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.

Genre trends in music - synth pop in the 80s, guitar rock and dance in the 90s - are as much about what the record companies promote as what people want to play. If the internet breaks their control, will the wave of fad after fad - already going at absurd speed, with genres lasting a year or two at most - break down completely?

September 29, 2008 in Asides, Culture, Rav Idly Wonders | 0 comments

worst.

brits.

ever.*

* oh, ok, for twenty years or so.

“I went to my friends house, to play some serious music, and he kept playing me Huey Lewis and the News!”

So it’s mid-January! You remember 2007, right? Right? The one before this one. The one with the missing girl, yes? Yes! That’s right.

[Read more →]

Is the fact that Britain still enthusiastically labels its greatest cultural export of the 20th Century with the dismissive name "the Fab Four" (a) a sign of our refreshing unpretentiousness or (b) a depressing relic of the shallowly commercial working-class-showbiz culture from which the Beatles miraculously sprang?

December 7, 2007 in Asides, Culture, Rav Idly Wonders | 0 comments

I’ve just deleted 20,362 music files from my computer. Over 1,400 hours of music, gone. I feel like a wave of liberation has washed over me, or something. [Read more →]

First sights:

* Hostel is astonishing glow-white slab of ultramodern, and shares space with the local drama school, which is both nice and bizarre.
* McDonald’s appears to have exactly the same menu as in the UK. Bit disappointing.
* Euros aren’t as cheap as I thought.
* The hostel charges an extra 4 euros a night to the over-26’s. I feel like a paedophile just being here.
* Madrid has a serious grafitti problem (see picture). I saw a maid standing in the doorway of an upmarket-looking apartment block, but she couldn’t budge the mass of spray-paint all over the door.
* Also saw a dreadlocked white guy, early twenties, presumably homeless, shaving hastily in a car wing mirror.
* I walked behind a TV interview, and will therefore be on Spanish TV.
* Sat in a cafe eating fries with garlic mayonnaise, watching Spanish TV (not looking out for my cameo), I was struck by the tacky presentation of Spanish daytime TV, with on-screen captions and idents that could have been from the early 80’s. And the program, which seemed to be enitrely celebrity gossip (Spain invented the modern celeb mag, of course, with Hola! - which begat Hello!), didn’t feature a single American or British celeb. No Winehouse, no Beckhams, no Britney. Perhaps, I thought, all this talk of globalisation is nonsense. Perhaps TV is the great local medium, maintaining individual cultures, local obsessions. Then I noticed the background music to the feature I was watching was “Matinee” by Franz Ferdinand.

PA100166, originally uploaded by Rav Casley Gera.

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 →]

What, in the end, will be history's verdict on The Pretenders?

May 17, 2007 in Asides, Rav Idly Wonders | 2 comments

The single war is a dangerous business. “Country House” vs “Roll With It” marked the beginning of both Blur and Oasis’ artistic declines; One True Voice’s decimation by Girls Aloud left the nascent boyband (sorry, “vocal harmony group”) stillborn. So it’s slightly scary to see two brand-new and fairly fragile careers entering the arena: former Sugababes Siobhan Donaghy and Mutya Buena. [Read more →]

I am so doing this. Soon.

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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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 →]

I’ve made a remix! Admittedly, it’s just some vocals added to an instrumental, but then that’s how the very first remix, Frankie Knuckles’ You Got The Love was made.

The music is Explosions In The Sky’s “Memorial”, from their excellent album The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. The vocals come from an interview that was recorded a few weeks ago for WAMC’s Weekly Rundown. I can’t remember the name of the interviewee, unfortunately.

Memorial (Warning)

This time on music

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 →]

More free rock pics than you can probably handle at Andrew Kendall’s website. Pete D in a dress is a treat.