Sinister: Last Exeter To Brooklyn

[P F]

I was feeling kind of silly
***************************


ATLANTIC TOSSING

Peter Miller Heavy sent a post without the word 'Rod' in the title.

When we'd recovered from the blow, we could see that he'd asked:

>>Has Trousers joined The Economist? All of a sudden there are articles 
>>about
J-Pop and Hello Kitty and lots of sly music references in the photo captions
and amusing headlines.

Your references, Miller, are obscure. I only know what this 'kitty' thing is 
because Stevie T once gave me one. Obscure, then - but accurate.

The conjecture about the Economist, however, is half-true at best. The boy 
Troussé now works in a position of authority at the Royal Mail. He chairs 
meetings where they say,

- Shall the Royal Mail's colour change to orange?
- No, orange is trés 1998.

A banal vignette at best. I'm just serving as a relay of information, you 
understand, now that the boy T is no longer with us in person. See, now he's 
got this new job, he's banned from sending e-mail, which is in competition 
with the loveable and traditional forms of postage it's now his brief to 
sell.

I suggested to a pop star today that Miller might be a front for a Rod 
Stewart advertising campaign - might even be Rod himself (why not? He's been 
everyone else). She agreed, I think. As far as Rod goes, I keep coming 
across vintage Rod CDs everywhere. The other day, I was listening intently 
to Stevie's tales of the post office, when, crashing blindly into a 
lamp-post, I fell into a CD shop with Rod a plenty. Some of it was poor Rod 
- the disappointing When We Were The New Boys, etc. But some of it was 
*classic* Rod. I came away with a £5 copy of the remastered An Old Raincoat 
Won't Ever Let You Down. It's only 33 minutes long, but so is It's A Shame 
About Ray, and that has a slightly shorter title. Mind you, I think Ray is a 
better LP, despite the decency of the Rod effort. Any takers? I know Nicky D 
is out there somewhere.

Then the next day, I found Never A Dull Moment for £6. I didn't pick that 
up, but probably will. Seems arguable that once you've got these 2, Every 
Picture, and Gasoline Alley, you really don't need any other Rod in your 
life. But am I being too proscriptive here?


------------

DEVON CAPS LOCK

Alasdair Cook marshalled his difficult name and breathed:

>>And if
Heaven never existed, at least Heavenly did.

If only Tim Popkins were here, it might be in order to muster some great 
jokes along the lines of,

Just Live Devon
Stairway To Devon
Devon In A Wild Flower

and the like.

But without him around, will anyone get the clever pun involved? Possibly 
'lixibell', who has a book about puns.

Ally96 continued:

PPS It's a simile.

That he has a Parliamentary Private Secretary of his own does not surprise 
me. I can say without hypocrisy or irony that I've sometimes seen the boy 
Cook as a future Premier of Scotland. But as for the rest of the line, I 
think it refers to a simple metaphor which some clown mentioned in the last 
post of July (whose archive nonetheless includes posts from August). Come to 
think of it, I was the perpetrator. Here's why.

'It's just a simple metaphor / For a burning love' - Lloyd Cole, Forest 
Fire, 1984.

In early 1989, a Scots pop magazine called the Cut reviewed Lloyd's Best Of, 
and quoted this line, adding 'If a simple metaphor is needed, Lloyd Cole is 
like cheap cola: flat, lacking the fizz and originality of the real thing', 
etc etc. At the time I thought this was clever rock writing.

It struck me that some folk distinguished between a metaphor and a simile: 
the latter involving similitude ('like a forest fire'), and that the 
reviewer could have said that Lloyd's was, strictly speaking, a simile. 
Heaven knows, this was mere pedantry, not least because a simile is one 
class of metaphor. But Cookie96 has revived the charge in comic vein against 
my description of sinister last week. I appreciate his solicitude for the 
treasures of the text; but I think he's mistaken, cos I said:

>>This list has fair exploded into a forest fire of action in the last week 
>>or so

which does not involve any explicit allusion to similitude.

------------------------

CAT-TIN MARVELS

Geoff recounted:

This cat has started walking into our house, strutting up and down the
kitchen like he owns the joint. I gave him a saucer of milk and some
batter. He hasn't started sitting on our sofa yet, but I wouldn't be
surprised it he did soon.

That's Martin Robinson. Didn't you realize?

-------------------------

SAW A MOTORCRASH

Ally96, who's been on fire lately, also excited me with this kind of talk:

The spirit of rock 'n' roll is alive and well, and it is dedicated to
the first Sugercubes album. Where were YOU in '89? Have you ever
dedicated an ideological way of life to such a transitory item as a pop
record?

Perhaps pop should not be dedicated to aspects of life, instead we
should postulate the theory that pop music IS life itself.

I found this interesting, though self-confessedly enigmatic. I think 96 had 
been attending too many shows in Camden and getting amazing vibes about pop 
about pop. When I say too many shows, I mean the opposite: he'd been, he'd 
seen - and he'd got the picture. I think - I'd like to think - he's bang on. 
He bangs on, too, sometimes. Or does he?


>>>A snapshot of his life was all he ever gave them, but the flash didn't
wake them up, it was the music that did that. The music of someone he
loved. They went to the park. Someone, somewhere, caught a bus.

I thought this was fine, too. There should, perhaps, be more of it about. 
Why isn't there?

- Because it's rubbish! whispers a wee Go-Betweens-admiring Scots footy 
expert bairn.


----------------------------

HE'S A WATERFALL

Steady Mike - for it was he - typed.

Then he thought - things like:


>>Ultimately, I did neither - shuffling out of that humid box with a
stolen bottle of Becks.

The excellence of this paragraph (go and reread it - why not? It was very 
fine), I think, is distilled best in that

'that humid box'
.

Can anyone explain why? Something about the detachment of that 'that', is 
it?



>>I am prepared to have my
preconceptions challenged here, however.

OK.

Watford outplayed you in the 1984 Final. The Cocteau Twins' work improved 
steadily as they entered the 1990s and left their early excessive spirit of 
adventure behind them. Ditto Throwing Muses, who are now, if they're still 
going, at their peak. The Alarm vied with Phil Collins to make by far the 
best records of the 1980s - it's down to 'Against All Odds' vs '68 Guns', 
folks. So-called Midi systems are the best way of listening to music, 
especially if it's precision and clarity you're after. Richard Briers is 
neither funny nor poignant.

Phew.


>>Elsewhere, a boy called Brown opened his closet and the skeleton of
Green Gartside fell out. No embarrassing bag of bones this.

Eloquent, confident in tone - but baffling. Can anyone explain?


>>>Unless I've been skimming posts even more than usual (and I have), I 
>>>don't think there's been over-much examination of the brief, swimmy,
piano-led instrumental which shares track-space with "Judy Slap" on
the ex-hit single (CD version). I think Chris Jones mentioned it, to
a deafening wall of indifference. I think it's comfortably the best
thing on there. Does this have a name of its own? Shall we give it
one? "Sticky Farrago". "Grief Jollies". "The Path To Rushmere St
Andrew Is Gloomy And Unyielding". I know you can do better.

It's called "Sonic Primrose", and it's by nand. I thought that had already 
been made clear.


*********************************
When I stepped in some Caerphilly
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