hypothetical euthanasia roller-coaster

think about it...

Dime, qué comemos

Having seen what I saw this afternoon, it's a good job I didn't do as I nearly did yesterday and "go in there myself". Why does the river run brown?: the question on everyone's lips. Wet wipes: the soiled answer dripping from the drainman's hand. Unfortunately, none of this is metaphorical.

AUTUMN GIGS

(FRI.)    - 14/Oct  -  Mojo
(FRI.)    - 28/Oct  -  Shipping Forecast
(TUE.)  - 22/Nov -  Shipping Forecast (w/ Casiokids)
+ more we haven't written down yet

Pedestrian Sundays

Alight numbers at the bombed out church stops have dwindled since they shifted the commercial district half a mile closer to the waterfront. To fully explain the motivations behind the very existence of a Bold Street Festival would require depth to drown even the most competent of 'verbal swimmers' I like to call readers. Although that barely makes any sense, it does sound alright, so it stays. Anyway, just understand that I'm saving you from having to tolerate a load of relevant (but seriously dull) journo-style opening paragraph filler / context stuff (you're welcome) and trust that the businesses higher up the hill have suffered since the opening of Liverpool One: Bold Street has a festival now.

Those present on Sunday gone would perhaps argue the point that it was more a case of Bold Street being open, as per usual, with the addition of balloons and bunting to adorn the awnings. But inarguable was the presence of stages (perhaps spaces would be more apt) exhibiting dubious artistic outpourings, one example being the twenty minute spillage of our musical bile (this being the literary bile) across the cobbled filth that paves the increasingly tranquil side of the CBD. I don't want to detract from the event or the wider success of the day: it is a worthy cause, a welcome addition to the city's events calendar, organised by devoted and passionate patrons of that noble climb towards wrong-o-clock and Tokyou. It is just a shame that this once crucial route on any shopping trip worth its (Matta's-bought Italian rock) salt has to resort to this level of prostitution - in a Holden Caulfield dismissing movie scriptwriting way, nothing more sinister - just to get people to acknowledge its being there. The fault lies almost completely at the doors of cash hungry town planners and developers. That's not news, though.

Bold is a street that I will forever associate with my earliest forays in to town, both with and without mother. In the memory rain is rare, its limited outings confined to the heart wrench of some Romantic image that Claus of Innsbruck might cast in bronze for me; so perhaps the cynicism of my now years is completely misguided. The relative corporate neglect lends well to a counter-cultural renaissance, which is a good thing. All of this, of course, the subjective anecdotal ramblings of a tired man. So we move on to report the stuff worth reporting. 

It counted as gig number six as our current carnation and it was maybe one of the worst yet. Such harsh self-criticism comes on the back of the mild success of our midweek dalliances: what we're looking for is that rare thing called consistency, and over the two shows we certainly demonstrated little of it. With computing issues that the rockers of old would certainly spare a chuckle for, such a thing could well take longer than it otherwise would. Nonetheless lessons were learned, even if the principle one was that stylophones and songs about spiders are more crowd-friendly than the tidbits we have to offer a disinterested passer-by. Which, when you really think about it, isn't a lesson at all.

P.S. Only now, having read the above back, do I realise just how little sense any of it makes. Not that you can expect an apology, they're your eyes and it's your fault for leaving them open. The song below, which I'd well recommend, has a tenuous link to some of what was said, and may well make the effort of you scrolling all the way down here worthwhile. Just remember to try and bring yourself to pause our music beforehand (if you've already paused it, shame on you), unless you want an inadvertent and probably quite terrible mash-up. Mash tips? Answers on an email.

You got naturally selected, bitch.

I'd like to think I respect grass. At least, when I see some baby shoots in my path I attempt to skip over, so as to cause minimal damage. I will not however, divert my route entirely for the sake of some fucking grass. Given this, I was mildly offended when, on my way to work this morning, I was approached by a burly grounds keeper who was thoroughly pissed off at what he saw as a mistreatment of his emerging foliage.

