Rav Casley Gera’s Blog

I’ve never really decided quite where the irony-balance lies in this song. After all, David Byrne is as self-consciously urban (in the pre-MTV, racially neutral sense) as anyone. Certainly, as someone who regularly chafes at British culture’s knee-jerk for a nostalgic vision of country life, I can’t help but thrill at such unabashed horror at a back-to-nature future that many people at least claim to long for.

But that line in the last verse - “as it fell apart, nobody payed much attention” - hints at a darker interpretation. After all, one of the central ironies of the modern environmental movement is that the very close-to-nature lifestyle which some of its proponents call for is probably exactly what we’ll wind up with if the kind of “civilisation” Byrne eulogises here continues to run out of control.

Anyway, it’s funky. Enjoy.

I’m not going to mock Norman Mailer by pretending I can write anything sufficiently meaningful, passionate or truthful to do him justice. Suffice to say that reading his books, I realised for the first time I could care as much about American literature as deeply as I did about American popular culture. [Read more →]

I still remember the wet Wednesday afternoon in Sheffield when, rifling in my usual way through Sparky’s CD collection, I stumbled upon the greatest hits of Nancy Sinatra. In the full flourishes of my retro-Americana phase at the time - cf. the cowskin on the floor of my second-year bedroom - I thought it sounded like kitsch fun. I wasn’t remotely ready for the psychedelic rollercoaster it turned out to be, complete with lush orchestration, bonkers greek-mythology lyrical allusions, and the ghostly presence of a mysterious male crooner. Later that day, Sparky identified the source of both the voice and the marvellous imagery: Country maverick and prolific producer Lee Hazlewood. [Read more →]

I got a little angry at friend of mine. Let’s call her, for the sake of example, Mandy Davis. Not a close friend, it’s fair to say: someone I’ve done a couple of film projects with, nothing major. Possibly she’ll invite me to the party, but definitely not to the actual wedding. That sort of thing. But a nice, friendly, fun person, not someone I’d expect to get annoyed with. [Read more →]

In our double-speed age, when the most staid, pinstriped executive salivates over the latest iPod, hot trends shoot all the way up from the underground to the mainstream with dazzling speed. YouTube was only founded in early 2005, but by late 2006 it had not only made its founders multimillionaires, but had put a new buzzword - “web 2.o” - onto the front pages of the developed world’s traditional media. By now, you probably know what it means - an internet created, shaped and filled by us, the user. In a genuine stroke of genius, the folks at Time magazine - at its best, the perfect yardstick of the most forward-thinking end of the American mainstream - declared its Man Or Woman of the Year for 2006 to be “you” - or rather, us. [Read more →]

Gossip is young + full of blood. We have existed for 5 years. We are a punk band consisting of 3. We are interested in art, change, the underground, dancing, fashion, punk history, crime and movements. We will nvr die. We are artists, poets, cooks, writers, feminists, designers, musicians & djs. This is life dedication to action, passion & drive.

- Gossipyouth.net

What’s not to like? After a long, long time of near-ideological obsession with authenticity and straightforwardness, the music scene has shown encouraging signs of flamboyance and theatre over the last couple of years. The Gossip have the heart of true soul music, with some of the wild visual flair of the 80’s (including - yes - Leigh Bowery, who I will stop going on about now). The statement above veers dangerously close to pretension, but its sheer, gormless, youthful enthusiasm sees it through. “We will nvr die” is probably as good a rallying cry for generation myspace as any.

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As the world braces itself for the release of the dismal travesty Bat Out Of Hell III, it’s worth taking a step back to 1977 to remind ourselves just how genuinely fine the original was (Bat II was the first album I ever bought, so I feel vaguely qualified to talk about this).

This particular clip has the added benefit of this strangely amusing description:

If you have ever seen Rocky Horror show… chances are you have seen this video by Meatloaf. They play it alot as a trailer before Rocky Horror… at least in Miami they do.

