I Feel Love

You can tell a lot about people by the way they respond when they’re asked to contribute to lame newspaper features like So what’s your guilty pleasure? Of course, we can’t acknowledge by name those who did the decent thing and refused, but there’s a very wide variation among those who said yes, the litmus test of course being “do you stand to lose anything among your peers by your ‘confession,’ or is it really a sly form of one-upmanship?” viz.:

Julie Burchill: quite a good choice, but it’s a bit boring and orthodox nowadays to say “actually I don’t feel guilty about anything” (if that’s really true then you should just refuse to take part!).

Ian Rankin: ha, Jilly Cooper, that’s actually a really good answer.

Kirstie Allsopp: oh please–The West Wing is a guilty pleasure? What level of high-mindedness do you require in an un-guilty pleasure, reading the Epic of Gilgamesh in the original Mesopotamian?

Jennie Bond: reality shows, safe answer but acceptable. Props for admitting she votes.

Jon Snow: The Archers is a radio play therefore metonymically highbrow even if it’s a soap. -1. 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love”: obvious classic. -1. R Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly”: I’ll pay that. +1. Rossini’s Petit Messe Solenelle. Give me a break. -2. Reading the sport pages. We’re in a post-Hornby world, that’s Observer reader behaviour par excellence, -1. Anthems by Stanford, ha I quite like that, +1. Glimpse of Julie Andrews, very good, +2. Result: -1, you just had to overreach with the Rossini didn’t you.

Mo Mowlam: Bless her, nobody seems to have told Mo that ABBA are now universally applauded. Still, points for innocence.

Natasha Bedingfield: “Sheepishly” “admitting” that you like cheesy romantic comedies: that’s exactly the kind of thing people do in cheesy romantic comedies!

Alain de Botton: WANKER! WANKER! WANKER!

Charles Kennedy: Was the premise actually explained to him, I wonder? The “guilty” bit?

Dan Jacobson: Not a bad answer, but Miss Marple is not “middle-aged” for heaven’s sake!

Dom Joly: Good, but then no-one expects comedians to have any taste anyway!

Katie Melua: This takes the cake for sheer absurdity, but I do quite like the idea of Katie and her friends having Secret Beethoven Parties!

Bruce Forsyth John Grisham I’ll pay, but Frasier? And by all means take the opportunity to decry the decline in standards, that’s just what this kind of thing is all about!

In conclusion, Ian Rankin is surprisingly revealed as the least preening of the group, while Kirstie Allsopp (who I’m unfamiliar with but she should really be horsewhipped for that answer) and Alain de Botton (who unfortunately I’m all too familiar with) should never be allowed to take part in such exercises again (although one might make an exception if they offered an answer like, say, coprophagy).

Perhaps it was wrong to mock that article about “suburban chic”; it might be nice after all to have an aesthetic justification for my newfound love of Bargain Shopping, rather than sheeting it home to mundane economic factors.

Let’s therefore say that it was in the spirit of hip irony that I made my way to Jeff’s Shed in the sweltering heat last night in search of the manchester clearance sale that’s been advertised incessantly on TV for the past few days. I was lured in particular by the promise of EGYPTIAN COTTON BATH SHEETS!!!!!!, having been advised in apopleptic tones by the voiceover man (his hysteria might have been intended ironically, I suppose) that these were on offer for a miniscule fraction of the normal retail price. I’ve been using the same scratchy bath towels for over ten years now so in the spirit of Kath and Kim I thought it was time to “upgrade”.

I’d actually never been to Jeff’s Shed (note to non-Victorians, this is what everyone calls the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, after the ex-premier who built it and to whose narcissistic reign its grandiosity stands as a monument). It’s an odd, rather eerie building, enormously long and so vast that I can’t help thinking of it as somewhere you could comfortably sleep the whole of, say, Geelong, in the event of some future mass evacuation. It’s become something of a tradition, however, for the whole space to become a bogan mecca in the lead-up to Christmas; even if you’ve never been there yourself, it’s likely that some relative has decided you weren’t worth very much and got you a present from there at a 70% discount. (Not I, incidentally; I was there strictly to buy for myself, having relatively few presents to buy this year owing to the annoying tendency of some of my family members to blithely fly off to bloody Germany for Christmas, not naming any names. And of course when I bargain-shop for myself I’m doing so not because I’m a cheapskate but as a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of mass consumerism.)

