The Null Device

Robin Gibb, one of the members of long-running pop group the Bee Gees, has died, aged 62. While they're best known for some overexposed disco-pop from the 1970s, Robin, by all accounts the eccentric of the group, was a much more interesting figure than one might believe:

"I'm also doing the musical score for a film called Henry the Eighth," he told Fabulous, "and I'm making my own film called Family Tree. It involves a man, John Family, whose grandfather is caught trying to blow up Trafalgar Square with a homemade bomb wrapped in underwear." In July 1969 the NME announced Robin was "fronting a 97-piece orchestra and a 60-piece choir in a recording of his latest composition To Heaven and Back, which was inspired by the Apollo 11 moonshot. It is an entirely instrumental piece, with the choir being used for 'astral effects'." Robin Gibb was still only 19 years old.

Age barely mellowed his eccentricity. In the 90s he left his brothers speechless when, during an interview with all three of them on Howard Stern's show, he announced his wife Dwina was bisexual and they enjoyed threesomes. He quickly said it was a joke, then changed his mind again a week later. With their cocooned, peripatetic upbringing (Isle Of Man, Manchester, Australia), the Gibbs never had an instinct for cool pop moves. And Robin Gibb's music - untutored and isolated (I can picture most of it being written on a harpsichord in a dimly lit 12th century living room) – has come out without any of the usual dulling rock'n'roll filters. Who else could have written Odessa (City on the Black Sea) about a man stranded on an iceberg, writing a letter to his wife who loves "that vicar more than words can say"? Frankly, no one.

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Something Awful looks at the recent reissue of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, which Kevin Shields spent the last four years remastering:

So what can My Bloody Valentine fans expect from the long-awaited Loveless reissue? Bliss. Like, it's totally, you can't even describe. It's like a migraine made of vicodin, man. It's like the aurora borealis, but made of guitars, and you're getting blown by a cherub (made of guitars). Imagine you're overdosing on Xanax inside God's vagina, and there are some guitar sounds related to that. It's like, the original was pure sonic perfection, but this is like, even more perfect? Because there's more presence and most assuredly some additional warmth.

And what can the rest of us expect? Well, the original album consisted of some murmuring, plus lots of guitars and some more guitars. Now, thanks to miraculous new mastering technology, it's louder. According to Kevin Shields himself, the first disc of the reissue is exactly the same as the 1991 release but with the volume turned up; the second disc, freshly mastered from the original analogue tapes, sounds almost exactly like the first disc. Read the interview yourself and try to tell me that's not what he said.

The article goes on to reveal some of the features of the new reissue:

Many listeners have noted a jarring digital glitch present in the remastered "What You Want," which may seem like a significant oversight in a project that's been in the works for four years. However, it's actually an Easter egg for dedicated fans: when slowed down a bit, the glitch is actually over thirty hours of shelved My Bloody Valentine music from Kevin Shields' various abortive attempts at a Loveless follow-up.

Thanks to the overall loudness boost of the new mastering job, playing "Sometimes" at high volumes reveals the repeated brittle snap of Kevin Shields breaking off tremolo arm after tremolo arm and yelling "for the love of god, will somebody please fucking bring me more tremolo arms," followed by the sound of engineer Alan Moulder crunching through piles of fallen tremolo arms like so many autumn leaves and creakily screwing a new tremolo arm onto Kevin's long-suffering Jazzmaster even as he continues to bash out wobbly chords.

¶ culture heritage rock my bloody valentine shoegazer 0 Share

K Records has a new interview with Rose Melberg of The Softies, Tiger Trap, Go Sailor and her new project, Brave Irene, in which she talks about the creative process behind her projects:

It was pretty formulaic; I’d pretty much write a song and then take it to Jen, and then we’d write her guitar part and harmony together. We’d never collaborate lyrically. One person would write, and so it was never super collaborative, but that extra guitar brought so much. Sometimes we’d actually write Jen’s part note by note by note. Like, I would point to the fret board and say, “That one!” because there was one specific note that I wanted to hear right at that time. Sometimes it took a while, because the parts were quite complicated and weird, seeing as they were just a series of notes. But I love her sense of humor about it. I know how difficult it must have been for her to deal with me trying to get these specific notes, so I appreciate that she can laugh about it now.

