EXTRANEOUS YOUTH

Daggermouth - Abracadabra Holmes

from the 2007 album ‘Turf Wars’.

The title of this track comes from the Will Ferrell film ‘Talladega Nights’. The line is said by John C. Reilly’s Cal Naughton Jr. character. NASCAR - white trash as fuck. Film’s kind of funny though.

Daggermouth are the one and only band I liked out of all these pop-punk cum hardcore cum pop-hardcore cum pop-punk type bands that have been growing in popularity over the last however many years, from Set Your Goals through to Title Fight and all the other bands of their ilk. Daggermouth were awesome, and their cancellation of their UK tour shortly before their demise saddened me - a sadness deepened upon hearing the reason why the band were taking time out.

That said, ‘Turf Wars’ has one of the cringiest inside artworks I’ve ever come across… a cartoon depiction of baseball bat-wielding ‘hardcore kids’ squaring up against variously fatty or thinny ‘scene kids’ with flick knives does make you wonder how the fuck it got past the ‘ideas stage’. Just a bit awkward.

Awesome band though.

(and their name comes from Family Guy episode ‘A Fish out of Water’ in the 3rd season, from the gigantic robotic fish lurking in a lake)

Don’t Mess With Texas - This Plane Is Definitely Crashing

from their self-titled.

This Croatian band are for fans of Esskyma, We Followed Tigers, and that sort of dynamic instrumental post-rock. The tracks off their S/T are named after lyrics from songs by other bands.

The track ‘This Plane is Definitely Crashing’ is very obviously Modest Mouse - Shit Luck. The track ‘You’re Not Punk And I’m Telling Everyone’ is very obviously Jawbreaker - Boxcar. This post is tediously obvious. Too obvious.

The other track titles are: ‘Sound of one lung filling with water’, Marijana daj stani’, ‘We excused ourselves to the bathroom and had a little cry’, and ‘God might want to change his mind’. I swear I knew what at least two more of those references were related to when I started this post.

No cares, gotta keep this project going.

Snowing - Methuselah Rookie Card

from the ‘Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit’ record.

A wonderful track by a wonderful band.

There’s not too much to really point out here, apart from that the title is from a moment in The Simpsons which always makes me laugh; Flanders’ religious trading cards: (from episode ‘Homer’s Barbershop Quartet’ - Series 5, Ep.1)

Snowing split up in 2011. Either at a similar time, or possibly I just found out about both at the same time - to Joie De Vivre splitting up. At the time I focused on the Joie De Vivre split. I liked them better and listened to them more and had been listening to them for longer. In retrospect this wasn’t fair. But it has taken the news of Joie De Vivre’s reformation to make this apparant to me.

To qualify an opinion, a lot of the time you have to put yourself on the spot; choose between two options and side with one.

Marvel or DC? Star Wars or Lord of the Rings? Peanut butter or Nutella? Black Flag or Minor Threat? Pan’s Labyrinth or Snow Dogs (with Cuba Gooding Jr)?

A lot of these things don’t even oppose that well. And should I treat my heart as to be only large enough to back a single horse? Not to mention the horse race in question is non-existant and only created by myself to try and make myself have a stricter and more belligerent voice to talk about interests in. I’m sorry, Snowing. I’m sorry that I am only just now missing you and that it took another, unrelated band to reform to make me realise that. One day I’ll learn.

Pg. 99 - More Complicated Than A Sci-Fi Flick

from ‘Document #4’.

I should point out that while this song exists in various forms on Documents #1, #4, #11, and #14, its the version on #4 that I’m looking at here, as it is the one with the cracking sample at the end - taken from the movie ‘Heathers’.

There have been a few lines of dialogue cut out from the sample, as its just tangential dialogue which doesn’t in the same way gnaw away at that sort of self-righteous and angsty indignation Winona Ryder has for her parents, grown ups, the world, media, authority and disingenous factions nationwide - admittedly, she’s no Holden Caulfield, but no-one is, really. Its good enough.

“Can’t you see? These little programs are eating up suicide with a spoon. They’re making it seem like it’s a cool thing to do … All we want is to be treated like human beings.”

“Treated like human beings? When teenagers complain that they want to be treated like human beings, it’s usually because they are being treated like human beings.”

“Yeah? Well I guess I picked the wrong time to be a human being.”

“You’ll live.”

The sample plays in around the 1 minute 30 mark, starting off while the drums and guitars are staggering out of the recording, unti the music cuts out from the line starting “when teenagers…”.

‘Heathers’ seems to have a big cult fanbase and when I watched it for the first time last year, I was genuinely surprised that every other scene or so seemed to have lines or phrases in it that I’d heard before not knowing that it was particularly to do with anything at all.

The line “Dear diary, my teenage angst bullshit has a bodycount” was censored and co-opted for a song title or album title or something by a band called From First To Last. I had to Google that, I knew there was some metalcore band a few years ago with that album name, but it wasn’t anything I was into. I believe the singer of that band now does dubstep under the name Fish Eggs.

Scottish mid-00s band The Fall of Boss Koala had tracks on their ‘Reference Points’ album called ‘I Love My Dead Gay Son (Parts 1, 2)’ which is, again, a line from the film.

Please listen to The Fall of Boss Koala (melodic, building, raw, thunderous):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzZ4UEyNbK8

See the scene their song titles were taken from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMroWnWIqs0&feature=related

Pg.99 are the best band in the world. More from them another time.