Ignoring the temptation of BELOW COST books, CDs, DVDs, rugs, furniture, children’s clothing and shoes, it was straight to the towels that I headed. thousands of them piled on dozens of trestle tables right at the end of the building. You actually had to hunt around a bit to find the Egyptian Cotton, but I didn’t feel like it would be properly Suburban to settle for a less aspirational fabric. So having finally found two towels in an acceptable colour and ensured that their provenance was indeed the land of the Pharaohs (I suppose it’s possible that Egyptian cotton doesn’t actually come from Egypt, but please don’t disillusion me), I made for the imposing phalanx of cash registers which seemed to be staffed exclusively by backpackers fresh off the plane from the UK and Ireland who had been given a crash course in Australian currency (it’s decimal, just like yours!) but were still looking slightly confused.

And if that’s not enough suburban chic for one evening, I then walked to my tram stop through the Crown Entertainment Complex! I didn’t actually play the pokies admittedly; there’s a danger in taking aesthetic poses too far.

I can’t believe I’ve just written a post about buying towels. I’ll try to do better next year; in the meantime, Happy Christmas!

Mel has a justifiably disdainful entry about a typically toe-curling item in the Sunday Age magazine about the “trend” of “suburban chic”. Mel nails it as usual, but still I thought this sentence from “futurist” Ben Hourahine (is there any job title more debased than “futurist”?) was weirdly interesting: “Copying the naff look of suburbanites like Kath and Kim, while ironic, lets us reflect social aspirations more sincere than our own.” Now one of the worst tendencies of cultural studies blogging is that people devote entirely too much time to close readings of the off-the-cuff pronouncements of professional bullshitters, but still, what exactly does this mean? “We” adopt tastes that we consider lower in status than our own (”naff”), therefore our starting position is ironic, and yet this allows us vicariously to experience desires that as ironic postmodernists we’ve otherwise lost the ability to experience? And–this seems to be the implication–that mitigates the initial irony? Or does it consitute some kind of reflexive critique or it? So the sincerity of Kath-and-Kim-style trumps our ironic imitation of it and the ultimate target of our irony becomes…ourselves?

Yeah, that’s almost an interesting thought, although I suspect only by accident.

I’m not going to do any year-end musical list-making–there are excellent lists by far more authoritative people than me which can be found, well, just about everywhere–but instead here are some notes on an end-of-year compilation CD I’ve done called Staring Out the World, which contains a whole lot of stuff I’ve liked in ‘04. The general theme is: how to avoid giving in to total paralysing despair. Well, it’s been that kind of year hasn’t it?

1: Kanye West – Jesus Walks From The College Dropout, definitely one of my favourite albums of the year. For a very-lapsed Christian I’m still fairly susceptible to songs about Jesus, and I found myself wanting to hit a sombre note at the beginning of the mix. “I wanna talk to God but I’m afraid ‘cos we ain’t spoke in so long”…

2: Dizzee Rascal – Graftin’ Hard to choose just one track from Showtime, but I have a special (if rather impertinent) fondness for grime tracks that invite you to imagine their protagonists as Dickensian urchins. This could be from a musical of Oliver Twist! (If Lionel Bart hadn’t already written one, that is).

3: Junior Boys – High Come Down This track has admittedly been around for ages but it only came out in album form this year so it qualifies. It pretty much defines the JBs’ unique combination of fidgetty beats and fragile, tender melodies. Gorgeous.

4: Robag Wruhme – Hugendubel The opening track of Wuzzelbud “KK”, which amid stiff competition is my favourite microhouse album of the year–stuttering beats and endless false starts that eventually coalesce into a gorgeous trance-y melody, as a statement of purpose this is hard to beat.

5: The Knife – Heartbeats (Rex the Dog Remix) A mention of this track on Tim Finney’s blog prompted its late inclusion (ousting Le Dust Sucker)–the anonymous Rex the Dog has been everywhere this year (and prompted much debate about his identity, although isn’t dance music meant to be about erasing identity anyway, huh?) and produced a string of great remixes alongside his own tracks; this is perhaps the best of them, stirring stuff.

6: Narcotic Syntax – Electronic Liquid And this (from a brilliant EP on Perlon) is my favourite microhouse track of the year; I can’t quite put my finger on why, it’s something about the combination of a rather utilitarian 4/4 beat (more and more I gravitate towards the most unapologetically dancefloor-oriented tracks, even though I’ve hardly been dancing at all this year!) with nervous little keyboard stabs and a gloriously nonsensical Euro spoken vocal–Miss Kittin meets William Gibson via Lewis Carroll.

7: Dani Siciliano – Extra Ordinary Well, some may find it “tepid” but I’m still holding a candle for Dani’s Likes as album of the year. (If only because nobody else is, although it’s good to see it make Marcello’s list at No 20, at least.) This is delicate and gorgeous, a house built out of matchsticks.

