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...'

The Glasgow ABC - a great venue

I love the ABC as a music venue.  I, perhaps against mainstream opinion, think it's the best music venue in Glasgow.  I actually like the ABC more than the Barrowlands.  I'm heartbroken that it has been damaged in the fire that has affected the Glasgow School of Art.

Looking through this blog I've seen a lot of bands there.

The Butthole Surfers
Modest Mouse with Johnny Marr
Battles
Conor Oberst
TV on the radio in 2011 and 2008 and downstairs in ABC2 in 2006
Crystal Castles
The Vaselines
Shellac
Sonic Youth playing Daydream Nation
Slint
The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Low
Bonne Prince Billy
Bob Mould
Belle and Sebastian
Supergrass (which I had totally forgotten)
My teenage idol - Jello Biafra

I've seen many other great gigs there too - Ministry, Dag Nasty, Television, Afghan Whigs, Teenage Fanclub, Dinosaur Jr (who were very loud), sleater kinney and many many more.  The sound was good, the views were great.  When I was younger I even went to the nightclub.  The staff were really nice.

I hope that the venue can be salvaged and that they get it repaired.  Glasgow needs the ABC.  Hell, I even remember seeing all the Police Academy films there with my dad when I was a kid and the first Batman film back in 1989.  The though of the building being damaged in a fire like this is just sickening.

My respect goes to all the firemen trying to put out the fire.

30 years of Danzig

There is a Big Black concert recording that contains the immortal phrase 'no-one in the room may look Danzig in the eye'.  One controversial punk icon making a snide dig at the other.  Both larger than life figures who attracted controversy.  Both wrote songs about horror with humour in their music.  Both often ended up in physical confrontations with detractors.

There is notorious youtube footage of Danzig being knocked out with one punch (look here if you must).  In 1993 Danzig nearly got into a fight with a member of Def Leppard. This was not the one armed drummer as many suggested.  I think a lot of people wanted to beat up Albini too.

Still, I love Danzig.  I've loved his stuff since I first heard Last Caress/Green Hell on the $5.98 e.p. by Metallica when I was at primary school.  The stupid offensive lyrics and the swearing just got me.  After that I got a tape with Bullet on it and I was in love.  Misfits stuff was hard to find but the first Misfits collection LP was well circulated in the west of Scotland in the '80s.

The Misfits were stupid fun horror punk.  Danzig sang with great passion about the emotional struggles of horror film monsters and other gory subjects.  The energy of the music with the lyrics of songs like Bullet or Attitude were just electrifying.  As a 12 year old I had no idea what the lyrics of Bullet meant.  Reading them now, at the age of 40, I'm still bemused.  If I had the chance I'd love to ask Danzig about them.

The Misfits are not the whole story.  The band Danzig, fronted by Danzig, were superb.  The first album I heard was Danzig II: Lucifuge.  I've been listening to it today.  It's still fucking great.  I'm not sure why they had to lose the original Doors homage cover.  It was a bit homoerotic.  They probably got sued.

Danzig was Danzig trying to be Jim Morrison with a dash of Elvis.  It was metal but blues.  The songs were still fucking ridiculous with Danzig worrying about being a werewolf or some shit like that but it rocked.  It rocked like little else.  It really wasn't cool but it didn't suck.

At this point I must make it clear that I had little access to MTV as a kid.  I've only seen the video for She Rides recently and as a fairly PC, hardcore punk morally puritanical teenager I might have been put off by the blatant sexism and exploitation of this video.  As an adult I just shake my head and sigh.  Danzig was trying to be sexy.  I'm not really convinced he was.

I'm really excited that I've got tickets to see Danzig when he plays Glasgow later this year.  He last played in 1991 when I was just a bit too young to see him.  I did see the Danzig-less Misfits a few times but they could never top the real deal.

When Danzig was young he wanted be a comic book artist.  Indeed, he did have his own line of horror/soft core porn comics called Verotik at one point.  They were kind of stupid, like many of his songs.  My University flat mate was an even bigger Misfits fan than me and he had a few.  Danzig also got famous comic artists like Simon Bisley to do covers for his records and draw his comics.  I used to like Bisley till I met him and he proved himself to be an objectionable twat.  I think I asked him if he knew Danzig.

