I Feel Love

As you may have gathered, I’ve had the big job interview I mentioned a few days ago. I think I did quite well, but I don’t find out about the job for at least another week because they have other people to interview.

Meanwhile, my number of hits seems to have stayed roughly the same even though I’ve been posting much less frequently. I’m not sure what to make of this! (Of course, about half my hits are Googlers these days. Not that the Googlers aren’t welcome.)

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Anyway, Scott asked for the views of gay people on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, so as an official gay person I would have to say that I think you are taking this all a bit too seriously mate! In any case I’m all in favour of “tacky co-opting.” I have to say I don’t get the “stereotypes” criticism though. Firstly, the show is made by gay people; I don’t think anybody (including other gay people) should be telling us we can’t play up to our own stereotypes a bit if we want to. Secondly, there is actually quite a spectrum of campness on the show, ranging from Carson at the flaming end to Thom and Ted who are almost straight acting! The fab five could easily be a random group of five gay men of my acquiantance…what’s the problem, are we going to start pretending that lots of gay men aren’t fashion people or interior designers or whatever?

The slightly embarrassing thing of course is that lots of gay men I know, myself included, could benefit from the ministrations of the fab five themselves. If anything the problem is the way that straight men are stereotyped! (In fact I know quite a few straight men who are neater and more stylish than me, not that it takes much.) So by all means bring on queer eye for the queer guy or straight eye for the queer guy or whatever, it’s all good fun!

To be honest, though, when I first heard the description of the show I cringed too. It was only seeing how delightfully and warmly the premise has been realised that changed my mind.

It’s chart time again…still running a week late but I’ll try to catch up soon.

41: Sarah McLachlan – Fallen Why does Sarah McLachlan still write songs now that their raison d’être, Buffy, has finished? I jest of course, but I can’t hear that voice and those characteristic long lines (heptameter, in fact, seems to be Sarah’s preferred metre) without thinking that I should be watching a montage from a Buffy season finale (angsty variety). Still, Sarah’s nice enough, one of the few Canadian singers I can stomach actually. (kd lang is another one.)

38: The Saddle Club – Boogie Oogie Oogie/Undercover Movers And Shakers As seems to be the case with singles made for the pre-teen market, this has been impossible to find on one’s favourite file sharing services (not good enough, children! don’t kids break the law any more?), so I’ve only been able to hear a brief excerpt…enough, though, to confirm that “Boogie Oogie Oogie” is indeed a cover of the disco classic by A Taste of Honey, one of the best disco songs ever in fact. I don’t know what this has to do with a TV show for pre-pubescent horse fetishists, but clearly someone in charge has excellent taste in music.

37: George – Still Real George (or george as one’s supposed to call them) are a Brisbane band. I think I’ve heard some of their other songs but they’ve never really made much of an impression on me. Judging by this, their brief is “intelligent” coffee-table indie songs with look-at-me harmonies, but there are some things to like about them, especially the singer’s voice, which, although it’s standard indie chick in the lower register, soars beautifully off into ethereal Rickie Lee Jones territory on the high notes. Nice, but I think they should embrace the weirdness and go all the way.

25: The J Wess Project – What Chu Want Our third Australian single in a row; this is from an American-born chap who moved to Australia to play basketball, and now aspires to be our Timbaland, a rather interesting career trajectory; although whether it’s made him “the most noted Australian since Steve Irwin,” as he claims in his rap here, is open to debate. This tune isn’t bad actually, I’d dance to it, more Neptunes than Timbaland since there’s only really one idea, but unlike The Neptunes it’s probably not a good enough idea to sustain a whole song. Also the very dodgy MP3 I have possibly makes it sound more rhythmically interesting than it actually is.

12: No Doubt – It’s My Life This is how out of touch I’ve been with mainstream rock music until recently: I’m vaguely aware that No Doubt are reasonably famous, but I doubt I could actually place any of their songs. This song is synth-rock which would be much better as synth-pop; why do rock bands always feel the need to add something for the chorus? More guitars, louder drums, whatever. Couldn’t they try taking something away for once? I honestly think this is one of my biggest problems with rock music!

No changes at all to the composition of the Top 10, and the Top 3 haven’t even moved: Britters at No 1, Kyles at No 2 and Beyoncé (Yonce? Bee?) at No 3. All in all, not the most inspiring of weeks in the pop world; I think I might have to declare the Saddle Club my favourite single of the week (even though I’ve only heard about 20 seconds of it).

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Well, I’m at least thinking of buying the Junior Boys EP, Matt, even though imported vinyl is ridic. costly in Australia, and also I don’t actually have a record player. (The theory is if I start buying vinyl it will inspire me to buy one eventually.) But I feel I should at least get points for good intentions!

