Emperor Fuckshit

'Randum'.

The actual best cover art ever is this:

Do you live with people who are Christians? I can understand you being a bit pissed off in those circumstances. And the 'waste of money' argument is a pretty good one: I don't actually buy presents for anyone at the moment, so I'm immune to that. Give it a few years, though...

'Jingle All the Way' is fantastic. I can't believe that it's Christmas unless/until I've seen that movie (and listened to 'A Fairytale of New York').

"AAAGH! ZIS TERBOMANNNN!!!!!"

"I am NOT a POEVOERT!!!! I justwaslooking forTURBOMANDOLL!!!!"

My suggestion would be 'A Hobo's Christmas'. It's a bad movie in almost all senses, but it's the kind of thing that you can't hate because it's so gentle and inoffensive and full of Christmas loveliness. Might be hard to track down (dirt-cheap made for TV movie), but it might be worth seeing if a crap cable channel is showing it.

How can anyone hate a Christmas movie, anyway? They're Christmas movies, and so by definition heart-warming and gorgeous.

...but the rest just sounds so out of touch with what Frank should be about. Million Dead were fresh, new, violent and all round shockingly good, Frank on his own is just dull as shit.

That's what it comes down to, I think. FT fans who weren't that into Million Dead will say, "well, he's just a proficient folk artist, good for a sing along, he shouldn't have to be 'angry'". But people who really loved MD will feel... not quite 'betrayed', but... disappointed, I suppose is the word. I get the feeling that Frank could've been so much more. Sure, he might be a good acoustic folk-y singalong artist (and I'd dispute even that, really -- he's no Billy Bragg or Johnny Cash or anything; 'dull' is quite judicious), but there are loads of people who can do that. Frank circa MD was special.

And that doesn't imply that MD fans 'could never have been happy' with solo Frank or anything as glib as that. Like I said, I enjoyed a lot of the early stuff. But since CP, he's just another bloke with a guitar.

It'd be like if Steve Albini had disbanded Big Black and started a fairly good Polka band. Not bad for what it is but, come on... it's Steve Albini.

Fair enough. Have you heard the other MD-related sideproject, Who Owns Death TV? featuring the lovely Julia? They're alright, far closer to the MD sound.

I listened to some of the Myspace uploads when they were 'The Quiet Kill'. They were all instrumentals at that point, and we're very one-note 'DUH-DUH-DUH-DUHDUHDUH'-type abortions. Haven't checked them out in a while though. Is it worth it? Do they have a vocalist these days?

Oh, and have you been to Million-dead.org (recently)? They have a lot of early, hard-to-find stuff, but also unreleased songs which were demos for a never-released-or-even-anywhere-close-to-finished third album. No vocals, but still kind of interesting to get a glimpse of what might have been. (Link).

I remember them being not that good, but I only gave them a quick listen, and that was a while ago.

Does he do any Million Dead covers in his solo gigs?

He used to do quite a lot when he first started. I've seen/heard him play, at one time or another, 'After the Rush Hour', 'A Song to Ruin', 'Smiling at Strangers on Trains', 'Medicine' and 'Harmony No Harmony'. I'm sure I'm forgetting some; I have vague recollections of a version of 'Margot Kidder' or 'Achilles Lung' or maybe both.

I doubt he does so anymore. I last saw him about 18 months ago, and there were no MD songs in the set. I don't think he'd be re-incorporating any, because of everything he's said about moving away from that style. I think the covers came from necessity more than anything, due to his paucity of material.

I also wouldn't read too much in to him playing "Dancing Queen" as I saw him do it in October 2005 as an encore in a really small bar in Cambridge

I know it is/was a regular thing. He used to do 'We are the Champions' as well at times. I don't see how that mitigates it.

I loved Million Dead. There are maybe half a dozen bands/artists from 2000 onwards that I really adore, and they were one of them. The first album is just thirty-five minutes of tearing, screeching anger (with a five minute break for the title track, which is nevertheless still excellent), and that is incredibly rare these days. Political bands wearing their hearts on their sleeves and making few if any concessions to demographic-targeting and cleaning off the edges are a rare thing, as far as I can tell. 'A Song to Ruin' restored my faith in music, in Leftism, in... life, generally, I think. Cor.

