preston

My Bests of 2011

2011-12-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

So... I enjoyed doing this last year so even though I am criminally neglectful of my blog I thought I'd do it again...

Toro y Moi- Underneath the Pine

Panda Bear- Tomboy

Girls- Father, Son and holy Ghost

Kurt Vile- Smoke Ring for my Halo

Ford and Lopatin- Channel Pressure

Atlas Sound- Parallax

Danny Brown- XXX

Das Racist- Relax

Washed Out- Within and Without

EMA- Past Life Martyred Saints

...Oh and Watch the Throne was pretty ridic too.

D8s

2011-07-28T03:57:00.000-07:00

1/12/11 Leeds - Cockpit
2/12/11 Manchester - Club Academy
3/12/11 Aberdeen - Lemon Tree
4/12/11 Glasgow - King Tuts
6/12/11 Newcastle - Academy2
7/12/11 Nottingham - Rock City Basement
9/12/11 Birmingham - Academy2
10/12/11 Bristol - Thekla
11/12/11 Portsmouth - Wedgewood Rooms
12/12/11 Falmouth - Princess Pavillion
14/12/11 London - Islington Academy
15/12/11 Southend Chinnerys

Quarter Life Crisis

2011-07-09T07:34:00.001-07:00

Life is like the first Super Mario game; you can’t go back. But the further I awkwardly settle into adult life, the more I view my past achievements with a kind of dreamy, wide-eyed nostalgia. I’m enjoying myself now but the successes that I achieve in the studio do nothing to feed my hungry ego. I considered a side/vanity project but I am working long hours and I couldn’t afford it the time to make it really great. I thought about just growing up and getting over it but that niggling poke-in-the-brain wouldn’t relent. So B-Unique (my publishers and friends for the last eight years) suggested I do a few last Ordinary Boys shows while I was still in my twenties to give the band a proper burial. At first it seemed absurd. I don’t listen to the same music that I did when the band was active, I haven’t performed live for five years or so and it seemed unlikely that anyone would even want to see us after all this time… But then I remembered what it was like to play those early Ordinary Boys songs and nothing else seemed to matter!
I have made the SpinalTap-esque phone calls trying to rally the others and hopefully I can get most of the boys together. There is even some talk of some Japanese festivals. It is so easy to mindlessly and habitually whizz through life without savouring the fun times. These few shows, should they happen, will be a chance to play some shows for no reason beyond the fun of playing. I want to play mainly the first record and some b-sides and maybe some rougher, sweatier versions of some of the singles. I just need something loud and fast in my life and I want to do it before I turn 30 next year. Even writing this blog is getting my heart racing in anticipation! Hopefully see you in the mosh pit!

Smokes are for Losers

2010-12-30T22:46:00.000-08:00

Smoke alarms have been silently sounding-off. The sour smell of stale tobacco on sweater sleeves. The hacking cough that wakes me every morning. The one that did it was seeing the terror with which Battlecat (see blog entry entitled Kitty Porn) recoiled from any cigarette smoke that wafted his way. It seemed like the smart Darwinian option. I read a self-help-quit-smoking-in-ten-easy-steps book, which transpired to be one of the most depressingly dull, badly written books I have ever read (I’m not quite sure what I was expecting). The success in the book’s technique is essentially inciting a feeling of such resentment for having endured such tedium for two hundred pages that you feel obliged to at least have a stab. To put your money (/no cigarettes) where your mouth is.
I think just as effective would be to read a book that you may actually enjoy (may I recommend Roberto Bolaño’s ‘The Savage Detectives’) and just glance at these key bullet points. It stinks. Your clothes and car will stink. Your breath will stink. Girls won’t want to kiss you. If they do they will probably be thinking ‘this guy stinks’. It is anti-social. I work in a nice warm studio. We light candles and record pop songs and hang out and it’s fucking great. Then every half an hour I stand in the rain and the wind alone for ten minutes (American Spirits last longer than Marlboro’s). It’s banned from anywhere fun. The days of dancing (probably to At The Drive-in) in a club with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other are sadly no more. It’s absurdly expensive. It’s so easy and very sensible for the government to tax as much as they want on something that costs them so much in hospital bills… which brings me to the last point. It kills you. It fucking kills you. It gives you cancer and then it fucking kills you. KILLS YOU. KILLS YOU!! KILLS YOU FUCKING DEAD WITH CANCER!!
I began to convince myself that smoking somehow defined me. That it was part of my personal brand. That it sent out the right ‘I don’t give a fuck’ messages. Well I guess I do give a fuck, and the older I get, the more the image of what it is to be a smoker morphs into something I don’t want to be. Whereas I saw myself as James Dean or Hunter S. Thompson the reality is nearer to that frail, yellow-fingered, stinking old geezer coughing up rubbery pellets of phlegm, standing in the rain outside the pub and that is something I never want to be. I enjoyED smoking but I also enjoy smelling nice, my friends, my money and being alive!

