We’re havin fun and doin time/ Sucking on our samovar and lime

I’ve been keeping to myself a fair bit recently, working on project for my site, which is due to go up in the next few days, all things willing, not least of which is my understanding of, what may be to some, simple concepts in my, just read, FrontPage book, but to my basic mind are comparable to Mathematical Philosophy or some other alien discourse.

In the interim, I was please as hell to find that Jane Walker has just put up the brand spanking new Toy Love web site, and damned wonderful it is too. Lots and lots of information and trivia, history, a nice link to my Propeller page, and so much more. Why can’t all band sites be this good? No over reliance on Flash or gimmicks, no fucking songs that launch without a how’s yer father and take over the system, bashing themselves up against the perfectly selected piece of minimal German techno that you may be enjoying at the moment of entry.

That, changing the subject somewhat, in itself, is reason to avoid Myspace as much as possible. That and the fact that I don’t feel comfortable giving someone as historically unscrupulous as Rupert Murdoch too many ins to my life. There is, with that ownership, something unsettling about the site and I simply don’t trust Newscorp to do the right thing with all that power. I’m there, but only just.

And I’m listening to, today, mostly:

Fujiya Miyaki – Transparent Things (quirky pop on the eclectically mighty Tirk label)

North by Northwest (Paul Morleys’ rather fantastic boxed set of Northern UK post punk, complete with a couple of gems I’d completely forgotten, rough as hell, but that’s the point)

Deep Disco Culture Vol 1 (underground as fuck but soulful disco gems that most people have never heard of, and unless they are as obsessive as me, don’t really want to..)

You Better Believe It Soul Vol. 2 (more obscure old Warner, Elektra and Atlantic 45s)

Oh, and a bunch of bump bump bump singles that I won’t go into now

Just like Pagliacci did…*
*its the obvious line to use ok?

The second part of the album thing I started here……

Smokey Robinson and The Miracles - Make It Happen (Tamla 1967)…the great Motown myth is that Stevie and Marvin took the company into the era of great albums, with the label fighting all the way. That’s not strictly true, but, yes, I guess it adds to the mythology somewhat. Those wondrous Norman Whitfield albums from The Temptations predate the era of Music of My Mind and What’s Going On and so do the two finest albums from Motown’s greatest songwriter, William “Smokey” Robinson. One of those, Sings Smokey is another Temptations album from 1964, complete with My Girl. The other is this record is this glorious album from 1967. Reissued in 1970 with the last track, the now iconic Tears of a Clown as the new title after it was a massive hit. But this record stands squarely on its own as one of Motown’s finest releases, ever. We all know Dylan’s famous line about Smokey, it’s over quoted but still stands as the gospel truth and the evidence is herein. Ever the most, superficially, facile, intent seems to flow like some of divine moment But the magic of this record is not just the majesty of the songs it’s the execution, and more that, its Smokey’s astounding production. His arrangements and mix absolutely redefine the use of space in a song and his instinct as to what to use and what to lose at precisely the right moment is pure genius….on My Love For You, for example, the strings are used with such economy, drifting around the hint of a piano and the simple snare. Not one song here has an element that is unneeded or overstays its welcome. Put it one, turn the lights off and float away…

Mantronix-The Album (Sleeping Bag 1985)…oh, yeah I guess it sounds a bit dated now but this is another album that, in its own humble way (ok, its hip hop…its not that humble) changed the face of popular music. And toss any track from this album on within the earshot of any old B boy and watch the involuntary tears of joy. When this first hit the streets back in ’85 nobody had heard, or for that matter expected anything like it. This was electronic rhythmic mastery from the end of the universe and with it half a dozen sub genres were invented, or at least a doorway was opened to, not least of which were the big beat boom and drum’ n’ bass. If this album had only included Bassline and Needle to the Groove it would’ve been enough to nail its place. It confused the fuck out of the hardcore hip-hoppers at the time (and lets face, they’ve often been the more conservative element in the post funk / disco universe and most resistant to change) but it signposted a clear path forward. Oh, and it rocks…still.

