Arrived just before 6pm last night (it is now 8am Monday morning here). Journey from Pudong International Airport to the Renaissance Hotel fairly unremarkable. Aside from the billboards in Chinese script I could have been in Dallas. Met up with my colleagues Paolo and Adrian and we went to the hotel's Wan Li restaurant. Among Chef Yuen's specialties that we sampled were jellyfish in lemon and sesame oil (jellyfish has the texture of a vegatable but a salty taste - not bad actually); saltmeat (pork) and oyster sauce (very tasty) and congealed gelatin with cucumber (delicious). After a few drinks in the hotel bar (don't ever order a cucumber juice if you see one on a menu - its lovely verdant appearance is not matched by its taste), we headed down to the Bund. This famous waterfront strip didn't really grab us. Maybe it is better seen by daylight because on this Sunday evening it was very quiet. The views were disappointing too - the Oriental Pearl and Jinmao Towers being almost obscured by a mixture of smog and poor lighting. (Shanghai is an ill-lit city which, with all the high-rise buildings looming above you, makes you feel like you are on the set of one of the Batman movies). We decided to head down to the Hengshan Road for a look round. This strip is one of the best-known for nightlife in the city. Certainly, it is wall to wall neon and odd pastiches of different architectural styles. We ended up in the Narcicus Bar where a local covers band was performing near-perfect imitations of The Carpenters, Alicia Keys, Avril Lavigne and others. A slightly surreal experience. And for some reason the drummer was in a perspex enclosure at the back of the stage. If anyone has any ideas why, please let me know! We didn't stay too long as we started attracting the unwelcome attentions of some of the pimps and hookers who also frequent this area of the city.
Here's the second leg of my marathon tape archiving project. This one is drawn from several sources: Peel; A Radio 3 Mixing it special from Prague (seemed unbelievably exotic then); Kevin Greening's saturday morning show on Radio 1; Pete Tong; and I think Arrested Development was from the Jacquie Brambles show (!)
Title: Late May 1994
Side 1:
Autechre - Bass cadet
Chumbawamba - Homophobia
Credit to the nation - Mr ego trip
Frank Black - Headache
Raymond St. Clair - Blow chap gravy boat
Arrested Development - Ease my mind
Flying saucer attack - Feedback song
Scorn - Falling
Yequana - Thousand rains LSG - Heart
Carole King - It's too late (excerpt)
Side 2:
Iwa Bitowa - Tsana Czim (probably totally misspelt!)
Dunai - (title unknown)
Ecstasy of Saint Theresa - Her eyes have it
Wojtek Havel - A little blue dancer
Dissecting table - Dead gods
The Allman-Mulo Band - Emergency
God is my co-pilot - Kwhiney Q
Troy Raimi - I can't stop holding on
John Oswald - Field
Hank Williams sr - Your cheatin' heart
Special AKA - Your racist friend
Black Flag - Jealous again
Notes: Whatever happened to Credit to the Nation? They made some great records. Ecstasy of Saint Theresa were perhaps the first group from the post-communist states of eastern Europe to get any kind of hip cachet. They made a kind of post-rock/blissed out electronica. If artists were rewarded for influencing others John Oswald would have made a lot of money in the last two to three years - his Plunderphonics concept pre-empted the whole Bootleg scene (2 many DJ's; DJ Dangermouse et al) by years. The Special AKA track is indicative of left politics in Britain at that time ("If you have a racist friend, now is the time, now is the time for that friendship to end.") A nice sentiment, but simplistic.
I've been a bit lax with the updates this week as I have been preparing for a weeklong trip to Shanghai (leaving tonight). It will be my first time in China, so I expect a few surprises. Look out for posts and pics shortly.
You would think they would have learned by now, but no. Still there are men cultivating the mullet (1980s pre-irony version) of the facial hair world: the Slipped Hitler. You know, that pathetic tuft of hair just below the man's lower lip that looks like a Hitler moustache that his slid down his face. These dickheads think it is an expression of their individuality to copy Craig David. The worst among them even talk about growing a 'soul spot' (the appallingly pretentious name that some SH wearers call this type of 'beard'). Mock them at your leisure.
