Plastic Ono Band

I bought 5 albums while on R&R in Australia. Let's check them out:

1. Plastic Ono Band - John Lennon

2. Imagine - John Lennon

3. Greatest Hits - Neil Young

4. Greatest Hits - Joni Mitchell

5. Nevermind - Nirvana

I've only had the time for 1. and 2., but 3-5 will come soon enough.

Plastic Ono Band is as good as everyone seems to say it is. Good case for John Lennon as the father of punk rock, if you ask me. It's scary that he doesn't need motherloads of distortion or screechy feedback noises to be scarily primal about music.

adam

Journal Entries : Australia

20th Oct

Last night was freezing. The sleeping bag was ok - but my colleagues are worried as I am how we'll survive in the field. We manage in our fashion, I think. Cigarettes and sheer bull-headedness. Am Looking forward to going home - but the training stretches out like a desolate track ahead of me with no end in sight. I guess I'll have to wait.

So far things have been pretty relaxed which is great for settling in - I've never lived in a place like this before. The roof of my tent is letting through ominous spots of sunlight - that won't be good when it rains.

Tonight's the 8km 'prep' march. The first of many sufferings. I'm as ready as I've ever been to eat shit but good intentions never make it into the field. By tonight I'll be collapsed somewhere wishing I'd had the good sense to report sick.

So yeah - hope is on the horizon. Until tonight at least I can stay strong, and then it's up to my body and the weather god.

25th Oct

Came back from the first mission last night. I was right about the weather - once you stop moving it's freezing. Oh well. I managed not to cock anything up for once.

I also finished Haruki Murakami's 'Norwegian Wood' while I was at Sam Hill with the planning team. I think it's a great story - a love story, but it has all the quiet subtlety a love story deserves. I think the best part is at the end where Reiko and Toru hold an impromptu funeral by getting drunk and playing every Beatles song they know. I want that done when I die.

Surprisingly, my spirits are pretty up now, despite living in this hole of a camp. I'm thriving on little happinesses, cool air at night, a hot bath, a good book and the Beatles.

Sweet Loretta Martin, thought she was a woman, but she was another man. Eat your heart out, Lou Reed! I guess now we just wait for the end. The final mission will suck but we're expecting it.

When I get back I'll buy a good bottle of whisky and drink it with my friends and sing some songs. Nobody else here appreciates the 60s like I do. Nobody back there does, but at least they play along.

Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner, but he knew it couldn't last.

Get back

Get back

Get back to where you once belonged!

Rock and roll.

26th Oct

There was an attack of boredom in the morning. I had breakfast, brushed my teeth, had two smokes and decided it wasn't working. I wish I had a guitar here. Or, for that matter, someone to talk to about anything other than cars, boobs and cigarettes.

I decided to tackle the spell of ennui with a calculated dose of music.

Here's my playlist of 4 songs:

1. Desafinado - Ana Caram

2. Free City Rhymes - Sonic Youth

3. Move - Miles Davis

4. Help! - The Beatles

1. didn't quite work. Bossa doesn't do it for me all the time.

2. Did. It's the most beautiful musical construction ever created under the banner of Rock. But SY always left a strange aftertaste, as if in reaching for the cosmic their feet had left the ground.

3. From 'Birth of the Cool'. Skin-tight arrangements, solos tumbling through the changes perfect in pitch and poise. There can be no formal complaints - but in my distracted state I couldn't summon the concentration.

4. 60s rock and roll in the middle of a dusty army camp reminded me of FMJ. And if anything is the antidote to SY's 90s cosmic freakout, it's the earthy simplicity of a Beatles song.

I feel much better. Gonna have a smoke, then see what's up.

27th Oct

There's been a stunning array of cock-ups. I'm almost beyond caring. It's so pathetic that I can barely bring myself to think about it. I'm just waiting for the end.

That was from the morning. I was too pissed for words - the men really push me over the edge some days.

Every day's pretty much the same otherwise - eating, sleeping, training, smoking. The routine grates but it has its own advantages, like enough time to write this entry. I still miss my guitar, but I'm dealing with it. My bunk mates are gambling or blackjack but I've declined to play - I suspect that makes me unforgivably antisocial but oh well.

I listen to music when the urge strikes me. It's not always easy to enjoy in this dusty little hole, but it's a welcome relief.

