June 2001 Archives

There's a line in Almost Famous that goes:

They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts.

I'm like that when it comes to music. I was that kid with the notebook scribbling down words at gigs, trying to get an interview. I was that naive. And no different probably from the 'groupies' - you all do what you are good at to get close to what you admire. Whether it's flauting your brain and your words, or flaunting your cunt.

A friend of mine remembers everything. He remembers each and every day of the 15 years I've known him. He remembers who said what. Who ate what. Where we ate. Where we went. He remembers what we did even if he wasn't there. He remembers random encounters. Pick a date, any date. He can tell us what went on in our lives.

It's great. Except when he reminds you of the exact time and date you were an unbelievable arsehole.

My friend reminded me of the time, when I confused being honest with being rude. When I told a street musicians just how much I hated his music.

"Can you spare a guilder for the music?"

"What music? I didn't HEAR any MUSIC."

We used to have buckets of time, and we'd spend it all together, it seemed. We didn't need to make appointments, we didn't need to set a time and date for anything. Meeting up was effortless, it was what we did. Time spent apart seemed a waste.

We would meet up and the days would never end. A weekend would stretch out into the week. We'd end up parting and then couldn't wait to start it all again.

And then we grew up and got lives, or perhaps we lost them. Now we have to go through our appointment books and figure out a time when we can all make it. And even then you never know, something else might turn up. More important. Opportunities. Commitments.

That's life.

Picked up Jeffrey's book this morning from the post office. (it took a while for them to find it, why don't they just close that branch, if they're that incompetent). Flipped through it on the underground, smiling at captions and lines read here and there.

And I thought, I think this book is going to teach me about language, even more than web design.

And that's not that odd. A trip to Stockholm taught me about group dynamics, personal needs and, again, language rather than Swedes or Sweden.

I just saw 'The Merchants of Cool' (a report on the creators and marketers of popular culture for teenagers) on Dutch television. Call me blinkered, but I had no idea just how sick the business is. Or perhaps I chose to ignore it. I mean, I know it's fucked, but I didn't know to which extent. The whole 'Sprite/Hiphop/MTV' section made me want to retch. Paying kids to look cool in an audience. People paid to 'hunt cool kids'.

Last week, or is it two weeks ago already, in Dublin we talked about music, and the so far sort of disappointing big releases (REM, Depeche) this year. And he (glam bam thank you ma'am) started talking about Roxy Music, and how the reunion is 'obviously gonna be crap', but 'weren't they great and didn't you just know they were special, and did I have the first two albums?' I do. I got them not too long ago.

So tonight I'm watching the Roxy Music Top of the Pops special, and Ferry hasn't aged since Avalon, still looks fabulous, still sexy as hell with the suit and the hair, that HAIR, the weird grimaces, the inimitable voice. Not that crap, obviously.

I should be packing my bag.

But instead I'm writing this and thinking about the very first time I saw Roxy Music on television. It was the very first time I saw 'Top Pop', the Dutch equivalent of Top of the Pops. It was 1975. I was living in a children's shelter, straight out of my fairytale world into the horror of adults fighting (over me) and still grappling with the death of my mum. I was a very young 12 year old.

And then Roxy came on - a clip of a live performance of Love is the Drug. The hiss of a lit cigarette, the slam of a car door, and Ferry in his khaki uniform. A creature unlike I'd ever seen. A man.

And I knew there was something more.

I just came back from seeing the band Coil in the Paradiso here in Amsterdam. I paid 40 guilders. They played for 40 minutes. That's a guilder a minute. A guilder per VERY LOUD minute.

I've seen lots of bands in my life and some of them were very loud. Ministry were loud. Neubauten were load. But nothing was ever as loud as Coil. It was physically loud. I felt like I got hit by a tank. The vibrations were making me ill.