Spending time with my son
Teaching medical students.
Political history books by Tim Shipman
Star Wars Skeleton Crew
Scooby Doo (with my son)
A good curry last night
Audible audiobooks
Here comes the guillotine podcast
True Detective series 4
Void Rivals comic book
Life is short. It slips by in flashes of months and years. I can't pause it, I can't slow it down, no matter what I do. It progresses, relentlessly. The base way to deal with it is being here and enjoying it. Enjoying the little bits of it and the big bits will hopefully take care of themselves.
Life goes in a direction and I think it is the right one.
Sometimes it's nice to write just to write. I never have the time..
I was fairly shocked and very much saddened when I read about the untimely death of Steve Albini this afternoon. He has been a hero of mine since I heard 'bad penny' by Big Black on a mix tape when I was about 13. That tape also contained my first fugazi, minor threat, black flag, butthole surfers, sonic youth and many other life changing bits of music. I was a fan of the dead kennedys but I didn't know all this other music was out there.
Albini was among the best. I was a bit surprised when a couple of years later he produced a Nirvana album. It's not my favourite Nirvana album and it's not my favourite Albini record but I suspect he will mainly be remembered for 'in utero'. It was nowhere near his best work. The Jesus Lizard 'pure' and 'goat' spring to mind. People will point to 'surfer rosa' or the Breeders or 'songs about fucking' or something else and they will all be decent choices.
When I was 16 I travelled down tot he phoenix festival in stratford upon avon to see shellac with a couple of friends from school. it was great. it was well over a decade before I had a chance to see them again and I can't be sure how many times I saw them after that - maybe another 4 or 5 times - but they were always good.
He was a great thinker and a great speaker. He talked sense about music and other things in a calm and logical way. He was 61 when he died which is far too young for this world.
RIP
'I'M A PLANE. I'M A PLANE'
'...and the plane becomes a metaphor for my life...'
Listened to music - Delgados, Ezra Furman, Blonde Redhead, Pavement, Yann Tiersan
Went out for lunch
Played with my son, tried to encourage him to eat his dinner, looked at a book with him, bathed him and put him to bed, told him a story about how his great grandad had a brown Hillman Imp
Read some of a book - Edge of the grave by Robbie Morrison
Picked up blood pressure tablets from the pharmacy
Sat and drank a fairly rubbish coffee and ate a bit of truly terrible millionaires cake which I couldn’t finish
Phoned my mum
Why should an accident of birth make one person better than another? At the end of the day, we are all the same. We all have hearts and brains and skin and lungs. What we choose to do with our lives may define us but I do not believe that anyone is innately superior just because of their parents.
I live in a kingdom. One internet definition of this is 'a politically organized community or major territorial unit having a monarchical form of government headed by a king or queen'. My country is packed into a unit with other countries because of the existence of a monarchy. We are united and ruled by someone who has a job because of an accident of birth. A lucky sperm.
I realise it is not all wine and roses. Prince Harry certainly feels that he has been the unlucky sperm and outlines his feelings in his ghostwritten autobiography Spare. The book has sold exceptionally well, much to the annoyance of the press and news media in the UK who did their best to curtail sales whilst boosting their own by publishing all the juicy bits before it hit the shops.
France, America and Russia have all been sensible in going down the rebuild route. I am not saying that these are model societies or any more equal but at least they have made an effort to get rid of the pseudo-mystical royalty bullshit.
My ancestors have been farmers and servants and shop keepers and nurses. Many of them lived their lives in challenging environments and some of them did well for themselves. To me, they are more valuable than kings but I realise that most of the world doesn't give a shit about them. But at least, as far as I am aware, they never started any wars or invaded any countries.
My son will make his own way in life with whatever help I can give him. It won't be much and he will need to work for what he wants in life. He will be luckier than some.
I wish every kid in the world was as lucky as my son.
The last time I saw Bob Dylan was in the SECC in 1998 when he was supported by Van Morrison (who was not great). That night was almost a Dylan greatest hits show with fairly faithful versions of tracks like 'Blowing in the wind' and as a 20 year old I loved it. For a variety of reasons it took me nearly 25 years to see him again. My memory of that last show is ghostly faint but positive. Tonight was crystal clear and very different.
Dylan played an upright piano all night. His band was just brilliant. A great drummer, great guitarists, a great bass player and a multi-instrumentalist on steel guitar and others. Tone, sound and music was everything tonight with Dylan's voice, his vocal tone, another lead instrument. He played some big songs from his past but the versions while musically excellent were almost a parody of the more familiar versions. When I paint my masterpiece, gotta serve somebody, most likely you go your way and I'll go mine and I'll be your baby tonight were just tossed out, taken apart and rebuilt in very different. This was not a pop hits night, this felt like an improvised jam band that was punching above it's weight.
