Everybody's Weird, le weblog

My old friend Arnaud (a.k.a. the underground master) recently asked me to copy him my compilations former to #4 (he owns a #4 manur's compilation, the lucky man). Sadly, I had to tell him that I hadn't kept a master of all those mixtapes I have made through the recent years. The only satisfaction I can offer him is to put online the tracklists. So, following this link, you'll find my compilation/mixtapes/whatever you want to call that... If YOU did some interesting tapes, I'd be extremely happy to discover it.
Remarks : If you are into indie rock, you'll find my mixtapes pretty disappointing as they take no risks. There isn't even a couple of Sonic Youth tracks for you elitist pricks. If you are, let's say, into hip-hop or jazz, or classic rock, you'll find them disappointing as well ("who the hell are that flaming lips guys singing about scientists, for chrissake ?"). These were intended to open-minded, open-hearted friends, to which I wanted to introduce wonderful songs without getting too underground.
(BTW Arnaud, what did you say on that answering machine / késtadisurmonrépondeurgérienkapté ?)

I've just finished (re-)reading Dalva, by Jim Harrison. This is such a beautiful book. I was just going through the last pages listening to some Tori Amos songs, it was really great.

Current mood : a bit depressed. No one has reacted over this blog since Nick did (not a very English sentence, but i don't really care right now). Not being in the Blogger public directory yet doesn't help, I think. But if you guys don't show an atom of interest from times to times (submit your favorite links, for example), I won't find the strength to go on with it... (Nita, you don't need to pretend liking this and all, you're already my sweetheart...).

Okay, next time, if you're nice enough, i'll tell you how working in a bank's headquarters at the end of the 20th century, a capitalist experience by nature, can turn into a soviet-like socialist hell. Yes, I will. If you're kind to me.

Tanya hates music. All of it. That would normally turn her into my worst enemy but 1) she knows what she's talking about 2) she's so virulent it's a pleasure 3) it's entertaining. Really worthwhile.

This guy is sooo lucky... You can say what you want about Britney, but she's hot. dot. At least she doesn't want us to believe she's doing Aaaaart (fans of Céline Dion, this one was for you ; wake up please). Britney, it's just money, teen lust and mainstream musak, you are warned from the beginning.
And please spare me your feminist shit like this Rachel Thing email.

A spiritual joke is pleasing from times to times.

Check this screenshots of Microsoft's Windows 1.x to 3.11. It drives me to a foolishly nostalgic mood, would you believe it. That may also be a sunday afternoon laziness by-product...

66 ways to be annoying at Monopoly. Indeed.

Design, logo and colors for this page are quasi finished. Please tell me what you think. Important notice : I'm color-blind...

Never heard something as frightening as this Godspeed you black emperor! monologue. The guys are dangerous situationnists. Beware. (from dead metheny)

Remember the purity test ? An old internet classic you should do. I did it again a moment ago (oops!) and I couldn't get under the score of 74% of purity, again. I'm so straight...
Anyway, for my male readers, the new hip test is the suave-o-meter which will tell you how appreciated you are by girls as a potential love-mate. I won't tell you my score, since as adam stated it (to fellow webloggeurs) :

any credibility you had in claiming "suaveness" was immediately shot the second you posted your score on the "suave-o-meter" to your weblog. in this post

Anyway, people from any gender are encouraged to try the others tests from emode.com, which are well-written, interesting, and above the standard of your disappointing boy/girl magazine summer tests.

My friend Richard maintains his large website (in French), where you can find the famous "Zone Pingouin", evidences that he's a php3 guru, and a large collection of useful links, among many other stuff. Go there to find the view of a guy who's been a professional webmaster for more years than any dumb start-up empty-headed prick in the business since Time said it's hot money-making. Respect.

Hey ! Are you all sleeping ?
The only reaction I got so far 'bout this blog came from Nick, my old friend (almost ten years, mate!) who's trying to be more leftist than me and wins :

"that may be a different way to use internet" : very elegantly said ; I hope that at least there are porn sites in your weblog...:-)

(translated by me)
Thanks for the humour... but not for the sarcasm ! Yes, there's another way to use internet, which is not driven by money, greed and the pursuit for power. But you've got to search behind a thick layer of crap sites to find it. I guess that it's the purpose of weblogs to generate a mutual aid network to help people digging...
Enough theory. And... there isn't porn links so far here, but why not ? A bit of erotism here.

Dinette's weblog has a wonderful design, and it's quite funny.

This is very small and this is huge : the bookmarklets are small tools designed to help you browsing. Most of them are great. Try to click here as an example !

