Like all you mortals I get inappropriate junk mail, such as the flyer offering me discounts on entire sheep and teatowels for Ramadan. This one threw me for a second:
What do you think this pamphlet was trying to sell me? I’ve blanked out the last bit, because when I first saw this ad all the signals – amateurish layout, the word “passion”, the attempt to emulate the look of Facebook, the rainbow, the passive-aggressive use of imperative tense, the big old building, the ascending stairs, the open door, and (to be perfectly frank) the clean-cut young black man – made me assume this was yet another flyer from one of the hundreds of charismatic churches in the East End, and that the final word would be “salvation”.
I was wrong. Was this confusion intentional? Is pretending to be a god-botherer a way to get people’s attention now, or have I slipped into a parallel universe?
Better on Vinyl
Friday 13 August 2010
What is the lingering appeal of the vinyl record? Classical music store Harold Moores Records is refurbishing for the next two weeks, and has been making room in the basement by clearing out all the second-hand LPs and dumping them in a skip in Great Marlborough Street. The result:
I was alerted to this feeding frenzy when a friend sent me a frantic text ordering me down to Soho. By the time I arrived the skip was only one-third full. Luckily for me they were still bringing out fresh stock/trash, from some of the more insteresting racks. More importantly I was able to grab an empty box everyone else was ignoring, so I could actually lug the lot home.
There were, of course, people who came up to the skip, poked around a bit, and then left once they had determined that there were only classical records. Despite this, some people were content simply to grab a record or two and then leave. A couple of guys were about to leave when they decided that the records were appealing enough as objects to make it worth their time to make a large and varied selection.
Vinyl records and gramophones are the steam engines of music: impressive and elegant works of engineering, advanced in technical and industrial development yet still obvious enough in its means of operation for the everyday mind to intuitively grasp and appreciate. Subsequent recording technology is too efficient to be impressive, too inscrutable in its technology to admire on an aesthetic level.
I found myself picking up a couple of records which I already have on CD; not for any retro-chic appeal they might possess, but because the old LPs are clearly “newer” than the CD reissues. They are artifacts of the time when the recording was newly-recorded and released, and so still an unknown quantity – far different from the “classics” preserved on CD.
Despite whatever protest Harold Moores’ staff may have made, at least at first, the records had obviously been kept in stock for some perceived monetary value as objects, not as recordings. That album of Henze’s El Cimarrón was priced at £36. You can get the same recording on CD at Amazon for at least 10 quid less, and without the scratches, dust and surface noise. No wonder no-one bought it.
Abney Park
Wednesday 19 May 2010
My Drug Money
Monday 10 May 2010
The Caffe Nero in Theobalds Road is obviously a money-laundering front.
This Way to the Miracle
Thursday 7 January 2010
Greetings from a non-denominational robin
Monday 7 December 2009
I got so excited about the George Crumb Total Immersion day over the weekend I broke a tooth. While I recuperate and write up the contrasting concerts (including a rare chance to hear an evening of Crumb’s orchestral music), here’s a picture of a friendly robin who was hanging around the chapel when I last walked through Abney Park.
Still Number One!
Monday 30 November 2009
Too busy to post words and stuff right now, but stay tuned because this blog is No. 1 FOR HIP|HOP & R’n'B!
One-Minute Mystery
Tuesday 15 September 2009
Every morning I go past Conway Hall on my way to work. A while ago I just twittered that for the last two days the front entrance has been surrounded by truckloads of pianos being wheeled inside. This morning I caught a glimpse through the front door of the corridors lined with pianos.
I’d been hoping for at least a super-duper version of Les noces, if not some sort of weird, quasi-musical ritual going down – the hall opens its doors to all sorts of meetings. Instead, according to their website they’re just hosting a piano auction this week. Google takes the fun out of everything.
No wonder London’s public transport is so unreliable.
Thursday 6 August 2009
All this time, and I never realised that the buses were made of cardboard.
