useless person must have in this world. I am slowly losing my grip on non-uselessness. Don't get me wrong, I love my men, but it's a different sort of relationship with them, mostly based on trading insults and comparing penis sizes - not all in all a fulfilling existence. I miss having a real conversation. I miss talking for hours about pointless (but interesting) philosophical quibbles. I miss not having to walk around in a protective shell made out of belligerence. And I've resorted to more and more outlandish (and often destructive) ways of coping with this.

I mean, this is truly pathetic, that I can't seem to handle a little thing like this without becoming self-destructive. It was alright when I was just content with destroying my body. But that barely seems like enough now - I fear I've started to play games with my mind and my heart that no sane person would attempt. It is worrying.

On the dubious upside, I know I should make it through alive. My family is composed some of the most arrogant, stubborn people on this planet. And I won't give up even if (and especially if) it kills me. I just hope I don't drag too many people down on the way.

So - bring it on, motherfuckers.

adam

Test

Cool... Blog by email, by handphone.

New Phone

With the plan renewal comes new handset time (it's about time, I say - my k800i is now 3 years old and starting to grey around the temples). I could have opted for the really sexy HTC model, or god forbid an iPhone, but for budget and perhaps camp security reasons I went for the archaic (and indeed, arcane) nokia e71 - a model that, while clunky and quite hideous (I got mine in a manhood-approving shade of red), appeals to me in its sheer, almost medieval brute force approach to design. I like that there is no touch-screen, there are no stylish symbols, just a don't-fuck-around-with-me qwerty keyboard on the front, an i-don't-give-a-fuck tiny LCD display, and a why-am-i-even-bothering 3.2 camera, which used to be huge but now isn't. This is a phone for people who get the job done the messy way. I love the features, too, which it sure doesn't fall short on.

adam

OC SAY ADAM! I WANT BULLET FLY OVER THERE
I SAY HOW MANY?
OC SAY MANY MANY!
I SAY YES SIR.

adam

Odd

I just re-discovered a blog that I started two(!) years ago and promptly left to die. It's RTVOODOO, my music blog - and I've gone and updated it just to keep up with the general spirit of necromancy that seems to be prevalent.

rtvoodoo.blogspot.com

adam

Are and Gee

I'd just like to take a moment to plug a play which I won't before because I'm in the army, but which my friends are producing/acting in, and which I think is a fantastic endeavour. Tom Stoppard's 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' will be on 17th-19th of July. You can contact me, Terence Lee, Ryan D or Chengyi for info.

adam

Further Impressions

Okay, I've not had much time with Closer, but I have spent many ecstatic hours listening to Rising Down, and it is definitely worth the critics' hype. I can't say I know much about hip hop, but I know a little about music - and this album shows a band (and a crew, let's not forget) at its prime, basking in the sheer joy of inventiveness, whether it be ?uestlove's manic drum beats or Black Thought's flow (eat shit, Kanye!). Mos Def opens the lyrics with an apocalyptic tableaux. Dice Raw carries on with the protest song 'Get Busy' before Black Thought commits vocal murder with freestyle @15 and burns his competitors hard on '75 bars (Black's Reconstruction)'.

They break out the gangsta rap for 'Criminal'.

The two closers on the international version ('Birthday Girl' was left out in the American release, sadly) function like the closers on 'London Calling'. 'Rising Up' is nothing short of apocalyptic, with a flaming fusion beat, choir and modulating chords banging on the electric piano. 'Birthday Girl' brings things to a personal level - this is the 'Train in Vain' of rap right here and it closes the album on a slightly sentimental note - but don't mistake this for mush. It's the cleverest song on the album. 'I just let you inside cos the line was so heavy/But i shoulda know better cos now I feel like america's underbelly/R. Kelly, gutter smut peddlers, internet predators, chat room irregulars', Black raps. It's also stunning for making actual musical use of Fallout Boy's singularly talent-less lead singer. I doubt if he wrote this himself, but the final chorus is (and I turn a little teary here) quite stirring, and quite witty

'They can't really seem to look away

so they tried asking her to stay

fake ID you won't get turned away

you look lovely tonight

Now you're old enough to buy a gun

so many better ways of having fun

right now I can only think of one

You look lovely tonight'

Some of the reviews blamed Black Thought for rapping too seriously on this album. It's not funny, says Rolling Stone - they're probably right. But just when you think he's starting to become Jesse Jackson, the band turns a hairpin and reminds you that they sure as fuck are having fun.

adam

Double album buy!

The Roots - Rising Down

Joy Division - Closer

Both of these stem from the arty side of rap and punk rock no doubt. First impressions will have to wait until I've had some alone time, but I do want to take this opportunity to officially forgive Fallout Boy for all their musical mistakes now that Patrick Stump has lent his dubiously necessary voice to that brilliant Roots track, 'Birthday Girl'. The reviews were right about it not fitting in with the album, but it is clever, catchy, clever, and you know what? Who gives a fuck about the world, if we had more songs like this we'd be alright.

adam

16 reasons why God would never get tenure

1. He had only one major publication.
2. And it was in Hebrew.
3. And it had no references.
4. And it was not published in a refereed journal.
5. And some even doubted that He wrote it Himself.
6. It may be true that He created the world, but what has He done since then?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a very rough time trying to replicate His results.
9. He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it up by drowning the subjects.
11. When subjects did not behave as predicted, He often punished them, or just deleted them from the sample.
12. He rarely came to class: He just told students to read the book.
13. He has his son teach the class.
14. He expelled His first two students for learning too much.
15. Although there were only ten requirements, most students failed His tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent, and usually held on a mountain top.

-taken from http://komplexify.com/epsilon/

I think selfhood is overrated. When all's said and done we are victims, not champions, of who we are.

I want to be upbeat and aloof and above all the petty little troubles. But I keep feeling this miry misery bringing me down - it is a low, pathetic, animal emotion. There are 3 emotions that are worthy of homo superior - joy, wonder and anger.

adam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9RAbi2xEvo&feature=related

The thing that separates these girls from Simple Plan (cutesy hairstyle and drug-induced kitsch MVs notwithstanding) is nothing more profound than the musical tact to put their accents in the right places. The simple mastery of rhythm turns what would otherwise be a humdrum cover with nothing but four-on-the-floor and ye olde basicke punke beate into a sincere, intelligent and energetic tribute. 

adam

The power of Led Zeppelin IV to cause me to curl up in a foetal ball and whimper still astounds. A fairly powerful speaker system helps. 

The new anti-smoking campaign announces a 'Rockin' without Smokin' concert - and suddenly I am overcome by the threat of a congregation of terrible Straight Edge bands making music awful enough to wake the dead who sleep beneath the foundations of the Esplanade. 

Actually, no - there aren't actually any good bands in Singapore, although the Observatory comes close at times, as does ublues - but my real grief with this ridiculous business is that making rock squeaky clean is necessarily disingenuous, if you actually give a shit about the music. Now, don't get me wrong - I don't in any way promote smoking, although I have done my fair share of it. But to use rock (or the idea of rock, in this case - asking for actual rock in this country is asking for far too much) to push your own squeaky clean agenda is to disassociate it with everything that rock stands for - the great sacred chaos at the heart of human interactions. 

I'm not outraged at this point. The concert is well meaning, and given the quality of past such productions I'm not (and doubt if anyone is) shocked. But I'd like to add my voice to a debate that maybe will help this sodden little country grow up a bit.

adam

Last night was quite the disaster. Still making sense of what happened - but hey, I guess you don't get awesome unless you're prepared to accept epic failure. 

Sigh.

adam

Science: the God of Small Things (with apologies to Arundhati Roy)

From this moment on, I will be featuring a new sort of blog entry, one that celebrates the little observations that keep you on the thin and narrow ridge line of Sanity, the joyful little discoveries that make you sit up for a moment and go 'wow,' and thank your preferred deity that but for the whim of Science, we might all still be sitting in caves and scratching our armpits and watching the Simpsons.

1. 

Put a watermelon in the refrigerator for a few hours. Take it out, cut it into small chunks and eat it. 90%  of the pieces will be colder on one side. This happens because the outside of the watermelon is the first to lose heat to the cooling effect of the refrigerator - common sense really, but in the days of Phlogiston and liquid heat (scientists actually believed heat was a liquid until alarmingly recently) there would have been a considerable lot more confusion. I think it is actually beautiful that the same laws that govern the motion of the heavenly bodies and the rise and fall of the tides could actually make chilled watermelon pieces cold only on one side. If there is a God, he truly is a joker.

" And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. "

- Kurt Vonnegut

I am happy, for I have found my Kind of Blue. 