Saw Goldie Lookin' Chain at Le Botanique in Brussels Monday night. A very entertaining show. They played for around an hour and did most of the tracks from Greatest Hits (Guns don't kill people..., Roller disco, 21 ounces, You knows I loves you and Half-man Half-machine being some of the stand outs) as well as selections from their extensive MP3 back catalogue. There were around 120 people in La Rotonde, the nicest of the four music venues at Le Botanique, the cultural center for Brussels's Francophone community, which is situated in a former botanical garden (and still has rock pools with goldfish in the corridors!). It seemed like at least half the crowd were locals (with about a dozen or so Welsh and the remainder other Anglophones). I doubt the Bruxelloises understood many of the words or much of the humour, but then again, a lot of the latter is also lost on anyone who doesn't come from South Wales. There is an extra level of comedic resonance in a line like "Guns don't kill people rappers do, From B&Q to Bristol Zoo" that is only fully appreciated by those who have been on shit day trips across the Severn Bridge to that dismal place (Bristol Zoo not B&Q - you can have a shit day there anywhere in Britain). Having grown up in the Vale of Glamorgan and experienced that day-trip hell, I knows where the GLC is comings from.
Still, if Taxi/Enter the Dragon (about Newport's Dragon Taxis) left most people bemused, the whole audience was grinning along with Shit to me and its deeply irreverent chorus: "J-Lo means shit to me, P. Diddy means shit to me, Ja Rule means shit to me. Fuck you Alicia Keys!" And with 8 guys bouncing around on stage, the 'Chain kept the pace going throughout their set. The show seemed semi-choreographed with everyone stumbling around the stage as they delivered their lines but all punching the air, etc, in unison on the choruses. (As one of my friends observed: "Well they are a boyband!")
The night ended with an encore of the Uk chart smash Your mother's got a penis (surely a Stateside hit with the people who love Beavis and Butthead and South Park, if no-one else).
The band still seem pretty down to earth and a little bemused by their new-found stardom. Thanks for the autograph, Maggot! Whether they are a one-year wonder or, like the Beastie Boys can forge a long-term niche in the alternative mainstream obviously remains to be seen. I suspect the former but would love to be proved wrong.
p.s. For anyone not yet au fait with the GLC's work, check out their website: http://www.youknowsit.co.uk
When you've been living outside your own country for a while you start to take for granted the little things that, at first, marked your new place of residence as Other. It is only when you return to or entertain guests from your homeland that these items again acquire a sense of strangeness. Having left the UK two and a half years ago to move to Belgium I am now attuned to reading in three languages and looking the 'wrong' way when I cross the road. But with an impending trip to London it struck me this evening how bizarre the concept of chlorophyll-flavoured chewing gum (one of the most popular flavours here) is to a British person. In the UK, the same flavour would be called something like fresh mint and chlorophyll would sound as right a name as moss or bark.
Karaoke may be a global phenomenon, but it is one that each adoptive culture has interpreted in its own way. This becomes apparent when different 'schools' of karaoke clash. It was certainly apparent to me and a group of mainly Anglophone friends at a karaoke bar (called 'Karaoke Bar') in Brussels' Sablon district last night. Whereas Brits and Americans tend to have a very light-hearted approach to the whole business, appreciating a wretched performance as much as a good one, performing in groups and singing and dancing along, the French-speaking denizens of the Karaoke Bar seemed to be taking the whole thing much more seriously. Although plenty of alcohol was being consumed, the atmosphere was somewhat sober, a seemingly endless string of Chanson dirges adding to the sombre feel. And when three of our group performed Duran Duran's Girls on Film in a slightly taking-the-piss manner they were greated as if they had just arrived on 'Planet Earth' from Mars.
...Ready for the radio." Pooh Sticks, wasn't it? Marvellous.
Well, I've finally managed to re-assemble my decrepit PC and gain access to the database of tapes I recorded off the radio between 1989 and 1997. The tapes themselves are no longer in my possession. They were stolen by a particularly nasty burglar when I lived in Stockwell, South London in 2000. He probably got a fiver for them tops. Dickhead!
