(With apologies to Andrew Clare)

work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work break to watch Randell And Hopkirk (Deceased) the new version - whoa! why is that actress wearing all those weird outfits work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work break to re-pot all the basil and coriander plants - aw, ain’t it cute the way our cat Poppy hangs out and watches our every move work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work break to watch Chicago the movie - man, what a great movie, my respect for Renee has just increased several hundred per cent work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work damn, not able to go see Guitar Wolf the other night - heard it was an awesome show, too work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work damn, missed I’m Being Good with Noxagt - would’a liked to have seen that work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work damn, have I missed Comet Gain in Brighton, too - somebody please turn this carousel off work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work

Andrew! Where’s the cover?

Posted by Everett True on Saturday, May 29th, 2004
(1 Comment)

work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work
BANG!
suddenly i’m in a pub and we’re going to play a show. Noxagt get in late, their van is fucked, their sound guy is sick, their bass amp is blown. england has beaten them. it’s horrible seeing bands you know and love getting destroyed by the country you live in. there’s a whole load of nothing happening and eventually we open the doors and play, without a soundcheck, and somehow get away with it. Noxagt are spectacular, then we make 4 car journeys back to the practice room with all our shit and then 2 car journeys back to tom’s house with the PA, which tom has to then make 2 journeys to horsham with in the morning before work. then there’s as close to a party as you can get under the circumstances. then it’s work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work workwork work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work and then

BANG! suddenly i’m at Basle airport being collected by Jean-Luc in a punk minibus and driven to Colmar and it’s all sunny and summery and i’m sneezing and wearing a teeshirt and everything. Jussi is here already. hello Jussi! and Kevin out of Trumans Water! hi Kevin!, and then all these other people who i’ve never met before who are incredibly friendly and shaking my hand and asking me if i’m Ca Va and fixing me drinks and i forget all of their names very quickly. Neman from Herman Dune tells us we’re on tonight, not tomorrow night, so it’s decided that Stuart should probably try and sleep for a bit, if he can remember how to, and we mooch around watching people soundcheck and drinking and generally unwinding.
Our soundcheck leaves us worried but when we play we’re a little sloppy and sound a bit fizzy but i think, well, we seem to get away with it at least, so it’s okay. other bands play, kevin plays with jussi and neman and it’s great, i still have 2 of his songs rattling round my head even now. and herman dune play and they’re great too, and some other people play but i’m ashamed to say i didn’t watch them. we sleep in the oldest building in town (built 1416) with mike and dina from pre-war yardsale and their incredibly well-adjusted baby and the bells don’t wake anyone up. i still manage somehow to wake up too early and get myself lost in town. Eventually get back to the venue and hang out and hang out and hang out and make some noise in the big derelict chimney and sit by the river and drink and eat and nod and shake hands with a lot of people and so on.
in the evening we somehow implicate ourselves into Jussi’s set, which seems to go well, although maybe not what he was expecting but i think he got away with it. Then there’s more drinking and eating and i manage to not be around when there’s a sing-song happening in back. it’s all about timing. and herman dune play and they’re way better than the previous night and then we go stay with charming Nicholas in his lovely apartment and i don’t sleep at all for some reason and then in the morning Nicholas is showing me a bunch of Vincent (vanoli)’s books and artwork that i’ve never seen before and a bunch of other amazing french artists’ stuff and i’m feeling very inspired and want to hang out all day talking about stuff like that but whoosh, we’re out the door and back to the airport and whisked home on the plane.
and that’s the end.
the end.

Posted by Andrew Clare on Saturday, May 29th, 2004
(1 Comment)

just reading frances’ blog about einsturzende neubauten brought back memories of my school days. i remember being about 12 or 13 and suddenly shifting my interests from ska and posi-punk to industrial, going out and finding kollaps and strategies against architecture by neubauten and filth by swans and sonic youth’s confusion is sex and being so blown right the fuck away and actually carrying a big clunky tape recorder into school to play this stuff to my friends. I remember being very dissapointed with my school that, in spite of their best efforts, i wasn’t really turning out the same as everyone else.

Posted by Andrew Clare on Saturday, May 29th, 2004
(1 Comment)

So my wife decided to celebrate her birthday in suitably noisy fashion upstairs; according to our marriage contract this required me to stay downstairs with a pot of coffee, a pile of subediting and something Pretty Fucking Noisy And Abrasive, which is what I tend to do anyways so no problems there. However, tonight the noise from above was such that I turned aside the Richard Youngs I’ve been obsessed with, I switched off the gentle pickings of Jack Rose, I eschewed Juana Molina, White Magic and even (fuck knows what made me drag this one out of the vinyl box today, but forgive me lord, I did it, and it felt fine) the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, and I reached out, almost without thinking for the lovely pristine package that contains Kalte Sterne, early recordings by Einsturzende Neubauten, delicately repackaged, arrived in the post the other day and left completely unopened by me.