Some of their stuff that pre-dates ASTR is also surprisingly awesome, incidentally (the 'There are Ghosts' cover, 'Mute Group', 'Reformulating the Challenge...', 'Gnostic Front'). Though some of it, like any band's first recordings, suffers from ropey production.

Their second album left me with a huge feeling of disappointment after the first few listens. It just sounded so full of filler. I heard that, at the time, they would compose their set-lists by writing down not the name of the song, but the artist that the song 'reminded them of'. To me, that sums up a lot of what was wrong with HNH: incredibly ersatz. Many of the most obvious tributes (Black Flag aping on 'Plan B' most notably) were miles wide of the mark due to production that didn't even attempt to recreate the relevant band's sound. Much more mellow, too, which was obviously a conscious attempt to make a 'change of direction'. I can see the thinking behind that, no-one wants to stand still creatively, but to me MD were so distinctive that more of the same would have been absolutely welcome.

I have gotten into the album more recently, and there are a lot of good tracks in hindsight. It just wasn't what I was looking for at the time at all.

Anyway, Franksolo. I remember being really excited after hearing his first few tracks. 'Harmony No Harmony' (the song) was already a fantastic omen, and 'The Real Damage' and 'Worse Things Happen at Sea' proved that he could take on new subject matter whilst remaining amusingly grounded and/or bitter and pissed off. At the same time, the 'After the Rush Hour' 'cover' and 'Nashville, Tennessee' proved that he could transfer his politics into a new sound. I remember having a chat with a mate at that point (also an ex-MD fan) and remarking that the lyrics to the first few songs were as good as anything from ASTR (my mate responded with, 'uh... if you say so...'). I continued to check out his new stuff now and then, and felt that 'Father's Day' (or 'My Dad's a Cunt' depending on which version you got) was the zenith of his marrying folk musicianship to gutsy politicised ranting. (His lyrics became more quasi-political and obviously personal at this point, but I kind of expected that, and didn't see it as necessarily a bad thing).

I saw him live for the first time at roughly the time he released 'Campfire Punkrock'. Tiny venue, great atmosphere, broadness of crowd composition that YI mentioned. Excellent gig. Except... as his encore he played a cover of 'Dancing Queen' (and didn't play 'Father's Day' at any point). This, I felt, was a bad omen. The self-satisfied, 'look what I'm doing' irony of the song choice aside, it was kind of a warning that he was now very much just 'doing what he wanted to do' / pissing about. That's fine; good luck to him. But the scene needs musically proficient, angry musicians. He could be that if he so chose. I was disappointed.

I checked out some of the stuff released in between CP and the album, and then went to see him again before the release of 'Sleep is for the Week'. He was playing with Dive Dive this time, which completely shot the intimacy factor to shit. And the songs were just... bland. The extra instruments were a case of subtraction by addition, and it was just an incredibly boring experience. One of his songs ('We Were Anarchists', I think) has the lyric, "I've got friends who are bankers / and it'd be an easy rhyme to call them wankers / but in truth I admire how they live." I mean... just fuck off. If you're experiencing some kind of regretful guilt about your youthful extremism then fine, whatever, but the catharsis doesn't need to be public. The only bright spot I can remember was 'Thatcher Fucked the Kids', and I think that was more for the shouty chorus than anything else.

I kind of got off the train at that point. Bought the album and was underwhelmed, which at that point I expected. I haven't acquired 'Love Song and Ire' by any means. He's welcome to do whatever he likes, obviously, and he seems like a nice enough bloke. But his tastes for anthemic self-referentiality are coming to the fore now, and it's at the expense of his creativity and, more broadly speaking, his work. There was an interview with him that I read not long after MD split in which he said he doubted he would form another 'hardcore' band, because he was 'bored of shouting at people'. Fine, mellow out, good luck to you. But I won't be around to watch it: the world already has one Badly Drawn Boy.

EDIT: Accidentally described ASTR as 'the fist album'. Must've been Freudian...

Oh, and for any fellow Shields/Butcher boosters, the night was nicely capped off by a drunken MSN conversation when I got in that involved coming up with 'much less cool' names for MBV songs. We got:

'When You Have a Kip', 'Don't Do That', 'Lots of Ladies', 'Where are We Going?', 'Not That Deep', 'Oh, I See', 'Let's Tongue Wrestle!', 'Shortly', 'You are Drunk', 'That's Enough, Thanks', 'I'm Winded!', 'My Fingers Have Fallen Off', 'Arrive on Your Tod', 'Every Now and Then', 'Not so Fast' and, lastly, 'Run Me Over in a Car'.

