Saturday, Bloody Saturday

I've spent so long writing what ended up being two posts on the best albums of 2018 (in my opinion, natch) that I've neglected the quotidian reality of life nine feet underground.

Four days have passed since I posted a 'normal' blog here, primarily 'cos it took that long to write the 'Best Ofs' - even then I held back, there was much more I could have written - but I just wanted to get them finished and out there.

It's become clear to me (probably should have realised this decades ago) that I have a compulsion to write.  What you see here (if indeed anyone does) is the tip of the iceberg. There's a journal, there's my Bullet Journal (entirely separate from the journal), there are the letters I write weekly that are an exercise in Sisyphean futility (only time will tell) and more besides. I have long harboured a desire to write in a more substantial way but somehow I have struggled to find a voice that I feel is my own and not just an aping or mimicking of the style of others whose writing I admire. 

I also wrestle with the difficulty of writing about music; I believe Frank Zappa once wrote (to disparage music journalists, I think) that 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture', and I have a lot of sympathy with that viewpoint. Not against music journalism, if that was his intent, but because it is almost impossible to write convincingly about music - either how about it sounds or the experience of it or what/how it makes you feel - without descending into cliche.  I especially abhor the use of the words 'classic' or 'anthem' applied to any song or tune; those words are the epitome of laziness and, to these ears, the equivalent of someone scratching their finger nails on a blackboard (though I guess that's a simile that will mean nothing to most these days) or maybe polystyrene blocks being rubbed together. Aaaarrrrrgggggghhh!

Is there a point? Is there ever a point, in truth? Not questions I can answer. I am still tormented with things day to day and continue to try and distract myself with exercise, books, and, far less successfully, music. Music mostly serves to highlight and heighten those tensions.  

Today's selection, another new discovery, is from Le Butcherettes, a band with an interesting back-story, in particular the lead singer, Teri Gender Bender (in case you're wondering, that's not the name her parents gave her😉), has an interesting tale. The album, 'bi/MENTAL', from which this track comes sounds both different and good on first listening. Glad to have found them. If you wanna know more about the back-story, you can read it here.

So, until the next time, farewell...