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The Album From Last Year That…

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It won’t be long now before someone posts an Album Of The Year thread which will quickly be filled with lists littered with names of bands that simply have to be made up… to be followed shortly after by hilarious lists of made up bands. But in this giddy excitement over the new, a sober voice will state – in the manner of the modern-day Chinese premier warning against haste in assessing the impact of the French Revolution – that the only safe way to pick a 2017 Album Of The Year is to wait a few years, just to be sure. This otherwise appealing idea is rendered somewhat fanciful on a site where the demographic means that “crazy new beat” you’re grooving to is less likely to be coming from your Rega than from the grim reaper knocking at your door. So, in the spirit of calm reflection but at the same time acknowledging the irrefutable reality that your sense is, at every moment, ebbing away like the air from a punctured tyre, I thought I might ask these questions about your favourites of last year.. (1) Which album’s greatness did you fail to grasp? Here I am referring » Continue Reading.

“I Bought It For The Second Disc”

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Recently, I picked the the eponymous album by “supergroup” (I guess?) The Thorns on the cheap. It’s the version which includes a second disc where they play all the songs acoustically. Now, I’m not the “ale should be chewy”/”wooden wheels are best”/”if you can’t play it on an acoustic, it’s not a song” type, but with this album by this band I think the harmonies work better strummed. So much so, I may never play disc 1. Previously, I bought the second Tindersticks album for a CD copy of the live LP (a particular favourite on double 10 inch vinyl) that comes with it (and, curses! the cd doesn’t have space for the superior live version of “My Sister”). When Rakim was making his comeback he half-inched a trick from the King Of Pop by attaching a EB&R greatest hits disc to his new album, which was again snapped up for CD versions of favourites. And, I’ve mentioned here before, I really like Visioneers’ Hipology album, but I love disc 2 where all the songs are mixed together. So, what have you bought just to get the extra disc, or upon owning it found the second disc substantially better? Now » Continue Reading.

We Can Reproduce It For You Wholesale

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“Talent borrows, genius steals” is a line usually attributed to the genius (convenient!) Oscar Wilde. Cynical old devourers of popular culture like us may appreciate that there truly is nothing entirely new under the sun, but I was wondering whether we might reach some kind of agreement about what we believed was the most complete piece of appropriation. Music, I think, should be excluded as I’m confident there won’t be the teeniest bit of consensus in this contentious field. Here’s a few suggestions:

Goober And The Ghost Chasers A not-at-all fondly remembered and short-lived cartoon from the 1970s which decided to capitalise on the popularity of Scooby Doo by introducing us to a plucky bunch of youngsters who encountered ghosts as they traversed the countryside in their logo’d up vehicle with their talking dog. Oh, and they had lots of “celeb” mates including famous basketball players. Mind, there were a few touches to distinguish GATG. Firstly, the kids were journalists at “Ghostchaser” magazine who actively sought out ghosts and their vehicle was straight out of Gerry Anderson’s Century 21 designs (lucrative trade, ghost journalism). Also Goober, as per the ancient theatrical tradition, talked to us, the viewers in supposed-to-be-funny asides, » Continue Reading.

Jamila Woods – HEAVN

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What does it sound like?:

“Last Century, last week” goes one of the refrains on Blk Girl Soldier, one of the bangers on Ms Woods’ self-penned solo debut – a reference to the plus ça change nature of the black American experience. Timely, you might think, as events US-side last week did carry so many echoes from the previous century (and the one before that). Thing is, this album has been around for almost a year. The earlier version was in my AW albums of 2017, as it was downloadable at the time gratis on Soundcloud. Apart from some overdubbed backing vocals and some new noodly guitar work on the title track, this differs only in that it is the official release. Well that, and the fact that the assorted “interludes” have been given their own separate track numbers – it’s a pet peeve of mine that on so many albums you have to hear the intro/outro every time you experience a tune.

Jamila (pronounced Jam-ee-la – “It’s a long ‘i’ baby!”) is one of a plethora of musicians from Chicago who seem to pop up on one another’s recordings. Previous collaborators Chance The Rapper and Nico Segal (the » Continue Reading.

