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“If as a teenager you feel music this powerfully, it is very difficult to grow up and grow out of it. You are in fact likely to spend the rest of your life searching for similar experiences, even at ages when other life experiences should have suggested that there is a kind of immaturity in feeling so strongly about what is, after all, merely music, which is merely a form of guesswork about consciousness.” Words & Music, Paul Morley
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“A man sits in a car on a tree-lined street, watching a fourteen-year-old girl walking home from school, hopelessly in love with her. I’ve almost come to blows with friends because of my insistence that much of Van Morrison’s early work had an obsessively reiterated theme of pedophilia, but here is something that at once may be taken as that and something far beyond it. He loves her. Because of that, he is helpless. Shaking. Paralyzed. Maddened. Hopeless. Nature mocks him. As only nature can mock nature. Or is love natural in the first place? No Matter. By the end of the song he has entered a kind of hallucinatory ecstasy; the music aches and yearns as it rolls on out. This is one supreme pain, that of being imprisoned a spectator. And perhaps no so very far from “T.B. Sheets,” except that it must be far more romantically easy to sit and watch someone you love die than to watch them in the bloom of youth and health and know that you can never, ever have them, can never speak to them.” Lester Bangs on Astral Weeks
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The kindly folks at Mediafire have suspended our account for copyright infringement. This will affect all the mixes hosted for this site, Randy & Earl’s Old Record Club, Hickeysonic and Clockwatcher.
Please bear with us while we work on a solution, and if there’s a particular mix you crave, contact us and we’ll see what we can do.
Filed under: Reading | Tags: Alvin Lucier, Kylie, Paul Morley, Words & Music
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even more amazing the second time round, 10 years later. Probably because I’ve heard more of the music he’s talking about, but also because music writing this ALIVE is even rarer these days, I think
We’ve hit 50,000 views. Not the most precise barometer of interest but it works for me.
Shrag have split up and I’m gutted. Yet to hear the reasons, I’m sure they all make sense, just frustrating when you come across a band (very late, it must be said) and then they vanish. Ah well, they were mint, especially last album Canines (see review).
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Here’s my recent Narc live review:
“On a night when everyone flocked to see various local indie heroes, a more select, smarter – dare I say it, sexier? – crowd gathered to see Brighton’s Shrag… (They) are the first indie band since Los Campesinos! to really catch my attention, and in some ways they’re similar – whipsmart, literate, ambitious, complex. Live, they’re rawer, more scrappy, but not at the expense of their songs. In a set heavy on tunes from this year’s astonishing Canines album, the Brighton quintet don’t let the small audience bring them down and power through a set stuffed with brilliance. Frontwoman Helen is a ball of nervy energy, fluttering around the stage, curling into a ball, dancing off the front of the stage, her lyrics full of resentment and lust. Most indiepop bands would kill for one song as good as Show Us Your Canines or On The Spines Of Old Cathedrals. Shrag have a whole set of them. If they come back to Newcastle, you owe it yourself and them to show up.”
If only.
Filed under: 2012 Albums Of The Year
According to Last FM, these are my most listened to artists in 2012:
| 1 |  |
Shrag
|
152
|
||
| 2 | |
The Singing Adams
|
136
|
||
| 3 | |
Swans
|
127
|
||
| 4 |
Future of the Left
|
112
|
|||
| 5 | |
Pye Corner Audio
|
104
|
||
| 6 | |
Munly & the Lee Lewis Harlots
|
102
|
||
| 7 | |
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
|
95
|
||
| 8 | |
The Flaming Lips
|
90
|
||
| 9 | |
[unknown]
|
88
|
||
| 10 | |
The Pine Hill Haints
|
82
|
And my most listened to tracks:
| 1 |
The Singing Adams – London Trocadero
|
 |
18
|
||
| 2 |
The Singing Adams – You Drew A Line
|
17
|
|||
| 3 |
The Singing Adams – No Rock Song
|
|
16
|
||
| 3 |
The Singing Adams – Good Luck
|
16
|
|||
| 5 | |
Emmy The Great – Paper Forest (In The Afterglow of Rapture)
|
15
|
||
| 6 |
Micah P. Hinson – Don’st you (part 1&2)
|
|
14
|
||
| 6 |
First Aid Kit – Emmylou
|
|
14
|
||
| 6 |
The Singing Adams – Dead End
|
14
|
|||
| 9 |
The Blackstone Valley Sinners – Saturday Satan Sunday Saint
|
|
13
|
||
| 9 |
Santigold – Disparate Youth
|
13
|
So there you go. No more lists..
this won’t be everyone I saw this year – my memory sucks more and more, plus some bands were so shit I’ve deleted them mentally. But it’s a fair crack at a comprehensive list. Most of this gigs were due to Narc Magazine / kyeo.tv, so I love them.
Afghan Whigs
Alabama 3
Archers Of Loaf
Attila Csihar
Balam Acab
Black Twig Pickers
Blanck Mass
Bob Log III
Bob Stork & The Heaton Playboys
Body / Head
Bridie Jackson & The Arbour
Bug
Burning Condors
Caretaker
Carlton Melton
Chris & Cosey
Cornshed Sisters
Cult
Death In Vegas
Demdike Stare
Dexys
Dirty Three
Dr John & The Lower 911
Drunk In Hell
Dylan Carlson
Errol Linton
Fever Fever
Field Music
Floating Palaces ft. Howe Gelb, Robyn Hitchcock, KT Tunstall, Eliza & Martin Carthy
Forest Swords
Future Islands
Future Of The Left
Giant Giant Sand
Gnod
Goat
Guitar Wolf
Hey Colossus!
Hype Williams
Icarus Line
Imelda May
Islaja
Jarboe
JK Flesh
Josh Rouse
Kilcawley Family
Killing Jokes
Larkin Poe
Lash Frenzy
Laura Viers
Legendary Shack Shakers
Less Than Jake
Lichens
Lisa Hannigan
Long Lonesome Go
Lord Rochester
Los Campesinos!
Lydia Loveless
Lyndsey Tin
Make Up
Mama Roisin
Martha
Maximum Zeros
Meitheal
Melvins
Meschiya Lake & The Little Big Horns
Mission
Misty’s Big Adventure
Modified Toy Orchestra
Mogwai
Moshi Moshi
Mothertrucker
Mudhoney
Necro Deathmort
Nervous Twitch
New Order
New Town Kings
NHK’ Koyxen
Night Owls
NoFX
Nurse With Wound
One Night Stand In North Dakota
Orbital
Our Imaginary Friends
Pain Jerk
PCM
Pete Molinari
Pine Hill Haints
Pye Corner Audio
Rexine
Richard Dawson
Richard Hawley
Rob Heron & The Teapad Orchestra
Serious Sam Barrett
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
Shonen Knife
Shrag
Six Organs Of Admittance
Slackers
Slayer
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
Slim Chance
Snuff
Spiritualised
Swans
Sylvester Anfang
Tenses
Thee Spivs
Tim Hecker
Treetop Flyers
UFOMammut
Unit Ama
Warm Digits
Water Tower Bucket Boys
Wilco
Witch Hands
Wolves In The Throne Room
Women In Revolt
Yob
Yuck
Who says nobody ever comes to Newcastle?
