I’d like to apologise for being away on holiday and not posting here going ‘woo, I’m in the south of France!’, cos now obviously you won’t believe I was really there. And I can’t even say I was so much in the middle of nowhere that there wasn’t an internet cafe as there were two in the wee town I was in. So I’m afraid it was entirely that I was enjoying myself too much to give you all a second thought. I did find the time for some record shopping though during a day trip to Bordeaux and thanks to Hugues for giving me directions to a rather ace record shop called Total Heaven which was filled with lots of UK, US and European vinyl. Not to mention a nice big box of local band releases and a big display of fanzines [all in french, sadly for me]. They’re on the Rue de Candale so go there if you’re ever in the vicinity. Shopping in Bordeaux was probably the most exciting thing I did in France but wandering about the alleyways of Sarlat, driving through some staggeringly beautiful places, visiting castles, caves and water gardens and seeing my mother for the first time in months wasn’t exactly un-exciting.

Nor indeed was my return to the UK where I hopped on a bus to Oxford and spent a hugely fun weekend there for Audioscope. Despite being robbed of all but a few hours’ sleep by Fighting Red Adair and their talking all night antics, I had a great time tending the Appliance merch stall and stumbling over to photograph the bands. You should be hearing more about Audioscope in the next issue of the diskant ZINE but suffice to say it was a fantastic day, both in terms of the bands and the amount of money they raised. Top bands for me were Cat On Form, Appliance, Souvaris and Dustball. Hello to everyone I met at Audioscope by the way, especially Jill and Jamie for making me feel like all this time and energy we put into diskant is actually appreciated by real people.

Just back from seeing [a corporate indie band] and oh deary me. Big bus, more crew than band members, laminate passes. And guess what? They were acting like dicks! Ninety minutes for them to soundcheck, zero minutes for the support bands. We’ll have this area here for our merchandise and you’ll have to stay out of the dressing room all night, boys, the bass player is female. You need to borrow a plug? Spares! Re-mem-ber Spares! And finally, they parked their van where it blocked the other bands from getting out.

Were they worth it though? Must have been, they had ‘AAA’ on their passes and lots of shiny posters. Their badges come in sets in plastic bags. No, they were crap. So inoffensive I was offended and so slick I wanted to sandpaper their faces. But The Kids loved their airbrushed angst and jumped up and down like there really was meaning and passion in the songs. They might become big enough that the shitty behaviour of them / their crew doesn’t stand out so badly but right now they look ridiculous and fake to me. Escort offstage and two bouncers on the door of the dressing room? Please.

Boo, commenting is broke so I can’t add snidey comments to Chris’s post there. I’ll just have to post my own ramblings instead. Got a couple of hours to spare til I have to go catch a plane. so, aye, Gig on the Green. I think the general consensus was that it was pish. Generally speaking. There were some good bands playing and I like it being in the town and the weather was perfect but all the general festivalness of it and the smallness just made it a bit of a disappointment. Main whine would be that the New Bands stage was hidden away, not publicised and finished hours earlier than the other stages. Oh yeah, and 90% of the new bands were rubbish too. The Silver Pill were indeed quite good, especially for their amusing mud diving, security baiting friends. I’d have liked to see RAAR as well but it was rather a lot of fun just watching them arse about backstage. Which is more than can be said for Trail of Dead: swotty Conrad Keely was sat translating French novels in the sunshine. And after making us break their fiendishly tricky guest list code to get there in the first place! They had tales of Axl Rose and Slipknot and the making of their very good new video though. Trail of Dead were ace by the way. Small kids going mental, much crowd jumping, rock styling, security guard tussling and happy upbeat songs about killing people. Who else did I see? Death Cab For Cutie were lovely and cuddly kitten emo jumper good, The Streets were kinda fun in a ‘look, it’s not a guitar band’ way but they weren’t anywhere near as good as Jason Reece seemed to think they were. Spiritualized were exactly as expected. No surprises but satisfactory despite the booming of the Prodigy seeping into the tent. And Slipknot were weak ass. Very disappointing but their crazed hyper-enthused fans almost made up for it.

Sunday was both less and more fun. The Bellrays I thought were just okay. Without her they’d be nothing and, idiotic though it sounds, I’ve never been that keen on people who can sing well. I liked the White Stripes better, doing a similar retro thing but with more pop and the kind of style branding that should have won someone an award by now. I left to see Guided By Voices only to discover they’d swapped sets with…..Leaves! So I made a hasty retreat back to the main stage. Would have liked to see the Reindeer Section but not more than seeing Jane’s Addiction who were total rawk frenzy. Perry Farrel set about proving his A+ loon credentials, wearing a huge feathered hat and prancing and posing all over the stage. They were funny as hell and preaching streams of nonsense. I got bored after that, having no wish to see Stereo MCs or Feeder and only a vague wish to see Pulp. I might have liked to see how The Strokes were getting on but then I’d have seen them live four times which is three times too many.

So, to sum up: I hate festivals but I like Trail of Dead.