The Slag Of Quizzes

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I took triangular chocolate from triangular bees and triangular honey from triangular trees… but it turns out the shape of your turds is largely dictated by the shape of your rectum. Yay Science! Anyway, here’s a time wasting quiz of old advertising slogans, with the qualification that you get 1 point for the missing words, 1 point for the product, but 20 points for saying something funny. Please add any more you feel have potential

1. Put a ……… in your ……… 2. This …..’s too wet 3. If ……… could talk, they’d ask for …….. 4. They ……… in your mouth, not in your …….. 5. A girl’s best friend is her …….. 6. A ……. a day helps you …………………. 7. The …….., they came in search of …… and found it in …… 8. ……………………..the hole 9. The sauce is on the bottom! But the …………… on top 10. A ………… of ……… is just enough to give your kids ……… 11. ………….. A ……. in every bite 12. Once you ……… you can’t stop 13. The milky ………………… on me! 14. ….. it with ………. 15. If you like a lot of …………… join ………….

Post-apocalyptic Musings On The Power Of Fake

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My fellow survivors, as we huddle in this underground shelter, sharing a glass of sock strained wee and secretly envying the millions already dead, it seems an opportune moment to ascribe blame to the man most responsible for the recent thermonuclear catastrophe. That man is Stephen Fry. Mr Fry, I think we can all agree, was a clever man: erudite, witty and a delightful recounter of even the most familiar of anecdotes. Alas, what bitter irony that his wonderful evocation, on his QI show, of the extraordinary preservation of the features of the victims of Pompeii in the moment of their demise was ultimately to be echoed by the atomic torch fixing his death shadow to the walls of the BBC building so many centuries later. Of course, by then Fry had quit presenting QI, and why wouldn’t he – his work was done. After more than a decade spent removing pieces from the Jenga tower of our certainties until it tottered, tugging maniacally at the threads that knitted the fluffy jumper of accepted wisdom which had hitherto kept us warm and reassured, he departed like the fleeing farter who is happy to pass on the blame for his flatulent » Continue Reading.

James Richardson departs Guardian Football Weekly

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Did you lot know about this? And, if you did, couldn’t you have found some way to let me know so I could let myself down gently (certainly, The Guardian didn’t -Jimbo’s ugly mug is still on top). I’m already reeling after the departure of Jack O Brien’s odd staccato style from the presenter’s chair on the Cracked podcast (although at last the GFW maintained its usual standard this time. The Cracked podcast hasn’t been the same since JOB left). Can’t see any of the usual guest presenters doing the gig full time, so who will be the long term replacement? Thoughts….?

Mr Jukes – God First

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What does it sound like?:

Now I’m not really sure this belongs here at all. If I read the AW parliament right, its majority party is made up musical purists who won’t like this record for the simplicity of its cut-and-paste arrangements and a stroppy minority group of hip-to-the-beat 40ish year old kidz who won’t hear anything “fresh” in these tracks. Fact is, Mr Jukes may also have fallen between the two stools of satisfying his own fans and appealing to the beat boys who might see this album as some half-assed dilettantism. Y’see “Mr Jukes” is today’s name for Jack Steadman from Bombay Bicycle Club. I say “may have” because I’m not really familiar with BBC, apart from snippets when they played Glastonbury some years back (I gather they sound a bit different now) so I don’t really know what baggage he brings into this. And anyway, I had heard it all the way through and my foot was already a tappin’ before I did a search to see who this dude was. So, the music: what you get is the samples-over-beats construction of a DJ Shadow or RJD2 incorporating the rolling guest spots and smorgasbord of styles » Continue Reading.