E-Dancer – Heavenly (Planet E 1998)..I said in the first part of this listing that house music is a genre that has produced few classic albums, and so it is. But not so its mutant cousin from Detroit. On the contrary Techno as a genre has produced dozens of great long players, but a few stand out, in particular this killer collection from Kevin Saunderson’s alter ego. Heavenly, many of the tracks from which, appeared as singles too, of course, comfortably bridges the gap between where techno had come from and where it was going. It has elements of the early rough core of Detroit’s rough machine soul and yet it also points to the more mellow direction the music was going to and works as well on a big dancefloor as it does on the headphones. The album drags in the likes of Carl Craig, Juan Atkins and Kenny Larkin, all big guns in the techno universe, and all of whom provide worthy contributions, but its Saunderson’s trademark keyboard sounds and moody swirls and dives, oh and his subtlety which are the real stars here. Techno was never, despite its reputation amongst non believers about being loud and banging. There are hints of Inner City but this record is far deeper than anything recorded under that name. A bunch of us played this album incessantly for god knows how long and I still grab it at least once a fortnight. Hard to find now, but if any album lives up to its title…

Various Artists – AK79 (Ripper 1980)..this about the vinyl release of this record, not the CD which I compiled a decade ago and stands on its own as a documentary of the Auckland Punk scene. No, they may contain many of the same tracks but they sound and feel a million miles from each other. No CD can ever re-capture the raw snarl of the thick PolyGram pressing plant dinner plate vinyl complete with sub standard mastering that was a feature of both NZ plants in the late seventies (PolyGram mastered stereo for months with only one speaker working and the other under a desk). But for all that, it sounded as shitty as it should and was just right, especially thru a battered Sony 3 in 1 system after having been walked over at a dozen parties by gatecrashers with Doc Martens’ finest on as they threw bottles at the confused and protesting host. No, that was the way AK79 was meant to sound and the way we listened to it. From the opening bars of the Zwines anthem, Mysterex (about ex Scavengers singer Mike Lesbian, who was proudly proclaimed by the wall at the club to be a C**t) to the last notes of The Toy Love Song, we knew every bloody word of every song (ok maybe not The Swingers who were the odd ones out and never that cool) many many months before this came out. This was our record and we fucking loved it…And you know what, that battered old vinyl copy still sounds better than the CD all these years later. Nothing to do with nostalgia, ok…

Blaze – 25 Years Later (Motown 1990)…once again, it’s about the vinyl which is a different beast to the CD, released simultaneously. The CD was reordered and had these annoying little talking bits between the songs. To be fair, the CD order and the story it told was as Blaze originally wanted but the label said no and talking bits between songs are always annoying, let’s face it. So the big black version works best. But with this album, Blaze, who had made some of the seminal early East Coast Deep House singles, gave us what may be the finest Motown album of its decade (if you place it in the last year of the eighties), and let’s not forget, the label still mattered then, in the years before it became just another Universal label. This is the most soulful, most delicate urban music ever produced by a house act, from the sensual, post Curtis of Lover Man to the yearning, Wonder-ish Missing You to the shuffling, reggae-ish We All Must Live Together, the best version of which is the remix on the 12” from co-producer Timmy Regisford. This album has an enormous, and much deserved reputation amongst those that know it but somehow got lost in an America which was awash with swingbeat and chicken dancing in harem pants at the time. That it is, and has been, unavailable for 15 odd years is a crime.

Lil Louis and The World – From the Mind of Lil Louis (Diamond 1989)..my favourite Lil Louis record is the US Epic EP of I Called U which I’ve mentioned before, but its hard to go pass either of his early albums, both of which still sound like the masterwerks they are, a decade and a half later. What I particularly love about this, the first of them, is the way it so successfully veers between the rather, at the time, off the wall almost nightmarish twisted oddness (but house had so much oddness in its first decade that it didn’t seem quite so odd then if you get the drift) of French Kiss, and I Called U, to the sweetly soulful Nyce & Slow and Insecure, all of which feel connected by the inherent jazzness (god, another word that definitely doesn’t exist, I guess it does now…its better than the god awful “jazzy”) of it all. What I’m trying to say in a very clumsy way, is that, for me, great jazz albums veer almost unpredictably all over the place, sometimes into uncomfortable zones, sometimes into easy warmth (think Coltrane at the Village Vanguard or Saxophone Colossus), and this album does all that, and seems part of that tradition. The uneasy noise of Blackout, complete with Biblical quotes into Tuch Me , co-produced by Larry Heard really sums that up. Once again, this album is, these days, predictably unavailable.

Young ladies / my Mercedes

I think I wrote elsewhere on this blog that it was a crime, nay, offensive, that the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame doesn’t have space for the New York Dolls, perhaps the most important rock group, in sheer influence that the USA has produced since the Velvet Underground

As flew into Jakarta last week I had similar thoughts about Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. I saw them some 25 years ago in London and it was a personal life changing moment.