Contemplating the oeuvre of Neubauten feels to me something like staring into some huge abyss filled with leftover stock and buried treasure, like whe I was 16 and worked in Woolworths and out the back we had this abyss - no kidding, a fucking abyss - where all the out-of-date chocolate and broken Barbies waited before getting thrown away. You were under no circumstances allowed to take anything from the abyss or even go near it (this was my first job; they fired me for wearing black tights instead of flesh tone and having an ‘attitude problem’) and it was always dark, but glinting with the seductive shiny wrappers of old sweets and toys, and I always wanted to get down there and have a rummage, not because I wanted out-of-date M&Ms as such, but just because. Because it was an abyss. Because it was there. But it was too big, too dark, and too risky, and I wanted to keep the job - although, as I said, I got fired anyway, so I might as well as dived right into it on my first day and run out the door loaded down with damaged Lego Technics and dented cans of Irn Bru. But I never did.

My point being. It was probably about that time in my life that some boy, because it is always a boy, always, tried to get me into Neubauten, and I resisted. Because there was just too much of it. It was too heavily coded and hermetic. I could bluff my way through the boys’ worlds of Japanese noise and 60s psych and all that noisy American stuff we used to listen to back then, took to it like a frowning duck to water, but not the Neubauten. It would have been like pretending I knew about computer games or sports - I would have been so out of my depth and so caught out. Instantly. And so patronised too, let’s not forget. I got to thinking that Neubauten were exclusive to boys (or, at least, the sort of boys I knew), like punching walls, making lists of films they’ve seen (with ratings), having a Heavy Metal Phase, liking Butthole Surfers, reading Michael Moorcock, keeping a huge box of 2000AD in the cupboard and having bigger feet than me were also exclusive to boys.

And then I grew up and forgot all about the abyss and the differences between boys and girls. But I retained the abyss-like suspicion of Einsturzende Neubauten, while getting over my similar fears of the Residents and Nurse With Wound - and while developing exclusive geek-worlds of my own (test me on early Krautrock, fuckers! go on! and British Folk, while you’re at it). After it while it just became something I was never going to do. It was too late now. It would be, I don’t know, like suddenly taking up running. I would just look and feel like a complete twat.

Then Mute records sent me this CD, and when someone saw it the other day and expressed surprise that I hadn’t listened to it, I suddenly felt guilty. So I put it on the stuff-to-play pile, on top of the Mission of Burma album, which I didn’t like much actually, and underneath something else, what is it, a Murcof remixes thing, well, that isn’t gonna take me anywhere amazing, is it, but I think it will be nice ( it has Deathprod on it after all), and suddenly, at 1.22 am, I’m finally listening to the bastard thing. Yes, I put it on to drown out my wife’s festivities - she gets the boys, I get the noise; it’s a match made in heaven - but my goodness.

It’s great.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Thursday, May 27th, 2004
(4 Comments)

Three great films in the past fortnight I’ve rediscovered, thanks to Hove library’s rather patchy DVD section (mostly comprised of Big Brother outtakes and crap Seventies horror films like I Spit On Your Grave) - Elizabeth Taylor’s incredible performance as Maggie ‘The Cat’ in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, 8 Mile (rather surprisingly) and Alan Bates’ classic early Sixties kitchen sink drama A Kind Of Loving. These, coupled with the complete third series of Jeeves And Wooster, have provided welcome relief at the end of days when computer and music threatens to overwhlem and send me tumbling down a spiral of blank solicitude. Plus: aren’t the magnolias and lilacs beautiful, cycling through the back lanes of Hove on a summer’s afternoon? I think so.

We now have an almost completed pilot issue of Plan B - with ads to match!
We now have a Plan B cheque book!
We are ready to rumble.

You’ll be wanting to check out creepingbent.org for the Fire Engines live CD? Don’t know who they are? Well. Hmm. Check out the site. Unless it’s not up, in which case…you can trace a dierct line between the trebly, extreme guitars of this 1981 Scots pop band and their debut single ‘Get Up And Use Me’, and Erase Errata’s brittle, bruising rhythms. Serious.

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, May 26th, 2004
(3 Comments)

Assailed by computer troubles and huge piles of paper that need looking at and with a list of stuff to do where the writing gets wider and sprawlier as it gets to the bottom of the page, I reckon I might as well write a quick blog. Just for a break.

