Ham Sandwich – Whelan’s, Dublin (7/11/09)

Ham Sandwich once more rocked my socks right out of my shoes last night. According to the Laws of Sock Rocking Beats, I documented it for ZME. It starts with words resembling the following:

And to think that some people are still deluded enough to believe that U2 are Ireland’s premier live band.

I don’t know if it’s sheer media saturation that’s perpetuated that myth, or just widespread ignorance, but it needs to be stamped out post-haste. Bono can take his impossibly huge stage monstrosities and stick them where the streets have no name; Ham Sandwich have claimed the crown so wrongly placed on Hewson’s overinflated noggin, and painted it neon. Let me make myself perfectly clear: a Ham Sandwich gig is a splendid thing to witness.

I may come across as less of an objective reviewer, and more of a preening fanboy with a dictionary. In reality, both are true.

Radio Bile: “The EMAs should have gone bigger. Better. Bummier.”

Another week, another Radio Bile. This time music awards shows are in the crosshairs, as I lambast them for being boring and stupid. And suggest some ideas on how they could liven them up. You might not want to read this with anyone judgmental around.

So, apparently, the 16th MTV European Music Awards “went down” on Thursday. Did you notice? I didn’t – I was preoccupied with more relevant, pressing matters, like noticing that ooh, it’s getting quite cold this time of year, and hey, I need a shave. Of course, the fact that these two realisations came in quick succession meant that my addled brain became quite confused, and I ended up shaving my woolly fleece. Live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, at time of writing (3pm on Friday afternoon, thanks for asking), the biggest story to emerge from the EMAs is the complete lack of interesting stories. The biggest controversy was some nonsense about MTV building a “wall” in “Berlin” to cordon off some space for a U2 performance. Oh wow. I’ve had more interesting comas (NOTE: a lie). When – well, I suppose if – we get televised footage of Bono and Jay-Z goose-stepping back and forth across the wall, let me know, then I’ll summon up a grudging interest.

Now go leave a comment, my lovelies.

Bon Jovi: The Circle

Yeah, I’m a pretty big Bon Jovi fan. Wanna fight about it? I don’t. But I did want to review their new album, The Circle. So I did. It looks a little bit like this.

There are two possible scenarios that come to mind when I try to picture a Bon Jovi songwriting session. Obviously, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora are there. They’re probably joined by their co-writer of choice – say, Desmond Child or Billy Falcone or whoever – and they’re brainstorming ideas for a spanking new set of songs. Scenario one features Richie holding a guitar (idly playing some blues runs that will never, ever make it onto another Bon Jovi album) as Jon’s face slowly erupts into a blinding grin: he has an idea. And it’s a good ‘un. “Hey guys: how about we pick a subset of middle America to patronise?” Last time around, it was country music fans. This time, it’s the working class and the newly-unemployed.

Scenario two is that these songs are Bon Jovi’s genuine attempt to connect with the average Working Joe. I’m not sure which scenario is more depressing.

I enjoy imagining things.

Radio Bile: “Some Ridiculously Ill-Formed Notion of Thought Policing”

Look, I’m sorry. I’ll have something about Broken Sword written this week, I promise. Possibly. In the meantime, here’s the latest Radio Bile column.

Spending too much time thinking about anything in particular is dangerous. So dangerous, it should quite possibly be illegal. Giving any amount of extended thought to anything rarely leads to a good outcome. Imagine if Hitler hadn’t been allowed enough “thought-space” to write Mein Kampf – wouldn’t that be wonderful? Hitler’s awful, demented thought process, brutally cut off before it could develop into an insane quest for Lebensraum, all because of some ridiculously ill-formed notion of thought policing. Also, imagine if Nick Griffin’s parents hadn’t been allowed contemplate conceiving for long enough to “make” Nicky.

Overthinking things can have effects on a scale less far-reaching than horrible racist political thingies, too. Reviewing, for example, is a dangerous game to get too involved in. Spend too much time evaluating anything, be it music, cars, hippos, or webcomics, and soon enough, you won’t be able to look at a hippo without thinking “Hmmm, that’s more of a 6/10.”

