Long pier / short tree / angry mob of cooks playing sludge-rock

[hirez]

You ever get to that state where there are far too many half-formed thoughts steaming around in your head like bricks in a spin-dryer, and you're waiting for the first one to come leaping out the front in a hail of glass shards and builder's rubble

Comments

[nemesis_to_go]

Of course, it could all be down to dopamine.

I don't think that's a universal phenomenon, though. I think some people remain full-on dopamine processors throughout their lives. Case study No. 1: John Peel.

As John Walters, Peel's long-time producer once said, "We'll be in real trouble if Peel ever reaches puberty."

He was joking...but only a bit. Because John Peel certainly retained his youthful enthusiasm for all things new throughout his life. He would often sum up his musical philosophy as "I just want to hear something I've never heard before." That strikes me as just the opposite of most people's approach, which, as they get older, tends more towards "I just want to hear something reassuring and familiar."

Related point: the increasing popularity of cheesily cheerful 80s chart chunes within the goth scene. An aging group of people reaching back towards the musical comforts of their yoof? Personally, I always suspected so. Probably not all due to brain chemistry (I think you'd have to add all sorts of social/psychological factors to the mix) but I bet it's in there somewhere.

I think I must have a Peel-type brain. The thought of existing within some sort of musical groundhog day, forever listening to the same old smasheroonies, over and over again on an endless life-loop, strikes me as an utter nightmare.

The other night I went to see Claudia Brucken - her out of Propaganda - at Bush Hall. The PR bod wanted to Increase her Online Presence, and for some reason he thought I was the man to do this. Like a fool (and also because it's quite rare for me to get offers from PR bods, so it was kinda flattering) I said yes. But probably shouldn't have gone, really. It was a good gig...but it wasn't me.

Claudia Brucken had all three of Heaven 17 on stage, plus that gangly bloke out of OMD. Some chap behind me heaved a contented sigh, as if he was settling into a cosy armchair, and remarked blissfully, "Eighties heaven!" In musical terms, it probably was a cosy armchair for that audience. But, even though, as a 40-something 80s kid, the gig was all about 'my' era, I rattled around that venue in a state of divine discontent. I wished I had given the PR man a polite no. I mean, Comancechi were playing the Lexington on the same night. I could've been there...instead of in eighties heaven!

I'm aware that all this probably makes me a bit unusual, being a gentleman of a certain age now, and all. I know people who think I'm potty because I'd rather listen to Maria And The Mirrors than Men Without Hats. But, naturally, I think I'm right.

Interestingly, I've played Maria & The Mirrors to people of my own vintage and they hate it. "But it's just noise!" they say. Which is what my mum used to say about Killing Joke.

[hirez]

I've not been paying, er, any attention to what's popular with the gothics, so if there's more eighties cheese than there was the last time I looked I can only be mildly horrified.

Perhaps there's something curiously addictive about the noise of FM synthesis and/or shit 8-bit samples.

Maria and the Mirrors are very good indeed. I don't know where I found them but it was probably via a link in yr FB, so ta very much.

[reddragdiva]

All three? You mean Ian Craig Marsh has shown his face in public again?

[nemesis_to_go]

Yes, although he did bugger off after a couple of songs. One of which was the demo version of 'Temptation' - to show us what the song sounded like in its original home studio arrangement (and also, I suspect, because Claudia Brucken can't sing like Carol Kenyon).

ICM looks disturbingly like Arthur Daley these days.