I saw this PIF on social media this morning. Dumb Ways to Die was an Australian public awareness campaign made by Metro Trains in Melbourne back in the halcyon year of 2012. It's novel and silly and memorable ... all the things you want from a PIF.
It's also very ear-wormy, with its finger-picking guitar, lo-fi alt vocal and happy slacker vibe. I've been lah-lahing it all day. Now, by the gift of aural infection, I pass it on to you.
Literally, Pain Perdu translates as "lost bread", but it's actually what the French call French toast, I think. Maybe Mr Gedge is trying some semi-clever Franglais to make a pun on "pain". Regardless, despite what the video caption says, this is uncensored as far as I can tell.
I wonder if you still see people that we used to know I wonder if you still go to places that we used to go I wonder if you still listen to the bands we used to see I wonder if you still watch the same TV shows as me I’d like to know (don’t ask me why I do) It’s a lifetime ago but I can’t forget you I wonder if you still lie when somebody asks your age I wonder if you still spoil stories by reading the last page I’d like to know (don’t ask me why I do) It’s a lifetime ago but I can’t forget you And in all of the years since then and, this is such a dumb thing I just can’t help it, I think about you every day And in all of the years when I thought I was looking for something I already had it and then I threw it all away I wonder if you still cry when you read some soppy book I wonder if you still laugh when your grandmother says: “Fuck” I’d like to know (don’t ask me why I do) It’s a lifetime ago but I can’t forget you And in all of the years since then and, this is such a dumb thing I just can’t help it, I think about you every day And in all of the years when I thought I was looking for something I already had it and then I threw it all away
In the comments after a recent post about the weather, Adam from the inestimably brilliant Bagging Area made the observation that "Dew Point would be a good name for a band or project - something ambient maybe." C from the always-wonderful Sun-Dried Sparrows added that she would "give Weather Underground a listen too." I added the usual jokes required whenever something sounds vaguely like an obscure band name, talking about imagined Peel Sessions, and fantasy signings for Rough Trade. I probably patted myself on the back too.
Anyway, it all reminded me of the time I tweeted about seeing Abundance Mindset open for The Fall, on the strength of this cartoon...
Lots has changed since then. I don't use Twitter/X any more, simply because Elon and his audience raise too many antibodies in me. Dilbert cartoons like the one above are much harder to find online now too, since the cancellation of cartoonist Scott Adams. He died as well, of course, which probably doesn't help matters. What hasn't changed, since I work in the world of higher education, is that my salary still doesn't keep up with inflation, and that I'm still peddling the same simple jokes to a readership I can probably count on my fingers. Christ!
A song, then. Here's the actual Fall, in session for John Peel, a mere 46 years ago. This is Container Drivers, for no other reason than it makes me smile more than my own predictable jokes.
Searching Bandcamp for "Easter" has thrown up quite different results to previous searches that, on the face of it, might be thematically similar. There's quite a lot of techno songs with Easter in the title; ditto long moody synth pieces. But I've chosen to eschew those for today's random threesome.
Mydolls have been around since 1978, apparently, plying their post-punk trade out of Houston, Texas. They even made it into the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas, though not with this track, Easter.
I love the name Basement Kirk - it conjures the idea of a cut-price starship captain, does it not? Snow on Easter Monday has literate lyrics and a vaguely Byrdsy feel to the opening bars. Not what I expected from a Berlin three-piece.
The Sisters hail from Morehead in Kentucky. Easter Sunday dates from 2014, yet is still undecided what it wants to be: soft, ballady MOR or rock wig-out... so it has a bit of both.
Three Randcamp choices for your Easter. Which, if any, do you find egg-cellent?
If you're about my age (and let's face it, if you're here then you probably are), when you hear the opening bars of Paganini's 24th Caprice you'll be looking for a couple of giant hands to touch fingers and for Melvyn Bragg to hove into view. That's because The South Bank Show used Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Variations as its theme... and that was very much based on Caprice No. 24.
Paganini's source material was composed for strings, but here's an arrangement for classical guitar performed by Japanese guitar prodigy Haruna Miyagawa, in which her hands defy the laws of physics. Whether you like the music or not, if you are any kind of guitarist you know that this is almost unbelievably exceptional.
...to know which way the wind blows.
So opined Sir Robert of Zimmermanshire. Similarly, I don't need a weather station in my back garden, but I have one anyway because: (a) the weather is interesting; (b) I like data; and (c) I guess I'm just a massive nerd.
Anyway, the night before last, weather was happening fast.
You know when Tomasz Schafernaker gets on the TV in front of his weather map green-screen and talks about a cold front moving in? Well, this is what it looks like when it happens quickly.
Yes, this is data from my weather station, which gets uploaded to Weather Underground in near-real-time. Look at that drop in temperature, around half ten. I believe the technical term for that is "fell like a stone". From 10.6°C at 10.28pm to to 7.1°C at 10.49pm. That isn't usual. And the wind, which had been building since 9 o'clock, really ramped up, peaking with gusts of ≈30mph.
I know, this is boring, sorry. I remember learning, in O-level Geography, that a weather front would pass over you entirely in 24 hours. But it can also move quicker. I'll spare you the barometric pressure graph for the day, that pointed to this happening. Let's have an appropriate song instead.
More soon, when I take a deep dive into why the pump don't work (spoiler alert: the vandals took the handles).
I've been watching Mr Mercedes on Amazon Prime, the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King's novel. It's okay, rather than spectacular. Brendan Gleeson is reliably excellent as our hero, retired detective Bill Hodges. Harry Treadaway is a standout as the antagonist psychopath Brady Hartsfield. There's a perfectly serviceable supporting cast too. But the real star is the soundtrack.
Example, you say? How about three. These were all in one episode.
Okay, so the T Bone Burnett track is the theme tune, so is in every episode, and Tunefind tells me the Donovan track is used in a lot of film and TV. But even so, there's hardly an episode of Mr Mercedes that doesn't have me scrabbling for the Internet to ID one tune or another.
Poor old Julius Caesar, he didn't beware the Ides of March enough, did he? Not even when he got the point... in his back. Oh well. If he were here now, he'd be wise to beware the quality of some tracks on Bandcamp named after the Ides (or the 15th of March, in new money). Here are three I don't mind.
Birdmask are/is from New York. Beyound that, I'm not sure how to describe them. Props to this song, though, for the first use of "pulchritudinous" in lyrics that I can remember. He/they tagged this "chamber pop", whatever that may mean.
Miles Kennedy's Ides of March starts off with a musical rip-off of Shape of my Heart by Sting (really, compare). Then it changes course quite dramatically into soft-rock MOR toss and gets much less interesting, in my book.
Lastly, juules.gif from Chicago (her lack of capitalisation, not mine). This one is tagged "bedroom pop" which amused the linguist in me when compared to "chamber pop" earlier. This is a lovely acoustic short story that sounds like it grew out of Covid lockdown.
Three Randcamp Ides of March conspirators. Which is your Cassius and which, if any, is your noblest Roman of them all, Brutus?