In Case Anyone Wondered, My Albums of 2010 Are the Same as Everyone Elses

2010-12-23T00:39:00.000-08:00

Toro Y Moi- Causers of This
Suckers- Wild Smile
Ariel Pink- Before Today
Das Racist- Shut Up, Dude
Diamond Rings- Special Affections
Girls- Broken Dreams Club
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All- Radical
Twin Shadow- Forget
Health- Disco2
Chromatics- In the City
Ceo- White Magic
Beach House- Teen Deam
Small Black- New Chain
Curren$y- Pilot Talk
oOoOO- oOoOO
Shit Robot- Cradle to the Rave
Delorean- Subiza
Aeroplane- We Can’t Fly
Tanlines- Volume One
S∆lem- King Night
Free Energy- Stuck on Nothing
Teengirl Fantasy- 7am
Theophilus London- This Charming Mixtape
Games- That We Can Play
Big KRIT- Wuz Here

… And yes, Kanye’s album is very good.

Morrissey: A public unapology

2010-12-03T04:39:00.000-08:00

Teenagers are rarely subtle in the ways they emulate their heroes. This is never more apparent than when casting a glaze along the queue at a Morrissey gig. My teenage Morrissey impression lasted up until my band (named after a Morrissey song) started releasing (Smiths-a-like) records. Having dropped my unnecessary Christian name to be more like Steven Patrick and growing a proud quiff people began to notice my obsession and it was deemed as totally inappropriate behaviour for the singer in a band. I stuffed contact lenses in my eyes and demolished my quiff, flattening my fringe over my forehead. If there is an irony to be found in being uncomfortable with having to avoid copy-catting the world most notorious misfit then I see it only now. Now, when my hair is at it’s dizzying highest. Yet now, when my career is writing pop songs.

Morrissey has a lyrical style that speaks so directly to the listener that he becomes a kind of surrogate father figure. At once both laugh-out-loud funny and crushingly sad. Of course you already know this, and as I race through phases and trends in music (which is something I swore I would never do) I know that I can always return home to Morrissey. Morrissey I love you and I don’t care who knows it!!

The XX

2010-10-05T03:58:00.001-07:00

Chantelle is an astonishing girl. She is stunning. She is enchanting. She is entertaining. She is also my ex-wife. It is this final attribute, which makes me feel privileged to call her a friend and nothing more. There are very real reasons why we got divorced all those years ago and neither of us are strong enough to go through that again. It hurts to have real emotions trivialised and that is why I am clarifying this for anyone who is interested. I wish I could give big brother viewers the fairytale ending they wanted but, to me, this friendship is a post-modern, 21st century ‘happily ever after’.
I have been saying precisely this for the past month and if I was ever slightly diplomatic it was to spare the feelings of the girl who I still care very much for. Obviously tabloid magazines don’t always take human emotion into consideration when fabricating their fantastical stories and I don’t direct any anger at them, but it is nonetheless upsetting. So, before feelings are further trampled, I graciously hand this crooked crown to Josie and John James and feel truly lucky to have had so many insane/absurd/breathtaking/irreplaceable experiences and to walk away with a one-of-a-kind friend-for-life.

Wikipedia Brown

2010-10-03T10:12:00.001-07:00

A Twice in a Lifetime Opportunity

2010-08-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

If you are reading this then it is already too late. But what five years ago would have been a career-suicide note, I hope this time, can be something in the way of an explanation. I am writing to any of my friends and family who now have their faces in their hands and are slugging on bottles of whisky, silently mouthing the word ‘why?’ between gulps.

Imagine the scenario:

A boy is at the dizzying crossroads in his life where he can’t work out where the path starts that leads to adulthood/family/normality. He gets a surprise record deal for a band that was only ever intended to be a leisure pursuit; A diversion. After much hard work, that band becomes successful. While pausing to look for the path his phone rings. ‘Of course I will go on your reality TV show’ he is overheard replying… OK, this third person shit is even starting to irritate me and I’m the one pushing the keys. The main sway is that I always felt I was adapting to a professional life that was sucking me with it.

I got married and the backlash caused me to become very defensive, which is a hugely unattractive trait and one comes across as bratty and arrogant in overcompensation. The marriage… right… it honestly seemed like a normal thing to do in the mad, Mickey-mouse world that we had built around us. We loved each other, hated to be apart, and to a certain extent never wanted the Disney-princess-castle to crumble. In all honesty I am second - guessing because, in reality, I have no clue what the fuck I was thinking.

I finally found the path but in some ways it was too late. I still feel as though I carry the ghost of my youth with me. Whenever I work with a new artist I smile and make a joke but the ghost walks off Never Mind the Buzzcocks or dresses up in an ill-informed mod-revivalist costume. Genuinely my primary reason for walking up those stairs is because I had the (first) time of my life in that house, but I also want to exorcise that snotty little ghost and let people see the adult that has replaced him. I have worked so hard to build myself a life that I love, a career that I love, (a cat that I love) and for the first time in my life I am happy with who I am. I just want everyone else to be happy for me and with me!

Anyway this isn’t all about me. It’s about Ahmed, Shabnam, Bubbles and whomever else I find myself sharing bathwater with. I used to feel the need to disguise my compulsive obsession for Big Brother behind a veil of excuses. Whether it is a post-modern study of social Darwinism or an excuse to look at boobies it undeniably has something to teach in the way of tolerance and I can’t wait make the best mistake again!

