Kurt Cobain at Rough Trade East

Kurt Cobain (1993) by Steve Gullick

Yesterday saw Steve Gullick's photographic exhibition, "Tenebrous" at Rough Trade East, Brick Lane, London E1 61L.

Like when you see a bird with a broken wing, and cry, "Look, it's hurt. (can't you do something?)" A crowd of girls stood around this photo and said, "Oh, it's Kurt...(can't we do something?)."


*sigh*


Link: Steve Gullick website


ps. Tenebrous = dark, shadowy or obscure.

New Ryan Adams song deleted from his blog

Really, it was only a matter of time before Ryan Adams featured here. Not because he is also born in the Year of the Tiger – his album is called Easy Tiger – but because, simply, I love love love him. That's it. That's all there is.


Anyway! (Short pause to admire this photo, in his room. Daymn.)

Anyway, anyway! – even the man himself admits he is a "fickle blogger". He'll put something up for a few hours, and then take it down.

Luckily this clip was grabbed before he trashed it. I like his solo acoustic songs the best and so, yeah, I guess I really like this clip... except one crucial thing that's missing.

Me. In his room (use your imagination).

Anyway! Back to my dreamtigers...




Link: Alt-Country site and Ryan Adams archive

wine women song

wine, women & song : wine woman, & song

Derrida: "I fight for improvisation"

'It's not easy to improvise, it's the most difficult thing to do. Even when one improvises in front of a camera or microphone, one ventriloquizes or leaves another to speak in one's place the schemas and languages that are already there.

There are already a great number of prescriptions that are prescribed in our memory and in our culture. All the names are already preprogrammed. It's already the names that inhibit our ability to ever really improvise. One can't say what ever one wants, one is obliged more or less to reproduce the stereotypical discourse.

And so I believe in improvisation and I fight for improvisation. But always with the belief that it's impossible.

And there, where there is improvisation, I am not able to see myself. I am blind to myself. And it's what I will see, no, I won't see it. It's for others to see. The one who is improvised here, no I won't ever see him.'


Link: Jacques Derrida, Unpublished interview, 1982

I play the drums in a band called okay

Is this book a cliché? Or do (some) bands believe their own bullshit so much that they become cliché? Does that make the band cliché rendered in this novel true? These are the ouroboros questions I asked myself as I read the 9th novel by Toby Litt.

The structure is laid out like a stage, with the drummer at the back narrating the action around him. Each chapter enters stage left like a short story in itself. Then comes the stereotypes beat out in 4/4 time: self-serving loneliness, chicks digging the lead singer over the drummer, drug-addiction, and the tedium of touring. Boom-tish!

Shuffle to the middle of the book and it gets a little more interesting. What happens after an ego-juggernaut stops? Enter the post-band comedown, when they’re in their 30s and it all begins to become too real… bored and jaded by all the fun but not able to give it up, either. For new haircuts, I mean - bands, in NME magazine this week (or last week, or whatever) it may be a nasty shock to see where it all leads. And it's not as tragic as you'd believe. It's downright mundane.

The drummer-narrator could’ve fallen a lot harder. I’ve seen it happen in real life enough to know he kept his sanity (if not his hearing) more than most. But this is fiction, and the band novel is always difficult when truth is often stranger than fiction: can you imagine a novel based on Keith Richards?? Also, the (Canadian, indie) band is called (lower-case, italics) okay; they are not larger than life rock stars. Which left me thinking: who cares?

If the larger-than-life rock star book is what you’re looking for then you won’t find it here. Read The Dirt - Motley Crue: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band for the ultimate band book – for structure, characters (!) and redemption – but I warn you now, only if you can stomach it: it's not okay.

Link: I play the drums in a band called okay - The Guardian Digested Read

Agent Provocateur

Fancy your evenings in Guantánamo orange, but without the waterboarding torture? Then put a bid in for these limited-edition knickers from Agent Provocateur to support legal action group Reprieve. These two unlikely bedfellows came together to create Fair Trial, My Arse following

"...bizarre and unfounded accusations by the US military authorities that the Reprieve legal team smuggled contraband underpants into a prisoner in Guantánamo Bay."

So whilst Enhanced Interrogation Techniques are still exclusive to long-term holidays in Guantánamo Bay, you can enjoy your own "interrogations" at home with these sexy knickers – and support Reprieve and human rights.

But you'll have to be quick – Ebay auction ends on 28-Mar-08 at 15:25:53 GMT

And ps. they're orange and black - so you too can be a tiger like me grrrrrrrrr!!!!!

