DownTuned

Here I am in the sun, doing my best to look like a communist. One that's into Trans-Ams.

You know, there was a time when I considered myself ahead of the musical curve.
I got into metal when I was at school, and my collection got pretty big over the next decade. My tastes got more eclectic and (I like to think) more sophisticated. I spent time feeding my passion for obscure doom, hunting out limited edition vinyl singles, writing to bands and zines (There was no ‘interwebz’ in those days), and even tape trading.

By doing this I uncovered a lot of great music that most people will never get to hear. If you can be bothered then I thoroughly recommend you check out Pale Divine and Sir Hedgehog. I’m not going to add MySpace links because..well, because they don’t exist, but do some hunting for Black Tears distro or something and they’ll point you in the right direction.

Anyway, after school I took about ten years out from education. For some reason I thought I could be a musician, so I spent my time working McJobs and spending the cash on guitars and amps, fuel to get to gigs, and me and some friends wrote some great (and some not so great) songs. It was a lot of fun.

Wavves. Bought to you by the letter V.

So, eventually I returned to university at the ripe old age of 26, and had a lot of fun making out with teenagers and drinking. While I was there I met this chick. She was hot and fun and we really clicked. We had different tastes in music but we also had that same openess to new sounds and experiences. We took pleasure in discovering new things and I fell pretty hard for her, and she eventually broke my heart.

Afterwards,as part of the healing process I cut off all my hair and developed a pathological hatred for anything kooky, ooky, or altogether electro-ey. I thought it was because it stirred up too many bad memories, but actually it’s because I started seeing through all that posing, affected, skinny jeans and blue hair teenage shit.

You don’t like music hipsters, you just like name dropping bands you hope your moustachioed, vintage-clad friends won’t have heard of.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I caught a couple of bands at this thing. The Vivian Girls were on, and even though most of their songs seem to be about Mopeds (being ‘British’ is cool you see?) they’d have been alright, except that every festival sound engineer in the world now watches Glastonbury on TV and actually thinks that’s a decent mix.

Wise up knob twiddlers. If you want a decent festival sound watch some footage of Donnington in the mid 80s, when you could hear the band properly. To be fair, you also need a 400,000 Watt P.A System. And maybe the band just sound like they’re playing in a wind tunnel on purpose. Ever been in a wind tunnel? I once dropped a loud guff in bed but that’s about it.

The Vivian girls. Possibly pictured in a wind tunnel.

Anyway, there were also two types of booze on sale (San Miguel and fucking pear cider), and about a hundred nondescipt experimental art bands. There was also a pretty heavy socialist presence, because hey, Che’ was hip too you know? I once met a guy who’d met him. Apparently he looked like a chimp. On that basis I wrote a sitcom script about ex-revolutionaries living in an old people’s home together. It’s just as well I didn’t bring it along, because there’s no recycling bins. Conspicuous waste is cool.

I always saw myself as an artist I guess. I took pleasure in the things I created, and always spent time on the details, the little things that make something stand out. Now I spend my weekends in sub-Mad Max landscapes, surrounded by people who think it’s ok to go out wearing a cloak made from knotted doilies.

Old women are cool.

Doilycraft is cool.

That guy who used to be in Joy Division threatening to play his hit.

He’s cool too.

I’m really not that cool.