2010-08-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Life Waited

2010-08-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

This is a brief life-update for anyone who may have been wondering. It is a cathartic double-underline scrawl on my quest for success on the other side of the wizard’s curtain. After going back to school to finish my studies in music production, followed by a year’s apprenticeship in a studio, I have started to get some really exciting cuts as a songwriter. These have already led to bigger and better writing sessions and the momentum itself has begun to give me the sense of being an authentic and relevant member of society. Battlecat and I couldn’t be happier in the flat in Brighton. I drive my 2cv to London everyday, roof down weather permitting, work on music, then return to the awesome (if not perhaps mildly tragic) bachelor evening of pizza, a bottle of red wine and a 1970’s horror/exploitation VHS. OK… perhaps that isn’t everybody’s dream life, but it’s mine!

I feel as though I have found a secret way of keeping the wolf from the door while still making a new song everyday. I started a production company… I may even finish my novel one-day. I still have plans to try my hand at a solo record (I broke both my elbows half-way through promoting my first solo single =[) but for now I have a spring in my step and music in my head. I can’t think of much else I really need.

Four AM FML

2010-05-15T00:53:00.000-07:00

The insomnia of my younger years has returned. Inverted. I tuck myself in at night and, before I can snuggle up with my bedfellow (a stuffed ‘Red’ from Fraggle Rock) and absorb the simple ecstasy of duvet cuddles, I am dreaming. I have had reports that sleep sees me with a stupid smile resting smugly on my face, which I absolutely believe. I am an avid dreamer of vivid dreams. I would never be so hippyish as to suggest that dreams hold any great meaning. I see them more as natures cleansing entertainment. Fantasy for when life is dull. However lately the show-times have changed and I wake with a jolt at four am, just when the morning light is bleaching the night, slowly that it seems as if it hopes the transition will go unnoticed. But I notice.

There is never a good time to be up at four am will the possible exception of a mad all night love-in but even then I imagine I would be a wheezing mess about ready for some post coital hugs. Four am feels seedy and as unwelcoming as it is unwelcome. As soon as my brain acknowledges alertness, it starts to fire up like a PC. The MS DOS start-up screen blinks into action and, like the theme tune of some forgotten soap opera, my brain plays an ironically chirpy jingle. If I concentrate I can hear the buzzing of my mind as it prepares to recklessly steer my train of thought in it’s favorite of my worst directions.

To ease me in the first stop we will usually visit is immediate existential panic. This begins with my brain reminding me that my boiler is broken or that I have a gas bill to pay and then the train takes that information in its already cluttered carriage and veers towards wondering what I am doing with my life. This leads on to a tour of every decision I have ever made and a list of potentially superior options that I didn’t take. By this time my inner monologue is so clear, I am practically speaking aloud as I squint my eyes hard shut wishing for sleep to return. I start to make wild plans to pack a bag and move to San Francisco or to get a job in the Levis store in Churchill Square shopping centre.

At around six thirty I succumb to the torturous persona living in my head and stumble upstairs to watch cartoons or read a book. As the sun lights up my flat, my various souvenirs from a life of travelling present themselves to me. The huge papier-mâché Day of the Dead skull that I somehow safely brought home from Mexico after taking a spontaneous adventure with a girl I had just met. Beads that were give to me in Benin by a voodoo priest. Pictures of me on the Jersey shore with my best friends. I then notice my Wurlitzer and my guitar and marvel at the fact that I have managed to reach twenty-eight making a living, sometimes well, from music. Transitional periods in life throw you totally off balance. The path you were so carefully treading reaches a broken bridge. And as I make the transition from performer to songwriter and leave more and more of the celebrity culture amongst which I felt so uncomfortable behind, I am scared. But mainly at four am.

The excitement of the unknown is exhilarating in the clarity of daylight. Moving my career towards songwriting is risky. I think I am a really strong songwriterbut it is an industry where talent in not necessarily rewarded with success and sucess often comes to those with more luck than talent. So during one of my four am FML sessions I made the decision to carry on down the path that I was on seven years ago, before all this silliness got in the way. In three years if I am not vomiting money as a songwriter, I will be a fully trained, legitimate music teacher with seven bizarre years worth of memories, which will eventually fade like dreams. And as I lay in bed, hopefully next to a beautiful wife, preferably my own, after a hard day of teaching kids about minims and canons I am sure something else will boot up the hard drive in my head just as the clock ticks four am.

LDR Survival Guide

2010-04-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

I have a lunch date at dinnertime. I will light the tall candles in my silver candelabra and tie an oxford bow on my skinny Dior tie. The meal, having been previously arranged, is also being prepared four thousand miles away, with the same conditioned reflex. I will pull on the lapels of my dinner jacket forgoing the trousers in favour of grey tracksuit bottoms or perhaps just a pair of well-worn Y-fronts. As my date flickers onto the screen like the onboard computer beauty from a nineteen-seventies SciFi fantasy I will hide my bare legs from the tiny peephole hidden in the screen of my laptop.