When I opened the Head Hunters cd to rip to to FLAC, imagine my surprise when two cds fell out - one of which was the Kind of Blue that I'd been mourning the loss of for months. 

Rejoice, for my brother was dead and now is alive!

adam

Back from Taiwan

Not something I really want to talk about. 

Did get the opportunity to shop for some clothes, though. 

I've got about a week off, sans wednesday, so I guess i'll try and get back to my old life for a quick while before it's torn away from me again. I will not succumb to army! 

In keeping with the general atmosphere of hope and all that, here's some Shonen Knife:

IT'S A NEW FIND

Feel in your pockets for something fun
Wash your socks and turn them inside out
Try to look hip in old ugly clothes
There'll be something different in your life

*It's a new find, It's a new find,
It's a new find, It's a new
It's a new find, It's a new find,
It's a new find, It's a new

Let's all get up and dance to a song
It gets you feelin' very nice
You can have a strange hair cut
There'll be something different in your life

*repeat x2

I can't find any more but you can find a new way

Sache down the street in platform shoes
You can find some new scenery
Make up with your friend and try again
There'll be something different in your life

Just a perfect day
Drink sangria in the park
And then later, when it gets dark, we'll go home
Just a perfect day
Feed animals in the zoo
Then later a movie too, and then home

[Chorus:]
Oh it's such a perfect day
I'm glad I spent it with you
Oh such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on

You just keep me hanging on

Just a perfect day
Problems all left alone
Weekenders on our own
It's such fun

Just a perfect day
You make me forget myself
I thought I was someone else
Someone good

[Chorus]

You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow
You're going to reap just what you sow

Went clubbing. It is aggressively pointless, but I guess that could be the idea. In our world, where everything is manufactured for fast, effective results; where we get straight to the point and discard the packaging; where we make pacts with the demons of efficiency to trade our souls for Extra Credit - it may be that pointlessness is the rallying cry of my generation.

adam

Kari Carpenter

is, I suspect, one of those people whose accent gets more Southern the more drunk she gets. Listen to the studio version of 'Top of the world' (sober) and the live version (considerably more Texan)

adam

Shonen Knife - Or, Music for Strangely Disillusioned 9-Year Olds - Or, Everything You Thought You Knew About Music is Wrong.

This is going to be difficult to put into words - because the primary effect of the music of Shonen Knife is to shamanistically invoke the hyperactive nine-year old that secretly resides deep in our hearts. And nine-year olds are not historically very good at english. Nevertheless - I shall try - for the sake of science. 

Immediately I felt a huge discord within myself as if I had invoked some kind of jungian doppelganger. The grown up in me wanted to goggle in austere horror at the sheer travesty of it all. Shonen Knife does not sound well on cultured ears. The nine year old that I talked about earlier was, on the other hand, ecstatic like he'd been given a bag of lollipops - I can only attribute this mysterious reaction to the presence of some kind of mystical force. 

After awhile the initial shock was replaced with a grating feeling that I've done my growing up too fast. 

adam

life changing redux

Better put up a few more in case you got the idea that I was a music lover.

6. h2g2

7. the great gatsby

8. prufrock

9. eats, shoots & leaves

10. anarchy in the u.k.

11. Little Wing

life-changing

Name 5 events that have shaped who you are as a person.

1. A Love Supreme

2. E.S.P.

3. The Velvet Underground

4. Led Zeppelin IV

5. Preludes

adam

Ever proof that my poor damaged brain is slowly receding into childhood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epRWUbgw9V4

I can't get this song out of my head.

adam

I'm on the highway to burnout city, with an open mind and a song in my heart.

In other news, there is true joy in Wynton Marsalis and the Modern Jazz Quartet's rendition of 'Cherokee'. 

adam

Most incongruous bassist

This award needs to go to Krist Novoselic of Nirvana. See this link: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbHO0OFNC8w

Kurt Cobain looks like he's faced down the collected horrors of the 20th century and been found wanting. He looks wasted. Krist looks like he's just got back from the frat party and knows the reason Kurt is so bummed is cos he just stole his entire stash of pot and smoked it all at once. He looks like he wishes he was in the Beatles. Check out the stupid grin on his face at 1.54. Pat Smear also looks like he wishes he was Slash, but that's different - he's just a guest guitarist and gets to make an idiot of himself.

adam

The Boxer

One of the songs I really love is Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Boxer' not just because it's unusually intelligently and sensitively written but because it gets slowly, imperceptibly but insistently louder as it plays, growing from a quiet folksy ditty to a towering, reverb-drenched wall of multi-tracked orchestra. 

This usually allows me to use it to drown out people I don't want to talk to - 'Hey, do you listen to Simon & Garfunkel? This song's pretty cool, lemme put it on for me to hear...' 

'Yeah, I'm doing good, I'm in army now.... nope... don't believe I've heard of that movie... what's that? sorry I can't hear you LAI LA LAI. LAI LA LAI LAI LAI LAI LAI

adam

I guess I should update this every now and then. 

So.

Army is shit, that's about all I really have to say. 

adam

Devastated

Led Zeppelin IV. How I lived on for so long unaware of this, I don't know. 

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/

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

SITUATIONS (see a couple of posts down)

Man: Hey, did you just kick me in the shins?

Me: No, but I fucked your girlfriend.

ba-dum PISH!

adam

Blondie - Sunday Girl

Quite possibly the most beautiful song ever written. Sexy, and aggressively shallow, the melody charms your heart while the churning intellectual steam-train of Pop grabs your brain by the vulnerable bits and gives it a good shaking. 

Sonic Youth - Free City Rhymes

This is the poncier, snobbier side of intellectualism, and Sonic Youth treads thin ice here, but what glorious ice it is! Thurston Moore's sonic New York-flavoured mishmash is ethereally beautiful, and the almost melody brings home the ghostly heart of his beloved city. 

Rilo Kiley - Silver Lining

I love this song. Rilo Kiley hearkens back to Blondie not in sound but in aggressively poppish material which is anything but ashamed to be catchy. The kicker is Jenny Lewis's songwriting which is several layers deep and pretty no matter how you look at it. "I was your silver lining/but now I'm gold" Eat your heart out, Lit majors. 

Beastie Boys - B-Boys makin' with the freak freak

Not particularly chosen for the quality of the rap, which I'm admittedly clueless about. But these boys were like the Sonic Youth of rap. Rap historians may forget that they played some motherfuckin' funk that hails Funkadelic itself in invention and sheer joyous sonic fuckery. They pull out all the stops: double-bass, tape loops, scratching, sound clips. 

Arcade Fire - Intervention

After the Sensitive Jerks with Acoustic Guitars (Jason Mraz - guilty) and the Touchy Feely Pop Bands (coldplay) and the Annoying Pseudo Religious Harcdore Bands (Avenged Sevenfold, shittiest band quite possibly in the history of music ever), Win and gang bringing back the Excess into rock and roll is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. They did this one on the biggest church organ in england. No poncy classical/jazz pretentions here. The organ gets straight to the 1-6-4-5, blasting out the chords like some demented church organist, except the gospel here is Rock and Win Butler is the preacher. Workin' for the church while your family dies, indeed. 

Velvet Underground - After Hours

This one's been covered by everyone from Rilo Kiley to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and that's because we all love it. Moe Tucker singing? Yes. Moe Tucker singing out of tune? Fuck yes. Nobody makes it charming like she does. The simplicity of the lyrics belies the depth and detail of feeling displayed here - 'If you close the door, I'll never have to see the day again' tells of desperation, denial, naivete, and child-like faith, without once losing a tight grip on making sense. The melody is heartbreaking. I think a fitting song for the end of this year.

adam

Amidst Rilo Kiley's happy sunshine (but oddly intelligent) pop album, I discover a song about (guess what) blowjobs. Is this some ritual bands use to proclaim their Indie Cred? 

'I took a man to my room/I was smokin' him in bed/Yeah I was smokin in bed/That's what he said'

adam

There is nothing more joyous I can think of than the fact that we are all slowly dying like fires in a cold night. Burn on, my brothers - Merry Christmas.

adam

IN THE NEWS: SARAH PALIN EATEN BY MOOSE

In an unfortunate series of accidents, ex-vice-presidential Candidate Sarah Palin was eaten by a moose last Saturday. The Governer Palin was taking a bath in melted Swiss Cheese, which she claimed 'makes my complexion so silky, you betcha!' when her bathroom wall collapsed from the impact of an enraged and cheese-starved moose.