I took a couple of seconds to consider my response, "Do you even realise how this grass got to be here in the first place?" I said,
"Aye lad, I planted it here meself"
"You're not grasping the bigger picture," I scoffed, "this grass exists only by virtue of a process of natural selection, whereby the strongest blades - those best suited to the environment they habituate - go on to survive. In the wild, this grass has to endure myriad attacks from all corners of its largely futile and miserable existence. Over hundreds-of-millions of years, this has led to the perfection of the grass you so love and nurture."

I'd run out of things to say but nevertheless continued, "so can you not see that by caring less about the health of your grass, we all contribute to the ongoing improvement of the species? Who knows, a few thousand years of lawn neglect could lead to the emergence of plant-intelligence and world-wide grass domination. In some parallel universe of unknown spatio-temporal location, there's probably a giant blade of grass writing a ridiculous and entirely fabricated story on his shit blog about how it's ok to stamp on babies heads because it progresses the species in the long term"

"Well that's a good point there lad" said the grounds keeper.

I must say I was surprised by this response. I expected him to be bewildered and confused by an apparent intellectual argument which had quickly descended into an absurd, self-indulgent rant. But he must have grasped some meaning from my vague whimsical sentences when he laid me out with an impressive right hook.

As I lay there watching him race off on his shitty little lawn mowing go-kart, spraying fresh cuttings into my poor swollen face, I thought to myself, "Who was the winner in all this?"

Me!  I was fucking right. I proved my own point by taking a punch to the face, probably the purest form of justification and elucidation for any point in the history of homo-argumental consciousness.

Turn Ups

We all know that this blog sits happily on your bookmark bar alongside the BBC, Guardian and YouTube icons, and that you simply can't leave the house or close your eyes at night before eagerly checking for any fresh literature for you to get your mental chops around. Well here it is, cats. To follow up your digestion of the news that the police aren't pursuing legal action against the Guardian Media Group (shame, because I hate how smug those hacks have gotten these days) I present at your brunch table an amuse-bouche of the latest in the series of Live Updates! on Carousel's affairs.

NEWS NEWS NEWS Tonight at the MelloMello we (Carousel) play along with the delectable Being Jo Francis, the undeniable Moody Gowns, and the adorable Lu Lou & and The Boy. How fitting those adjectives are is anyone's guess: for concrete evidence you'll have to turn up and see for yourself (see what I did?). It's all free but depending on how cheeky we feel (or on how much organic vodka Ross has consumed) there's a chance we'll be asking for donations to try and cover some of the costs. The link to the FACEBOOK EVENT is tested and should work. Just in case, though, it's a half eight start and we should be done by midnight, so anyone looking to dash off down the road and slip in to the first Medication of the academic year shouldn't be concerned, although your psychoanalyst has reason to be. Now you've got through all that I'll let you get away to watch what's left of PMQs, although Miliband is likely done by now so unless you want to watch Dave field questions on the rise of sheep worrying in lowland Cumbria you're best not bothering. See you tonight, bitches.

The Charm Offensive

Obsession is a double edged sword. So after a few days of maniacal perfectionism and borderline lunacy, we have one of two 'finished' songs ready for the manifold listening experiences we hope you, a person, will enjoy in abundance.

Of course, it doesn't help that when re-encoded for streaming on soundcloud it sounds like shit, and I didn't spend my waking nights carefully pruning this fucker for you to not at least have the option of something of a little more quality. So here is one you can download and listen to all by yourselves.

In other news, we're hosting a gig at a fine establishment by the name of Mello Mello this coming Wednesday which we're very much looking forward to. Oh look, here's a link.