But more than that, they, and the explosion they symbolised were a life changing moment in rock’n’roll (which of course hip-hop is an integral part of, despite its belief to be something above it, its all part of the same beast) when Flash and crew released, on Bobby Robinson’s legendary Enjoy label, back in 1979, the tune that turned my head again 27 years later, Superappin’. Of course they took a large part of it some three years later and reworked it into the massive worldwide, genre defining record The Message but that tune still, to my mind stands in the shadow of its protgéner. For a start this is far more funky, complete with an unbelievable backing groove from Enjoy’s oddly named house band, Pumpkin and Friends. And it has an urgency, a rawness, that was gone three years later after it had been smoothed out by Sylvia Robinson.

Steinski did a fantastic Sugarhill mix a couple of years back, released as an album, which really twists and turns itself around the live funk elements evident in so much of the best early hip-hop. No studio bozos rhyming over Good Times here; and its peaks when it drops into Superappin’, which just propels the mix, gives it unbelievable momentum before dropping you exhausted into the next track. On the headphones anyway…..

How, in gods name can they have a (silly idea anyway) Hall of Fame without these guys? It should’ve been an instantaneous nomination once the 25 year point (since their first release) was reached.

The energy of Superappin seemed to be a perfect way to tumble through the smog into Jakarta. A prelude to the madness and intensity of this great city, beginning at the airport as you head for a taxi and the touts swamp you relentlessly.

I guess I sound like a Jakarta virgin, the way I enthuse naively about the town. So what, I am and happy to be so, revelling in it all and right now I understand the guy (an Indonesian friend who has spent years in an out of the place) who said to me you can spend your whole life there and never know it.

We go to Jakarta for a holiday. If you live in Bali, it makes perfect sense…so we do, this being our fourth trip in the past twelve months.

This city is personified by our hotel, or at least its surroundings. The Alila, exquisitely designed, but not expensive by Western, or even most other Asian standards, sits just north of Merdeka Square, the governmental nerve centre of the nation, surrounded by third world alley ways and sometimes, although not always, squalid food stalls in the street.

In the same way, turn off the wide green boulevards of the so called golden triangle that run through central Jakarta, complete with dozens of massive skyscrapers, and lush, watered gardens, and you can be anywhere in urban Indonesia in a matter of metres, with its chaos and noise.

I’m not sure how I feel about it, although I know that Jakarta, and indeed the country as a whole, needs this wealth to grow, assuming of course, and it’s a big assumption when the cops on the roundabouts on the boulevards are still, I’m reliably informed, pulling drivers over for alleged and often imaginary offences….to boost personal coffers… that there is some eventual filtering down of said wealth. One can but hope.

Ok, so with reservations aside, every time we go to the city we wander and explore more and more, and find more and more places that we want to return to. Which means we need to stay longer each time. There are the malls of course, and then there are more malls, and more and it makes Singapore look like a backwater for shopping. The five stories of the Mangga Dua electronics computer emporium make Funan IT seem sterile and overpriced, and if you are so inclined to battle through the front lines of Blok M you can find anything, including the one thing you can’t find in Singapore: cool, innovative clothing and style that isn’t from the catalogue of some multi-national, be it Gucci or Robinsons (although that’s all here too, real or fake).

So what did we do? We got stuck in traffic of course, but, despite its odious reputation the traffic snarl (macet in local slang) which is never as bad as traffic I’ve encountered in Europe and in particular the roads around dirty old London; or for that matter in LA or NYC. But it’s shocking still and I have to smirk when Aucklanders talk of traffic issues in that city; or force back a howl of derision when I hear it from Wellingtonians. Or Sydney for that matter…..

We shopped but the frustration in JK is, as always, the lack of a decent guide to the city. There is not, as far I can work out, a decent printed or online reference as there is to most cities half its size. So you rely on pointers from others and instinct. But we walked and explored and shopped. Bulés get strange looks from the locals walking the back streets but so be it. Down in South Jakarta we wandered the streets looking for the market that we were taken to a year back in the back of somebody’s car without taking much notice of where or how you get there. With the help of a slowly (very slowly) increasing vocab of pidgin Bahasa we found it, and of course finding it was more than half the fun.

