Friday 31 July 2009

A P.S To The Below Post, Unrelated, But Nevertheless Critical

Lyrical Ballads, Yours Sincerly, Wordsworst.

Here are some lyrics I've written for you all to lay some eyes on. The first one is still a work in progress, donc: no name as of yet.

"
Suited smartly, with trousers turned up,
Shiva mascot in hand, he drops
In, into the river
With a
Plop! his heart stops.

In the half light his amputated Rolex reflects
His cold white dead eyes,
Utterly perplexed,
Broke, old broken body,
Moldy,
Completely convex.
"


"The Barnacles With Us, Boys"


"
Oh No!
This ship is going down,
Pull in the oars boys and girls
Before we drown.
This one eyed captain
Can't turn this ship around,
So Mutiny!
On this vessel not a rat'll be found.

Six years ago,
Prevailers of Peace,
Against our crew's general distaste
We sailed east.
Rumours of supplies
Burned out on home shores,
So Mutiny!
We were but bitches in our Captain's dorm.

Well back at base,
The most dignified advisers
Were having scrumptious dealings
With the partners of the ugliest misers,
Moats filled with water
And billed to general taxation,
So Mutiny!
Education Education Education.

With defences low
To the good ship Blighty,
We dug to the depths of our Redness
And pulled out some tricks for the party,
If hit by cannons
We'll Identify,
So Mutiny!
You've Forty odd days to comply.

Well we'd be fibbing,
If we said there ain't competition,
There's those blue cheeked pirates
With academic preparatory wisdom.
And that general of theirs, they call him
Long John Smugly Considered
He rows to the office while
His speedboat is secretly delivered.

So what will become of us?
A disgraced and marooned mix.
We're taking the barnacles with us boys
We're sinking the whole ship.
This crash is imminent,
We're surrounded by sharks fins,
Perhaps this might've ended differently if we
Had the decency to sail against the wind.
"

"Some Old Rusty Brahms"


"
An audience of three watches a pianist with a broken arm
Attempt to play the keys but all resounds is some rusty Brahms,
In condition such he's drunk to much and he sings and plays right out of his arse,
And while the crowd permits to laugh there's one in there and she's thinking fast.

Bon nuit, mon cherie, we'll see eachother in the morning, won't we,
The orchestra's second act, this ain't no coup d'etat!

And as she is the foreign bard a cow walks past with a broken arm,
For all his knowledge of improvised scales he can't quite match her new born qualms,
But like the diminishing of a third, a change like this is bereft of curse,
Yet to profess of noise and sound, these don't quite equate the love I've found.

So

Bon nuit, mon cherie, we'll see eachother in the morning, won't we,
The orchestra's second act, this ain't no coup d'etat!
"

"On The Defence Now"

Let's just start by getting this straight.
We only buy the best, yeah, the freest of the meat
And
We only go to burger joints on children's birthdays,
We only buy the best, yeah, you should see what we pay.
Don't you know it's come from a happy home,
Can't you imagine it smiling as you're licking it's bones?

We only roast a carcass on Sunday Lunch,
We'd be happy with just gravy but we're a a traditional bunch,
And we always gut carefully and we never eat liver,
And when we slip in processed pork yeah it's only a slither,
And don't you know it's come from a happy home,
Can't you imagine it smiling as you're licking it's bones?

This is what we're made for, put your hands to your teeth,
The canines are a-hungry, let's turn this cow t'beef,
While chomping and chewing on our secondary energy,
A million pigs in custody are machine lined and ready,
Well don't you know we always buy from a happy home?
Can't you imagine a dead dog on your fireplace throne?
"

Duos Entre Les Nuages
"
If you'll be kind, I'd like to buy back what's mine,
I've a fistful of bills to give, will you forgive, forgive
My old self, drunk, decrepit by oil and wealth,
My sixty years have passed, didn't they run fast, didn't they run fast?
So you call this place hell? Yes I know it all to well,
See I used to run this house, my position pronounced, pronounced
With authoritative fear, their liberation ruthlessly clear,
I spoke right into God's own ear, said "To think of life before democracy here!"

'Don't think you've escaped my gaze,
I've had eyes on you since the missiles were misplaced,
In sixty evil years, do you think I'd let such talent go to miss?
You and I were meant for this.'

What once was mine, you bought for a very good price,
A seamless sacrifice, Divine, Divine
Electoral faith, yes I stole that truthless game,
And I stole it twice, and I stole it twice.
In security's name, I have casually slain and killed,
So Lucifer please, my soul if you will.
"

(This also, is unfinished)
"
Sitting behind you I was inclined to
Take a peek
At the French narrative you were reading and
Try and muster some words to speak.

