2002/11/30
What does an intelligence agency do to improve its public image? Germany's federal intelligence service, the BND, is opening a shop selling clothing and merchandise bearing its logo. As well as the usual T-shirts and calendars, the merchandise includes underwear bearing inscriptions such as Verschlusssache ("Classified") and Streng Geheim ("Top Secret"), as well as the agency's logo.
A British environmental thinktank says that high-speed trains should replace air travel on short-distance routes across Britain and Europe. Citing environmental damage caused by air travel, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution is calling for extra charges on air travel to represent the environmental cost, and a shift towards high-speed rail. Which all makes sense.
(Tangent: Which reminds me of something I read in the Guardian weekend magazine whilst in London; an ecological pundit in the UK (in Scotland, I believe) posited the idea that everybody should have a fixed annual number of carbon credits, which would be depleted whenever they used a car, rode a bus, used heating, &c., in proportion to the amount of fossil fuel used. To save the world from imminent doom, he argued, the allowance would need to be set so low that most people would only use cars in emergencies. Credits could be bought and sold, so poorer people could sell theirs, ride bicycles and wear thick jumpers, and the rich could buy enough to holiday in the tropics. True to form, the author of this proposal eschews travel to overseas conferences, sending addresses on cassette instead.)
(Tangent 2: Intercontinental rail will be a different issue altogether; I recall that the Russians were planning a rail tunnel from Siberia to Alaska some years ago, which would make it possible (if slow) to catch a train from London to New York.)
The election is nigh upon us, and it looks like Labor is going to get back in easily. No great surprise, as the Liberals have been doing their best headless-chicken impression for some time. The other party to watch is the Greens. If they poll well, they could capture one or two formerly safe Labor heartland seats; if this happens, Labor will have to stop taking the inner cities for granted, giving outer suburbanites (in marginal seats, or so the theory goes) their Los Angeles-style freeways whilst not spending 1/10 of that on public transport.
Victoria has appalling public transport compared to other places. Unless you live in the inner city or on a railway line, it is virtually unusable, leading to US-style car dependency, with all the problems that causes (from obesity to pollution to dependency on oil). And given that the marginal seats (which decided who governed) were in the outer suburbs where public transport is a pipe dream at best, the answer is always Build More Freeways.
Well, with any luck this will change this election; if the government would pony up a fraction of the billions earmarked for freeways (many of dubious economic value) on reducing car dependency (and not by just sitting back and saying that they expect that public transport use will grow; building railway line extensions and expanding bus services to run outside of peak times would be a good start), we wouldn't be on course to becoming the Los Angeles of the southern hemisphere as we are now.
How am I voting? Most probably Public Transport First, with preferences to the Greens. PTFirst don't stand a chance of winning a seat, but if they make a strong showing, it will send a message to policymakers; the Greens do stand a chance, and hopefully will do well. It may be optimistic to expect them to win lower-house seats, but who knows?
While eager to ride into Baghdad and capture Saddam dead or alive, on the scantest of "evidence" of terrorist involvement, our noble leaders have been careful not to criticise Saudi Arabia, tiptoeing around its Taliban-like human rights record and going to great pains to not make trouble about its equivocal relationship with anti-US terrorists. But what's a little thuggish authoritarianism, oppression of women and financial and moral support for terrorists when you're dealing with a special friend in the region, right? I mean, the alternative would impinge on every American's God-given right to drive an oversized SUV from their suburban home to the shops, and that's not negotiable.
2002/11/28
Seemingly going for the Pauline Hanson demographic, disposable Australian celebrity Dannii Minogue (she's the less talented one, apparently) recently was quoted ranting about Asian immigration and liberal policies in a British men's magazine. "Even some of the street signs are in Asian!", she is quoted as having opined, before coming down on Blair for being soft on crime, blaming crime on foreigners, and stating that French right-winger Jean-Marie Le Pen "struck a chord with people".
"She may have somewhat controversial political views but at least she has the defence of being Australian," he said.
