Oh, V*CE...

An Overview

Too obvious, I know, but truly brilliant. Really, where would we be without V*CE? How would we know who to laugh at? There would be (dare I say it) random acts of unpretentious Happenings all over the world, there would be no order and chaos would grip the hipsters of the world. Spontaneous, logical choices! Totally fucking out this season, yeah? Yeah!
Highlights include :

1. Laughing at ugly people
2. Trivialising lesbianinsm (worse than FHM, worse than Playboy, this is actually self-aware, supposedly ironic degradation of maybe the worst lesbian ever) ps. the comments are hilarious, "HAIRY WOMEN RULE!!! 100,000 years women have been hairy, hairless is just a fad".
3. Porn. Nothing more and nothing less. The third one's quite pretty, but WHAT IS THE POINT THIS IS IRRELEVANT DAMN YOU V*CE WHY DO YOU SUCK SO MUCH.
4. More porn. Basically all of this is gratuitous indie porn. Really? Really. The worst thing about this is the male cameraman who has the most rapey voice ever, it will haunt me.
5. Incest. "Here’s one thing us guys with no sisters will never get. How can you not want to fuck them—at all. Like, if you had a sister that looked like this and you walked into her room and she’s putting on long white socks how can it not just flash through your mind even for one second?" I really didn't think they would go there, but they actually went there. Good God.
6. Blasphemy. 'Because God stopped being cool when Jesus died' and stuff.
7. Something...about..tabards. 'It’s become the armor of cleaning ladies, café waitresses, and chip-shop girls', apparently. No 'witty' aside needed.

And to end, the most V*CE sentence ever, lifted from their truly delightful weekly mailout that I am still subscribed to because I need midweek cheer -

"See photos from the opening of The Vice Photo Book exhibition at the Jago Gallery in Shoreditch. "

shoreditch, VICE, photo, gallery, exhibition, opening...gah.

Important things and other things that aren't as important

1. Mercury 'Music Prize'

Adele - 19
British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
Burial - Untrue
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Estelle - Shine
Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement
Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
Portico Quartet - Knee Deep in the North Sea
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns
Robert Plant & Alison Kraus - Raising Sand

All consistent 8/10 albums, no hip-hop, no grime, a fairly dull list of uninspiring 'nice' music. Where is the punch? Where is MIA? 'Representing the British music scene at the moment' doesn't necessarily mean drawing up a list of fairly popular, fairly alright bands with fairly alright albums because that is boring and music right now isn't boring, it is fun and exciting and makes you want to jump up and/or down because it is really, really Good.
ON THE OTHER HAND....

2. Popjustice £20 Music Prize

'A&E' - Goldfrapp
'About You Now' - Sugababes
'Bleeding Love' - Leona Lewis
'Call The Shots' - Girls Aloud
'Dance Wiv Me' - Dizzee Rascal feat Calvin Harris
'Flux' - Bloc Party
'Money' - Daggers
'That's Not My Name' - The Ting Tings
'Valerie' - Mark Ronson feat Amy Winehouse
'Ready For The Floor' - Hot Chip'
Song 4 Mutya (Out Of Control)' - Groove Armada feat Mutya Buena
'Stuck On Repeat' - Little Boots

!!!!!!!!!!!! All classics, I mean, Song 4 Mutya's even in there. And Bleeding Love. And Hot Chip. Ting Tings, though...well, at least the Ting Tings will never write a post punk 'masterpiece', which is admirable.

3. Lack of NME // V*ce magazines, general exhaustion and low literary self esteem, long list of 'To Do's and falling out of favour with mentors. Dead batteries and broken dictaphones, annoyance at not seeing Interpol, Lovefoxx from CSS talking really fast and Brazillian and incoherently. Blah, blah, and also, blah.

a cold evening for sleuthing

A cold evening's sleuthing has revealed firstly that Ex Models are actually alright, and secondly that Prurient produces harsher noise than Kylie Minoise. Sorry, Kylie. We used scales, and everything.

Also:

"Conflicting edits

There was more than one attempt to edit this resource at the same time. This may have been because you double clicked on a link or a button or because someone else is also editing this blog or post."

Congratulations are in order.

On The Ting Tings

» Someone we had in for work experience recently explained that she and her friends do not like The Ting Tings for the following reason: "she wears a hat on stage and he looks like a paedophile". (??!)