(Melbourne readers: has anyone actually seen the EP in any shops here? May have to order it from Juno or Boomkat.)

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You know you’ve got it bad when you get all excited to see another blogger mention that they’ve been to Cologne…

A couple of circle-jerky moments before bedtime:

Like Scott I was astonished to learn that Tom Ewing has a beard…although my mental image of Tom was less Tiga (!), more Jack Davenport.

Melbourne boy explains Jamaican music to New Yorkers. Yay!

Oh, and one more: brilliant stuff here from Jon, but there’s really nothing to “unpack” in my Kylie/Kubrick comparison! “Loosely defined” is exactly right, I was just thinking of the way some people say they hate Kubrick because his films are so stilted and drained of affect. So yeah, no doubt in actual aesthetic terms Warhol is a much better comparison. By the way, is there a version of “Slow” that actually goes for twenty minutes? There should be! I’ve heard a couple of remixes, but remixing is missing the point on this one; we need an old-fashioned disco style “extended mix”.

The strangest things occur to you as you’re walking to work. This morning, I was thinking about the lyrics to Prince’s “U Got the Look”, and realised what they reminded me of: Shakespeare’s sonnets! This bit in particular:

Look here
U got the look
U must’a took
A whole hour just 2 make up your face, baby
Closin’ time, ugly lights, everybody’s inspected
But U are a natural beauty unaffected
Did I say an hour?
My face is red, I stand corrected

Ambivalence caused by a clash of aesthetic paradigms! Artifice vs nature! Is that, or is it not, Elizabethan as fuck?

A funny and touching photo-essay from Matt. If this is a circle jerk then it’s one I want to be part of. (I can’t think offhand of a circle jerk I wouldn’t want to be part of, but that’s another story.)

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Got a lovely e-mail from Ron, as far as I know my first correspondent from Hawaii. Aloha Ron! Ron’s blog alerts us to the fact that San Francisco based house label Om Records have put out a Christmas CD! How wonderful.

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I like to think of myself as having a magpie-like interest in all aspects of the world around me, but there are some things that even I find it difficult to rouse any interest in. There are, in fact, a few subjects on which I have never read, seen or heard anything that has sparked even the tiniest flicker of attention. I think, therefore, that in the interests of time management I will just never attempt to engage with any of these topics again. So if you write something on one of the following subjects, I will stop reading after the first sentence; if you happen to meet me and start a conversation about one of them, I will make my excuses and walk away. Please don’t take it personally:

• baseball
• superhero comics
• ecofeminism
• Bob Dylan
• guns

Thanks for your consideration.

(PS I want to hear yours as well, for my files.)

I heart linguists.

Apparently England just won some rugby match, so hearty congratulations lads, but meanwhile onto more important things: time for the Top 50 roundup, again belated. It’s all RAWK this week, even the Britney song has a guitar in it!

50: Michelle Branch – Breathe Nice enough pop-rock, but not as good as the Blu Cantrell song of the same name. (I think it may in fact be the third single called “Breathe” this year…?)

34: Magic Dirt – Plastic Loveless Letter Chris Beig once rightly took me for task for dismissing this Geelong band without ever having heard any of their music, so let me now make amends by saying I really quite like this. It’s a lo-fi punkish number, not my sort of thing obviously, but I really like the girl’s voice; she’s managed to sound indie without sounding hopelessly affected, a near-impossible task for female vocalists these days. Rubbish title though.

32: Alex Lloyd – 1000 Miles Another Australian, one of those singer-songwriters people my age are supposed to like; would it be terribly unfair if I called him our John Mayer? Unfair to John Mayer, perhaps, who I actually have a guilty fondness for. Alex Lloyd is just boring, more like our…oh, who’s that English singer-songwriter guy, he’s so dull I’ve even forgotten his name.

20: Blink 182 – Feeling This Joey Ramone would be rolling in his etc etc…do the punk old guard ever actually listen to their own words when they’re dissing the likes of Blink 182? Does it never strike them as slightly ironic that they’re using the ethos of punk to castigate younger people for desecrating the work of their forefathers? This whole attitude makes me want to like Blink 182, and in fact I do quite like them; they’re tuneful and fun, certainly preferable to The Offspring (surely the worst very successful band in the world?) and I couldn’t care less about Joey Ramone.

17: OutKast – Hey Ya! You don’t need me to tell you how good this is. And of course it extends this week’s rock theme, since OutKast are of course America’s Greatest Rock Band (TM Sasha Frere-Jones), and in any case this is a rock song through and through. Except, being by a hip-hop band, it has better lyrics than most rock songs. Well done Australia on making this Top 20, by the way.