I met the band Slint once.  I love Spiderland.  I got to talk to David Pajo who actually recorded a solo album of Misfits stuff and all I could ask him was 'you know Danzig, don't you?';  I was a bit drunk.  But Danzig is interesting.

Musically I sort of lost touch with Danzig after Black Acid Devil.  He tried to become Nine Inch Nails or Ministry and he failed.  He has made a few decent records since then but he doesn't get much exposure anymore.  He has also starred in a few slash-fiction comic books focusing about his fictional romantic partnership with Henry Rollins.  Rollins enjoys these comics.  I suspect that Danzig does not.

I love Danzig but it's a complicated relationship.

I just wish he would re-issue the Samhain box set.

The Pixies at the Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow

I started listening to the Pixies in 1991 or 1992 around the time that they broke up.  I initially heard Doolittle on tape, borrowed from the library in East Kilbride.  A neighbour gave me a copy of Trompe Le Monde and I bought a second hand copy of Surfer Rosa, looking for Big Black style Albini kicks.

They didn't click with me immediately.  I got the REM and Velvets references on 'Here comes your man' but it took a while to fall in love with them. Eventually I got there.

I first saw them live in 2004 at T in the Park and since then I've seen them in the SECC and at Primavera in Barcelona.  Generally they deliver and I was keen to see them again at the Kelvingrove Bandstand which is a great venue and usually ned free.  Sadly there was a bit of a ned problem last night which is often an issue in Glasgow.  Drunken twats are like scabies in Glasgow and I encountered one last night.

The pixies played a great 31 song set, starting with 'where is my mind?' and including 'wintering', 'caribou', 'nimrod's son', 'broken face', 'wave of mutilation', 'here comes your man', 'gouge away', 'planet of sound' and 'debaser'. They also played a bunch of new stuff I didn't recognise.  They were tight and the new bass player did well.  We also bumped into a bunch of pals which was nice.

Sadly our personal space was invaded by a drunken twat who thinks it is ok to be verbally aggressive to women.  Another concert goer was wearing a 'rudimentary peni' t-shirt and on reflection, I feel that it should be gifted to that drunken idiot as a warning to the general public.  After some razor sharp with and repartee, we left the venue during the last song to avoid me getting my ass kicked by the aforementioned intoxicated misogynist.  We listened to the encore of 'into the white' from the car feeling sorry for anyone who needs to interact with that dude on a regular basis.

The pixies were good and assholes are, sadly, everywhere.  Even at pixies concerts.  If wankers could fly we would never see the sky.

Minimum alcohol pricing may well make Scotland a better place.

sometimes it's nice to meet your heroes - End of an Era 2, the final ATP holiday camp festival and Mike Watt

The ATP festival concept was brilliant but sadly it has now run it's course.  This weekend I attended the ATP chalet festival at Camber Sands in Rye.  For work and financial reasons I never made it to the early festivals but I always looked at the line-ups with awe.  A good friend of mine plays in Mogwai and actually curated the first ATP festival but the first one I made it to was curated by Jeff Mangum in 2012.  I loved that experience and went back to the Deerhunter event this summer.

I was sad to hear that the festivals were ending.  I am not privy to the reasons for this but running a big festival has to be difficult in harsh financial climates.  Pontins certainly did not roll out the red carpet for guests this time, requiring us to bring our own linen.

The line-up for this festival was brilliant and contained many personal favourites. Slint, Shellac, Loop, Girls Against Boys, Michael Rother, Mike Watt and of course Mogwai.  Attendance was required despite my fears about the notoriously unpredictable late November weather.  In the end I made it to Camber Sands without any snow having made a stop at the British Museum on the way.

Pontins is not scenic and reminds me of my home town of East Kilbride.  I guess it provides an appropriate back drop for alternative rock but I wouldn't want to spend an actual holiday here.

On the first night I saw Thought Forms, a band I was unfamiliar with.  They made some cool Sonic Youth-y noises and jumped about.  I liked what I heard so I bought up their back catalogue.  I'll look out for them in the future.

Thought Forms

After Thought Forms I caught Om and the Fuck Buttons set.  Om were intense with a great Sabbath/stoner rock sound.  I have a few records by Sleep, the band that Om developed from and they were just as good.  After that the Fuck Buttons hit the stage.  They made some great noises.  I don't have any of their records but I enjoyed seeing them.  Finishing off Friday night was a one-two whammy of Shellac and Slint. 

