Ooh, I’ve got a new column up on the main page. Aside from apologising about the couple of spelling mistakes in it, I thought it might be worth mentioning a couple of asides:

Firstly, I saw Growing at ATP last week, and they were excellent. Everybody else I spoke to who caught some of them said they were insufferably dull, but I really enjoyed that fact that just a bassist and a guitarist (not sure what happened to the third guy) built up a wall of sound based around precisely one note for twenty minutes, before exploring its textural possibilities for a further fifteen. They even added some proper melodies and everything towards the end, and it was quite entrancing. They were the first band I saw that weekend (after walking out halfway through a song by the pathetic Converge), and a warm introduction to the weekend it was. I also saw their guitarist wandering around as part of a bizarre musical troupe after Shellac had finished on Sunday night, armed with a guitar, candles and tambourines. Welcomely odd.

Secondly, the reference I made to Oneida live dates is sadly now long out of date. Suffice to say, they were great, they did play a couple of long songs, and managed not to be blown off the stage by the mighty Wolves!(OfGreece).

Enough. I’m off to the continent for a week. Enjoy the forthcoming content on diskant.

I’ve been thinking a lot about gaming recently and why, after 4 or 5 months of Gamecube ownership, I still only own three games. The reasons I put down mostly to lack of money, waiting for my sister to just buckle down and kill Ganondorf so I can borrow Wind Waker and that the two games I was playing (Majora’s Mask off the free Zelda disc and Billy Hatcher) were just TOO HARD and/or too time consuming.

My favourite games are the Zelda and Pokemon series and my favourite parts of them are just wandering around collecting stuff. You can guarantee I’ll have done all the sidequests way before I get anywhere near the final dungeon.

My least favourite gaming experiences have been bosses and impossible (to me) puzzles, usually involving jumping. I’ve lost count of how many games I’ve completed to the final boss and then got frustrated never to return and see the world saved.

(Coincidentally, there’s a similar thoughts going on at the Do You See? blog)

Thank goodness, then, for Animal Crossing. None of my friends seem to understand the appeal of this game and my best shot at describing it has been, “imagine an RPG without any bosses, or any plot”.

Basically the game runs in real time as you go about your daily life in a town populated with up to 15 animals. Every day you read your mail, buy clothes and furniture at the shop, go fishing or bug catching, chat to your neighbours, write letters, do errands, dig up fossils for the museum etc. There’s no plot whatsoever. You can work towards getting a perfect town, a completed museum and a huge house or you can just re-arrange your furniture and play NES games in your basement.

I was looking around today to see if anyone had started an Animal Crossing blog which I think could be really funny in the right hands. Instead I stumbled across a discussion on www.gamegirladvance.com which I found interesting for a number of reasons, the main one being how you only need to play Animal Crossing for 15-45 minutes at a time. I hadn’t quite realised that this what I most enjoy about AC – getting home of an evening, loading up AC and just reading my mail, checking the shop and chatting with the animals. And then I can switch it off and get on with all the other stuff I need to get done or get more involved as I try to pay off my debt and get some new trees to grow.

This is why it would be a tragedy if Nintendo stopped making games. Forever accused of making kids games, what they actually make is accessible games, games that anyone can play. In some ways, yes, that does often mean they’re easy. But in other ways, it means you’re not frustrated from enjoying huge parts of the game because of a lack of skill. Instead you get an immersive experience where your friends are encouraged to help out or join in through connectivity or multiplayer. And surely gaming should be as much about entertainment as challenge. Even with Grand Theft Auto, for all the talk of what an amazing game it is, people I know seem to just spend most of their time arsing about, kicking in prostitutes and doing ridiculous stunts in fire engines, much to the general amusement of onlookers. Zelda and Animal Crossing for two I think are really fun games just to watch someone else playing.

Surely now it’s time for all games to have realistic difficulty levels where Easy can actually be completed by your little sister or your gran and SuperHard can give those people who will happily stay up half the night trying to complete a level a real challenge.

Or even better, can we just give Nintendo a monopoly on games? Aw, go on…

So Cat Power surprised pretty much no-one by being really inconsistent last night (at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire). Parts of it were gorgeous, notably a couple of what I presume are new songs, and versions of ‘Metal Heart’ and ‘I Don’t Blame You’. For reasons best known to her, she decided to turn up the house lights and sit looking at her illuminated audience for the last ten minutes while she smoked a fag and muttered things into the microphone. There wasn’t even the payback of a triumphant final song, just: ‘You all have to go now, or the government will attack’. Possibly the most anticlimactic end to a gig I’ve ever seen, but then you’d expect nothing less infuriating from Ms. Marshall. Having said that, it was wonderful to see her with a (mostly) attentive audience in relatively-civilised seated conditions, punctuated by a constant stream of stewards telling people to stop smoking, and a stream of people slinking off to smoke guiltily by the bar. And I still love her.

Of course, Chris is neglecting to tell you that he missed Uzeda too. So that’s only the two best bands of the weekend then.

(Sorry Chris)

Most drunken person there eh? WALK A MILE IN MY FUCKING SHOES! I MISSED SHELLAC.

anyway.