There is at times, a bizarre logic in the city too, although not a profound logic. That the dozens of street stalls selling, not very discreetly, hard core porn, also sell Viagra, blatantly advertising the items (and whether they are pirated copies of not I do not know and have no intention of finding out) makes sense. Although it would make more sense not to have them all centred in the main boulevard of Glodok, one after another, perhaps a little more geographical disbursement may help expand (although such a word may not be the most appropriate when discussing Viagra) business, especially for the guy who sits in the 35^th stall along the street, selling the same items as the first 34. Then again, this is Indonesia. We found the plastic paddle pool stall street too…all the same, one after another…go figure.

We ate. I like eating and Jakarta is one hell of a place to eat. The Penang Bistro on Jl. Kebon Sirih has (and god, I hate this phrase) modern-Asian Malaysian derived cuisine served next to a giant waterfall wall feature, and we’ve been there a few times now, so much so, they seemed to know us. The Roti Prata may not be as good as the places in the north of Singapore, but its not far from it, and the surroundings are somewhat more pleasant..and you don’t spend half an hour trying to get a cab back after. And then there was Sushigroove…I love the name. It’s set in one of those restaurant mini malls, of which there are many, full of exquisitely designed rumah makans…served dynamite sushi, of course, including one called a Dynamite Roll. For RP35,000 (about US$3.70) they also served the Dragon Roll, named by one magazine recently as the best dish on the city. All in dark post industrial, almost Blade Runner-ish surroundings, their feature wall being sculptured with lights. Oh and killer cocktails also for Rp35,000, which we drank of course. Well, Brigid did, as I’m a firm Bintang man these days…dull, I know.

Other restaurants obviously were doing a similar trade as, the other moment of interest as we walked outside was an incredibly drunk Japanese salary-man being dragged screaming into his car. Throwing fists and kicking violently at all near, until they propelled him in, with some violence, to the back seat of the Kijang. I wondered how he would feel about his friends the next day when he saw the bruises they’d given him as their fists impacted with his head.

Gladly some other restaurant’s diners had the pleasure of his company.

We went to Dragonfly on Jl Gatot Subroto. More, sorry, “modern asian”, more upmarket but with another amazing feature wall. Two actually, one massive one, leading up to the industrial piping high above us, and made again with lighting; and another beside our table with huge waves of, I think mache or plaster above us. A wonderful, wonderful dining experience, helped by the over-priced cocktails that even I couldn’t help but partake in.

And I couldn’t help but wonder why, in New Zealand, we are rarely treated to restaurants that both look and taste this good. Although the country has some wonderful food, mostly in the main centres, I can think of less than a half a dozen eateries that aspire visually to this standard or come close. And yet cities in Asia have them by the score. Maybe it’s the good old enzild thing about aspirations to pretentiousness, about not wanting to be seen to be too clever because you get slammed if you do. The way the rest of NZ reacts to anything that has the whiff of not-like-us in Auckland is a case point.

We were also intrigued at Dragonfly by the badges that all the staff wore…we have no drugs here…that’s fine…we didn’t really want any, but it’s nice to know.

Sadly after an unbelievable meal we were forced out about 10.30 by the band who launched into the gruesome You’re Beautiful by England’s own Pat Boone revivalist, James Blunt, whose faux soul for the Idol generation, who have come to regard vocal squirming as talent, seems to be every where in Indonesia right. They followed that with something from the equally teeth gritting Coldplay, whose formless lightweight whingeing also seems follow us around. The expats on the prowl in the bar were loving it. We were thus unable to resist the urge to leave, which, considering the price of the cocktails, was a good thing.

The next day, somehow we had a reality check, as, craving a non modern Asian burger, we went into something called Chilli’s on Jl. Tharmin, and, since it was, as far as I could see, some American franchise joint of the type that fills the strip malls of that nation and makes middle America the shape so many of them are (I can’t talk), we had a big fat unhealthy grease burger and watched this enormous American couple (and I mean fucking huge) feed themselves plates of Nacho’s washed down by Coke, and their child, a large sprite. I felt like I was back in Vegas

Once again we had to leave, this time to the airport, where we found that a) because I’d misread the ticket after all those Dragonfly cocktails, and b) there was no traffic and it took 30 minutes to get to the airport instead of our allotted two hours, we were four hours early for our flight, which was then delayed for an hour. Is there much to do at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport for five hours? Even the free internet drags after a while….

I read Robert Fisk, listened to the iPod again as I did on the way in, and we finally arrived back in Bali about 1am. That strange taste was the fresh air….

moonshine / washing line / they suit him fine

It’s all over the web, the TV and the interesting media of course, but I have to have my little ten-peneth worth too. Of course I do, it was Syd, and like so many of my generation, at least those who listened, we felt we owed him a lot, and, and perhaps, some may say this was the problem but I think that’s a stretch, owned a little bit of his mind too.