Nai Harvest - ‘Tim Helped Me Get Over It.’

Nai Harvest are a rad noodly emo band from Sheffield. Their location is lovely as it provides hope to the rest of the country, that from even the Steeliest of Cities can spring the Tenderest of Emotions.

The sample employed in the intro to this track (as well as reference in the title) is from the UK version of The Office. Or, if you’re from the UK, just ‘The Office’. It comes from the final episode - the Christmas special. Our tired-eyed Everyman, Tim - played by Martin Freeman - is reflecting upon the period of his life filmed by the ersatz film-makers supposedly working the cameras that provided the content of ‘The Office’. Here’s the transcribed sample:

“I don’t know what a happy ending is. Life isn’t about endings, is it? It’s a series of moments. And um, it’s like if you turn your camera off - it’s not an ending, is it?  I’m still here, my life’s not over. Come back here in 10 years and see how I’m doing then. I could be married and have kids, you don’t know. Life just goes on.”

A lot of people seem to dislike Ricky Gervais. I think he’s great - as is Stephen Merchant. But what people seem to miss out on, is the fact that while their various projects do have elements of material clearly offensive to a large swathe of the population, they are very intelligent, witty, and balanced individuals. Their shows have these incredible moments, these veins of excruciatingly HUMAN interactions threading their way through the sometimes brash selling points of the show (and it is the humour which seems to be focused on by the casual viewer/criticizer).

Tim and Dawn’s relationship is stumbling and heartwarming — as was Jim and Pam’s in the American version of which I’m also a big fan (see the Lion of the North post a few entries down). Tim’s rational optimism here is touching. Things come to an end. Things carry on. The bigger picture is far more lasting and important than any small picture idea will ever be. You’re still here. Your life is not over. Totally poignant writing in a show that will largely be remembered for David Brent’s dance moves.

Watch the ‘Extras’ Christmas special. The most unexpectingly heartbreaking performance and writing that gets me every time. Andy Millman’s moment of clarity when appearing on Big Brother is astonishing. And it gets me. Every fucking time.

Noisy Sins of The Insect - ‘There Won’t Be a “My Life”’ from the record Automatic Suicide Machine.

Awesome lo-fi skramzy band from Turkey, with really violent vocals (when they used them - their instrumental tracks are pretty and build emotionally). I liked this band a lot. The track titles have a very blunt but over the top feel to them, as though they haven’t quite been translated properly into English. They’re really strong, anyway, I do like them. Song names like “My Funeral in You, and Our Memories”, or “End of a Love Doesn’t Mean End of Me but I Love to Kill Myself Because I Listen Noise”.

This track here is “There Won’t Be A ‘My Life’”.

The sample kicks in fairly early on, and then, unusually, continues in the background for the rest of the song. I’m not going to say that the sample is particularly needed, and definitely doesn’t need to be there for so long. There’s another version of this track which doesn’t have the sample in it, but after so long listening to it with the sample, I do like this version a lot more, maybe how the spoken word chips in and out with the music - its timed pretty nicely.

The film is Donnie Darko, from the scene with the cheerleader mom lady directing a class on social skills or understanding how to treat people. With her own brand of flawed logic allegorical of right-wing newspapers and media stations across the Western world.

The woman pictured here is the same bitchy fucking moron in any film or show I’ve seen her in, and she infuriates me. Obviously she’s an actress, and plays that part very well. Its nice have a good ‘bad guy’ to really allow yourself to hate whenever they come onscreen. I’m sure she’s lovely in real life, although I possibly would rather think she was playing herself in all these roles, just to keep the wet hate dream alive.

Here’s the sample.

“…and Mr. Darko?”

“Ling Ling finds a wallet on the ground filled with money. She takes the wallet to the address on the driver’s license but keeps the money inside the wallet. I-I’m sorry Mrs. Farmer. I don’t get this.”

“Just place an ‘X’ on the life-line in an appropriate place.”

“No, I mean, I know what to do - I just don’t get this. You can’t just lump things into two categories. Things aren’t that simple.”

“The life-line is divided that way.”

“Life isn’t that simple. I mean who cares if Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love.”

“Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions.”

“Okay, but you’re not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here. Like, the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can’t just lump everything into these two categories and then deny everything else!”

“If you don’t complete the assignment, you will get a zero for the day.”

Modern Life Is War - Martin Atchet

from the album ‘Witness’ (2005)

Basically, track down a copy of the Peter Milligan graphic novel ‘Skin’. It is pretty hard to come across an affordable copy these days, but if you trawl online for a few hours, you’ll find one. It gets pretty rare/pricey as it was variously banned, dismissed as vulgar, and dealt with extremely volatile subject matter and obscenity.

‘Skin’ tells the story of Martin Atchet, a thalidomide skinhead. He’s angry, he’s frustrated - and after his friend Ruby (mentioned in the song - “What Ruby told you, well that was true.”) shows him the corporations responsible for the Thalidomide birth defect are living rich and guilt-free, with no apology or acknowledgement of the problems they caused for so many, decides to take his own bloody revenge.

A lot of the lyrics in the song are lifted straight from the book, or paraphrase or expand upon scenes Martin experiences. The song is about Martin Atchet. All the way through. Its a rad comic, its a fucking angry song. I think the song is great, and pays suitable homage to ‘Skin’. Read ‘Skin’ if you like Modern Life Is War.

YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!

BASTARDS!

BASTARDS!