Final Fantasy VII - Prelude

Back in christmas '95 I made the leap into the 32-bit era of gaming when I got the original Playstation. It's one of the systems where I can find some of my fondest memories of playing games, any Capcom fighting game was a definite must, Konami's Metal Gear Solid, Square's Vagrant Story, Sony's own Ape Escape, Syphon Filter, Medievil, Spyro The Dragon and a bunch of others gave me hours of entertainment. And then there came Final Fantasy VII, a game like no other until then.
But a bit before that there was Final Fantasy VI, a game for the 16-bit SNES, that I played for hours and hours, and I'm not even sure if I ever finished or not. It was my very first JRPG and it took me a long time to get into the mechanics of it. When FFVII was announced, if you were there, man... the hype was immense. The promos, the ads, the reviews - everything pointed to an experience unlike any other.
And I didn't play it, for whatever reason, not at the time. At the time I was mainly playing beat 'em ups, and Capcom was delivering a huge amount of amazing games that commanded my attention.
But in '99 a couple of things happened : my son was born, and Final Fantasy VIII came out. I'd seen a TV commercial for it and finally got it for christmas that year.
So this is a cliché of having a newborn : the sleepless nights, either because your infant is keeping you up, or you're up because you're worried sick about something happening while he's asleep. What came to happen is that I eventually picked up the game on one of those sleepless nights, and started playing it, logging in an inordinate amount of gaming hours all the while. And as with all good things, it eventually came to an end and I felt utterly dejected because I wanted more. You'd figure that connecting the dots and just play FFVII would be a simple matter, but I did not immediately think of it. In truth, my first thought was get some beat 'em up to play, and so I went to this place that sold second hand games, where I usually got my games, to see what they got there. I found myself browsing their selection for a long while - nothing seemed to pique my interest. I'd almost given up. But a familiar white cover, a splash of green and the words Final Fantasy VII rising to the front.
I picked it up and got it.
Back home, I played it for the first time. My first impression? I was thoroughly unimpressed. You see, I have a deep, deep love for FFVIII, one of - if not the most - divisive games in the series. Still fresh in my mind, it held a ridiculously high standard to everything else. And VII... well, it just seemed so... muted in comparison. The characters were blocky, the soundtrack wasn't doing what VIII's did for me, I couldn't get into the story. I almost gave up.

But, gladly, I stuck with it, and eventually - as I recall it just before CD 1 ended - I started to really dig the game. The more I played it, the more I came to appreciate it, and soon enough I'd be completing it for the first time.
'For the first time?', I hear you ask? Yes, I played these games multiple times. And honestly, that first playthrough I did? I finished the game, but was nowhere near full completion. I didn't defeat any of the Weapons, I didn't get the Golden Chocobo, I didn't get a bunch of the summon materia... It'd take a guide that I borrowed from a guy to find all those secrets. That first time I fully completed the game, though? I was hopelessly in love with it. Cloud and company were an amazing cast, Sephiroth was the quintessential bad guy, and that soundtrack... how could I ever have doubted the brilliance of Uematsu?
It's over twenty years since that original release, and the remake was recently released. I can't wait to get my hands in it, but I'll have to wait, the boy's got the PS4 with him.
Until then, I'll be spinning the soundtrack and travelling back to Midgar!

Interpol - The New

Two things here - one, you'll notice that very, very often I'll be revisiting a certain era of my life, mainly those years between circa '93 and '97 or so, as well as some earlier years. Two, you'll quite probably see me waxing lyrical about my many failures. Not the 'Ever tried. Ever Failed' of Beckett fame kind of failure, no. This is the 'tried a couple of times at best and saw I couldn't do it and just gave up' kind of failure
Case in point, as a kid and well into my early adulthood, I wanted to play the bass. Most kids want to sing or play the guitar, hell, even the drums. Me? I wanted the bass. It's always been the instrument that my ears most quickly gravitate to, and let me tell you - I dislike many famous bands for, and among many other reasons, the way their bass sounds.
So summer '95 I took the plunge and bought myself a, quite frankly, crappy bass, determined to master it. How hard could it be? Little did I know.
Sure, maybe for a month or two I gave it the old college try, but I soon found out that bass and me just weren't meant to be. For that matter, neither me or any other musical instrument, if I'm honest.
I know everything you could ever say about this - trust me, it's not ever going to work. It's just the way my mind's wired, I can't understand the process of playing music. It's too mathematical a thing, and my brain doesn't play that well with numbers. Believe me, it's never going to happen.
Ah, you ask, 'did you take lessons, at least?', to which I reply 'yes, yes I did'. It's hopeless.

So years and years go by and I'm always transfixed by great bass playing - particularly bass that's got amazing production and mixing as well. Bands I followed back then I could trust to have the bass I craved, bands from earlier days had that bass too. And how many bands, truly, did I listen to, from, say, 2000 or so onwards that provided me with that bass lick kick? Not very many, unfortunately.
I can't exactly point out the first time I came across Interpol, but they're part of a slew of bands that are very prominent in my early-to-mid aughties. I remember seeing - but not listening to - the video to 'Obstacle 1', and it didn't really register for some reason. At the time, and this would have been in 2002 I was working in a local FNAC - a place that used to be actually fun to work at, before things went south there - and for a wee while I was working mornings. We always got in about one hour before the store opened up, so we could do some restocking, or if we had something new coming in, then highlighting it, or just, you know, making the store actually looked presentable. So everyday before the store opened one of us got to pick something for the rest of the team to listen to - or quietly ignore, as could be the case - and that opened me up to any number of things I'd never listened to. Bear in mind that we sold all kinds of music, from indie to jazz to metal to world music to classical to eurodance - you name it. So any given day we could be listening to anything, really. There was one particularly inspired choice one morning, where someone chose a Goran Bregovic record, and that just lifted everyone's spirits.
Of course, one morning someone played Interpol. As 'Untitled' rolled in, I just stopped. What was this? Who were these guys? Motionless, my ears fixed to the sounds being played, I was drinking it all in.
And man... that bass. That bass right there. Carlos D. speaking directly to my soul. I knew I was hooked for good. I couldn't get enough. Then comes 'Obstacle 1' and 'NYC', a one-two punch that devastated me. And the best was yet to come... when 'The New' kicked in, I fell in love with that bassline - it's one of my favourites ever. It even gave me itch to pick up a bass again and finally learn how to play it?
Did I do it? No. Will I ever do it? No.
It's just not meant to happen. Trust me.

Sepultura - Mass Hypnosis

So in the last post I briefly mentioned a guy who was my closest friend for a number of years. I met him in the late 80's, I'd say '89, as I remember it, but it may have been as late as 1990. By now age has eroded my memory a bit.
But some context beforehand, before I start this part of the story. As a young boy, I was wildly in love with Iron Maiden - my utmost cherished possession was a denim vest with a number of Maiden patches. I first came across them via illustrations I saw here and there of Eddie, their mascot, though at the time I didn't know this, nor did the band's name mean that much to me. Man, it was all about those Derek Riggs illos, they were like nothing I'd seen before. Dynamic, mysterious, wicked - I couldn't get enough of it. I eventually came to know that this was actually something that was related to a band, mainly through a couple of people : my future godfather, and this older guy who went to school with my brother. For a few years afterwards, Maiden was everything to me. I bought records and tapes and more patches and t-shirts. But as far as metal went... that was pretty much it. I guess I knew some other bands, I remember seeing pictures of bands in music magazines like Bravo, but for some reason I payed no attention to them. Around '88 or so - and because things are truly cyclical - I went back to the same school where I attended 3rd grade - the school where the Maiden nut and my brother also went to - and though it was sort of like coming home again, I returned on the second term and was pretty much an outsider from the get-go. But what is one of the most amazing things you can use to break the proverbial ice? Music.
My class was mostly girls, mostly into pop music, mostly annoying and screeching, mostly super cute and adorable, and I was probably enamoured with them all. Funny thing, some of them I remembered from my 3rd grade, but now they'd grown. They'd grown, and started to fill out. How dare they? I was still a pudgy, tiny speck of a boy, and these girls were already so far ahead of me! And so, this reluctant teenaged outcast sat by himself for a few weeks until the day I came in sporting a Maiden tee, and I was asked this supremely tricky question - 'You like music?' - and so connections were made, tapes were traded, and if not necessarily directly through them, then through their friends and relatives who were into what I was into, I got to know other bands, stuff like Helloween, Accept, Blind Guardian, Flotsam and Jetsam, Metallica, Megadeth,  and more in that vein. As far as I knew it then, this was as extreme as it could get.