Comme des Garçons 888 (2008)

Ever wanted to be gold? Me too. Comme des Garçons designed their new perfume, 888, to be the olfactory expression of gold. Could this be our chance?

It's not the exotic Oriental I expected. No Alladin's cave here; no curling incense from a genie bottle amongst piles of gold coins and jewels. Quite the contrary.

Imagine you are in a Swiss bank with a biometric password standing in an air-conditioned vault – piled high with pure gold slabs. This is a serious perfume.

After testing it, I ran my nose up and down the inside of my forearm all day as if it had turned into a smooth bar of gold bullion. The smell is streamlined and modern with the base note a derivative of saffron with notes of pepper, coriander, geranium and amber.

It reminds me somewhat of Cinema, by Yves Saint Laurent (perhaps, the amber?); although if this is solid gold bullion, Cinema is more like a Solid Gold dancer in comparison. Personally, I imagine an older woman wearing it. But no doubt it will be a big hit in China. Eight is a lucky number in Asian cultures; and so, 888 is particularly auspicious.

For me, the only thing that smells equally good on everyone is money. Not everyone can wear gold.

Launched this month, it has a limited release.

Link: Available at doverstreetmarket.com (London).

Bladder Song

On a piece of toilet paper
Afloat in the unflushed piss,
The fully printed lips of a woman.

Nathan, cheer up! The sewer
Sends you a big red kiss.
Ah, nothing's wasted, if it's human.

- Leonard Nathan

Link: American life in poetry #7 - Leonard Nathan

Go live, win and lose

"Go live, win and lose, smash your hands against hysterical constellations, your head against phases of the moon, and your heart against another heart. Find the leisure to contemplate the results. You will discover the human condition. Foolish people who say that they seek reality don’t know what they are saying. For them, the worldly, when they approach it, they tremble and feel weak, distressed, fearful, terrified and repelled. They reject the truth and turn somewhere else for it, an easier, a softer, lifeless one. Little do they realize that they have been through the door itself, and in error, stupefying ignorance, in that immensity, said "nothing is here", and stepped back to dullness. They may be less eloquent and merely realize the words "it is painful. I must stop it", and step back."

Link: The Lotus is born in fire, by John Brzostoski

Doris Lessing: "Oh Christ... I couldn't care less"

When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature, reporters waited outside her home in North London to give her the news. She responded: "Oh Christ... I couldn't care less."

She is my favourite 88-year-old Nobel Laureate! As the second sentence of The Golden Notebook (1956) says:

“The point is,” said Anna, “as far as I can see, everything is cracking up.”’

Link: Doris Lessing on Nobel Prize

Finish your collapse and stay for breakfast

photo by Ted Pushinsky

The band with the name that most accurately reflects my life– Broken Social Scene – is playing in London Friday May 23rd at Shepherd's Bush Empire (and you thought I was going to say AC/DC).

I've listened to 7/4 shoreline everyday now for about two years. It makes my mornings feel like I'm gliding on a freeway in a sports car when actually I'm walking to the station in bad heels.

Broken Social Scene have five core members but on tour they include "whoever else was available to attend any individual show". I like to think of them as a collective. How many people are going to be on the stage in London? Hopefully, as many as they can find! And Ms Feist singing? Yes, please.

I don't think I'll be napping on no steps.

Link: All Tomorrow's Parties present Broken Social Scene

Divine Princes of Decadence

Why have I just finished two biographies about wilful and flamboyant self-destruction through spending large sums of money? I'm bored of my hell, I want to hang out in your hell for a change. Let's dream on in Less-Than-Zero style (£££, that is).

Bunker Spreckels: Surfing's Divine Prince of Decadence is about the step-son of Clark Gable who, at 21, picked up his inheritance in an armoured van ($50 mill) and set out on a mission to destroy himself. He asked his friend Art Brewer to document his life; and you can see for yourself in the photographs: he went from sun-kissed young boy to bloated, drug-crazed, gun-toting sex monster. He died of a heart attack at 27, before his film was completed. But you get the gist. I can't help but get a delicious thrill of schadenfreude observing a surfer self-destruct (Forgive me, but I grew up at the beach yet liked to wear gothic black: not fun).

