Everybody's Weird

I attended Placebo’s gig yesterday night. They certainly aren’t the best band in the world, and the recent Black Market Music isn’t the best album out this year. But they are the most francophone and they do have a lot of class, especially Brian Molko. And I had a revenge to take : two years ago I had the most horrible flu when they played in Paris, and my ticket went straight to the garbage.

Anyway the show had real great moments, such as 36 degrees, Special K, Every you every me, or Teenage Angst, the ultimate Placebo song as far as I’m concerned (a track in my 90s top ten, sure !), played acoustic in a midly disturbing but seducing way.

Back on duty

• The Bidule Corporation now has its website, stamped with the same bitterness than the TV show. For fellow fans of Le Vrai Journal.
• A gallery of beautiful and feminist luscious lesbians. I love that.
• Lycéenne : a french role-playing game about the life of teenage girls in high school (teachers, love stories, jealousy, volley-ball…), inspired by those japanese mangas. For free on the internet. A nice idea ; if anybody tries it, let me know what you think.

More seriously, Klaus Barbie’s Trial is broadcasted on cable & satellite TV, and on the internet (follow « Les émissions »), for french-speaking people. Klaus Barbie was the nazi officer responsible for the deportation of the Jews and the members of the Resistance in the area of Lyon during WWII. He tortured and killed Jean Moulin, among many others (including children). He was eventually judged in 1987 for « crime against humanity », and sentenced to penal servitude for life.

An abridged (35 hours !) filming of the trial is showed to the public for the first time, with the extremely moving testimonies of the survivors. To actually see this old man, called long ago « the butcher of Lyon », casually say his name and address to the judge is a very disturbing introduction to an exemplary trial of the dark side of the human nature ; a too familiar absurdity that you will only begin to understand by reading Primo Levi, Robert Antelme, Claude Lanzmann and Hannah Arendt, in my opinion.

« We invented Canada », they claim. At least this indie rock zine (Pandomag) provides quality record reviews. They even liked Kid A, a rare sign of humble and trustable people.

By the way, did anyone else noticed how *hype* it is to despise Radiohead these days ? A whole herd of sheeps wouldn’t go in the same direction more mindlessly than all our egomaniac obsessed-by-hype elitist internet music writers… Come on, guys, if you don’t like it, shut up or talk about one of the billion others record out this fall. It’s not like mass-marketing and hammer-radio-broadcasting Celine Dion-like would keep pressuring on us to buy it. There isn’t even a single or a video !!

Wonderful digital-age art at Exploding Dog (don’t ask ; click). Beauty doesn’t require 32 million colors. [thanks to nanette]

Sign #4532 that I’m getting older

I truly enjoyed AC/DC’s motherfucking mega-show. And I was seated.

A hell of a party Friday night to celebrate Maly’s success at the lawyer’s school admission exam (Maly is Nita’s cousin). Chinese restaurant first, where my lucky cookie foresaw me a « quiet and happy life », which put me in a hell of a good mood ; I can behave like that sometimes.

Then we headed towards a small club downtown on the Champs Elysées, for the weekly ‘Asia Folies’. I had never heard about it before : Asians from Paris seem to gather here to party on a mid-90s house music, plus occasionally a Far-East anthem. The irresistible appeal of the madison on my Asiatic friends was once more confirmed ! (As Nicolas, Maly’s boyfriend and the other white boy of our group, said, there’s was a flavor of Bangkok-like sexual tourism all over the place…) Nita and I are exhausted, we definitely agree that we’re « too old » for this now, but anyway we had a great fun.

PS: The Lucky-Cookies factory can manufacture a set of cookies with your own personalized message(s) inside. A nice idea for parties.

Next Tuesday : AC/DC in Paris… I know, I know… But I’m sure it’s gonna be a great gig in the old-fashioned rock-n’-roll way. I ought to see it once in my life !

I’ve already mentioned how great Glenn McDonald’s weekly column The War Against Silence is. It’s even linked in the sidebar of this blog, to the right. I’ve never told you why, although I should have. He’s one of the most interesting music reviewers these days : he makes you feel emotions while you read, musical emotions.