During the beginning of the Softies, our rule was that if we couldn’t recreate it live, we didn’t do it on the record. I hate the production end of songs, and a lot of what I do is more accidental. On the last Softies record [Holiday in Rhode Island (KLP119)], we made a conscious decision to add more things, but it was really just for fun. That continued with my solo stuff, but still I really just want the songs to be recorded.

For what it's worth, there are videos from the Brooklyn leg of the Chickfactor shows here. For those in the UK, Rose will be playing at this year's Indietracks festival.

¶ indiepop k records music rose melberg the softies 0 Share

The record collection of another legendary British DJ been made available for fans to peruse online; this time, it's that of effervescent radio and TV personality Fearne Cotton, a collection with over seven records:

‘There’ll be information about all the records, including whether or not Fearne rated the album,’ explained a spokesman. ‘Cotton famously employed a meticulous 5-star rating system for her music, and every item in the collection was awarded the full 5 stars. Albums are accompanied by Fearne’s additional superlatives such as ‘mega’, ‘massive’, ‘most awesomest ever’, ‘cool’ and ‘really, really cool’.’

The virtual museum includes such rare curiosities as a first pressing of Mis-Teeq’s 2004 hit ‘Scandalous’, a Foo Fighters greatest hits compilation, and some stuff by The Kooks. It’s not all obscurities though, as the trend-setting DJ also found room for plenty of U2 and Coldplay.

(via xrrf) ¶ celebrity humour media music 0 Share

In the UK, nightclub bouncers are requiring punters to show them their Facebook profiles on their phones as a condition of entry, ostensibly to weed out the underage. Civil liberties groups and a door staff training firm claim that this is illegal, while some bar owners and bouncers defend the practice, citing heavy fines levied in the event of staff accidentally letting in a minor with a fake ID.

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Adam “MCA” Yauch, cofounder of the Beastie Boys, has passed away after a battle with cancer; he was 47. There's an obituary on the Beastie Boys' website:

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Yauch taught himself to play bass in high school, forming a band for his 17th birthday party that would later become known the world over as Beastie Boys.

With fellow members Michael "Mike D" Diamond and Adam "Adrock" Horovitz, Beastie Boys would go on to sell over 40 million records, release four #1 albums–including the first hip hop album ever to top the Billboard 200, the band's 1986 debut full length, Licensed To Ill–win three Grammys, and the MTV Video Vanguard Lifetime Achievement award. Last month Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with Diamond and Horovitz reading an acceptance speech on behalf of Yauch, who was unable to attend.

Meanwhile, Pitchfork has a piece on how MCA offered a relatable blueprint for growing up, in both his art and his life:

The Beastie Boys turned curiosity into a form of art. They wanted to know more about what was around them and learn everything they could about what wasn't. Forget about Kurt Cobain for a second: For kids like me, the Beastie Boys invented the 90s. Technology was changing fast and the world was shrinking rapidly. Between their music and label/magazine Grand Royal, the Beasties showed how to reach out and scoop up all the best parts. New York hip-hop and punk rock, Japanese pop, Jamaican dub-- all of it could be gathered and re-assembled into something that reflected who you were. This sort of cultural mixing was nothing new, but the Beastie Boys brought it to the mainstream. They were ambassadors, but their hipness didn't look down on anybody. It felt inclusive.

MCA was the spiritual center of the trio, even before he became a student of Tibetan Buddhism. There was a certain kind of Beastie Boys track that I liked to call a "State of MCA" dispatch, starting with "A Year and a Day" from Paul's Boutique. The group was known for its 70s references and corny jokes, but these MCA songs hinted at a yearning for something deeper.

There's an instrumental on Ill Communication called "Futterman's Rule". The only lyrics listed in the booklet say, "When two are served, all may eat." It turned out to be a reference to a community ritual that was dear to Yauch. In a later issue of Grand Royal, there was a short piece explaining that Gene Futterman was a professional chef and a friend of Adam Yauch's family. He was known for his large dinner parties and when he brought food in from the kitchen he would tell his guests: "When two are served, you eat!"