Wordythinks: Episode 3 – Musical Musings

Another podcast for you, my luvverlies. This time, myself and the goodly David “Coyote Trax” Kirk eschew the fabulous, mystical lands of the webcomics, foregoing the opportunity to capitalise on his new WordPress website, and instead focus our steely gazes on the dripping, soggy carcass of the music biz. Under our critical eye this time:

• Pearl Jam’s Backspacer, and why we demand better from the bands we take for granted
• Soulsavers’ Broken, and why Greg Dulli was probably right to have a hissy fit
• My swish new Radio Bile columns over at ZME
• Rum. We love rum

It’s a circuitous, depressing listen, certainly. Anyway, take a gander at the RSS feed, the iTunes feed, or the straight MP3 feed, and feast on it to your heart’s content. And please do tell your family and friends how excellent and informative the podcast was, even if you’re lying.

Radio Bile: “Atone For A Tune”

Another Radio Bile goes up, a little bit late this week. It reads something like this:

Music: it’s entirely, utterly, completely, undeniably, irrefutably subjective, right?

Wrong. You daft idiot.

Look, I know it hurts, but it’s true. Some music is just objectively woeful. In fact, the odds are pretty high that if you’re listening to music right now, it’s crap. Whether it be chart music on the radio, an album on your iPod, or a memory on the tiny little Fisher Price turntable that is your mind, the song remains the same – and it’s a crap song.

You can’t beat some judgmental nonsense on a Sunday night.

Radio Bile: “Music television has been dead for years. But can we please close the coffin now?”

My second Radio Bile column has gone up over at ZME. In it, I ponder the slow, agonising death of the phenomenon once referred to as music television. It starts with these words:

When did music television die, exactly? I’ll tell you when – it was when we all gave up on it, and with a collective mouseclick accepted Youtube and Myspace as our appointed saviours. But! There’s a more pressing question on my mind: is there a single post-Myspace moment where we can say music television went beyond an existence of pallid, pathetic obsolescence, and into fully-fledged, crap-slinging horribleness?

When I say “music television”, I don’t mean MTV, necessarily – that channel hasn’t been synonymous with the phrase it acronymed since the exact second they started showing the godawful, self-glorifying, materialistic nonsense that is “Cribs”, which at one point probably featured R Kelly saying “Oooh, look at me, I have 17 bathrooms, all of which I wholeheartedly ignore in favour of the underage groupie in my bedroom waiting for me to defecate on her. That’s where the magic happens.” Which of course, led to the coronary-inducingly painful sight of “My Super Sweet 16″, and other such abominations. MTV’s not dead, so much as it’s a reanimated, maggot-ridden corpse feasting on the palsied grey matter of any idiot willing to watch it.

And then it continues with some other words. It’s all very word-based, to be honest, but then, you’d expect that from a written column. Also, I promise I’ll actually write something specifically for Mister Hands soon. I really don’t want this to just become a links blog. Probably about the Broken Sword games.

But while I am linking, go check out my old Poplars-R-Us cohort David Kirk’s newly-wordpressed Webcomics Critique, and then progress to reading his wonderful Star Trax webcomic.

Radio Bile

Okay, in an effort to apply some sort of routine and regularity to my inconsistent posting practices, I’m starting a new weekly opinion piece over at ZME Music. I’ve entitled it “Radio Bile”, for reasons beyond my own comprehension, or indeed, human understanding. My first article takes a look at the oft-lamented world of soft-rock, and some returning luminaries within. Charlie Brooker, I’m one step closer to being a cheap rip-off of you.

It starts thusly:

Soft rock really gets something of a raw deal these days. Mention in a conversation that you like soft rock (in an unironic way, rather than a “sings along to Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ after a couple of drinks at a wedding” way… c’mon, keep up) and you may as well have told that person that you’re partial to licking their grandmother – you’re now a social pariah, and you’d best get used to it. Beard-stroking musos will castigate you for not listening to the Mars Volta’s latest 16-minute prog-jaculation with one hand clenched in a tight fist, and the other down your trousers; meat-headed, dim-witted dunces will laugh at you for being too much of a pussy to listen to “real rock”, which in their atrophied brains includes Hinder’s latest single, entitled “30 Ways to Date Rape Your Own Sister”. Probably.