Micah P Hinson Live Review

Basically, when my zinemate wasn't there, I couldn't find it.

I ended up outside the Old Blue Last.

I was more lost than I'd ever been before. I also blended better than I'd ever done before.

At this point I got worried and boarded the nearest whizzy beneath-the-surface train homewards.

On the way back, I realised that 'Recommendations' by Mirah sounds like Casiotone for the Painfully Alone if he were female, and that 'Body Below' by Mirah sounds like Gowns, and that 'Cold Cold Water' by Mirah sounds like the best Bjork song she never sung.

mmm, FTZ maybe. maybe. probably not.

Patronising 'women's journalism'

(am feeling suitably venomous and bored of everyone being on holiday and running off with attractive Europeans whilst I am looking for pictures of the elusive faux-Grecian drape dress by Isabel Toledo, so this will have to do.)


There is only one music website that is worse than DrownedinSound.com (no link provided, luckily, one wouldn't want to increase its page rank) - the 'brilliantly titled' Lipster.com. Though it loses the stifling air of pretension that hangs over aforementioned website like a canopy, the (almost) shield against sense is replaced by a far more poisonous literary atmosphere - one of comfort food, comfort telly, comfort clothing. One of 'it's a women's site, for women, by women! We promise!'. But most importantly, one of, 'look! we're women! we don't really care that much about all this faffing around with experimental drone and ambient techno, give us a Youtube video of Patrick Wolf displaying his manhood and we're happy! We're not serious! Come sit down and have some tea, let's have a gossip, we're only women after all!!!!!'

"On the Lipster you can expect to read youtube-riddled pieces about Madge, Wino, Lily and Eurovision one minute and Bon Iver, Super Furries and Indiana Jones the next" Brilliant! A posh perez hilton (no capitals, NEVER CAPITALS, the man is fictitious)! With a vagina! I can get my 'daily fix' of 'madge' and 'wino', because I'm a woman, and this is the kind of thing we like! Mike Diver and Sean Adams (DiS overlords) must be bloody brilliant with women, because they really do have them 'sussed'. The whole sordid affair was probably thought up on a drunken afternoon in the DiS office, when the remote control was lost and the satellite was busted so ITV was constantly playing, and suddenly, majestically, out of the pre-watershed reactionary ramblings of Jeremy Kyle (oooh, I love him, me. What a hunk!!!) came the Modern Voice Of Feminism And Petty Arguments About Men, Loose Women.

"Brilliant! This is just what we need. DiS is a testosterone magnet, we need pink, we need fluffy, we need something for The Women," cried Diver.
And to that, Adams replied, "It shall be called The Lipster. And it shall be brassy and sassy, because I heard Sarah Jessica Parker say those words in the movie and they sound apt. Go, now, Michael! I must review Johnny Foreigner's album again, giving it a higher score!"

The site screams 'HIPSTER HOUSEWIFE' - while Diver interviews Serious Music people (Primal Scream, Ratatat, Wild Beasts), Lipster gets the enviable exclusive of interviewing Kat Von D (famous boyfriend, naturally) and Gok Wan (fashion person, yeah? We're women, remember? That's what we do!?!?)*

"How much fun can you have on 900 calories?" asks the headline. Not much, apparently. Baked beans for every meal, leaving us gaunt. Oh, us women care a lot about staying thin, don't we? Oh, we are silly, aren't we? Just writing to inform, though, have to please the womanly masses. Though, does DiS have articles on erectile dysfunction? Articles relating to Men and Their Musical Needs, like gratuitous news features (with pictures, OBVIOUSLY) about Lily Allen looking 'buff' with her new pink hair are plentiful, however. It seems The Lipster and DiS are merely fingers on the same hand, both patronising - one is subtle and underhand, under the guise of jokey irreverence, the other, a step back in the struggle for the acceptance of women in music journalism, or indeed, any form of journalism. Ohhh, women, eh? We're only good for telly and food, after all. Brilliant.



*Bjork interview, though. That's quite nice.

Review: The Croydon Festival

Poor.

My friends who I saw were good, though.

The sound was AWFUL.

It rained, which wasn't so bad, everyone got free 'macs', then it didn't and it was sunny.