For the last two and a half years I have been the willing victim of a long distance relationship. It started when I naively thought that life would wait for love and, having spent all of my money on shuttle-runs to Philadelphia, I finally see how wrong I was. This may seem horribly unromantic but I also learned that when you find someone who you genuinely think is super-double-awesome then stability and a (however forced and against ones nature) sense of realism is necessary to ensure longevity. Having also had the clarity that lies at the far end of a colossal failure of a marriage I learned a lot about life and love. Essentially don’t fall in love when you are full of alcohol/ prozac/ sleeping pills/ the hollow praise of fickle glossy magazines (!).

You truly cannot help who you fall in love with blah blah however the true danger lies in who you try not to fall in love with. My G/F and I spent the first few months of our relationship in a blissful haze. I was living in Philadelphia when we first met and I assured her that it was a good idea for me to whisk her off to Mexico where our love was confirmed. Then Berlin, France, hotels in New York… finally we settled in Brighton for an idyllic spell of driving the 2cv with the roof down and taking care of the cat. We were a happy little family until she checked her Visa and I checked my wallet. Alas, they both agreed that she and I would sign ourselves up to the Long Distance Relationship Club. And so now, years later I find myself cutting polenta fries and offering them up to the brilliant glare of my MacBook.

I am historically completely dependent. I would forget to eat and drift into existential crisis if anyone were ever brazen enough to leave me with my thoughts for more than a few hours. The first rule of the Long Distance Relationship Club is to learn to adapt. Find things you enjoy about your own company. I, for instance, laugh at all my jokes. I share my own political beliefs despite often disagreeing on religion. I am the only one who shares my passion for the films of Stuart Gordon and feels crushing nostalgia for the music of Algebra One (melodic hardcore band from the late nineties). It helps to take inventory of new music by the ancient and sacred medium of the mix-tape. My only means of transferring vinyl to love memento is an old record/ cassette player which gives every mix-tape a classic eighties Brat-Pack feel. I cannot understand why couples reject the mix-tape after the first few weeks of a relationship. If you have a sweeping romantic gesture to make then why not call upon Phil Spector and Tom Waites who have, no doubt, put it more poetically that you ever could and scored it to music. These mix-tape exchanges also serve to remind me that my G/F is much cooler than I could ever hope to be.

I relish in reinstating the first-date nerves that arise after a long period apart. Our tenth first kiss, carefully choosing my outfit despite being two and a half years deep into a relationship. When immigration laws snatch her away from me is when the gaping whole in my life reminds me why I need her. Couples don’t talk as much as they should. They may share their thoughts about gas bills and state a preference over which movie to watch but being forced to fill a daily email or a weekly letter is an unforgiving compatibility check. As I write this the morning has almost made its way across the Atlantic, the second-hand dawn spilling into her Philadelphia street, her inbox cluttered with the love letters of a couple on the rise and a recipe for the dinner that she will have for lunch.

Revenge of a Nerd

2010-02-24T05:10:00.000-08:00

There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you. My name is Samuel Dylan Murray Preston and I am a geek. While my pre-teen peers were awkwardly fingering girls in the alley behind the Spar on Ham Road, I was awkwardly fingering the fret-board of a hand-me-down acoustic guitar and watching the Dark Crystal. I certainly groped enough boobage and rummaged around in enough young vaginas to satisfy a healthy sexual curiosity but I have grown into an adult who balances sex with episodes of Battlestar Galactica and the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft. I struggle to defend myself for having spent my life thus far desperately covering signs of nerdery behind an unconvincing swagger and dropped ‘H’s but I am consciously putting an end to all that.

Next time you hear an interview with Mike Skinner et al. please remember this; In order to cultivate the skills necessary to competently write and perform music and lyrics one must sacrifice some of the glue sniffing orgies (I’m pretty sure that’s what kids get up to) in order to spend thousands of hours sitting quietly in a darkened room mulling existentially whilst studying chord shapes and generally feeling like you don’t fit in. The reason that Rock Stars have such a nihilistic reputation is because they are busy compensating for the sex and drugs that they missed out on in their teenage years. Years they were busy analysing Beach Boys harmonies and learning twenty inversions of the same guitar chord. Time spent alone by no means guarantees an interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy but it they seem to be somehow fundamentally entwined.

Now you know my dirty secret let me tell you how I put it to daily use. When I am lying in bed my train of thought will often steam off in dark, unwanted directions. I will consciously begin to piece together a Sci-Fi fantasy world so alien and mystical that there is no way that my accountant could invade. I am so adept at this skill now that it has become as immersive as Avatar minus the terrible plot and characters. I walk around in my make-believe setting, hanging out with weird goblins, until I am worn out and fall asleep (probably under a tree with giant purple, hand-shaped leaves). I told you I was a geek.