Speaking of relief, there was a drizzle last night - first rain in a week. I seriously thought of getting out in it and bathing - but it didn't get heavy enough. The clouds are filling up the sky though - there may be hope yet. As long as it doesn't rain while I'm on exercise! Nothing like being miserable -and- wet.

In all honesty, this is a beautiful country. The bare trees, the lone kangaroos, the dust, the endless expanse of dried foliage. It's austere in a way no rainforest is. And at night it's so quiet! I could never find a place like that in Singapore.

It's just a pity I have to do all this abominable army stuff here.

Whoops. Spoke to soon - there's a storm coming.

7th Nov

The heat is murderous at 1 o'clock. I'm writing this just to keep things off my mind. Let the night come I say! I am now officially tired of this country, trees and all, stars and sunsets and all, and the whole of Oz can jolly well fuck off and let me go home to my air conditioning.

Sinatra is doing his part to take my mind off the crippling heat rash and the sand. Good ol' Blue Eyes. I've meanwhile written a few more songs of dubious import (I don't know if I'll ever get good at it) and I hope to put them to music when I get back. Meanwhile (I've said this twice now) the sound of trumpets and piano is edifying. It occurs to me that music nowadays may require less leftist hippiedom (and I mean as an approach, not as a politic) and more rightist formalism. It is becoming dangerously neither here nor there.

I'm afraid no amount of 'inspiration' will excuse terrible lyrics and noodly melodies. Even those icons of hippiedom, the Beatles, wrote with a terrifying mastery of the fundamentals, passed off as simple good-naturedness.

Choon Ping was right. Academic rigour is needed. And not Wynton Marsalis and gang's backward-facing history worship. I mean genuine intellectual commitment, and not just warm fuzzy feelings, however the two may be related.

I am doing my best to live up to this standard but like in any art rules without that special confluence of mental states known as inspiration produces no results. I will try harder.

Frustrating that my entries always end up about music. I swear I have other interests! Aloy has taken my book now though, so I am temporarily deprived of them. I'll write another song, here:

Sing a song to let me know

you'll never go anywhere

or do anything to make me sad

and live in this house of bricks and clay

Sing a song to let me know

that you won't die to-morrow

or the day after, or the rest of my life

and you'll never fly away

Sing a song to show me

that you'll never leave the ground

that you'll fold your wings around me

and never spread them wide

Sing a song while you hold me

So I know that you are there

So I know that I'm not tying you

but you've chosen not to fly

-adam

I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass

Yo La Tengo - I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

Sorry about the last post - that was for WB. I picked this album up at HMV - I'd wanted to get I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One but they only had this one and Popular Songs and faced with the decision I went for the one with the (infinitely) cooler title. It was also the last copy, so those hypothetical readers who hypothetically listen to my recommendations may face trouble if there isn't a restock.

And that's exactly what this is: a recommendation. This is rock for people who don't need leather and a ten foot tall haircut; it's happy, and full of Georgia and Ira whisper-singing their little melodies all over and their left-of-centre lyrics. It certainly comes across as an album by a long married (and 20 years is a long time) couple, full of affectionate humour and reminiscence.

Yo La Tengo don't have a style per se - they have a number of set pieces that appear in every album with new lyrics and new variations. There's always the long noise jam - that's the first track here ("Pass the Hatchet..."). There's the speedy punk number with the whispered melody. There's always the trance-y electro tune. There's always a clever ballad. There's always some stripped-down rock and roll.

And considering how great every one of the songs appears, it's stunning to note how modest the arrangements are. What they are is settled, stable, confident, and they need no flash-and-bang to impress - they have enough songwriting chops to cover that and hopefully many albums in the years to come.

adam

A letter to Joni Mitchell Re: Tree Museum

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/popsong/17moe18.html

Terror

I was paid a visit by an old friend tonight. I call him terror who used to visit me at night when I was barely a teenager. He brought pictures with him, many of death and disease and old age, but one fascinated me like no other. He showed me a picture of an eternity of oblivion. I remember because for many weeks I was like a shell but for that thought, that I would die forever. I was not even sure then, because I had my faith.