I didn't stick around for the Stereo MCs because they sounded rubbish and then anyway lots of people went to the pub so I went too.

I didn't see Superman Revenge Squad because when I went to his stage there was just bad 'community' based rap instead.

Worst thing I saw was a rapper who performed with the 'flutebox'er. Because it's not really smart to diss the Labours, Bushes, Conservatives and 'Liberals' of this world and 'represent' peace if yr next lyric happens to be condoning sexual assault.

Bring back De La Soul. Or put Lyanna Austin actually on the good stage where there should be good sound. Or Cellar Door because they were quite good.

x

Preview: The Croydon Festival

Stereo MCs and Finlay Quaye HEADLINE, not in that order.

Lots of my friendz are playing and going.

I have a really big blister.

I should be there.

x

Oh, LOL.

http://www.independentthinking.co.uk/Who/Associates/Tim+Benton/default.aspx

<3

Review - POBAW

Perks Of Being A Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky.

Oh, Stephen Chbosky. You wrote a passable account of teenage life in the early 1990s without too much intelligence or imagination and suddenly millions of awkward teenagers see your book as their Bible. Well done for perpetuating the MTV SEX DRUGS ROCK N' ROLL WEEZER BEVERLY HILLS pop-punk Charlie Ralph myth. It probably wasn't intentional, but constant references to The Smiths, Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana mean that POBAW is always going to be stuck in that 'young adult fiction' category, where it seems that authors can write complete shit about one-dimensional characters and get away with it in the name of 'growing up'. You were the literary equivalent of The Feeling - quite good, but Chris Moyles is a fan, so all are red-faced when the 'Sewn' 7" is found in one's record collection.
The cliches are nearly almost endless. Charlie, the chronically introverted narrator, writes for a fanzine, run by a feminist riot-grrrl. Chbosky is practically yelling 'IT'S 1992, PEOPLE. DIY PUNK IS SO HOT RIGHT NOW!!' It's too relevant to be endearing and too much like Catcher In The Rye to be interesting. Charlie isn't likeable enough to hold your attention. They all listen to music and get drunk and smoke pot and cry all the time. The best bit is when he takes LSD. It's Skins, but even worse.
There's a pretty girl he can't have and a gay guy and nightly screenings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's like the best teen movie ever. But it's still on that teen movie level. There's a lot of child abuse, though. You don't see much of that in Judd Apatow coming-of-age rom-coms.
Aforementioned molesting is the only real 'redeeming' quality (how strange) because it creates something that resembles depth in a book riddled with GAPING PLOT HOLES and other terrible things. The blurb is bad enough,
'Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dancefloor'. And then ; 'The world of first dates, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, where all you need is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.'
It's like something off Postsecret.com, which should be nice and intriguing and A Window Into Humanity, but it's a bit unsettling and unfortunate and makes you feel a bit sorry for a generation that thinks Charlie an emblem of youth.

Visually and aurally offensive in equal measure: writing as flaccid as a lit turd

Thank you, NME, for Tim Jonze's Lightning Bolt review. This was printed circa 2006, and I think I only have 4 editions from that year. Most of them have some sort of reasoning behind their longevity in my files: for instance, one has a full-page Two Gallants review, and this one has a Lightning Bolt review. Yes, a Lightning Bolt review! In (modern) NME! Of course, there's no time wasted in informing the unsuspecting member of the general public who's picked up this magazine that they're different. I'm not sure if it ranks up there with Gay Against You reviews which end "...but everyone else seemed to enjoy it", but it is inspirationally insipid. Apparently all their songs blend into one, and apparently wearing earplugs at (noise rock) gigs is like watching porn blindfolded, or masturbating under local anaesthetic. Thank latter day Guardian scribe Tim Jonze for these analogies. I seem to recall from other NMEs the frivolity of our Tim covering Glastonbury when there was no Glastonbury (reporting a feature story of cow and field related frolics) and dressing up as an emo kid (half the words in this post could be italicised, btw) only to realise he wasn't going to get picked on by drunks and subsequently get drunk himself. Yeah, take that, journalism! Where was Neil Kulkarni when Justice vs Simian's We Are Your Friends came out? Anyway, get some of this Lightning Bolt review down yr earholes. But don't tell Brian Chippendale.


