The moose in question seemed sheepish when interviewed and claimed it was 'all a huge misunderstanding'. Mooses are common in Alaska and normally eat moss, but biologists and ethologists on the case are perplexed by what noted boffin Richard Dawkins has called a 'sudden predilection for cheese and stupidity'. 

adam

IN THE NEWS: Obama's pastor bashes Klingons

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has appeared in a video on Youtube with a fiery indiction of Klingons, who he claims were 'cast out by God' sometime around the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. 'Klingons do not go to heaven, the Bible clearly states this,' he said. 

 

If there was a phrase which could sum up the human condition in all its variety, it would be 'OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK'

adam

Not a worship song

Jesus, help me find my proper place 

Jesus, help me find my proper place

Help me in my weakness cos I'm falling out of grace

Jesus, Jesus

Jesus, help me find my proper place

Jesus, help me find my proper place

Help me in my weakness cos I'm falling out of grace

Jesus, Jesus

Jesus, help me find my proper place

Jesus, help me find my proper place

Help me in my weakness cos I'm falling out of grace

Jesus, Jesus

by The Velvet Underground

Maybe it's the little atheist in me but my first reaction to this song on their thoroughly wonderful album The Velvet Underground was 'This can't be a worship song.' I mean, nobody in the 60s had even heard of Jesus right? Wrong, as it turns out, there were some seriously creepy Jesus-freaks even back then. But part of me refuses to believe the great band would write a song so transparently. I think it's more about a personal sense of desperation and self-loathing than, well, Jesus, but I guess the Christians will disagree. 

adam

Sunday Girl by Blondie

I know a girl from a lonely street,
cold as ice cream, but still as sweet.
Dry your eyes, sunday girl.
Hey, I saw your guy with a different girl.
Looks like he's in another world.
Run and hide, sunday girl.

Hurry up, hurry up and wait.
I stay away all week and still I wait.
I got the blues.
Please come see,
what your lovin means to me.

She can't catch up with the working crowd.
The weekend mood and she's feeling proud.
Live in dreams, sunday girl.
"Baby, I would like to go out tonight".
"If I go with you my folks will get uptight".
Stay at home, sunday girl. (oooooh...)

Hey, I saw your guy with a different girl.
Looks like he's in another world.
Run and hide, sunday girl.
When, I saw you again in the summer time,
if your love was as sweet as mine,
I could be sunday's girl.

Hurry up, hurry up and wait.
I stay away all week and still I wait.
I got the blues.
Please come see,
what your lovin means to me.
Hurry up!
Hurry up, hurry up and wait.
I got the blues, please, please..
Please come see,
what you do to me.
I got the blues..

Hurry up!
Hurry up, hurry up and wait.
Hurry up!
Please come see,
what you do to me.

I've thought of something brilliant : instead of actually having a cool life which I'm sadly unable to do, I shall think up cool situations to be in and put them up here so I can live them vicariously through everyone else's imagination!

Scene 1: Some half assed lame indie kid hits me up on msn by asking me if 'besando chicando con Surfer Rosa' is a reference to the famous Pixies album. I have a good laugh for a good 90 minutes after that. 

adam

EDIT: I and I no come to fight flesh and blood, but spiritual wickedness in high and low places. So while they fight you down, stand firm and give Jah thanks and praises!

EDIT: Am reading Richard Dawkins's 'The Selfish Gene' which to my unscientific mind is thoroughly brilliant and if not actually brilliant is at least a fucking good read.

It's a depressing thought to realise that when you come back from army on the weekend or on leave, most of the world just doesn't have time for you. 

In retrospect, one of the more apt turns of phrase that I've stumbled upon with regards to my ongoing relationship with music is 'chemical dependence'. While other people might claim to love music or find complete fulfilment in music I find the only reliable way to describe my need for music is that my brain needs it like it needs alcohol or heroin (or would need if I did heroin...). It's not good for me, it's highly destructive and it often reduces me to a trembling, incoherent wreck. But once you're in, there's no stopping and often one is overcome with a feeling of defensive indignation when people tell you that you should stop for your own good. 

Yes, um. I don't know what the point of that ramble was. I've been listening to 'One Way or Another' for the last 4 hours non-stop.

adam

IRIS by the Breeders

Four hours in the pot, one hour out 
It grows and I sleep standing up 
When Iris sleeps over 
What a book she'll write 
Oh last night 
Oh come on, nobody wants that 
Sister, sister, Oh... 
We tried hour by hour 
Hour by hour 
Hour by hour 

Four hours to daylight, four hours and then 
Pour water on me til I live again 
When Iris sleeps over 
It'll be alright 
All last night 
But come on, nobody wants that 
Sister, sister, oh... 
We tried hour by hour 
Hour by hour 
Hour by hour 

Ah, I think it was Sam Harris who wrote in Time or Newsweek or somesuch about how elitism in politics should be a Good Thing because after all we want elites everywhere else doing stuff for us why shouldn't our politicians be qualified? With respect to Sarah Palin, of course. I agreed with this, mostly, because yes I do believe running a country is necessarily a complex and difficult not to mention pivotal job and hence deserves qualified professionals. 

There is a difference however between the elite and the elitists and I find Sam Harris misses the point a little here : not even the hockey mums and Joe the Whatever want an incompetent in the White House. They didn't want someone who ignores the needs of the middle-class, and perhaps misguidedly rallied around Palin and her unfortunate populists. This doesn't invalidate populism, because it is possible to be elite (i.e. highly qualified) without being elitist (i.e. ignorant of the needs of the middle/lower classes). So Sam Harris' incredulous sniffle at the whole Palin saga was perhaps, a little too incredulous. I still think she was an idiot though.

adam

MOVIE REVIEWS

WALL.E - awesome.

Balls of Fury - silly.

Meet The Spartans - Gut-wrenchingly stupid.

Taiwan plus POP

So let's get the nail-biting-y suspense bits out of the way. I've been posted to 1st Guards, which is good/bad in equally gigantic parts, because I will absolutely DIE in the guards conversion course, but I guess the rapelling and swimming bits might be fun, as compared to ASLC which is to fun what Salman Rushdie is to fundamentalist muslims. I guess also I'd like to actually assume some real command instead of going to BMT, just because it sounds like an interesting thing to be doing. 

But, four weeks ago:   I flew off to taiwan for my finale exercise. It was 

--------------------------- OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT -------------------------------------

but mostly pretty fun, I quite enjoyed the R and R.  Following that, a gruelling week of nonstop parade rehearsals, each longer than the last, designed to grind down what little was left of our willpower and leave us reduced to a desolate, mushy mashed-potato like substance. POP came, it was alright although somebody cocked up the timing, we got our chevrons and fucked off right after we got our postings. So it's first guards, whoopee I guess I'll be at camp on monday then.

adam

Like, the funniest thing, ever?

Malmsteen fans telling Dragonforce fans they know nothing about music.

Go youtube!

adam

Northern Exposure is the Pixies of TV comedy - it may not be as quick or as loud as any of the newer stuff, but they sure as fuck don't make shows like that anymore. There are few characters I've known more endearing than the neurotic physician Joel Fleischmann.

adam

Three Essays

Below you will find three short essays. The first one is titled 

'Poetry and the sordid state of humanity'

I wish I could write, I really do. It has never been my strong suit, and I struggled greatly with the difficulty during my junior college years, of writing essays that were clear and argumentative. I do love a good argumentative piece. I read the Economist and Time exclusively for those, and I find a well-argued essay a wonderful thing like a perfectly cut diamond, cutting swathes of sparkling light through the fog of ignorance and grinding away the detritus of imprecision and indecision, pausing only to scoff as I gleefully mix my metaphors. In the same way, nothing stimulates my academic pleasure centres like a well-argued debate, although there are none to be had in Singapore. I just don't seem to be able to do them myself, and whenever I write what I feel to be a cogent argument I come back a week later to re-read it and find it floppy, imprecise, and downright shameful oftentimes. I can't say for sure if this is some deficiency or merely lack of practice, but it frustrates me greatly for I am convinced that I have ideas but not the words to express them, and if this proves to be mere delusion then all is lost, I am nothing. 

Poetry is another monster altogether. I started this in sec 2 under dubious circumstances, and like argumentative writing, I'm afraid that the current assessment is that I've never been very good at it at all. My opinion of my literary skill fluctuates often. I've re-read my oeuvre (If it even deserves the term) several times and never been able to come up with a stable opinion on the load of rubbish that it is, and finally I've decided that if it's not going to convince me then it must be tosh. But I used to, and often still enjoy writing poetry. 

It used to be free verse, because I felt it was, well, freer, but quickly you realise that if the form isn't going to force you to think you end up not thinking at all and writing the same load of claptrap about frogs and whatnot. It's not intelligent at all, unless you happen to be a paragon of brilliance like Walt Whitman. So I turned to verse, which at least gets to pretend it's clever by rhyming, and have been writing rhym-ey little things ever since. 