As well as listing the contents of each tape in the collection (or a fair few of them at least), I will also try and give some background info and commentary. I thought about doing it chronologically, but that seemed incredibly dull and tedious. Instead, I'll be picking out tapes at random. Here goes... Title: January 1991
Side 1
My Bloody Valentine (MBV) - To here knows when
MBV - Swallow
MBV - Honeypower
MBV - Moon song
Steelie & Clevie - Give it a chance (version)
Mark Summers - Summers Magic
3xDope - Mr. Sandman
Midwich Cuckoos - Show me
3PM - St. P
Ugly Music Show - The pie is the limit
Xon - Dissonance (edit)
Side 2
Sensurround - Blind Faith
Spacemen 3 - Big City
The Wake - Jokeshop
Yamie Bolo - Struggle in Babylon
King of the Slums - Joy
The Charlatans - Opportunity 3
Deskee - Kid get hyped
Plant Bach Ofnus - Second birth of the inner eye (edit)
These were all tracks played by John Peel. The My Bloody Valentine tracks were all taken from the To Here Knows When EP. Amazingly it reached no. 29 in the UK charts. Jokeshop was a diatribe against Factory records, The Wake's former label. Given Factory's impending collapse, it was probably pretty accurate. According to the Link2Wales website, Plant Bach Ofnus (Timid Little Children) were an "Early 90's [sic] hippy-trippy trance outfit, who rec for the Anglesey based Ofn label." Sensurround was the brainchild of the Manchester music journalist John Robb and was in the same Indie-Dance vein as Primal Scream's Loaded. Pretty good actually. 3PM were a rap group from Bristol. The St. P of the title is the St. Paul's district of the city.
Another instalment in The Pulse reviews series. This one concerns loungecore's arrival on the Nottingham scene:
The Mile High Club: In sounds for the way out @The Hand and Heart, Nottingham, April 3, 1998 Loungecore is here! Where is everyone? This night demonstrated the difficulties of transplanting a London fad to a provincial city. Sure enough, the Mile High Club made all the right moves with its blend of 60s exotica, erotic soundtracks and mood music, whilst pattern-projectors, lava lamps and screens showing cult fiction conjured up the requisite retro-kitsch, 'we're on the set of Jason King' ambience. Unfortunately, the model the Mile High Club is following is starting to look somewhat shopworn, even when well packaged as here. Since the whole loungecore/easy listening/cult fiction nexus initially appealed because of its tastelessness, as an antithesis to clubland and rock music notions of 'cool', when those 'way out' sounds came in from the cold they lost their outlaw cachet and had to be judged in purely musical terms, where, with the exception of gems such as Jean-Jacques Perrey's EVA, they tend not to withstand much scrutiny. Nevertheless, as a background buzz pre- or post-clubbing, the Mile High Club could be worth checking out in the future so long as its organizer gives it a more original twist and relies less on the London blueprint. More kitsch porn soundtracks perhaps? Yes! More sex please, we're British!
Last Friday evening I returned to Bratislava, a city I first visited almost exactly six years ago. While on the surface of things, the Slovak capital has changed a lot in that time, dig a little deeper and it has changed little. True, the Habsburg old town has become a lot more tourist-friendly. Whereas, in 1998, there were few bars and restaurants and most were fairly cheap and cheerful, now there are a plethora of Soho-style cocktail lounges full of chrome and designer lighting, grand cafes in the Viennese style, Salsa clubs, Pizzerias and even a Sushi bar. Six years ago, the Tesco's department store and McDonald's restaurant felt like an alien imposition in a city feeling its way blindly towards a new mode of existence. Now, they are so commonplace as to be barely noticeable. Indeed, whereas the McDonald's on Laurinska Ulica always seemed to be packed with people on my last (weeklong) visit, this time only a handful of diners were inside when I passed by early in the evening, a sign of increasing consumer sophistication and of the range of eating options now available.
Yet, away from the old town the pace of change has been much slower. The area around the railway station, for instance, barely seemed to have altered since 1998. The same post-communist shacks selling mustard smothered hot dogs and Slovak brands of cola were still in evidence and prices (some of the cheapest in Europe) were still (for a relatively well-to-do Westerner) remarkably cheap (the equivalent of Euro 0.65 for a hot dog and around Euro 1.50 for a glass of beer).
These low prices are indicative of the low incomes of the majority of Slovaks and a sign that, for many, the pace of economic transition has been painfully slow to date.
Hopefully EU membership will help speed the transition; if not, don't be surprised to see the Slovak electorate turn back towards more extreme political factions again.