Hey ! My 1999 top-ten favourites records is online ! Check it out...

<french>De retour de vacances. J'y ai eu la surprise de découvrir l'été d'Uzeste Musical, impasse d'autant plus impardonnable de ma part que c'est à 6 km de Noaillan et que cela a lieu tous les étés depuis 23 ans... Ce festival éclectique est une mine d'or (c'est toutefois à chacun d'extraire les pépites du minerai), même s'il était "en grêve" cette année pour cause de subvention refusée. Pendant ce temps, Fabius exonère Vivendi de 5 milliards d'impôts. Pour plus d'infos sur les raisons de la colère, faites un tour sur leur magnifique site et cherchez un peu.

Dans le train et au bord de la piscine, j'ai lu le numéro d'août 2000 du Monde Diplomatique, contenant d'excellents articles de Marcos, de Noam Chomsky, de Garcia Marquez, etc... que je vous conseille d'aller lire dès le mois prochain sur la Toile : leur site contient les archives de tous les numéros parus (sauf celui en kiosque), initiative remarquable. Le diplo a l'inconvénient de ses avantages : c'est dense et épais, je n'ai pas le temps de le lire tous les mois.
</french>

Listening to Coldplay. A great album of ethereal pop. Everybody's talking about it : are they the new Day One :-) ? Hype goes fast.
The comparisons with Radiohead are a bit flattering, but it sure is exquisite songwriting, featuring a couple of catchy tunes bound to conquer the British charts, at the least. And it's a nice introduction to some forthcoming and exciting LPs (Radiohead, Placebo, Portishead, GYBE!).
Speaking of this, here's from nameless :

Deux infos de taille : les canadiens de Godspeed You Black Emperor ! vont sortir un nouvel album. Il s'appelera 'Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven', sera double et sortira le 9 octobre. Deuxième info de taille (pour les fans de Godspeed également), sachez que les tout-aussi-atmosphériques Sigur Ros assureront la première partie de Radiohead en europe en Septembre...

[English fast translation: GYBE! will release 'Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven', their second LP, october the 9th ; and Sigur-Ros will support RH during their European tour in September.]
This fall is gonna be post-rock and apocalyptic...

The design of this page is almost done (thnx again Dreamweaver!!). It lacks a couple of links on the right (articles, electric light...) and a better-looking logo on the top. If you feel like creating one for me, I'd be extremely grateful !
I'm taking a week of holidays, but I'll be back on duty very soon. Take care.

I'm listening to Daft Punk this morning.
I bought the album the week it was out, after hearing a couple of tunes on Radio Nova. Two months later it was a huge success on every dancefloor in the world.
I've immediately loved the LP. I was playing it over and over. The sound was so new, the melodies so catching, the production so perfect ! But remember : it was the early beginning of the "French Touch". Here, "techno" was still mainly a junkies & gays music (appaling, isn't it ?). Being the exact contrary of 'destroy', and openly heterosexual, I was seen as a weird little guy doing the best he can to be different from the crowd, although everybody serious knows that good music includes U2 and Boney M. Even my good friends who tried to listen the tracks were bound to tell me it's "not bad, but too repetitive"...
What strikes me the most when I listen to Homework today is how modern it sounds now. Those filters, those minimalists tunes blurring and merging to reach sophistication, this teen age mythology, this disco fake revival, all of this is now the in thing, that doesn't even emerge from the background when we hear it. Any ad, any sport coverage, any radio listening session, any shopping musak features a track by moby, propellerheads, saint germain or the chemical brothers. Especially Moby.
The only Homework tune that hasn't gone mainstream in the summer of 2000 is the headbanging Rollin' & Scratchin'. Don't think I feel proud about it, but it has been my favourite track since the day I bought the album. Go figure.

A couple of miscellaneous links first :
Green Plastic Radiohead and French hardcore fans Aurélien & Mona present Kid A seconds by seconds : a track by track minute description of each song from the forthcoming and long-awaited Rahiohead fourth album.
<FRENCH>La version française originale du même document. Tant que vous y êtes, faites un tour sur leur excellent site.</FRENCH>
Hundreds of wonderfull bjork wallpapers here.

