one from the vaults….
oh, this is funny… (ho’ ho’ ho’ ?) while looking for some rather boring design tools that i won’t bore you with i happened upon this ‘crapola translator’ so here is… marilyn’s shampoo in ‘ebonics’ (!)
muthafuck!
(the gorgeous image on this post is by shiny binary)
or : how i’m learning to stop worrying and start loving The Tears
like many pallid adolecents stranded in early ninieties suburbia suede were my teenage dream. they were the band i would wait forever outside a venue for, the band i talked to when no-one was looking, the band i would take a punch for.
more than a band: a badge. a gang. a gun.
pitched (at least by the music press if not by the band) somewhere between the smiths and bowie, suede were slimline, androgynous handclapping camp warapped around a concrete brick of satellite town frustration and anger. feyness with fuck you, if you like. looking at them now they were a bunch of unwashed, skinny arsed students – but back then – oh, the glamour!
suede were never political in the billy bragg sense of the word but always dealt squarely with he politics of the personal. whilst brett anderson’s millstone-like statement of bisexuality will no doubt be reprinted until his obituaries the real backbone of their gay politic came in fact from drummer simon gilbert (who publicly campaigned for the levelling of the age of consent). the body of anderson’s lyrics dealt instead with lonely housewives, desperate teenagers and council estate dads. not as psuedo-intellectual as the manics and without the overt humour of pulp, suede meant something.
the band that britpop forgot.
after five albums, some nasty drug habits and several changes of line-up it was no great shocker when they finally split up. the news however that brett was to form a new band with his original guitarist and writing partner bernard butler was – and also therefor rather exciting to say the very least. john and paul. bowie and ronson. mick and keef. morrisey and marr. brett and bernard.
of course it could only ever be a disappointment.
weirdly here comes the tears sounds far more like where suede left off without bernard than anything they did with the original lineup. or in fact anything new.too polite, too contained. the sound of two men trying not to piss each other off does not make good rock & roll.
but lately…
well, i got new head phones and the sun is shining and somehow it all sounds so much better.
maybe it’s a sign i’m getting old when i start to notice things like ‘production quality’ but these things matter to me now. here come.. is a nice little album, and like a new morning is very short on imediate throat-grabbers but has several really nice growers that i’m now very fond of. nice little songs that sound good on a sunny day. in fact the songs that work best for me on the album are the little melodic pop songs like two creatures, lovers and refugees. no demon but a lot of animal soul.
i know that were they a band with no baggage that i had no expectations of i would probably really like them. it’s like meeting a teenage crush again when you are both all grown up. i have to put all that breathless teenage adoration out of my mind and just get along with them for who they are now and not who they used to be.
(but secretly, i still have my fingers crossed for a passionate fling with brett’s solo album)
_start(introducing)
can you believe it? no more totp. so sad. first smash hits now the pops. my childhood cornerstones are dropping like flies.
i just read this post on wordpress vs myspace and i have to say i agree with so much of it. i resisted opening any sort of myspace account until very recently but finally succumed for ‘promotional’ reasons. it’s true there is a lot of exposure to be had on myspace but it allways makes me feel sort of dirty. and not in a good way.
firstly it makes my head hurt – there is just so much going on – it reminds me of those hideous satalite music chanels that have text message boxes and ring tone adverts on them and the music videos crammed into a tiny wee box in the top left of the screen.
and the pulling. oh god, it’s like one big ‘hope-i-get-a-shag’ fest.
it all makes me feel a bit ill.
also it’s so hard to make pretty – i mean, sure, you can customise it – but only so far. like covering your school books. they’re still school books – just with matt goss on top.
and the rss support is shocking. and i’m now obssessed with rss.
and and and…
i realise it is an easy way to get online if you’re not computer handy but there are so many better ways. when i first started a blog i was with blogger and allthough ive now moved over to wordpress which i love to bits (the plugins, ah the plugins) i still have a real respect for blogger. for what it is it’s a really easy slick way of getting out there and beats the shit out of myspace.
i realise the main attraction is the ‘comunity’ aspect but ah, i don’t know, it just always feels like a whole bunch of people with nothing much to say. and their tits out.
maybe i’m being overly harsh – but yay for wordpress all the same!
it’s official : billie piper will be leaving doctor who at the end of this season and i must say i will be very sad to see her go. playing rose she has been – as the ninth doctor would have it – fantastic. she has just the right combination of screen charisma, scrappy prettieness and believable normality needed to flesh out the ‘chav with a heart’ character. oh, and a smile that lights up the screen.
i’m not going to be all doom laden about it – who knows how they will choose to replace her, it could be just as good or even better – but i do hope they give her a huge send off. i have a nagging suspition it will have something to do with that satan-prophesy. so not a dry eye in the house i predict.
well, there have been a few changes around marilyn’s shampoo’s parts (ooh er…)
i’ve just finished updating my website to utilise rss feeds from this bog (ive become a bit obsessed with the handy little blighters!) and so i’ve shoogled things around on here a little too. firstly i will no longer be posting my art and web design work in the main stream as i had never intended this blog to be for work, it just started getting that way because i was enjoying being able to post new work so easily (unlike the previous design of my website) HOWEVER there are now catagories for digital art, traditional art, web design and earlybird (work) news in the sidebar so that anyone who wants to look at my stuff – either current or archive – can still see it there. i may post update announcements from time to time if there is something i’m particularly happy with or whatever. i’m doing this with the help of a rather nifty wordpress category visibility plug-in by rich hamilton – allthough it did throw out my drop down menu which i was rather fond of…
i’m still working on trying to get rss feeds into a flash version of my site but i’ve just started a new job so it may be a couple of months before i can come back to that.
i’ll keep you posted.
as it were.
i’m currently working on a publishers web site and an accompanying children’s author’s site. they are both very exciting projects and should be online within the next few months. more on this nearer launch time..
i watched moulin rouge again last night… i love that film so much. it’s such a full-on, opulant masterpiece. nicole kidman is just gorgeous in it – classic high end, old school hollywood glamour. it looks, sounds and plays so great that i can even ignore ewan mcgregor’s rather ropey singing. and as for the cover of ‘diamonds are a girls best friend’ spliced with ‘material girl’ – well, you can imagine how much that floats my boat…
Preen is run by Edinburgh based Hair & Makeup artists Julie McGuire and Rebekah McVitie and offers bespoke Hair & Makeup design for weddings and special occasions, photographic, fashion and editorial.
woo hoo! after a nerve wracking 48 hours of blogless blank nothing where marilyn’s shampoo should be all is well again and i can finally exhale.
thanks as allways to joefish for bailing me out AGAIN