It’s frustrating that imagination and a respect for the imaginations of others has such a fracking (nerd joke) stigma around it. I am not fat or staggeringly ugly and I don’t sweat more than I should. I have friends that I love very much. I jog. I DJ. I wear nice clothes. I do not dress up as an Orc at the weekends and re-enact battles from World of Warcraft. However, I refuse to let go of the child-like ability to become lost in imaginary worlds. I think Science Fiction exercises the appropriate glands to keep that sense of wonder alive. I wish someone had told me when I was a youngling (Star Wars reference) that being cool and popular in school pretty much guarantees becoming a tedious adult. If I had known that then I would have happily been away with the faeries (but not the ones in The Labyrinth that bite) rather than pretending to like things I hate and hiding my love for music and puppets and all the other weird shit that is undeniably wonderful! May the force be with you.

How Do You Sleep?

2010-01-25T03:24:00.000-08:00

I write this as a warning. I write this at three o’clock in the morning, my brain humming with activity, up from jet lag. Previously I would have swallowed a handful of little white pills and waited for that comforting glaze to seep over my body, from the feet upwards, and envelope me in a cloud of nothingness. The worries; money worries, relationship worries, career worries, were all totalled by the tsunami of static that washed through my brain every night; every night for years. Sleeping pills and anti-depressants destroyed relationships, sent my life in uncomfortable directions and added an apathetic flippancy to my consciousness. While staring at the ceiling tonight I have already thought of an ending to my novel, made important relationship decisions and decided to take a screen-printing class (this one probably won’t happen but I have been up for ages). Worries are only precursors to miserable events if you ignore them by gobbling downers every night.

An addiction is infuriating in that it won’t listen to reason. No matter how many times I woke up in pools of blood on the bathroom floor having not made it to bed. The embarrassment of having to explain to the doctor as he stitched up the tears in my skin that I didn’t remember anything. Still my hand reached for those pills every night. I would make promises to girlfriends at the end of their tethers and would be horrified by my own creeping and lying. Anything to get the drugs. The sleeping pill I would take was called Zolpidem (Ambien in the U.S.) and I would take up to 70mg a night. A little research shows me that people overdose on less.

I initiated myself into the world of the chemically assisted through what I imagine is a well-trodden route. I had been taking Prozac since I was a teenager which certainly affected my views on prescription drugs and I would persuade my G.P. to send some Diazepam’s my way as a Sunday morning normaliser. Then towards the end of my teenage years record deals, tours, trips to L.A. and Japan and a misguided sense of Rock’n’Roll nihilism persuaded a guilty habit to become a regular life choice.

The stories that exist from those days at first seem predictably funny; Inappropriate nudity of aeroplanes, smashed hotel rooms etc. etc. but it’s terrifying to not have any memory of any of it and it’s humiliating to be seen as an uncontrollable (clichéd) lunatic when all I really wanted was some stability and a cup of nettle and peppermint tea in the evenings. I am sure the numbness to consequence is to blame for some of the more bizarre decisions that I have made in my life and for that I am not sure whether to be grateful or regretful. I certainly wouldn’t have left university to pursue music or agreed to do Big Brother… I hate to say it but I wonder if I would have gotten married to a near stranger however smitten we thought we were.

Anyway. So here I am free of the sleeping pills and on the verge of giggling with delight at the fact. I can, for the first time in so many years, see the expanse of my life ready to be unrolled in front of me. All I can think is terribly sensible and grown-up thoughts of exciting (in that grown-up, sensible, slightly boring but in a good way) career paths that I could take. I am perfecting my studio techniques, Fuck! I am on my way to becoming a skilled labourer. I even went back to school. And my writing, music and art mirror’s this newfound clarity. I have myriad projects in their infancy and each one is a different route away from the WWF-wrester choke-hold pin-down that sleeping pills had me in. Look out prudence, here I come!!

G.S.O.H.B.T.W.

2010-01-05T07:13:00.000-08:00

Do you want to know the secret to a good relationship from someone who knows? Trust? Nope. Physical attraction? N’uh uh. Strong communication. Hell no! The secret to a loving companionship is common pop-culture references. There is nothing I find more attractive than holding a conversation about teen-prostitute ‘Tiny’ from the 1984 Seattle documentary Streetwise or discussing favourite characters from Jayce and the Wheeled warriors the French/ Japanese sci-fi cartoon (my vote goes to Saw Boss in his humanoid form). These things define us and if someone can’t relate to the life lessons I learnt from the Dark Crystal then the chances are they can’t relate to me.

Beginning at the beginning; the things we share from childhood (Captain Planet, Alex Mack, Zelda, Point Horror) often help shape our moral compasses or at least world view and provide us with the sense of a shared upbringing. Becoming nostalgic about them (Were-Bears, Teddy Ruxpin, David the Gnome, Boglins) becomes another tool in the regression back into a child-like state that goes beyond the usual spoon feeding and pawing that couples enjoy so much. This nostalgia is so powerful because of the huge investment that we, as children, make in cartoons (The Mysterious Cities of Gold, Dogtanian and the Three Muskerhounds) and imaginary worlds that we create assisted by plastic figures (He-Man, M.A.S.K., The Real Ghostbusters).