As for subject matter, anything goes really but there are a few topics which particularly interest me, most of which being the sordid state of humanity. I wrote :

your garden gate has never been

so green and so unseen

at eight we learn to dance and sing

at nine all bad boys will grow wings

It's about a boyish dream to get out on the road and live a vagabond's life, but it's manifestly silly. The truth is, everything we've ever dreamed about is a construction built out of our insecurities, and will fall apart. 

This is, of course, only my opinion, and you needn't go home and shoot yourself just because I told you so. 

adam

Music, life, and atheism

Music started for me in the string ensemble back in Raffles Institution. My friends whose artistic taste I trust tell me we played crap music half the time and played good music crappily the other half, but it opened my ears. I loved it all, the mozart, the atonal stuff by Bartok, even that funny little christmas piece that Rayner assures me is totally silly. I would not say I have a 'passion' for music - firstly, I hate that word and the way every upstart student who wants to edge his way into university uses the word to describe how vibrant he/she is, and secondly, it's not a passion but more of a chemical dependence. A bit like heroin - I'm not proud of it at all. It's not a noble pursuit, unless you're into classical music in which case it only occasionally is, it isn't high art and most of the time it isn't vastly intellectually stimulating. I just... like it, out of some kind of bloody-minded hatred for all human beings. 

Music interests me (that is exactly the word! interests. Thoroughly noncommital) as a signifier or symbol of human community. It's an artifact of culture as well as a commentary - but mostly an artifact. Most rockers couldn't tell a sociology textbook from The Lord of the Rings - especially King Crimson, who think The Lord of the Rings IS a sociology textbook, well nuts to them, they sucked anyway. I like to make music because I think it's thoroughly good fun, and it infuriates the passionate people when I tell them it's thoroughly good fun because they think it should be something great and profound, when in reality it's just some blokes making funny noises. Yet, although it is never conceptually profound, its effects can be profound. Anger, sadness, destruction, occasionally happiness - these probably aren't intrinsic to music but are auxiliary emotions. These interest me. Nobody ever wrote a good song thinking 'this is going to be a sad one', they just thought 'this sounds good' and the sadness came as a by-product of their thoroughly sordid state of existence. 

There are only two musicians I have ever come close to taking seriously (and this doesn't include classical music because I hardly know enough) - Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane. Pete Townshend wrote on Rolling Stone of Hendrix that he felt phony listening to him, and he felt that all The Who had were silly little songs compared to Hendrix's 'real music'. Coltrane nobody needs to emphasise - he was amongst all other musicians and men, a prophet and a preacher in his own inimitable language - out of him probably emanated the only true spirituality any musician has had to offer, the others being cleverly deceptive or deluded fakes. If you were to claim that music has a spiritual quality, I might be able to see it in these two. In everybody else - I highly doubt it. It's all in good fun, though, and I love it just fine. 

adam

The Angst of Army Life

As Wang put it to me the other day, the first five minutes of your army life, if you're anything at all like me, will be spent ricocheting from the headiness of superiority to the hollow realisation that you're stuck in this place for two years. Two years might pass quickly, if you know how to have fun. They can also turn into a neverending hell. I've been in here for almost 6 months, and they have for the most part been hell, and I genuinely hope that things improve for the next one and a half years or there is going to be trouble. 

In the army, your brain shuts off - any NSF who's had a smidgen of an education will tell you this, and for the most part it's true. Sunday afternoons are dreadful with the futility of having to go back to camp. But by tuesday you hardly feel anything at all, there's no more 'oh, this place is a shithole' - rather, just a sort of anaesthetised haze where you run about and do your thing without quite thinking about it. Well, that's not so bad, you might say. Jolly Good Fun and all that - well it isn't. The real agony comes the following sunday afternoon, when you realise just how miserable you've been but your misery-centres in your brain have become overworked by tuesday and don't produce enough misery-chemical to do the place justice. During the week, you also become quite stupid, at times, although personally I excel at technical knowledge, you forget the day of the week and what time it is and whether you've just had breakfast or lunch although since it was sausages it was probably breakfast, dreadful isn't it well yes it is. So - your brain shuts off but not for long enough to have any real comforting effect, more like the creeping horror of losing your mind as you inch toward the age of 75, only I'm 19. 

The other thing is the tiredness, the physical tiredness. Now any army worth its salt will work its trainees hard, sure. Ours does. In fact, I would go as far to say that maybe some people deserve the jolly good whacking they get and it certainly gets them in shape. I'm all for the fitness stuff. In my experience though, there never quite is enough recovery time for me, and as any course progresses I get more and more tired to the point where I sometimes report in on sunday night -already- tired from the previous week and not having had enough rest over the weekend - this is not good. As if the slow degradation of your mind isn't enough horror, the slow degradation of the body compounds this triple-time and makes you seriously worry for your health. Not that, in the throes of lactic-acid poisoning, my body is really the first of my concerns. Army also breeds a certain self-destructiveness amongst the trainees, out of desperation or sheer bloodymindedness I don't know which, but more people take up smoking in the army than anywhere else i'm certain, and if we get a choice whether to down that can of likely carcinogenic Red Bull or just go the SOC alone with half a litre of water, the Red Bull is the choice anyone would make. 

Often I've come back from a gruelling route march feeling physically sick from fatigue, refusing food and almost vomiting if there was anything left to vomit. It took me a week to recover from my 32k, during which I often had problems standing up. 

So - yes, this IS a soldier's life and as far as soldiering goes it's probably necessary. But, I don't like it and I'm seriously concerned about my body and my health and I don't think it's fair to put so many people through it if the consequences are like that. At least put some real thought into the postings, Jesus. 

adam

After listening to Get Behind Me Satan, the only drummer I will settle for is Meg White. Heavier than Dave Grohl, almost - she is one of the few people who plays the drums as an instrument rather than obligatory background rhythm noise. 

adam

Go to msn.com - click on music - find the bottom left corner - click on 'consumer guide' - read. 

Robert Christgau knows his music, alright - although I must say Jaguar Love actually sounds like a man getting mauled to death by a large cat. Loud and angry enough for me.

adam

Back on the weekend, which is slow, sad and mournful and often punctuated with bursts of electric happiness.

I've two days off - monday, and tuesday, which makes this a long one, which leaves me more time for my music, my reading, and my self-loathing.

In a burst of such self-loathing I bought Persuasion and vowed to finish reading it, come fire, flood, or trench-digging, and this time I pulled through on the herculean feat of bashing through the 250 pages of 18th century language with the equivalent of a literary parang. Of course there's no reviewing Austen : it was as brilliant as it should have been, et cetera - I do appreciate Anne Elliot as a bit ( I think - don't crucify me, Cambridge! ) more of a mature character, a bit more vindictive and a bit more long-suffering than naive Elizabeth. The book WAS published posthumously, so I guess that would indicate it was written later.

I need a new book now. Does anyone have any suggestions?

And Now For Something Completely Different!

Radiohead! Took a re-listen to In Rainbows and despite what Christgau says (Ha! I flaunt my independent thinking) I say it's a pretty damned fine album. They really crammed the electronic effects into OK Computer like a 5-year old who can't stop playing with his christmas toys, until the squeaky noises and the digital auto-wah started spurting out of your ears and drove you quite crazy (although it was good, heady stuff nonetheless). On Rainbows we have some interesting lyrical choices, overall a more controlled use of squeaky noises, and most importantly, without which there would be no review or no album or indeed no music at all, a few bloody good songs. The chords on Jigsaw Falling Into Place bring tears to my eyes, no irony intended and when thom yorke sings in his annoyingly incomparable voice NOT JUST ONCE, NOT JUST TWICE he in fact touches that vibrating core of angst that sits at the centre of rock and roll, just for a moment. There is no shtick here, despite the electronica: just rocking music, beautiful notes, and the fact that even despite their prog-gy leanings they never sacrifice the melody for the effect.


adam

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the one thing man wants is the society of his peers.

SISPEC

SISPEC - a screaming nightmare that I wake up from every Friday if i'm lucky, broken, sweaty and dirty - On sunday, i'm forced at gunpoint at ten thirty to go back to sleep, kicking and screaming as it were and then finally falling asleep from exhaustion.

adam

In Utero - Nirvana

'Teenage angst has paid off well, and now I'm bored and old' proclaims Kurt Cobain - and in fact his final album with Dave and Krist drops most (but not all) of the angst from Nevermind. In Utero is a far more abrasive, angry and far less hooky album than Nevermind - in part fueled by Cobain's increasing frustration with fame. No doubt nobody else in the history of music itself has been so thoroughly traumatised by fame as Cobain was, and on this album, it shows terrifically - in Cobain's terrified shrieking on 'Tourette's', his glue-sniffing persona on 'Dumb', his repeated scream 'GET AWAY' on 'Scentless Apprentice'. 

