Sdtrk: ‘Satellite’ by Depeche mode

Andy Warhol, iconoclast and Pop art meister, would’ve been 80 today, on 06.08.08. Personally, I think he was early by like two days.

‘I don’t know where the artificial stops and the real starts’

Many happy returns, Andy!
That having been said, where’s his Android when you need him?

Technorati tags: Andy Warhol, robots, Android

Sdtrk: ‘Prove it all night’ by US girls

Does your crazy on-the-go lifestyle prevent you from reading ‘Shouting etc etc’? Well, thanks to Wordle, now it’s available in capsule form (prescription required):

full size is here; opens in a new window

Wouldn’t this have been lovely to display on the fourth anniversary post? Probably. *facepalms*
Upon viewing the finished product, it’s occurred to me that I missed out a couple of words, such as ‘Eighties’ and ‘Anglophilia’. And ‘lovely’. And ‘fuck’, as that one gets quite a bit of usage round here

Sdtrk: ‘International’ by OMD

It’s so simple! Take pics like this (lasses only):

This was from the lovely Gina of See Gina Blog. Ta very much! You are appealing to my prurient nature, and well done, I say!

Sdtrk: ‘Butcher’s tale (Western front 1914)’ by the Zombies

Never let it be said that I don’t mention personal occurences in my life! NEVER LET IT BE SAID, UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH.

+ Remember how at the arse end of 2007, I was whinging about my inability to write anything? It seems things have picked up, as I CAN’T STOP WRITING. You’ll be pleased to know that my Muse is off her holidays, and I’ve got like ten posts in the hopper as of this writing. Well, three are half-complete, but that’s still a rather impressive sum. Better start placing bets now as to when the well dries up

+ After six months of peaceful cohabitation, Tsukihime is moving out of Deafening silence Plus. She’s gotten engaged to some bloke, and as continuing to live here would prove quite awkward to all parties involved, she’s a-movin’ on up. Well, out. Sidore and I wish her the best of luck.
Now we can hold all of those cotillions in the livingroom that we’ve been itching to host!

+ Did you see the ‘Media appearances’ page up there in the Personal bits section, left sidebar, up at the top? Originally, I was just going to create that for Sweetie’s oft-neglected site, but then I figured there’s no reason it can’t be on my blog as well. So there it is! It should go without saying that those are all the appearances that we approve of; there’s one that doesn’t get our Stamp of Approval, as it’s 50% fallacy and 50% supposition. But we don’t talk about that one

+ Due to spambot infiltration screwing up peoples’ ability to leave comments, I might well attempt an upgrade of WordPress quite soon. Wish me the best of luck, otherwise… well, I shudder to think what may happen

+ This may be the Greatest Picture Ever. It’s pretty hard to dispute, I’m sure you’ll agree.

‘Tis true, Your Lordſhip iſ a ſtraight-up pimp’

+ And finally, I conclude with a haiku I dredged from teh Intarwub:

Haikus are pretty neat
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

That is all!

Sdtrk: ‘Jacqueline’ by Franz Ferdinand

As my friend goshou has been a rabid fanatic of the Guitar hero series ever since its inception, it naturally stood to reason that he would pick up the rhythm game phenomenon known as Rock Band up for his XSLAB 360 upon its release. Shortly after he did so, Zip Gun grabbed a copy as well for his PS3. So usually, our Saturday get-togethers are finished off with a hearty hour or two of banding rocks together.
Our group’s name is ‘AH SALOPE GET OFF ME!!’, the name stemming from a long-standing in-joke within our group of mates*, but usually we rock out on Free Mode, as neither SafeT or I have the game, so we can’t practise our chops at home. We’re prone to switch up instruments, but usually ZG plays guitar or sings, goshou mans guitar or drums, SafeT can be found either singing, drumming, or ah, guitarring, and I usually pick drums or bass, or vocals if it’s one of the songs by the Ramones. Like most of the other bands on the rock server, we’re pretty average; however, it must be said that we’re shockingly good at Bon Jovi’s ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’. We can’t explain it.

The game’s opened my ears to a bunch of songs that I’ve always heard of, but never actually heard, like Foreigner’s ‘Juke box hero’, or ‘Paranoid’ by Black sabbath, or Deep purple’s ‘Highway star’, which for some bizarre reason I actually like. Maybe it’s due to its association with the ‘Diamond is unbreakable‘ story arc of the manga series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

So I was just thinking recently: you know what song is begging to be added to the already-lengthy Rock Band playlist? ‘Sister Ray’, by the Velvet underground.

There would be a big brawl over which take to use. Of course everybody would opt for the takes where they sounded best. It was a tremendous hassle, so on ‘Sister Ray’ which we knew was going to be a major effort we stared at each other and said, ‘This is going to be one take. So whatever you want to do, you better do it now.’
And that explains what is going on in the mix. There is a musical struggle — everyone’s trying to do what he wants to do every second, and nobody’s backing off. I think it’s great the way the organ comes in [John] Cale starts to try and play a solo. He’s totally buried and there’s a sort of surge and then he’s pulling out all the stops until he just rises out of the pack. He was able to get louder than Lou [Reed] and I were. The drums are almost totally drowned out.

— Sterling Morrison, from ‘Up-tight: the Velvet Underground story’

Yeaaah, all seventeen sarky chaotic seedy whirlwind minutes of Sister Ray. And here you thought ‘…and Justice for All’ was an endurance test. Pfft, lightweight

*Do you want to know? Do you really want to know? Click on the comments for additional unneccesary exposition

Sdtrk: ‘Alright, already’ by Combustible Edison

Being as that I’m a reasonably large fan of the comic-artist stylings of Jamie ‘The Bicycle King of Worthing‘ Hewlett, you know what gets on my wick? I’ve got all of the Tank girl trade paperbacks available (except for ‘Tank girl: Apocalypse!’ as that was shite), and I even have a copy of the rare ‘Hewligan’s haircut‘ in my library, which I proudly display whenever dignitaries or heads of state pop round Deafening silence Plus. However, the one thing I desperately need a trade paperback of would be his series ‘Get the Freebies!’ which ran in the UK fashion/music/style mag THE FACE back during the late Nineties.

