It’s like I know by now that there will be a frill of cymbal-shimmer and a ripple at the edges of everything and that I will leap up and down and laugh because I’m so excited. I know what Boredoms are going to do, pretty much, at least to start with. I know the way in which they’ll unfurl their sound with the upward seeping and sweeping of queasy intergalactic fairground chords and an outward spiral of drum-rolls and percussion mutterings, upwards and outwards until the music spreads to touch every sonic nerve ending in your body and light appears from your fingertips and your toe-tips and your nose and the clouds open and swallow you into the space between them and then they get going, after that. I know because I’ve seen Boredoms play pretty much the same set four times in four years - with some differences, sure, like tonight’s acid house disco bit in the middle - and I wonder about this and then I stop wondering and start leaping and laughing again because it’s OK, it’s not the same it’s totally different, it’s like weather is always different and like how the seasons are always a surprise when they change, and it’s OK too, using all this hippy talk, because it is Boredoms, and they are what most out-there music only promises to be. They are body music for the mind to do iridescent aerobics to.

Last night they retained the high of their last few performances and were also more lyrical and unashamedly pretty than usual, sounding more like Yoshimi’s OOIOO in places. They aimed for triumphant, anthemic prog peaks, too, and (duh, obviously) reached them easily, finishing off with a stately march, a national anthem for a planet run by giant cats and carnivorous plants. And there was the aforementioned disco-acid-house breakdown bit, expertly dropped on us after a galloping, thundering motorik. When things got too sweet, Eye cut loose with a swoop of noise that whistled past the head like a circus knife-thrower’s blade and travelled thence downwards much further than it ought. He leapt and yelled and pointed and conjured with glowing orbs in the encore, hinting at the chaos that surrounds the drumming and could always overtake and swamp it. Of course we know that won’t happen, but the intimation that it will is part of the tension and the fun and the sacredness of Boredoms: that they - at their best, which is like most of the time - sound like they’re holding everything together, holding the whole of music in their hands for an instant, passing it round, passing it on, passing it over the heads of the audience, and then throwing it out into the world and letting someone else have it.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
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Here’s my first chart from lastfm (most played artists)

1 The Long Blondes
2 Dexys Midnight Runners
3 The Undertones
4 The Go-Betweens
5 Patrik Fitzgerald
6 Camera Obscura
7 M. Ward
8 Candi Staton
8 Timi Yuro
10 Au Pairs
11 Serge Gainsbourg
12 Lonnie Donegan
12 Grandmaster Gareth
14 Animals and Men
15 Desford Colliery Band
16 De La Soul
16 Jackie Wilson
16 Yeah Yeah Yeahs
16 The Dresden Dolls
16 Snowbirds
16 Willie Hightower
16 Tracy Thornton

Posted by Everett True on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006
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(This was Isaac’s due date.) Listen up: there’s something I’ve been meaning to share with you for a while now. No, not talking about last Wednesday at St Andrew’s Church - although that was extraordinary enough itself - where I played a half-hour improvised set with Noah Taylor, Noah on violin and guitar and sax simultaneously. We gelled, and we played noise, and we hit a groove, and we talked, and man it felt so good. (There’s a repeat this coming Friday at the Marlborough Hotel in Brighton, if anyone’s interested, where we’ll be joined by Chris Anderson.) No, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about something in cyberspace.

So. After reading Miss AMP’s article on lastfm which appears in the next Plan B - and having just acquired a new PC, and thus access to iTunes once more, finally - I decided to check the site out. I logged on, played the requisite 300 tunes or so needed to register neighbours (folk with remarkably similar to musical tastes to your own) and checked out my new community. The third one I looked at - Gud, a 19-year-old Swedish male - was the one where it happened.

First: his most played artists this week - Irma Thomas, Betty Lavette, all my soul ladies from the Sixties. Cool, I thought.

Next: his most played artists last month – Orange Juice, The Pastels, Dexys Midnight Runners, Razorcuts. Nice. Shows diversity, exactly where I like it. This lastfm ‘generate neighbours’ function really seems to be kicking in, I thought. Then, I scrolled down the page to where Gud listed his most played tracks, and there at the very top with 84 plays – a song from a totally obscure band from Cardiff (and Brighton), one that didn’t even feature on my own iTunes list at that point. ‘Impossible Dream’ by the Snowbirds.

I freaked out. Snowbirds were my wife’s college band.

Posted by Everett True on Monday, May 29th, 2006
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Hurrah for the lovely BARR, who’s playing at lovely Bardens, which has RE-FUCKIN’-OPENED at long last, after almost a year of not being open and forcing us to go to all sorts of weird places like Kilburn instead. So hurrah for all of that, and you should all go see BARR and get made happy, because he’s ace, and because I won’t be there, most likely, because I’ve got meetings, deadlines and a head full of worry and woe and a most unseasonal hibernation instinct enveloping my head like an itchy wool snood, so I want everyone to go for me and ENJOY.

OK?

They’re showing films too. It will be good.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
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Last night wasn’t so good - Isaac woke up screaming at 12.30 and it took two solid hours of me singing to him, and talking, and bringing him medicine and milk before he was comforted enough to sleep again. When you’re so asleep yourself it’s hard to think of variations on what food he’ll be able to bite at once his teeth come through - beans, kidney beans, broad beans, runner beans, baked beans, green beans, minestrone, pinto beans - repeated on what seems an endless loop. He seems well enough now, though.

I’m about a day away from finishing my book. Today should do it, actually. I need to read through the final ‘death’ chapter once more (and the epilogue), and finalise the acknowledgments. Man. Then it’s just a matter of waiting until the galleys are back and wincing at the numerous typos - and, yeah. That’ll be it. It’s odd. The feeling is almost anti-climatic. It’s been almost two years. And now I just feel immeasurably sad - partly like I’ve betrayed my old self and Kurt by seeing this project through its conclusion, and partly because it’s never nice looking back in such detail, not when it reduces your current life to such an insane, repetitive routine. I’m sure it’s also affected my ability to write.

I love this Kimya Dawson album so much.

It hasn’t really been possible to Kimya while I’ve been writing my book - it’s too intrusive, and she makes you want to catch every last wavering word - but it means a lot. My chosen music to play at 6.55am is Camera Obscura’s new album, more Concretes than the Concretes even, it’s such a delightful way to greet the morning. And for incidental music, played while I’m preparing food or Isaac’s down in the kitchen, The Jam (Extras, or live). And for writing the book itself during the final week; Mark Lanegan and Talking Heads. (There’s been a ton more, but I really don’t want to get into writing extended lists here.)

Watched Dig last night. Man, that final scene where Anton kicks someone in the head for no reason depressed me so much - it was all I could think about when I was woken suddenly in the night. Not sure if the film isn’t too close to reality for my own personal comfort.

Posted by Everett True on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006
(3 Comments)