Beats shopping…

On Saturday: Offspring sucked while NOFX were surprisingly OK (“Idiot son of an asshole…” hohoho), if pseudo-punk is your thing. Slipknot were a bunch of wusses. Saying “godamn motherfucker” doesn’t scare anyone and there was more moshing going on at …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead. They win for liberating cans of juice from backstage and throwing them to the audience. I saw Silver Pill at the new band stage, they were interesting. I can’t remember who else played that day, they must have sucked.

Sunday I was more in the mood for. The Bellrays kicked off, rocking indecently hard for so early in the afternoon. They’re like music from an alternate past, where rock moved towards soul instead of virtuosity in the early 70s. Ow it was intense. Have to be seen live. Most of the other bands I saw were crap: Vines, Leaves, piss off. However, Zuba, on the new bands stage were in the right weather for their summery African-styled tunes. Them I liked.

So that’s the White Stripes then? OK I see the appeal. They sounded much better with just two people than all the overstaffed rock bands I saw over the weekend (Jane’s Addiction, Reindeer Section, I’m looking at you). And they’re charismatic enough to hold an audience (Pulp and Stereo MCs scored highly here too, despite my lowish expectations).

Then I got bored with guitars (Where were the electronic artists?) and went to the dance tent (sponsored by Grant’s Vodka). Carl Cox was there, with 100s of monged Weegies and their kids, all counting up to four over and over again. I left when it got too crowded out of a misguided notion that I should see the Strokes. NO! The Wanks more like. The singer’s too pissed to stand or speak and I’m supposed to applaud? All Your Songs Sound The Same, you could at least make an effort to gloss over it. If they are style over substance they forgot the style today and there’s not much there. Hey, it’s Glasgow, last date of the festivals, lets just do it drunk. Don’t let Butlins fuck you over on the way down you arrogant prick. Ugh. 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, I should have stayed in the dance tent. No-one there was half as incoherent and they could all still move.

But yeah, Sunday was fun. A whole sunny weekend in Glasgow! Rock.

we went to see filthy sludge fuckers eyehategod the other night. it was quite a good evening all in all, but then it’s hard not to enjoy yourself when surrounded by lots of behemoth looking men going “grraaaaarrggghh” and hitting each other. the highpoint for me was probably the white trash between-song banter; “we hate everyone”, “fuck everyone” and “you got a pretty mouth”. for the uninitiated i recommend you check out “southern discomfort”, a singles and rareties compilation, and an old album called “dopesick” both on century media.

Well then. In Glasgow on a friday there was none of your fey East Coast acoustic nonsense. We’re Hard Men and we like our Rock to not be pink and crumbly. Triple bill of aft-rock bands and for the first time in ages I wasn’t bored by any of them.

There was FOE, apparently related to Rothko in some way, who did the instrumental rock thing. They had short songs with flashy / virtuosic / wanky guitar playing that made me think of the catchy bits of King Crimson. Funkier and more foot tappier than that makes them sound. Good and with grooves and things.

Then Cat on Form played. As I am the only diskanteer to not know who the Oedipus were, believe me I’m taking an objective view. They Really Are Very Good Indeed. Fierce little pocket monster punk rock. Yuck no that makes them sound like pop punk. Oh I know you’re looking to us for wise words but you need to take my word for this because I am Never Unstinting in my praise of bands. All my thoughts about bands start with “I liked them but…” Not this one. I liked the songs the attitude the spasms the t-shirts the whole thing. I wanted an encore. I clapped fit to make my car-bruised hands throb. But because they are hosted here you won’t believe me. Damn cynics.

Non-credibly, this was (I think) only the second time I’ve seen Lapsus Linguae play. Remember that if you’re ever tempted to think I know about music. I should be ideally positioned to trace their path to stardom or comment on how their interaction with the home crowd has developed. Can’t do that. Sorry. You can read better about them elsewhere. All I can report is that no-one got their balls out, there was one spitting incident but it didn’t involve phlegm, they cantered around the audience for a bit and I liked it. Does that make them sound dull? They weren’t but you probably know that.

Thousands of dawdling tourists WITH UMBRELLAS!

Hello, I’m back from a day in Festival frenzied Edinburgh. Can you tell? It was precisely while stumbling my way between people with umbrellas bigger than my house that I began to feel the beginnings of regret in choosing the acoustic niceness in Edinburgh over the crazy rock in Glasgow. But, hey, I got to eat pizza and watch Top of the Pops with Elizabeth. That was an experience in itself, not having a TV in diskant HQ and not having watched TOTP in a very long time. We were mostly struck by some new American boy band doing the live vocal acoustic slow number on stools thing and, astonishingly, being able to play instruments but not be able to sing in tune. What’s happening? In my day boy bands couldn’t sing or play any instruments and quite often they were quite ugly and couldn’t dance either. Then we got American boy bands who made a point of doing staggeringly dull acapella nonsense at every opportunity to prove that actually they could sing. If I could remember this new band’s name I’d be vaguely interested in whether their new boyband format actually works.

