Tiny Little Fractures

This is what the monkeys are going to look like after a few weeks of solititude on my desert island, well I hope at least (Saira Mohan, from here)

Apologies drac old boy, I have zero imagination when it comes to titles, but here is a breakdown of what I would pack if I was err….forced to be ‘exiled’ to a desert island. A fate which I would obviously rail against with all my heart…sigh… 

So there’s my choice. Now I’m going to go figure out how to in turn generate solar energy for my CD player using only a coconut frond and a monkey’s tail and ponder on whether there’s an outside chance Saira Mohan might come floating into my metaphorical lagoon. You know because coconuts aren’t that companiable. Unless of course one figures out how to convert them to arrack.

 P.S. I tag the following five peeps: Rastiadu, RD, Darwin & Spectral (who hopefully will give me some heads up on some new tunes) and Pissu (because I’ve always wanted to know what crazy people listen to).

If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world

My one shitty picture off my phone

I was strangely unmoved while the whole of the Greek Theater was up in arms singing along to the Snow Patrol anthem. It was an odd thing watching them play in the US. Not a bad thing mind you, after all I’ve been trying to see them live for about three years now and this time I wasn’t thwarted by unexpected job offers, procrastination, geography or any of those other factors that made me loose my noodle before. This time R, myself, A and D were sorted months before with tickets and we made it there without any hitches (minus of course the bloody 283 dollar speeding ticket).

Honestly one could not ask for a better place to watch a gig than the Greek, nestled in the hills of Griffith Park, it’s a small intimate venue with an amazing if slightly toasted (courtesy of the recent Griffith Park fires) view. The badu were also amazingly hot, though as usual with my luck I had a smelly Persian girl (obviously the one Persian girl in the whole of California who isn’t fit) and her dubious looking boyfriend sitting next to me. The band was brilliant as well and I could go on about Gary Lightbody’s voice but it might be a bit gay…oh yeah and there were these two songbirds, the Watson Twins who sounded ethereal and were umm…yum. 

But as I mentioned before watching them play with an American audience was strange. Whereas I was up in arms going crazy for Spitting Games, Run and of course Chocolate the rest of the crowd seemed strangely unmoved. I was especially surprised when this laxness was displayed to Run, I mean I remember singing along with a thousand Brits in Chelmsford to that anthem and watching the Somerset show where the same thing happened. Of course this anomaly was explained when Chasing Cars came on and everybody was doing what I had been doing solo a few minutes ago. Nobody out here knows Snow Patrol for Final Straw, only from Eyes Open.

Fair enough I guess, but it was still an awesome, awesome gig. I just couldn’t get any decent pictures because the disadvantage of having a ginormous SLR is that it doesn’t really fit down my pants and thus can’t be sneaked into a concert. I did wish I had it though when this couple started making out in front of me and the light beams from the stage created this absolutely spellbinding silhouette. It would have been a hell of an image.

Of course it’s a reflection of how crazy my life is at the moment that it took me two weeks after the concert to blog about it…sigh…

Well not like it’s a series on this blog or anything but I just came across an awesome band on the old iPod. Dubstar, a British Indie dance (now that’s a genre I have never heard of before!) that was formed in 1992 and disbanded in 2000. I happened to have two albums, Disgraceful and Goodbye on my iPod and Not so manic now popped up one morning. Absolutely brilliant stuff, very dreamy and synthesizy, very early-mid nineties, all in all excellent stuff and I highly recommend them for a good chill session.

Because I’ve been up here for a while
I’m starting to feel the monotony of the tower block
I’m not so manic now
I can uphold the weight of those neighbours
And she’s lifting and throwing to the wall
The post-natal harmonies of youth
When this younger man, twenty-five
Advantageously took away her pride

Dubstar – Not so manic now

This post is sort of inspired by Sach’s dark musical trip and RD’s confession about liking high-pitched boy bands. I’ve gone on ad nauseum about how certain songs take me to happy, happy places where the beach and long legs in black, frilly mini-skirts rollick hand in hand (so to speak). But there are also songs that take me as they did Sach to a very dark place in my life, a time when I truly lost faith in humanity, trust, love and all that jazz. Thankfully a good dose of Old Reserve, R and a bout of womanizing helped me get over the immediate pain, but I think I’ve only truly come to terms with what happened last year, give or take.