8: Björk – Oceania Since selecting this track I’ve discovered that Björk sang it at the Olympics; surely the strangest song ever to be so honoured? Medulla may be only a partly successful experiment, but thank God for partly successful experiments! And thank God for Björk, she’s the kind of person that in years to come we’ll tick ourselves off for not appreciating more.

9: Stina Nordernstam – I’m Staring Out the World My little selection of Girl Crooners comes to an end with the lovely Stina from Sweden (that fount of seemingly endless pop glory). This melancholy number is also the end of my compilation’s “Side 1″, or it would be if CDs has sides.

10: Shapeshifters – Lola’s Theme (Vocal Radio Edit) …and we’re off for Side 2. There’s nothing at all extraodinary about this song, technically it’s a perfectly basic filtered house track, but the hook is so infectious and it puts a smile on my face every time I hear it.

11: The Streets – Blinded by the Lights And this is like the dystopian counterpart to the previous track–the strange loneliness of clubbing and taking drugs brilliantly conveyed through a half-time beat and a clinically stripped-down keyboard riff. Even after that great whoosh as the drugs kick in there’s something very jaded about this. Of course my favourite track on A Grand Don’t Come For Free is “Empty Cans” but (this record made rockists of us all) you have to listen to the whole thing to appreciate that one.

12: Turner – After Work This is actually from a 2002 album, but it was released as a single (with remixes) this year so it counts–anyway, there’s something about the faux-naïf (or is it really naïve) optimism of the lyrics that seems bitterly appropriate to this year. Turner is a German guy who started out producing soundscapey electronic business but has moved recently more and more towards this kind of brooding, nakedly emotional vocal electro-pop; definitely worth investigating if you like this sort of thing (and I do, quite a lot).

13: Bloc Party – Banquet Token rock song! Bloc Party seem to be mentioned a lot in the same breath as Franz Ferdinand, but I can’t stand Franz Ferdinand and I love Bloc Party. Perhaps it’s the handclaps? I believe they’ll be putting out an album next year; this is from their self-titled debut EP.

14: Kylie Minogue – I Believe In You Well done Scissor Sisters! This, penned by them, is Kylie’s best single for ages (and better, as far as I can tell, than any actual Scissor Sisters song), a lovely swooning head-voice melody above your basic Hi-NRG throb.

15: Britney Spears – Toxic It’s hard to believe that mere months ago we lived in a world where the song “Toxic” by Britney Spears didn’t exist! Single of the year, or as good as, this alone would justify Britney’s existence even if nothing else did.

16: Destiny’s Child – Lose My Breath A glorious comeback, this is quite techno-like in structure–it’s all built on an eight-bar loop–but the magic, apart from the insane military-style beats, comes in the terrifying bass note that rises out of the bowels of the earth on bars 7 and 8. It’s enough to make you cringe in obedience!

17: Kanye West feat. Twista and Jamie Foxx – Slow Jamz Yes, a second appearance from Kanye–but this song could hardly be more different from “Jesus Walks”, and I love it so much that I couldn’t leave it out. No commentary really necessary.

18: Superpitcher – Tomorrow (Kaito Remix) From the Kompakt 100 compilation, this really is an exquisite track; I especially love the multitude of ways Kaito comes up with to delay the appearance of the bassline seemingly endlessly (actually for about the half the length of the track). Not only do I like this more than anything else Kaito has done; I almost like it more than anything else Superpitcher has done!

***

So that’s it; if anyone wants a copy, let me know. Obviously there are a multitude of omissions, especially from the dance end of things; apologies to Michael Mayer, Ricardo Villalobos, Ada, John Tejada, Losoul, James T. Cotton, Mathew Jonson (!), Tiga, Tiefschwarz, Le Dust Sucker, etc etc etc, as well as Bark Psychosis, Annie, JC Chasez, Usher, Wiley…I’m sure they’ll live with the disappointment of being snubbed by me when it counted most, but still I feel bad.

I am R (as the phrase has it) OFL at Mel’s update of the classic Roses commercial. It used to be a favourite pastime of mine to make up alternative versions of commercials. But the only one I can remember was my VB commercial for yuppies (this was back in the days when fax machines were still sexy, mind you):

You can get it sendin’ a fax,
You can get it avoidin’ tax,
You can get in watchin’ the Dow.
…Matter of fact, I’ve got it now.

Not bad, but I don’t think it can touch Mel’s effort.