This is an album permeated with horror, and the effect must have been immense when it came out in the 90s because prior to this rock and roll was very much a macho affair - all big hair, poncy arrangements and misogyny. Nirvana castrated rock and replaced the big hair macho men with angry, scared shitless teenagers. The world would never trust the music industry quite the same way again when Cobain shot himself, and legions of imitators would go on to spawn alternative rock, for better or for worse. 

In Utero ends on a slower, softer note with 'All Apologies', a song widely considered to be Cobain's masterpiece. Hinting at REM and Sonic Youth, Cobain opens with a snaky, sad guitar riff. 'What else should I be? All apologies' he sings, 'Everything's my fault' and when he hits the crashing chorus it is with self-destructive abandon and an almost prophetic premonition of doom.

More than 10 years ago Frank Black of the Pixies sang 'If all in all is true, won't you please run over me' on his song 'Levitate Me'. On this album, Cobain's last release, on the last bit of the last song, he sings, almost as if answering Frank Black - 'All in all is all we are.'

adam

I don't want to get over you (by the Magnetic Fields, written by Stephin Merritt)

I don't want to get over you
I guess i could take a sleeping pill and sleep at will
and not have to go through what I go through
I guess I should take Prozac, right
and just smile all night at somebody new
somebody not too bright, but sweet and kind
who would try to get you off my mind
I could leave this agony behind
which is just what I'd do if I wanted to
but I don't want to get over you

cos I don't want to get over love
I could listen to my therapist, pretend you don't exist
and not have to dream of what I dream of
I could listen to all my friends and go out again
and pretend it's enough
or I could make a career of being blue
I could dress in black and read Camus
smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth like I was 17
that would be a scream
but I don't want to get over you.

Rather Good Poetry By Some People Who I Happen To Know

Writer's Blog: I've collected some of the non-crap that we've accumulated over the years and put it all on one post, check it out. I think it's pretty neat.

adam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp5eBxU248Y

Frou Frou - Details

A souffle. Some questionable lyrical choices, and Imogen Heap isn't a terrific vocalist but manages a sort of mangled schoolgirl innocence at her best. Still, properly catchy electronica beats, intelligent arrangements - solidly likeable.

adam

John Coltrane - One Down, One Up: Live at the Half-Note

Where 'One Down, One up' is urban, discordant: 'My Favourite Things' informs the old sound of music tune with enough apocalyptic fire and brimstone to bring down a church.

adam

edit: props also for detailed, well-researched liner notes. Nothing converts me like liner notes.

I guess more fanboyism of mopey alternative bands? This is what my life has come to. Doo-dah.

I must resist the urge to keep saying 'but seriously' and then degenerate into loopy-speak.

This week is radiohead week: that may explain the disjointedness.

Robert Christgau said (and he is my bible really when it comes to music, except of course for the pleasure centres in my brain, which are severely overworked now) that Radiohead has two modes: a more electronica-y, texture-y mode, and a rock-y, structure-y mode. The key i think to understanding this joyful dichotomy is that in the former they have layered guitar accompaniments: in the latter they have layered guitar solos. Get it? OK computer is the latter; In Rainbows is the former. Honestly i prefer them when they're fucking about with the tape loops and the stuff, but OK computer is still good honest music that you can get behind (and that solo on paranoid android, whoa?). In Rainbows is a nice album. Nice of them to give it away free too, otherwise i'd be twenty dollars deeper into my third-world-nation-crippling budget deficit. The first track, in particular, is good rolicking fun in 5/4 time.

Although I am definitely out of touch with what the world is listening to today (I still think jimi hendrix is pretty hot stuff, remember) I hope the present trend towards slightly silly punk-pop music goes away (although blink 182 has some(but not that many) things going for it, and so does Green Day) and I can only take heart that the 5-years-ago trend towards impossibly bland MOR songs about the most generic love affairs one can imagine has by now progressed into the realm of kitsch.

The two bands I have heard who are going places now, today, and not 40 years ago:
Arcade Fire and Radiohead

I hope U2 and RHCP, both stalwarts of the 80s, keep going without starting to suck (stadium arcadium? what were you thinking). I hope John Mayer scrapes some of his songwriting mojo together, with his guitar prowess, and gives us an album worthy of his idols rather than Michael Learns to Rock. I hope Nickelback dies in a fire. I hope the reunion bands - Pixies, Sonic Youth, Breeders - do justice to their illuminated past. I hope the memory of Nirvana never dies, although those who remember Nirvana often should. I hope people will let jazz die so the extremely talented performers who feel guilted into playing it by some sense of tradition will finally move on and make new, exciting music. I hope asia will finally (or have they already?) start contributing to rock music, which has become international in most senses of the word, but without needlessly co-opting american culture. If some of the newer japanese bands are any indication, we have hope (MELT BANANA. MELT BANANA.)

I hope hip hop will live up to its ideal, and become to the 90s-2000s what punk was to the 70s-80s. Outkast and Eminem - yes. 50 cent - no. I hope Eminem will be remembered like I said he would - otherwise I would've been wrong. I hope indie music will live on without the awful pretensions of its fans and practitioners.

That's all hope though. What I know is that music will live on regardless. Humans need it around.

adam

more rock n roll.

Found a new joy surfing the web last week : The Breeders.
Basically Kim Deal (who is the sexiest person alive) decided to have a side project and The Breeders turned up. You can hear what she tried to do with the Pixies only was sidelined by Frank Black. It's angry, loud stoner rock and her abilities as a lyricist are nothing to be scoffed at.

When I was a painter, I painted you well
Too bad I have to die
You brought the essentials - perversion, appeal
and many lovers at one time.

On the more philosophical note, could it be the reason music fascinates me is that it represents an impenetrable system? My thinking is largely rooted in the idea of systems, an internally consistent set of logic and rules. I interpret science, math and much of the arts according to systems. Yet music, if delved deeply enough into, never reveals a system - the flaw is obviously in my own thinking, but I guess what I can't know intrigues me intensely. What system governs artistic appreciation? What about artistic merit? I insist there must be one for any kind of quality to be measured (art is not subjective, although taste is), and instinctively, 'quality' as a parameter DOES exist (there is good art and bad art). Yet the system for 'art' has never been adequately quantified in a way understandable by more than a few specific people. Despite this fact, high-quality art has been produced almost consistently over the centuries by every culture. Does this imply a subconscious system? I believe it does, but that doesn't mean that logical thinking will not reveal it. And if it is ever revealed, I am sure it will not be trivial enough to devalue art.

adam

Look, I've written a strongly worded email but I'm still very miffed about this. No offense to Jon at all : but whoever started the hoax is a very poor approximation of a human being.

received email:

'My mum told me about this when I arrived home from Mass earlier this evening, and right now I'm very afraid:

About the Large Hadron Collider

It's this machine that involves two beams of extremely high energy colliding just so scientists can recreate the scene of the Big Bang. A number of scientists have fears over this experiment, given that it's carried out underground and that it involves a high amount of energy, but still some others have declared it safe. The first beam of energy was launched today, with the second beam set to be launched in a month's time. Why this experiment is being carried out is so that scientists can see a particular which is called the Higgs boson, otherwise known as the "God-particle". My own personal take on this is that some scientists are using this experiment and playing God; trying to see for themselves that the existence of God can be proved by science and not by His wonders. I've included the following video.

YouTube: Did Nostradamus predict that the LHC will create a black hole?

I guess the best thing that we all can do is to pray. Pray that something goes wrong during this launch of the first beam, and that the scientists will be forced to discontinue with this experiment. I ask you to pray not for yourself, but for the conservation of this earth that God so lovingly created for us 2000 years ago. Please pass this on.

Regards'

This is entirely tosh. The LHC will create a black hole? The faintest beginnings of any putative threat to our planet's existence were immediately squashed by an entire panel of experts who are, I like to think, rather more qualified on the matters of theoretical physics than anybody who believes that the earth was created 2000 years ago. Get out much? Either you tell me you're scientifically credible OR you tell me you're a new earth creationist. Can't have your cake an eat it.