Cue Valter, the guy who I used to be close friends with. Now, this was a guy with whom I had a lot in common - books, comics, toys, videogames, music, you name it. The thing is, he always was a notch or so above me. Not only was he older than me, some three years or so, he also had access to a lot of stuff I never even dreamed about. I remember the first time I went to this guy's house, and remember, this would have been 1990 at the latest, and he already had hundreds of records - vinyl and CDs, but above all - his tape collection was a sight to behold. In the coming years, I'd try to emulate that collection for myself, though I'd never quite match it. I said this guy was at least a couple of levels above me. Music-wise? Dozens of levels. The amount of bands I got to know through this guy was staggering. I'd never heard of Napalm Death. Or Death. Or Death Angel. Or Morbid Angel. And how to tell these bands apart? Death Angel played Thrash Metal and Morbid Angel played Death Metal. And Death most likely created Death Metal by themselves. And Napalm Death? the hell was that? A 30-something minute record with over 50 songs in it? Some only a few seconds long? What. in. the. actual. hell. was this?
Needless to say, I devoured it all. Granted, I didn't enjoy very many of those bands, and most of them didn't survive that first listen. I know full well what I like, and if upon first audition I'm not (at least) a little bit impressed, I'll just chuck it.
But bands that survived from those very early days in me - and were quite important - were bands like Paradise Lost, Samael, Tiamat and Sepultura.
Sepultura, in particular, were instrumental in defining my passion for extreme music - though here I'll confess that for me they begin and end with that 'Morbid Visions', 'Schizophrenia' and 'Beneath the Remains' trifecta. 'Arise', released in '91, universally lauded as a classic, has always left me a bit cold. Never managed to quite get into it. Everything that came after that I just skipped for the greater part.

I had a TDK tape, a chromium one at that, whose A side was 'Beneath the Remains' and the B side was the 'At Death's Door' compilation, which featured the likes of Deicide, Morgoth, Pestilence, Death, Obituary and others, that I played countless times. 'Mass Hypnosis' was decidedly my favourite, and when I eventually got the 'Under Siege' VHS I absolutely loved the live version, with Max naming the song 'Mass Hippie-Gnosis' on account of his accent.

Funny side story : during my tape collecting days, I bought any number of different types of tapes - though I never actually understood how and why they differed. Sure, I knew that the 'metal' and 'chromium' types were significantly better sounding than the others, but truth be told, most of the time I wasn't exactly liquid enough, so to speak, to spring for a pricier kind of tape. However... I once bought a super expensive tape - I can't quite remember how much I paid for it, but it was more expensive than a brand new CD - where I'd record the greatest album ever made. What album is that? I have no idea, I never did find it. But for years on end it sat unopened in a locked drawer along with some of my prized possessions.
One day I looked at my bookshelf (singular at the time) and decided I didn't want them tapes anymore. So what did I do? To my kind of but not really eternal regret, everything was binned. Including that very same unopened, crazy pricey tape.

                                                                      **SIGH**

Elend - Weeping Night

Straight off the bat, I'm going to ask you to bear with me on this one. It might turn into mushy drivel.

As far back as I can recall, I've always sought the answers to some important questions : what defines friendship? what is love? (if your answer to that is 'baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more', then you, sir and/or madam have already won.)

The latter is a question whose answer, I find, will always elude me. It was so paramount in my mind when I was younger, that well into adulthood I thought that love could fix anything. It could fix everything. Unfortunately, I didn't take into account any number of ancillary virtues that were crucial for that to work - trust, respect, sacrifice, etc. 

I always thought that love itself, by itself, could overcome all obstacles. A lesson I learned in pain, both to myself and others.

As for the former, I was struck at a very early age by an event that would shape my definition of friendship. When I was about six or so, there was a cartoon that anthropomorphized the characters from Dumas's 'The Three Musketeers'- here it was called 'Dartacão' and elsewhere, like in english speaking countries, it was styled 'Dogtanian'. This was an important moment in my life, for it would take me on a path where I would devour the adventures of D'Artagnan - 'The Three Musketeers', 'Twenty years after', and 'Ten years later' - and at such an early age began to further my love for books and reading. But concurrently with this ran the cartoon proper, and I ate it up religiously. It does not only boast one of the catchiest theme songs of all time, but during that very intro a message was relayed to us, the spectator beyond that fourth wall.

'This series based in Alexandre Dumas's novel 'The Three Musketeers', through its joyous protagonists, seeks to laud two virtues that ought never be forgotten : Honour and Friendship'

If my memory isn't playing any tricks on me, this was the very same year where I started going to school for my first grade. Upon reading these words, it became imprinted in me just how important friendship should be. And really, when you hold it up to such a high standard, is it any wonder I truly didn't have (m)any friend at all? It's true. Oh, I got along with people, I got along with people alright. Mostly in a semi-perfunctory way, but I got along with people. And if I'm honest - what friends I had never lasted from one school year to the other... maybe our interests, which may not have been that in common to begin with, caused a wedge between us. Maybe I just didn't feel any lingering friendship at all. 

Sometime in the late 80's I met this guy who would be my closest friend for a number of years. He'll pop up in more detail one of these days. But to cut a long story short, we had a friendship that was highly competitive - there was a lot of upsmanship between us, and as usual, I couldn't pass muster. To be fair, the only time I did get an advantage over him, I ended up in the relationship that would one day bring my son Ian to the world; and the events that led to that relationship existing in the first place meant an end to our friendship. It saddens me still, in a way, because I wouldn't have acted the same way, if our roles were reversed. Ah well, who has time to ponder on things that happened a quarter century ago? Oh yeah, the eternal overthinker.

In truth, this competitive kind of friendship was not new to me, though I never sought them. They just sort of happened. It would be like who's got the most G.I. Joes or Transformers, or comic books, or whatever. There really wasn't much beyond that, and bar this kid who I was friend with flashing me his pubes once - super gross - there wasn't any kind of intimacy at all, none of us knew anything about each other's lives, we only trod that common ground which briefly united us. 

All this would change sometime in the 90's. I'd first meet a guy - Paulo - with whom I sensed a kinship, and we bonded quickly. First it was the music we listened to, then it was our desire to have a band of our own - which we did, to comical results - and eventually we hung around with each other a lot outside of school, my first tentative steps into the going out at night thing were with him. A year or so later, I'd changed school, but kept in touch with him nonetheless. In this new school I'd meet a bunch of people whose presence I enjoyed, some I would've called friends back then, others I came to know as trusted, true and good friends for nearly thirty years now. 