There you have it; Australia is now seen as the new South Africa, that rough redneck cowboy state somewhere in the godforsaken Southern Hemisphere, where bigotry and narrow-mindedness are par for the course. If you're an Australian, people pretty much expect you to be racist, reactionary and xenophobic (and probably to scratch your arse in public and spit on the floor as well). Remember that next time you're in Europe, and give thanks to Pauline and Johnny.
The pundits at Crikey analyse the Greens' chances in the upcoming election. Their analysis treads a middle ground between the ebullient optimism of Green supporters and the peremptory dismissals of traditional political commentators.
(I'm not sure I'd categorise the Greens as "radical left"; they're not rabid Trotskyites or neo-barbarians, and indeed seem less inclined towards totalitarianism than the Democrats (who at times leaned towards Scandinavian-style social engineering and similar ideologies). And is wanting decent public transport and an emphasis on renewable energy really an extremist position?) (via Graham)
2002/11/27
Life imitates Borges: A professor in Japan plans to create a database of every human idea. Darryl Macer from the University of Tsukuba believes that the number of possible human ideas is finite and enumerable. The database is intended to shed light on cross-cultural differences and to be used to help come up with international agreements acceptable to all parties.
An aide to the Canadian premier has been forced to resign after calling President Bush a "moron", comments which the Iraqi press (no, not the Guardian) picked up on gleefully. She should be careful; that's either giving succour to the enemy or revealing state secrets.
George W. Bush has a posse, and we're all in it: Britain's television advertising authority has banned advertisements questioning George W. Bush's intelligence as "offensive". (And probably mention likely to sow disunity and affect public morale. I doubt whether criticism of Churchill was tolerated in WW2 either.)
They do things differently in the Netherlands; for instance, a Dutch public TV station recently produced a film about a dying teenager who has a webcam installed in her coffin after she dies.
When one of the teenagers dies, the survivors must decide whether to fulfill their high-tech pledge and if so, how. One stipulation moves the story into the gothic realm of Edgar Allan Poe. The coffin is to contain a heating element that will speed or reduce the body's rate of decomposition. The temperature will then be controlled by online visitors, who can adjust an interactive thermostat on the tell-tale Web site.
The film, titled Necrocam, can apparently be viewed on its web site. (via bOING bOING)
2002/11/26
The US Department of Defense recently investigated ways of redesigning the Internet to eliminate that pesky anonymity that allows terrorists, paedophiles, drug traffickers, Green Party activists and evil, evil people to go about their dastardly deeds undetected. After attempting to fudge a politically expedient result (or at least one likely to get money thrown in its direction, in the name of "national security"), they concluded that it was impractical and scrapped the idea.
I wonder how long until the MPAA/RIAA revive the idea and start pushing hard for Internet protocols to be rewritten to stamp out this un-American "file sharing" idea and protect their business models, late capitalism and the American Way.
This looks pretty nifty: Racer, an open-source, multi-platform car simulator (as opposed to "racing game"). Haven't played with it (it'd probably crawl with my ancient Riva TNT2 video card), but the screenshots are quite pretty. (via Mr. Scum)
16 people have been arrested in the central Asian state of Turkmenistan for attempting to assassinate the President, Saparmurat Niyazov. It is not known whether the incident arose from an ideological dispute over the naming of months or the precise delineation of the Ages of Man.
2002/11/25
Hey penguinheads; remember Berlin, the superdoovy new windowing/rendering system that was going to replace X and usher in a new era of peace, prosperity and seamless translucent, rotated windows? Well, the project didn't die; it's now named Fresco and Milestone 1 came out a few days ago. And here are some screenshots. Nice to know that they've gotten beyond the "look, translucent rectangles!" stage. Still looks a bit rough, but the technology looks promising. I'll probably play with it at some stage. (via slashdot)
An outfit named b3ta interviews the woman who did the voiceovers on the London Underground, asking her all sorts of silly questions. (via Luke)
(Speaking of automated voiceovers at railway stations, does anybody remember the icy English dominatrix voice that used to be on the PA at Flinders St. station in the late 1980s/early 1990s or so? You know, the one with the cut-glass accent and intensely imperious delivery? ("Stand clear please... Stand CLEAR.") I presume it was decommissioned sometime during the Keating era, when anything redolent of colonial ties became deeply unfashionable.)
