I haven’t really got into the whole MySpace thing. It reeks of “sellout” to me. Perhaps it’s techy/blogger snobbery but it’s a subculture that’s not quite niche enough for me to be into. On account of, you know, the world and her dog having a myspace page. I quite frankly don’t feel the need for one. MySpace is where I am, the square metre or so around my physical presence which, if invaded by uninviteds gets a punch on the nose. Unless you’re my wife, my son or particularly cute.

Should I be concerned, therefore, that I found myspaces for TheThe, Foetus, Alexander Hacke, Neubauten, Lydia Lunch, Skinny Puppy, Jarboe et al? Or should I just get with the program?

Year Zero

Halo 23

April 17

The beginning of the end?

Who are they? What do they? Any good they?

Apparently they’re supporting NIN on their tour and all I know is 2 boys, 2 girls, from Liverpool. And I’ve heard the name before.

The year for music keeps getting better. Following the purchase of a new Foetus album the other day (no link, find it yourselves you lazy gits!), the announcement of a new NIN album, another new Foetus album and acquisition of tickets to a NIN gig in March, I’ve just been informed that Neubauten are playing dates in Nottingham and London in April.

This is one happy Dragon.

Not the weather but the title of the new album by Foetus. Don’t know how I missed this (apart from the fact that I’m not any mailing list) but I’ve ordered it anyway. It’s mainly a collection of previously unreleased stuff and remixes either of tracks from Love or that he’s done for other people (like the mix of ShrunkenMan he did for The The which I have on the Interpretations EP somewhere).

What’s more, there’s a full remix album, called Vein, slated for a Spring release. If it’s to Love what Blow was to Flow then it will be very good indeed.

Oh, and there’s a new Nine Inch Nails album in the pipeline too, currently titled “Year One”.

This must be ancient news which just goes to show how informationally challenged I am. I swear again that I am the most untechnical techie around and that I am a disgrace as an IT professional. I’m verging on being about as competent as a user these days - and that’s more than a little scary.

Still, I recently got introduced to music genome project thing and their Pandora player which is kind of like the Musicmatch radio station in that you specify an artist and it then plays a load more that it classes as similar. So far I have (and I’m sorry about this - well, not that sorry) only entered in “White Zombie” as the entry and am getting a good return of music including Ministry, Therapy?, Die Krupps, KMFDM, System of a Down and Powerman 5000 - some of which I know, others I don’t. It’s certainly making my monday morning easier to cope with. The advantage over musicmatch is that it’s unlimited once you sign up (although to register you’re going to need to fake a US zip code).

So there we go. Load guitar music to while away the afternoon to. If only I could take my laptop down to the gym.

The title song on Neubauten’s last album, Perpetuum Mobile, was inspired by the copious amounts of travelling that the band did and the lyrics intriguingly describe a life spent away from home, wandering through international airports and hanging around in the queue at customs.

This morning, the song happened to be playing as I was descending with the masses into the bowels of the underground. I had never been fully aware of the rhythm of the horde of zombies who shuffle their way through the corridors, past the ticket machines, down the escalators and along the platforms every morning on their daily commute to work. And neither seeing the band play PM live, nor listening to it in situ at home, had I truly appreciated how well the song captures that rhythm until this morning.

It’s a beautiful thing.

In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Harry Lime (Orson Welles) - The Third Man

The other thing that came out of Switzerland was fabled industrial rockers “The Young Gods“. While more middle aged than young these days, the Gods are back on tour celebrating their 20th year together. They have a new retrospective/greatest hits album, XXY, and are playing at small venues around Europe, including a gig at the Barfly in Camden on Friday 25th November.

I’ll be there - anyone else up for a nostalgic night out?

The mate who came with me to do Tough Guy was also the same mate who got me tickets to go and see Nine Inch Nails last month. He has earned yet another gold star by getting tickets for the Pixes.

I don’t think I’ve been to as many gigs in one year.

I will confess that I only started listening to the Pixies after they split up (and would have been in my first year at university). I won’t go into a long dialectic about why I like them because the crux of it is that they’re wacky, dark and loud enough for my tastes.

It should be a good night out.

This morning I feel like I’ve put a couple of years on in one night but that’s the price you pay for feeling 20 again for a couple of hours. I met up with friends at the Trinity Arms pub (not the Tempest as previously advertised) and we had a couple of beers before heading off to the gig. We decided to skip the support (Saul Williams) and got there 10 minutes or so before the main event.

And what an event it was!

Trent and the boys rocked and there’s no two ways about it! Two hours solid and about 20 songs later it was all over. No break, no encore, just a simple, straightforward 2 hour set. But the temp built and built and with a brief interlude for some of the slower ballads (well, just “Hurt”) which were only temporarily marred by about 3 or 4 tossers who thought they were at a Boyzone gig and waved their lighters in the air, the noise levels and freneticism increased through “Closer”, via “Gave up” and “Wish” until it reached the unleashed fury of “Head Like A Hole”, by which time I was dancing around like Zebedee would if he’d just downed an amphetamine spiked Red Bull and absinthe.

It’s a sign of a good gig too if it makes me listen with new ears to a song that I previously didn’t care much for and it was like that last night. While he disappointingly didn’t play Only (an oversight considering he’s releasing it next week as his new single) he did play a few tracks from the new album and aside from the title track and “The Hand That Feeds”, I haven’t so far been taken with either “The Collector” or “Don’t You Know Who You Are” but last night they were played the way they are meant to be played and it made all the difference.

A fantastic gig. There’s nothing more to say.

UPDATE: Some camera phone pics courtesy of Sergio - cheers fella!