Annals Retentive: 2006

If art school has taught me anything (and i’m starting to wonder if it actually has) it’s that i hate nostalgia. Presumably because the majority of our tutors are around the age where they can remember (or, as the masturbatory drugs phrase puts it, not remember) the Sixties, new students are virtually on arrival reminded that we are all still in thrall to a decade that withered away nearly forty years ago. Our first lecture, for instance, was about said decade and how (this is a direct quote, or rather as close as i can get through the jumbled slices of paper and string in my tired mind, but the most important words are still intact) "a thing called magic still existed". We all, of course, live burdened with the post-modern condition that makes us believe the world will only get worse – it wouldn’t be a profound stretching of the imagination, i don’t think, to hear that this is part of the reason. At the start of this term, our first lecture was about Andy Warhol and those hep Factory cats, accompanied by slides of his numerous and thus quickly tedious portrait prints that have been rammed down our visual lugholes since deciding art would be a great subject to study at GCSE. It strikes me as perverse that, even given the reminiscent age of the staff, such a cynical and questioning subject as art can be so rose-tinted about any period of history, let alone a twentieth-century one. The sun shone every day, they say. The eyes of strangers were full of rainbows and hence everyone loved. All the unbettered ideas were being had. They nearly neglected to mention there was a war on.

[Edit: When Moldy Peaches first arrived in Britain, there was a large NME article centred around them written by one of New York’s most esteemed hacks (i can’t recall who) which basically said you limeys never got over punk. i was annoyed at this, more because of the way in which the article only talked about the band themselves when mentioning the rumour that they drank each other’s urine, but in hindsight it was a very accurate point. Here, in Britain, we haven’t got over punk and we haven’t got over the Sixties, and i doubt that it hasn’t made some sort of hindrance to progress in most areas of culture and society. With regards to music, The Rolling Stones had what i’ve heard was the biggest grossing tour of recent years and, although i much prefer the support of a live artist refusing to die to the over-reverence of a dead artist you can’t remember living, i can’t help but want that accolade to have gone to someone else.]

i told one of my tutors this – one who, because of her lesser age, pines more for the days of long black overcoats, Morrissey’s credibility and when Nick Cave was a smackhead – and pointed out that maybe i’m just suffering from nostalgia envy. This is a particularly good point, especially when pondering what the ‘Noughties’ (bleurgh) will be remembered for. Uhm, Iraq. Uhm, the internet. Uhm, i’m struggling here. We’ve been living on revivals for too long now, as proven by the wealth of movements prefixed by ‘new’ – New Wave of New Wave, New Rock Revolution, New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, Nu Metal, New Acoustic Movement and so on. The last reasonably original cultural movement i can think of was rave (grunge was an almost onomatopoeic regurgitation of a punk/college rock hybrid, Britpop was British Invasion Mark 2 only not as successful etc.), and now that even that has been re-hashed as New Rave it’s difficult to know where to go next.

But, then again, i disagree with nostalgia on principle as it doesn’t let us learn from our mistakes. Which is why, dear reader, i’m worried i’m suffering from it myself. With regards to music, i go along with Our John’s view that the best ever year for music is the one you’re in now, but it doesn’t seem quite right to let people believe what i’ve just written up there, especially myself, when i know that so much (for want of a better phrase) good stuff has gone largely unnoticed. So, in an attempt to combat this, i will ramble on at great length in a vastly self-indulgent manner about the years i begrudgingly admit that i remember most fondly, i.e. all the ones that occurred this side of the Millennium, with accompanying songs. Agreed? Agreed.

Baby steps first, as i work my way backwards, starting with 2006. Ah, those were the days! The crazy fashions we wore! The zany crazes we followed! The long hot summer evenings! Etc.! It feels quite fitting starting with this one, not only because it was so recent that a lot of our weblog brethren are still reflecting on it, but also because it was, if i’m being quite frank, one of my least favourite years on record, largely made sweeter by a relatively limited yet very VERY wonderful list of things:

1) The co-creator of this blog
2) My father and his lover’s wedding
3) Park Farm Shop
4) We Are The Pipettes*

But as my memories are basically formulated by or around songs, i’ll just have to post you a few of them.



