Live tele-blogging the Glastonbury festival - day 2

photo courtesy nme.com

14.30 it's not real, it's just for fun!

sounds from the frenzied teenie reviews at NME.COM that glasto achieved some sort of redemption last night, with the festival-friendly likes of magic numbers, rufus wainwright, arcade fire, new pornographers, gogol bordello, super furry animals, hot chip and the hold steady. plenty of reasons to steer clear of disheartening choices such as bloc party, kasabian and the arctic monkeys. substantial lumps of live footage at those links, pop pickers.

GMS opted out and went to see Taking Liberties instead. it let us know that the Blair government has quashed civil liberties that are, like, a thousand years old and shit. nice to see a revival of the anglo-saxon / kind arthur / magna carta recourses popularised by our 19th century forebears. word to feargus o'connor.

plenty of tried and tested michael moore moves, with literal theme music in abundance. interesting seen in conjunction with sicko, anyway - michael moore's roseate view of england is rebutted, but both films use the same montage / humour / polemic approach, both interview tony benn, both end up invoking thomas jefferson on how governments fearing the people = liberty, people fearing the government = tyranny.

good to see mark thomas out and about, getting around prohibitions on mass protests by having hundreds simultaneously protesting different causes. the film could've spent a little less time building outrage at familiar incidents, and little more time contextualising and offering suggestions as to why libertarian opposition to terror laws (represented here on the left by tony benn, and on the right by boris johnson) has failed to cohere into a significant political movement. the aggressive media response? internal divisions? what would the tories have done in the same circumstances? how do these moves compare to government policy during the troubles? the positive rationale for the i.d. card scheme was also left a galactic mystery.

14.45 back to glasto. looks like a bit of a struggle today.

Pyramid Stage

The Killers
The Kooks
Paul Weller
Lily Allen
Dirty Pretty Things

Other Stage

Iggy And The Stooges
Editors
Maximo Park
Babyshambles
Klaxons
CSS
Biffy Clyro
The Long Blondes

John Peel Stage

The Twang
Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly
Patrick Wolf
Bat For Lashes
The Pigeon Detectives

good lord. if CSS and patrick wolf clashed, that would make for one hopeless-assed line-up, especially if folk got up too late for pigeon detectives.

14.55 St. Ebbe's Primary School summer fete, Oxford - live review

GMS got its own mini-Glasto on, checking out the local school fete. the live band pulled some serious hold steady-style moves, with 'long tall sally' 'the midnight hour' and a rendition of 'hard to handle' that prompted some serious under-4s head-nod approval. ass hat's lovely escort made it rain at the raffle. fingers crossed. the prize on the golf game? 15 golf balls!

15.10 seriously, watch the gogol bordello set.

15.15 the pyramid stage at night can make most bands look good. that's my story and i'm sticking to it. arctic monkeys - 'i bet that you look good on the dancefloor'

15.20 bjork's set may or may not be genius. impossible to say. or to read while listening.

15.30 bloc party look like a much more coherent live band than they were when GMS caught them several years back, which ain't rocket science. but more coherent, precise whiney nonsense isn't necessarily a good thing.

15.40 brakes and the long blondes cover 'jackson'. sigh. run out of digestive biscuits.

16.20 the super furries' set is gear, even if 'good festival band' is their meal-ticket these days. still, 1997>2007, as ten years back the furries' set was stage-invaded by pavement dressed as squirrels.

16.25 queens of noize are "interviewing" hot chip. brain bleeding out of ear.

18.25 a summer rain produces an abundance of tiny frogs in south oxford. frogs.

18.30 it's all kicking off: GMS heads to the local park to feed the ducks and coots. coots gotta eat.

19.00 nice swim in the local lido, followed by cooking: banana bread. unfortunately, we're missing holy fuck, but NME has it covered.