Nothing makes my heart flutter more than knowing that the mistakes I made in my early teens (Sublime, Nose Piercing, Reel Big Fish) were made, completely independently, by someone who I could now duet the whole of No Fronts by Dog Eat Dog with. Shared pop-culture references suggest that, not only do you get on now but you would have gotten on in 1996. I find great comfort in that even if I no longer wear my hair in braids. Shared embarrassment is a great bonder! The music, books, films, video games et al. we consume say so much about us and even if I don’t choose to put my Smashmouth record on, the fact that I once did has shaped me.

In the internet-age it is now fantastically easy to immerse yourself in the nichest of niches. Sub-sub-sub-sub-genres of music and cinema have scattered the Townie vs. Grunger divide of my school years into barely distinguishable pockets. I only just found out that a few of the bands I have been listening to recently (Washed Out, Best Coast, Neon Indian) belong to a genre that someone somewhere has classified ‘Glo-Fi’. Whatever… I just like it. It is worlds apart from the mail order punk catalogues in the back of fanzines that a seventeen year old me would obsess over. Studied and researched pop-culture is, of course, very important to me and truthfully what a lot of my relationships with friends and ‘other’ revolve around. I am a borderline obsessive blog trawler but nothing get’s my mojo working more than that knowing nod of recognition when I reference something that I thought I was the only one who remembered.

Mirrors

2009-10-14T09:20:00.001-07:00

Ue o Muite Aruko by Preston (Sakamoto Kyu cover)

2009-10-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

Quite Big in Japan

2009-09-23T11:13:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to recall memories of Japan. As I labour to chronolise the events of my eight (or was it nine) visits between 2004 and 2007 my conscious only throws me abstract images and feelings of confused excitement. I would wander from interview to sold-out gig in a jet-lagged Valium haze struggling to accept that all this good fortune could be smiling in the direction of me and my funny little band. Nothing had happened for us in England. We were still (very much enjoying) touring the conveyor-belt of shit-hole venues with sweaty walls with the house lights up but, somehow, our album had managed to sneak its way to the top of the Japanese charts. A cliché of Spinal Tap proportions! Of course the cliché is that it only happens to the very worst bands but that is not for me to comment on and when the call came through I really didn’t care.

After a twelve-hour Ambien coma at 40,000 feet, we boarded a mini-van for the hotel. The roads seemed to weave like rollercoaster tracks amongst the skyscrapers and the horizon was twisted with industrial tubes and towers. The whole city was stamped with neon advertisements and posters of western celebrities secretly endorsing mysterious products. I can remember feeling tearful with excitement as we parked up outside the Shibuya Excel Hotel. All four of us were winded by what greeted us in the hotel lobby. Fans. Real, live, fans. Trying hard to appear as though this sort of thing happened all the time I revelled in signing everything they presented. They gave us gifts and sweets and adorable letters and asked about my lyrics and our clothes. I began to understand why Britney Spears would place such emphasis on letting her fans knew she loved them at every opportunity. For me it was love at first sight. Our Japanese guides, having checked us into our rooms, came over to us and proceeded to shoo our fans away, swatting them like flies with the hotel documents. Somewhat taken aback we retired to our rooms on the fortieth floor and independently spent that night staring at flocks of pedestrians washing like waves across the Shibuya crossing.

There is a radio station in Japan that exclusively plays the Beatles. This is a twenty-four hour service and sound-tracked every trip I took. Most of the hotel rooms would only have one speaker which meant most of the early stereo Beatles records would be limited to Paul singing and playing bass, maybe a little tambourine. Whoever had the room next door would get John and George. It was such an intimate way to rediscover those records in a land where Beatlemania seemed as maniacal as ever. After that first sleepless night and a delicious, if unexpected, breakfast of rice and grilled fish I was presented with my itinerary. Every minute of the day was accounted for from eight a.m. until midnight. The interviews were amongst the most gruelling therapy sessions I have ever undertaken. I remember on one occasion being asked to describe my soul in a word. But the questions were generally so cleverly researched and a joy to answer. The gigs were heaving and the venues were slick and shiny. The food was heavenly. The sake flowed like wine. A week later we came home.

I can’t remember landing in England. I imagine it was probably raining. I can remember unpacking the ornate fans and decorations from my bag and instantly transforming my room into an oriental zen paradise. I started reading solely Japanese literature (Mishima Yukio being a firm favourite), listening to Plus-tech Squeezebox and Capsule as well as Japanese classics like Sakamoto Kyu. I bought Yoshitomo Nara and Murakami Takashi prints for my bedroom and grew a tiny Japanese garden at the foot of my bed. I started learning how to read and speak Japanese and when I had a day off I would spend it walking around my flat in my kimono. I am under-exaggerating so as not to appear obsessive. I cried when I found out that the next Japan trip was imminent.

I arranged to travel a few days early on my own so that I could see the Studio Ghibli museum and the most fucked up aquarium imaginable (they have see-through fish). I had made a good friend at the record label on my previous visit and she let me stay at her suburban Tokyo (possibly an oxymoron) apartment where I could put my Japanese obsession in practise as she grilled me my breakfast fish. It was Sakura season and the streets were swimming in a sea of pale pink. As a touring band it is near impossible to get fully acquainted with a city: to take the subway and buy dinner in a supermarket. I greeted the band, ‘Konichiwa’ when they finally arrived, fantasising about moving to Japan for good. There is something fantastical and hypnotising about Japan and I am quite predictable in being so wholly seduced by it. The art and music has an irresistible mix of stern seriousness and child-like playfulness and as a country it is visually as otherworldly as anywhere I could imagine.