Highlights:

LUNGFISH

PART CHIMP

JAMES ORR COMPLEX

I’m quite interested by the fact that no pain was caused by being in close contact with Lightning Bolt, Mogwai, Boredoms etc. but a 50 minute plane journey from London has broken my ears. Certainly I am getting old. But WOOO, best ATP ever! My top highlight was Lightning Bolt. Don’t listen to anyone who says they were crap, they’re just sulking about the playing on the floor thing. I couldn’t see them but they were still astonishingly great. So good I went next door and impulse bought the DVD. Also brilliant were Boredoms, Shellac, old skool Mogwai set and little old Chris Mack on that big stage. Tortoise, Papa M, Cat Power would have been great if I hadn’t shouted to people constantly over the former or been able to hear the latter two. I spent a lot of time being extremely un hardcore, sitting down during bands and hanging out at the chalet and thus had a 100% excellent band percentage by Saturday afternoon. My drinking antics were pathetic thanks to damaging my throat within 10 seconds of arriving in London. Most drunken person there – a tie between Chris Summerlin and Colin Kearney. Addition of the gambling area was a stroke of genius also. Yay, ATP. I’m off to have a bath now, despite spending half the weekend moaning about how our chalet had a bath instead of a shower. Go figure.

Shellac were AMAZING at my birthday party on Thursday also. I love that band. Hello to everyone I met and thanks to the kittens for my birthday pie, of which I ate 2/3rds. Mmmm, pie.

Everybody I met or spoke to at ATP – new friends or old – are great people. Seriously. Thank you all

Still too tired and confused to work out my musical highlights so far, due to not being able to take alcohol any more without getting a week-long hangover.

glad to hear people had fun at atp (although not entirely surprised). i won’t dwell on that too much in an attempt to cheer myself up for having missed so much fun recently, but one thing; stu! that was two years ago! time is indeed flying by though, i will turn 40 next year etc.

some considerable time after everyone else, we have finally come to appreciate the joys of curb your enthusiasm. having heard many people rave on about it, we finally caught bits of a couple of episodes on tv, and it seemed ok, but not really anything astounding. then, gradually, we saw more and more of it, and it seemed to get a little funnier each time. then last week we bought season one on dvd, which has finally caused us to share the common opinion that this show is a work of fucking genius. last night we watched the dermatologist one, and by the time larry was doing his “norman! not on the weekend!” speech in the car, we were both verging on delirious. lovely stuff.

i’m still half kidding myself that we could go to atp next weekend, despite the fact that a) it’s 3000 miles away, b) we don’t have any money and c) it’s sold out. a boy can hope though. failing that, there is the prospect of sun city girls in louisville next month, or possibly hair police/prurient/kites/wolf eyes in michigan, although on the way back from there last week i lead us on a somewhat unnecessary 120 mile detour, so i’m not even sure kim will ever let me be in a car with her again, let alone drive us back there. we were there to see the ever horrible khanate, who were spectacular as you would expect. i was very drunk which didn’t help with the whole “GGGRRRUUUUUURRGGGHHHHH-CCZZZZKKKKKIIIIINNNNNNTTTHHHHH-RRRRAAAAAAAAGGAAAWWWWWWAAAAAAA” aspect of the evening, in fact by the time khanate had played i could feel the fear rapidly approaching, but thankfully i managed to keep it together till the end. bought a fucking amazing shirt, so nice that i feel the need to show it off.

This seems like as good a time as any to break my blogophobic habits and rejoin the fold post-ATP. Not too much to say now, as I’m sure we’ll be putting up a diskant feature like we did last year, but HELLO to everyone I spoke to from the diskant fold – you’re all WINNERS. And HELLO to Ivory Springer, Big Joan and Ann Arbor, who are all GREAT and lovely and you should go check ’em out.

Personal highlights were Lungfish (who were even better than I thought they’d be – get that gurning!), Boredoms (who gave me the best headache EVER and made at least one of our party retire to the beach in pain), Lightning Bolt (who sounded like they were probably utterly skill from where we were standing, but were predictably only properly experienced by the 100 or so people nearest to where they set up), Uzeda (such a shame they overlapped with Shellac), Cat Power (who was TOO QUIET TOO QUIET TOO QUIET and as such didn’t seem to go down very well beyond the first few rows of people), and Shellac, obviously. AND I’m going to see Cat Power again tomorrow and Le Tigre next week, which makes up for the weekend two lineup being BETTER. Anyway, work – BOO, ATP – yay. Also, I’m a plane.

Hi all. I’m now returned from All Tomorrows Parties, as I’d imagine most of the other web-hackers on this computer site are. Suffice to say, it was great. I’m not going to write much because my eyes are about to bleed from exhausation, but what I will say is this-

– Trans Am, Boredoms and Uzeda were my favourite three bands of the weekend.

– Everybody in attendance was equally nice and friendly, barring the sub-moronic, chest-beating neanderthal who kicked me as I tried to get past him during Shellac (performance #2). He should be killed.

– If one more person excitedly taps me on the shoulder to tell me Lightning Bolt are playing an impromptu gig in a toilet/cupboard/suitcase, I will vomit hard and long.

– I lost 40 pounds somewhere on the beach.

– ‘Western Train’ is the most unusal arcade amusement I am ever likely to experience in my lifetime. ‘Players enjoy to control our train directly’, and that’s a fact.

– ‘Festabulous’ isn’t a popular word.

Now sleep.