And here are a few of the better or more interesting photos I took during my recent trip to the UK. These are just from the first part of the trip, mostly around London. (Click on the thumbnail excerpt to see the full image.)
Seen in a toy shop at Singapore's Changi airport; a rather appropriate name for a toy SUV, don't you think?
Graffito found on a street sign near Notting Hill. A laudable sentiment, wouldn't you say?
It's the signage on a shop on Carnaby St., though it sounds like an indie-pop concept album idea to me.
A model omnibus at the London Transport Museum. Pay particular attention to the advertising banner.
A few scenes from a pub in West Ealing on a Sunday afternoon:
Those quaintly Orwellian posters that are all over bus shelters and the Tube. It's funny how some terrorist bombs and the ravings of a few apocalyptic bampots can make the watchful gaze of Big Brother so much more comforting as an idea.
A rather good sunset over the Thames and Houses of Parliament:
(All photos are (c) me. If you want to use any of them, email me.)
2002/11/24
James Packer, heir to one half of the Australian media oligopoly, is reportedly in with the Church of Scientology; apparently, his close friend Tom Cruise suggested that perhaps ridding himself of the ghosts of dead aliens may help with his business and marital woes or something, and he took the advice and jetted off to the Church's Celebrity Center. (And before you criticise the Scienos, ask yourself: can your religion claim to have a Celebrity Center? Didn't think so.)
(So the Murdochs are in bed with the Chinese government (and indeed any other authoritarian force they can establish a relationship of mutual respect with), and the other side are going to bed with the Clams. And that is the state of play for the vast majority of the Australian media today.)
It's heartening to know that Diana is no longer at #1 at the BBC's Great Britons poll. At the same time, it is somewhat dispiriting that the former clotheshorse and magazine-cover celebrity is ahead of the likes of Darwin, Shakespeare and Newton. There's still time to vote, though; well, a few hours perhaps.
A brief review of a few of the CDs I picked up in the UK (well, the ones I've had a chance to at least partially digest), in alphabetical order by artist:
- Ballboy, Club Anthems 2001: File alongside The Smiths and Belle & Sebastian. The spoken-word track about space travel isn't bad, and Sex Is Boring, which bags house music and club culture, also has its charms.
- Below The Sea, the loss of our winter: Credible guitar-driven post-rock instrumentals from France. tropic of cancer is probably my favourite track so far. Unfortunately, my copy seems to have a defect which results in a fluttering noise when played; though one could argue that it's not as noticeable as it would be in other musical genres.
- Bis, The End Starts Today: some remixes from their most recent album, along with their speech synth-driven cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart, which is probably the highlight.
- Clan of Xymox, Medusa: A combination of reverb-heavy 80s studio rock, minor-key synthpop and goth-club floor-filler material, with the distinct touch of 4AD about it; a sort of Frankie Goes Eurogoth. Check out the heavily-processed guitars, rapid-fire drum machine patterns and po-faced Brendan Perry-meets-Andrew Eldritch vocals, as imitated by every other dodgy Cleopatra band from the US Midwest since, though this is a notch above all that.
- Colourbox, Colourbox: Another 80s 4AD outfit, this time doing electronic dub instrumentals. They went on to form M/A/R/R/S, you know.
- Cure, The, Collectors Curiosities Vol. 2: With Carnage Visors and numerous B-sides and no reference to the band on the disc itself (presumably to evade copyright audits at the pressing plant), this is another one of those London market specials. The "bonus tracks performed live in a recording studio 1984" certainly adds to the air of suspiciousness of the entire package.
- Curve, Come Clean: Curve-by-numbers; crunchy overcompressed beats and overdriven guitar whines and Toni's distorted vocals and textures of analogue synth warbles and bleeps. I suppose that's the nice thing about Curve records; you know what to expect, and you're not disappointed. All much of a muchness, though Beyond Reach is nice.