Now I have no faith. I am sure that I will die forever. But I met my old friend with open arms tonight, because I know why I was afraid. I was not afraid of oblivion - death is not fearful, the greek philosopher once said. I was afraid that an eternity of oblivion would devalue everything in my pitifully finite life.

I am no longer afraid. Eternity will not drain the meaning of my life, because I have created it, and as a creator I am greater than all fear. Do you hear that, old friend? I have friends. I have work. I have music. I have hope. You cannot rob them from me.

adam

New York Dolls

I've had a cd sitting unopened on my shelf for almost a year now - Private Worlds, a double album of demo tapes by the New York Dolls. I like these guys a lot.

adam

Laughter

is an evolutionary mechanism developed to rid ourselves of that most deadly of vices - significance.

Late night

Sleepless. I don't think I'll ever renounce feeling confessional at 2am, even if it's only my blog that will listen to my insomniac ravings. I had a good jam session today. I haven't felt this alive for awhile - maybe it's that feeling alive requires copious amounts of amplified noise. At least I can make some on my own. I wonder how people without guitars get by.

I've got 'someday my prince will come' on. It's a nice tune - and to have Miles put his inchoate siren over the changes is almost too much of a good thing.

I'm flying to australia in a week. I need to get my strength together. Goal here is not to come back in a box.

I wonder where all my friends are.

Maybe I need to stop practicing and get out of my room once in awhile. I am starting to feel the effects of social awkwardness acutely. It will be too late soon.

:(

adam

Twilight

It's not the Absolutely Terrible Novel I was hoping it'd be.

Yes, I must note - I have read it. And it's not that I've gone over to the dark side or anything - I accredit the reading to boredom, which shall become the excuse for all evil deeds great and petty.

And this will no doubt void my membership of the Singapore chapter of Auteurs Anonymous. But for what it tries to be, which isn't much, it's not a bad novel at all. It's not Ishiguro for sure, but nobody wants it to be - and Meyer manages somehow to make a vampire story that's well sort of interesting and skips lightly past all the unnecessary emo that the genre's often burdened with.

So there, all you Writers and Poets and Critics and people who Know About Literature, poo on you all. I liked Twilight.

adam

Yo La Tengo!

They've been a bit hit-or-miss with my tastes but the hits are solid ones, and certainly rank pretty high up there in my pantheon of Great Songs. Of slightly more import : They're married. And they're good enough to wield that singularly un-hip social institution like the great electrified warhammer of Rock, smashing aside assiduously, snidely single doubters.

Read: Sugarcube ("Whatever you want from me, that's what I wanna do for you, sweeter than a drop of blood on a sugarcube") What's more married than that? And what is more rock and roll?

Read: Mr. Tough (Hey Mr. Tough, don't you think we've suffered enough?) ("We'll leave our worries in the corner, leave them in a big big pile")

Really, the pile doesn't go away for people living together. But the way they deal with it is rock and roll in every way that matters.

Georgia and Ira Kaplan seem to have incorporated a uniquely scathing form of domestic bliss in their personal myth, and I find it extremely compelling. If I ever get married, my kids are going to be named after them.

adam

Revolver

The Beatles - Revolver

I will not make pronouncements or judgements because I am not worthy. I am less than the dust on the soles of his sandals, I am not fit even to listen and I am only allowed because of his magnanimous grace. In times to come they will say he was only human but in the glory of the spectacle I can only see majesty, purity and perfection.

adam

ONCE AND FOR ALL: THE SECRET TO WRITING

Distance, indifference, dispassion. Writing and music may portray emotions but may not contain: emotions in the writing process should only be accessible as a product not as an ingredient because they shut down the multi level process that art requires. To give way to emotions is to lose coherence, structure, and above all true appreciation - it is the mind that stores the details, not the heart, and the mind must recreate the details to recreate the response in the heart.

adam

Horehound

The Dead Weather - Horehound

Yes, I did actually go out and buy it and I don't regret it at all. The first thing I thought was 'I've never heard anything like this before' and the second thing I thought was 'I've heard this all before, somewhere'. I think the truth probably lies somewhere in between - Horehound is a kind of recombinant album, country/western meets blues meets hard rock meets rap metal. Individually the parts don't sound particularly new - blues licks, banjo sounds, feedback noise, Led Zep, reggae-style delay. But we've never really heard them put together like this, with such facility and with such attitude.