I have a huge pile of Careless Talk Costs Lives back issues on the floor next to me, and last night on the train I reread some of them for the first time since last summer. God, that was a good magazine. I hope people will keep their copies safe and bring them out to show young people in 30 years’ time, like one of my tutors at college who had a stash of Oz and IT and City Lights books he was kind enough to let me look at. I read a couple of my pieces with trepidation, knowing that I’d used my columnist status a couple of times to, uh, work through a few issues, but it was OK really, like the things I wrote about are OK now. The nicest thing was reading a long Robert Wyatt review I wrote last September. Back then, I was indulging myself in some serious self-pity and shock. I hadn’t eaten for a week, almost, and each night I had dreams about knives and guns and scissors. I wrote the review in bed, wrapped in blankets, and then finished it on the front room table, after which I put on ‘Soulful Old Man Sunshine’ by The Beach Boys, which I probably danced to. The point of this, though, is that when I reread the review yesterday, I really liked it. I didn’t squirm in embarrassment (and I’m not embarrassed, anyway, about getting my heart broke last year and then daring to write about it in the context of music - christ, isn’t that what pop music’s for?); I admired the things I said and the way I said them. It’s really a pretty straight review, all told. It bears the stamp of Wyatt’s calming, zen-like character and a rueful acceptance of bad things getting better someday. It has facts in it and everything; names and stuff. And a quote from Samuel Beckett (bastardised and uncredited). So, you know, nothing to upset the British Sea Power fans, then.

The only thing that bothered me was that I hadn’t listened to ‘Cuckooland’ much after I wrote the review. I’d been so nice about it - was it actually any good? This can be a real problem, you know. Infatuated with the rhythm of writing and the knitting together of words, I sometimes write a good review of a mediocre album that reads way better than the damn thing sounds. I’m sure this couldn’t be true of Robert Wyatt, but still. So I’m listening to ‘Cuckooland’ this morning.

And you know what, it’s wonderful. There’s much wrong with it, much to bend your ears around. Many aesthetic decisions you or I might not make. But pretty much everything I felt about it then still stands, only this time I’m coming to it from a much nicer place, and this time I don’t need healing, just a little encouragement. By the way, if you ever need encouragement to make your own music and let your own voice be heard, you can’t beat Robert Wyatt. He should be required listening for every cynical, shy, have-I-left-this-too-late songwriter. This time I even used the 30-second break in the middle of the CD to go make some tea, like Wyatt suggests you do.

Back to work.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, May 25th, 2004
(3 Comments)

brigitte…toujours au fond de cafe… et de la bois

got one last review to do but my wife is distracting me from malleus malificarum with her references to extended entries and so forth. she lent me her Hott Dutch Bike (this is a real thing not a euphemism) so I could go to the shop and i rode it all the way to the middle of hackney and then i got back and i could not write this last review because i got hung up on the fact that Liars would be EVEN BETTER if Giles Narang were drumming for them. so i’m getting up at the Witching Hour to write it and i hope you appreciate that, Liars, and readers also. the Witching Hour (this time of year) is like 5am, in case you were wondering.

i’m not really listening to whose fist is it anyway. i just really like the title, despite never having heard it. it’s a song by Prong, whoever the fuck they are, and one of my favourite friends just told me it. we sat in the pub with the old men and darts and ‘god only knows’ on the jukebox and talked about richard youngs, matthew bower, zztop, 13th floor elevators, the drinking habits of Americans, how there’s never been a band called Witch Hammer, and how women always have the upper hand. god bless you, sir.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Monday, May 24th, 2004
(2 Comments)

So what happens is all your deadlines come at once and you suddenly have a magazine that you helped to happen taking shape under your hands, or at least under someone’s hands.

Goes without saying this makes me happy.

But other deadlines come along too. It’s May, after all. All your deadlines come at once, especially in your 27th and 28th years. I can hear it in a new friend’s guitar lines and see it in my frown lines, my handwriting as I jot down feverish song lyrics as if someone else is holding the pen, tap out quick-fire columns with torn-nailed zeal. Remember what my life was like this time last year, as I simultaneously embraced and chafed at Normality, sitting in the 9th floor office pretending my music and writing were ‘hobbies’ and I really wanted to help people publish books for the rest of my life.

Goes without saying that, frayed as I am, tonight I want the powerbook screen and the dance of words on the page, the bass and the synth and the violin, and the derelict cinema with Greek gods’ heads on the wall and the huge black staircase and holes in the roofs and the huge door you have to force open. And no more 9th floor offices.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Saturday, May 22nd, 2004
(No Comments)

…and I’ve been meaning to buy this album for near on 27 years!