My Bloody Valentine at the Apollo in Manchester. Firstly, I only got tickets about two days before the gig. I paid like three quid to my mate who got four from E-Bay. We got completely blindsided. I had, pretty much coincidentally, been listening the fuck out of them for the past week. They're just a good summer band. I didn't even know they were on tour until my mate who lives in Norwich mentioned that he was going to see them in London. I presumed I would've missed out on tickets for any reachable venue; apparently not.

The actual gig was just perfect. Almost the exact set-list that I would've wanted (I would've substituted 'Soft as Snow...' in for 'Cigarette in Your Bed', but I didn't really expect to hear 'Soft...' because seemingly no-one likes that song). Gorgeous ethereal quality to it. The first time that I've been to a gig with video or some kind of visual effect (or any kind of non-aural accompaniment) and thought 'yeah... this gig would be sub-optimal without this...'. Dancing, head-nodding, accidentally twatting the girl next to me whilst busting a move too many to 'Soon'. Ah...

The nice thing about going to see MBV is that you can really believe that it's no different to how seeing them in the 90s would've been. They have no new material to try to crowbar in around songs that are actually, you know, good. They don't really have a mystique/aura/oftheirtimeishness to have rubbed off (c.f. seeing Gang of Four and the Undertones in the Noughties). It's 'all about the music, man'. One of the best experiences of my life. I could quite happily spend the remainder of my existence just going to that gig over and over again on repeat until I die.

EDIT: I'd also recently split up with my ex in circumstances that Kevin Shields appears to have cribbed (using a time machine, I suppose, the crafty Mick bastard) precisely for the lyrics to 'You Never Should'. So I was able to convince myself that they were tacitly dedicating that song to me.

That's really nice. I'd wear it if I could find one snug-fitting enough. The Walhol pastiche is admittedly rather played-out, but I was still surprised to see it in this context.

According to their website, the pop-art collage is their third kit. It's available in small.

Billy Bragg -- Levi Stubbs' Tears.

Just an incredibly sad story, backed with a pretty simple guitar part. The trumpet part at the end, during the solo, gives it a slightly haunting or dream-like quality too. The lyrics "When the world falls apart / Some things stay in place" are delivered fantastically, and sent shivers down my spine when I heard it performed live. It has a unique tone as well... sad, but kind of defiant and grimly hopeful.

Keren Ann -- By the Cathedral.

Another piece of evidence to back up my conviction that trumpets solos are fucking depressing. There's something I find really touching about the lyrics "darling... I've been mellow and tender, darling". Sort of recalls to me the feeling of desperately wanting to show someone how you feel and how you've changed, but being unable to do so for whatever reason.

Big Country -- Chance.

Yeah, alright, Big Country. But the story told by the lyrics is genuinely moving, I think, and the bagpipe-esque guitars have a certain sorrowful quality. And whilst crude and sort of 'do you see?', the closing "Oh, Lord, I never felt so low" repetition is sang well enough to work. Like 'Levin Stubbs Tears' it's sort of particularly bleak because it talks about the kind of depression that, rather than being temporary and desperate, just builds up slowly over the course of a life.

Sunny Day Real Estate -- In Circles.

It reminds me of a girl. "I long / to heal your wounds / though I bleed myself / I bleed myself." The lyrics are pretty much the perfect example of effective simplicity, and the beginning couplet of just "sincerity / trust in me" is ace, and allows Enigk to do what he does best... hold notes at a very high pitch. A lot of other stuff from 'Diary' is pretty depressing, really, most notably 'Sometimes'. 'Seven' is sad too, but has a hopeful volta, and is too aesthetically pleasing to be really sad. It's just emotive generally, I think.

The Smiths -- I Know it's Over.

Obvious choice, but fuck it.

I'm sure I'm missing some stuff that has had an affect on me in the past, and I feel remiss for not including a 'Today is the Day' song, but that's what jumps out at me right now.

My thoughts posted verbatim from another board:

Three actors, one character. As if David Brent was such an interesting and layered character he needed to be split three ways (with Stiller doing 'Pompous Manager Cunt', the Woman Who Can't Act playing 'Daft Racist' and Gervais himself doing a nice line in replacing jokes with social awkwardness).