'Treat me like your mother' is probably the best (and cleverest) song on the album, and sounds a bit like Rage Against the Machine grown a sense of humour. 'I Cut Like a Buffalo' has Jack White singing some of the evilest reggae ever made by human beings. 'So far from your weapon' - a sort of far out blues written by Alison Mosshart, but it hits home, which is more than can be said for Frank Black and his parade of weirdness. So Jack White and co have a bit more of a handle on weirdness than perhaps any band that capitalises on the aesthetic have had. And it's good. The rest of the album is just gravy - Bob Dylan cover, instrumental which wouldn't sound out of place on the soundtrack to starcraft 2 (which is a compliment), 12 bar blues, the works.

The truth is the re-tread nature of this album may cause non-discerning individuals to dismiss it as 'jock-rock', or a bunch of over the hill rockers trying to be Limp Bizkit (which it certainly -may- sound like). But give them credit for a sense of irony, which is draped over the album like a good sauce. Jack White never falls victim to his macho constructions - although he never distances himself to the point of outright tongue-in-cheek. There is a sense of revelry in the over-the-top riffs and aggression and macho posture (especially on Mosshart's part) - and this ironic distance gives the album the depth it needs, proving once again that white is a genius and that it is possible to make some headbangin' hard rock without being stupid. Applause.

adam

all the bloody time

http://xkcd.com/642

all the bloody time.

I am in love with Alison Mossheart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Goi2YcW2To

Not many vocalists can actually send chills down my spine.

adam

Dear Friend

I've seen the way she looks at you

very ugly - that comingling of familiarity

and expectation

very unbecoming (like something out of a movie scene)

as if her eyes could wrench

your sordid emotions from your chest

still throbbing; bleeding.

I've seen your smile (ecstatic/bovine)

your little jokes (asinine)

and a thousand little sins against Man

Please.

I know they are masks for happiness.

I know you are only hateful because

you hate how joyful

how unnecessary

how sublime your happiness is

You can't take it

but if you give it away it'll break my heart fuck you

Premature

I will not fall into the trap of making Pronouncements this time. As far as I'm concerned, the greatness or lack thereof, and the success or lack thereof, of this new band called the Dead Weather can be bloody well left to fate, or market forces, or Jeebus or whoever's miserable job it is to decide these things. But for now, I kind of like them. Normally I'd be a bit suspicious of the new, almost painfully hip indie posturing of which Jack White is almost certainly guilty of. But the music is redeeming - loud, difficult but firmy attached to the ground via the blues, which is one of Jack's few redeeming qualities. Alison Mossheart is charming, the other two kind of blend in but the organ is wicked, all in all it's a good time and I sincerely hope they go somewhere rather than become another White Stripes side project.

adam

I believe in the market

I consider it a (partial) vindication of the modern audience's taste that a band as abrasive, avant-garde, noisy and melody-less as the White Stripes can make it big. Of course after shout-fests like 'seven nation army' they shored up the leaky bits with plenty of melodies on 'Get Behind me Satan' but the fact is that they are in no way a feel good pop band, and Jack White as a frontman is antiquely unhip, what with his strange tricolor fixation, blues playing and fascination with electronic noise and Bob Dylan (who's to say which is less marketable?). Still, they sell. There is hope for humanity after all.

adam

Albums pt 2

With less hype this time -

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Chronicle

Sonny Rollins - A Night at the Village Vanguard

I did go to the shop one of my main purposes being leaving with some country rock (because I've been into this country phase) - probably the Allman Brothers, but instead my mum wanted CCR and I figured it was worth a try. It's not totally off the wall Redneck Rock 'n Roll like the Allman Brothers, complete with hat and moustache, but it's pretty Southern, and John Fogerty ain't half bad.

adam

Albums!

Cream - Disraeli Gears

The Beatles - Revolver

The Classic Albums, Best of '67, whatever. I wanted to see what the hype was. So far I've only put Disraeli Gears on - it's as psychedelic as the cover suggests, plenty of high falsetto shrieking and reverb guitars riffing on middle eastern modes - the works. Also, fairly playfully put together (see mother's lament O.o what? psychedelic rock album plus cockney filler music?), fairly well written, Eric Clapton's guitar like a liquid orgasm laid on top of the rest of the music. Graphic.

adam