So, I went out on Saturday night, and…

Went to see the first night of the Moloko tour on Saturday night and
they were fucking ace. Roisin’s an absolute star, fabulous singer,
immense, relaxed, smart stage presence and the band were super tight —
Moloko live are like a highly evolved funk band that regularly step it
up to house tempo. They were a treat cos they have fantastic melodies
combined with two things that make them particularly ace: first, and
most important, they have that twisted, weird Sheffield edge, it’s music
for freaks dressed up for the charts. Second, they go completely mental
while retaining their sharp sophistication.

All the songs worked real good but there were two moments of genius —
they did a dead slow cover of Chaka Khan’s I Feel For You that morphed
into The Time Is Now, and the finale, a huge version of Sing It Back
that started off with three minutes of (I think) Masters At Work’s
Bangin’ done in the most pounding manner imaginable, slowly bringing
bits of the song in. Unbelievable.

Live house music done properly with a drummer and everything, could it
be the next big thing?

Hipness quotient

Reynolds (http://blissout.blogspot.com/) updates his 94 piece from Lizard where he makes judgement on a long list of muso-cultural icons and gets it dead right by putting the Velvet Underground in the passe thru ovedr-use camp. However he then fucks it by putting the glory of Funkadelic alongside middle-brow crap like the Jesus and Mary Chain. Christ. The JAMC were cool for about five minutes and then got very dull, unlike, say, Big Black, or even Phantom Tollbooth. Their problem was not that they were derivative shit, but they were boring derivative shit. In contrast, Funkadelic is… well… some of the Greatest Music Ever Made.

Of course, if he were making some subtle point about Parliament being being better than Funkadelic, then he’d be on stronger ground. But as it is, well… pissed on chips I’m afraid Si. Some groups are beyond criticism — at least when you’re putting the Rolling Stones in the hardy perrenials of hipness camp.

Matthew Ingram in contrast has managed to soil himself in public by calling the Velvet Underground “the greatest band ever”. Isn’t it sad to see a great mind begin to collapse in on itself? Now, I’ve done my share of teenage garage punk covers of the Velvets — frankly they’re a lot more fun to play than they are to listen to — but I’ve always been mysitifed by their deification. Good art scene and all that but lets face it the fucking Doors were better than the Velvets despite the poetry, and The Stooges piss all over them.

Anyway, both pieces deserve an extended response, and they might get one.

DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE

Those of you WONDERING WHY there’s no pagan blogs out there should look here:

not found much good stuff though

How the FUCK do you do paragraphs in this stuff?

I coulda sworn I used to!

Garage commentary

You may want to check for garage stuff if you find luka just a bit too… discursive.

Nicely focused blogging.

there’s a professor of archaeoastronomy! cool!

Clive Ruggles and Frank Prendergast who’s an Irish archaeoastronomer.

Here’s the reading list from Ruggles’ homepage — looks good but weighty — and expensive!

http://www.le.ac.uk/archaeology/rug/AR3015/booklist.html

So all of a sudden archaeologists are looking at cosmic calendars of ancient peoples — very Hamlet’s Mill! (Though it’s not on the reading list.)

They reckon that lots of stone circles AREN’T connected with the stars. Probably with lines on the landscape, innit.

But they do mention that archaeologists didn’t take alignments seriously until Thom in the 60s — bang on — and that there was (effectively) a paradigmatic struggle.

Oooh — apparently Brunel liked to build his tunnels so they were aligned with sunrise on his birthday!

3000bc on you get almost all sites oriented in particular directions relating to movements of the skies — but different from place to place.

Apparently clusters of burial tombs were more important than being “just cemetaries”. Exactly what they don’t explain.

But they admit that there MAY HAVE BEEN equinoctial alignments — which immediately means massively sophisticated science beyond

Apparently passage tombs were aligned with summer solstice, but stone rows with the moon.

But aligning sites with stars is too difficult — or rather too easy to tell you much.

All from a BBC Radio 4 programme, might still be archived.

http://www.oxbowbooks.com/feature.cfm?&FeatureID=27&Location=Oxbow&CFID=2372916&CFTOKEN=25079596

Speaking of ragga, if anyone can recommend anything by Action, I’d be grateful. I’ve searched the usual suspects and can'[t find ‘owt by him.

Ingram on rough trade stocking ragga

>”In Rough Trade’s favour Darren in Covent Garden (who I hit in person with my URL last Friday, if you’re reading this mate, hi!) does stock Ragga, which is almost
> foolhardy in the face of market forces. I mean how many people really buy it?”

I reckon there’s about to be a big ragga crossover, with lots of middle class white people buying it. People seem really hungry for it. I look forward to being able to reccomend a series of Soul Jazz ragga compilations to new initiates.

Of course this has a lot to do with the popularity of my own Nervous Ragga mix CD, which literally several people have requested.

East…
Luka talks (midly and not uncritically) about how investment in the east end is a good thing, just as dizzee rascal’s being on Dazed & Cionfused’s cover is a good thing.

T’ing is, investment in (or near) the east end has been remarkable for its lack of impact. Arguably it does nothing but drive out original inhabitants through gentrification.

Just a thought.

Have just realised that I could very easily spend the rest of my blogging life simply commenting on the archives of Hollow Earth. http://www.hollowearth.org/2003_04_01_oldcrap.html#200177527.

So. DAF. It’s all about Sex Unter Wasser and Goldenische Spiele, isn’t it?