Cody Chesnutt – My Love Divine Degree

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What does it sound like?:

It seems like only six months ago that everyone was saying “see that Donald J Trump with his crass, uninformed, bigoted, poorly articulated, wildly inconsistent and frankly dangerous statements? Just you wait – once he assumes the Presidency, the gravity of the office will transform him into a thoughtful and unifying statesman”. You may be thinking that’s an odd way to start a review of Cody Chesnutt’s new album, but the analogy here is the way many of us fans reacted to The Codester’s extraordinary but sprawling home-produced 2002 debut The Headphone Masterpiece, by declaring a major new talent had arrived and, “just you wait, in a few short years Mr Chesnutt will marshall his many talents to produce a new, more focussed, bona fide undisputed classic”. And how did that go? Well, the fifteen years since have yielded a second, pretty good album Landing On A Hundred (a mere ten years after the first) and the six track e.p. Black Skin, No Value. And this new album, while honed in proper studios with a serious producer, and coming in at a tidy 48 minutes, somehow over its 14 tracks still finds space to » Continue Reading.

Oi! Sorkin! No!!!!: Unforgettable Scenes That Needed No Words

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Over on the rather fine Cracked podcast this week, they were talking again about the final scene of The Graduate, where, after all Dustin Hoffman’s bloke-in-a-movie rush to reckless action succeeds in producing a result conventionally regarded as desirable within movie logic, if not in real life, the camera lingers on the couple past the “sorted!” freeze frame long enough to see the realisation break across their faces of what they’ve done. Wordlessly, we see how the weight of what’s going to happen next subverts the “Hollywood ending” we were prepared for. More often than not, the great spaces between dialogue in film are filled with stunts and explosions, but, from time to time, there are unforgettable moments of drama conveyed without a word being uttered – I’m thinking of Bob Hoskins’ bottom row of teeth retracting defeated at the end of The Long Good Friday. Moments before, the future object of Jessica Rabbit’s affection absolutely nailed one of those grandstanding speeches actors dream of, but he still shifts up another gear in the back of that car.. So, how about celebrating some of the great scenes that required no words? I’m hoping for replies, although I suppose complete silence » Continue Reading.

Quintessential Titles

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Music. Some of it’s great, some of it is truly awful and a great deal is just “meh”. And who has time to listen to all of it?* ** *** Fortunately, in the course of their a strummin’ and a plinkyplonking and a cut’n’pastin’, many of our pop buddies have a habit of hitting upon that one title that completely sums up what they do, thereby providing a helpful shortcut in our quest to identify that which we might “dig”. As a f’rinstance, 10,000 teased out and carefully considered mots justes by the planet’s foremost music scribes will provide the curious with scarcely more information about the band Spiritualized than their one quintessential song title: She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit). All you need to know about Senior Spaceman’s particular goulash combining love, divine grace and winky opioid up-tops is right there in that symphonic oo-er pop referencing pun. Not a great example? I’m sure you can do better…. *okay, probably Tigger ** yeah, and duco *** dammit, probably most of you freaky shut-in mofos…!

Side 1. Track 1. Back Of The Class!

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There was no end of material over on the Back o’ The Net thread – as Sir Junior of Wells points out “a lot of bands prefer to hit you with their best shot” and, no doubt, record companies encourage artistes to frontload their albums with bangers. Interesting then, that we can probably all think of an album (this time, not necessarily a debut) where the starter’s gun has gone off but our heroes seem sluggish getting out of the blocks. Sometimes it’s just our self-important friends signalling to the punters they they are in the presence of a work perhaps a little different to what they were expecting – I’m thinking here of something like It’s No Game (No 1) at the start of Bowie’s Scary Monsters; Yes, says David, you will be getting a run of chart hits, but first you’re getting this, because I have a rep to maintain. While the CP(POF)H had by this point established himself as both “a bit experimental” and an habitué of the top 20, sudden (and possibly unanticipated) success might be the explanation why civilian fans of one of 1981’s biggest hits were treated, upon purchasing the album with the same » Continue Reading.