Bah. It was what I expected pretty much. I was surprised at all the various 'edgy' topics (disability, murder, racism) being dealt with simultaneously - how will they fill the remaining episodes? But obviously it's this type of humour Gervais wants to push to the fore, if his stand-up shows are anything to go by.

As for Stiller, he really didn't add anything. A couple of his lines made me laugh, but that's not really saying much for him seeing as he borrowed his delivery style from Gervais. His presence was, at least, a mild diversion from that woman who was really annoying.

I laughed a few times, but not enough to counteract the overall tone and subject matter of the show - not to mention it being stylistically indistinguishable from The Office - which really grated.

I won't write it off completely yet, mostly out of optimism because I actually did like series one of the Office and, initially, series two - until the Emperor's new clothes were dramatically torn off on repeated viewings.

Thanks for that. I will check out Burmese Days, it sounds like a pretty good read. I was aware of the...uh...two-partedness in RTWP, and I'd be much more interested in tracking down the essay on socialism (part two) than the first, narrative part.

1984 slipped my mind in the first post. I'd say it's a good read and perhaps the most accessible of his works, other than AF. However, from a modern perspective, it seems bizarre that such an important anti-authoritarian work has fallen into the culture of petty, pop-liberalism today. BIG BRUTHA IS WATCHIN YOU, MAH FREND. But still, Orwell can hardly be blamed for that...

I will try to find '...Spanish Beans' on the internet somewhere, sounds interesting. I agree HTC is one of Orwell's best and certainly his best work of reportage.

Dissapointed you didn't think much of CUFA or KTAF. The latter in particular probably appeals more to the idealistic young anti-capitalist in us all (well, in me anyway). I might re-read it to see if I still like it now I've matured a bit. Another one added to the pile, I guess...

What EF is really saying, is that he is smarter than us.

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The Boosh is absolute bollocks. Look Howard, MONKEYS! wearing TROUSERS! Haha, they jusxtaposed two unrelated ideas and mentioned animals again. The smug cunts.

I decided to re-read 'Words' and 'Nausea' by Sartre in order to get me back into the existentialist mood neccesary to start on his Roads to Freedom trilogy today or tomorrow or whenever. A friend tells me they're not particularly well written, but then again I'm genuinely more appreciative of JPS' writing style than he is.

For anyone looking for a gentler introducting into existentialism, I'd check out Camus' absurdist works, probably the Stranger, the Outsider and the Plague over everything else. I'm going to knock off the Stranger whenever I can get around to it, although I'm pressed for time at the moment. My mom, who had never read anything much besides chic lit, enjoyed the Stranger and the Plague a lot upon reading them, so I guess they're pretty accessible, and the former also fairly short.

Before the school holiday I started to read War and Peace, and got a few hundred pages into it. I'll probably resume it when I go back in September. It's decent enough at the moment, but I imagine it'll get better when it isn't primarily focussing on the ins and outs of tawdry Russian aristocratic affairs. A bit dull so far to be honest.

Found out the school library is quite well-stocked. Was going to start 'If On a Winter's Night...', but this version has a massive introduction I can't quite summon myself to either undertake or dismiss entirely, so I don't know if I'll bother with this or not. Also tried to start Aurelius' 'Meditations', but, like a lot of pre-Renaissance philosophy it is in places either completely irrelevent or horribly obscure or both. It's also written in that annoying 'numbered propositions' form, which was unwieldy if understandable when used by Wittgenstein, and at least I cared about what he was saying.

To prepare for A2 English I have to read Stoker's Dracula, which I'm doing now, and some stuff by Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter. Bleh.

Finally, I'm going to try and squeeze in some Dostoyevsky short stories and, now that I've finally got a copy, Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience/Walden'. Should keep me busy for a while.

Steven Speilberg - Schindler's List, but Saving Private Ryan if you won't go with the former.

Alfred Hitchcock - Difficult to choose. I'd probably second North by Northwest though.

Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver. More interesting as a character study than Goodfellas, both rather similar films though.

Oliver Stone - Wouldn't bother. Platoon is alright, nothing special. His body of work other than that is solid but generally indifferent.

Woody Allen - Annie Hall or Manhattan. Flip for it.

Quentin Tarantino - Maybe Pulp Fiction but probably wouldn't bother with anything. Except PF he hasn't really done much.

FF Coppolla - The Godfather or the Conversation. The former probably pips it, but they're both top five all time films for me.