I saw Shellac in Glasgow last weekend and this was the 5th time that I have seen them since 1994.  I bought the first Shellac singles as they came out back in 1993 and they have always been one of my favourite bands.  They played a great set although they were oddly quiet (dodgy PA).  They even played 'wingwalker'.

Shellac wearing their evening suits

Slint too had a quiet PA but it was great to see them again.  They played most of Spiderland as well as a track from Tweez and a track from their EP.  I had hoped that we might have seen more of the mythical Slint documentary film but there was no joy.  After the concert I ended up in the Mogwai party chalet and in a drunken haze I met David Pajo.  He seems like a nice guy, even when confronted with an intoxicated Scottish Danzig fan.

The next morning was a bit of a red wine haze.  I woke up early and went to Camber Sands beach to contemplate infinity.  Camber is probably fairly nice in the summer but it's a really small town.  I wouldn't want to live there.  The locals were nice but the holiday camp is certainly grim.  This time we brought food with us so we didn't have to buy overpriced rubbish in the Nisa store or toxic waste from the onsite food outlets.

The beach itself is beautiful.  I took a few photos before my hangover really kicked in.  I was able to watch the Dismemberment Plan play a set that drew heavily from 'emergency & I' but after that I had to lie down for a bit to prepare myself for the evenings festivities.  After my much needed beauty sleep I caught a bit of 23 Skidoo and the Pop Group.  Neither band really set my world on fire but it was nice to see 'we are all prostitutes' played live.

Comets on Fire were a different thing altogether.  They took to the smaller downstairs stage and tore the place apart.  I've been listening to a couple of their albums which are enjoyable enough.  The recordings did not prepare me for the rock fury of the band on stage.  Blending Mudhoney, the Stooges and Sabbath they sent an electric shock through the crowd.  Rocktastic.

Comets on Fire

I had been listening to Loop stuff in an attempt to prepare myself for this concert.  I sort of missed Loop as a teenager spending more time listening to Spacemen 3.  In recent months I have taken a bit of a crash course in their stuff but it didn't really click until I saw them live.  They managed to make an immense noise with the hitherto 'polite' upstairs PA system.  Their repetitive drones drove the crowd mad and a plague of crowd surfing spread though the room.  To ice the cake they encored with 'mother sky' by Can.  I was grinning from ear to ear.  Once more I retired to the Mogwai party chalet where I had a close encounter with some rather nice 15 year old Glenlivet.  I stumbled back to my chalet at around 3am with a smile on my face.

My hangover was a bit worse on Sunday.  I managed to reconstitute myself in time for the Michael Rother set at 3:30pm.  It was pretty good but I preferred the Neu heavy set that I caught in Primavera a few years before.  My recovery was complete in time for the Mike Watt set.  He was playing ll Sogno Del Marinaio, a sort of opera about sailors.  It was nice, instrumental passages with intermittent vocal flourishes. He finished his set with a cover of Funhouse by the Stooges (i think).  Watt is a great hero of mine but I'll return to this topic in due course.

Mike Watt

After Watt came Girls Against Boys.  I've been listening to Girls against Boys for many, many years. I saw them 2 or 3 times in the mid nineties but I haven't seen them for a long long time.  I was rather excited to see them again and I wasn't disappointed.  The sound was slightly ropey during the first song but they managed to shine anyway.  They kicked off with 'tucked in' before playing an action packed set.  The strength of the Girls Against Boys back catalogue was highlighted by the fact that they managed to play a great show despite missing out classics like 'I don't got a place' and 'sexy sam'.  The new songs that they played held their own against the old material.  It's a shame that GVSB never had the success they deserved.

Girls Against Boys

The next big discovery of the weekend was Goat.  Goat are a Swedish band that wear masks and play intoxicating rhythms.  They make you want to dance.  I suspect them to be the Knife in disguise but I am told that this is not the case.

Goat going bongo crazy

Finally the last ever ATP festival was closed by one of the best bands on earth. Mogwai.  I cannot write an objective word about mogwai, especially when they got me drunk all weekend and gave me a stage access pass for their set.  However, I will honestly say that they played a brilliant set.  The new material is amazing (especially 'remurdered' and 'blues hour').  I remember first hearing them play Helicon 1 about 18 years ago in a very small room and seeing them playing it again in a very big room in front of some very excited fans was great.  Mogwai curated the first ATP festival and it was fitting that they closed the last one.