It's at this juncture that pieces start to fall into place. One of those lasting friendships is to Sérgio, a fellow traveler of the road less traveled, a brother in arms as we journeyed far beyond the shores of night, past the gates of horn and ivory, and into this bond we forged.

I have told him so many times over these past twenty-something years that in him I see the man I should've been - the man who, when waves crash upon him like unto a cliff, does not yield and rather rises and grows strong. The man who learns and grows and studies, and has in him the worlds that beget worlds, life, joy and love all around him. I could not be any prouder of him; and this he knows.

There are moments that could never be driven away from my memory, not even if Mnemosyne herself chiseled at my brain. And so many of these moments seem to happen in the same place - the house where he lived back then, a place so firmly etched in me that I would sooner forget myself than it. 

He had a stereo that lacked only a CD player, and we listened to CDs on the system via his Amiga CD-32, making him the only person I've ever known who owned this oddity of a console. That stereo, unfortunately, no longer exists, and I know he regrets not having it still. 

Many times we'd do these sessions right there in his living room, where we'd play whatever was new. My CD collecting was starting to run rampant at the time, and very often I'd bring some atrocity I'd bought thinking that I'd found a masterpiece. Sometimes, though, we'd listen to what Sérgio had bought, his investments in CDs much more prudent than mine own. I remember some things he played for us that to this day I dare not listen to again - I'm looking at you In the Woods and Katatonia. I'm fairly sure that Sérgio has no particular interest in listening to some of my worst finds, bands like Deinonychus (why??) or Lord Belial or Hecate Enthroned.

Sometimes there'd be things that we listened to intently. That's how we came to appreciate The 3rd and the Mortal, and Kari's and Ann-Mari's voices and ways of singing, poles apart from each other.

There was also the time when he played me Elend's then lastest opus - a band we got to know from Paulo, who had bought their album 'Les Ténèbres du Dehors' and introduced the band to us. I wasn't, I confess, that impressed with that effort : it seemed to me that there was altogether too much going on in the record, I didn't think it made for a very cohesive work, and it soon fell out of mind.

'Weeping Nights', though, was something else. Classical instruments and music only, gone are the dissonant guitars. No male vocals either, only dueling sopranos.

The almost title track - 'Weeping Night' is a powerful, moving, tour de force that still touches me to this day. The album features songs by Henry Purcell, as well as some reworked songs from the previous album.

As with so many others that I listened to on that cherished abode, a part of me lingers there still, sat down on the ghost of a sofa, my soul brimming with absolute joy.

Amenra - Diaken

Amenra is a band that's relatively recent in my life. I might've known the name from somewhere, but truth be told, most of the past twenty years are years where the heavier type of music took a huge backseat in my life. It was the rare band that actually succeeded in captivating me. Sometime maybe in 2015 or so I came across a video of theirs - can't remember which - and I found it somewhat interesting. At the time, I listened to a lot of music at work, and most of the music I listened to was something that I could easily ignore, I just needed something to drown out the sound. If I'm not mistaken, at the time I was playing a lot of Mono, Hungry Ghosts, God is an Astronaut, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, stuff like that. Something instrumental, or mostly instrumental, that wouldn't occupy a large portion of my brain.
Every now and again Amenra would pop up in a playlist or the other, and though they were quite far removed from any of these bands I mentioned, it didn't offend me to find them there. So eventually I start to tune in to their music a bit more - after you get used to the slow, heavy, emotionally charged guitars, and you start to know the words that are being sung, I started to dig in and decided to catch up on them. More videos followed, more songs, more new experiences. Given time, my playlists were mostly Amenra - and the reader will forgive me if I confess that it still was something that I could listen to while at work without detracting from my concentration.

A couple of years later, and this would be 2017 by now, my situation at work had changed a bit, and I stopped having time to listen to music. Well, I could still manage a song or two here and there, but free time was rare and far between. I made sure to make every single minute count. If the songs I played hitherto were songs I could ignore, now I had to choose what to play, what mattered.
I started curating my playlists with more rigid criteria. Luckily, 2017 gave us 'Mass VI', Amenra's latest album so far. My first exposure to it was the 'A Solitary Reign' video - and from that moment on, that song became at once one of my all time favourites. For months on end I'd listen to pretty much 'Mass VI' only, and almost three years on it's still a record I play a lot. My adoration for it is such that I have no less than three different copies on vinyl. The band itself quickly became one of most represented in my collection.

'Diaken', the song I featured on Instagram was a definite slow-burner for me. For the longest time it was one of those songs that I didn't really connect with - until one day it just hit me.

This. This. THIS :

'When I keep my eyes closed, I'm in your arms again.
And when I keep my head down, it feels like I am home again.
When was the last time there, this is all too much to bear.
Still I keep my eyes closed, I'm in your arms again.
Memories dissolve, and I am alone again.
And when I open my eyes, I am alone again.'

Fatum nos Junget.

Front 242 - Headhunter

I'm not a terribly social person these days, and I really wasn't one when I was younger. I'm guessing that the going out at night bit only started somewhere around my 20th birthday or so. Sure, I'd gone out before, but I didn't really enjoy it. But fast forward to the late '90s and a guy who I used to be good friends with changed that a bit, a guy with whom I traded dozens and dozens of tapes, and with whom, circa 1992, I was in a band with. That is to say, we were the band. 'Band'. When you say it you have to do finger quotes.
We were terrible. But yeah, this guy who was as into metal as I was suddenly veers towards a very different sound. I remember him explaining it to me, and I wasn't that convinced. I mean, growing up in the '80s I listened to a lot of synth-pop, sure. Depeche Mode, Erasure, Culture Club, O.M.D., Soft Cell and whatnot. But techno was never my thing. (Still isn't, to be honest).
And the way he described it, what with the pulsing beats, droning electronics, and sample heavy sounds, I wasn't sure if I'd be into all that. So he burned me a CD - we used to do it that way back then, kids - full of names I'd never heard of. Covenant, VNV Nation, Hocico, Front 242, Assemblage 23, Nitzer Ebb and a bunch of others. First impressions were - I didn't despise it. It was different, yes, but I found some of it to be intriguing. Up until 2000 he'd provide me with a number of other CDs, filled with more of this electronic music. So in September 2000, if I recall it correclty, I moved to London for the first time, and I took my MiniDisc player with me, along with some discs I recorded containing a selection of these songs.
When I returned to Lisbon, things had changed quite a bit. While in London, I went to the legendary Slimelight venue, and it was like I'd stepped into another world - a darker, intoxicating world. Sure, the scantily clad girls helped, but no mere smut this : rather, it was like evil nuns and nurses, characters of the LeFanu and James victorian persuasion and other creatures that go bump in the night had spewed forth from the other side of the mirror, and I now peered deeply into that world.
As I ambled through the massive place, careful not to stray off the path, else I wind up in Domdaniel or the land of Summer's twilight, my ears atuned themselves to the dissonant cacophony. Bodies writhed on the dancefloor, some in a grotesque, mechanical manner, others as if lost to some unknown ecstasy. Transfixed, there I stood, drinking in the scenery, taking in the sounds and lights and beats and the bizarre menagerie therein.
Somewhere inside me, something began to stir.

A couple of years after that, already back in Lisbon, I was entering what would be my most bohemian phase. Back then, there was a place where this demimonde gathered, and I would often be there, dancing until the wee hours of the morning. Something I truly miss, but am not sure if I can go back to.
There were a few numbers that always brought out the best and wildest in me - songs whose opening seconds were more than enough to rouse the beast.
'Headhunter' is one such song - I even palyed it now and again when I used to DJ.

I'm playing it as I type.
Come dance with me.