(Equally funly, in addition to writing and keyboards, Jim Steinman is credited with “Lascivious Effects”)

I’ve always been disappointed by clubbing. Now, I’m not instinctively a club person - I mostly like music with guitars in, I prefer beer to class A’s, and I start to flag at about three on the usual night out. The club world swam into my consciousness in around 1994, via my brother’s obsession with jungle; but no sooner had I become aware of this strange world, than Britpop broke and carried me along with it. Life became a blur of collarless shirts, sideburns and Sovereigns, middle-class parents suddenly bemused by their violin-playing darlings’ newfound interest in pool and darts. [Read more →]

Yorkshire Pride: Sheffielder Richard Hawley’s album Coles Corner has been nominated for the Mercury Prize, but his fellow steelers Arctic Monkeys are the bookies’ favourite

I suppose you could accuse me of jumping on the Mercury bandwagon. Although the ex-Pulp man’s croonings had floated onto my radar before his latest album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, I did take the opportunity of the nomination to give it a proper listen. For the uninitiated, Coles Corner is a richly orchestrated smoky-lounge bar album of wistful ballads that recalls Pulp’s This is Hardcore more than their more commercially successful material. It’s unashamedly retro, and unashamedly Americana. [Read more →]

We live in an uber-digital age. 3.3 billion text messages were sent in the UK in the last month. Everyone from U2 to the Pope has commented at length on the never-ending sea of media messages that buzz, pop and bleep over us from the moment we wake to the moment we sleep at night – and even in between.

So it takes skill and inspiration to make a comment on on this brave new world that makes an impact. Which makes the work of New York mix artist Christian Marclay even more impressive. His 2003 piece Video Quartet, recently granted a proper room in the rehanging of Tate Modern, makes for a startling evocation of media overload: startling not for its technical skill or apparently sage commentary, as with so many pieces on similar themes, but for its humour and humanity. [Read more →]

Sampling. You know the story; it’s invented, everything changes, and lazy European schmucks make cheap, easy dance music with it. Hip-hop has probably used it the most inventively, and the Beastie’s excellent Paul’s Boutique showed the potential for heavily-chopped speech-sampling to create interesting new stories & sounds. [Read more →]

Now, I’m not a gourmet restaurant critic. I like my good food, but I also like Pringles. A lot. So I’m not about to start telling people where to eat. But if you are looking for a delicious, nicely served and cheap vietnamese meal near Central London, you could do a lot worse than Cay Tre. One of an insane rash of vietnameses around Shoreditch (sorry, “London’s trendy Shoreditch” as it’s now known), it’s the most upmarket and best, but mercifully still dirt cheap. [Read more →]

Just a lucky discovery, this. WAMC’s Weekly Rundown is a free, streamable, downloadable, rss-able, podcastable “irreverent” weekly newsmagazine that comes out ever Friday night (EST). Big deal, right? Wrong! It’s a strangely joyous and occasionally genuinely funny dive behind the headlines from a nicely sneery-liberal East Coast perspective. The star of the show is Greg, who’s one of those people who you just know was a geek at school because, however much they’ve blossomed/got contact lenses/come out/found likeminded people, they still retain the slightly nasal voice. I always imagine Greg as a clever-looking blond preppy character, a bit like the guy from Ally MacBeal who was in Desperate Housewives last week. I haven’t dared to look at the website for fear he’s really fat with long greasy black hair and a Megadeth t-shirt.

Support comes from Mary, who, bless her, isn’t very funny, but tries hard. And her rubbish moments just make you appreciate Greg more. I always imagine her with a big blonde perm and a pink tunic, slightly patrician-y. Again, I daren’t look at the website, as she’s probably a lank-haired dropout.

Anyway, here’s the website, and here’s the rss/podcast feed.

MP3 Blogs. Essentially a good idea. But with so bloody many of them, how do you keep up with the gems? Enter the shining white horse of technology, and riding atop it - The Hype Machine! This marvellous thing aggregates all the best MP3 blogs into an almighty daily list you can play in a thousand different ways - including a podcast, for those who desperately want to fill up their hard drives. The tech doesn’t matter - what it basically means is instant, free resource to a stupidly large number of great new (and some old) songs.

Enjoy! R