GMS live tele-blogs the Glastonbury Festival

Electric Six, a Welsh flag and the phrase "Ba Ya". The spirit of Avalon awakens.

in the wake of all this bonnaroo-related excitement across the pond, GMS has decided to get involved with the live-blogging revolution. we'll be providing in-depth, all-access gossip and coverage of the glastonbury festival. live and direct from the HQ here in oxford.

1.45 some nice lunch. a french cheese called chaumes. pleasantly nutty yet smooth.

2.00 WEATHERFLASH it's a bit showery, in intervals. the bbc has a nice visual aid: a muddy leg. so, like, students can understand the weather too.

2.10 completely incredible news, pop pickers! from nme.com:

The View's frontman Kyle Falconer told NME.COM that the band's Glastonbury debut was "really good", adding: Falconer and Reilly then went off to watch The Cribs on the Other Stage.

a man of few words.

2.15 we follow falconer and reilly over to underwhelming pavement-punk journeymen the cribs, where something even more incredible takes place. NME.COM again:

The Cribs spoke out against indie during their performance at Glastonbury 2007 festival. Before closer 'The Wrong Way To Be' Gary Jarman said sarcastically : "They want us to speak out about global warming but the biggest problem is the attitude of some indie bands. Isn't that a bigger problem?" He also screamed the words: "Fashionistas we don't need you!" during the end of 'Wrong Way To Be'. With the crowd chanting "The Cribs are on fire!", their frantic set ended with Gary Jarman jumping into the audience and losing his shirt.

time for a cup of tea.

2.35 NME mention "a month's rainfall in an hour". this scores heavily on the glasto drinking game, just behind 'rumours of a libs reunion' and 'keith allen arrested'.

2.40 the earlies are due on the pyramid stage, which makes one more decent band on that stage than glasto managed in 2005. GMS caught them at the New Bands tent two years ago. Very nice, in a Doves-go-americana spirit.
16.00 lay-z writes a good verse, on a new t.i. track (unclear whether t.i. or t.i.p. is responsible). not glasto, but news: get it at nahright.

16.10 steve lamacq on bbc radio 6, holding down the mid-paced indie rock steez like it was '97. dunno who he's playing, but it sounds like a worse version of number one cup.

16.15 the cribs are on the air! "yeah it were good." moaning about the rain. doesn't look nearly as bad as 2005, 1998, 1997....
16.20 the cribs reckon modest mouse were alright. in all likelihood, modest mouse were alright.

16.25 more goodness from nahright - new song from little brother, about mooching about in nice clobber. not bad, a little smug.

16.30 first live music from glasto comes from ... the automatic. incomprehensible. not even the monster song.

16.35 the automatic covered 'gold digger' with a guest flautist. somebody call status ain't hood.
top five worst covers of pop and rap songs by dreary indie bands:

1. the vines - 'ms. jackson'
2. electric soft parade - 'can't get you out of my head'
3. travis - 'baby one more time'
4. the automatic - 'gold digger'
5. ben folds five - 'bitches ain't shit' (quite like that one, though)

16.40 literal theme music alert - garbage - 'only happy when it rains'. shucks.
five better rain songs:

1. johnny ray - just walkin' in the rain'
2. mark lanegan - 'kingdoms of rain'
3. fairport convention - 'down in the flood'
4. johnny cash - '5ft high and rising'
5. bonnie 'prince' billy - 'raining in darling'

17.00 BBC news refers to Amy Winehouse's set as "rather subdued". Excellent. Is this a 21st-century version of 'tired and emotional' for blog-friendly hipster-pop alcoholic wrecks?

17.05 Steve Lamacq spins 'Made of Stone' by the Stone Roses. Drink one shot.

17.10 Good Shoes played a set. Last year at Truck, GMS saw two of:

Good Shoes
The Shoes
Good Books
The Books

Neither of them were much good. NME's review doesn't make it at all clear which bands I might have seen.

17.15 arctic monkeys surpass the cribs in articulacy. they saw amy winehouse. "she were good".

