My Own Biggest Fan

Pulp split up late 2002. I can’t say it is really horrible because they gave it a good go and left on a high note. There is speculation that they will get back together again, but I have my doubts.

Here is their final concert in a series of MP3′s. For some reason Google doesn’t cache the site, (I think it is because it is ran off the guy’s home server) so it is hard to find. Which is good, because these things go away if they are too popular.

The first track is misleading, it is not the “intro” it is the banter that is after the first song, which is missing. Great quality as I think it was taped off a broadcast of some sort… they muss out the word “fucked” from Sorted For E’s and Wizz. Regardless of the imperfections, it is a good artifact to have anyways.

It would be forgivable if you thought these kids were from London, or maybe somewhere further south and sunnier (Brighton maybe?), but damn, Vegas? I didn’t see that coming. Then again, I had heard the lead single Somebody Told Me before I had heard the rest of the album and I had made my judgement early.

Then the album. It is a sad thing when A&R reps get to involved with the creative process. I hope that this is the case here. the song sequence is tragic. By the time the third song arrives, easily the album’s weakest track, with a chorus that consists of the whiney “smile like you mean it”, over and over and� well, you are ready to jump ship. Instead, jump ahead to the next song, the catchy and fun lead single and start the album there. It used to be a bad omen to have a lead single as the first track from a new artist, but there are always exceptions. I mean, well Nevermind was an alright album wasnnit?

What follows after is quite capable and fun. Not that we haven’t heard this before. If I thought that I would be the first one to say it, I might have written “American Franz Ferdinand” but that would have been off the mark. More like The Killers are to Ferdinand and Oasis, as to what Rialto were to Pulp. Remember Rialto? Not a bad band, but you only listened to them when Different Class got a little to predictable.

Thats the sort of roll this album has. It won’t rewrite your life, but it might just be a good soundtrack to a roadtrip or barbeque or something. Probably quite a few in fact. Dancing around singing “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier!” is better than any Victim Rock any day. And the song Indie Rock and Roll (download 6.9 Mb), is probably the most hilarious fun goofball anthem I have heard in ages, aaaaand it even makes the first two songs listenable. Unfortunately it got cut for some other tune on the American release. (fuck you A&R man!!!) I have resequenced the mp3s in iTunes into an album worth my time, sans Smile Like You Mean It. There may be hope for popular rock n’ f’n roll after all. Now if you excuse me I am going to download Monday Morning 5:19.

So it is all done, and my greenies have had a good show, as is told by this CBC story. It should only take them a short while (two more elections by my prediction) until they are as big as the NDP.

As for the major horse race, I hope that the old cliche is true. “Better the devil you know, than the one you don’t.”

I am offering a free gee mail account to the first person that emails me here and tells me how much they like me and My Own Biggest Fan.

If you are in Canada and you are planning on voting in the coming election (June28) then you might be interested in this. This guy, I assume his name is Ray Slakinski, has asked reps from each party key questions on their stance on an American-style DMCA law being passed here, along with some other issues that I find key, (Kyoto Accord, Gay Marriage).

The Conservative candidate obviously didn’t care about the answers rattled off for his interview, the NDP candidate seems awfully ill-informed and the Liberal candidate hasn’t even responded. I know these guys are busy, but they obviously don’t care for grass-roots type governing as much as they would have you believe. The Liberals are such a shit-show that it is a wonder that they are in-fact gaining in the polls. Thank goodness the Green Party came out on top here, it justifies my decision even more, considering my choice is to essentially keep my conscious clean this election. I have no misconceptions that Green will get in at all, but hey, the numbers can only go up, right?

Found via Boing Boing.

Listen to something new, from people who have gone to the Wil Murray School Of Web Design.

There is info about the bands here

I recommend Deerhoof. But I have not fully explored the site, there may be better stuff there. Let me know what you liked and didn’t.

I have nothing to write you guys about so I am going to throw together a half-arsed entry and you are going to have to be happy about it. Yes I know it has been two weeks, but hell, we all have our down times right?

Two things that come up in conversation when people talk about Mason and the Internet… 1) Mason finds weird things on the internet and people ask “How do you find that stuff?” (this happens with music too, and if you are a music fan it is one of the most annoying questions one can field) 2) My blog is impersonal.

The reason that my blog isn’t all about me me me is that I don’t want people to know about me me me. This is just a forum for things that I find cool, or that I might have done that I want my friends and random strangers to see. 99% of the public doesn’t care what my cat puked up (to borrow an example from Joy) so why would I write about it in a public forum? That said, this place IS called My Own Biggest Fan, so odds are the things I show you have some bearing on my life. It is just indirect.