Duh! Your Questions Answered

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Following fentonsteves brilliantly instructive post about the great pre-recorded cassette tape swindle (a.k.a. Home Taping Is Significantly Improving Music) yesterday – itself a response to a query from Moose – I thought it might be time for one of those threads where punters can ask anything that’s been bothering them in the hope that the AW hive mind can polyfilla over that crack in their wall of knowledge. Not so much the big threadworthy ATM stuff as the small almost-too-embarrassed-to-ask headscratchers. And, as my man Carl Sagan said: “There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question”. And, with that in mind, I’ll set the bar at limbo dancing level by asking this. Every now and then, while listening to seventies reggae music, I find myself wondering about combs. In the JA Cinematic Universe it’s very clearly defined that The Dreads are the good guys and the baddies are the “Baldheads”. Yet the Dreads’ greatest gesture of defiance is to “throw the comb away”. Now, I don’t know what degree of curation is involved in maintaining a » Continue Reading.

Time Travel

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Author:James Gleick

James Gleick first came to our attention back in the late 80s with his book “Chaos: Making A New Science”. This was around the same time Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History Of Time” was becoming the publishing phenomenon which would prompt a proliferation of “Popular Science” literature. Hawking’s book, notoriously, rivals Finnegans Wake in the ratio of copies owned to those completed and comprehended. Chaos is no less formidable in terms of the depth and breadth with which it seeks to explain its subject. But, while it’s true that it tackles what were then-zeitgeisty topics like The Butterfly Effect and Fractals which apply to more down-to-Earth things such as cloud formations and coastlines, I would say Chaos also demonstrates that Gleick has a greater talent for bringing the reader along without needing to oversimplify complicated subject matter.

As eyebrow-raising as Chaos Theory is, it is very much hard science. Time travel, as Stephen Hawking (who famously threw a party for time travellers by sending out the invitations afterwards) would remind us, is the stuff of speculation, so I was interested to see how this writer would approach the subject. As it turns out, Gleick could have cheekily half-inched » Continue Reading.

“Like Cars In A Contraflow Syste-e-em”: U.K. Roolz

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It’s Brit Awards month here on The Afterword. As you’ll be aware, along with our sister site AfterNuts, we’ve been profiling all the nominees (although their profiles are mostly pictures of Beyoncé bending over). This year, there are quite a few AW-friendly acts in the shake up for the prizes who we can see are there on merit alongside Rag n Bone Man. The Brits are a time for celebration of British talent and influence around the world – Mr Kano, on one of his crispier biscuits, makes a reference to Johnny Foreigner “Crossing the pond fishing for hits”. While he acknowledges “We both gain from a little influence”, he wonders “How come nobody credits us Brits?”. It’s true, whether it’s the “British Invasion” following Beatlemania or Britain’s ability to persuade its trigger-happy cousin that its own neglected children Hendrix, Blondie and Public Enemy are, in fact, ace, or just someone calling their band Pavement, there has been a lot of cultural traffic westward from the Mother Country. So, big, small or silly – how about a thread documenting the times the U.S. took a tip from the U.K.? To start: when Public Enemy were brainstorming ideas for their theme » Continue Reading.

Afterworld: It Doesn’t Look Like Anything To Me

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The Deadloss Corporation welcomes you to Afterworld, a safe place where ageing balding geezers going round in circles talking gibberish are indulged, rather than pointed at and mocked the way you are in the outside world. This is only possible because we have a full cast of humanlike cyborgs to attend to your every fantasy. Why not visit our old-style saloon the Aspidistra and Hatstand where you might meet some of our earliest units who we, sentimentally perhaps, still employ in service? At the card table is “Old Bean” a model so basic he can only play poker and drink whiskey and even then only by having his hollow leg regularly drained. At the bar is Dreamdaze (yes “dream” AND “daze”, we were really taking the p*ss with our early models – we spelled out their true nature in their name and still they believe they’re real). In the case of DD a “Millennium Bug”-style programming limitation means he is unable to comprehend anything that happened after December 31 1969. Newer models are more sophisticated and frequently reassigned new identities. Most recently we repurposed “the rough one” from a touring boy band so that he believes he is a hairy » Continue Reading.

