Delicious procrastination.
Placebo are one of those bands that I always feel oddly guilty about enjoying which is odd because "Nancy Boy" is damn fine blistering 3 minute pop song which lovely crunchy guitars and a thumping bass line. I mean the video's a little bit "Art school student gets his 'alternative' friends together and then gets a bit enthusiastic with the Inferno effects plugins" but I never seem to get tired of listening to the song itself
As a bonus track - not strictly 90s but I really like the Placebo cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" which Q magazine memorably described as "sound[ing] more like a 'pact with the Devil' than the original 'deal with God'"
even if the video is like a better dressed emo version of Feeder's "Just A Day" (which for some reason I can't help watching every time it comes on)
Hmm - no nerdy music factoids so far. Errm. Ok - the reason why drummer Steve Hewitt is blurred out in the Nancy Boy video is because he was still contractually obliged to a band on another label at the time.
"Economists should listen more to techies on what techs will be feasible at what costs, but techies should also listen more to economists on the social implications of tech costs. Alas, just as economists prefer to rely on their intuitive folk tech forecasts, techies prefer to rely instead on their intuitive folk economics."
This Halloween I'll be drinking McNuggetinis
Two words: Ham Daquiri
"[Teddy] have it." Repeated five times. And then followed with the totally new, "[Daddy] buy it."
It turns out that Sedona in Phoenix is so unspeakably cinematic - with its soaring orange mesas and artistically arranged cacti silhouetted against the blazing sunset - that your brain can't actually deal with it and you just start thinking that it looks like a really bad special effects cliché and discounting it as being fake.
It's kind of weird.
Anyway, that's got absolutely nothing to do with this weeks 90MM which I've plucked randomly from my scratch pad of potential candidates based purely on the fact that it's gone 2pm already and I hadn't noticed.
Inspiring, huh?
Anyway, so "All I Wanna Do" by Sheryl Crow.
Looking round to find the reasons the general consensus, including the commentary on Wikipedia, calls this inexplicable but, having watched both this 'original' and the more common one (which you can find here for comparison) I think I have an answer - the edited version is better and the guy who plays Billy comes across as an insufferable douche who I'd really like to give a good shoeing to.
Anyway, with that particular issue settled we can get onto even more obscurity like, for example, the fact that the song is actually a pretty much word for word recital of the poem "Fun" by Wyn Cooper (who is credited as a co-writer and made, apparently, a metric fuck-tonne of money from the royalties)
“All I want is to have a little fun
Before I die,” says the man next to me
Out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. He says
His name’s William but I’m sure he’s Bill
Or Billy, Mac or Buddy; he’s plain ugly to me,
And I wonder if he’s ever had fun in his life.
We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday,
In a bar that faces a giant car wash.
The good people of the world are washing their cars
On their lunch hours, hosing and scrubbing
As best they can in skirts and suits.
They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record store,
The genetic engineering lab, but not a single one
Appears to be having fun like Billy and me.
I like a good beer buzz early in the day,
And Billy likes to peel the labels
From his bottles of Bud and shred them on the bar.
Then he lights every match in an oversized pack,
Letting each one burn down to his thick fingers
Before blowing and cursing them out.
A happy couple enters the bar, dangerously close
To one another, like this is a motel,
But they clean up their act when we give them
A look. One quick beer and they’re out,
Down the road and in the next state
For all I care, smiling like idiots.
We cover sports and politics and once,
When Billy burns his thumb and lets out a yelp,
The bartender looks up from his want-ads.
Otherwise the bar is ours, and the day and the night
And the car wash too, the matches and Buds
And the clean and dirty cars, the sun and the moon
And every motel on this highway. It’s ours you hear?
And we’ve got plans, so relax and let us in—
All we want is to have a little fun.
... and lets face it, who doesn't like a good beer buzz early in the morning?
And finally, the project is complete. Admire your work and wait for the birds to congregate.