- High Llamas, Buzzle Bee and Snowbug; somewhat twee, post-Beach Boys/Bacharach melodies. Sort of like Stereolab without the difficult bits. (Indeed, Tim and Lætitia appear on the latter disc, as does producer John McEntire.) Good background music, though not the most compelling records ever made.
- James, Laid: I picked this up for the title track, and because it was cheap. For some reason, they sound more Australian than British to me; not sure why. Perhaps they sound a bit like the Go-Betweens or the Triffids or someone, or otherwise give a sense of wide spaces and harsh sunlight in their music?
- Miss Kittin & The Hacker, The First Album: minor-key neo-80s synthpop with disjointed, emotionless Euro-accented vocals, and KOMPRESSOR-style songwriting.
- Primal Scream, Autobahn 66 promotional single: just the 3-minute version of the track. Blah.
- Spearmint, Songs for the Colour Yellow: their early works, with 1960s power-pop touches; not as baggy as A Week Away or as bowlie as A Different Lifetime. Interesting to hear that they recycled the melody of the title track for one of their subsequent songs.
- Trembling Blue Stars, She Just Couldn't Stay CD single: No, he's still not over her. Though isn't that the whole point of Trembling Blue Stars? Compelling, but in the way car accidents are.
- Will To Power, Journey Home: early-90s LA studio outfit, best known for their cover of 10CC's I'm Not In Love; I remembered them for Koyaanisqatsi, their spoken-word rant over a slickly-produced electronic background, going on about corporate domination, animal research and damage to the environment from a gun-toting anarchist perspective (think early Moby meets an arts-degreed Eric S. Raymond). That and the Nietzchean sleeve notes add a touch of eccentricity to the rather overproduced, vaguely Madonna/Lewis Martinee-esque bulk of this CD. I wonder what Bob Rosenberg ended up doing after this; producing commercial dance music, or retreating to a cabin in Montana? Either sounds equally likely.
Anyway, I picked this up for something like 50p at the cheapo branch of Music & Video Exchange, and am quite pleased with that. If I end up doing DJ sets, you can probably expect Koyaanisqatsi to end up in them, next to other curiosities.
2002/11/23
Some observations from my recent trip to the UK:
Britishisms absent in Australia:
- Pantomimes starring celebrity has-beens (a fine British tradition, or so I hear)
- Bathroom sinks with built-in stoppers operated by a lever. Pretty much every bathroom I saw in England had those; presumably the rubber/plastic stoppers you see in Australian bathroom sinks are quaint antiques over there. (Perhaps it 's some EU standard?)
- The ear-splitting beeping sound made by pedestrian crossings
- Teletext as a widely used information medium
- A comprehensive railway network
- Those Cadbury Boost bars, i.e., chocolate bars with caramel, guarana and biscuit. Here we have something similar, only it's called Viking, doesn't contain any biscuit and isn't quite as nice.
- Poker machines everywhere. Not just in pubs and sporting clubs; they're in shopping centres, railway station cafés and other public places. Mind you, there are always signs nearby telling children that they are not to play with them. Perhaps evidence that the Poms have more respect for authority than the larrikinous sons of convicts in Orstraya?
- Those sub-miniature two-seater "Smart" cars. There may be one or two in Melbourne, but they're everywhere in London.
- The deep amber glow of street lamps. In Australia, they are a leprous salmon pink.
Australianisms absent in Britain:
- Half-pint pot glasses in pubs. There, beer is drunk by the pint. If you ask for half a pint, you'll get one of those wimpy cylindrical glasses whose very shape mocks your prowess as a drinker.
- Wastebaskets in public places. Then again, with the way things are going, how long until those disappear from Australia as well?
Advantages London has over Melbourne:
- Decent public transport. You can rock up at a Tube station and get a train in the direction you want within 5 minutes. And the London council are actually implementing a congestion charge on traffic going to the city, using it to pay for public transport improvements. Fat chance of seeing anything like that happening in Melbourne, where billion-dollar freeways are the go and railway line extensions costing 1/10 of that are cancelled.