It is this otherworldliness that blends and smudges the memories. I remember New York because I ate pizza and saw a movie. Did I really listen to Tokyo Storm Warning during a Tokyo storm warning? Did I play a baseball stadium to 40,000 before returning home to play to 400? Could I have possibly walked through the neon mazes of Shibuya with the neon fashionistas as my life in Brighton carried on without me? Are the Pachinko machines ringing their bells for someone else? Whenever I suffer a sudden attack of terrifying nostalgia as I sometimes do, it is always a regret for having lost that link to Japan. For now I can preen my zen garden.

Kitty Porn

2009-09-23T04:58:00.001-07:00

Big Brother is Dead

2009-08-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t until Michael Jackson’s drugged corpse was found splayed on an incontinence mat in his four-poster bed that we remembered him as the innovator he once was. The images re-circulated of his sexy silhouette pulling implausible shapes and the radio once again remembered the sharp sounds that had defined him. Big Brother is dead. I hope the wounds aren’t too fresh. It is easy to dismiss a programme that has been so irritatingly ubiquitous for so many years, a programme that has thrown so many vapid wannabes onto the pages of magazines (*shifts uncomfortably*). From the first time I stood underneath the live feed from the Big Brother house as it twinkled on an oversized screen in Leicester Square, I was a fan. The pretentious teenager that I was would overuse words seldom applied to any other pub-talk subject. ‘Microcosm’ had a good year in 2000. But behind my waffling was an enthusiastic belief in a truly groundbreaking innovation in television.

Gone was the hulking camera and the hulking cameraman that reality often found hard to ignore. Gone were the cooling down times, the phone calls to mother, the days off. We made friends with people we always assumed we would hate. We hated people we always assumed we would hate. And by dialling five numbers God had a direct line from heaven to earth. The human chess element was a crafty way of creating a feedback loop that made viewing essential. We didn’t want anyone to get away with ANYTHING. And they didn’t. Liars were outed and the nice guys were vindicated. For the first few years Big Brother was an irresistible innovation. Then the housemates started getting horny. There was something reassuring about watching romantic encounters culminating in awkward fumbles between sweaty duvets in a strip lit box room. Arguments were void of clever put-downs and never resolved. This was reality.

I walked through those set doors in 2006 during what I predictably think of as the golden age of Big Brother. I had been sworn to secrecy, punishable by banishment, and told nothing of what I was to expect. I read the rumours religiously and had convinced myself that Anna Nicole-Smith and Boy George would be nervously watching the door as I swung it open. They weren’t. I was amazed at the lengths the production team would go to to remain true to the concept and to keep us, the contestants, in a state of total confinement. Although the Celebrity edition of the show is a quarter of the length of the summer stint, it seems celebrities crumple in a quarter of the time. My no-list status allowed me to keep my head and I treated my position in the house as ‘interactive spectator’.

The symptoms of Big Brother’s terminal illness started in a world separate from the compound in Borehamwood. Fresh reality ‘stars’ fought for precious column inches in glossy magazines alongside pop, sport and movie stars. Contestants were no longer interested in winning on the inside, their sights were set on the prize awaiting them on the outside. The show itself quickly and inevitably became a formality as competitors adopted personalities that had proved popular during previous series. This steered the show into an echo pattern from which it is struggled to recover, ultimately affecting public opinion. As people lost interest the media scramble dissipated and both legs buckled. In many ways the moribundity of this summer's installment has been its saving grace. With no glossy career goals to think about beyond a few free glasses of champagne, the contestants are driven by a love of the format. This has given the penultimate summer a classic feel but will the damage prove too great?

The solution? Heat magazine pick twelve good-looking, slightly unstable bi-curious ‘people like us’ and plaster them directly on to the front page of the magazine. Then we can sit back and watch the real competition unfold. The cat-fights for columns. The boobies. The irresistibly steep, derailed decline. The initial success of Big Brother launched the reality genre. A genre which rarely shared any of the charm and intelligence with its… Big Brother. I have every confidence in the production team to deliver a new ground-breaker; it just feels like the ideas factory needs a new machine. Now, as you lie back and draw your last breaths, Big Brother, we can remember your best bits.

An Open Love-Letter to Philadelphia

2009-08-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

The plane wrenched itself skyward leaving London shrinking behind it until it was a road map: a destination that I was moving away from. With it I left a failed marriage, three friends that I once called the Ordinary Boys and a life that had skewed beyond recognition. Waiting for me in Philadelphia were old friends, family and the chance to reflect, or, more appropriately, to ‘think about what I had done’. It was naïve for me ever to imagine that I could scale the walls of the glossy magazines. I imagined myself shining from the pages of OK with a love of art and literature, the country guffawing in unison at my laboured puns. I had planned a mini revolution in bi-weekly installments. Of course when the interviews came out they had been edited to include only the lines when I mention that “I like cats” and that “my favourite colour is royal blue” (it is). This coupled with a colour photograph of me awkwardly straining my mouth into a gurning smile. Not the system smashing that at first had seemed so plausible. As the plane's engines let out a sigh, as we levelled out in the high silence of the clouds, I felt a great sense of release. To make a bollocks of one's life in private is a shame; to do it in the white glare of the camera flashes was truly mortifying.

