Thursday, October 19, 2006
It's Indie Rock And Roll For Me.....
So I've downed a couple of what I believe the cool kids refer to as 'Buds' and I'm blaring out Miles Davis' 'Bitches Brew' at a reasonable volume (can one blare 'reasonably'?) and I figure it's time to Lay Some Blog On Y'All. What I wanna talk about is Contemporary Indie Rock Music. I mean: Indie, right? Who doesn't love indie? I sure as hell do! Oh boy. Indie, Indie, Indie. Oh yeah. I dig that whole, y'know, thing. People playing instuments, wearing clothes...uh...having hair...y'know: Indie! The Kaiser Monkeys! Panic! There's an Arcade Fire! Woo! I just can't get enough of that guitar orientated rock music released on an independant record label stuff!
The reason I'm hittin' y'all with some indie shizzle is that my girlfriend's band, the very excellent Grammatics, have just begun PLAYING GIGS after a year of rehearsing three nights a week in a cold ass basement in Leeds. The main Grammatics cat, Owen, is some sorta crazed post-emo Phil Spector perfectionist and wanted everything to be JUST RIGHT before they got on stage and performed His Art to anybody, and now everything is JUST RIGHT and His Art is ready to be unleashed on the Indie Masses for their consumption, enjoyment, etc. Now I don't know much about post-Arcade Fire, Echo & The Bunnymen referencing orchestral punk funk Neu-wavery but I know what I like, and fortunately for all concerned I knows I likes Grammatics very much thankyou kindly, and it sure is a stone groove to watch Rebecca (for it is she) producing My Bloody Valentine styled sheets of noise from her cello, while a gaggle of black clad skinny white boys get all early New Order around her and generally come on with a whole buncha heavy crunching grooves that are bound to get the skinny jeans and baseball sneakers set myspacing their asses off in approval. The York Music Scene as we've experienced it is pretty much 'roots' orientated; infact hop on a train sometime and visit our lovely city whydoncha, 'cos if you dig The Blues, The Country or The Rock and Roll, you'll fair flip your wig at the quality and sheer number of bands churnin' this sorta thing out on a nightly basis; Boss Caine, The Ventilators and Hijack Oscar are but three of the (very best) RnB/RnR bands currently making the scene, and of our friends the 'indiest' until recently have been Cardboard Radio, who on record do an excellent line in post-Libertines, Kinksy RnB/punk knock-aboutness, and live can spend 20 minutes or more ravaging Baby, Please Don't Go or a Led Zep tune of their choosing. But Grammatics are a whole other bag: Pure Mainline Hook It Straight To My Veins INDIE. Cool, hip, zeitgeisty, NOW, POP! The music ain't simple, infact it's almost willfully complex (I've heard a few cats mumbling about it being 'too much information'), but it's savvy as hell, totally on the money, everything the Modern Indie Kid could possibly want & reasonably expect out of a band, largely 'cos the main aforementioned perfectionist cat, Owen, knows What The Hell He's Doing. You might call this calculated, maybe even manipulative. I call it being a smart muvva fugger. Ain't no point playin' this game if you ain't gonna make a few bucks in the process, right? No crime in being clued in. So now I have a girlfriend in a Contemporary Indie Rock Band and I'm thinking about Indie and what Indie means and if I should get a hipper barnet and lose about 10 inches off the bottom of my jeans and drop a t-shirt size or two. I'm still an indie kid, in a broad sense...but when you read in the NME a description of Richard Ashcroft and his army jacket/flares/feather cut outfit as being the living definition of cool "10 years ago" and you peer from under your feather cut at your flares and army jacket and realise you ain't so 'with it' no more you gotta figure that maybe your collection of Stax records LPs ain't gonna cut it with The New Breed and now you're dating the cellist in a hip indie band you might wanna dumb up your style somewhat. Ain't gonna look too good turnin' up in my 'L' brown Flying Burritos t-shirt & a fringed Neil Young jacket now I'm hanging with the Beautiful Junkie Thin People, right? I'm a groupie now, right? I'm dating the cellist in Grammatics now! I gotta look the part! Get with the program! Can't swan about in back stage bars ripping off free Stella lookin' like asome shmuck off the street! I gotta get with it! I'm off to buy the new Klaxons 45! Do they call 'em 45s anymore?
Anyhoo, I guess I don't really have much of a point, but I figure you're used to that by now. I'll leave you with a few Things I've Been Enjoying This Week.
Things I've Been Enjoying This Week
The Empire Strikes Back / Return Of The Jedi (on video)
Miles Davis: Bitches Brew (on vinyl)
Old copies of Mojo (on paper)
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (on More4)
The Big Playback (awesome 80's block party hip-hop compilation. On CD)
And this wisdom from Friends:
Joey is attempting to open a locked cupboard door with a bobby pin. After a beat:
"By the way, I have no idea what I'm doing here. For all I know I could just be locking it more."
