Current mood: HAPPY THANKS...
Category: HAPPY THANKS... Music
I was supposed to be going out....
Sculpture was playing together with Snorkel - It was a showcase for the Slowfoot record label. It all looked very interesting. An alt.electronic heaven - just my kind of thing..
But I didn't make the trip....
Why???
It's more than a big part laziness - I had a bottle of wine, and that I had the bottle to gee me up to go out, rather to be an end in itself, got gradually forgotten...
I put on a LIVE recording of Bogdan Raczynski LOUD and drank the wine. I looked at the map, looked at the weather. I drank more wine, turned the music up a touch louder. I spazzed it about. Chatted and messaged here and there with peple I knew and others I didn't. I turned the music up again and refilled the glass....
Then, at some indeterminable point, I realised I wasn't going out anymore - that I was getting everything I needed from the night out by staying in...
Booze (cheaper), company (virtual - maybe, but easier and more substantial), loud music (a LIVE set at a decent volume) and a good degree of freedom about all of it...
So was this a laziness once off, or increasingly the way of things...??
I think the latter. In fact, I strongly feel the going out experience is being increasingly devalued and regulated to the point where making the effort is less and less fun and therefore less attractive...
Yes boss, there's a certain degree of freedom I always have to doubt now. I feel I have to prepare for some kind of bullshit at some point of every evening out and it gets tiring....
I'm sure things were once different.
Pubs and clubs used to be a place to go to let it all hang out. You could drink, smoke, sometimes smoke pot, buy drugs, fart (it didn't matter - no-one would smell it above the fag smoke) There was loud music and new people to look at - people you would never otherwise meet or get the chance to talk with...
Nowadays you can't smoke, half the London pubs have bouncers some of whom insist on searching you. Some want you to remove your cap, some want to jump up above the toilet doors to check you're not taking drugs whilst you piss or shit (or take drugs) Then there's the guys in the toilets who want to guilt trip you into you letting them wash your hands and spray you with perfume whether you want it or not. I mean..
'FUCK OFF!!! IF I WANT TO POOF ON MY HANDS I CAN DO IT MYSELF THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!'
Shit, sometimes you have to go through more checks, prompts and observtaions to go into and enjoy a pub or club of an evening in Central London than you would have had to do to fly to Mars....
What I'm getting around to saying is that as with sex, I honestly think going out is on it's way out...
Yes boss, I have the gut instinct that the idea of going on the razz will bubble under, as technology rampages on and brings greater and greater entertainment quality into the front room...
Musical development isn't helping. In fact, the whole thing with LIVE electronic music is that it's generally very impersonal and unspectacular. This has always been it's failing LIVE.
Now to be fair, Sculpture is one of the few exceptions to that rule.
In fact on the 3 or 4 occasions I've seen him play a LIVE set, he's had more of a physical prescence than more or less anyone else I've ever seen play electronic LIVE. He makes an effort to properly mix it up and his LIVE material always seems to have an unknown edge that his studio recordings don't quite have....
But in general, LIVE electronic music is like watching paint dry. It's some guy behind a laptop clicking a mouse and some colourful pictures on the backdrop that only have value at all if you're off your face on drugs...
It's not just electronic music.
No, as a general rule, I believe inner space is becoming more free and expansive than outer space. People are becoming more accessible and more convenient from a computer than from inside a bar. At home you can make your own rules - outside you're constantly flooded with other peoples rules and most of them are stupid and petty.
Indoors you can easily have a WHACKING BIG SOUND, you can project 10ft or more of TV or film onto the wall for less and less of an investment. You can have cheaper and better quality drinks you don't have to queue 20 minutes to get and that don't get whipped away if you leave them on a ledge for more than a few seconds. You can smoke and take drugs at will. You can wear a hat - shit you can run around naked if you like and no-ones going to bother you (unless you're in a shared house of course)..
Yeah...
I reckon going out is on it's way out....
Or maybe I'm just getting old....
 | Currently listening :
How to Operate with a Blown Mind
By Lo-Fidelity Allstars
Release date: By 19 January, 1999 |
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