Akira Kurosawa - One from Ran, Rashomon or Samurai. Flip a three sided coin.

Orson Welles - The Third Man shades Citizen Kane for me.

Sergio Leone- Il Buono! Il Brutto! Il Cattivo! Never seen the un-hacked to bits version of OUaTiA, so I can't say for sure though. Show the Bicycle Thief and Ben-Hur as well as an assistant director master class. They're as good as any of the films he directed.

Luc Besson - Nope...

Stanley Kubrick - Hit and miss body of work. FMJ, Clockwork Orange and The Shining are all bollocks. Show 2001 or Dr Strangelove, preferably the latter, which is the only time Kubrick got his anti-war message really correct, even if he did take the ending from Spike Milligan.

What no...?

Billy Wilder - Chrissakes! Show Double Idemnity or Sunset Blvd., probably the latter.

Roman Polanski - Chinatown.

Mel Brooks - The Producers or Blazing Saddles.

Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times, City Lights, The Great Dictator.

Ingmar Bergman - Wild Strawberries or Fanny and Alexander. Seven Seals might (does) just look a little odd these days. Still good though.

I guess you could do Solaris (Tarkovsky rather than Soderbergh, obviously), but they'd mob you. Probably deservedly.

They're all cunts again. HAY ENDEMOLS THANKS 4 DA GAY STEROTYPES! NEVA GETS OLD!!!

Best of the Worst: Derrek and Science.

Loves Suicides

Bit of Googling unearthed that.

And, for more by the same author.

Sorry, I know I'm dragging up a very old thread here, but there seemed to be interest in this, and I have no idea where else to put it.

Throw it Away

Forming

Manimal

Media Blitz

Richie Dagger's Crime

OOTP7 is coming in the Autumn, so I'd say it's your call...

Out of the Park Baseball 6

www.ootpdevelopments.com

Absolutely the best available.

20 games in with my Red Sox in Dynasty Mode, on Pro level. Record is something like 15-5, so I'm thinking its getting a bit easy right now. I might play some exhibition games on All Star, and tweak the sliders to make it more challenging. Then again, I'm not really blowing teams out, so I don't know...

Had real problems hitting home runs when I first got the game. I'm getting better, but I still pop up a fair few when I try to hit out. Also, I keep trying to hit homers with my power guys, and their averages suffer as a result. Manny has 7 HRs so far, but is batting at something like a .260 clip. Also, I'm not giving up too many runs, even with Pitch Meter difficulty up to 50 and control down to -50. Should get better when I move up to Allstar.

My starters are all doing really well. Clement, Schilling and Wells all have ERAs between 2.50 and 3, which is good and realistic. Wakefield and Arroyo are both coming in under 2 though, which is a bit weird. Again, should get better results when I move up a level. Big stars for me so far have been Varitek (.380, 4HR) and Mueller (.350ish, 4HR). Haven't even been trying to hit homers with Mueller, he just keeps depositing balls over the monster. Big busts so far are Renteria (.250, 2HR), Bellhorn (.230ish, 2HR) and Millar (.240ish, 3HR). Ortiz got injured running into second on a line drive a few games ago, and will miss six weeks. Billy McMillon is his replacement in the majors, and Doug Mirabelli will take over as DH (he was doing great as a pinch-hitter and catcher for Wakefield, but has being horrible since starting to play every day). Bullpen has been pretty bipolar -- Timlin, Mantei and Foulke are sure-things (all ERA under 2, Foulke has four saves) but Embree has been streaky (4.4ish ERA) and Koch (I signed him to flesh out the middle relief corps), has given up a ton of hits and HRs, and has an ERA just under nine. Highlight of the season so far for me: Drilling Kazmir with a line-drive on the inside of the leg and then later getting the news that he'd been placed on the sixty-day DL.

All in all, an excellent game. Pretty realistic even when you play out games, and really captures the feel of the game well.

Oh, and everyone should lower Melvin Mora's stats (Power in particular). He's getting ridiculous in my dynasty -- on pace to hit 80HRs, at a .390 BA.

Yay. Now future generations can be infected by horrible guitar playing, and horrible music, and the so-so lyrics of Kurt Cobain.

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Oh get off your fucking high horse

You need Fugazi's 'The Argument' and '13 Songs' as well. Those two albums are absolutely excellent, most of the rest of their discography is very good also.