So go read it, and if you like it, do comment on it. Also, if you don’t like it, do comment on it. Also, if you’re indifferent to it… well, you get the idea.

Alice in Chains – “Black Gives Way To Blue”

I really don’t know how I feel about Alice in Chains’ new album, and I wasn’t sure I’d have enough coherent things to say to constitute a review. I know for sure that it’s a rather good rock record, and I know I’m glad Cantrell and co are making music, but I do miss the way Layne Staley’s voice used to make a great song even better. But such personal, impossible-to-pin-down reservations are meaningless when reviewing an album for the masses. Thus:

There are lots of ways to open a review of Alice in Chains’ long-awaited return to the studio. The obvious approach is to eulogise Layne Staley, their sorely-missed lead singer. But I have some deep-seated neuroses that don’t let me do things the obvious way. (They also don’t let me touch public bathroom door handles without covering my hand with my sleeve, or trust anyone who doesn’t remember Aqua’s “Doctor Jones” with a fond, nostalgic sigh. But anyway.) Nonetheless, Staley’s absence hangs heavy over Black Gives Way To Blue, like a collapsed, rainsoaked tent atop unwitting campers – the lack of Staley’s unique, pained vocals defines and informs this album as much as new singer William Duvall’s presence.

So it’s probably for the best that the band addresses the issue almost immediately. “All Secrets Unknown” opens the album with a frank and open divulging of where Jerry Cantrell and company stand on the Staley-less nature of the group: “Hope, a new beginning/Time, time to start living, like just before we died… There’s no going back to the place we started from.” And it’s somewhat telling that, atop a classic droning, metallic riff, it’s Cantrell’s voice taking lead – as much as Duvall has, over a few years of touring, become an accepted part of the fold, it’s Cantrell’s responsibility to show everyone that this is a natural, timely and well-deserved return for Alice.

If nothing else, please listen to the title track. It’s beautiful.

Default: ‘Comes and Goes’

Embarrassing story: I used to really like Default. “Wasting My Time” was probably one of my favourite songs of 2002. Ah, more innocent, stupid times. Anyway, their fourth album came out to little or no fanfare this Monday, probably due to it being a Canadia-only release. To redress the balance, I review it for a continent full of people who can’t buy it.

You probably don’t remember this, or perhaps you’ve simply blocked it out of your memory, but back in the earlier part of this decade, Chad Kroeger wasn’t just the annoying, frog-faced, inexplicably popular lead singer of turd-rock band Nickelback. No, in the dark days of Space Year 2002, Kroeger tried his hand at being something of a mogul, and with his attorney friend Jonathan Simpkin, founded a record label: 604 Records. To date, the only band I’ve heard of from this helpful Wikipedia list is Theory of a Deadman (a.k.a. Nickelback Jr), which suggests Kroeger’s talents as an A&R man are roughly equivalent to his talents as a rock singer. (Also, upon further investigation, all of the bands listed are uniformly awful, although The Organ are redeemed slightly by their hilariously lewd band name. Snigger.)

Admittedly, this isn’t strictly relevant to this review – I’m just a sucker for any opportunity to point out what a scum-sucking, vomit-spewing, painfully ugly, cancerous sore on the diseased, puckered, inflated lymph nodes of the music industry Chad Kroeger is, both as singer and as Record Label Fella #24. Which makes his relationship with Default all the more surprising.

Actually, that sample only mentions the band once, and tangentially at that, but I promise I do actually talk about Comes And Goes at some point. Briefly. And despite the middling mark, I do think you should give them a fair listen – they’re not brilliant, but they’re sufficiently entertaining, like the musical equivalent of a straight-to-DVD movie.

Still. Chad Kroeger. What a prat, eh?