Now – The Incase

i should admit that the reason i’ve even heard of Now, even though they’re on the excellent Pickled Egg Records, is that the keyboard player used to be my art lecturer at Arts Institute Bournemouth. Alas i can’t remember much of the content of these lectures, other than one was about that controversial United Colours of Benetton advertising campaign and that she’d describe everything she didn’t like as “chronic”, but rather refreshingly for an art lecturer she was actually willing to stay behind afterwards and talk to you more about art. i think we had a debate about Martin Creed once and a reasonably lengthy talk about the use of contemporary artwork by Manic Street Preachers. What i remember more, though, is being sat by the radio at 2.55am one morning listening to Radio 1’s sadly missed (by me) magazine show OneWorld and, specifically, their Pickled Egg special where, because the show finished at three and they’d already played the early Go! Team single they previously said they didn’t have time for, i assumed i’d missed their airing of a Now track. But, rather spectacularly the show finished on this, meaning that those clattering clangs at the end segued straight into the next programme. i miss radio like that. Is that a tear forming?



The Schla La Las – Hot As Possible

This is my favourite Schla’s track so far, particularly as it sounds a bit like ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’ by The Cars only, y’know, good. i first saw Schla La Las in 2005 but i met most of them when stumbling into a marquee tired and confused on the Sunday night at Truck. Unbeknown to me, George Schla was the same as George who writes for Drowned In Sound and so we had something to talk about pretty quickly. After a while George admitted that after a few drinks she desperately needed the toilet and yet, as any glam camper knows, the cubicles on the third night of any festival are a no-go area – as i had discovered earlier that evening when my good friend Jonathan found (and there isn’t really any way of skirting around this i’m afraid) a footlong turd in the sink. Anyway, in an act of (in hindsight, quite laughable) gallantry i said i’d stand at the wooded perimeter of the festival site, keep guard to make sure nobody asks her what the hell she’s up to and whistle loudly with my eyes closed while nature took its course. On the way there though, we were stopped by a reasonably inebriated reveller who seemed to know who George was. A few moments later they asked, “where are you off to then?”
“Oh”, said George, “well we’re going to the woods just over there. I’m just off to…you know…powder my nose.”
“Ah, I see”, said our acquaintance, giving both of us a knowing look. “Well, you’re welcome to do it in my tent if you want.”
All i could do was stand there and surpress my laughter as George’s face turned to a picture of horrified bemusement, thinking that a passer-by had just quite sincerely offered her the chance to urinate in their tent, whereas they obviously thought that powdering our noses meant we were off to do a line of coke together.



Yaporigami - Yamato

Before Adaadat released their really-quite-good-you-know compilation Trade & Distribution Almanac Volume III i’d not been aware of Yaporigami and, who knows, may even have been in a pub at the same time as him/her without realising it. As far as i’m aware, T&DAVIII is the only compilation i’ve ever awarded ten stars (unless you count ‘Songbook’ which, considering its near-biblical status in my head, i don’t).



Easy Star All Stars featuring Morgan Heritage - Electioneering

Who would have thought that a reggae tribute to OK Computer would not only work but still be just as enjoyable several plays later? Most feedback i got about Easy Star’s previous release, Dub Side Of The Moon, was that it was astounding on the first listen but tiresome on the second. Also, Radiodread is only one of two reggae-based band puns i’ve heard yet it is definitely the worst. Then again, the other one is Jah Division.



Coco Electrik – Apple Pie (Skylab remix)

Let’s end tonight on my favourite remix of last year, even though the numerous remixes of 'Atlantis To Interzone' gave it a fair bit of competition (especially as the Klaxons remixes made a fairly poor song sound interesting, whereas the remix of Miss Anne Booty simply made quite a sedate song sound like it’d happily chisel your face off). i don’t know why Coco Electrik hasn’t snatched Goldfrapp’s crown and isn’t shifting more units than that last woeful Madonna rekkid did. She’s already recorded ‘Cuts and Lies’ with Acoustic Ladyland, and although i prefer it when they’re doing all that that skronk-jazz-noise that irritated Jools Holland, i won’t begrudge them the chance at sultriness. In terms of the dancefloor fitted somewhere between my mind and my ass, though, Skylab’s rendering off ‘Apple Pie’ obliterated all.

However, if you’re interested, single of the year for me was ‘Fashion Parade’.

*(Sorry i was mildly distracted by the new video for ‘ABC’.)