FYI / JAM WARS

PART ONE is for those who bought tickets for the forthcoming 'Metronomy Night' in the Kazimier on the premise of catching us open the show before sneaking out for a swift half in the Monro and jumping the last bus for an early night, for I must bear to you bad news. You can probably guess where this is going. Let me temper this with a classic good news bad news set-up. Ahem: your tickets for the night are still valid, but alas we wont be there. Don't tear up those passes in despair though, you've made a commitment and you should stick it out, even if your faves aren't going to be about (get on that rhyme, linguists). The last band on - I think they're the ones called Metronomy - are half decent if the print press is to be believed, so probably worth going down to see if their funk is worth the others' fuss. But yeah, in short we're not playing it so strike it from your official Carousel Calendars. (While I'm on that subject: anyone who pre-ordered but still hasn't received one of those classic pieces of merch in time for the start of term should consult their local post man, as it is he and not we that holds responsibility.)

PART TWO is where we enter the real meat of this blog post. Not actual meat, a significant percentage of the band has now expressed an interest in taking "the pledge" and cutting out the red (sometimes white) stuff all together. When I say meat I actually mean jam. And by jam I actually mean war. JW1, as it will be forever documented in the annals of time, sees the first significant battle take place next week when strawberry takes on raspberry. Note also that there are a few interesting undercurrents to this one: rival mothers, north/south divide and berry suitability being the pick of them. Don't hedge your bets because this one really is an open field. Now that pun fest is over we can look forward to the tastings. If you want to get involved bring bread, a blunt knife, appropriate footwear and also da ruckus. If you don't want to get involved just have in mind that it's already too late, and by persisting with this drivel up to this point you're already knee deep in stickiness without you even yet realising it. May I recommend that you stock up on wet wipes.

The benefits of lazy naivety

With days off few and far between, a 7 hour band practice is simultaneously a blissful escape from our mundane lives and a nightmare slog which saps our pent-up creativity and splatters it all over the walls of our low-lit practice room; the perfect setting for a musical experiment which has left us satisfied but slightly confused by the end result. Before I elaborate, I should point out that we've attempted the seemingly futile fusing of unrelated ideas in the past and ended up kicking ourselves for wasting time. Given this, it's frankly ridiculous that no one objected to the proposition, whereby we take parts from two floundering but promising pieces of music and combine them to create some supersong. But for some reason, after complicating things more and more, we finally got something which works.

I can't tell you what it is. I don't even know whether it's good. As was pointed out about half way through this little jaunt, "I don't know whether this is groundbreaking or just musically wrong". On the off chance that it's the former, we'll sleep on it and try and work out what the fuck it is that we just wrote.

In the meantime, we've made the online acquaintance of emerging Liverpool-based music blogger ManGone, delivering unbiased and well-written reviews of gigs in the city. Naturally, referencing his blog has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he thinks we're "pretty cool".

Rising Damp

Is it too much to ask, for our homes not to be thwarted by the shortcomings of cowboy landlords and desperate crooks?  Apparently so.  Though, people have to eat...so come all you drug hungry, pilfer our guitars, laptops and good spirits.  Lessons were learned from our new years break-in, we are now amongst the insured.  But our protection does not extend to black holes - metaphorical or physical - and I fear the time Tom and I spent clearing this mess up will not be reimbursed. 

boo hoo

How To Write Nice

Formula. Conformula! There is no newfoundland. A footprint in the snow can be covered - tread obscured - but it existed nonetheless. A Derridean paranoia of the flawed concept of individualism, omnipresent. To have image is to be trend. To set trend is to clamour for reassurance. Tribe functions only as tribe. Mutiny, revolution; an overthrowing of old structures to impose neglected but non-forgotten methods. History repeats itself as farce. Critics champion the musical reverberations of their own youth. What goes around does not come around, it is exhumed. The genre resurgence, though passive, requires the action of another : though the baton be carried by bright young things, it is passed by not cool possessors of dusty blazer pockets full of VAT receipts. Oh whatever. How easy to bemoan in a mirrored tone. Day old bread.