Day: September 4, 2003

tHAT wAS a nAUGHTY bIT oF cRAP#106258083149864339: “The Silver Records.”

Jesus, the man’s on fire!

Incredible stuff, this is the music criticism equivalent of Jeff Mills — all flashing speed, lava, and power — combined with Slip It In-standard collector nerd punk invective. “So now the goons are coming to the party I thought it was time I did a bit of the old bollocks-on-the-table. Let all you kids snapping at my heels know what you’re up against. Which is an absolute disgrace because the records I’ve chosen to perform this nasty trick with are among the most important documents of the 20th century.” Hardcore. I’ve no idea what these records sound like and I probably never will but you’ve got to read this.

Funfair For The Common Man: “(but don’t get me started… “

Just talked to the wife about this, she reckons they were a great band too. Thing with the Poppies was, lots of girls liked them, cos they were funky and they were fun, and that must really piss off the high brow fan boys…

Funfair For The Common Man: “(but don’t get me started or i’ll veer off into my stock rant about how Pop Will Eat Itself invented breakbeat and they’d be taken a lot more seriously if only they’d taken themselves seriously. and trust me, we don’t need that) “

I think we do actually. This is a position I’ve argued for many times. Never forget that PWEI played with Public Enemy and are namechecked / credited by them on “Millions”. Can U Dig It was about as good as dance music made by white people who weren’t New Order or Adrian Sherwood got in those days. But as you say, no-one took them seriously cos they didn’t. That was an enormous strength IMO.

Funfair For The Common Man: “also i’d wonder how nobody seems (i may have missed it) to have mentioned Meat Beat Manifesto yet. certainly, my initial exposure to that end of dance music came from hearing stuff like Storm The Studio from my more industrialist friends”

Absolutely right Dubversion. Of course they went on to do a fantastic double-header single with Orbital — Edge of No Control. Bit of a central linkage to dance music there…

Right, a serious point for a minute. Matt Ingram’s comics are really excellent. I think Luka might be right. For a long while I didn’t twig that they were his comics — I thought he was scanning in really cool stuff from some underground genius. And so he was — for it was him. They’re so delightfully artful with such wry humour, the pace of them is so well judged, the characters so deftly formed with such economy. They’re great, they really work, not quite as art, not quite as a comic strip, but as great stories. And I’m not much of a fan of comics.