Pod of wails

Photek is difficult but rewarding. Angular and yet filled out with big bass. I cannot follow a Photek track end to end but that's how my head is, so I'm loving it.

The rain is in our street like a broad, fast river. It astonishes us that we have so much rain but there is not enough for us all to drink. The National Party had a dream that Australia would have a population of 50 million and would become a powerhouse in the world. That's the kind of narrow, emptyheaded nationalism that sells well here. I've never cared enough about being English to feel it but I suppose people's need to belong makes them want to belong to something big. The water stopped them in their tracks though. There isn't enough for 20 million and more would not be sustainable unless we all learn to drink seawater.

What goes on is straight ahead rock, which the Velvet Underground, despite their reputation for the esoteric, did better than most. I suppose that it's only in hindsight that it sounds straight ahead: VU created the idiom.

Sometimes, when you consider innovators, you have to consider whether the thing they made was bound to happen. I was thinking about potatoes and how wonderful they are. Without Columbus... well, that's not quite true. If Columbus had not found the Americas, someone would have. VU weren't the only experimental band of the late 1960s and one supposes that if it hadn't been them, it would have been someone else.

But perhaps if the English had found the Americas before the Spanish, or the French had, things would have developed differently. Would the difference in tone had there been no Columbus match the difference had there been no VU?

Witness are a great unnoticed band. Their sound is quintessentially American and they come from Wigan. Why do I say they sound American? I suppose because they do literate, carefully made alt.rock. It sounds like open spaces. It certainly doesn't sound like Wigan.

I am eating potato waffles. Junk food is warming on a chilly, wet day. Yes, we have them, even in the sunshine state. Listening to A Certain Ratio's Shack up takes me back to my teens. Potato waffles were a staple of my diet when I was living at home. My mum was not a cordon bleu cook but she made what we liked. ACR did funky quite well. Some say you have to be black to be funky but this is just a reprise of blacks got riddim for people who think that's a bit risque. Blacks do not got riddim, of course. I've seen a club full of blacks and not one of them could dance to save their lives. I should have video'd it for Mythbusters. I can't dance either. The advent of club culture and E was a blessing for me because nondancers needed only drop the pill and suddenly they were Travolta himself. With more gurning.

The Yellow Magic Orchestra were pioneers. I'm not sure what of though, because their leftfield mix of Jean Michel Jarre and Kraftwerk is not much echoed these days. Rydeen is a sweet melody though, but horribly dated now. Strangely, Kraftwerk are still fresh (Jarre never was). I don't think you can analyse what makes music timeless. It's quite different from writing, for which being dated is not a drawback: Austen and Dickens are still fantastic to read, even though no one could or would write that way today.

Yo La Tengo are my idea of a perfect pop band. I'm probably fonder of their alt.country stuff, such as Did I tell you, Autumn sweater or particularly Stockholm syndrome, but they have been consistent for years across a range of styles.

Sometimes you wonder, well, I wonder, why great bands like that never make it big. Of course, I'm too polite to think the truth of it: most people don't actually like music. It's just noise for them. Some people feel hurt when others don't share their loves. Not me. I only care that enough people love what I love that the people who make what I love keep making it. The rest of the world can go fuck itself.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:23 am