The Waterboys - The Whole of the Moon

Some years, I find, seem to hold more significance than others. Meaning, in my case, that I can remember more things about them, more vividly even, than others. 1986 is one such year for me. I was eight years old, going on nine, and my life was about to change. Fairly soon we would be moving to a new house, and not that I would leave many (if any, at all) friends behind, but where we went to I didn't really connect to anyone. 1986 was also a World Cup year, and I was absolutely in love with the West Germany football team. That loss against that amazing argentinian team was something that bruised me deeply at the time. 1986 was also the year where the one-two punch of both 'Highlander' and 'Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars' - events that to my closest friends I have written about at length - hit me. Also, it was the year where I fell in love with Maltesers.

But it's 1986, and I'm living outside Lisbon, where both my parents worked. Me and my brothers went to school here as well, so that meant waking up extra early in the morning to get ready. I never was a morning person, I'm much more of a night owl myself, and if I could, I'd sleep during the day. But I rarely had that luxury, and certainly I didn't have it back then. What I did have, though was about a half hour trip from our place to Lisbon, where I could get some sleep. We always had the radio on, often one of the most uninteresting ones with people reporting the news, that drab, monotone voice lending itself to further torpor, but sometimes we'd tune in to one with music on.
My father was driving this day - I can't recall if they took turns or not, but sometimes my mother would drive as well - and I was in the back, next to my brother. We're nearing the entrance to the city proper, now, reaching the end of a freeway, and just after a bridge, there would be the toll booth where everyone had to stop. Sometimes there'd be a long line of cars there, stretching out beyond the bridge itself. It's one of those days where you're not fully stopped, but you're only moving one slow inch at a time. I'm recently woken from sleep, and still mildly dazed, I look about me. We're about halfway through the bridge, and below us ran a a foul, brown sludge of a river, its bed littered with flotsam and jetsam. The bridge itself lies nestled in a valley, connecting one end to the other, and on this particular day something peculiar was happening. To one side of the bridge, the sky was very cloudy, dark clouds at that, and it rained. To the other side, it was like a summer's day - a bright, yellow sun shone. The rain that was on the opposite side was also making a rainbow a bit further ahead where it met the sunlight, and high in the distant sky, was the fading moon. I could see it, partly, just not the whole of the moon. And I swear I'm not making this up, however convenient this juxtaposition may seem - the radio was playing this very song. I can't claim to that being the very first time I heard it, as I recall it it was pretty much everywhere at the time, but I can certainly say that it was the first time I truly listened to it.
That scenery I beheld, coupled with the soundtrack to it, has never left my mind. To this day I'm still not sure whether I dreamt it or not.

That's it for now, tomorrow there'll be something else - though I still have no idea what.

Amicitia fortior!

Air - Sexy Boy

A part of me thought that this forced confinement thing would be fairly easy to deal with, after all, I'm not a terribly social person, and I only go out if I must.
However... I should've remembered how easily some things can outright spin out of control. i.e., sleep schedules. Working from home, I find myself exhausted all the time, and I recently even confessed to missing being at the office. You know what this means, right? Somewhere in hell things started to freeze over.
But my regular day is something like getting up - logging in to my workstation - grabbing a bite to eat - christ, it's lunch time already and I feel like I haven't done anything - sleeping for 45 minutes - get back to work - what do you mean it's six o'clock already? - maybe do some shopping - watch some TV and fixing dinner - being asleep by 9 p.m. - waking up sometime around midnight - being up until six or seven a.m. - going back to bed for maybe a couple of hours - and rinse and repeat.
I hate this.
I hate this with a passion.
I feel perpetually sapped of energy, strength and the actual will to do something, anything. All the cool things I said I was gonna do, like going for a run at 4 a.m.? No sir.

So I sit in the sofa, headphones on, listening to music - somedays even catching up on my reading - most nights. And most nights, like so many of us out there, I think, my mind does tend to wander, and think and overthink. Lately I've been thinking a lot about my son, Ian, whom I've not been with since this quarantine began. Ian turned twenty years old last December, and he's been my one constant companion these past few years, and he's seen me at my very worst - the dark days of 2013-2014 - and he's seen me at my most hopeful, only to see those hopes dashed against the rocks. Had his not presence been in my life, I don't think I'd be here still. Ian is, in so many ways, very much like me. Though he is far braver and more resolute than ever I was at his age; when I was 20 I'd started giving up already. Well, that is to say, I'd made my peace with the fact that all I'd amount to was some lowly, easily replaceable cog in the great machinery of life.
Twenty now, and though we've had our disagreements - what parent doesn't? - it's been a privilege to watch him grow. I couldn't teach him much, except to be a kind person, to judge people by what's in them and not how they look, and to find in his soul a charitable bent. All this, and so much more, he's accomplished.
Twenty now, and it saddens me on a personal level just how much of his early life I can't remember, and also missed out on, and this on account of having lived abroad when he was younger. I don't actually have many photos of him when he was a baby - we didn't really use the camera we had  back then - and so I can't even fall back on those records.
But I still remember a bit. I remember when we found that we were going to have a child. I remember my first tine holding him at the hospital, looking at the wee gremlin and thinking 'so you are my son'. I remember the very first word he said, something weird that sounded like 'OH-GAH-NEE-BOO-GAH'. I remember sleepless nights. I remember waking up to change his diapers, only to find him soiled up to his neck, and thinking 'HOW?'. These memories - distant ones, to be sure - are still firmly etched in my mind.
I also remember how those sleepless nights were often spent watching 'Hill Street Blues' reruns, playing Final Fantasy VIII, and watching music videos on whatever music channels we watched at the time. And that takes me to today's song - Air's 'Sexy Boy' and its video that was on heavy rotation at the time on the french MCM channel. Though the band itself is mostly miss than hit for me, when I found this record on some bargain bin a few years ago, I couldn't pass it up. In some way, it's a memento of those very first memories I have of my son.

I swear I always promise to myself that whatever I intend to write about is going to be concise and to the point. Maybe I don't have it in me. Ah well!

Stay safe, folks!

Manic Street Preachers - This is Yesterday

[I'm cheating today. The text below is something I wrote nearly a decade ago - on May 19Tth 2010 to be more precise. Reading it now, I can say that most of it still stands, yet I can also observe the state of mind I was in at that time. Sad. Lost. Angry. Hopeless. I had a weird energy about me at the time that lent itself to writing. Somewhere in my emails I´ll have a few chapters of long abandoned attempts at writing a couple of novels. But I do have some fond recollections of this piece; Kieron Gillen and Warren Ellis both reblogged it and for a wee while I felt invincible.

Barring some typos that I'll correct, I'll leave the text as is. There is the temptation to edit myself, sure, to weed out some stuff, maybe to expand on other stuff. But let's leave as is, I'd rather remain true to myself.]

