Halfway Home

I've sort of run out of things to blog about. In fact, I'm having one of those periodic losses of mojo that have befallen me a lot in the last few years. What's the point?

Time, then, to fall back on the good ol' YouTube Watch Later list, to see what I might have left there for just such an occasion.

Not much, as it turns out. Seems I have been to the well a few times too many. I mean, I'm loathe to say I'm scraping the barrel, because this is better than that, but it's a handy metaphor for what is probably the last time, for now at least, that I can fall back on the Watch Later list. Henceforth, the cupboard is bare. Anyway, we're going out with a good'un though, for this is Halfway Home by TV On The Radio, from 2008. It strikes me that this is what Peter Gabriel would sound like in some parallel universe where he was born in 1975 and went to school in Brooklyn instead of Charterhouse.

Blue Friday: No Feeling

I heard No Feeling by American Football (featuring Brendan Yates) on 6 Music the other night. I knew nothing about the Midwest four-piece or the featured guest vocalist, on loan from Turnstile apparently, but the song stopped me in my tracks. Not literally, fortunately, as I was driving, but metaphorically. It's quite something, I think, to write or sing or create something beautiful, poignant and, perhaps, hopeful from such bleak thoughts and feelings.

Whatever; this might not be one to listen to too often, but it is one to listen to. The band are touring their imminent new album LP4, from whence this comes, in the summer and have a smattering of UK dates if you're interested.

There’s nothing new to say or do
There’s nothing new to crave
Tell the doctors I’m done
The kids, “Adieu”
And Mother, “Désolé”
One last goodbye and one last kiss
One last dance with the Goddess Nyx

No feeling
No pain
No one to blame
Forever awaits
It’s just an eternal blank page

Some bones stand on their own
Some bones are carried
Mine are either, neither, or both -
They just ache to be buried

Help me dig a hole!
I’m already cold!
(I honestly never planned on getting old…)

I know you’re waiting for some sign of life but the pain is too much to endure
Goodnight…

One last goodbye and one last wish
One last slow dance with the Goddess Nyx

No feeling
No pain
No one’s to blame
Forever awaits
It’s just an eternal blank page

Look who volunteered to play the fool

This is I Played The Fool by Michael Stipe and Andrew Watt. It's the theme tune to a new Steve Carell-powered comedy series called Rooster which looks intriguing but you need to subscribe to HBO Max to watch it, so who knows? But we get a new Stipe song out of it, so... it's not his finest work, but it is nice to hear his familiar voice singing something new. And the lyrics are resonating with me.

Anyone seen Rooster and know whether it's worth a subscription?

Oh, I
Oh, I
I played the fool

A good guy, bad guy
Punchline, frown
The joke fell flat
I′ll come around
Look who volunteered to play the fool

A sea change came
It knocked me down
I'm setting up
The punchline now
Look who tried too hard to play it cool

Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
I played the fool

Laugh at me
I′m trying, trying
Falling sometimes
Sometimes flying
Cry me an ocean
Of one liners
Cruel, cruel, cruel

Sticks and stones
You know the rhyme
You know it landed
Hard this time
Look who tried too hard to play it cool

We laugh and move on
With our lives
I'm bootstrap pained
But nеvermind
I'll find a way
To rewrite our bеginnings

Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
Oh, I
I played the fool

Laugh at me
I′m trying, trying
Falling sometimes
Sometimes flying
Cry me an ocean
Of one liners
Cry me an ocean
Of one liners
Cry me an ocean
Of one liners
Cruel, cruel, cruel

Use a clothes dryer as a hiding place

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.

Blue Friday: Pain Perdu

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 session tonight...

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.

Randcamp: Easter

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?

Music Assembly: Caprice No. 24 by Paganini

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.

Blue Friday: Videotape

Don't need a weatherman...

...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).