The premise of the series was typical The Hewll: gay Buddhist kung-fu expert Terry Phoo and his partner Whitey Action, a former child star who has her breast development stunted by hormone use, work for the police in order to capture the Freebies gang, which is comprised of Burk, a dumb purple gorilla; a fey midget with hooves for feet whose name I can’t remember; and Marlon, their leader who has a basketball for a head. They drive round in Matchbox cars, Whitey’s main gimmick are her utility pants, which are a bottomless pair of knickers which hold her weapons and… anything at all, really, and in the first issue, the Freebies get killed. But that doesn’t stop them from reappearing in the rest of the series! YES. HEWLETT.
What shags me off worse is that there actually is a trade paperback for Get the Freebies! But the bastard’s in Spanish. DAMNIT *slams fist on table*

However, there might well be a live-action television series. The Devil, you say.

Car chases, kung-fu and comedy come together in the wonderfully warped world of Phoo Action – an offbeat 60-minute drama special for BBC Three.

Based on characters created by Jamie Hewlett (Gorillaz, Tank Girl) for The Face comic strip Get The Freebies, Phoo Action is set in 2012, when London is in the grip of mutant criminals, The Freebies.

Only Terry Phoo, a hapless Buddhist kung-fu cop, and unruly teenage heroine Whitey Action, the daughter of Police Chief Benjamin Benson, can save the nation.

Together they form an unlikely but effective crime-fighting team who bring together chaos and comedy, mischief and mayhem, to become heroes for a future generation in the face of Britain’s super-vile, super-famous mutated criminals.
taken from this site

Going by the trailer on the above-linked Myspace page, the pilot looks rather Sid and Marty Krofft-esque, which fits, and would probably be the only proper way to translate something like that into three dimensions. Also, it’s reassuring to see that it’s directed by Euros Lyn, who was in the director’s chair for one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes, ‘The girl in the fireplace’. Huh! And HOLY CRAPS IT’S ON BBC THREE THIS TUESDAY NIGHT AT 9PM.
As long as it’s nothing like that hideous Tank girl movie, there’ll be no need for that massacre. Err, not that I was planning one, of course

Technorati tags: Jamie Hewlett, Tank girl, Get the Freebies!, Phoo Action, Doctor Who, BBC Three, Sid and Marty Krofft, Worthing

Sdtrk: ‘I only said’ by My bloody valentine

As I sit here, our long-suffering Organik roomie Tsukihime is under a cluster of blankets, trying to fight off a cold/flu/virus/leprosy, and I’m at my fashionable IKEA-made kitchen table, poppin’ Airborne tabs like they’re going out of fashion, attempting to catch up on my neglected Email responses, and downloading the latest eps of Gundam 00, Cutie Honey the Live, and Kamen rider Kiva from my good friends, INTERNET PIRATES. Shi-chan is relaxing in the bedroom, reading our copy of ‘Factory records: The complete graphic album‘ (ta very much, ZG), and I’ve just now received an Email from Amazon.co.uk stating that my combo copy of the DVD of ‘Control’ and a paperback version of Deborah Curtis’ ‘Touching from a distance’ will be gracing my doorstep this week, which is news that fills me with liquid joy. Or Lemon fresh Joy, one or the other; I honestly can’t tell from here.
There! Now you have a small glimpse of the domesticity that goes on within Deafening silence Plus. Scandalous!

This Sunday past, in between hacking away at my laundry and repairing a small tear in the Missus’ arm — she recently overextended it playing air hockey* — I happened to see some very incredible news mentioned on someone’s blog. I can’t remember which blog it was right now, but the news remains burned into my retinas:

Apparently, the greatest band of the Nineties and the gods of Shoegazer, My bloody valentine, have reformed and are touring this year. The Second Coming will end up happening during my lifetime, after all. If they come to Michigan, I will explode in a mile-wide detonation of Lemon fresh Joy.

My best friend Sean and I saw My bloody valentine back in 1991, when they toured for their epic Loveless album. Actually, they came to St Andrews twice — once towards the start of the tour, and once near the end; we caught their second performance, which was pretty much all we hoped for and more. The sheer wall of sound they generated was almost a religious experience, it was that good. I still have the shirt I bought!
For those unfamiliar with the whole Shoegazer ethos, it consists of blissful pop arrangements where the guitars and vocals are almost completely awash in effects pedals. Distortion, delay, reverb, flanger and the like are the order of the day. The term shoegazer comes from the curious habit that most of the guitarists display of staring at their shoes while performing — in actuality, they’re not simply staring longingly at their trainers, they’re deciding which effects pedal they’re about to turn on or off. The important thing to remember is that during its heyday, there were a passel of Shoegazer groups — good ones, such as Medicine, Slowdive, Cranes and (early) Lush, or rubbish ones like Catherine wheel or Bailter space — but none can hold a candle to the blurry genius of Kevin Shields, Bilinda Butcher, Colm Ó Cíosóig and Deb Googe. And now, they’re back together after a decade and a half, with a new album on the way, according to rumour. Absolutely lovely. Now come back to Michigan! Your fans have spoken.

In the meantime, you lot reading this? Go out and pick up a copy of Loveless. You owe it to yourself to have at least one phenomenal non-Joy division Cd in your life, and that’ll fit the bill nicely

*I kid! We don’t have an air hockey table! We were actually arm-wrestling