I was told something once, long ago, which I didn’t believe way back then, and that took me a number of years to finally come to believe. And, to make it all worse, I was told this lie by someone whom I considered a good friend, someone whose word I trusted implicitly – a guy I used to know by the name of Nelson. Now, this guy and I met in really weird circumstances – he was, after all, the son of my dad’s then girlfriend, and how weird is that right there? Even typing it doesn’t make it any less strange that old people, way beyond their best by date, could still have girlfriends… anyway, after being absent from my family’s life for a couple of years, my dad waltzes along, determined to win us back, and dad just goes and tries to make up for all the crap he pulled. Oh, I knew what his game was, and since I never liked the sonofabitch anyway, I made the most of it. I never felt bad, not even for one second, when I knew I was mooching as much off of him as I could – dear old dad had lost the privilege of eliciting a valid emotional response from me years and years before. That’s what too many whippings and punches to your face will do to you. Be that as it may, in he comes all gallant like, and soon enough he takes us (me and the sister) to meet the old lady he’d hooked up with. Can’t remember her name, maybe something that begins with a G. Or with an M., I don’t know. I dimly recall not liking her very much, for no real reason. But I did really like her son, Nelson. He was maybe a couple of years older than me, and in a way, we liked pretty much the same stuff. We listened to the same kind of music, to an extent, we liked comics and books, and games and football, and everything else. It was music, though, that swiftly bonded us, for – and as I stated – we listened to pretty much the same music, there was a much more alternative bent to his taste than mine. Between us, we had a pretty nifty collection of tapes we’d borrow from off of each other, and a wealth of new sounds to be discovered. This was maybe, what?, ’92 or so, when we first met, and my tastes ran the general metal gamut. Back then, I still listened religiously to the riffs of Metallica and Megadeth, Testament and Kreator, Sepultura and Overkill. I was also beginning to feel much more pulled towards the more extreme disciplines metal had on offer – if I considered Slayer to be one of the most brutal things I had listened to up until then, though I never liked them, bands like Deicide, Death, Morbid Angel or Benediction were something else. Insofar as it was possible, I strove to listen to the noisiest, foulest, unholiest (which, or so my computer tells me, isn’t even a word…) sounds out there. That was my goal, then and there - to listen to the heaviest stuff possible. And this Nelson dude, well, he was just happy to listen to whatever I gave him. More often than not, it would turn out that whatever death-metal hymn I was addicted to was something that he didn’t really appreciate. Even then, he was the sort of guy who loved Entombed (another band whose allure always escaped me) more than Brutal Truth. And in turn, in turn I’d have to do the same. He’d give me some tapes, every week or so, with stuff that he’d recorded from off the radio, or whole albums that someone somewhere had recorded for him. In those tapes, I found many of the bands that went on to make a name for themselves a bit later, or were about to make it, bands that I could never really like no way, nohow. Among those - Pearl Jam! Nirvana! Temple of the dog! Sonic Youth!, as well as countless others. But also, and on the opposite spectrum, you could find bands such as : Sleater Kinney (though I haven’t listened to these girls in ages), The Tear Garden, Faith No More, and Manic Street Preachers.
And that’s the crux of all this, MSP. I guess I was aware of them early on in their career : I can recall, but only dimly, seeing a bit of the video to Motorcycle emptiness in my place years ago, on one of those Top 40 style shows, or whatever, and I liked the guitar solo quite a bit, but man, how could it compare to the hellish solos delivered by Hammett and Mustaine, Kisser and Murphy? No way in hell it could. It would be a few years more before that particular MSP song would come back to haunt me, and stay with me forever.
No, what happened was that a few of the songs that I listened to from them in those old tapes were just good enough for me to register their name, to make a mental note of it, a thumbs up of a sort. In my teenaged mind, I was okaying these guys, admitting that their death-metal grunt-free music was listenable enough, and boy, did that make a difference. Had it been, say, a year earlier or so, and I would not have even entertained the notion of listening to anything other than metal. Well, that is, something other than that which I knew, that which I listened to before I really came into metal…
And so, on and off for some two years, but much rarer as time moved on, Nelson and I had our music exchange program going in full swing. I can’t tell you what happened – either I no longer remember it, or maybe it was for one of those silly reasons, but eventually, gradually, we drifted apart, stopped talking to each other. Maybe it was because dad and his mom split up, but I don’t know. Whatever the cause, we stopped talking, I didn’t even call him on his home phone, nor he called me. This was on the day before cell phones were common, or cheap enough for everyone to have three, before text messages and all these new technologies. But the last time I saw him, if I recall correctly, was when pagers became really popular among the young folk, and as chance would have it, I met him in a bus I was catching on my way home. We didn’t spend that much time together, my stop was a few minutes away from where I had originally got in, but he did give me his pager number, something with maybe some twelve to fifteen digits, and he also told me that thing I mentioned earlier. And what he told me was that he’d just listened to one of the heaviest things he’d ever listened to. I could barely imagine what exactly it was he was talking about - this was during the summer of ’94, late summer, and there was so much stuff going around, music-wise, that could fit that description, that my mind raced at the thought. Could it be that he’d learned of Tiamat? But then, heavy though they were, I’d hardly call them the heaviest. Samael? Maybe… Samael circa Blood Ritual was heavy as all get out, but even so? Nah, not them. And certainly not the likes of Moonspell. Ah, then it could only be Cradle of Filth. They were, back then, the epitome of what extreme metal could be, at least for me. I smiled knowingly, waiting for him to tell me what it was. And then he said, ‘The Holy Bible, by the Manic Street Preachers’.
What the fucking fuck? Huh? Come again? Certainly, my disbelief at such a claim was so apparent that he reiterated his statement. The Holy fucking Bible by the Manic fucking Street Preachers. I checked my data banks for info I might have stored regarding them, and what my mind came up with sure as hell didn’t match with what I was being told just then. How exactly do you mean, ‘heaviest’? is it the sound? What?
And so he told me thus – or something along the lines of : it’s the sound, it’ the words, it’s everything. You gotta listen to it. You’ll be sorry if you don’t. Take my word on it. It’s gonna fucking floor you.
Admittedly, I didn’t rush out and listened to it. I sure as hell wouldn’t spend money I didn’t have on it, and I knew not of anyone else - save for Nelson – who had it, so it took a while before I got a hold of a copy of the record. I guess it must have been closer to the end of the year, I had put in my papers to enlist in the Air Force, I had dropped out of school, and my final year of English had ended at the same time. Looking back on it? Jesus, if I was American I would be white trash… anyway, moving on, I did still keep in touch with some of the people from English class, and there was a guy from my First Certificate year called Antonio (I think…), the only person I knew back then that wore more black than I did, and who was a self-avowed nihilist of the Nietszchean school of thought that, only too naturally, had his own copy of ‘The Holy Bible’. On a whim, I borrowed it from him, and it wasn’t long in the returning; maybe a few days later only I was giving it back to him. Maybe he asked me what I thought of it. Maybe not. He wasn’t the sort of guy to make pointless questions. Nothing was really that important to him, vital though they were, in part, to his very existence.
To myself, I kept the knowledge that I had listened to the entirety of the thing all of one time, and I considered it to be an hour ill wasted. I couldn’t, for the life of me, begin to fathom how the guy had the gall to call this – not a piece of shit, I knew this much even then – tame and somewhat subdued record one of the heaviest things that he’d ever listened to. One listen was more than enough for me to make my mind up. Nothing I heard there was heavy in the least : not the songs, (the ‘heaviest’ being maybe ‘Faster’), and though here and there I heard words that recalled what seemed to me as violence and bloodshed, shit, I was weaned on the writings of Carcass and Cannibal Corpse, how could that compare?
And right here is where I ask that you forgive me. Yes, I was only seventeen, but I don’t hide behind that excuse. The fault was entirely another. You see, I was still too romantic in my thoughts, too connected to more chivalrous writings on one hand, and too in love with the darkest of possibilities whispered in those anthems of metal. My mind was as that of a child helplessly in love with his favourite cartoons, when something else comes along to challenge that love – and even if you can see some quality there – your true love speaks louder, and blinds you. Moreover, it deafens you. All this said, I can also admit that in my (assumed) seventeen years of sage wisdom, I was stupid as hell. Goddamn, if I could go back in time, I’d kick the shit out of myself. I did, and said, and presumed, and took to thinking, some pretty stupid shit way back then. And it does infuriate me, more’n just a tad, to realize how much I lost by being that way, for not knowing better. For thinking that I knew better, when all along all I knew was chicken shit.
But eventually, change came to me… slowly, very slowly at first, but I changed over time. And a huge catalyst for that change was my ex Dora. I guess I wrote a lot, probably much more than they ever deserved, about some of the girls I used to go out with, and then again I may have never wrote a line, or scarcely more than that, about Dora.