It's important to support your local bands from times to times. My problem is that I could hardly introduce a cool new French indie band. Where's the French indie scene ? Miossec ? Noir Désir ? huum. Placebo is only 1/3 from Luxemburg, dEUS 4/5 belgian, Soulwax 100% Flemish, Venus from Brussels... None of them is French. There's no way out of house & hip-hop music here.
It seems to me that the French equivalent of indie bands are Ska/Reggae/Punk bands. I mean : hip college girls and boys listen to those bands, and they have a true originality. My best friends (Vioud, that's you !) know Sergent Garcia, Spook & the Guay, Les Papaz, Rasta Bigoud, Ludwig von 88 and the likes much better than Pavement, Guided by Voices, the Dismemberment Plan, Zita Swoon or even the Best Band of The World (c)(tm) : dEUS...
So, after three weeks of intense Tori Amos infatuation ("To Venus & Back" is the second CD I have burnt to Nita, the first one being.. guess it... dEUS' Ideal Crash), until she (Tori) made her way to my 1999 top-ten, after these three weeks, I'm currently driving myself to an auditive O.D. of the Ruda Salska second album : L'Art de la Joie. Very good music, that avoids two main drawbacks of bad ska/punk bands : a) the songs don't seem like they're all the same : the melody and the beats change thorough the LP (for the best!); b) the lyrics are very clever, and never reduce to a boring "fuck the police / fuck the fascism" everyone agrees about. So, being French or not, you should give it a serious try, since this band manages to make very good songs without taking itself seriously, with the fun of life as the only motivation.

PS: un très bon site français sur Tori Amos.

J'ai reçu ce jeu stupide aujourd'hui : il faudra que j'essaie (c'est du Word 97).

Imagine you start a band with your mates and are trying to find a coooool name :
- If you're planning to put the word "head" in it, check Head Bands before.
- Browse the internet for some funny ideas.
- Try to list meaningfuls names on a notebook.
- Remember to put the accurate add-on.
- Delete those names that are too easy.
- Anyway erase all those stupid lame spittings coming from your sick head...
- ...and let others [1] [2] find the glorious denomination by which nobody will call you. You're just a basement band, suckers !

Of course this unbelievably long internet address is a real fun to type with your fingers (i did it). It's a pity though that the page behind it is only an ad for a domain registration company...

For those of you with a fast internet connection : Georges Lucas in love is one of the funniest short movies ever. It's now an internet classic, and it will definitely make the geek in you laugh.
This one if you need translating French words in English. I need it :-)

And, hey, Dreamweaver is such a great software !!! So user-friendly, so easy to learn, so efficient... My God, I've been using Frontpage for more than a year now, but after three days of DW2 I realize I'll never accept to use this *archaic* tool ever...

Essayez aussi les critiques de disques par Vincent Bergeron en français... Il en est presque à 260, et elles peuvent vous aider à vous constituer une "discothèque idéale". Note: je ne suis pas d'accord avec tout ce qui y est dit, mais étant donné que c'est la seule entreprise de cette ampleur en français, respect !

Bon, maintenant un peu de Dreamweaver avant de reprendre le taf. C'est pour une bonne cause : le design de cette page.

Ok. First some weblogs I like, so you can see what this is all about :
kempa has a lot of wit, and his articles are great ! Check his Axl Rose things...
Nanette is this kind of girl you can only see on the internet, it seems they never exist in the real life. In my neighboorhood, at least, but america is such a strange country :).
Andre Torrez' blog is more about his life that internet links, but it's extremely funny and sweet.
Devon has good musical tastes. Check this out.
And Glenn's weekly War Against Silence is one of the best music reviews online, established 1995 and still alive. Just search his web with words like 'My so-called life', 'Tori Amos' or 'Guided by Voices' to be amazed. He's a prolific reviewer and has a lot of tenderness for his "victims".
More later.

Hi there !
This is my first post, and this is a frightening thing, brothers and sisters...
So, why a weblog ? The first reason (the subconscious one) is that I've always planned to write something like, let's say it, a "book" and it will prove me wether I'm able to deal with small bits of writing regularly or not. The other reasons include the facts that blogs are fun, that they may be standing for all the emails I forgot to answer to (so it may calm my friends' anger down), and that keeping a weblog is way cooool, especially in countries like France, where it's still a rarity.
Now, "Why a weblog in English ?" is the next pertinent question. First, I have to say that I will probably switch to French from times to times, when inspiration or enthusiasm will be lacking, when my posts will be specifically intended to French audiences, or... for dirty words if I feel like it. Anyway, 99% of the visitors should be French or French-speaking, so that shouldn't matter that much.
Back to the point : English is the widespread #1 language on the internet, especially in the field of independent pop/rock music, which will without doubts be my favourite subject. And above that it's a fucking great language that I truly love, yes sir ! Brushing it up will be beneficial anyway.
See you very soon. I'll try to entertain you ; that may not work, but you know that's because
... everybody's weird !

Emmanuel