Taped crusader: my cluttered collection of cassettes

I’ve had a pile of cassette tapes gathering dust for maybe 15 years. I figured it was time to go through them. Sorting through some old belongings, I discovered an old walkman that still worked. Bingo! What would be on these dusty old tanglers? I was mostly hoping to find a phone interview I did with Nivek Ogre, or a face-to-face with Fear Factory, neither of which saw the light of day thanks to a mishap in a house move. They must have been in the other pile of tapes, which got damaged. Nope. On this one, I found …

TAPE 1

It’s in a Smashing Pumpkins sleeve, but is actually a bootleg of Ministry in 1994. I went through a brief phase of picking up dodgy tapes – cassettes and videos – from the Camden Market. The bloke on the stall claimed to be mates with Killing Joke, and said they let him onto the stage to stand at the side to get the best footage. I never bought one of his Killing Joke tapes, but I did walk away with Skinny Puppy’s 1986 Ain’t It Dead Yet and NIN in Dallas, 1990. I’m guessing this is from that market stall.

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Berklee String Metal Ensemble

Nicking this from @iheartnoise.

The Berklee String Metal Ensemble is a student group composed of three cellists, two violinists, two drummers, a bassist, and a vocalist. They play melodic death metal, with some hardcore influence. The group covers bands such as Dark Tranquility, Arch Enemy, and Heaven Shall Burn. Band members include Trev Wignall and Jason Lim on violin; Dean Capper, David Tangney, and Eden Raiz on cello; Aaron Liao on bass; Steven Hopkins on vocals; Rae Amitay on drums and vocals; and Carson Groenewold on drums.

I’m definitely no fan of death metal and think the vocals spoil it, but if you ever wanted to know what a chamber ensemble death metal cover of My Bloody Valentine’s Only Shallow would sound like, you’ve come to the right place. 

Last Impressions: Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts

You might recall that a few weeks ago, I reviewed Thurston Moore’s Demolished Thoughts with a view to revisiting it a month later to see if I still had the same opinion. I’m deliberately not looking back to my previous post so as not to “contaminate” this one with my first impressions. I have, of course, listened to the album a number of times since then, and mostly I’ve come to the conclusion that Demolished Thoughts is basically nine versions of Disarm by the Smashing Pumpkins. Well, it’s not that repetitive, but you get the idea.

The life and death of a genre

There were always old punks lurking at the local, or skulking in the nightclub, and we thought they were OK. Punk was old and dead, and the few wrinkly remainders trying to hit on women or men half their ages were smiled at like old WWII veterans. They might be a little out-of-place, perhaps a little embarrassing, but we wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for them, so there was a reverence there. We respected our elders. Nearly 20 years later, I see how young people today regard my own clubbing years. On Buzzfeed, a meme is going viral where fans are taking some footage of some terribly earnest-looking industrial fans dancing and overdubbing the music with ever more ridiculous novelty hits, with even more mischief to be found on Reddit. These fans are a laughing stock – and rightly so, because they are ridiculous.

What turns it from pathetic to outright upsetting is how little resemblance either the people or the music bears to the genre I loved with such a passion. It’s painful watching something you love die. Even when I was young, the old guard complained that Nine Inch Nails weren’t “real industrial”, and we smiled because things have to evolve and grow. But now there’s no trace of anything that ever made us love it in the first place. It hasn’t just evolved, it’s an entirely separate species, and it needs to be put out of its misery.

No Nirvana – A Late Show special

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Since it seems to be Grunge Week on the internet – 20 years since Nevermind came out – with articles in the Guardian and Collapse Board, there seems to have been some controversy as to which bands should be mentioned and which were not part of it at all.

I was reminded of a great episode of The Late Show – a culture programme on BBC2 – called No Nirvana – which simply featured live-in-the-studio performances from alternative rock bands such as Jane’s Addiction, Dinosaur Jr, Sugar, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. I thought Rage Against The Machine’s inclusion was a bit odd (if welcome), and REM downright out of place, but you can’t really argue with Sonic Youth’s amazing performance of Drunken Butterfly.