There are things in her, about her, that I have never seen in anyone else. She has the strength of a thousand men, and nothing can keep her down for too long. If anything, faced with difficulties she will only strengthen her resolve and find a way. She is someone – and this I greatly admire in everyone who possesses this quality – incapable of doing nothing, of just lounging around, lazing by, procrastinating. She’s always doing something, she is. But this is my vision of the girl with whom I spent eight long years of my life, or near enough as makes no difference. We split up a long time ago, and I’d like to think that she’s still like this, but then I no longer know her that well anymore. But what she also was when we lived together was someone who was capable of sudden mood swings, that went from the high – wherein she could wax lyrical about Agatha Christie, Queensryche, or Brazilian comics – to the low – where, sometimes, we’d be talking about something, anything, and suddenly she’d fall silent, and look at me, her eyes big and on the verge of tears, asking me questions that I couldn’t possibly answer, her despair deepening at my own silence, and I felt helpless beyond any and all hope : however much I wanted to help her, I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to. And just like that, snap! , it was back to normal all over again. But being with her, living with her, staying with her… it took me in unexpected directions, some bad, most of them good. A while ago, a thought crossed my mind that I never really had those small things you end up dreaming of, like spending lazy summer afternoons in the sun, letting them drift on to the evening, and watching the sun set with your loved one nearby, or coming home on one of those very summer afternoons after a day’s work, to find a fresh pitcher of lemonade in the fridge, waiting for you. This is – as usual – a typically selfish thought of mine. Of course I had all this; moreover, I had the chance to savour all this, and let it pass me by, time and time again.
But going back to the matter at hand, these years that we spent together – or some of them, at least – marked a period of definite growth in me. I realized that within a year or so of going out with her, my horizons had broadened considerably. Now and again, we’d spend a few hours sitting down somewhere discussing Hegel (of whom I knew little about) or spending equal amounts of time listening to the likes of Amorphis and Maiden, or L7 and The Black Crows. For every The Gathering, there was a Mr. Big, for every LaVey, there was a Poirot mystery to be solved. These things – small though they may seem – paved the way for my second attempt at ‘The Holy Bible’.
Sometime in 1997, I had started to listen to The Smiths, Depeche Mode and the likes again, after a few years away from them. It was a much needed fresh of breath air from the heavier sounds I’d been listening for the better part of a decade, and around that time – perhaps a bit earlier, I can’t say for sure – the radios and the TV were being invaded by the new wave of British pop music. To be sure, everywhere you went it was hard not to hear a song by Oasis or Blur. Some Suede and Pulp, even, or Shed 7 or Elastica. While I acknowledged this new sound that permeated the airwaves, it still didn’t mean that much to me. Not until a few months later, in the summer of ’98. It was the summer of the expo here in Lisbon, and my days couldn’t be more different than my nights, whether on a music or on a personal basis. I think I spent much of that summer in a constant state of inebriation, countless days I’d sleep maybe two, three hours before going to work only to do the same all over again. The nights, I’d spend with Tiago, nights spent in Alfama or Cais do Sodre, drinking as much as we could for no reason other than the hell of it, sometimes with Dora tagging along. Those nights, those legendary nights, were nights played to the soundtrack of Helloween (I can), Angra (Lisbon), Blind Guardian (Mirror Mirror), Hammerfall (Glory to the brave), and so many others… but the days, and especially the day when I worked with my supervisor Hugo – those were days filled with all the best that Britain had to give us. And sure, there were all those bands I mentioned above, but more as well. Healthy doses of Blondie, Madness, and Dexy’s Midnight Runners abounded. Quite likely, there was some Lush as well. Kenickie, for sure. I would never have enjoyed Kenickie quite as much – and this became eerily and quickly apparent soon thereafter – had I never been with Dora and listened to Bricks are heavy. And that’s when ‘The Holy Bible’ comes into my life again, when Hugo one day pops in the tape into the recorder, and ‘Yes’ comes along. Truth be told, it was kind of hard to pay attention – at least the attention it merited – whilst working, so all I did was give it a perfunctory listen, and I didn’t leave work that day without it inside my walkman. Oh yeah, baby. One of those big, clunky ones, when if you wanted to save precious battery, you’d stick a pen on one of the holes in the tape and wind it to your heart’s content, and your hand’s complaint.
In the days that followed, and whenever I was by myself, I listened to it intently, and only after a few listens I understood it, I understood what my stupid seventeen year old self could not have possibly grasped. But mostly, I saw how easy it actually is to misunderstand it. It’s all too easy to fall prey to the beauty of the songs, because it’s there, and it’s not ashamed to be there. But it takes a keen listening to realize that it’s an ugly beauty, harsh and raspy at the edges, and it threatened to consume and overcome you. It’s the beauty in the words of a man profoundly sad with the world we live in, with our fellow man, with the shallow values of modern life and society. It’s a beauty that you can only fully understand, and be aware of, after you experience heartache and loss and you finally come to see the world as it is, rather than what’s spoon fed to you by those who decide if we live or die. It’s the beauty in the duality of being something, only to be labeled wholly different thing (see, for example, the lyrics to ‘Faster’). It’s the beauty of words put into chords by hands that seem to foretell of the coming tragedy that would afflict the band. It’s the beauty of being uncompromising, standing up for what you believe in, even if you must etch into your own flesh, carving the very words of that belief. It’s all this, and so much more. And then, maybe it’s nothing like this at all. This is what is to me, to someone else, I don’t know. Maybe it’s something completely different to someone else.
All I know is that whatever it means, The Holy Bible, Richey, Britpop, the dirty and the dandy, the music and the words of those times… well, it marked a generation. Possibly not mine, though surely a number of my peers, but certainly the following. And all this is wonderfully told in words and pictures in the comic book series ‘Phonogram’. Comprising of two separate series, two different tales, but with the same backdrop and intent, Phonogram is not unlike a love letter to music in general (overall) but to britpop and the indie/alternative scene in particular – especially in the first volume, called ‘Rue Britannia’. The premise behind this? A quite simple one : that music is magic. But more than in the metaphoric sense here. In the world of Gillen and McKelvie, music is magic in a very real way – particularly for those who can really get in touch with it, and that, in turn can lead to spectacular or disastrous results. These music magic adepts call themselves ‘Phonomancers’, men and women with the power to make music come alive, to make music burst into light, or to curse the fools that cross them with a non-stop constant rendition of the whole of M People’s third album. In the first arc, we see the story through the vantage point of a phonomancer by the name of David Kohl, he of the midnight black attire, neat haircut and ‘existentialist poet’ glasses. His world is that of the ironically glitzy indie crowd, of the beautiful ones, of sex and drugs and cigarettes and alcohol. He makes his way amongst droves of black-clad men and women who live in nightclubs, shaking their bits to the hits. In his very own, and in a way I found somewhat detached, he does live a happy life. He knows his music, and what’s worse, the music – indeed, its spirit – knows him, and that’s where his troubles – his, hah, curse – truly begin. The first volume offers a thorough analysis on what it meant to be touched by the hand of their chosen deity – Pop Music. In the second volume, Kohl takes a backseat to the main event, and while he is an integral part of the story, it’s actually the story itself, and the storytelling invested in it, that outshine the very characters in it. The format is hardly original (sorry, Gillen and McKelvie!), and it reminded me of the format used by The League of Gentlemen in the third and final season of the show : one main story, with a number of ancillary, concurrent events all leading up to the inevitable climax. Art-wise, I liked the second series quite a bit more than the first. Initially, I thought that it was because the second series was actually in colour, but upon reading if a second time, I saw that there was a real evolution in McKelvie’s line. Originally, I found it oddly reminiscent of Jacen Burrow’s art, which is always good, but I also felt the potential for something more, and that’s just what the second series delivers. Pretty soon I’ll have to check out his Suburban Glamour, I think. And Kieron Gillen is fast becoming one of those writers that I’ll follow anywhere. Besides these two series, his Marvel work has been highly enjoyable too. His S.W.O.R.D. series was fun, but short-lived, and I’m really liking his Thor run. No mean feat, replacing JMS, and making the book your own straight away. But here, though, in these two series, it’s absolutely uncanny how much of what he writes and holds as true actually mirror my own thoughts. There are a number of threads used in ‘Phonogram’ that are akin to many that have been circling inside my head for well over ten years now, things that I intended to use in ‘One Nation’, but I am happy to see them used in a much better – and frankly, in a way that makes much more sense – than I’d have used them. I guess that the character of David Kohl must, partially at least, reflective of Gillen himself, and in both the writing and in Kohl, I see a lot of myself, and the life I used to lead a few years ago. There’s a scene in the first series where Kohl goes back to one of his abandoned, and previously regular, haunts that is very similar to something I went through myself, a few years ago. But not only that – there were times, always on the dance floor, where I felt, truly felt, that the music I was listening to was really magical. Maybe it was because of the ritual involved – the dancing, the moving, the shuffling of bodies and feet, the adrenalin, the energy, the sweat, the pent-up rage, the sex, the will to power inherent in all that… sometimes I saw lights that weren’t there, halos and wings of angels in the person who was dancing with me. Was that, as Queen would have us believe, a kind of magic? Oh yes, yes it was.