He laid it so bare, it was hard not to feel somehow that you were in there with him, in that world of crazy zig zaging lights and sounds. Nothing he wrote and recorded was quite right, nothing was as it, by all reason should be. And that, not even with hindsight, it was apparent within the first thirty seconds of Bike or Arnold Layne, opened the doors to so much. The music we listen to today, the possibilities of that we call pop, or rock or house, or disco or whatever would not have seemed available to us it it hadn’t been for Syd.

Pink Floyd were, more or less, increasingly shite, after Syd, with perhaps the exception of parts of Meddle and Umma Gumma, where his ghost was still so overpoweringly part of the band. Oh and Shine On You Crazy Diamond, but we all know who that was about. But whether he was the muse or the simply the loon that pushed the buttons in the heads of the others that made them what they were, its an unassailable fact that they stumbled relentlessly into an increasingly MOR stadium pomp act after him, mostly by watering down what they had with him, and Piper at The Gates of Dawn, the tangled, confusing and mesmerising, and indeed, almost punk, thing that it still is after 39 odd years, remains their best, and most important album.

It was never the same after the madcap laughed. Goodbye Syd, although I guess we said goodbye a long time ago…

edit: check out the amazing live take of Interstellar Overdrive available at Dilated Choonz

And I don’t care about morals / ‘cos the world’s insane and we’re all to blame anyway

On Saturday night last I spent about four hours standing side of stage in a park in central Denpasar, here in Bali. The event in question was a fundraiser for the quickly forgotten (by the world at large, unlike say, Katrina, which still seems to get a mention most nights on the telly in one place or another) Jogja quake of a month or so ago.

There were, I’m told, between four and seven thousand kids there, and, although to be honest, I didn’t venture much from the backstage area, to the best of my knowledge there were only three non-Indonesians in the place. Maybe that’s why, in the southern triangle of this island of this isle, I enjoy Denpasar far more than the tourist haunts centred on the often less than pleasant strip from Kuta through to Kerebokan. If you are going to be here, at least be here. I like being out of my comfort zone and if I want to be in Ponsonby or Darlinghurst I’ll get on an aeroplane. Although nothing beats Double Six Beach on a Sunday….

But, that’s all beside the point, init.

I stood on Saturday night and watched four bands. There was a reggae act, and yeah, they were ok, not my personal thing but ok. But these guys have a residency at a local Legian reggae club so thus deserve massive respect for putting up with the ugliest crowd on the planet…drunken Australians. There was band whose lead singer stood like a late seventies Joe Strummer and sang a post punky set in Balinese which I thought was well cool. I had no idea what he was saying, but I did…if you get the gist. The language of rock’n’roll rebellion is universal and no great mystery.

They were followed by (and I wish I had names for these bands) a crew from Jakarta who were both slick and entertaining in an almost nu-metal meets hardcore style. Seriously slick actually, with a massive presence and they worked the crowd like the local stars they clearly were and deserved to be. I enjoyed them, even though, musically they’re not my thing. And as I watched I found myself wondering, yet again why most New Zealand bands simply can’t do this, playing to the crowd that is, putting on a show…it’s such a rare national art and still, maybe as part of the legacy of Flying Nun, is frowned on by the uber-cool. What a shame that is….

The last band were the one I’d come to see. I’d seen Superman is Dead (S.I.D. to their fans…the name is, I believe a reference to the demise of Suharto…young Indonesians are keenly aware of the rather unfortunate legacy of the man and proud of their baru democracy… this is a nation on the rise, you can feel it and its power is in its vast youth) on TV a couple of times. Just acoustic takes on the local Bali TV channel and I’d had a quick listen to their new album, which I’d been given. But, and I’ve always flattered myself I have something of an ear (god that sounds too egotistical), something intrigued me, something made perfect sense. Even with the sound off on the TV, the second time the performance came on, I couldn’t take my eyes off them and found the songs going around in my head later

Live I wasn’t disappointed. I stood transfixed throughout the set. I was absolutely blown away by the drummer’s solo spot out front. And by the other’s cheeky knowing grins and by the way they bounced musically off each other in a way I’ve always assumed Lennon and McCartney did at the Star Club. Made, who was giving me a lift on his motorbike back to my car, came up to me half way through and asked if I wanted to leave. No, no I explained, I want to watch this through to the very end. I love watching a band, a musician, or a DJ with such an obvious empathy with their audience, feeding off each other, as SID and these thousands, who knew every word of their anthemic songs and travelled through the set as participants rather than simply an audience, did.