Mogwai playing mexican grand prix

After they finished the DJ played 'Teenage Riot' by Sonic Youth and it was all over.  The crowd went mad.  I was able to nip on stage and take some photos of the departing crowd.  Somehow I had found the 'make everything look drunk' button on my camera.  I ended up in the surprise party for Barry Hogan at 2:30am.  I shouldn't really have been there (although I was again abducted by the 'gwai) but it was nice to hear his words on a series of events that have meant a lot to people with good taste.  I don't know what he'll do next but I'm sure it'll be good.

As a coda to an amazing festival I had an amazing experience on the train from Rye to Ashford.  I met Mike Watt on the platform and I spent about 30 minutes talking to him.  SST punk was a big thing for me and I remember first hearing the Minutemen after buying the Post-Mersh volume 3 CD from Tower Records one boxing day (maybe 1991?).  Watt is one of the nicest men alive and when he heard my accent he asked me if I knew Dep from Monorail Records.  When I told him that Dep had advised me on Minutemen records over the years he smiled.  I think he regards Dep as a sort of missionary.

Watt spoke about his need to constantly tour.  He sees life on the road as being like that of a sailor, like his father who was in the navy and served in Vietnam.  Watt told me that he saw little of his father growing up and that he feels he only got to know him in his thirties by which point he was dying of cancer.  Watt himself said that he had decided not to have children as he felt family life was incompatible with life on the road.

He suffers from arthritis and needs to have a knee operation next year.  He'll need to to take 6 months off from touring to do that.  He says that this will be difficult as he doesn't know what to do when he isn't touring.

He told me a bit about how he recorded some of his records, how they got free studio time to record one song but managed to record all of the first side of 'buzz or howl under the influence of heat' by pretending it was one song.  He told me that he originally wanted to use images from the magazine Scientific American for the cover (indeed the title came from Scientific American) but the photo cost too much so Joe Baiza drew a sketch of him and D Boon instead.

Watt is an inspirational musician and his life and words have meant a lot to me over the years.  After I finished talking to him, changing trains at Ashford International I listened to all 175 minutemen tracks on my iPod back to back.  They took me most of the way back to Glasgow.  I thought about the life of Mike Watt and how he has given so much to me.  I don't think he's a rich man but he is a good man.  Like most American musicians he won't have free health care and nobody buys records now so musicians have to tour to make money.  If anyone reads this think about buying a mike watt record (fIREHOSE/minutemen/anything) or go to a mike watt gig.  He's a good bloke.

With the ATP concept, Barry Hogan did a good thing and has given me some amazing experiences.  I hope he does something new, similar and brilliant again.  Maybe even in Scotland?

The Death of the Record Shop

Society has changed.  People have changed.  A lot of the stuff that I loved as a kid has gone.  Sadly, record shops are dying out.

HMV, a mighty giant, has been fatally wounded.  HMV used to be dominant in the field.  It was the alpha-shop.  It wiped out all opposition.  HMV was the same everywhere; East Kilbride, Argyle Street, Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester.  The HMV brand was everywhere.  In the early '90s it was modern and cool (in a corporate way).  The good stuff was often overpriced but they punted a lot of landfill CDs in their sales.  I spent a lot of money there.

Over the past 5 years or so HMV hadn't been looking so good.  They had lost their way.  They wanted to sell iPods and stereo systems.  They had less music (or at least they seemed to have less).  I would walk into HMV and realise I didn't have a reason to be there.  I could buy my disposible media from Amazon and I didn't need to wander around HMV to do it.  If I wanted anything cool I could go to Monorail or Fopp (although Fopp has been an indie stalking horse for HMV for years now).

When I  was a teenager I loved trudging about record shops to buy  second  hand Husker Du  lps and Butthole Surfers tapes.  I would bump into people I know.  It gave you something to do.  Life goes on and now I have plenty to do but I feel that teenagers of the  future will miss out on something.  I guess elderly trainspotters feel that the teenagers today are missing out on the steam trains of the '40s and '50s.

HMV is fucked.  I will try and spend some money in Monorail this month.  I bought some stuff in Fopp last month.  I'm probably pissing in the wind.