5 of the best Literal Videos

Unlike misheard lyrics, Literal Videos are cover versions of songs with the lyrics changed to match the action in the video. Youtube user DASjr Productions has uploaded some absolutely hilarious examples, and others have followed suit. Here are my favourite videos by DASjr, which had me giggling like a lunatic yesterday. The Bonnie Tyler and Nirvana ones are way funnier than the others, but I got a smile from all of them. The “cat frame” is to avoid the videos being blocked on copyright grounds (which rather undermines the fair use/parody idea).

Total Eclipse of the Heart
“I’m swaying side to side / these dancers need to stop / the gayest man on earth would call this over the top”

#trendingtopics: 15 Lyrics…Guess the Song (2011 Edition) – ANSWERS

Here are the answers to yesterday’s quiz

#musicmonday: Smashing Pumpkins – Cupid De Locke

Youtube user Burgeois explains the video as “from my personal documentary on my New York friends visiting Kansas, driving through the plains at night with the brilliant stars.”

The song is from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. It’s rather beautiful.

Best Concerts Ever: Full Top Ten

I’m being nagged for my top 10 favourite gigs. This is, of course, just shows that I’ve been to. I caught footage of mid-70s Led Zep on TV the other day, so I’m pretty sure better shows have been played.

1. SMASHING PUMPKINS/FILTER
Wembley Arena, May 1996

(Review here)

The highlight of all highlights begins as the Pumpkins play another untitled track with incredible tribal percussion that threatens to cause the roof to cave in. The deep rumbling basslines resonate around the room, booming up through the floorboards. The sound is clear and pristine tonight, perfect conditions for a little experimentalism. Jimmy Chamberlain shows his true ingenuity as a drummer by holding the steady, complicated rhythms together as Billy and James churn out guitar lines in a vaguely Eastern-sounding fashion. The sound swells and holds for a full eight minutes before dying down to the percussion-based theme, and then something extraordinary happens.

2. RADIOHEAD/MANICS
Reading Festival, 1994

Saturday’s headliners Primal Scream were oddly disappointing – even if they had Dave Gahan as a guest star – because there was just no possible way they could have beaten the back-to-back double act that was Radiohead and the Manics. Two bands I personally rooted for, as much for their good-natured personalities as their music, and they never sounded better. I always felt afterwards that Richie had used this as a test run: see if they could survive without him before doing his disappearing act. I remember the surprisingly gorgeous James Dean Bradfield – a regular at the PR agency where I was doing an internship that summer – saying, “I gotta go play in front of 50,000 people” with a mixture of pride and terror to which I could only smile and wish him luck. They pulled off the challenge admirably. Radiohead were their consistent, excellent best.

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Best Concerts Ever: Smashing Pumpkins and Filter

This is right next to the Foetus one in the same issue – it has to be said, 1996 was one of the best years ever for live shows. If I was effusively enthusiastic about the Foetus one, this was the type of concert to completely take you out of your skull. Rarely, I was stone cold sober, but the performance itself made us quite forget our lack of beer …

SMASHING PUMPKINS/FILTER

14 May 1996, Wembley Arena

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Filter playing live somewhere

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I have dreams of concerts like this. The line-up was hardly to be sniffed at, but to be honest, we were only really there to see Filter. Yeah, I like the Pumpkins, but they’re just a better-than-average Alternative Rock Band, right …?

“Felcher?” asks Filter’s Richard Patrick, gazing bemused at the slideshow backdrop that has been craftily switched by the mischievous lighting crew. The red banner is hastily swapped back to “Filter”. Richard laughs, and introduces the next song. Filter’s Richard and Brian are undaunted by the size of Wembley Arena – this is probably due to their spell as members of Nine Inch Nails – and look right at home in the rapidly-filling venue. Blasting through the killer tracks off their spellbinding debut LP (Short Bus), they blind us with It’s Over, Dose, Under, and all the usual suspects, plus the ever-present Hey Man, Nice Shot (sorry guys – it’s most definitely your Creep).

Richard prowls the stage with his characteristic feline charisma, and whilst his singing voice shows the telling signs of end-of-tour strain, he can scream with the best of them.