Adventure Rocket Ship

I'm sure most are aware of the common structure of television adverts:

o Introductory sentence outlining alleged problem.
o (Beat)
o Solution!

I've now subjected myself to enough commercial television that one advert is leaking into any other with that format.

It goes:

o Introductory sentence outlining alleged problem.
o (Beat)
o "Go compare!"

I await the point where it leaks into media objects of longer form.

It's still only Thursday? Excellent. Having an unstructured week makes the time pass more slowly.

Thus far I have: Slept about the same amount as usual; bought a walking stick and a breadmaker, thus bringing the middle-class edifice to its knees; had to explain Moorcock to an excitable curry-house audience; cycled across Bristol in straight lines for a laugh (At least I know the location of Bristol Central Lawn Tennis Club now. Should I be among strangers at a party and the question asked, I can leap forward with a location-based answer) and then walked several miles home with a puncture; written some words; had occasion to use the internet for the purposes of making enlargements of holiday snaps and, um, some other stuff.

A notable and tiresome failure has been the idle quest (a chap must never give the agents of commerce the idea that their existence is anything other than a vaguely necessary evil for keeping the proles at bay) for black boot-cut jeans. Not one blasted shop, boutique or hut within the environs of that benighted pit up at Cribbs Causeway sold such things. Shops are just rubbish and must be stopped.

Via the well-controlled Making Light (who had wrabbed his norman lunch) we find a Wisconsin Scrap Trip and a farting rainbows t-shirt.

How many of y'all are going to be far to uberg*th to be spoken to in Leeds this weekend and thus save me the trouble of making smalltalk? (The malevolent sorts will get in my face, just to watch me squirm, obv.)

For what seems like an awfully long time, I've been listening to a variety of grim (and slightly less so) CDs and doing my best to avoid phrases like 'passionate bass' (and indeed 'bass chores'), 'driving beat' or 'dear christ will you all fuck off back to your jobs in fast-food outlets and never let the notion of musical fame ever bother you again'. Instead I've rambled on about 'lurching mobs', 'demonic possession', 'malfunctioning synths' and 'cider guzzling tramp' in a style I consider to be more or less randomly entertaining for the reader and somewhat band-antagonistic.

So I think last night was a strangely fitting end to all of that. No more can be written in that style and, crucially, no more bands can be written about in that style.

James Ray and the Startling Performance put an absolute end to it. As, I think, they'd put the notion in my head in the first place, it was appropriate.

The first time I viewed James Ray was at Whitby some number of years ago. I think it remains one of my favourite gigs because it was exactly the kind of chattering 303 and noise-wall guitar that I imagined would work rather well together. Like any other sensible sort, I was rather keen to listen to more of the same, which was unfortunate since the band imploded shortly thereafter.

The supports were... Some blokes in skinny ties that were making the same sort of generic noise with Bowie-influenced mic-lurching that I've watched support bands do since 1985. It was very 1985, in fact. No-one else here will remember 'Esprit de corps', but it would seem that at least one band in Bristol does. Next up were some jolly nice sorts who probably shop at M&S and began with some atonal synth-skronk accompanied by rhythmless sax, backwards guitar and distracted mumbling. An excellent start I'm sure you'll agree. However, a Roxette-remix dance/shuffle beat arrived on the DAT and it all went a bit polite shoegaze/MBV. I'm sure the time is probably right for the 1990 revival, but if you're going to do that, could you at least try to make it a little more Swervedriver and a little less coffeetable? I cannot say if I would purchase an album. Perhaps I will listen to some mp3s when my ears recover? Yes.

And then. A surly-looking mob took the stage. The backing was the sound of malfunctioning synths being beaten with a broken microphone stand by a bloke who looked like an old testament prophet without honour in his own land. Who'd had a couple of scoops and therefore lurched and staggered about the stage, fell over and delivered songs in the prone position while flailing the microphone stand about 'til it broke.

It was... Mesmerising. Though sounded quite horrible to begin with. As if several tunes were fighting it out... I guess if there was going to be a Fall for the black-clad, then this would be it. Then, about halfway through, something happened. Were it a car (obviously some V8 powered monster avec pink bottle) one might imagine that it had warmed up enough to run right and the pilot had found a straight bit of horizon to aim at. In the venue, it sounded like they'd all decided to play the same tune in the manner of a Tackhead mostly influenced by The Stooges, VU and the Porton Down LSD experiments.

The thing is, I adore tripped-out, trance-like fuzz guitar about as much as I like a howling 303 and pre-breakdown techno drum crescendos. Bolt the two together wrong and it sounds like Republica and/or any number of half-rubbish g*th-karaoke chancers that I've been forced to listen to in the last yea-many years. Get it right, and... It'll sound like James Ray.

So that's the very end of it. I'm off to listen to humppa and jazz and dub and electrofunk and whatever the hell else. Just not g*th/INDUSTRAIL(tm). There's no more point. Probably.

Edit/Linkage: http://www.4080peru.co.uk/ / http://thejamesray.co.uk/
Downloadable everything.