My weekend at the ATP festival or why Scott Spillane is the nicest guy ever

I’ve been wanting to go to an ATP music festival for a long time.  The festival grew out of the Bowlie Weekender organised by Belle & Sebastian at the Camber Sands holiday camp and was rebooted as the All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP) festival curated in its first year by Mogwai.  Cool bands would ask more cool bands to play.  The line-up is often a wet dream for music nerds like myself.

Sadly, circumstances have prevented me attending before now.  This has been due to limited finance and, limited holiday entitlement.  Thankfully, times have changed, I’ve paid off some debts and I get more freedom with my holidays that I did in the past.  When I saw that ATP was to be curated by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel in December I picked up tickets as soon as I could.  

It wasn’t straightforward from there.  The festival had to be rescheduled for undisclosed reasons shortly before the initial date in December.  This change of dates was a two edged sword.  March is a better time for travel than December but two of my friends could not make the new date.  This triggered some frantic searching for other people to use the tickets.  I didn’t really want to sell the tickets to strangers and the market value of the tickets dropped.  Fortunately two friends stepped into the breach bringing their 2 year old son with them.

Despite these logistical difficulties I was still very excited about the event.  I counted about 20 bands on the bill that I wanted to see.  Below is a list of the bands I managed to see.

The Elephant 6 holiday surprise band

Jeff Mangum (twice)

Mike Watt and George Hurley playing the songs of the Minutemen

Thurston Moore

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

The Fall

Robin Hitchcock

A hawk and a hacksaw

The Boredoms (twice)

Low

Yann Tierson

The Magnetic Fields

Earth

The Raincoats

Olivia Tremor Control

The American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME)

The Apples in Stereo

The Magic Band

The Sun-Ra Arkestra

Scratch Acid

Sebadoh

Secret Surprise closing set featuring Sun-Ra arkestra, Olivia Tremor Control, The Elephant 6 holiday Surprise band, the Boredoms and friends.

Overall, this represents a very good weekend.  I saw a lot of bands I never thought I would see, I made some new friends and I had a lot of fun.  I will now labour this point in detail.

The Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Band opened the festival on the Friday afternoon.  The Holiday Surprise band is basically a pick-up/jam band composed of available members of Elephant 6 bands.  They play covers and songs from their individual bands.  At times they had more than 10 people on stage.  They play an impressive array of instruments including the saw and some form of horn that fits around a large man.  They played songs by bands like the Gerbils and Elf Power during a set which culminated in a cover of a Sun-Ra track called ‘enlightenment’.  They got the crowd singing along with this track before walking into the crowd while playing their instruments.  They then left the concert hall and walked about the pavilion at Butlins as the song continued.  This was a great thing to see.

After this set I bought some t-shirts and ate some food.  I then got myself into position to see the first Jeff Mangum set of the weekend.  For many reasons I never thought that I would see Jeff Mangum play live.  He has kept a very low profile for the best part of 15 years and it hasn’t really been possible to imagine that he would return to live work.  I have been aware of Neutral Milk Hotel since my friends were blown away by them at a Glasgow show supporting Sparklehorse in the late ‘90s.  I had a couple of Olivia Tremor Control records but I only picked up ‘in the aeroplane over the sea’ when it was reissued by Domino in 2005.  Since then it has been one of my favourite records.  I love it.

Seeing these songs played live was something special.  For the most part Mangum played acoustic guitar unaccompanied but at key moments he was joined by other Julian Koster on the saw or Scott Spillane blowing a horn.  Like many of the bands on this bill the sound is capable of raising goosebumps.  I was singing along to songs like Holland, 1945, The King of Carrot Flowers and two-headed boy.  My singing made me happy although I’m sure others would disagree.

After the end of the Jeff Mangum set I watched part of the Raincoats set.  I saw the Raincoats at the Phoenix festival in 1994 although I’ve only picked up their records in the past couple of years.  I managed to see 5 songs including their classic version of ‘lola’.  I then ran through to see the Fall who delivered an aggressive set of classic Mark E Smith.  This was the 3^rd time I’ve seen the Fall and they’ve been good every time. 

After the Fall I watched the solo set by Thurston Moore despite drunken interjections from my friends who don’t like Sonic Youth as much as I do.  The set drew mainly from the 1995 Psychic Hearts album.  At present, this is the closest I’ll get to seeing Sonic Youth for a year or two.