It was a mind fuck, it really was, and it’s the sort of thing which can only come from those making the music, from the creators. Not from any A&R guy, from any MD in a gilded office, from any marketing plan. And that is why, music is more than just a business, why the machinations of the corporates matter to the shareholders but really don’t matter at all.

And I thought about the tyranny of location, something I’d mentioned in some long forgotten review of a forgotten album (an album by Spizz for A&M if you must know) twenty five years ago when I was a regular reviewer in Murray Cammick’s Rip It Up. About how location is everything, how any average band in the UK or the US has the odds stacked so strongly in its favour; that the recording industry has ensured that it has a vastly greater chance of playing to a global audience that the best band or artist from a less favoured nation, say, Indonesia or New Zealand; nations that are deemed by the system to simply not matter as sources of marketable music.

And yet Superman Is Dead leave many of the acts with large contracts, and the big chance, in the proverbial gravel. Anyway you look at it they’re better than the swathe of mediocre middle American rock acts foisted upon the kids by a the entrenched system, the MTV shite that you find prioritised by global multi-nationals.

And I thought about the revolution at hand. Popular music is driven by revolutions, and always has been. From Bill Haley to Hip hop to The Beatles to House, we’ve had half a century of youth driven revolutions, all of which have crept up those in a position of power in the entertainment industry and slammed them without warning as they struggle to make some sense of it all. The last decade or so has been a little staid, although considering what we’ve had released, performed and recorded in the last few years that term is a little unfair. However that music has worked within the parameters established over the past decade or two, and to my mind can’t be considered revolutionary as such, fine as much of it is.

There has of course been the digital revolution but that has a been a revolution in delivery mechanisms, a revolution that, whilst it has confused and bemused the major record companies (to the extent that they have made such major missteps as the glaring stupidity of DRM, the Sony BMG spyware mess, and the RIAA’s insane lawsuits against downloaders…rule number one has to be, and always has been, that you don’t assault and attack your customers, especially when they already think you are vaguely, no make that totally, evil) they have, as they did with the LP and the CD, after much flustering, tried to run with.

No, the delivery mechanism is not the revolution but it certainly made possible the revolution. The revolution which has crept up on the Industry as such is the new democracy, the growing realisation that the untamed aspects of the internet are slowly pulling the power, the control, away from the established power structure and handing it over the end user or those close to the end user. It’s a passing of the baton from the record companies to the people. Its best seen in New Zealand with the Fat Freddie’s phenomena, who one year on are still dominating an industry that really had nothing to do with their rise. And I’m not talking Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace which, despite the fact I have a presence on (who doesn’t, but it’s more of a giggle than much else), still feels like walking into the foyer of Sky TV to me; but I am talking, amongst other things, about the countless MP3 blogs which disseminate tracks virally around the planet (and yes, I’m well aware of the way these are used as marketing tools too but their power goes far beyond that), and from which I’ve personally discovered (and subsequently purchased) many digital audio files, some long forgotten (how many killer Billy Preston tracks were doing the rounds after he snuffed it…I’d forgotten how great the title track from his Encouraging Words album on Apple was…I have the vinyl but splashed out for the CD last week) and so many new acts that would never have gotten any exposure under the “system” as it was, even with iTunes or its equivalent. The power instead is beginning to sit with some blogger somewhere in nowhere land who has taken it upon themselves to espouse the greatness of some marginal act that would otherwise have slipped through the system. In its own way, the piracy of the music via the p2ps adds to the tentacles of this revolution in a way the major companies, obsessed with maximising the sales of their priority acts, to the despair of the overwhelming majority of their (non-priority) acts who wonder why their songs simply don’t get any real exposure, still don’t seem to grasp.

The MP3 blogging world has recently been abuzz with the likes of the wonderful Simian Mobile Disco, and Toronto’s noisy technoids, MSTRKRFT, neither of which would get a look in via the old system but are worth tracking down. Right now, whether EMI buys Warners or Warners buys EMI seems to be increasingly irrelevant to this business that has always refused to conform to accepted norms, a business that the kids have only just, in ways we can’t imagine yet, begun to claw back.

Oh and check out SID…they really are fantastic….