Monday, April 14, 2008  11:05 pm 

Fun and passion rupture the tepid walls of fashion and commerce enforced plus ca change boredom. And now here’s Tom with the weather

I can’t remember when is the last time I bought a 7” by an UK indie-rock band, I swear, I don’t remember when, but I have thought a lot about the why*.

Perhaps it is that the dynamics of the music industry in this country where so-called indie (aka indie schmindie) is the scene du jour (the kind of music that might make you money and get you laid via your ‘cool’, or something) create unhealthy pressures and incentives, watch a zillion uninteresting revival acts bloom, while those that were original and interesting in the first place go shit real fast, or vanish into the void. The Libertines were the prophets of our doom.

The hysterical fashion-driven ‘getting started-getting signed-getting dropped’ churn cycle makes it difficult for new promising bands to find their own voice before they become the best thing in the history of mankind OMFG hyperspace portal jump straight into becoming last-week’s news, as the fringed mob moves somewhere else (always in London). This might perhaps be a consequence of the strong association between indie and pop in the UK: pop is great, but by definition is disposable and fickle, an ethos which doesn’t fit well with the perhaps loftier aspirations of true independent rock music. Here we are not talking about novelty and entertainment, but something more durable, hrm, art? culture? Hell yeah! Why not?

We are actually fun people, believe it.

Additionally, live music has been punished by draconian licensing policies, with the ensuing reduction in the number of small venues, which are more suitable for non-mainstream gigs (i.e. by bands who don’t sound like Bloc Party). Consolidation pushes hiring fees upward making life really hard for adventurous promoters, this results in a situation where bands almost need to pay from their own pockets to tour the country, and this can’t help either. We have never made money in a gig we have put, but we haven’t been able to pay many amazing artists the money they deserve either, which makes us feel a bit shit. And puts us off organising shows…

Where’s the Smell in this country?

So I guess the UK is an environment where those real indie-rock acts that will publish the 7” I want to buy find it very hard to thrive. Which is sad when one thinks of past scenes started here (post-punk, C-86) whose awesomely groundbreaking output was captured to live forever (or until the desperate mainstream record industry develops cybernetic DRM roaches that devour vinyl and shit gold) in that lovely format. What happened?

Anyhow, what all this means is I have to get my 7” fix from the US instead. From bands like these.

That ‘every act that has no heart will be found out at the end’ is an statement we agree with in this blog, we love music made with passion with a passion. Faked smiles won’t get you anywhere in these parts.

Abe Vigoda- World Heart

So if the previous is true, then what happens to acts who don’t just have a heart, but a World Heart? I dunno, I guess their music, upon being created and played, helps reanimate those Ghibli-style colourful fairy folks of the forests whose life-power was drained away by contamination and industrialisation, a colourful festival full of joyful situations ensues as they parade through campings and bungalows across the land, the green-hued pool of goodness to which all acts of kindness contribute overflows as Abe Vigoda’s rambunctious polirrhythmical mini-symphonies stumble and crash in every direction, think El Guincho and a bunch of Unicorns charging onward to bring down the grey damp walls of reality like an EMP-bomb of positive energy going BLAMM whenever you press play in the turntable, find ‘World Heart’ in their 7” split with Mikaela’s Fiend, and love it.

Jay Reatard is a power-pop-punk savant who never fails to tie our innards into a bleeding knot with the intoxicating energy of his amphetaminic power ballads, then pulls the laces tight with fuzzy chops and relentless rhythm, out comes the heart still pumping through rupturing grimacing smiling mouths, haemoglobin & saliva splatter all over the emotional charnel-house, filling a bucket inside which the brush dips frantic, to then scribble cryptic graffitti in 7” discs such as See/Saw, underground transmissions of thee secret fucked up teen super hero legion HQ, we forget about broken hearts and start worrying about broken rib-cages through which intestines spill like the petals of an ugly and colourful flower, and in the midst of a chaotic cloud of noise, spazz in, love out.

Jay Reatard- Screaming Hand

Finally Punk crash and stomp in the midst of a fiery whirlwind you can’t learn to summon, you either have it or not, 20 boy indie rock bands can practise in their basements, then go out and get wasted, party til the cows come back home or play it wacky and start saying they are wizards or some such shit and at its shining best their music won’t be but a feeble drop of ‘energy’ and ‘fun’ in the vast ocean of goodness that Mika Miko are, same goes for gloriously loose Finally Punk, whose Primary Colors 7” doesn’t make us wanna boogie, it makes us boogie, an affront to all that is balanced and righteous, but ridiculously fun too, you know, WTF, missile!

Finally Punk- Boyfriend Application

- - - - -

*Actually it was this O.I.B. split. Kudos to them, to Yeborobo, to Upset the Rhythm (Hands on Heads!), Shimmy Rivers and and Canal, Gay vs You, Gentle Friendly, Munch Munch, Buttonhead and the other good ‘uns, you know who you are. And someone sign Medicine and Duty please.

labels >> Finally Punk, Jay Reatard, abe vigoda, xxjfg