Fractionals

A couple of odd things have happened/occured to me recently:

Last night K and I went out to the Diana restaurant for supper, and what was playing as we waited for food? "I Love Baby Cheesy"! Man, was that a blast from the past. I wonder if Pete still loves it, and if Josh still loathes it.

(At least, I think it's "I Love Baby Cheesy" - the one with "It's great! It's great! It's great! It's great! It's great! It's great!" in it, anyway)

While using the stationary bike at the gym on Monday, listening to Prolapse's unmatched The Italian Flag (which William Swygart does an excellent job of describing, something I wouldn't have thought possible), I had one of those mysterious, powerful moments of visual/auditory unity. I was on "Killing The Bland" and watching CBC Newsworld, and during the relatively placid opening verse they just showed two talking heads. But exactly as Derrick and Steelyard started screaming

See them!

They switched to rough digital video footage of a riot in an unnamed Muslim country over the US' purported abuse of the Qu'ran at Guantanamo. One of those shaky you-are-there visual moments.

Be them!

It was stunning in a way I can't quite recapture here. And just as the chorus ended they went back to the talking heads.

Also, back when I lived in Kincardine and lusted for albums I couldn't get through the proxy of Allmusic, Ride's Nowhere was near the top of my list (as was Slowdive's Souvlaki, which I did wind up loving). Best non-Loveless shoegaze album? I was there.

But when I moved to Guelph, through the infinite grace and vagaries of The Beat Goes On, Going Blank Again was the first Ride album I got my hands on. Although at that point I'd read David Cavanagh's frankly amazing (and now out-of-print!) account of the rise and fall of Creation Records, which I found for $5 (US) in a bookstore at Harvard and bought not knowing it's significance. And after reading that I was actually a little more interested in GBA, which wound up living up to Cavanagh's account, maybe even exceeding it; "OX4" and "Leave Them All Behind" are great, yeah, but "Cool Your Boots" is one of my favourite songs ever.

Anyway, point is, I finally picked up Nowhere about a year ago, and have listened to it twice. It just isn't doing much of anything for me, "Vapour Trail" excepted. But I'll give it a few more shots before selling it.

And lastly, as I'm just listening to Super Furry Animals' Phantom Power here at work, I'll just ask why "The Undefeated" didn't get mentioned more in reviews at the time. To my ears it's the real gem, not "Venus & Serena" (though that's good too).