- Portobello Market, Camden Market, &c.
- Fopp
- The fine UK indie tradition that isn't an artificially packaged "UK-indie" product, i.e., lumping Oasis, Fatboy Slim, Radiohead and a few old Smiths tunes together under the union jack for the amusement of poseurish pseudo-Mods from South Yarra and the like.
- The temperature never reaches 40 degrees. (Except perhaps on the Tube.)
- Any pub you go to you can be assured will have Guinness on tap.
Disadvantages London has to Melbourne:
- It's horribly crowded.
- Everything's so expensive.
- Tap water has a vaguely detergenty taste/consistency about it.
- Pubs close at 11. (Still, that usually means you can catch the Tube home.)
- Not as much of a unified live music scene. Once you get beneath the level of major-label touring acts, you have to dig deeply to find the many little sub-scenes.
2002/11/22
In the economically depressed nation of Argentina, entire neighbourhoods are disappearing from the telephone network, as desperate thieves steal telephone cables and sell them for copper.
Someone should launch a class-action lawsuit against the federal Liberal Party in Australia for false advertising, on the grounds that there is no way in which their ideology can be said to be "liberal" in any remotely sane definition of the word. Case in point: this piece about our illustrious Prime Minister steadfastly refusing to criticise anti-Muslim comments by Australia's equivalent of Jerry Falwell. (If I recall correctly, Michael Kirby didn't receive this level of deference from the PM; it seems that you have to be a seething reactionary demagogue.)
2002/11/21
From the Age: recording industry behemoth Universal releases 43,000 songs online; for US$0.99, users will be able to download them and burn them to a CD. Doesn't say which format it's in, though it sounds like the terms of the MP3-based EMusic service, which Vivendi Universal bought sometime before going pear-shaped. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if it was some proprietary format which needs "secure" Windows-based software just in case the naughty user tries to do something the copyright holder doesn't like.
Well, after 24 hours of sitting on a packed airliner (no empty row of seats to sleep on this time), I arrived back in Melbourne, tired, jetlagged and aware that I've spent too much money. (And I got stung on the excess baggage thing too; ouch. Damn you, Fopp.) And I have some idea of what Luke must have felt like to be back in Sydney.
Normal blogging will resume shortly.
2002/11/18
Things have been a bit quiet here recently, as I haven't had the time to sit down at a computer much lately. I've been mostly running around, doing some last-minute shopping and catching up with people. (I did get a chance to catch up with Meg on Friday afternoon, just prior to giving the record shops of Notting Hill one last once-over.) I've spent most of today trying to stuff all the CDs and books I've bought into my backpack. (Given that some titles which cost A$40 in PolyEster Books can be had for £3 at Fopp, I went perhaps a little overboard.)
Anyway, I'll be back in Australia in a few days, with the usual mixed feelings. Normal blogging is likely to resume shortly after that.
2002/11/16
Last night, I went up to a small pub/venue named the Betsey Trotwood, in Farringdon Rd., EC1R, to see a band named The Charm Offensive. I found out about them a week ago, when Nicola (the vocalist) was handing out flyers at Bowlie Nite, and decided to go and see them. I was quite impressed. The band consisted of two guys with guitars (one acoustic and one electric), a female vocalist and a minidisc player with the obligatory drum tracks. Their sound was sort of sweet Sarah Records-esque indie-pop, of the sort you don't hear much of these days; jangly acoustic chords and quiet boy-girl harmonies and such. They sounded a little like Blueboy, or perhaps Even As We Speak. I hope we hear more from The Charm Offensive.
2002/11/15
Artefact seen in window of music shop in the Scottish Highlands:
It looks to be what amounts to an all-electronic set of bagpipes, i.e., a breath controller and synthesizer unit, which adds in user-adjustable drones. Apparently it's of German manufacture, has been around for some years, and is intended for people needing to quietly practice the bagpipes. Not surprisingly, the main market would be in the highlands.