In The Eye Of The Beholder: A Safe Place For Your Mad Ideas

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That cryptic photo game we’ve been enjoying over there -> has me thinking about how we see or miss things that may or not be put there deliberately for us to notice. As a for instance, because of some browsing I did following Pete Burns’ death, Amazon keeps shoving the album illustrated below in my face. After my first careless glance at the cover I assumed some wit had put the “You spin me right round, baby right round..” hitmaker inside a washing machine. But a proper inspection and the compilation’s title – Sophisticated Boom Box – revealed me to be wrong. But half a beatbox does look quite a bit like a washing machine …so I still have a niggling suspicion my misconception is a deliberate plant by the artist. It made me wonder if there are things you’ve encountered on your travels where you’ve noticed, or thought you noticed, something and have been genuinely unsure whether it was just “in the eye of the beholder” or intended to be seen. The whole subject is a bit of a minefield: the film Room 237 reveals a plethora of clever choices Stanley Kubrick made in filming The Shining, but is » Continue Reading.

The “Bad Idea” Game

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Back in the nineties there was a record that got a bit of radio play. I never caught the name of the artist, but I presume the song was called “Bad idea” because, even though I don’t remember the verses, I recall the chorus went: – Ner Ner Ner Ner – Bad idea! – Ner Ner Ner Ner – Bad idea – where each Ner Ner Ner Ner was an example of a “bad idea”. The only example used I still remember was “Eurodisney”, which is why I’m thinking this was some time in the early to mid nineties. – It occurs to me that this could be a fun drinking game, where each person in turn has to name a bad idea, while subject to the discipline of four syllables (Tricky, I remember someone once commenting that Lemmy was one of the greatest songwriters because all his lines were only a few words long). For example: – Tigers as pets – Bad idea! – Farts in Spacesuits – Bad idea! ..and so on You could get certainly get away with four and a bit syllables: – Booze for t’baby – Bad idea! You may even think five will scan, » Continue Reading.

The Avalanches: Are They All That?

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As tiggerlion’s great Album Of The Year poll approaches, AWers are making their lists and checking them ..ooh.. dozens of times. One record that will feature in a lot of people’s thoughts is this year’s surprise new Avalanches release Wildflower. It’s certainly going to appear on Arthur Cowslip’s list following his excellent and fulsome review in Nights In (which you should definitely read If you have not already). Now I’ve not done 200 listens, but I’ve spun this quite a few times and, well, I’ve been wondering why all the fuss? It’s not that I don’t like it. I do. But not …much. Last time I played Devil’s Advocate it yielded Bingo Little’s fantastic Frank Ocean post, so I ask with anticipation: are The Avalanches all that? I’m not asking for a justification of the turntable/mixer as instrument (although, hey, bring it on!). There are plenty of djs-as-band platters I like (as as f’rinstance I really like Visioneers’ Hipololgy album, but I absolutely love the bonus disc – and I emphasise “bonus disc” – where all the tunes flow in a single mix), but the Avos (I speak Australian – drop all but the first syllable, add “o”) seemed to » Continue Reading.

Hell Or High Water

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Year: 2016 Director: David MacKenzie

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Westerns, the tv show Justified perhaps, those who can’t get enough Jeff Bridges..

The Witch

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Year: 2016 Director: Robert Eggers

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

It’s 92 minutes long so, for a start, it might appeal to people who enjoy films that aren’t tests of endurance. That said, if you’re looking for something to cheer you up, this might not be for you..

One Way Ticket

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When I get down I remind myself of my extraordinary good fortune. As an employed, white university educated male born in (largely not violent, not religion persecuting, sexually and politically tolerant, sanitary and disease free) Western Europe in the last third of the twentieth century raised by loving parents (and, for a bonus point, adopted) who has reached his fifties with fully functioning limbs and faculties I must be in the top 1% of the luckiest humans to have ever lived. “Well that’s awfully mature and thoughtful, Mr R, and not at all like the usual sh*te you come out with”, I hear you say. Well, yes, I’m getting to that bit. A hypothetical question that’s often asked for fun is “If you could travel to any point in the past, where would you go?” Contained in this question, it seems to me, is the implication that you could materialise in the crowd at Hendrix’s first gig after the release of Sergeant Pepper’s or in the Estadio Azteca to watch the 1970 World Cup final or be present to witness the newly completed pyramids in mintnick glory, have your fill of whichever personal fantasy you choose and be home in » Continue Reading.