17.40 TBC, or possibly not...

Woody Guthrie serenades children, battles syphilis, invents R. Kelly

Woody Guthrie’s CV is sick. Sicker than you thought, in fact:

1945: transatlantic wartime pedagogue

Here’s Woody rocking Children’s Hour on the BBC Home Service in 1945. At the time, Woody was washing dishes for the US Merchant Marine. Soon after, he was removed from this crucial service due to his communist beliefs, and drafted into the military. You work it out. Anyway, dig the frisson between him and the presenter.

Woody Guthrie – ‘Children’s Hour Introduction’

Woody Guthrie – ‘Wabash Cannonball’

Woody Guthrie – ‘900 Miles From Home’

Best ever collaboration between government, academia and rock

And here’s Woody performing ‘The Lonesome Traveller’, a radio-play / musical infomercial, scripted by folk-song archivist Alan Lomax, and sponsored by the US Department of Health and the Communication Materials Centre of Columbia University, warning of the dangers of syphilis. Bound for gory?

Woody Guthrie – ‘The Lonesome Traveller’

Singing while waiting for a train, bumping into a good-time gal from your old home town, nearly getting your ass handed you by a deranged syphilitic named Moxie, learning a valuable lesson about sexual health? At a stretch, Woody can be blamed for ‘Trapped in the Closet’, and for this incredible piece of work:

R. Kelly - Same Girl (feat. Usher)
Uploaded by yardie4life

More fun:

Buy Woody Guthrie
Buy R. Kelly

Verse of the week

a new series. once a week, meaning one less original idea per week. will it last? will it provoke debate and stimulate rap-fuelled fun? who knows - a galactic mystery.

all hail the inaugural GMS Verse Of The Week - 2007 week 25

R.A. The Rugged Man on 'Renaissance' by Hell Razah

For our first venture, everybody's favourite husky-voiced beard-tugging tramp-rapper and Wu-Tang bbq-chef R.A. The Rugged Man obliterates a loping soul sample with a Kool G Rap-style polysyllabic onslaught. This looks to be a single taken off Hell Razah's Renaissance Child - the most underrated album of 2007, in GMS' non-existent half-year round-up. At any rate, they've paid for a video using loose change found down the back of a sofa, and featuring a nice fuzzy hat that Hell Razah's mum was planning to throw out.



"On the real", Hell Razah and his other guest, Tragedy Khadafi, both put in verse-of-the-week level rhymes in what amounts to a Black Market Militia posse cut, with a nicely urgent hook from Timbo King. But, having spent the first half of the video fending off invisible bees while various sub-Wu henchmen stay well clear and inspect each other's winter-wear, Rugged Man owns the song, claiming his status as rap incarnate by invoking a head-spinning succession of genre greats.

It's enough to make GMS get its Pitchfork on: "This makes R.A. the anti-Mims - promulgating an organicist-historicist relationship to hip hop culture and the artistic muse that rebuts the self-actualising natural-rights rhetoric of 'This is Why I'm Hot'." Word to Michel Foucault. Anyway, it makes KRS One's perfectly good Hip Hop Lives sound real hokey by comparison.

R.A. The Rugged Man - 'Renaissance'