Apparently, it does MIDI, and if you run it through an amp, it sounds quite realistic. Is anybody else wondering what it would sound like through some effects pedals?
2002/11/14
After listening to albums from Miss Kittin & The Hacker and Adult, I have realised that the lyrics of your typical electroclash song are stylistically very similar to KOMPRESSOR lyrics; i.e., all disjointed, monotonous assertions with scant regard for scansion or melody and the odd bit repeated for effect. In fact, if he did away with the distortion pedal, Andreas K. could easily hop on the electroclash bandwagon.
Finding myself in Glasgow last night, I decided to go to see whoever was playing at the 13th Note. First up was an outfit calling themselves Blind Dug, who were described as "rock with progressive leanings", and pretty surely disproved the assertion that the difference between prog-rock and post-rock is capes. None of them wore a cape, and they were definitely prog- and not post-; their songs had relatively complex chord progressions, 1970s-style guitar riffs (think some of the musical interludes from The Goodies), odd time signatures, florid embellishments, false endings and lots of different sections. At one stage they announced that they only had time for one more song, and proceeded to play for some 20 minutes, changing keys and tempos quite a few times. They seem to enjoy wallowing in the excesses of the 1970s, but they do it fairly well.
Next up was an outfit named Cat Kills Six, who were a sort of grungy alternative band, though with some quite original moments. At one stage, the vocalist started doing a human beatbox, upon which the bassist went into the bassline from The Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight, of which they did the first verse and then went off on a tangent.
Finally there was a band named Frayed, who were fairly textbook metal, with a heavy Metallica influence. (They covered Harvester of Sorrow as one of their songs, obviously wearing their influences on their sleeve.) Technically they were quite competent and tight, right down to the obligatory guitar solos, though they didn't diverge from the metal genre or do much else original, and ultimately ended up as Just Another Metal Band. Then again, I'm told that the singer is only 15 (which brings up comparisons with a certain Australian Seattle-sound band from the '90s). Perhaps few years they'll go on to do more interesting things.
I just got back to London, after five days spent up north in the land of whisky and Irn-Bru. It was fun.
Yesterday I caught the train down from Inverness, through the sweeping landscapes of central Scotland, to Glasgow, the city that gave us Mogwai, Belle & Sebastian and a lot of twee jangly-pop bands somewhat before my time. Within a few hours of arriving, I had made my way to The 13th Note, a local café and band venue, which seemed quite cool, and has bands on pretty much every night. (For the Melburnians reading this: the 13th Note would be somewhere between the Empress and the Tote, or perhaps like Revolver without the house music and vague miasma of wankerdom subtly permeating everything; it's a funky-yet-too-grungy-to-be-yuppified bar with vegan food, artworks on the walls and flyers everywhere else, and a subterranean cavern where the punters go to see bands make a lot of noise.)
(Aside: Glasgow seems to have a number of things in common with Melbourne. The rain, the grid-shaped street layout, the relative lack of spectacular monuments, and of course a vibrant live music scene. It doesn't have trams, though, and the closest thing to the notorious Rangers vs. Celtics sectarian rivalries that Melbourne would have would be the occasional Serbo-Croatian soccer riot or something.)
2002/11/12
I spent the day walking around Inverness and its environs, taking a stroll up and down the banks of the Ness. As I was walking around town, I thought that Inverness would be a great setting for a mystery story or thriller. As I was walking upstream, through the autumnal landscape, the river slowly flowing towards the Moray Firth around islands full of high trees, I realised why: because the landscape looks somewhat like the landscape of British Columbia, Canada, which (through films and television from the X Files to Insomnia) has become shorthand for that type of story.
I also stopped by at the whisky shop and picked up a bottle of something called Athol Brose, purely on the strength of the Cocteau Twins having titled a song after it. It's quite nice.
2002/11/11
The Great Electroclash Swindle, or how to be electroclash in a few easy steps. (via Graham)
I'm in Inverness right now, typing this on a PC with a dodgy space bar in a backpackers. And I tell you, there was a magnificent sunset over the Scottish highlands this evening.