The elegance of Futterman's Rule does lend it a hint of spirituality. One eats one's food while it is hot, observing dinner as a natural continuum (instead of the top-down, "no-one-eats-until-the-chef-is-ready" hierarchical model that dominates most households). At the same time, no one eats alone (it is only once two people are served, and a social base is established for those with food, that one may begin to eat). If form follows function, the Rule is built to travel. So give it a try. And if you like it, tell a friend.

Adam Yauch leaves behind a wife and daughter, two living parents and a world that's slightly less enlightened than when he walked on it. Here passes a true mensch.

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Cracked's David Wong has a list of five telltale indicators of a bullshit political story; in this case, a “bullshit political story” is one which ignores the actual issues and treats politics as a sporting event, appealing to the audience's identification with one team or other:

The answer is that many (if not most) people don't follow politics in order to find out who to vote for as part of their duty as citizens living in a democracy. They follow it purely as a form of entertainment. They're like sports fans, rooting for their "team" to win. And as you're going to find out, virtually all political news coverage is written to appeal to those people. They're the most rabid "consumers" of news, and their traffic is the most reliable, so the news is tailored to appeal to them. In the business, they derisively call it "horse race journalism," where the stories focus purely on the "sport" of politics rather than the consequences.

That's where the gaffe stories come in. See, in this game, your "team" scores a point each time the other team says something stupid. It lets all of the supporters of your team mock and humiliate the supporters of the opposing team, on Internet message boards and around water coolers and in coffee shops nationwide. "Haha! The supposed 'genius' Obama thinks there are 57 states in the U.S.!" "Oh, yeah? Well, your last president said he was going to help terrorists plan their next attack!"

Hey, did you know that Barack Obama is an out-of-touch elitist because he puts fancy Dijon mustard on his hamburgers? Did you know that Mitt Romney is an insane sociopath because he once made his pet dog ride on top of his car 26 years ago? Did you know John Kerry can't relate to the average person because he puts Swiss cheese on his Philly cheese steaks? Did you know that George W. Bush hates foreigners so much that he wiped his hand after shaking hands with a Haitian? Did you know that all of this is petty schoolyard bullshit that wastes valuable time and energy that you'll never get back?

And, as smarter commentators have pointed out, there's an even bigger problem with this: It actually implies that the issue itself is completely unimportant. For instance, if the courts overturn some regulation about mercury in the water or Congress blocks car mileage standards, it always gets reported as "A Blow to Environmentalists." Oh, no, it's not a blow to the people who have to drink the water or breathe the air, or the taxpayers who have to fund the regulations, or the businesses that lose jobs over it. It's either a "blow to environmentalists" or it's not. They specifically make it sound like the effects extend purely to some fringe special interest group and absolutely no one else.

I'm telling you from experience, watching political races this way is addictive as shit. You have thousands of years of violent tribal instincts pumping through your veins, itching for a fight. That makes you an easy tool for manipulation, and every good politician and pundit knows how to push those buttons to make people march neatly in formation. Don't succumb. Or else you'll start supporting the most bullshit legislation just because your guy is for it. Or you'll start knee-jerk rejecting anything the other "team" proposes. Not because it's bad for the country, but because you want to deny them a "win."

(via MeFi) ¶ media politics psychology stupidity 0 Share

In a few hours, Londoners will go to the polls to elect their next Mayor and councillors. The Mayor is that of Greater London, who administers matters above the separate boroughs but below the level of Westminster. The post was held by a younger and more radical Ken Livingstone in the 1980s, before Thatcher abolished it; when the Blair government restored it, Livingstone won it back and held it for a few terms, before being toppled, at the last election, by the floppy-haired, mildly eccentric Tory Boris Johnson.