Yes oh yes, I guess, suggest the rest you fess
I'm Tribe Quest, I'm Moe Dee Wild West
Treach, 40, Jazz Jeff, Slick Rick, I'm Doug Fresh
I'm def, I'm Canibus before he met Wyclef
Original, I don't bite
I don't need nobody to ghostwrite
Kool G Rap strike the mic
I recite the type of hype
That you like, I'm Sweetback
I'm Uptown Saturday Night
I'm Black Ceasar, I'm Rudy Ray Moore, Dolemite
I'm an assassin rappin'
I'm Grand Wizard Theodore when he invented scratchin'
I'm Wu-Tang Killa Bee, epitome of Public Enemy
Gamblin', hustlin', like Smooth and Trigger be bitter, b
Bums diggety-diggety,
Das literally, I'm Pun in the middle of Little Italy
Didn't do diddly, gettin' me
Listen to me
I'm all good, I'm hood
I'm Ice Cube before he turned soft and went Hollywood
I'm Poetic from Gravediggaz
I'm ODB, I'm Headquarters
I'm Ted Demme, I'm Paul C
If I ain't better than B.I.G., I'm the closest
I'm Richard Pryor before multiple sclerosis
I'm beef, I'm gold teeth, peace
Mantronix, Stetasonic, Symbolic, Bambaata, Soul Sonic
I'm Dre, The Chronic
Melodic with logic Islamic
A poverty prophet
Economy robbery, cock it
I probably properly droppin'
It gotta be honesty
Opposite of novelty, rock it
I Herbie Hancock-it
I'm Onyx Throwin' Ya Gun
I'm Funky 4 + 1

Buy Hell Razah's Renaissance Child
Buy R.A. The Rugged Man's Die, Rugged Man, Die

i got the hook-up

No Galactic Mysteries will be solved in the coming seven days, as GMS is taking an up north trip (no, not to the state pen, that would be rubbish). Here’s some fun in the meantime:

Sex Pistols – ‘Holidays in the Sun’ (live at Winterland, 1978)

Poisonous Paragraphs looks back at Tricky’s career.
Re: hip hop covers – I forgot that Tricky did a nice version of ‘Lyrics of Fury’ too.

Aural Fitness has Tom Waits covered in Polish. Of course. Shout out to unhemmed, holding it down in Warsaw.

My man Double S reviews a wack-ass new break-dancing video game, generally takes ‘em back to school.

Street Census has the top ten diss tracks of the 1980s.

Berkeley Place has the Beasties live in 1982. A little more energetic than The Mix-Up, then.

Captain’s Dead has a live show by the Band. He gets a plug on account of referring to Commando in his post title. “Put away your chicken-shit gun, Bennett.”

Was planning to review Marco Polo’s Port Authority, but Passion of the Weiss said it all: best rap album of the year so far.

Lil’ Wayne is available for weddings, discos…..

No thank you, Lil' Wayne

Lil’ Wayne is available for weddings, discos, bar mitzvahs and corporate events. Wayne is a seasoned karaoke performer and bong-addled comedian. Wayne provides his own PA, and will play all your favourite hits from your favourite decades – from the 1960s to the 1980s! Who remembers the Beatles? Lil’ Wayne does! Who remembers Heart???? Lil’ Wayne does!

Heart, 'bout to get that paper

Lil’ Wayne featuring Heart – ‘Something You Forgot’ (from Tha Carter III Sessions)

(to quote Derek Smalls: “This is our power ballad. We invite you to feel the power”.)

Lil’ Wayne featuring the Beatles – ‘Help’ (from Tha Carter III Sessions)

(I guess Dangermouse had Jay-Z rhyming over Beatles tracks, so …)

’97 mentality

1997>1977

Exhibit I

GMS has been up in this blog ‘ish for four months without posting on Cheap Trick. Questions were starting to be asked. Luckily, Nargo The Bort’s Deviant Subculture – an excellent but soon to be de-commissioned purveyor of live bootlegs – has allowed that wrong to be righted.

In 1997 the Trick went into the studio with super-recorder and Shellac stand-up-comedian-in-residence Steve Albini. The eponymous record that resulted from those sessions was leaner, harder and better than anything they’d done since 1979’s Dream Police. It spelled a critical revival, though not a commercial one (the Trick change record labels with the same frequency and discretion that Rick Nielsen changes cardigans). Rockford was one of the best albums released last year (as well as laying claim to 2006’s ugliest artwork).

During the 1997 sessions, the Trick also decided to re-record their 1977 album In Color, stripping it of the original’s radio-friendly gloss, and adding some of Albini’s hardcore bite, bringing the sound nearer to that of their eponymous debut. GMS makes room for hard-rocking Trick, glossy power-ballad Trick, and most of the goofy nonsense in between. But for our money, the re-make edges it, as Nielsen and Zander’s songwriting on In Color hadn’t reached the pop heights of Heaven Tonight and Dream Police, and was better suited to their earlier garage-rock incarnation. Do folks agree?