The other biography is more seductive, or else, educative: Dandy of the Underworld, by Sebastian Horsley. Just like Quintin Crisp, just like Oscar Wilde, Sebastian Horsley believed the artist should also live the artful life, even more than creating actual art itself. To be a Dandy, in the historical sense, is a commitment to a lifestyle completely devoted to aesthetic pleasure and perfection. Even Mr Horsley's moments of pure squalor seem romantic because they are lived with an absolute commitment to his ideal. A few images will scar for me life: the amputee in the brothel with no arms or legs; well, it only proves there is courage in living your convictions.

Unlike Bunker Spreckel, Sebastian Horsley is still alive, living in Soho in London. He signed my book at Foyles bookshop. In ink, he wrote:

Hello dear, always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. This is it. Love Sebastian.


Link: Sex, drugs and rolling surf: interview with B Bunker Spreckels
Link: Sebastian Horsley's blog

Keith Richards: Exile On New Bond Street

Talk about the blues. I'm walking down New Bond Street in Mayfair with only £2 in my pocket. Then, like manna from heaven, rising from the street like a sphinx holding a guitar is... Keith Richards. Is it a sign? Yes, it is. For Louis Vuitton, no less.

What are you doing Keith!? I know you are on good terms with the devil – but come on, seriously – advertising is so much worse. I can hear Bill Hicks turning in his grave.

Well, he's not exactly hawking diet soda. Louis Vuitton is donating the money to the Climate Project, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. And it's the first time Keith Richards has ever participated in advertising of any sort.

The photograph is by Annie Leibovitz, set in a hotel room with skull scarves draped over lamps and a skull on the bedside table. Maybe that's where he is catching up on his reading of the bible? Checking to see if he is mentioned, no doubt.

The tagline: Some journeys cannot be put into words. New York. 3 am. Blues in C.

I caught the bus home. London. 5pm. Blues in Gee.

Link: Keith Richards for Louis Vuitton, Wednesday 12 March 2008

advice

"You know what I would do if I were in your place? I'd drink from the milk basin of the Milky Way; I'd swallow comets; I'd lunch on dawn; I'd dine on day and I'd sup on night; I'd invite myself, splendid table-companion that I am, to the banquet of all the glories, and I'd salute God as my host! I'd work up a magnificent hunger, an enormous thirst, and I'd race through the drunken spaces between the spheres singing the fearsome drinking song of eternity."

From the spirit of Galileo to exiled writer, Victor Hugo (1802–1885) during a séance.

Good advice. Must start tonight.


Link: From Conversations with Eternity: The Forgotten Masterpiece of Victor Hugo.
Link: Bruce Nauman, "The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths" 1967

SoKo: "I wanna look like a tiger"

If you only listen to one Parisian ukelele player this year, make sure it's SoKo. Especially, if you are like me, always pondering humanity's animal nature while jumping on a mattress like a 5- year-old with Attention Deficit Disorder (and allergic to everything in modern life). How many times have I sung out in joy the relative benefits of being a tiger rather than a monkey? SoKo addresses this eternal question in her cute and slightly awkward English. Brilliant of you.

OK, even if you aren't like me, how can you not like a song with these lyrics?

“I will never love you more than my boyfriend
when I was 14. Even though he's now an asshole.”
("I will never love you more")

She hasn't got an album out yet but you can listen to "I will never love you more", "I think I'm pregnant" and "I wanna look like a tiger," on her myspace page. That's summer sorted then.

Link: SoKo myspace page
Link: Monkey taunts tiger Chinese video on youtube

Secretions magnifique: blood, sex - magic?

What does a perfume that smells of blood, sweat, saliva and sperm smell like? Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge is the only place in London selling this "exclusive" scent by Etat Libre d`Orange. I jumped on the (not-so-fragrant) tube to find out.

In the perfume section, Secretions magnifique is easy to find. How many perfumes in Harvey Nichols feature a school boy drawing of a cock? This is anti-perfume; I get it. Ingredients: agreement adrenalin, agreement milk, agreement blood, iris, coconut (?), sandalwood...etc.

Here goes. I spray it on my wrist; my friend jumps a metre back.

Trauma in a Bottle

Do you know what broken bones and blood smells like? It all flooded back. Nine years ago – after a few drinks, we crossed the road and my friend was hit by a car. Blood poured from the crack in his forehead. I held his head up, to keep him talking, while we waited for the ambulance. The traffic passed around us. It was nearly midnight, but the bitumen was still warm from the day.

Smell is the most primitive of the senses. I was shocked a perfume could provoke this deep, visceral memory. This is not hyperbole; it felt shocking. Yet the perfume presents itself as an intellectual concept: magnificent secretions.