A number of candidates are running this year; the Greens, the Lib Dems (running ex-police commissioner Brian Paddick), the far right, and an independent who, unlike most of the others, wants a third runway at Heathrow. The main race, however, is shaping up to be a rematch between Boris and Ken. Two likeable and/or loathsome outsized personalities, holding the banners of their respective tribes and ideologies. (A few days ago, Johnson had a lead in polling, though it's said to have narrowed somewhat since then.)

In the red corner, Ken Livingstone needs no introduction. While less radical than during the wars of the Thatcher Era, he still wears his socialist convictions on his sleeve. Which can be good, when it comes to commitment to public transport, forward planning of infrastructure (something the free market isn't all that good at) and attempting to mitigate some of the rising inequality in high-Gini London, though is somewhat more sketchy when it comes to grand sweeping statements on the public dime. Livingstone has, in the past, used his theoretically strictly local seat as a base for foreign policy, drawing the Greater London Authority into a (symbolic) alliance with Venezuela's autocratic Chavez regime, on the pretext of providing free transport to the poor. More recently, he seems to have taken a leaf out of George Galloway's playbook in trying to court the Islamist vote, expounding on Palestine whenever visiting constituencies with large Muslim populations, bashing Jews and making suspiciously dog-whistle-like statements about gays. Oh, and he held down a job presenting on the Iranian propaganda channel Press TV; perhaps we can expect those good honorary socialists, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to sponsor bus passes for the poor if he wins?

In the blue(-blooded) corner is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, a character even more fanciful than his name would suggest, and not without his controversies. Upon election, he did scrap a lot of Livingstone-era public transport plans (such as the cross-river tram), though has avoided the sorts of red-meat pro-motorist culture-war policies some other right-wing mayors (such as the one in Toronto) have pursued. Not only did London's bike lanes remain, but Johnson, himself a cyclist, expanded support for cycling in the city (albeit with the sponsorship of Barclays, though that presumably ticks the piss-off-the-Left box). The Observer's architecture correspondent Rowan Moore has assessed Johnson's record on public works, and found it to be fairly moderate and generally sensible, if leaning a bit towards glitz and spectacle in places. Of course, one criticism has been that a lot of the projects were started by Ken Livingstone, with Johnson coasting by when they were finished for a photo opportunity. That is certainly a valid criticism of some things, such as the Overground and the launch of Crossrail; the case against Johnson's claim to the London cycle hire scheme, commonly known as the “Boris bikes” (though some earnestly right-on types call them “Ken's conveyance”) is less clear, though. While Livingstone did talk about setting up a Paris-style bike hire scheme, there is little evidence of anything having actually happened towards one until Johnson's term. And then there is the new Routemaster bus remake and the proposal for the “Boris Island” airport in the Thames Estuary to replace Heathrow (which is either a brilliant idea or utterly daft, depending on whom one asks).

More controversial are the symbolic statements. While Livingstone has allied his office with the actual and honorary socialist freedom fighters of the world, Johnson's statements have gone the other way. At times, he has taken up the cause of opposition to “political correctness” (commonly a way of ostensibly defending freedom of speech and the ability to take a robust joke whilst also dog-whistling to bigots that one stands with them) perhaps a little too enthusiastically at times, at one point, scrapping a multicultural festival because of its anti-racism message. Johnson has also denounced the Occupy protesters, calling them “hemp-smoking, fornicating hippies in crusty little tents”, a choice of words which, regardless of its accuracy, seems to show a haughty disdain for those who think that rising inequality is a bad thing. (Johnson's professed contempt for the Occupy movement, incidentally, is not shared by other members of the centre-right, including Germany's pro-austerity chancellor Angela Merkel.)

During the last election, this blog came out against Boris Johnson. This time, however, we will not be endorsing, or disendorsing, either candidate; there are good reasons for not voting for either. While Johnson is a Tory, and thus, as the common calculus goes, morally equivalent to Hitler, he is a far more moderate Tory than he looked before the last election. And while Livingstone's policy credentials are a bit bolder (with the exception of fancy buses and island airports, of course), some of his symbolic positions are somewhat concerning. For what it's worth, my first preference won't be going to either of them (the Greens are in with a chance, though).

¶ boris johnson dog whistles honorary socialists ken livingstone london politics 0 Share