I’m sure you’re scratching your head right now wandering what the hell the guilty secret that was I implied by the title, as opposed to the psychobabble I’m going on about. Well it’s a secret that when I reveal to my indie music friends, both British and Sri Lankan, they look at me as if I professed an undying desire to bugger Tony Blair while Cherie spanked me with a leather paddle. Before my favourite band was Snow Patrol and long after it was Boyz II Men, my all time favourite band was Matchbox 20. I still love all three of their albums from Yourself or Someone Like You to More Than You Think You Are. Unfortunately the latter album coincided with the dark period of my life, particularly an obsession with one track, Rest Stop. Listen to the song, trust me, the coincidences in life are truly weird sometimes and have to be experienced to be believed. And that song became an anthem of darkness for me.

Anyways last night in a fit of sadomachosicm, I put Rest Stop on and what do you figure happened? Absolutely nothing…no darkness…no pain…just an appreciation of what is still to me a lovely tune. Go figure, it took a listening to a song to truly appreciate that I actually have achieved closure. Not in a simplistic way of getting over a relationship but actually healing, changing and well…changing.

P.S. I did of course feel miserable in the morning, but I reckon that was probably due to waking up at 6am to hop on the 405 for an hour and then wandering around UCLA for another hour trying to find a room where I was supposed to get enlightened about NEPA. Needless to say today has not been one of my better days, though the considerable amount of totty on display at UCLA was nice, if a bit depressing.

Hed Kandi album cover, come on…seriously, the only way this picture could get any better was if the girl was real

Or rather house in the house. My musical taste has varied through my many years from appalling (New Kids on the Block at the tender age of 10), to less appalling (Boyz II Men around 13/14) to what I like now, which happens to be largely indi, alternative music. Of course the (5) regular readers of this blog I’m sure are aware of my obsession for Snow Patrol but I do have a range of other favourites, ranging from the Killers to the Shins, Trouble with Sweeney, etc. Of course two of my perennial favourites are the Smiths and the Pixies, classics but bloody excellent. Before I get attached by the culture vultures (or culture monkeys) let me add that I do listen to pretty much every music genre including Amaradeva and Iraj (two different genres again).

Recently though a song has come close to dethroning Chocolate as my all time favourite and house as a genre to dethroning alternative. The song is Empty Streets by Late Night Alumni, check it out here. Similar to the connotations I get from Chocolate (addressed in previous posts), Empty Streets reminds me of a full moon on a beach in Hikkaduwa this time around and just pure, heartaching relaxation. Late Night Alumni is what is known as deep house, I’ll be fucked if I know what that really means but I like very much, especially to chill and not just deep house, but most house, progressive, trance, etc.

My introduction to house music (well the second coming so to speak, I came across it in college but was more interested in the pathe wade associated with it, see below) came with a trip to NoCal for a drinking session with R during which he introduced me to Uncle. He of the tight T-shirts put on Buddha Bar, to which my response was “nice…wash that?” This was obviously after a few rum and cokes and despite getting excessively wasted at what I believe was a house party (though I vaguely recall people in fancy dress, including a devil and a cowboy, not entirely sure what that was about) I did have the sense to get Mamme (he has various Unclified nicknames) to rip me a CD of his stuff. Actually R might have done that but I’ll take credit…and the rest as they say is history. Ares and Amazon helped build my House collection, though I did sadly lose some of the CDs along with my car.

At the end of the day alternative’s nice but requires far, far too much thinking while listening, so I can’ really handle it under stress. Put some Kaskade, Ian Pooley and good old Mark Farina and one can drift off. And this is without the chemical inducements so often associated with House music. Funnily enough now that I’m really into House, I haven’t done any drugs in a long time (yes Evil, not even weed). The pill popping days (very brief mind you) are far behind me and even though I was into house then I think it was just the rhythmic beats that I needed to accompany said popping. Now House is for relaxing, working (i.e. writing innumerable cover letters and reading fascinating documents on soilless potting mixes) and most of all for the gym and driving. Though for the two latter Deep House doesn’t really cut it, you need more Trance of the likes of Paul Oakenfold and Armin Van Buuren. Put a couple of hour mixes on your Ipod and you can run for miles. Tis a beautiful thing, especially for someone as lazy as I am.

Current favourites include, Savvas Fellas, the artists mentioned above, Rufus White and anything Hed Kandi. One also can’t forget the deities of dance and progressive house, Leftfield and other more chilled out electro groups like the Beloved. The dream, a bar somewhat like Tantra, less open, more beach views, glass, funky fishtanks, skimpily dressed bartenders of the female variety ((hey if Justin Timberlake can do it, so can I) and a few of the male as well (cos I don’t discriminate!), progressive, deep house music and the ultimate chill out joint. Hmm…another project to be added for the future.