I have to say though that pace Mel I never liked Andrew Lloyd Webber, and I’ve admitted to the Manhattan Transfer so it’s not like I’ve got anything left to lose!

The ABC programmers had a difficult choice to make about last weekend’s offerings: on the one hand, they had a tribute concert dedicated to one of the indisputable legends of Australian music, Slim Dusty, featuring some of the nation’s most famous performers from country music and points adjacent. They also had something called “The Schools Spectacular”, which as far as I could make out was a North Vietnamese-style pageant featuring massed choirs, interpretative dance, ruthlessly enforced jollity and (most gruesomely of all) John Foreman as MC.

So naturally they put the Slim Dusty concert at 3pm on Sunday and saved the Schools Spectacular for prime time the same night. Jolly good decision! It’s not like country music actually has any fans in Australia anyway, really.

I don’t know about you but I think the Observer Music Monthly has developed into rather a good read–the overall approach is inevitably lifestyle-y and dilettantish (of course I’m a dilettante myself so I can hardly complain about this!) but at least they’re not a bunch of rockists and in general I think they back the right horses. I’m not as mad about the Scissor Sisters as they are (although I think “I Believe In You” is genius, the best Kylie single for ages, and what the singer has to say about being bored with “the gays” makes me warm to him) but I’m pretty happy with the magazine’s end-of-year top singles (minus Eamon and Frankee, that’s just idiotic) and albums, both of which include several of my own choices. (My top album, Dani Siciliano’s Likes, isn’t there though–I wish Dani’s album had got more of a push, surely she could be the “thinking person’s Joss Stone” or something? I have a theory–admittedly untested–that anyone who listens to it including people who don’t normally listen to “that kind of thing” will be bowled over by it and a slave for life–perhaps I need to give it to a few people and see if this is true.)

I downloaded and listened to the Resonance FM documentary about the blogosphere (available chez Woebot)–I admit I mostly wanted to hear what people’s voices sounded like! I can’t think of anything to say about that topic that doesn’t sound inane and American though (”I just love British accents! So sexy!”).

I think Matt is right that the documentary doesn’t really capture what was/is exciting about blogging, but perhaps that’s not possible. And no Matt, you didn’t come across like a complete cock! I always find there’s something weirdly embarrassing about saying things like “blissblog” and “woebot” out loud though; also, trying to talk about blogging to non-blogging people is difficult, you always feel you have to curtail your level of excitement to match the boredom you assume they’re feeling.

Overall, the doco could have given the blogosphere more credit though–after all isn’t one of our protegés about to get a Christmas No 1 under his belt?! Pretty impressive work, team (Junior Boys, your time will come…).

This is rapidly becoming a telly only blog; I apologise and promise to get back to matters of more moment soon, but I was tickled yet again by Little Britain last night when, during the “fanciable granny” sketch, the granny was shown watching the credits of The Good Life, except that the happy-go-lucky theme song we remember had been replaced with “Good Life” by Inner City! Talk about a joke that’s tailor made for me and about six other people…

But being reminded of The Good Life made me wonder, what happened to Penelope Keith? It’s as if the bridge-playing, sherry-drinking, slightly prudish upper-middle class and lower-upper class characters she specialised in have disappeared from view, so she’s become surplus to requirements. Actually, I see from IMDB that she did voices for the Teletubbies and then in 2002 she was appointed High Sherriff of Surrey, which seems very apt. To the Manor Born is surely due for a reappraisal though, Penelope vainly trying to resist the blandishments of parvenu Peter Bowles a telling allegory of the struggle for the soul of conservatism under Thatcher (and of course Penelope and Peter still end up getting married in the end, just like those old Tories all ended up eating out of Maggie’s hands).

Ha, Elanor so very otm–I think the formula is

One Tree Hill = (Dawson’s Creek – The OC) x The Breakfast Club

but the literary references are particularly hilarious! Atlas Shrugged! And the English teacher whose idea of getting kids to write “like Hemingway” was to come up with one word that described their deepest desires! Yes, kids, your assignment is to write one word–Best Teacher Ever! (I’m not sure Hemingway would actually have approved of this, mind you.)

Sadly I missed the first few minutes of Episode 1 so although I know the 2 main boys are half-brothers there are big bits of the main premise I just don’t understand–like the blond one is supposed to be “from a different world” because he plays basketball with actual black people, but his mother runs a chichi café and meanwhile the rich boy’s father is a car dealer? (Like Luke’s father in the OC–I wonder if he’ll turn out to be gay too, it would explain a few things). So selling cars > selling coffee I guess; I swear the American understanding of class is more finely calibrated than Jane Austen’s!