Okay nevermind that, let's leave aside the wrongheaded scientific fear-mongering and get to the religious manipulation. God-particle? Yes, the nobel guy did say that. It was because the Higgs Boson will be, if discovered, the cornerstone of an entire theory of gravity. That doesn't give anybody any leeway Whatsoever to claim some sort of hokum spiritual thingum that scientists are trying (once again) to prove whether God does or does not exists and hence bringing down Eternal Damnation on our poor misguided heads. Obviously a ploy to manipulate the ignorant, of which there are a Frightful Lot.

Please. Hoaxes are funny. Fucking about with religion, and especially your own brand of rather loopy creationism, is not so funny. Do not spread this email.

adam

notable songs

Just to remind myself.

John Coltrane - Giant Steps
The only way I can describe this is elemental. Coltrane's playing is prismatic, joyous, beautiful, fiery. I have never been tired of this piece.

Sonic Youth - Turquoise Boy
The crowning achievement of the album Rather Ripped - solidly and beautifully written. Rather Ripped showcased the very loud band's capacity for restraint, and this song shows that restraint put to rather good use, I think - everyone keeps to a simple beat and simple lines, to brilliant effect.

U2 - Kite
Opinions on the album this came from are mixed. I think this one's a success though. Simple, if a bit sentimental, but hey it's U2 and Bono can pull it off.

Arcade Fire - In The Backseat
The arrangement and the lyrics are impressive. Rather than fall to a guns-n-roses smashy crash fest (which a lesser band would totally have done) the climax actually gets quieter at its peak, invoking the melancholy of a funeral procession. A fitting end to the album.

Hole - Teenage Whore
Teenage angst dissected with canny perceptiveness by whore queen Courtney Love. 'I said I feel so alone and I wish I could die'

Husker Du - Pink Turns To Blue
Probably about Bob Mould's homosexuality. But scathingly written, depressing urban wasteland at its best. Husker Du always turned out good melodies, which distinguished them from a lot of hardcore bands.

adam

Courtney Love saved my soul.

I guess only a particularly nasty day at SISPEC, having run 10km in the hot sun, would leave me lying half-naked on my bunk wondering about the various natures of destruction. It also led me to a pretty cathartic appreciation of Hole's two albums - Live Through This and Celebrity Skin.

Live Through This as I've mentioned is largely about blowjobs, although obliquely so, and with far more gravity than my glib post would have suggest. It is a record held together mostly by Courtney Love's incoherent rage and self-loathing, and bits of less-than-proficient guitar noise (Kurt Cobain wrote better music, but Love is at least his equal at singing...). At least one song was definitely written by Cobain himself ("Plump"), and is also about blowjobs. 'Hold you close like we both died/My ever present suicide/My stupid fuck, my blushing bride, oh tear my heart out'.

If Live Through This is constructed on rage, Celebrity Skin is made out of a comparably almost clinical destruction (I don't dare say 'deconstruction' - this might be mistaken for a book review.) Sure, the subject matter is blah blah humdrum Hollywood bitchin' but the real showcase is Courtney Love herself : she wields her rock queen/whore punk persona like a scalpel, crashing through a seething pop ditty like 'Awful' with all the ditz of the REAL dumb-blond-sellouts, but twenty thousand times the intelligence. When she's sincere, it works too - check out 'Malibu'. 'When I wake up, in my make-up, it's too early for that dress.'

adam

Kurt Cobain - Seasons in the sun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO4BF67pvsc&feature=related

I found a neat little gem here - Nirvana playing 'seasons in the sun'. The song is a wreck, of course. Kurt, Krist and Dave switch roles, and Kurt sings horribly off key while careening wildly around the beat on the drums. Krist's mastery of the guitar displays all the prowess and subtlety of a student who's been learning for a week.

But yes, I'm going to say it like the doe-eyed punk fan I am, and you all can just bloody well suck it up - there's a kind of noble grace that they play it with, technical noobery and all. It's more than a novelty, it's a genuine interpretation, and maybe yeah it'll never make it onto any album as long as a sane record executive exists, but in some way it's wonderful.

adam

My Adventures with Sarah the Land Flame Mine

We made a land flame mine for our demolition live firing - 18 litres of kerosine and petrol wrapped around with a few metres of detcord and boosters. I named it Sarah, in a burst of clarity perceiving the pointed similarities between our sad but highly entertaining fates. We all signed our names on the tank, and a few interesting messages - 'ROMEO MUST DIE' and 'DEAR CMPB, THIS IS FOR YOU', then set her off. The shock wave was satisfying, as was the fireball. Sarah, I hope you're watching us from wherever it is land flame mines go when they die, and smiling.

adam

High school literature teaches you that when happy music is paired with gloomy lyrics, the effect is irony. A slightly more perceptive reading of London Calling acknowledges the irony that is characteristic of 20th century popular music but realises that reducing the effect of the album to irony does it a great disservice. When Mick Jones sings 'everything I need / He gives it but not for free' on 'Hateful', the joy is sincere. When he urges the audience to smash up their seats and 'mash up the nation', the joy is sincere. One could only say there is a kind of cathartic joy in watching the world burn, especially when it burns as colourfully as through the lenses of Clash lyrics.

Initially I dismissed the Clash as the band responsible for all the cretinous britpop bands around nowadays with their faux swing and poofy posturing. It's true, they were. But London Calling is incontrovertibly a work of genius - made with an elemental joy that most modern bands can only aspire to. Certainly they have much more range, musically, than the Ramones - displaying (bizarrely) a very competent grasp of reggae and ska, but they still rock on the one-two-three-four numbers, if not as angrily as Joey Ramone. However, in the end, in my limited perception, despite the forays into reggae and horn-band-music, this is a rock album and must be treated as such. And it succeeds, wildly.

adam

5 second stun

The whole... of Live Through This... is about blowjobs. In any other field except maybe post modern abstract mixed-media sculpture, that would be intolerable. In Rock and Roll, it's an achievement.

adam

Band Names

I've come to the hasty conclusion (one i'll probably rescind in days, but hey. I only get my weekends off) that the band with the best name in the history of rock n roll is Hole. Put down the parangs - it makes sense in context.

Courtney Love's loud, angry, mostly female band deserved a name as uncouth and blatantly sexual as Hole, and it fits right in with her preoccupations. It's fucked up no matter which way you look at it. Hole - mouth, vagina, asshole. And for someone who hates her own sexuality while making out with fans on stage, it's perfection.

adam

Finally, a decently long weekend - I've been holding on by the tips of my fingers for the past week. Urban ops fieldcamp, getting eaten alive by sandflies, double SOC when we got back - all in a day's work, really but I'm slowly but surely getting tired of everything. I'm a little sick of the cloistered small-mindedness of everyone in the army, not the least the commanders. I want to be back with people who think like me, or at least recognise that they don't.

Kept going by listening to U2 (who as master critic Robert Christgau notes, were an arena rock band that was Actually Good) who are turning out to be surprisingly intelligent. I guess I was too put off by Bono to give them any real credit? I dunno. As far as I'm concerned, musicians should stick to making music. Beauty is our responsibility, not politics. Been humming that Husker Du Beatles cover, Ticket To Ride as well. Man that's catchy, but I'd expect no less from the Mccartney man himself.

I also returned a little to old staples Nirvana and I even tried a bit of jazz again. I never lost any love for the masters : Ellington, Armstrong - and the singers - Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Ella. But bebop needs a certain state of mind, I think, which I've been somehow unable to produce for the last couple of months. Miles and Coltrane still ring true very often, but some of the lesser improvisors strike me as somewhat staid.

adam

If can find where to get a copy of the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, will love you long time.
EDIT: Will love you longer time if can also find a copy of Husker Du's Zen Arcade or The Arcade Fire's Funeral.

adam

I'm in a bit of a rut. It's like the last thought I have the minute before I book in is saved and replayed every time I book out. So all my processes proceed at 2/7ths the normal speed. I feel retarded.

adam

Shou Hao let me listen to the Arcade Fire in bunk a couple of days back. I am definitely impressed. When the band switches key on 'Rebellion' suddenly every alt-rock band in history who has ever played Bb-Gb-Db is totally vindicated, as if they managed to single handedly redeem the premise, the ideal of alternative rock. It's that good.

adam

DO NOT IGNORE THE PREVIOUS POST. Just because I wrote this one so quickly.

bands with very strange names

Stone Temple Pilots
Frou Frou
Butthole Surfers

bands with Rather Cool names

The Pixies
Queen
Weather Report
The Beatles
Manic Street Preachers
Sonic Youth
Sly and the Family Stone

bands with names that probably sounded like a good idea at the time

The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Franz Ferdinand
Guns N Roses
Jamiroquai
Slayer
Radiohead
U2
Velvet Revolver
Yes

Bored and short on originality, I ripped off Rayner's latest blog post :

My 15 Favourite Songs (in no particular order)

15. Cherokee
This one's a jazz standard - I quite like Clifford Brown's interpretation on 'Study in Brown' - super fast. A simple, poignant melody rendered with a kind of bittersweet energy when traditionally interpreted in double-time.

14. Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits
I told myself I HAD to include some dire straits and it took a bit of thinking before I chose this over 'Portobello Belle'. I love this song for the empathy for the sordid state of humanity that's evident in Mark Knopfler's songwriting. And also the killer guitar solo.

13. Teen Town by Weather Report
Not much to say. It's brilliant.

12. I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend by The Ramones
Nothing quite encapsulates the early Ramones aesthetic than this song. The blockish simplicity is completely purposeful - 'Hey little girl, I wanna be your boyfriend. Sweet little girl, I wanna be your boyfriend. Do you love me babe? What do you say?' No mucking about with abstracts here, and that is the middle class pathos that the Ramones captured so well.

11. Sir Psycho Sexy by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
I said before that Anthony Kiedis' songwriting took a downhill turn when he stopped writting about sex. This comes from way before that. His lyrics are unbelievably dirty but shakespearean in their wordplay. 'There's a devil in my dick, there's some demons in my semen'

10. Flamenco Sketches and Sanctuary by Miles Davis
Double entry because I'm afraid of running out of space. Miles plays the same way on both tracks but sounds completely different. His gift for arrangement is unparalleled. Flamenco sketches sounds almost primitive in its simple melody and ghostly harmonies, almost primevial - on the other hand, Sanctuary is urban, dense and complex, but possessed of the same wonder.

9. Sliver by Nirvana
Horrific, shocking angst and anger. When Cobain starts screaming 'Grandma take me home' the whole of my childhood comes falling down on my head like so many cinder blocks made out of teenage angst. He achieves this without singing about blood or darkness or night or cutting himself, for many bonus points.

8. Gigantic by The Pixies
Of course it's about sex - but like all good lyrics it references much more profound ideas - 'Gigantic / A big big love'. I love the simple chords and the sincere delivery.

7. Best of Both Worlds by Van Halen
Such a happy song, and such a guitar solo. I can't think of a reason to put this up here other than the happy feelings it fills me with. Props to the bassist I guess, for playing only one note throughout the whole song?

6. Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles
Mysterious, quiet and brilliantly arranged. A melody worthy of McCartney's extraordinary ability.

5. Crossroads and Walkin' Blues by Eric Clapton
Clapton is a master of the blues. When he plays, you feel it in your stomach. Unbelievable.

4. New York, New York by Frank Sinatra
This one's about the American Dream, and when he sings it, you believe it. 'These little town blues/are melting away/I'll make a brand new start of it, in old New York'

3. Son of Mr. Green Genes by Frank Zappa
I'm not very familiar with Zappa's oeuvre, but this one caught my attention from what I have.

2. Impressions by John Coltrane
More of the live version with Eric Dolphy than the album version, but hey. They're both great. Coltrane's intensity shows here, as well is his impeccable logic and his prismatic phrases. Dolphy burns with a more abrasive, atonal sort of intensity.

1. Slither by Velvet Revolver
Sure, disgusting corporate rock which probably doesn't mean anything but damn if it isn't catchy.



Hmm. I've left out a lot. Can't be helped I guess, but a few honorable mentions:

Raining Blood by Slayer
Could You Be the One by Husker Du
Opus Pocus by Jaco Pastorius
Love Foolosophy by Jamiroquai
Honeysuckle Rose by Jane Monheit
Take the 'A' Train by Duke Ellington
All Along the Watch Tower and Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix
Billie Jean by Michael Jackson
Una Muy Bonita by Ornette Coleman
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi by Radiohead
Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap

Ahh fuck it. It's impossible.

adam

Looking for

A female drummer with no skills whatsoever except excellent timekeeping and a rudimentary ability to sing. Please respond.

adam

I'm back from the first week of SISPEC. It is surprisingly a very good place. I guess that's partly because I'm in Echo company, said to be the slackest in sispec, but hey. The PT doesn't vary much, only the treatment does - and as far as I've seen the trainees are treated with much, much more respect than the recruits in BMT. I might actually enjoy myself here. I'm actually enjoying all the PT, even if it pushes me to the max - like running 4k in vest slacks at an INSANE speed because my sec-com is some charlie bravo fit guardsman. I guess it's because they don't yell at you during PT, and I know I'm pushing myself and nobody else is.

Other than PT, sispec is mostly lectures and later outfield. The lectures are stultifying. They are perverse. We've spent the first week doing mostly safety procedures and my god is that dull. I understand now why my sergeants always complained that they sai kang a lot - this is why : Safety forms. Safety procedures. Oh well - I guess the admin shitstorm is coming my way too.

More updates to come.

Also, I'm looking for people to form a rock band and I need a bassist, singer, drummer and another guitarist if possible. I'd like to try out some punk/alternative/indie stuff and I guess I've never played anything other than jazz in a real band.

adam

SPNS leg two.

I thought it was just a really horrible, senseless way to get knocked out. We were doing Very Well, in fact - 2nd placing in the qualifying round and then we got whacked by the Red Shadows during the quarters. Not to disparage their skills at all - they eventually made 2nd place and are a very solid team indeed - but it was a silly way to lose. We didn't make any tactical errors, we just got shot out plain and simple from behind covers. I know xun's beating himself up that he didn't get behind his dorito properly, but I think it isn't that simple to put the blame on him. I don't think we got complacent - not on such an important match. I just think in that match we were outplayed when our shooting wasn't taking a good turn. Mistakes were made despite the best of intentions, as happens inevitably to novices. And that is a shitty way to lose.

adam

The Pixies!

So true to my foray into the deep, mysterious and self-esteem-plagued world of punk, alternative and indie rock, I've discovered the Pixies. At first I didn't like them at all - I believe my first reaction was that they were playing the same four rather nauseating chords over again and pretending to be Mogwai - which Isn't Totally Fair because i was more accurately suffering from stomach flu and had Nirvana playing at the same time on itunes.

Their sound really grows on you though. You can tell how a generation of hippie environmentalist/political activist (I'm starin' at YOU, Bono) took to this music and made it their own somehow. Yet, there will never again be the Pixies. They are bizarre, never afraid to sound like pop music but always intelligent and always slightly off-the-wall (check out the screaming on Caribou - bet that made you jump.)

Also, Kurt Cobain apparently worshipped this band which is an interesting point to note because I like Nirvana so much and suddenly I see where Nirvana's pop roots and Kurt cobain's love of screaming came from.

Also also, I think the one possible flaw with The Pixies' approach is that fans spend FAR too much time staring at Kim Deal with their mouths slightly open. Not kidding you, I actually missed most of the 'Caribou' clip on youtube doing just that. Beware.

adam

Aguas de Marco/ Waters of March

To continue last week's topic of what bossa nova should have been, another brilliant case in point: Stan Getz's recording of 'Aguas de Marco'. This one came off the 'perhaps perhaps perhaps' compilation (an album which I fully expected to be full of disgusting sleaze and which was in fact probably full of disgusting sleaze except for a couple of gems - it had Mack the Knife too) so I'm entirely unsure of the personnel except that Stan Getz is on the tenor.

The arrangement on this track certainly deserves the most praise: again the disgusting double-kick-pedal drum beat is avoided, a beat that has become the unfortunate cliche of bossa nova after its inception. Instead a variety of hand drums, cowbells and shakers are substituted for brilliant effect: bossa nova done this way sounds far more ethnic (as opposed to slutty).

The lyrics are sung first in portugese, then in english; the guitarist here deserves much praise as well for showing unparalleled mastery over the bossa nova beat - while never departing from the basic beat he manages a palette of textures just by varying minutiae like the duration of every chord or a subtle change in voicing. Take note of the different texture during the portugese verse (upbeat, sprightly) as compared to the english verse (laid-back, wistful)

Of course none of this analysis would count for anything if not for the bedrock of any music: solid, beautiful songwriting. This one's another Jobim masterpiece, more impressionistic than Ipanema; the descending progression and the rapid fire images suggest a rural, tropical life. Jobim's lyrics are wistful or even sad as they describe the details of a simple life: 'A knot in the wood, the song of a thrush' 'A scratch, a lump/It is nothing at all'.

The singer's voice seems to reflect sadness but it seems in the scheme of things (as painted by Jobim) the sadness is part of some cosmic cycle : she sings 'And the riverbank talks of the waters of march/It's the promise of life/It's the joy in your heart.'

