2011: the year so far

I appreciate that this isn't an earth-shattering insight, but going back to work in January really is a sharp kick in the nuts.

On Tuesday the alarm jolted me awake and, in the first few seconds of confusion, my brain instantly filled to the brim with a to-do list of things I should have to-done way back in the 2010 stone age.  I reeled out of the flat while it was still dark and arrived at my desk in a state of confusion and near-tearful denial that the holiday was over.  All around me people rubbed their eyes and goggled at their inboxes as the last few vapours of festive contentment were sucked into the air-conditioning.  I solemnly placed my two Christmas cards into the recycling bin and turned off my out-of-office message.

So it's now 2011.  In May I turn 30 and this blog will descend into even more morbid ravings than usual.  I might get married at some point, although progress has not advanced beyond the decision to include a blender on the wedding list.  Everything else, from the religious denomination of the ceremony onwards, is up for grabs.

At least there will also be a few internationally significant significant anniversaries to look forward to.  400 years since the King James Bible was published.  100 years since the Titanic sank.  2 years since this blog began - brace yourself for the commemorative mugs and tea towels.  So it isn't all bad, and I'm trying to get as many treats in the diary as possible to drag me through the January murk.  Pulp at Hyde Park in the summer is simply too exciting to get my head around yet, but in the meantime I've just bought tickets to see The Streets in March.  I'm going in with fairly low expectations but it should be ok.  After all, they might play this one:

The missing ink

I had lots of life administration to do last Sunday.  Personal finances management (ie pay council tax to maintain the binmen's weekly 6am performance of Stomp), flat cleaning (ie collect the clothing that the missus has strewn aroung the flat (socks draped over lampshades, handbags in the bath, trousers in the oven) and put it all in a big bag that she can shake empty over the following week, like an urban fox with expensive tastes).  I was even going to cut my increasingly alarming hair (the crappiest of all the chores).

Unfortunately two things got in my way.  The first was the inevitable Sunday morning hangover, which now renders me incapable of anything other than watching 17 episodes of Come Dine With Me with the curtains drawn.  But the real killer was this website: http://archivedmusicpress.wordpress.com, which I literally spent hours and hours and hours reading.

It's nothing more sophisticated than a guy putting up hundreds of scanned pages from the Melody Maker and the NME circa 1987 - 1996.  I can see why that wouldn't float everyone's boat.  But if, like me, you grew up completely dependent on the news and reviews in these cheaply printed, ink-smeared rags then it's an absolute treasure trove.

Going though the 1994-1996 vintage material on the site it's amazing how much I remember.  Last year I was forced to go through my childhood memorabilia after a flood from an exploding boiler gave my parents an excuse not to have to store three tonnes of maths exercise books and shoddy renderings of glaciers any more.  Other than a few colourful reminders of how much I used to enjoy drawing the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot (not interacting - I was a stickler for realism) I came across a review of the first ever gig I went to, carefully torn from the Melody Maker and preserved between the pages of a terrible essay on music as a metaphor for love in Twelfth Night.  I needn't have bothered - it's here.  As is the MM's excellently dismissive review of What's the Story (Morning Glory) ("Oasis are fallen, fallen short of the stars. They sound knackered").  They subsequently re-evaluated this position when it turned out that Oasis sold millions of copies when put on the cover and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci sadly did not.

The Oasis flip-flop is an illustration of what a different world the music press was pre-internet.  They could get away with it because if you missed an issue, you missed it.  You couldn't just type the name of your favourite indie concern into a seach box and flick through everything ever written about them.  And as there were no band websites or myspace the only way you could get any information was through the inkies.  I remember pouring over news articles about upcoming albums and trying to imagine what a song called "Pencil Skirt" or "Pull the Wires from the Wall" could possibly sound like.  There were albums I didn't buy because, having considered the tracklisting long and hard, I'd decided they weren't up to scratch.

The lack of concern about a permanent record really comes through in the writing, some of which is frankly terrible.  The journalists insert themselves into interviews and reviews in a manner in which even the author of this blog considers to be self-indulgent.  But this also means that much of it has a liveliness and individuality that is sorely lacking in the post-internet, post-comments-sections-and-trolling age.

One of the things that I assume is the same now as it ever was is the making of terrible predictions.  The press needs to hype to have something to write about, and the law of averages dictates they get it wrong 95% of the time.  Which means there's a lot of sneering to be done by someone reading 15 years (Christ) later.  Almost every page has a reference to a band that, after years of effort, reached the pinnacle of their career with a mention in the NME before sinking without a trace.  Tokyo Ghetto Pussy.  Pimlico.  Buxom.  Brassy.  The Amps.  These are the fallen, and this website gives them the ghost of a tribute.

Got to dash, I've just found a three page interview with the Tindersticks from 1995.  I've already read it, of course.  But I was 14 then, and I read things differently now.