The next set that I saw was probably the musical highlight of my weekend.  I saw Mike Watt and George Hurley play a set of Minutemen songs.  For the uninitiated, the Minutemen were an early ‘80s SST punk band whose career was cut short by the death of singer/guitarist D. Boon in a car crash.  The Minutemen were more expansive than most punk bands.  Musically they were self taught and they played with an almost psychic degree of precision.  They sounded like nothing that came before them.  Their songs had intelligent political lyrics and off-beat humour.  D. Boon and Mike Watt seemed to have their own private language.  Watt and Hurley will play Minutemen songs as a duo but they would never use another guitarist on these songs.

I started to listen the Minutemen on boxing day 1991 when I bought their post-mersh volume 3 singles compliation CD from Tower Records in Glasgow.  As soon as I heard ‘if regan played disco’ that they were nearly perfect.  I susbsequently bought up their entire back catalogue and spent several years trying to play guitar like D Boon.  I failed. 

Walking into a room and hearing the music of the minutemen is an amazing experience.   Seeing Mike Watt play bass is an amazing experience.  These songs are fast, complicated and tight.  Watt would play all the bass parts and sing the songs.  At points where we expected a D Boon guitar break he would pause and look at the other side of the stage.  It was really poignant.  At a guess I would say that more than 30 songs were played with few pauses of breath.  Many of my favourites were there but I could have watched them for 2 hours.  At the end of the set Watt thanked the crowd and suggested that we should start out own bands.  I’m too old for that sort of thing but the experience was spiritual.  I hope I get to see this again.

After that I watched the end of the Blues Explosion set before heading home to catch some sleep before day 2.

We started the second day watching A Hawk and A Hacksaw.  They were playing a soundtrack to some old Eastern European film.  The music was very relaxing, perfect for a hangover.  After that I went over to the main hall to catch the first Boredoms set of the weekend.  I was blown away by the Boredoms when I saw them in Glasgow a few years back and the experience was similar here.  The main dude, Eye, stood in a circle of 5 drummers, conducting them while 15 guitarists added further colour to the sound.  The Boredoms had also bought their strange percurive guitar machine which is always fun.  I urge anyone who likes interesting music to see the Boredoms if they can.

Later on that evening I watched Low who delivered the goods as they usually do.  They were followed by Yann Tierson who was a new name to me.  His electronic music made me think of Blade Runner and Air.  I popped out to see a couple of songs by Earth but I was unimpressed so I returned to see the end of the Yann Tierson set.

Scratch Acid were another band I thought I would never see.  I have a certain fondness for the Jesus Lizard, the band that Scratch Acid evolved into.  Scratch Acid are a good, aggressive, noise rock band and David Yow is a great frontman but they lack the razor-like guitar of the Jesus Lizard.  It was great seeing them but the Jesus Lizard are probably better.

On the Sunday morning I started the day by watching ACME – the American Contemporary Music Ensemble.  They are an instrumental group who played a few chilled out pieces.  They were helped on one song by Julian Koster of Elephant 6 fame.

After that we went for a bit of a wander and we met Scott Spillane, a member of both Neutral Milk Hotel and the Gerbils.  He is a really nice bloke.  I always feel like I’m bothering someone famous if I go up and start talking to them but Spillane was very genial.  We talked a bit about the dire state of American politics, health care in the US and the UK, what he thought various Neutral Milk Hotel Songs were about (he doesn’t know) and the possibility of new Jeff Mangum material.  He told me that Jeff has written some new songs that he might record and that there are still plenty of old songs yet to be recorded.  He thinks that Jeff sometimes doesn’t want to record because that means a song is ‘finished’ but he thinks we’ll hear something at some point.  Really nice bloke.

After that we went to the cinema to see 20 minutes of footage from a Slint documentary by director Lance Bangs.  The finished film should be out by the end of the year.  I’m really looking forward to it.  In the footage we learn that the Jesus Lizard song ‘Mouthbreather’ is based on a comment Steve Albini made about Britt from Slint after he trashed Albini’s house – ‘don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy, I like him just fine but he’s a mouthbreather.’ 