When Getz comes in with his solo it seems all things must be right with the world again: no need for smashing cymbals and exploding snare drums: the drummer simply ramps it up to quavers on the ride cymbal, the band changes key and that is enough intensity for Getz as he embarks on his solo. Getz's tenor sounds pensive; romantic yet restrained and is the perfect foil for the singers. This solo's longer than the one on Ipanema and develops a lot more: his motivic playing is evident around 3.14 where he riffs off a 5 note arpeggiated motif (4 notes descending, one ascending) providing an interesting tension which contrasts plenty with the expressive, drawn out high notes previously played. It strikes me as particularly appropriate for the bossa nova mood because it reflects the same complex, yet restrained beauty. The end of his solo mirrors its beginning: while he starts with a 3 note descending arpeggio, his solo ends with a set of ascending 3-note arpeggios. The inversion is not lost on the listener; it feels complete and perfect.


adam

Friendship

Re: Rayner's post got me thinking about pretty much the same thing. I think it doesn't concern me as much as it concerns him, maybe because I'm too much of a loner, but also I think these sort of things need to be let be. I mean, there's nothing I can control about the way I relate to people or the way they relate to me except to always spend time with my friends whenever I can, which I do anyway.

He's right though, some friendships DO drift and are drifting because of army. There isn't much I can do. I think the more worrying part is that I haven't made many new friends. Of course my section mates and platoon mates count, but that's more of being forced to live together. I still haven't found anyone new to just share the things that I love with.

I think one day my laissez-faire attitude to life will get me killed. I mean, whatever happens happens and you have to deal with it. But until then I refuse to worry.

In other news, army has not delivered any surprises in the crap department: it's still crappy. On the upside, we get a hell lot of free time now: on the downside, the sergeants never let us get more than 1.5 hours without ordering rifle cleaning. The past week has been full of PT: 2 x ability group run, which is basically endurance running, 2x double strength training (which is 4, YES.), SOC and one 60:120 speed training. all in 4 days. Plus, I got remedial training on saturday which meant a late bookout and some -very- painful thighs. Fucking ranger hops. After bookout I went to play paintball with the 20th Legion (my team) and achieved record highs of fatigue level. Adrenaline only keeps you going for so long. This time, I managed not to kill any team members... but I still shot Terence after he was out. Bugger. I need to upgrade my IFF software. Still, I'm getting the hang of the basics. It is very fun.

So, I guess until next bookout I'll be PTing some more. Next week looks far better than last week, but this being Viper company there will still be much manly fun. And games day as well, during which I am part of the awe-inspiring Tentage Assembly Team. Yes, quite possibly the least manly event in games day save the cheerleading squad. On the other hand, just watching the combat race made me tired, so maybe this was a good idea. When keng comes your way, accept it with open arms, that's what I say.

adam

This one's a bit of a blast from the past: The Getz/Gilberto recording of 'The Girl From Ipanema' which was my audition piece for the jazz club. One of the first jazz recordings I ever heard, and studied obsessively. I can recite the portugese lyrics, if anyone wants to hear. Anyway:

Listening to the recording with the benefit of some experience and the freshness of having come back from 2 weeks of field camp/mad PT, it strikes me as a huge pity that bossa nova went the sordid way of easy listening, lounge music and boom-chuck-boomchuck generic, wishy-washy music. Because when it begun (and this is one of THE definitive bossa nova recordings) it had an immense delicateness that somehow lost its way along the line. Paul Desmond echoed my sentiments on the liner notes of Bossa Antigua I believe - something disappeared along the line which is so present on this recording. It is a (pardon me if I try to describe) sense of wanton freedom and a delicate appreciation of nature. The latin beat of the guitar is finely balanced against the jazz outlined by the hi-hat. There is no 1 rest rest 4 1 rest rest 4 bass. The bassist plays only on the 1 which gives the sound a folk-like simplicity (again, my vocabulary fails me). The arrangement is clean (and free of synth strings and Dave Weckl's massive overplaying. Good Lord) and largely consists of a guitar accompaniment which is romantic but not sloppy (is that Joao Gilberto? I'm not sure). Stan Getz's solo echoes the melody (supposedly a crime in modern jazz) but does not strike one as a lazy solo - it fits the mood perfectly. Astrud Gilberto's singing is as perfect as ever - detached and dare I say wistful.

My point in all this waxing lyrical is that this is an intelligent, finely constructed jazz recording that should be evaluated on its own merits rather than by what eventually happened to bossa nova. It's also one of my all-time favourite songs.

adam

Unimaginable, aimless depression. I don't know what it is this time. Maybe my subconscious has decided to rebel. I don't really have any reason to be that unhappy. I just feel sick and tired.

I just came back from camp. Army is suck. But on the upside, there is music! Back home, that is - nothing feels better than coming back from 2 and a half weeks of silence and (god forbid) army songs to some good music. I guess I've for now put my musical demons behind me.

Anyway, I gave Frank Zappa's 'Hot Rats' another listen. This is one of my all-time favourite albums. I consider it one of the pinnacles of instrumental rock and quite possibly the only time I've ever heard it done convincingly (I'm lookin' at YOU, steve vai.) It is a beautiful album. The opening track, 'Peaches en Regalia' is tightly composed but feels freewheeling and blooms with what I can only call exuberance. There is no hint of faux machismo here. This is rock music that isn't afraid of being happy - and it is very much so, but; like all great works of art, a sublime happiness. Which is why I prefer to say exuberance; a joy at the fact of listening, of life.

On a more technical note, Zappa's playing is free from cliches but strikingly simple, and his ability to improvise long and coherent solos is incredible - listen to the final track, 'The Gumbo Variations' for about 6 straight minutes of improvisation over a single chord, and it never once gets boring. Zappa's ability to be emphatic is one of his best qualities (and one which places him well above many many other guitarists). I appreciate the simplicity.

This is not to say the album is simple - it definitely contains elements of jazz fusion, with the tightly composed melodies and structures that implies. The instrumentation is varied and often bizarre (many many synths.) but it always feels like the structure is in service of a melody - and again, Zappa's gift with melody is seldom surpassed. Tracks like Peaches en Regalia and Son of Mr. Green Genes demonstrate this knack for simple but beautiful melodies.

On 'Little Umbrellas' Zappa displays a more experimental side - with a more jazz-like melody and much more complex chord changes, almost reminding one of Wayne Shorter's writing for the Miles Davis quintet and particularly for Weather Report with all the multi-layered melodies and compositions.

Kudos also go to Zappa's sidemen. Ian Underwood (saxophones) plays masterfully on 'The Gumbo Variations', contributing his own lengthy solo that delves into the shrieking, squeaking realm of free jazz but never deviates from the funky, earthy theme. Listen to the Art Ensemble of Chicago on 'Theme de yoyo' for an interesting comparison. Also, Zappa's violinist whose name I forget puts in a beautiful solo on the same track.

I saved the best for last - 'Willie the Pimp' is arguably the crowning achievement of the album. It is the only track on the disc with lyrics, and it represents Zappa's long fascination with the absurd and scatological, not to mention sexual. Zappa's associate Captain Beefheart supplies hoarse vocals, shouting 'HOT RATS!' over Zappa's slippery guitar playing. Then Zappa launches into a long, greasy solo - probably the most rock influenced in the whole album.

In total, 'Hot Rats' is an easily accessible but extremely well put together album that never fails to put a smile on my face. We miss you, Frank.

adam

First impressions - David Bowie, Earthling.

I don't see why the critics gave this album a hard time. The opening track, Little Wonder, is a brilliant vindication of electronica, replete with Bowie's spacey harmonies and even a little rock guitar. It fills me with happy feelings. Report on the rest of the album to follow.

adam

Purify my heart.

I've been unconsciously emo-ing myself into a hole these past few days, moping about in taxis and on buses, sulking around with my headphones in sunny KL, stuff like that. I dunno what it is. Maybe it's the quarter life identity crisis. I guess it is. I've been thinking about music. I've gotten quite jaded about jazz. I mean, face it. Jazz is in a rut. There haven't been any convincing acts (at least, none that I've seen) in the last 20 years at least. Fusion is a sad mess. Free jazz can't decide what it wants to do. The post-bop and Wynton's gang could never match coltrane's ideas and are stuck with pale imitations. I won't even get started on smooth jazz... I've just been to a wedding and that means Kenny G during the appetisers and Pachelbel set to a disgusting soft porn soundtrack during the main course. I guess it sucks that I might actually have to move on and do something else just as I was getting good at it. I'm tired of jazz.

adam

Just got myself a copy of Radiohead's OK Computer. Took me awhile to warm to it, but now I am busy partaking in the condensed awesomeness. I may be unresponsive on msn for a few hours.

adam