Patrick Wolf - Hard Times

What times we're experiencing right now, eh? Who among us would've predicted that this century's '20's would be so akin to last century's? Well, if you don't take into account the cyclical nature of things, and the absolute incapability that we, the human race that so gleefully choose destruction and bondage over true freedom, have to actually learn and grow and want more and truly shoot for the stars, then none of this comes as a surprise.
And so many of us the world over are now confined to our own tiny cubicles, venturing outside only to buy the barest of whatever we need to survive another day. I could write - at length - about how this is a test for the sure to come war for resources, and how we're utterly failling at that already, but no, I shall curb my more Ted Kaczynski-like thoughts.
As most of us now feel, boredom is indeed a daily facet of our lives - gone is everything that we did without even a second thought, curtailed are the opportunities we had to do so much of what we love. And we deal with this in our own different ways - some exercise, some read, some binge tv series, some get even more creative, some suffer in silence. We cope - somehow hoping that soon we go back to the normal that leads us inescapably to extinction. Ah, but if we can go out, if we are allowed to party like we used to, if we can go back to the old ways, why should the future be a cause for concern, when we have to make up for so much that we can't now do?

I find that as I age I become increasingly disillusioned with most things - the world, people, the state of things, whatever. I revert, even moreso as I get older, to a time when I found things to be simpler, if not necessarily better. There are, I deem, many places in my heart that hold dear so many of the things of my youth, and it's not unremarkable how much of my sense wonder has left me with time. It's true that while in some aspects I'm seeing a golden age of my oldest passions - I grew up reading comics and I'm a Marvel guy through and through - and to see the infinity saga play out across those many movies was a true delight for me, I also have to own up to the fact that pretty much nothing completely wows me these days. Maybe for the past twenty years or so I've been feeling like this. Granted, there are exceptions to every rule, and granted, I could list here a number of things from the recent past that have left a deep impact in my life. But nothing hits me like reading a Pratchett book for the first time, however many other books I read and reread. Nothing seems to pack the emotional punch that Six Feet Under packed, and that devastating final season still sends shivers down my spine. I've gradually been losing my ability to watch tv shows and movies, and I'm sure there are any number of things that I'm missing out on. That's why I can't understand the concept of binging. Maybe because I never was someone who wanted everything now.

And god knows I love music - if you've known me, even from afar, you can understand that. I'm someone who enjoys listening to music for its own sake, I do not analyze it nor do I presume to understand how it's made. In that respect, I'm completely bereft of understanding. And a part of me sort of, kind of envies people who can translate the music they have inside them into melodies, into symphonies. And the long winded gist of it is that one of the musicians I almost always default to is Patrick Wolf.
His song 'Hard times', from 2009's 'The Bachelor' is completely apropos to these troubled days we live. Do you know how sometimes you can't dissociate a song from a specific person? Back in 2011 I was dating a girl whose taste in music matched mine almost 100%, and true, it wasn't because of that things ultimately didn't work or were somehow better, but it helped to have that common ground. 'Hard times' is a song that I so vividly recall listening to whilst driving in her car. It just becomes so deeply ingrained in my mind that I can't help but smile a bit, and hope that wherever life took her, Filipa's doing well and keeping safe.

But back to Wolf for a bit now, back in the early 00's I religiously followed a blog that eventually became a full-fledged site, Planeta POP, and that blog was my gateway to so much of what I would come to listen in the coming years, from post-punk revival to New Rave to electro-clash to disco-punk, etc. It was right here, in these hallowed halls, that I first came across Patrick, with his video to 'Accident & Emergency'. I was hooked - that voice! The joy behind the way he sang! How the instruments sounded so gleeful! In a mire of darkness, his music became that shining beacon I'd been craving for the longest time. If you don't know him, I highly recommend that you do so as soon as you can. I highlight both 'The Bachelor' and 'Lupercalia' as his greatest achievements so far, but truly, you can't go wrong with anything he's done.

That's it for today, let's see what fate brings us tomorrow.
Thank you for your time, and have a nice rest of your day!

Afternoons with the blinds drawn

You know how you sometimes have days where nothing can save you? You just lie in bed morosely, utterly devoid of energy, unable to do even the simplest of things, and you just watch the hours slowly drift away, hoping against all hope that tomorrow will be a better day?
That was me today. In all honesty, that's me so very often, but today I just couldn't muster the energy to do something productive. Not even music seemed to be of help. I decided to ride that wave of no-energy until it ran its course.
Spent most of the day in bed, blinds partially drawn, with scant sunlight coming in. What sunlight did penetrate was already filtered through some heavy set clouds that threatened rain. Turned on the TV, turned it off shortly afterwards. Don't have what it takes to listen to people speaking, at least not today. Thought about picking up a book, decided against it. I knew I wouldn't absorb a single word, no matter how many times I read and re-read the same page. Eventually fell asleep, and dreamt an old dream.

This dream, I can't tell for sure if it's a dream I had as a kid and somehow became semi-recurring, or if it's an actual memory. It's set when I was very young, so early 80's. I have vague impressions of it being near christmas time, but I might be wrong. I'm in the dining room - the very same where I ate my meals every day as a kid - and I'm naked, jumping up and down on the sofa. In another room, adults are speaking, and I can't quite understand what they're talking about. The telly is on, and there's a commercial playing - I want to say it was for a beer, maybe Carlsberg - and the music they're playing in the background would haunt me for years, the anvil chorus of Verdi's 'Il Trovatore'. Still on the sofa, I stop jumping and edge towards the end of the sofa that's nearer to the wooden bookcase that we had then, and that I still have now on my bedroom. It looms large in the distance, a towering castle, with the floor serving as a makeshift moat, the space between sofa and bookcase an immense, yawning chasm that would surely spell my doom should I fall down.
But victory is within reach, because I inch closer and finally open a large drawer, large enough to house some records and some of my parents alcoholic beverages. All I know for sure is that somewhere in that sparse collection of records, was one that I was absolutely terrified of. I rifle through the records, slowly, my fingers running deftly through the spines. It is never in the same place. I'm reaching the end of the collection, and I'm yet to see it.