What you need to know is that his 300th chronicle is out this week. He explains why he keeps writing it for no salary at all and how he manages to do it in parallel with his regular job. It’s as entertaining as ever, 4200-words long, in a delightful style and vocabulary, and here are a few extracts that I *so* wish I’d have written :

I have, for nearly twenty years, spent the overwhelming majority of my discretionary income on music. I am better at buying records than I am at anything useful. I buy records to celebrate and to console, to satisfy curiosity, to share and to survive. I buy anything I have any reason to suspect I might find interesting, and I don’t mind wading through a bunch of records I play once and then shelve to find one that moves me. I also have a compulsive inability to ever get rid of anything. […]

Writing about music without writing about how it affects your life is, to me, an exercise in surreal opacity, like writing about sex or child-rearing without talking about love, or writing about food without eating. […]

I take a perverse pride in operating one of the few dead-end sites on the entire web. There is no links page, no message board, no sound-clip archive. I do not integrate, aggregate or repurpose. I do not provide music news, I will not send you updates via email, I do not endorse, I do not take advertising, I will not help you sell or market anything, even if I like it a lot. The rest of the web is full of shiny moving parts; my tiny, drab, obscure, tranquil corner is for me writing about music, with as little administrative overhead as possible. I hope it improves, but I don’t think it needs to expand.[…]

It’s incredibly cheering to get emails that begin, as it sometimes seems like half of them do (although statistically, that can’t be right), « I’ve been a TWAS reader for years, and I never write fan letters, but I have to tell you… ». You’ve written to tell me that I’ve found words for emotions you didn’t know how to express. You’ve written to insist I should be making money at this, which for the time being isn’t necessary, and might be more of a curse than a blessing in practice, but it’s a sweet thought. You’ve plugged my site in your own words, and insisted that you came upon it at random and then stayed up all night reading, which are probably the two most sincere forms of praise the net offers. You’ve suggested that sites like mine are what the internet ought to be used for, and I think we’re both destined to be disappointed, but not just yet. You’ve forgiven whatever obsessions of mine you can’t fathom, and kept reading anyway. You’ve thanked me for championing bands real critics are too uptight to enjoy. You’ve suggested I look up « florid », of all words. You admit, sheepishly, that you read even when you don’t have the faintest idea who the bands are, which is entirely fine. You’ve sent me helpful suggestions about my beleaguered rubber-tree plant, corrections for typos I missed, hundreds of recommendations I’ve followed up on and hundreds I haven’t. You’ve sent me enough emails titled « Thanks! » or « Wow! » that I can raise my spirits just by sorting my feedback folder by subject. […]

We fight silence, sometimes, because the other targets are too well defended. But the war against anything begins with an exasperated bark.

Everybody that (even remotely) happens to know me has probably guessed that Glenn’s vision of life is, for a large part, my own. I won’t be able to say nobody warned me.

One more post

We’re back in 1996, my friends ; rejoice !

Daft Punk has hardly given any news since their fantastic ‘Homework’ LP. All of house music have falled into an unexpected mediocrity since getting mainstream, with notable exceptions (Chemical Brothers and pals).

I was afraid that the wonderful duo from Versailles would disappoint me, like many of its fellow electronic combos in the past years. You know what one says about second LP’s and the Stone Roses syndrome…

But it seems I lacked of confidence. So just do what I did : Download the new (forthcoming or out ??) single ‘One More Time’ featuring Romanthony, from napster for example, and listen to it. Play it again. OK, now you’re dancing, I know it. Now you’re addicted.

This piece of music is as good as ever, fantastic. I ever feel like going to club again when I play it, which I haven’t done for the last two years (time runs fast…).

People throwing parties, DJs all over the world, play this tune ! It’s the greatest electronic track in years, it’s kewl as hell, it’s smart. PLAY IT !

The whole album is to be released on November 2000, the 13th (No worthwhile links yet). [thanks to Lies]

Lotus Notes is probably the worst widespread software ever designed. Even worse that some of the finest Microsoft products (think Frontpage). Check out why. As a user of it until last month, I definitely agree. This website, called the Interface Hall of Shame comments lots of badly designed and conceived software, and anybody in the IT field should visit it, especially fellow developers.

