Fairwell and rest in peace Steve Albini

 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...'

Things I’ve done today

 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

Royalty

 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.

Bob Dylan - Live at the SEC Armadillo Halloween Night 2022

 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.

Pavement- live at the Glasgow Barrowlands

 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,

Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records by Jim Ruland

 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.

Post-op recovery 2

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.

Bright Eyes at the Glasgow Barrowlands

 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.

Isaac Asimov

 As a kid, I enjoyed science fiction. My dad grew up in a remote place in the Forties and Fifties and passed in his love of reading and some of his books to me. One of my childhood favourites was Isaac Asimov and the recent Apple TV version of Foundation has made me think about him again. This has left me with mixed feelings about Asimov.

Asimov was born in Russia in around 1920 and moved to America aged 3. He completed a PhD in Chemistry and was in the American army for a time.  He was an intelligent man and a prolific writer and sadly it seems that he was a sleazy bastard.

As a kid I got a lot from his books. My favourites were really the Robot detective books featuring Elijah Bailey such as The Caves of Steel and Robots and Empire. I also enjoyed some of the later Foundation books as well as his detective series the Black Widowers and Azazel. I have great memories of reading these books while visiting family in rural parts of the West Highlands. 

I also read some of his autobiography and found his scientific work inspiring which indirectly led me to my current job and life,

I did not know he was a sleazy bastard who was notorious for his bad behaviour but I guess he died more than 30 years ago when I was a young teenager. 

I only found out about the unpleasant side to Asimov when googling after watching the impressive Foundation TV series. The adaptors (including Asimov’s daughter) have made a good show and have diversified the characters in keeping with the futuristic setting of the story. Im looking forward to further instalments.

Sadly books such as The Caves of Steel are currently out of print on the Kindle and other e-reader devices. After watching Foundation I would love to reread some of them. Maybe someday….

Bruce Dickinson - What does this button do?

 I never liked Iron Maiden.  I just never for into them. I liked lots of other heavy metal stuff over the years but Iron Maiden just never floated my boat.  I think it's the way they dressed.  They just didn't do it for me.   I was never really a fan of Bruce Dickinson either.  I have vague memories of him messing about on the BBC Heavy Metal Heaven season in the eighties.  In retrospect he must have been channelling Spinal Tap.

I listen to audiobooks a lot.  When I'm commuting I like to use the time to do something and audiobooks seem efficient when I can't be bothered with music or the kindle. Using Audible you can often get an unexpected gem of a book for a couple of quid.

Which is how I found What does this button do?

Dickinson narrates his autobiography himself and he is funny.  He is very funny.  He doesn't take himself or anything else seriously.  Between his boarding school education, his adolescent interests and his general positive mental attitude this is a real feel good book.  He did very well with Iron Maiden and he became a pilot flying commercial airliners while on a break from music.  Eventually he was flying Iron Maiden around the world in 'Ed Force One',

He is, sadly, a 'Brexit wanker' although I do see that he has expressed dismay at the impact of Brexit on UK musicians which is good.  Thankfully we don't get any Brexit stuff in the book.  Just fencing, beer making and Spitfires.

He would be a better Prime Minister than the one we have.