2002/11/10
I can't seem to go past a Fopp shop here without emerging with a raft of books. Yesterday I found myself in the Edinburgh branch and found that there was a new Christopher Brookmyre novel, The Sacred Art of Stealing, so I picked it up.
(Yes, I know it's theoretically a crime thriller, and thrillers are meant to be mindless pulp, sort of like Mills & Boon for blokes, but Brookmyre is a cut above the usual Tom Clancy macho-man rubbish, not to mention a keen satirist. Anyone who has failed rock-stars becoming international terrorists, and goes on to books about Dadaist bank robbery is IMHO worth a look.)
I'm in Edinburgh right now; I'm posting this from a (somewhat expensive though centrally located) Internet café at Waverley Station, and won't be able to post photos until I'm back in London at least (within a week, most probably). There's a Human League song playing on the radio, which is somewhat unusual perhaps.
Edinburgh is a very impressive-looking place; more so than London, I'd say. It's built on the slopes of hills (around a castle of historic significance), and thus you have interesting things such as streets on different levels, entire streets going under other streets, buildings with two ground floors and lanes which are winding stone staircases. Which, as you can imagine, looks quite doovy.
A word of advice for visitors to Edinburgh: if you're keen on photography (or just nice views), go to Calton Hill. (Why doesn't every city have high hills with impressive neoclassical monuments in the centre?) If you're afraid of heights, ignore the preceding advice.
(Another word of advice: don't bother with those British Telecom Internet-enabled payphones. They're a nice idea, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. For one, the vandal-proof, payphone-style keyboards are impossible to type on at all comfortably, and the keys tend to behave somewhat erratically unless whacked with great determination. (And also the custom browsing software they use lacks certain amenities, such as, say, HTTP authentication. Haven't these people heard of Mozilla?))
2002/11/8
I went along to Bowlie Nite last night, which was rather fun. I caught up with a friend from Australia who's travelling for the next few months, and we went there, meeting up with some other people. It was in the basement level of a club in Chalk Farm Road, with three or so DJs taking turns and playing records (mostly indie pop and northern soul; they played a good track by a band named Felt, whom I must check out properly, as well as stuff like Stereolab, Black Box Recorder, Broadcast, Kings of Convenience and Belle & Sebastian). They also played some old Beach Boys records, which the friend I went with said reminded her of a country wedding she went to a while ago. The hip/daggy dichotomy strikes again.
The flyer said that people could bring their own records and the DJ may play them. I handed the DJ (the one calling herself The Hatster, who apparently came up with the whole night) a copy of the Field Mice's Where'd You Learn To Kiss That Way (disc 2), and she played Emma's House.
Also, someone there was handing out flyers for a band named The Charm Offensive, who are playing next Thursday at some place called the Betsey Trotswood, in EC1R (wherever that is). If I'm in town (as opposed to, say, being rained on in the Orkneys or something), I might go to see them.
Anyway, Bowlie Nite was fun. I don't think there's anything quite like that in Melbourne. (There are "UK-indie" nights in bars, but they tend to go for the lowest common denominator approach and lump in everything from Oasis to Fatboy Slim to northern soul to electroclash under the union jack banner.)
2002/11/7
Johnny Cash covers Depeche Mode; it sounds plausible enough too. He also covers one of the gothfather's little ditties (about self-mutilation or something like that); wonder how long until he does the Sisters of Mercy or Gary Numan. (via Cos)
I never did end up making it to Machynlleth; as I was making my way to the 13:35 train, I remembered that I hadn't visited the record shop (which Jim had recommended), and so I went to check it out. (I ended up buying 4 CDs there.) Then I caught the next train out, which was meant to be 2 hours later, but was about 15 minutes late on top of that. Britain's railway network, it seems, has seen better days. Anyway, I'm back in London, for now anyway.
(I also managed to score a short-sleeved Ben Sherman shirt which was marked down to £18 at a local clothing shop. That's one of the advantages of visiting from the other hemisphere, where it is short-sleeve weather.)