I tried to smell my wrist again - I wanted to keep an open mind, maybe it will change into something else? - but it literally made my stomach turn. All I could "smell" was confusion, panic, flashing sirens, exhaust fumes and too much alcohol thrown into the mix. Perhaps, it was just me: but could it smell better on another person?

Whatever. I had to get it off; this smell, this memory. Even the expensive Harvey Nichols' bathroom soap didn't help the nausea – and worst of all – I could not get the smell off my skin.

After I calmed down a bit I couldn't help but thinking, who would like this? Perhaps the sado-masochist in your life who owns everything. Although at £75 you'd want to be stinking rich.

Personally, I'd rather a night out, wake up next to some take-out trash in a dirty bed, still in my clothes from the night before, smelling of tequila and stale cigarettes, catch the humid tube to work, hungover, with my nose smashed up against some sweaty businessman's armpit. Now how do we bottle that?

Link: New perfume smells of semen and sweat - London Metro

obligatory Keith Richards quote

Keith in a tree (like a tiger! grrr)

Interviewer: Steve Van Zandt told me that you can never quite remember the feeling of walking on-stage in front of thousands of people, and that’s why it’s still exciting to do.

Keith Richards: That’s right. You just hope that it’s there, and up until now, it always has been. There’s a certain energy when a band gets together - open the cage and let the tigers out.


Two obsessions meet: Keith and tigers!


I'm so happy I might just have to climb a tree or something.


Link: Uncut Magazine, The Rolling Stones Cover Story, April 2008, p38

Mystery hum

"Listen closely, and you'll hear the Earth humming - in not just one note, but two. The source of this second signal is a mystery. For around a decade we've known about Earth's quiet 'vertical' hum, probably caused by the steady thumping of deep waves on the ocean floor. Now a team in Germany has discovered a second 'horizontal' note, too, and nobody knows what's causing this new signal."

And I thought it was from standing too close to the amps, too often. What a relief: it's just the Earth singing.

Link: New Scientist, Mystery hum, 23 February 2008

In Wonderland: Screaming Tea Party, Bar Rumba

"At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!'

- Alice in Wonderland

Wednesday night. I am alone, both big and small at the same time like Alice down the Rabbit hole; I'm at Bar Rumba in Shaftesbury Avenue. "Drink Me?" asks Alice to the bottle. Oh yeah, I think I will, I'm in the mood for a riddle.

But every time I try to leave for the bar, I can't – what if I miss something? - what are they doing? Oh, I know this song, I think... what's going to happen next? Alice might not like a Tea Party, but I do. Especially one like this: a peculiarly-deranged, Screaming Tea Party.

This is not your average fairytale: it is a hyper collection of vicious riffs and scary lullabies. The band is based in London, but it feels like a trip inside the Manga story, Abandon the Old in Tokyo. The bassist/singer is in a sexy sarong, yet the guitarist is shredding his gaffa-taped axe and wears a black kerchief over his face. Then there's the very lovely kawaii-des-ne? girl on the drums that sorta makes your heart melt.

Every expectation is berzerked: kamikaze-like jumping from amps, old punk favourites readdressed like they OWN it, yet out of nowhere, a touch of the cymbal so soft it's painful; like a sweet lotion after an aural thrashing. The set itself became a fascinating riddle: Death Egg, a futuristic lullaby contrasts with the London punk redux of Between air and air. Like all good songs they are familiar, yet new and uncanny; I found myself saying, in my best nineteenth century voice, "That is very curious!"

I didn't leave the set for a drink... which is a very good sign at a gig, even if it is rather strange for a tea party. But it makes perfect sense at a Screaming Tea Party. What will they do next? Curious and curiouser – and, unlike Alice, I definitely want to go again. And get a bit stupid.

Link: Screaming Tea Party's myspace

Camden Town is burning down

"And to London, this is for London cause Camden Town ain't burning down."
- Amy Winehouse, Grammy speech for Best Album.

I don't even like seeing a pub closed after 11pm – let alone burned to the ground...

After my first thought – nope, it wasn't me – my second thought was, if Amy can start again, and look wonderfuckingful at the Grammys after her stint at rehab (and away from the front page of London Lite), then there's plenty of hope for her favourite gin-joint, the Hawley Arms.

As Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh told NME today, "The Hawley will bounce back stronger than ever I'm sure."

And no jokes about crack pipes. Leave the girl alone (I won't hear it).

Link: Amy Winehouse shocked, speechless - wins Grammy