Our assistant publisher informs me I have a rave review in the NME this week, in a review of the Sink & Stove compilation, The Hospital Radio Request List Volume Two: “Elsewhere, Indie stalwarts The Legend! confirm that a chunky man singing a capella about girls and stuff can still sound like the most vital thing on earth…”

Cool, except:
1) I’m not singing a cappella (two p’s) - there are instruments present throughout
2) I’m actually, very specifically, singing about my attitude towards playing music and what used to be called punk rock.
Now I know how musicians must feel when I’m writing about them and getting my facts wrong…!

Still, as Richard points out, in advertising I can shorten the quote to “The Legend! - The most vital thing on earth (NME)”

Posted by Everett True on Saturday, May 22nd, 2004
(2 Comments)

I’m listening to this Flaming Lips album because Frances has referenced it in her excellent and impressionistic OOIOO article, and I wanted to make sure that I too felt Yoshimi P-We’s own output was far more fascinating then the rather mainstream Lips album title implied. And yes, of course…although this record is slowly creeping up and snuffling in my ear like Flaming Lips records used to do. Although I could do without the calculated nods to Noughties production. (We had a discussion about that word yesterday, me and Katrina and intern Alex: we agreed we didn’t like it, but it seems we have no choice. The Nothings would seem to be more appropriate. But that was what yesterday was like: laughter and coffee and frolicking with cat Poppy in the sun and rain, and open-mouthed awe at the wonderful job Andrew Clare has done designing the new Media section for issue 0, and dictionary battles, and banter. Banter is good.)

Ah, sorry for my absence.
I’ll give you 10 significant recent events in the life of Mr Everett True as we attempt to battle the forces of complacency. And then hopefully we can all be friends again.

1) Last Wednesday: Plan B night at the Albert - the return of Jamie and ET’s Quizatron, Jon Slade’s birthday, just one team recognised the lyrics to ‘Enter Sandman’, on the Fiendish Picture Round a few people (alright, me) thought Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry was Frank Sinatra, A Question Of Pain ran away with the first prize of two tickets to a Concorde2 show of their choice (Slade came undone on the Euro Visions round), someone supplied a crate of beer, I got to play Aaron Neville singing the theme from The Mickey Mouse Club, only 15 people entered because there was a clash with the sparkly and delicate Blonde Redhead…Don’t type the words Blond Redhead into a search engine seeking to check your spelling unless you want ‘1000s of free redhead pubes pics”…

2) David McNamee has disappeared. No one else on Plan B understands what it’s like to go out and have a good time with people who actually like them, apparently. So he’s fucked off until we learn. This doesn’t make putting the pilot issue of Plan B together very easy, particularly as we’re on our final few days of deadlines, and we have no idea what album reviews have and haven’t been commissioned. So if you’re a contributor and reading this, maybe you could drop Frances a line and check to see whether she’s got your review? Thanks. I knew you’d understand.

3) Coco Rosie were superb. Harp, human beatbox, toy instruments, handheld tape recorders, two incredibly posh and stuck-up females - so incredibly attractive, obviously - one affecting a deranged child’s voice, the other all operatic and sweeping from side to side. Nice! Really enjoyed them, even though the soundsystem thumping through from upstairs at the Penthouse was frequently louder than their voices. Nice! In interview, we soon bonded on a shared love of cooking, and style. Not that I have much. Their album is just so beguiling and poised mysterious. I’m sure it’ll be the only one they make, before they move onto arthouse cinema.

4) Everyone here at Plan B is in awe of Hannah Gregory, 16-years-old and writing like a champ. Shame on you Klang, for not bothering to take the time to reply to Hannah’s questions with the respect and courtesy they deserved. You should hang your heads.

5) Got the finished version of my White Stripes book back. Man, Andrew did a fine job on the design.

6) Got some posters printed up of the cover to the pilot issue of Plan B. Yes! That blue. That lab technician. That syringe being stuck straight into the chick’s eyeball. Just need some cover lines now… ;O)

7) Been groovin’ on the reissued Modern Lovers album - Back In Your Life and Modern Lovers Live - for a solid two weeks now, and been absolutely shocked at the number of interns who’ve never heard of Jonathan. Man. This is summer music like I’ve haven’t enjoyed summer music since The Undertones.

8) Been groovin’ on all the fabulous Fantagraphics and Top Shelf comics I’ve been sent too, particularly the sweet and childishly spooky Van Helsing’s Night Off, the first volume of The Complete Peanuts (Charlie Brown & co, before any taint of popularism touched their world) and James Kochalka, of course. And those editions of The Comics Journal! Possibly the most beautiful magazine in the entire world…

9) …unless that honour goes to the new Loose Lips Sink Ships. Oh. My. God. How incredible is this?

10) Frances and Sarah and Andrew so have my respect and admiration.

Posted by Everett True on Saturday, May 22nd, 2004
(8 Comments)