It’s an odd sensation to be home these days. Back in college and actually until last December I used to come down with one aim in mind, party, party and more party. Drink until the wee hours of the morning, club hop till my legs felt like dropping off and trying to chat up as many girls as possible. Somewhere along the line however that changed, I guess that chat I had with Bounty on the way to the airport last time I was here wasn’t bullshit. Case in point, this holiday I’ve been out a grand total of twice, not counting 31^st night or a night at Buba, both times to Onyx. Well there was the night of Flygirl’s birthday which went on until around 5 in the morning, but that was relatively speaking a pretty chilled out night and it was a special occasion (which doesn’t really count).

I think the calming down is both a mental and physical thing. For one thing I’m unable to stay up until 6am, eat breakfast at Holiday Inn and still function as a somewhat normal human being the next day. I generally need at least 3-4 days to recover from a session like that, time that I can ill afford to spare. On the mental front I came to the realization today that I actually like hanging out with my family. I’ve always had issues with the fam, I guess it’s because I grew up with my maternal grandparents and that was a clash of cultures, especially in ‘modern’ Sri Lanka that was not going to go down well. The impatience and intolerance on both sides has however dissipated with time and now I just enjoy hanging out with them and talking. I even hang out with my paternal grandparents, to whom I had an emotion close to hate for taking something so important out of my life through their indifference. I guess its just time to let go and appreciate the good in people, despite whatever they did to you in the past. I guess it’s called growing up (something for the record I never thought I would do). Now I just have to figure out how to avoid becoming a square. 

Anyways family aside, the trip to Hikks, which was pretty much virgin territory for me since I was a kid, was awesome. There’s something so perfect about lying on a beach, staring up at a moon with Late Night Alumni’s Empty Streets thrumming in your ears. That is until the rest of the joker crew decides to turn up, throw sand at me, poke me and yell at me until I’m ‘sociable’ again. That and a stray dog attempting to nose my crotch got me up quick time as well. We then proceeded to head down to Mambo’s which was another world to me, I loved the fact they had trance music, and good trance music, playing. It would be nice to go rock out there someday before I get grey hairs and can’t move a foot without wincing. The beach boys could do with some less attitude though, one of the bartenders was a real dick, stole my drink before I finished and then gave me a gal look when I politely requested for it back.

All in all a good trip, heading down to Unawatune for the long weekend and then hopefully into the hill country the next weekend, if the last trip does go down this would probably go down as one of my better Sri Lankan experiences.  All in all this time down feels more like being home than ever before, which is going to make getting on that plane all the more difficult. What is however keeping me floating is that not only will I be back in August for Uncle’s wedding, but end of 2008, mid 2009 I shall be back here for good. 

There I said it, I’m coming back for good, come rain, shine or high water, Sri Lanka is home and always will be.

Bugger what everyone else thinks.

 Who could say no to this!

Ok so contrary to some expectations this blog has not passed the way of the dodo, at least not yet. I’ve just been taking an extended break due to some unforeseen circumstances but came out of retirement due to Rythmic’s tagging of me for the Movie Quiz, so here goes! 

1. CD or vinyl – really neither, I do like how my CD collection used to look on my shelves, but these days everything musical I won is on various computers, DVDs (as back up) and my trusty iPod.

2. An album you’ve been meaning to listen to – all the Super Furry Animals albums (Fuzzy Logic, Guerilla, Rings around the World) which I’ve listened to but not as thoroughly as I should.

3. Grammys - Important or a load of bollocks – bollocks, well bollocks most of the time

4. Your favourite album is – rather unsurprisingly “Final Straw” by Snow Patrol closely followed by “Leftism” by Leftfield, both of which I have to thank for an indelible image of a pair of long brown legs in a frilly black mini that comes to mind whenever I play either album.

5. Invite 10 Music people for dinner. Who will it be? That would be Gary Lightbody, Morissey, Paul Oakenfold, the boys from Asian Dub Foundation (who would count as one), Kaskade, Nirmala (used to sing for Controller.Controller), Jay-Z (to pick his business brains), Russell Simmons (same reason as before), Nicole & Melody from the Pussycat Dolls (OK, I’ll admit the’re eye candy, the former is the hottest thing I have ever seen in my life and the latter looks remarkably like a girl I dated for a minute in grad school).