I think we all have times when for all we know we could just be locking it more
The reason I'm hittin' y'all with some indie shizzle is that my girlfriend's band, the very excellent Grammatics, have just begun PLAYING GIGS after a year of rehearsing three nights a week in a cold ass basement in Leeds. The main Grammatics cat, Owen, is some sorta crazed post-emo Phil Spector perfectionist and wanted everything to be JUST RIGHT before they got on stage and performed His Art to anybody, and now everything is JUST RIGHT and His Art is ready to be unleashed on the Indie Masses for their consumption, enjoyment, etc. Now I don't know much about post-Arcade Fire, Echo & The Bunnymen referencing orchestral punk funk Neu-wavery but I know what I like, and fortunately for all concerned I knows I likes Grammatics very much thankyou kindly, and it sure is a stone groove to watch Rebecca (for it is she) producing My Bloody Valentine styled sheets of noise from her cello, while a gaggle of black clad skinny white boys get all early New Order around her and generally come on with a whole buncha heavy crunching grooves that are bound to get the skinny jeans and baseball sneakers set myspacing their asses off in approval. The York Music Scene as we've experienced it is pretty much 'roots' orientated; infact hop on a train sometime and visit our lovely city whydoncha, 'cos if you dig The Blues, The Country or The Rock and Roll, you'll fair flip your wig at the quality and sheer number of bands churnin' this sorta thing out on a nightly basis; Boss Caine, The Ventilators and Hijack Oscar are but three of the (very best) RnB/RnR bands currently making the scene, and of our friends the 'indiest' until recently have been Cardboard Radio, who on record do an excellent line in post-Libertines, Kinksy RnB/punk knock-aboutness, and live can spend 20 minutes or more ravaging Baby, Please Don't Go or a Led Zep tune of their choosing. But Grammatics are a whole other bag: Pure Mainline Hook It Straight To My Veins INDIE. Cool, hip, zeitgeisty, NOW, POP! The music ain't simple, infact it's almost willfully complex (I've heard a few cats mumbling about it being 'too much information'), but it's savvy as hell, totally on the money, everything the Modern Indie Kid could possibly want & reasonably expect out of a band, largely 'cos the main aforementioned perfectionist cat, Owen, knows What The Hell He's Doing. You might call this calculated, maybe even manipulative. I call it being a smart muvva fugger. Ain't no point playin' this game if you ain't gonna make a few bucks in the process, right? No crime in being clued in. So now I have a girlfriend in a Contemporary Indie Rock Band and I'm thinking about Indie and what Indie means and if I should get a hipper barnet and lose about 10 inches off the bottom of my jeans and drop a t-shirt size or two. I'm still an indie kid, in a broad sense...but when you read in the NME a description of Richard Ashcroft and his army jacket/flares/feather cut outfit as being the living definition of cool "10 years ago" and you peer from under your feather cut at your flares and army jacket and realise you ain't so 'with it' no more you gotta figure that maybe your collection of Stax records LPs ain't gonna cut it with The New Breed and now you're dating the cellist in a hip indie band you might wanna dumb up your style somewhat. Ain't gonna look too good turnin' up in my 'L' brown Flying Burritos t-shirt & a fringed Neil Young jacket now I'm hanging with the Beautiful Junkie Thin People, right? I'm a groupie now, right? I'm dating the cellist in Grammatics now! I gotta look the part! Get with the program! Can't swan about in back stage bars ripping off free Stella lookin' like asome shmuck off the street! I gotta get with it! I'm off to buy the new Klaxons 45! Do they call 'em 45s anymore?
Anyhoo, I guess I don't really have much of a point, but I figure you're used to that by now. I'll leave you with a few Things I've Been Enjoying This Week.
Things I've Been Enjoying This Week
The Empire Strikes Back / Return Of The Jedi (on video)
Miles Davis: Bitches Brew (on vinyl)
Old copies of Mojo (on paper)
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (on More4)
The Big Playback (awesome 80's block party hip-hop compilation. On CD)
And this wisdom from Friends:
Joey is attempting to open a locked cupboard door with a bobby pin. After a beat:
"By the way, I have no idea what I'm doing here. For all I know I could just be locking it more."
I think we all have times when for all we know we could just be locking it more
Labels: Indie Rock 'n' Roll
¶ 3:18 PM
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Yeah, because listening to Bitches Brew on vinyl is so square!
Grammatics sound good to me. Any indie band with a cellist in has got to work. Any myspace page yet?
Personally, I'm down with the up and coming web project Amplifico. Not exactly raw, they're mates with KT Tunstall for Gad's sake, but a tight unit with tunes to match.
Off to blare reasonably now,
TTFN
Grammatics sound good to me. Any indie band with a cellist in has got to work. Any myspace page yet?
Personally, I'm down with the up and coming web project Amplifico. Not exactly raw, they're mates with KT Tunstall for Gad's sake, but a tight unit with tunes to match.
Off to blare reasonably now,
TTFN
Yeah, if you go to myspace.com/grammatics you'll find all you need. I'll check out Amplifico.
And yeah, 'Bitches Brew' is a killer. I bought the 6CD box 'Sessions' set Columbia put out a few years ago...it's unbelievable. And The Jack Johnson era Sessions box set is even better. I've not heard much of the live Agharta LP, but many swear it's his greatest 'fusion' offering, even better than Bitches Brew, Jack Johson & In A Silent Way, so it's gotta be worth a listen. Enjoy blaring reasonably, George.
And yeah, 'Bitches Brew' is a killer. I bought the 6CD box 'Sessions' set Columbia put out a few years ago...it's unbelievable. And The Jack Johnson era Sessions box set is even better. I've not heard much of the live Agharta LP, but many swear it's his greatest 'fusion' offering, even better than Bitches Brew, Jack Johson & In A Silent Way, so it's gotta be worth a listen. Enjoy blaring reasonably, George.
I've always liked your army jacket/flares/feather cut outfit.
And I'd like the phrase "Cool, hip, zeitgeisty" written on my gravestone please.
Thank you for the words...
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And I'd like the phrase "Cool, hip, zeitgeisty" written on my gravestone please.
Thank you for the words...
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: 5:20 AM
: 5:20 AMSubscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
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