So with the divorce papers sitting on the mahogany desks of damp-palmed lawyers my plane glided into land at Philadelphia International. My first stop was the Rodeway Inn. I spent my first weeks in a grotty little room with a shared bathroom in the heart of the ‘Gay-bourhood’ and I was instantly hypnotised by the uniform buzz-saw bass-lines that would zip from the clubs attacking innocent passers by and wind up shaking my hotel walls late into the sticky summer nights. This was not the sweet Philly sound that I had been expecting, but I liked it. I watched a lot of late night movies that summer and as I moped back to the single bedroom that was my home I would pause to jealously watch the hipsters dancing through sweaty club windows. After a week of wallowing it was decided that I should be given a medicinal dose of nightlife and I couldn’t have been keener. I had heard that Diplo, the DJ who had collaborated with M.I.A. on the Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape was a key figure in the social circle that my friends were now involved in. Stories circulated of Hollertronix, the Diplo run ‘parties’ that gave birth to the scene, I was told about his trips to baile funk parties in Brazil and how he would return to Philly armed with new sounds. A Mad Decent (Diplo’s own record label) warehouse had been set up for parties, after-parties and, it seems, pretty much anything. This was how to start a revolution.

I met a rapper called Amanda Blank in 2007, who was then working on her debut record. Talking to her it became instantly clear why the Philly music scene worked. I watched her long, Frenc h-manicured nails gesticulate wildly as we chatted about various records she had guested on (see Lindsay Lohan’s Revenge) and the producers and DJ’s that she had already worked with. The longer she spoke, the longer the list of names of people integral to the growth, creative growth and general success of the music scene which bore her grew. When Amanda wasn’t busy with the dizzying schedule of an artist creating her first record, she somehow found time to tour with her friend and fellow Philadelphian Naeem aka Spankrock and play shows with her side project Sweatheart. In Sweatheart with Amanda is artist Thom Lessner who works out of an art space called Space1026. Thom and everyone else at 1026 make posters and t-shirts in their spare time for Santigold, Hail Social, any Philadelphian who is a friend of a friend. Sometimes these artists will perform spontaneous shows at 1026, that is if it is not being used to host an art auction or a night of stand up comedy performed by its artists. And every summer Diplo brings everybody together for a Mad Decent block party. DJ’s fill the street along with the people who keep helping the scene to grow, along with the fans of the music (that is the category I was now happy to be in), along with the neighbourhood kids and anyone else who just …showed up.

I always loved Philadelphia. My mother was born and raised there (yes, like the Fresh Prince) and I had made several unsuccessful attempts to relocate there throughout my life. The longest I had ever lasted was a year in my late teens. One of my closest friends was, then, in a hardcore punk band called American Nightmare and I had been struck then by the cooperative spirit. Going to a punk rock matinee felt like a community outreach project. Or something Claudia Winkleman might present for BBC3. It was that sensibility that had first endeared me to Philadelphia Punk (see Kid Dynamite). After being elbowed to the ground in the wall of death (it’s a dance move …don’t ask) you could guarantee that someone would immediately pick you up and dust you off. The electronic music that is currently coming out of Philadelphia is contemporary punk rock. It is community spirited. It at first appears offensive and aggressive yet is ultimately intelligent. It embraces art. It celebrates its multiculturalism. It shouts in your face before putting its arm around you. It exists to excite you! I suddenly, as though remembering that I had left the iron on, realised that I needed to start creating music again. I had thought that I was bored with music but I was just bored with the constant pissy stream of post-Libertines indie drivel that seemed to be stuttering in a loop on British radio. To my delight that era seems to be over.

It is comforting to see how much of what is now fluttering around the airwaves stems directly from that organic Philadelphia scene. Diplo and British DJ Switch (of M.I.A. notoriety) created the collaborative project Major Lazer on which, amongst Jamaican toasters and ragga artists, Santigold and Amanda guest (although Amanda’s rap was taken off at the last minute). Diplo produced tracks on Amanda and Santigold’s albums. Switch was responsible for the perfectly produced Mpho single Box and Locks having previously twiddled knobs for Spankrock. When not organising block parties and inviting people to his warehouse parties in Philadelphia Diplo has remixed songs for Britney Spears and Kanye West. And whether consciously or unconsciously everyone from Lady Gaga to JLS has borrowed bleeps and thumps from Philly electro. My year in Philadelphia opened my heart to music again, as the Bad Brains had done for a teenage me. I gained perspective on the Mickey Mouse life that had snowballed around me in England. I learnt that I love punk rock no matter what it sounds like. I saw people enjoying the malleability and control you can have with electronic music (I have been remixing under a pseudonym). And I became a music fan again, enjoying a place at the foot of the DJ booth staring wide eyed upwards in adoration (taking notes).