Street Art, Hackney
Thursday 25 June 2009
Filler By Proxy LXIX: This post has made me hungry
Saturday 6 June 2009
It’s been a bastard of a week, so no time for lovefun online. I’m firmly relocated back in East London, the world capital for dodgy chicken shops. It’s good to see I’m not the only one with a fascination for these establishments. Now here’s a musical tribute we can all sing along with! (Found via Floccinaucinihilipilification.)
The Giant Adenoid that Ate St James’s takes a step closer to reality
Thursday 2 April 2009
Now it turns out that this light bulb over the colonel’s head here is the same identical Osram light bulb that Franz Pokler used to sleep next to in his bunk at the underground rocket works at Nordhausen. Statistically (so Their story goes), every n-thousandth bulb is gonna be perfect, all the delta-q’s piling up just right, so we shouldn’t be surprised that his one’s still around, burning brightly. But the truth is even more stupendous. This bulb is immortal! It’s been around, in fact, since the twenties, has that old-timery point at the tip and is less pear-shaped than more contemporary bulbs….
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, pp.647.
Welcome to the homepage devoted to the Longest burning Light Bulb in history. Now in its 108th year of illumination.
First Meggezones, now this.
Google vs Death, Round 2
Monday 23 March 2009
Google Street View has finally launched in the UK and is already out of date. This is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. I’m more interested in checking up on where I used to be than where I am now, despite the new pictures looking like they’re better quality than the Australian ones (and the taunts about growing up in a tip).
The Google camera car went up my street last summer. In fact, it went up my street twice:
I’ve talked before about how Street View’s illusion of the present masks a preserved version of the recent past, already decaying and proving less and less true to reality. Now we can see street corners that exist simultaneously in two time zones at once.
For most Britons, the illusory, alternate-reality nature of Street View is immediately visible in the high streets. The economic downturn has worsened in the time between the photos being taken and appearing on the web. Google’s Britain is a brighter, nostalgic land with fewer boarded-up shopfronts, where Woolworths, MFI, Zavvi, and other chain stores are still in business.
Back in Australia, the emerging anomalies are more poignant. On the main street of the town of Marysville in Victoria, the season abruptly changes from summer to winter for a few metres; then just as suddenly, the sky clears, the ground dries up again, and the trees regain their leaves. Of course, neither version is true: we know the town was all but obliterated by fire last month.
(Crossposted at Sarsaparilla Lite.)
So Close, Yet So Far
Thursday 12 March 2009
I swore off making fun of newspaper columnists a long time ago, but this one’s too good to let pass by. Sue Sharp, head of Guide Dogs Public Policy and Campaigns, has an opinion piece in The Guardian decrying proposed changes to London’s pedestrian crossings (I’ve added my own emphasis):
… plans to introduce “speedy street crossings” in London to free up traffic will seriously undermine the mobility of blind and partially sighted pedestrians in London.Under these proposals, the amount of crossing time for pedestrians will be cut by up to six seconds, and there will be a reduced number of green man phases. As pedestrians walk at an average speed of 1.2m per second, such a reduction in crossing time could potentially leave them 7.2m short of the kerb when the light goes green to traffic, and more if they have a slower walking pace than the average.
If the metrics confuse you, here are some people under two metres tall walking at an average pace on a typical London street crossing:
Snow Day! Rothko post postponed.
Monday 2 February 2009
And it did end up snowing all night. Not having a job to go to anyway, I missed out on the thrill of being forced to skive off work because all the trains and buses were cancelled. I did get to spend the day at home with the girlfriend, however. Nice.
In any case, the girl was confined to quarters with a dud leg, so no skidding about on the snow outside for us. She contented herself videoing teenagers outside tobogganing down the street on a tea tray while I considered going out alone to take in the picturesque scene before deciding bugger it. I’m not getting cold and wet just for a few snapshots when thousands of much better views will be plastered all over Flickr by lunchtime.
Meanwhile, all across the island, Britons were rediscovering the innocent joys of a day (or evening) in the snow.
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