Anyway, I rather liked Aberystwyth. It's a rather charming combination of Victorian seaside resort (smack bang in the middle of the Welsh riviera), rural Celtic village and happening university town. The weather also seemed quite mild there too; I'm told that because of Aberystwyth's location, it usually is.
2002/11/6
I'm in Aberystwyth; I arrived on the train last night, and met up with Jim and Catrin, at whose quite pleasant (and undeniably fire-safe, judging by the bilingual warning signs on all the doors) flat I stayed overnight. Anyway, they're both quite nice people, and as interesting to talk to in real life as online.
I saw parts of a video of the production of A Clockwork Orange in which they acted (Jim playing the minister and Stanley Kubrick, and Alex and the prison chaplain all played by multiple actors; also, the main actor playing Alex was female), which was quite horrorshow. I also saw some fragments of the local Welsh-language channel (S4C); there's some rather high-quality film made here which unfortunately doesn't make it out into the wider world because it's in Welsh. (There's even a Welsh anime-style film, which looked quite impressive.)
I spent most of this morning wandering up and down Aberystwyth (an undeniably charming place; I can see why people who come here often end up staying), taking photographs and picking up bits of Welsh from the bilingual signs. I'll probably stop at Machynlleth (sp?) on the way back.
2002/11/5
I spent the last day or two in the countryside; Kent and Sussex, to be precise. I went to Beachy Head, an area of somewhat dramatic chalk cliffs, slowly crumbling into the sea. (There is a row of cottages there which is two cottages shorter than it was when they built it; I may post some photos at some stage.) Then I watched the last rays of sunlight over the pier in Eastbourne. (The pier is one of those dominated by an amusement hall. In decades gone by, there must have been coin-operated machines there which for a few (non-decimal) pence would show saucy dioramas or something; however, all there was now was a room full of gaming machines, beeping merrily to themselves, and a few lost teenagers. There's something rather bleak about a seaside resort on a Sunday evening in late autumn; the word 'post-apocalyptic' comes to mind.)
Also, I find it rather amusing that on the road between Winchelsea and Rye (I think), there is an ickle town named Icklesham.
2002/11/3
It looks like Cos has been doing a good job of maintaining Upcoming Events in my absence; judging by it, there are quite a few good gigs I'm missing out on being here in the UK. I wouldn't mind having seen the Sleepy Jackson gig, if only because of the supports (New Buffalo and Architecture in Helsinki all on one bill). I'll be back in time for the Essendon Airport gig, and/or the Architecture album launch.
All this evening, fireworks have been going off all around (well, all around Ealing and thereabouts, anyway). It seems that, this being the weekend between Halloween and Guy Fawkes' Day, it's a doubly good reason for fireworks.
Some of these look like organised displays, but others probably aren't. Unlike in Australia, anyone can buy fireworks here and set them off, which is why you get bottle rockets whizzing horizontally across parks and almost knocking people over and such; and apparently the casualty departments of hospitals are doing a roaring trade as well.
One thing that I found slightly surprising: the English really get into Halloween (which I thought was an American thing, at least in its modern incarnation). There were carved pumpkins everywhere, and I saw a number of people dressed up for the occasion. (And not just little children in pumpkin suits either; there was one woman walking down Oxford St., attired in green face paint and a witch's hat. Not the sort of thing you see in Australia much.)
I've been a bit quiet lately, because I've been too busy wandering around London to blog. I spent yesterday wandering around and doing some shopping. (It appears that Ben Sherman shirts are actually cheaper in Melbourne than here, as I found to my dismay; though at least here you can find a good range of Radiohead/W.A.S.T.E. T-shirts in shops.)
Today, however, I spent much of the day wandering around the Victoria & Albert Museum. It really is a fantastic place; it has huge warrens of rooms full of all sorts of objects and artefacts; from the personal effects of 16th-century people to machines made in the Renaissance (some of which look surprisingly modern), to designer plastic radios from the 1970s to huge statues, along with insights into the worlds from which these artefacts came.
Luckily the weather is looking up somewhat, as from tomorrow I'll be travelling around a bit.