After this I saw the Boredoms again, followed by the Magic Band and Olivia Tremor Control.  Olivia Tremor Control were interesting to see but their set was hampered by slightly ropey sound.  I then watched the Sun Ra Arkestra before we all had to queue up to see the second Jeff Mangum set of the weekend.   The songs were slightly different from Friday with a cover of ‘true love will find you in the end’ by Daniel Johnston and the little known Neutral Milk Hotel song ‘little birds’ from the recent box set.  Very, very good.

Sebadoh closed the main festival with an energetic set.  I like Sebadoh so it was good to see them.  However the highlight of the evening was probably a secret show that wasn’t advertised after Sebadoh finished.   A friendly member of the OTC roadcrew told us that Sun Ra, the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Band, the Boredoms and the Olivia Tremor Control would be having a jam in the Reds venue at the end of the night.  We ran down after Sebadoh finished and we were not disappointed.  At least 30 musicians filled the stage to play the Sun Ra song ‘enlightenment’ bringing a musical symmetry to the event.  Beautiful.

ATP is probably the best festival ever.

Steve Albini cookery blog

For those of you who like that sort of stuff, Steve Albini has a cookery blog

http://mariobatalivoice.blogspot.com/

Check it out

The most played songs on my iPod

So I've had the iPod since christmas and I have about 20,000 songs on it. iTunes does some funny stuff when it plays songs at random but here are the top 5 tracks.

1 - 6'1 by Liz Phair - A track from exile in guyville about inadequate men. I like it and I listen to it through choice a bit. Good track and worth hearing.

2 - George Square Thatcher Death Party by Mogwai - the stand out track from the new (out next week) Mogwai album. I am highly biased cos a mate is in the band but this is a great track. I love the vocoded vocals and I greatly dislike Maggie Thatcher. I suspect that we will see parties in Glasgow when she dies and this could be the soundtrack. A number one in my mind.

3 - Billiard Player Song by Shellac - I bought this 7" single as it came out in 1992 (?). I was a high-school Shellac fan after being a high-school Big Black fan and their early singles are some of my favourite music. These tracks are not very easy to hear but I do think that you should track them down. Shellac are one of the best bands ever and you should see them live and listen to them if you can.

4 - letters to the metro by Mogwai - I've been hammering Hardcore will never die but you will and you should too. See above.

5 - Ramble on (2007 remaster) by Led Zeppelin - I'm not a massive Zeppelin fan but this was one of the first albums that went on the iPod because Amazon gave me a free download. Ramble on is a great track and is worth a spin. Not sure how it got into my top 5 right enough. Curse you, the non-random shuffle feature of iTunes.

Primavera Day 2

My conference finished at 1pm on the Friday of the festival so I was making my way to the Primavera site by 4pm. I heard some Glasweigan accents on the underground and started talking to 3 blokes from Greenock. They were all fairly cool and essentially adopted me for the rest of the festival.

I had one major disappointment on Friday. Low were playing 'the great destroyer' in the indoor rock auditori and I didn't manage to get in to see them. This fucked me off bigstyle especially after I stood in line for nearly an hour in an attempt to get a ticket. It also pissed me off that I had to pay an extra 2 Euros to get into the auditori after I'd already spent 130 quid on a primavera ticket.

After the Low failure I contined to hang out with the Greenock guys. They were making a film about the festival and interviewing random people. They tried to get me to explain how to perform a lobotomy on camera. I politely declined to provide that footage. They were also trying to film a few bands where possible.

The bands on Friday were fairly good. I saw cocorosie perform a couple of stripped down numbers on a small stage although I couldn't really focus on their main set on a larger stage. They were just a bit too out-there. I barely recognised some songs that I really like from their CDs.

I watched a bit of Thee Ooh Sees on the vice stage. They were OK but they didn't blow me away initially. They were much better the following day when they played at the Parc de Joan Miro in town. I also watched a sunny day in glasgow who are not from Glasgow but were agreeable enough. I enjoyed them more in the Parc de Joan Miro the following day.

I watched Wire later on and I liked them. I've got several of their early albums but I didn't recognise much of what was played on stage. I guess that doesn't really matter cos they were great.

One of the best sets came from Michael Rother and friends (including steve shelley of sonic youth) performing the music of neu! I had a great seat in the ATP arena on the stone seats to the right of the stage. I had an unobstructed view of the stage beautifully framed by the sea. I own a couple of neu CDs and this set reminded me to listen to them more. The sound was great and the crowd loved it.