The bulk of the set was from the excellent Rough and Rowdy Ways and I was glad to hear that album live. Dylan is 81 and I'm not sure that he will play Glasgow again. Surely the never-ending tour must pause with time. I would love to see him again but I'm not hopeful.
The 1990s had returned to Glasgow last night with those ancient student unions and indie clubs pouring forth their revenants into a chill October evening. Pavement were back at the Barrowlands for the first time since 1999. I was there in 1999 and I was there in Barcelona in 2010 and I was there last night. Pavement seemed even more present than they were on those distant dates. They were tight, energetic and apparently enjoying themselves.
They played 26 songs, 7 of which I would describe as the MTV pop hits. Those bangers were delivered well and enjoyed by the crowd. I own all the Pavement albums although I haven’t listened to some of them for several years. Most of the songs were familiar but there were a couple I didn’t recognise. At times they mimicked Neu and the Fall. They fell apart in the middle of one song for the second time on the tour.
Pavement are a great band and it was good to see them again. I believe that if they had desired it more at the time they could have been massive. They could have been bigger than Nirvana with true pop hits but that was not their road. The road they picked was right for them and right for the Barrowlands last night as the spirit of the 1990s was manifest again,
I spent a lot of time as a teenager listening to music released on the SST label. Black Flag, Minutemen, Husker Du, Descendents, Bad Brains and many more released music via SST in the halcyon days of the 1980s. Then it all went wrong. The good bands stopped releasing music or moved to another label and eventually SST ground to a halt.
This book highlights how successful SST actually were at their peak and documents the fall. It's not totally clear what precipitated the fall but the departure of key team members such as Chuck Dukowski and Mugger seems to have played a part. Greg Ginn is often cast as a pantomime villain in events although I'm not sure how accurate this is. Certainly, early on, he did a lot of good for these bands and gave them a step up to better things.
I was an American hardcore/alternative enthusiast when I was younger but this book contained viewpoints I was unfamiliar with and has introduced some music that I did not know. I was left pining for a world where SST signed Nirvana and managed to keep Sonic Youth happy/release Daydream Nation. That may have been an exciting world.
What does the future for the SST bands hold? Will we see reissues and remasters with unreleased material? Has it all been lost? Do they even have decent tapes of the 1982 Black Flag demoes.
Ian MacKaye took a very different, archivist approach with Dischord and we will have much of the DC scene for posterity. The LA scene may just be degenerating, covered in some green mould.
Further surgery yesterday to repair things after the operation in January. I think the anaesthetist was better this time as pain control has been better and I didn't have the horrible dry mouth and urinary retention again. This operation involved more tissue damage and recovery is meant to take a bit more time. I'm on antibiotics and I've been given some stronger pain killers to use as needed.
I'm going to be bored over the next few weeks before I can go back to work. I'll need to find other things to distract me and take it easy. I need to avoid heavy lifting which can be hard with a two year old in the house.
I will see how much Netflix I can tolerate.
I've listened to Bright Eyes and Conor Oberst a lot since 2004. Some of these records contain some of my favourite music. Oberst is genuinely gifted and Bright Eyes sit with Fugazi, Dylan and Neil Young as perennial favourites. I've managed to see Oberst solo a couple of times and with the Desparadicos but I've never managed to see Bright Eyes. When they last played Glasgow in 2011 I was working In Dundee and I couldn't get through. Life sucks sometimes.
The show tonight should originally have happened in 2020 but was rescheduled twice due to the pandemic. Glasgow was dark and busy as Celtic were playing Real Madrid at Parkhead, just up the road from the Barrowlands. We arrived late so we missed the support act. The venue was not too busy and the crowd were fairly mild mannered.
The band tonight were great. Besides the 3 core members there were an additional 5 players on stage producing a rich sound. This was the last night of a month long European tour so they were well practiced and tight. Bright Eyes as a group compared with Oberst solo are different prospects. Solo, Oberst seems more precise or subtle but with Bright Eyes there are more sample driven soundscapes and improvised jams.
Oberst appeared to drink from a bottle of wine onstage. His speech appeared slurred at times but he was able to play piano or guitar with perfect timing immediately after the apparent drunken rambling. Oberst as part of Bright Eyes might be a bit of a character at times. He had been tattooed by a member of the support band before the show. Pictures were posted on Facebook afterwards. Twitter contained a lot of concern for Oberst but I think he probably had a good night.
I always struggle to remember the names of Bright Eyes songs. I often know all the words but I can't remember the titles. Thankfully SetlistFM exists and can tell you the titles of the 18 tracks that were played. Personal highlights included I believe in symmetry, Lover I don't have to love and Mariana trench. A cover of Double Joe by Simon Joyner was enjoyable too.
So, overall, I loved this gig and I could watch Bright Eyes recurrently and be happy.
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