As for statement #1, here is a little insight into How Mason Finds Things…

I long ago ditched Fark.com for Boing Boing. Fark was fun for awhile but really, how many times can you read the same joke over and over and still find it funny? It is like those people that can watch Monty Python and the Raiders of The Holy Grail and find it hilarious every time, even though they know the movie verbatim. I mean, why even bother with expending the calories putting the tape in the VCR? They could probably recite the whole movie to a blank wall and get as much joy out of it. I once saw one of these people watching this movie (and of course calling back to the television his favorite lines) and not once did he crack a smile. Of course there are a lot of factors at play here, including intense social incompetence and such, but I will end this train of thought right now. Anyways, like I was saying, I read Boing Boing.

I am a sucker for any blog that is more useful or cooler than mine. This is why I read BB and through BB I have discovered new and fun things that yes, I could live without but for the most part have enriched my life, way more than say, a night watching TV could do. (I do not own a TV by the way)

I have found a new love in Cool Tools It is sort of a show and tell for creative types. BB linked to it and that is how I found it. So there you go, one cool blog type thing, led to another. Not a horrible thing seeing as how the information that is on CT is stuff that will actually help my endeavors and isn’t just a time sink like say, Fark or pr0n.

While browsing CT I found an entry that talks about this nifty little OSX application that displays phrases called Oblique Strategies which are little Zen-type phrases that are designed to help the artist, designer, musician what-have-you get out of a rut. They were conceived by Brian Eno and Gregory Taylor in 1979. It is free and it can be downloaded here. I have already emailed the app to anyone I know (or can remember) that runs OSX, so I am not sure how this could help anyone else reading this.

Anyways, like I said, this entry was written to fill space. I really didn’t feel like updating the site at the moment. Funny thing though, I essentially stole the format for this entry from Joe’s daily email list, but admittedly, with probably half the entertainment value. Weird thing though, at the very moment I was ripping him off he sent me an email asking why my site had not been updated. If I were more superstitious I would have been freaked out.

Here is my review of the new Streets album, as it appears in this month’s Izzum.

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The Streets
A Grand Don’t Come For Free
(Warner)

Although relatively unknown here, Mike Skinner is not at all unfamiliar to the UK press. The venerable NME nearly fell over itself trying to clear the way for his debut, Original Pirate Material, acting like the enamored fan-boy with a red carpet, pushing old ladies and invalids out of the way, even though it hadn’t even heard the album yet. It seems, though, that some victims of the NME machine handle hype with more of an even keel than others (see �the Strokes�). Skinner, the “savior of UK garage” (I always figured that he was saving us from UK garage, but whatever), has injected freshness into his persona with offerings that no one saw coming.

A Grand Don’t Come For Free is an ambitious effort that was not at all hinted at with the tossed off, but wonderfully droll, We All Got Our Runnings EP. Ambitious because, well, Grand is a concept album. It seems that the only pop genre that hasn’t been eager to leave the “c” word behind has been hip-hop, though it should have sometime after Dr. Octagon (or maybe it�s just Busta Rhymes). Luckily, Skinner has both the lyrical talent and the production ability to tame such a wily beast.

Skinner’s use of British working class slang and his thick accent has drawn comparisons to The Jam, though stylistically he is closer to Irving Welsh, but, uh, more English. His very British references can perplex most North Americans. “Geezer,” “ITV,” “nowt,” and “well fit” don’t interpret easily here, which is why The Streets’ fanbase this side of the Atlantic is generally made up of Brit-pop fans, and not 50 Cent fans.

The subject matter is universal enough � boy meets girl, cheating begins, relationship dies � but there�s also the matter of the thousand quid he loses at the beginning of the album, and the friendship that is strained in the course of all this. The simplicity of the plot is the reason why this doesn’t end up sounding like The Wall. In lesser hands this could all turn to shit, but Skinner tells a story that, for all the right reasons, pulls at our emotions. His lyrics have a complexity and depth that defies his subject matter.

Beyond the obvious novelty of his nationality, there is a quality to the delivery that sounds like no one else, and somehow makes you a part of the story. I�m not sure how, but the phrase “I am not going to fucking, just fucking leave it all now/You said that it was going to be for forever, that was your vow” comes off neither trite nor stupid. I am at a loss to explain why I crack a smile when the bank machine rejects him on “It Was Supposed To Be So Easy,” but I do, and I probably will every time. It is these small moments that build this album one by one. You believe in almost every one of those moments. It is that quality that is sorely missing in pop music, and it is also why it is a shame that the (North American) kids won’t be buying this album.