Later on I watched Les Savy Fav. I'm a big fan of them, I own about 5 of their CDs but for various boring reasons I've never managed to see them. They delivered in a spectacular way with singer Tim Harrington taking the stage dressed as a dog. He then spent a lot of the time running around the crowd promoting chaos. Entropy in action. The band was tight and the sound was shit hot.

Shellac came on after Les Savy Fav. This was my third opportunity to see Shellac and they were great as usual. I took some good photos and enjoyed the show. If I get my shit together I'll put up some photos here.

Finally I caught the end of the pixies set. Shellac were obviously my priority so I missed the first 20 minutes but I enjoyed what I saw. The Spanish crowd were loving it. A couple of drunken English girls approached me and tried to make me drink rum. One of them tried to snog me but I resisted.

Generally it was a good day.

And while we are on the subject of Steve Albini....

I found some Shellac material that I don't have. Shellac should be rich and famous even though they probably don't want to be.

Use any means necessary to hear their first couple of singles - uranus and the rude gesture:a pictorial history. I need to buy a record player so I can listen to them again.

And see them live if you can.

For more info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellac_(band)

Classic Steve Albini Article

Been looking for this for ages

http://www.mercenary.com/probwitmusby.html

Steve Albini is actually santa

'Songs about Fucking' was just a cover story for the sweet man who pretends to be santa.

http://pitchfork.com/news/37310-us-postal-services-threatens-steve-albini-charity-christmas-drive/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-sun-problem-1206-dec06,0,7873762,full.column

Shellac live at the Glasgow ABC

Shellac are Steve Albini's fun band. He's done his best to be outside the music industry. His influence is obvious in a lot of modern rock music but throughout his career Albini has done his best to avoid selling out and playing the corporate rock game.

I got into Big Black when I was about 12 after hearing Bad Penny on a mix tape. I remember buying Songs about fucking and hiding the LP so my parents wouldn't find it. I bought the early Shellac singles as they came out and I first saw Shellac when they played the Phoenix festival in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1994. That was one of the best rock shows that I've ever seen.

When I was in Mono records earlier this year and I noticed that tickets were on sale for an unadvertised Shellac show I bought a pair immediately. I then persuaded one of my pals to come along and see them with me.

Sunday night was freezing. My mate smoked a cigarette before we went into the venue. As we stood outside an American couple walked up to us. I was chatting to my friend and I said 'pretty fucking baltic, eh?'. The American couple suddenly looked scared. They clearly weren't used to Scottish dialect. As we walked upped to the concert hall my friend told me that we had been standing next to Todd Trainer, the drummer. My pal had done some interned research.

Support came from Aidan Moffat, ex-singer of Arab Strap. It wasn't the best musical experience of my life but he's a good guy. Funny.

Shellac took to a stripped down stage. They were loud and extremely tight. I would say that they have improved over the past 14 years. I didn't recognise much of the material although we did get personal favorites like Wingwalker, Prayer to God and End of Radio. The band are almost like a comedy troupe at times with fake mistakes and Bob Weston hitting out with quality one liners.

After the show Albini and Weston sold T-shirts from the stage. I bought one from Albini and managed to speak to him in a few seconds of almost total nerdgasm. A look of disdain filled his eyes.

To make up for my nerd overdose I went to Nice n Sleazys and tried to chat up a few random women. I found a couple of attractive doom metal fans from Birmingham. I failed to get any numbers but did use some good moves. My married friend felt guilty just by hanging out with me.

A good night. See Shellac if you ever can. Buy their records.

Classic eighties alternative music

I have recently been thinking about some of the brilliant bands that came out of the american underground in the 1980s. In my view these include Husker Du, the Replacements, the minutemen, Big Black and Sonic Youth.

Now I know sonic youth are slowly re-releasing some of their older records but what about Husker Du. Zen Arcade came out about 20 years ago and I know that some out-takes exist. I would love to hear some of that stuff but I don't forsee it coming out anytime soon.

Big Black have a similar story. I guess Steve Albini is politically oposed to re-releasing some of their rarities on CD but it would be cool to hear them.

I know the replacements re-mastered some stuff but I heard a story about them throwing all their master-tapes in a river. Sad.

Anyway, just a geek-out rant