In case you cannae read it:

Tim Jonze
NME, 10 June 2006

Lightning Bolt,
The Luminaire, London
Sunday, May 28

Tense, nervous headache? Why not go and see The World's Scariest, Loudest Most Fucked-up Noise-rock Duo (TM). That'll cure it!

It's an hour before Lightning Bolt are due onstage and NME is suffering from a terrible migraine. Let us explain the ramifications of this. When we're having a migraine, even a tender embrace from NME's girlfriend feels like 17,000 stampeding woolly mammoths are raping my brain. And now we have to endure The World's Scariest, Loudest, Most Fucked-up Noise-rock Duo (TM). For what seems like about 17 weeks. Great.

Lightning Bolt seem to be on pretty frightening form tonight. They forget to put us on the guest list (scary!), set up their kit in the middle of the crowd (revolutionary!) and mutter something incomprehensible through their broken microphone (yikes!). Then, they open their set with 'Dracula Mountain'. Ha! Get the joke? As if anyone could actually tell what song they're playing - they all sound identical; like your innards are being sexually molested by the National Grid. It's a series of increasingly painful squeals and electroconvulsive therapy that somehow mutate themselves into one long, grotesque, punishing rhythm. If you could hear yourself think, you might say, "This is what The Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray' would have sounded like if they weren't such play-it-safe wusses."

You might also think how it must be pretty annoying being The World's Scariest, Loudest, Most Fucked-up Noise-rock Duo (TM) and having to play gigs for an audience politer than your average Keane gig. Honestly! Down in "the moshpit" people are nodding their heads and adjusting their thick-rimmed spectacles. Other people are wearing earplugs. Earplugs! Isn't that like watching porm while blindfolded? Or masturbating under local anaesthetic? Why on earth would you wear hearing protection to see a band whose only purpose is to deafen you?

Anyway, none of this really matters because, as Lightning Bolt continue to bash out their collection repulsive noises, the electric bolts of shredded noise start leaping from their guitar and drumkit and begin to remould NME's brain, removing the migraine bits and leaving the nice bits that think about stuff like ice-cream and Darjeeling tea in the process. And then the migraine completely evaporates! Which means that Lightning Bolt have actually sucked the pain directly out of our brain, fed it through their FX pedals and blasted our agony straight out across Kilburn High Road tube station. You certainly don't get that kind of thing with The Kooks. So we go outside and, hey, we're cured! Which means NME now has the brainspace to wonder: "Did we just see the future of subversive, mid-mangling noise? Or was it just two very strange men playing the same song over and over again very loudly for the benefit of some middle-class graphic design students?" And we just can't tell.

--


(Plenty of things you could comment on. For now - I've just downloaded iTunes and am setting about filling my iPod with The Fall. Said iPod is currently adorned with a sticker of Bulgarian footballer Daniel Borimov, circa World Cup 2008, because it was the best thing I could find. So... comment to follow later, on a review that misses the point of Lightning Bolt completely and shows an immense lack of preparation, yet does well to include some semblance of story - loud, the people are funny, I had a headache.)

Illo 4 Rillo

You should see my syndicated stuff!

(Sorry for the language. This was my old Physics book.)

Bride of Frankspencerstein; other treats

(L&C refers to 'Love & Caring' which I thought would be a neat name for this, probably the most haphazard pseudozine ever doodled)

'No Logo'? Shame.

Things I did when I should've been learning about learning. I chose to 'sap the joy' from my life instead. I'm not taking advice from a 35 year old who thinks it is Totally Fine and Okay to sport a quiff.

x

quite useful

A Selection Of Stuff From My Afternoon:

- Vegan recipes! Courtesy of an indie pop star!

- The Torah on VHS!

- A picture of John Malkovich's face that is cut to fit as a mask on my face!

- My notebook... the notebook that included 'Bride of Frankspencerstein' and the Tenacious D live review... has resurfaced. If we ever have another AGM (I have £3 which is enough for a train ticket, but not really 'cause if I screw up I will be screwed - next week I am a minute away from Oxford Circus tube stop as of 5pm, except Monday) then I can show you the WONDROUS second strip of Frankspencerstein, the GLORIOUS letters page and the HILARIOUS Nelly Furtado remix album review (as produced by "Timberland & Ragoo"). One whole page is devoted to "LINDA BARKER: NAKED (page 5)". It really is a marvellous notebook.