Anyway…fun though that was, I was over to see Chris Brokaw, James Orr Complex and the wee Stuart Mogwai. Except I’d been enjoying TOTP too much and having slight troubles finding the entrance to the venue and so missed most of Stuart’s set – booo! I did get to hear Cody though so I was happy enough. The whole night was one of those quick changeover and then kick out everyone so we can set up some crappy club night deals which annoy the hell out of me. The venue was really nice but give the promoters the time to spread the show out, give people time to arrive and enjoy the evening. So Stuart was quickly followed by the James Orr Complex aka Chris Mack who I’ve not seen for a while. He was damn lovely as always, intricate melodies tripping over themselves, the vocals translating emotion into poetry. And all honest, humble and friendly. Album out in a couple of months on Rock Action. You’d be an idiot not to buy it.

Another quicksmart stage swap and here we have Chris Brokaw, formerly of Come. I’ve not got anything by Come though so forgive me my viewpoint of ignorance. His presence was much more assured with more volume and power. The instrumental songs kept my attention in the main with the vocal tracks giving a helping jolt from the dreamy lull it was easy to slip into. The tracks I liked best were when he just riffed up some distorted noise in loops and waves. It was kind of like when Unwound hit the perfect riff and just keep at it and you wish they’d never stop, that the record would have one of those infinite grooves and it would go on forever. Yeah, it was like that. I could have done with way more from everyone. It should have been in a dark draped basement and carried on til dawn, taking shots and requests, making stuff up as it goes along. After felt too early, too wrong. I came home.

I’ll try and avoid a repeat of my Six By Seven blog, which hung on the fact that “they’re not as good as they used to be”, but Mercury Rev sucked last night. I’m aware that my tastes have changed greatly since i was really into them, like 4 or 5 years ago, so that has as much to do with it as anything else, but I was still bored rigid throughout their entire set. It’s all so safe, so middle-aged, so fucking….lame! Where once I found Jonathan Donahue’s weirdo Mark Almond-esque dancing mysterious and unusual and cool, I now just want to yell “get a job!”. Grasshopper! The man could very well play in Michael Bolton’s backing band, sneaking off for a quick wank over his stupendous fretwork every couple of minutes. Not one song had any hint of the kind of dynamic that once made them great. They’ve been playing them all for so long and they’ve got them all so polished that to hear them now, it’s hard to distinguish one song from the next in the continually plodding mid-tempo cabaret. If last night’s gig was represented on a cardiograph machine, it would be a flatliner. All the ingredients were there for a fucking awful gig; rediculously expensive ticket, rediculously shite support band who are the current NME hypes, but in reality are a bunch of posing schmindie losers (Minuteman, in case you hadn’t guessed already), and last but not least a tired old middle-aged band, and their middle-aged fans who follow them round blindly applauding for years after they released anything decent.

I listen to a lot of unpleasant gloomy crap, but I now know that as long as I keep going to see The Flaming Lips every couple of years, there will always be some musical balance in my life. I had seen them twice before last night, and both times had been spectacular epic occasions, the kind of thing you look back on with a teary eye and a grin in years to come, so my expectactions were high as they rolled into my fair city for the first time. Race For The Prize has to be one of the best songs it is possible to start a show with, it’s absolutely huge. Unfortunatly it came second last night, but seeing as they’re touring for their new album you can hardly blame them for keeping it fresh. They still came through with all the crazy stuff though, fake blood and monkey hand puppets and giant rabbit costumes and a truckload of confetti, and even though it was practially exactly the same as every other time I’ve seen them, they still made me feel like all was right with the world, they made me want to dance and smile and run around barefoot and have water fights and…yeah, you get the idea. It may well have been the wrong side of cheesy on a few occasions, but it was still an event, which makes a huge change from the posing introverted sixth form post-rock dirge I find myself watching with alarming frequency. I’m sure if I saw that kind of thing all the time it would get old pretty quickly, but as long as I can go on seeing The Lips every once in a while, then I get the feeling that everything will be just fine.

Wandered over to West 13th last night to see Enon. Firstly we got The Magnificents who are still crazily great. They were having some sound problems that only made scary eyed keyboard man all the funnier. One day he will have an onstage mental fit and rampage around killing people and we’ll all think it’s hilarious. Especially if he continues to shout into microphone while on killing spree [KIIILLLLL, AAARRRGHHH! RAAAAAAAARR! etc.].

Enon, however, did not gain anything from the dodgy sound (hey, mr rich person, give the venue money for a new PA) and it was only after a few songs that they started to sound like a vaguely good hardcore guitar band. Which is still not good because Enon are a wonky electronic band. There was too much emphasis on the guitar bits and not enough electronic fun or singer running around the place inspiring fun and amusement. This was mostly upsetting because they were ace last time they played Glasgow, upstaging Les Savy Fav no less (!). I didn’t know any of the songs they played until the last two but I could hear some ace tunes buried under the sludge so I’m betting on the new album being fantastic. Luckily the sound got ever so gradually better and they played a rather awesome version of Conjugate The Verbs to finish on so it didn’t end up a total disappointment. Ho hum etc.