Another fine delivery from the Grand Royal scuderia

Roughly once in a year, I fall for a punk/metal album, instead of my sensitive indie pop standard. Last year has seen the triumph of the System Of A Down eponymous LP, between the dEUS and the Guided by Voices eras. The current band that has conquered my CD(and mp3 !)-player(s) is the american outfit At The Drive-In, who just released their first LP on a major label, the one and only Grand Royal, yes, the one that brought us Luscious Jackson and Ben Lee, among others.

Relationship of Command begins by two songs a bit too ‘punchy’ for a first encounter, but at the middle of the third (the single ‘One Armed Scissor’) their melodic genius suddenly appears ; and raises the sound to an achievement it will never leave until the end of the CD. Think Rage Against the Machine meets Neutral Milk Hotel meets the Pixies. Think rough guitar riffs but subtle song harmonics. My piece of advice for the week (the month ?). Cheers to Mike D. and his fellow b-boys for another brilliant signature.

Links-a-gogo

• My new boss is fond of Lego (the new ones, with engines, processors, a programming language and movement sensors!). Geeks…
  
  Anyway, it seems some folks have designed a truly complicated-but-exhaustive wargame system to make Lego armies fight in your basement. Re-Geeks… [link thanks to Adam]
• For the Frenchies : You can now trace your family name’s history during the XXth century in the French « départements », as well as your first name’s popularity thourough the years.
• Again for French-speaking people, here’s Patoche website, with all the (mostly metal) concerts he ever attended, plus setlists and pictures. He’s a friend, and one of the most entertaining folks I’ve worked with.
• Did I mention that the Internet is full of geeks ? Here’s an almost comprehensible list of the notables properties of some numbers between 0.412454… and 10¹⁰¹⁰⁰. For people with a lot of spare time.

Seeds of the Pumpkins

Farewell gig yesterday for Billy Corgan & friends here in Paris. Well, I know most american hip indie kids find the Smashing Pumpkins « an awful band since they’re sellout », but we tend to see things in a slightly different way down here in Europe. Anyway, I HAD to see once in my life the band that made Siamese Dream, and it seems like it’s their last tour.

Support : Sunna ; honest band, working very hard to conquer the kid’s favors ; surprisingly, their label is Melankolic, the next step after Day One towards eclectism ? It’s disturbing that bands with an overground ambition tend to do this kind of light metal music again, it brings us back to the Nirvana years…

The Pumpkins concert began very awfully. They’ve slowed the tempo of wonderful songs like ‘Today’ or ‘The Everlasting Gaze’ to a point where it wasn’t at all the same tracks, and then they added some free-jazz piano improvisation à la Pink Floyd over it (Did Billy want to prove he’s as good as a musician than Radiohead ??). It was terrible. I was thinking I had a nightmare : « Oh my God, this is the Adore Tour ! I have to wake up !! ».

Act II : Billy took the electric guitar, and here it goes for two songs (including ‘Bullet with Buttefly Wings’) played… with an increased tempo ! At least it was interesting to hear. But after half an hour, the real show begun. This was the Smashing Pumpkins magic. The wonderful voice of Billy, Jimmy’s energic drumming, James’ modesty and virtuosity, and the special asset : Melissa, so sexy with her bass guitar. A really remarkable light show. An audience going crazy. Only fantastic songs on the set list.

The most moving moment was the second encore, when Melissa introduced the musicians in a perfect French, with her adorable voice. The last song was ‘1979’, an obvious choice, and a very fulfilling apex to the show. Billy stayed on stage a couple of minutes after the song ended, just to enjoy those magical moments when 12 000 people give you love and respect.

Whatever the venue, whatever the band, whatever your position in the room are, the most exciting person to be is the guy on stage.

Not the folk who would cry if he were not ashamed, not any of the few thousands seeds of the pumpkins.

PS: Don’t forget to download Machina II/the friends and enemies of modern music, their last and free album, not available in stores.

Let’s talk business. I’ve got ONE ticket for Placebo at the Olympia, Paris, for the 4th of November. I won’t be able to go there, so I’m looking for somebody who would like to exchange it against a ticket for the same show the day after (nov. the 5th).

I can also sell the ticket for a very reasonable price, although I’d really prefer the first solution. What I call reasonable price is much under the current bids on ibazar : [1] [2] or [3], for example.