1: Britney Spears – Me Against the Music First things first, this is a brilliant title. All those dullards who’ve been going around saying hilarious things like “Ha ha, she’s called her new song ‘Me Against the Music,’ how very apt!” are merely pointing out an obvious instance of intentional irony, just like people who say “‘Everybody Loves Raymond’? I don’t love Raymond!” Well, duh. Britters has your number, hatas. All this is by way of delaying giving an opinion on the song itself, which is OK I suppose, but it’s a bit Janet Jackson circa Rhythm Nation isn’t it? (Which is to say, good, but hardly urgent and key in this day and age.)

Other movement in the Top 10: “Slow” down to No 2, Pink’s “Trouble” in at No 10, and “Shake Ya Tailfeather” and “Rise Up” are both out (not before time, in both cases). But expect Guy Sebastian’s “Angels Brought Me Here” to come in at No 1 on Monday week. (Not the bravest prediction ever made, I admit.)

Bloody excellent!!! For some reason I was sure it was going to be Shannon. I’m absurdly excited.

A few random pot-shots:

I partly agree and partly disagree with Luka’s take on Zadie Smith’s comments about the soul-deadening anti-emotionalism of the literary academy. I may explain why properly when I’ve finished preparing for this interview (for a job in, er, the soul-deadening anti-emotional literary academy). One area in which I’m afraid I can confirm everyone’s worst fears is this: I don’t think we academics should be spending our time talking about whether books are “good” or not. I think that’s rather beside the point, actually.

And that was actually the second time I’ve talked about Holly Valance and fisting in the same sentence! No-one seemed to notice the first time…

My wine tastes seem to be permanently stuck about five years ago. I just cannot get with the Riesling program, I know it’s supposed to be what we’re all drinking now instead of Chardonnay but yuck, it’s just too sweet, and as for the inexplicably popular Sparkling Burgundy: DUD!!!

Finally, check out Symposiasts, a fun blog by two mysterious Melburnians. (Check the blogroll: that’s what I call good taste!)

It’s six days late and it’ll have to be a quick one, but I can’t probably pass up the chance to do the new Top 50 entries in a Kylie week!

50: Sheryl Crow – The First Cut Is the Deepest I was sitting in a taxi on the way home from a party last night, and a song not unlike this came on, a soft-rock ballady kind of thing, and I thought, you know what, this kind of song is excellent for listening to in a taxi on the way home from a party. I used to really, really hate Sheryl Crow but somehow I’ve warmed to her; maybe it’s that her voice is quite expressive without being impossibly affected like most of her chick-rock cohorts?

44: Solitaire – I Like Love For once I actually know where a sample comes from! This takes both the chorus and the amazing bassline/guitar riff from Norma Jean’s disco classic of the same name; in fact it’s basically a remix, only the rather cute spoken-word “I’ve prepared a very special song for you” bit has been added. What can I say, it’s fluffy summertime house but all the basic elements are good. Go and listen to the Norma Jean song though, it’s wonderful.

35: Despina Vandi – Gia A bit rubbish this, housed-up Greek wedding music. Took me ages to download too. Still, with singles like this it’s fun to speculate about who might be buying them.

30: Atomic Kitten – If You Come to Me This would be quite good in the taxi on the way home, too, actually. Was it this lot that did that appalling cover of “The Tide is High”? This is much better than that.

29: Blue – Guilty And this is seriously good! A bit like “Back For Good” but better: great strings, lovely harmonies, and Tim F.’s right, Blue are really quite good singers indeed (unlike Tim I don’t know their names though). I mean it, if you’re not even a little bit moved by this then I pity you because you are clearly incapable of human feeling.

25: Obie Trice – Got Some Teeth All hip-hop should be like this! Filthy lyrics, wacky sound effects, it makes you dance, I like. Apparently this is produced by Eminem and Dr Dre, clearly rediscovering their inner sense of fun for the first time since “Without Me.”

21: Big Brovaz – Baby Boy The video for this has the premise “imagine if Friends was all about black people, ha ha!” Quite clever, but surely there are sitcoms that are all about black people, so the satirical point is a bit obscure. As for the song, it’s like the Neptunes never happened!

1: Kylie Minogue – Slow Brilliant, audacious, stunningly affectless, this—if we must make the comparison—is the deadpan cocaine-fuelled polite Bauhaus orgy to Holly Valance’s fervid amyl nitrate backroom fisting session. If you don’t like Stanley Kubrick’s films then you won’t like this song. FACT! As for me, I love them both.

And that’s the only new entry in the Top 10, with Pink making an inglorious exit after only a week. The Australian Idol single is still No 3! Incidentally, did you see that new Mark Holden ad for the charity karaoke CD? The one where he’s with the sick kids? Did it give you the creeps as well?