Formalities aside I missed my train ride
To Chennai,
Perhaps it was because, I think the reason was,
I was wishful something might arise.

But fourteen hours senior to our meeting I believe we were
On a bus,
Some ramshackled old truck, where I gladly observed
What that humour of yours had done.

You seem to use your eyes to inherently see life in
It's newest form. True:
We may all be cynics,
But I'd ask you Amaya, is there some beauty which didn't see you?
"

There's a few more, but in my opinion, this including the last one in certain respects, they're not up to scratch, regardless, Enjoy.

Lots of love,
Declan xxxx

Monday 27 July 2009

To Be (Shit), Or Not To Be (Shit).

Hmm.
I've always felt a little ambiguous about Kasabian, never quite sure whether I think they're absolutely brilliant, or just a bit dated and sonically uncreative. The lyrics are nothing revolutionary, in my opinion, but definately listenable. Yet I think Serge Pizzorno's got something musically under one of those hats he often sports.
So while I've been away I've just heard rumours, odd bits of information, and suggestions as to what is coming out at the moment, or in the very near future.
An Arctic Monkeys and Wild Beasts single here, a Dirty Projectors suggestion there, a wave of information just round the corner regarding a certain band called The Horrors (I've actually heard only half a song, but I know it's produced by the chap from Portishead, and that means it no doubt has a certain amount of quality to it...).
And I've heard bits about Kasabian. Time to make up my mind, I reckon. So I thought I'd give some of their new songs a listen, and I found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQClR22WV0Y

"Fire".

I love the way it drops around a minute in, I hate the way it re-drops about 30 seconds later, cor blimey. I still don't know.
Maybe that's what makes a classic band.
The fact that sometimes you can't work out if they're completely shit, or completely amazing.

Declan xxx

Thursday 16 July 2009

Jay Dee-Lightful...

http://www.we7.com/#/track/Wild!trackId=935114

Listening to J Dilla's 'Ruff Draft' was just another reassurance at how good a producer J Dilla was.
This song in particular stood out to me, not because I think one of his best beats on the album or his flow is grabbing me particularly; in fact, if anything, it's pretty ridiculous. But that's why I love it. I love how off-kilter it is, and I love it's charming, clumsy plod from start to finish. It sounds like a track that doesn't know that it's catchy when it really is, almost like it was self-conscious. But self-conscious in a boisterous way (however much of a contradiction that is), bopping at every hand-clap.
I guess it's ridiculousness comes in the fact that one of the best hip-hop producers of all time sampled a child singing a Slade song.

I have only recently realised now how many of the songs that I heard as a teen and deemed my favourite Hip-Hop tracks or albums, had songs written by or were produced by J Dilla. I guess that says it all.
If you don't know him, get to know him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla

Huw

This Man Has Me Wrapped Round His Little Finger



What a fucking genius on all accounts is Frank Zappa.

Not only is he, à mon avis, the only true rock musician to do anything significant in the field of classical music, but he's edgy, he makes you feel uneasy, he makes you piss yourself laughing, he makes you feel fucking outraged at how perfect some of his modulations and harmonies are, he also took the American Censorship Comittee to court on grounds of evasion of freedom of speech and won.
He also has a moustache of regal proportions.

I like it when artists take the piss out of you, and Zappa certainly does. Not in a childish wasy, in a way to challenge you, and to make you think wisely about how you live your cultural and political life. And he's a top class comedian in terms of lyrics as well, a real satirist.

The only other person in music who I think can match these sorts of qualities, (not to say these are always desirable) is Mark E. Smith, of The Fall:



Imagine Morrisey but more rude, and that's but an introduction to Mark E. Smith.
If ye can, check out 'English Scheme' by The Fall, it's got a great line in it, which is "The clever ones tend to emigrate". It's delivered with such irony. Top class.

Anyway, bon nuit,
I'm off to bed to read "Disgrace" by J.M Coetzee, my new favourite author.

Lots of love to you all,
Declan, Mysore,
India
xxxxx

P.s. I'm home soon. :o)

Sunday 12 July 2009

I Just Think These Are Some Of The Best Written

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
Louise, she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze
I can't find my knees"
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

Tuesday 7 July 2009

Monday 6 July 2009

"Yo! What's up, gee, some homey has been dissing my bitch!"

These were my words to a perplexed Korean tourist when he asked my to give an 'example' of English comedy.

I think I should have left it at "Back of the net".