Well, it’s goodbye from me …

As Spandau Ballet once sang, “Why do I find it hard to write the next line?”

My last post. 

Why Everett True is wrong

Written for Collapse Board

“Mostly only art created by women has any validity. The male experience has been created and recreated so often” – Everett True, 1992

That is such bulls***. It’s like saying that only Tuvan throat singing/rock hybrids have any validity because you don’t get much of that, either. (And, f***, it’s good stuff.)  I don’t flip the sleeve over to check the gender before I’ll listen to the record, any more than I’d think too much about whether they were, say, Turkish. And, yes, a Turkish act does bring a certain flavour to the mix that you rarely get with non-Turkish acts. It’s informed and shaped by its Turkishness but not wholly defined by it because it’s more than that and to reduce it to that is to insult it.

Take Aylin Aslim, for example. I don’t know who she is, but I love her. I don’t have the slightest clue what she’s singing about (though Google translate tells me it’s called “ghoul”). There’s definitely a Turkishness to what she does, but I don’t set out to listen to Turkish folk. I just like this one – her – because she has such a don’t-give-a-f*** attitude and playful energy that makes her an absolute joy to listen to.

#trendingtopics – Music Shuffle

From Facebook:
Time for another one of these.
Write down the first 25 random songs that come up on your MP3 player, iPod etc. I used Last.fm set to My Library station.
No cheating!
No editing!

I thought I’d give it a go, using Last.fm, just to see what would happen. I found it interesting because it was forcing me to listen to things that I hadn’t heard in a while or given a particularly fair listen, and playing things out of the context of how I usually hear them. There’s some good songs here …

1. Foetus – Verklemmt

Bit of a no-brainer for me, considering how much I’ve been listening to this lately. I find the video hard-going (made by Alex Winter from Bill & Ted, it’s got literally thousands of cuts), but it’s a great song from the album GASH.

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2. The Kinks – Dead End Street

Ah, I never tire of this song. I used to play it a lot when I was unemployed and starving-broke, living in a miserable bedsit in one of the rougher parts of South London.

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Quest update: Aylin Aslım

I mentioned a while back that I’m on a mission. Just for my own piece of mind, I want to know that there’s a new generation of great rock stars out there – people that 13 year-olds in 2010 are wanting to be when they grow up. Rock ‘n’ roll, as I deemed it, was “knock-out charisma, a sense of poise and glamour that radiates from a good-natured personality, an exuberant sense of joy, and a certain forthright sensuality”. That the music has to be great goes without saying.

Today I found myself just wanting to hear something good, quickly, and idly searching youtube for Aylin Aslım, who I’ve mentioned before when I loved her Gülyabani album. I realised very quickly that while she’s not my personal X-Factor winner, she’ll make the Final Twelve.

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The thing I like most about Aylin is that she basically just does not give a f***.

I don’t know anything about her personality and I don’t understand Turkish so I don’t have the slightest idea what she’s singing about, but in terms of sheer nonchalance she’d give Lady Gaga a run for her money. The first hurdle at which almost everyone falls is that they try too hard. Like Gaga, Aylin can dress up in wacky costumes or just saunter around in a bikini and look equally comfortable. She can channel anyone from Lacuna Coil to Cardiacs without seeming to switch gear.

First Impressions: Aylin Aslım – Gülyabani

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I fell in love with the single, Gülyabani, and had to hear the rest. The album falls between Lacuna Coil and Levitation in the sonic spectrum – swirling gothic psychedelic rock, distinguished by the strong Eastern European influences from her Turkish roots.

World tour: women in rock

Kateri tweeted a link earlier to an Angry Black Women blog post about women in rock. It was a great list, with some of my favourite musicians represented, but it was a list of mostly Western-sounding British and American artists. It got me thinking about how you can go pretty much anywhere in the world and hear a pretty racket by a pretty woman …

Aylin Aslım: Gülyabani
(Turkey)
This one has a great video, and is just a fantastic song

Kolrassa Krókríðandi: Gammagarg
(Iceland)
There’s more to Iceland than Bjoerk, you know