Cheap Trick – ‘Clock Strikes Ten’

Cheap Trick – ‘Southern Girls’

Cheap Trick – ‘I Want You To Want Me’ (jazz version)

More fun

Previously on ’97 mentality

Cheap Trick homepage

Buy In Color

Marley Marl: hip hop not living so vigorously

marley marl had a heart attack, but is in a stable condition. though he's sounded like old man steptoe (or sanford) since in control volume one, he's still only 44. hold on in there, mr. marl. hip hop lives and so forth.

here's the excellent approximately-five-amigos video for 'the symphony'

Marley Marl Feat Masta Ace & Craig G & K
Uploaded by SeenMyBrain

marley marl and krs one - freestyle

Pharoahe Monch and hip hop cover versions

Pharoahe Monch’s “long-awaited sophomore album”, Desire, is likely to make a lot of end-of-year lists. The songs jump all over the place, from early single ‘Gun Draws’ to the ‘Hey Ya’ feel of goofy come-on ‘Body Baby’, and the production is “unobtrusive” to put it kindly, but it’s a solid album by a talented MC, with a couple of things to say (even if they are, hey, guns and A&R people are baaaad). He does good videos, too:

Pharoahe Monch – ‘Gun Draws’

Slightly odder is the inclusion of a pretty straight cover of Public Enemy’s ‘Welcome To The Terrordome’. Is Monch trying to rehabilitate Chuck D’s reputation as a rapper, as opposed to a righteous, intelligent shouter with a penchant for horrific puns? Is he pointing out how PE’s rhetoric is as relevant today as it was fifteen, twenty years ago, and that simply repeating their points is a political statement? Either way: fair dinkum, erm, Pharoahe.

Pharoahe Monch – ‘Welcome to the Terrordome’ (from Desire)

Public Enemy – ‘Welcome to the Terrordome’ (from Fear of a Black Planet)

By my count, that draws PE level with Slick Rick at three high-profile cover versions a-piece: Monch’s ‘Terrordome’, Tricky’s ‘Black Steel’ and, ahem, Duran Duran’s ‘911 Is A Joke’, against Snoop’s ‘La Di Da Di’, Jay-Z’s ‘The Ruler’s Back’, and Black Star’s ‘Children’s Story’ (though the Rick covers are more like re-tellings).

Tricky – ‘Black Steel’ (from Maxinquaye)

Can’t think of any more straight rap covers, unless we’re going to get into Ben Folds / Jonathan Coulton comedy territory (incidentally, that Duran Duran version – not comedy). Any ideas, holla. Anyway, here’s Raekwon doing a frighteningly assured re-working of Nas’ ‘The World Is Yours’:

Raekwon – ‘The World Is Yours’ (from the Prelude to Cuban Linx 2 Mixtape)

Pharoahe Monch – ‘Body Baby’

More fun:

Sniffy track-by track review by Byron Crawford

Enthusiastic write-up at the Smoking Section

Buy Desire

Buy Public Enemy

Buy Maxinquaye

Buy Raekwon

"trill recognise trill"

. . . to which GMS can only say “indeed”.

good things about the new dizzee rascal album maths and english:
(i) a track with a swearing in the title built around ‘it takes two’ by rob base and ez rock – a song that features in the music round of GMS’ local pub quiz every single week
(ii) “don’t be a wally / be more jolly / go home make a cup of tea and watch corrie” – wise words, especially as that nasty paul connor is rumoured to die in a car-wreck this week. but what will become of leanne?
(iii) the latest chapter in ugk’s quest to guest on every 2007 release, essentially with the same verses:
dizzee rascal (feat ugk) – were da gs?
dizzee rascal - 'sirens'