6. Appropriate punishment for those who play Celine Dion’s "My heart will go on" while pretending that it’s still 1998 –abduction and anal probing by Celine’s alien crewmates and then made to live in the north of Canada.

7. Choose your favourite instrument and its best player from your point of view. Hmm….guitar I guess and the best for that would be Santana.

8. The one piece of music that can move you to tears – Jason Donovan, “sealed with a kiss” moves me to tears, followed shortly by nausea and violent contractions of my small intestine (thank ITN in the early nineties for this affliction).

9. You are an executive at a major label and have the power to green light one album a year. What would you do? – probably get Krishan and Randhir to collaborate, fine tune it for a global market, sell it and make me and them millions.

Hmmm….who should I tag, I guess I tag Evil, Rastiadu (who seems to have bloody good taste in music) and Venus(to try and bring her out of retirement!)…go forth and spout wisdom!

Or this!?

Yes I’m sad. I can’t help myself but be a big fan of Gray’s Anatomy, despite the fact it is somewhat of a medical Dawson’s Creek (which I more sadly used to like back in the sunny days of my youth, but that’s another blogpost). In fact I was quite bummed to realize I had missed the season premiere last Thursday, probably because I was busy drowning my sorrows at R’s place (not that I can remember).

I did manage to watch the premiere on ABC’s website, which was handy, and it was good, very good! Now just can’t wait for Lost’s premiere in a couple of weeks and an exciting season from both shows. Watching the Gray’s Anatomy episode led me do some research on the music featured on the show, which in turn led me to fortuitisly download some tracks from my favourite artist of the week, Mat Kearny. He’s sort of a pop, R&B, toned down Limp Bizkit, hard edged Peter Yorn, weird, brilliant mish mash of music. Bloody excellent listening to and I would highly recommend Limewiring him. Enjoy!

Ah, finally got my hands on the new Snow Patrol album, Eyes Open, I’m pretty broke right now being unemployed and all that and not really into buying books, CDs, etc but made an exception for this album. I first heard Snow Patrol on Xfm during the Christmas of 2003 whilst freezing my nether regions off in Neath, which for those of you who don’t know is in Wales. Run was being played pretty heavily, I quite enjoyed the song a bit depressing but then it matched the weather, which since it was Wales was dark and gloomy. 

Run was followed by Spitting Games and  I liked both so much I scraped together some money (being a broke student), bought Final Straw and stuck it on my MD player. That album will forever be associated with the craziness and fun in my life in 2004. Everything kicked off with a field trip in Ascot where activities included drinking excessively, tasting ethyl alcohol (not recommended, vision can get a bit blurry), breaking into a test nuclear facility, climbing and falling out of trees, trapping Carabid beetles and smoking seeni sambol amongst other entertainments. We really earned the label of environ’mentalists’!

Final Straw was still playing during the summer, spent initially in a remote village in Moneragala gathering data for my MSc project and then in Colombo where the ‘boys’ were reunited after 3 years. Getting stoned on a moonlit beach in Unawatune, downing bottles of Reserve and hitting on everything female in Clancys and dancing the night away on the tables at Glo afterparties was the order of the day, easily the best summer I’ve had. The album was still playing while I bummed around London after that trying to write up my project, cursing at tourists and having cold pints in the summer sunshine. Chocolate achieved an iconic status for me.  

All in all 2004 up until December was an amazing life  changing year, and Final Straw, Songs for Polar Bears, When its all over We Still Have to Clear Up and the Libertines comprised the background music. Oh yeah and I did see Snow Patrol and the Pixies (yes the Pixies!) at V Festival in Chelmsford just to put the icing on the cake. Putting on anything by the boys from Glasgow takes me back down memory lane to those insane, happy times.

Anyways back to Eyes Open, after that rather lengthy digression.  Eyes Open shares some similarities with Final Straw with both sharing those weird electronic background sound effects on some songs and a similar album structure. Gary Lightbody’s voice is as usual ethereal and the lyrics are good as well. You’re All I Have, Headlights on Dark Roads, Its beginning to get to me and Open Your Eyes all have thumping guitar riffs and uplifting but at the same time somewhat dark lyrics. The slower songs are also pretty good; Chasing Cars is absolutely awesome and incidentally was played during the season finale for one of my favourite TV shows, Grey’s Anatomy. The album is about lost love, with lyrics like “Somehow everything I own smells of you And for the tiniest moment it’s all not true” on You Could be Happy but it’s a nice mix of melancholy and upbeat tunes. All in all an excellent album (I may be a tad biased) and well worth the three year wait…get out there and buy it!