Outside, in the real world, some children are yelling, as children are wont to. I wake up, and still drowsy, I check my phone to see what time it is. Still thinking about the dream, the words started flowing.
I can fault my parents for much, however, what I cannot ever fault them for was the lack of culture at home. This came mainly from my mother, a learned and intelligent woman, who instilled in me a love for books and reading. From her, or mostly from her, I would inherit a certain liking for music. It helped that she worked at the time for the national TV company, and as luck would have it, we always had movies and TV shows to watch - the perks of working for the company also included being able to record pretty much whatever she wanted and take home with her. Yes, I understand how you might feel that security was lax and whatnot, but really... it was just a different, way less complicated time. One of my childhood's holy grails is something that I saw only the once, which was the series bible for a show called 'He-Man and the Masters of the Universe'. Goddamn me if that still doesn't haunt me..

As I said a little bit back, my parents had a fairly small selection of records; though memory may be sketchy here, and it could be that they had more than I remember. And even so, I can't seem to remember very many of what they had. Out of the top of my head, I can recall Santana's 'Abraxas' (the record whose cover I was terrified of in real life), a Bruce Springsteen live boxset, some Queen, Dire Straits, Pink Floyd for sure, and a bunch of classical music cassetes my mother collected. I also have fond memories of the soundtracks to Dirty Dancing and Ghotbusters. CDs came later, maybe around '88 or '89. There's one in particular that I may or may have not played to death - Dire Straits's 'Money for nothing'. A funny thing is that by now I'd already started to have a few records of my own, and my brother also had his own set of records. From him I got to know about the alternative bands of the day, bands that back then we called vanguard, but nowadays are called 'post-punk' or 'goth' or what have you. It comes as no surprise, however, that my most used form of media was the good old tape, and in time I would amass a collection of various hundreds, a collection that I would one day throw away in a fit of lunacy.
I always had music by my side; and even though today was a day where not even it could awaken my soul to joy, writing about it surely lifted my spirits a bit.

Tomorrow I'll be back to our scheduled programming, and I'll rant a bit about these hard times we're living right now.

Be pure.
Be vigilant.
Behave.

Echo & The Bunnymen - People are strange

Going back a bit to my previous post, my decision to reactivate my blog is something that I'd been considering for a good long while. I had no idea, though, what I'd write about here; in the past my previous and long defunct blogs were a bit all over the place in terms of content, and if memory serves me right, the last time I actually wrote about music on a blog of mine was almost a decade ago when I was between Switzerland and Portugal. But I guess you'd have to thank this pandemic to actually get me off of my lazy ass and start writing again, and why not write about what I'm listening to?

So today I posted Echo & The Bunnymen's cover of 'People are strange', originally by The Doors - a band that you'll probably be shocked to find that I truly dislike. I just can't seem to understand what the appeal is, and god knows I tried. My brother was way into them many years ago, and I did listen to all their records, but apart from a song here and there that I didn't dispise, most of it was pretty meh for me. But yeah, this particular version of the song is special to me, it is, after all, part of the soundtrack to one of my favourite horror movies of all time : The Lost Boys.

I'm not now a huge horror fan, I guess I just stopped having patience for it many years ago, but way back in the 80's? Oh yeah, I was all over horror. (Well, american horror, that is to say.)
Halloweens, Fidays, Nightmares? Loved 'em. Evil deads, Fright Nights, Howlings? Devoured 'em. Anything that had Stephen King or John Carpenter on the title was pure gold to me. I couldn't get enough, and to be sure - every visit to my local videostore meant that some movie or the other would be playing later on on the telly. But bear in mind that none of the technical bits in the movies were what endeared them to me, nor did they inspire me to learn any of the crafts therein involved. Yet there was another crucial factor, a magazine I religiously bought and read for years on end called Fangoria. Oh, those halcyon pre-internet days when you weren't spoon-fed everything, and if you wanted to know anything at all you truly had to put in the time and effort.
And Fangoria - along with Starlog, but that's a story for another day - were my gateway into so much that would come to influence me greatly in those coming years of my youth.

And man - just look at that cover right there. Ten year old me was completely engrossed, I wanted to know more about who these lost boys were, I wanted to know who this kickass disfigured vampire was, I wanted to know everything. And because I'm an old man now, whose memory can sometimes be downright sketchy, I can't really remember if I first saw this movie in the 80's or in the very early 90's, I for sure didn't watch at the cinema, my parents would have never allowed it. Watching a horror movie with the family at home, yes? Watching it alone in some dark cinema? No. (I also can't say for sure if it got a release over here or not.) But be that as it may, I certainly recall watching it for the first time and immediately falling for it. What's not to love? Kiefer Sutherland as a badass, menacing vampire? The super awesome Frog Bros, who run a comic-book store of their own? And that soundtrack? Who among us never felt chills when listening to 'Cry little sister'? Hot damn! If all that's not a recipe for success, I don't know what is!

Throughout all these years - like it was only yesterday, but over thirty years ago - I never stopped having a soft spot for this movie in my heart. A few years back I was crate digging in a local record store, and among the thousands of records I handled that day, I brought home a few with me - including the 12'' single that I showcased today. Playing it always brings a smile to my face. Impending threat of global nuclear war nonetheless, the 80's were truly an amazing decade. Don't be surprised if I revisit if often here!

In a patterned room

Once upon a time I used to write for an online music magazine. I never professed to claim that I wrote well, but I was told that my articles were of quality. Those days were of great personal growth and it also broadened my musical horizons quite a bit, as I had to listen to loads of stuff I'd never even heard of before. There were also the gigs that I went to and then wrote about, and I'm thinking that maybe those were my favourite pieces of writing I did for the magazine. Highlights, for sure, were the White Lies, Lloyd Cole and Kid Congo Powers gigs - those were immensely fun and rewarding to write about.
Eventually, though, time and other factors started to weigh down on me and I had to step away from the magazine. It wasn't an easy decision, and certainly not one that I took lightly, and to this day it still pains me that I couldn't have done more.

But music, as always, remained with me. I couln't ever walk away from it, else my very sanity would be in jeopardy. Reading, listening to music, spending time with my son - these are the things that keep me sane still. And once upon a time I collected music, too. Vinyl I started having in the 80's, CD's I started collecting in the early 90's, and given time, I amassed quite the collection. I wouldn't say it was very eclectic - for the longest time I basically only bought any kind of heavy music I fancied, and it wouldn't be until the very late 90's or early 00's that my tastes started veering towards other sonic landscapes. I loved collecting, and even though my vinyl collection took a backseat to my CD collection, I had a nice little bunch of records, plenty of The Smiths and Depeche Mode singles, loads of Iron Maiden, Queensryche, as well as god knows what by now.

The 00's were cruel to me, I find, in terms of music. That was when I started to not enjoy the heavier things anymore - though I still loved (and still love) everything from before. And I grew so apart from everything I had, that, coupled with the advent of digital media, I made the decision to get rid of - at the very least - my CD collection. One day I woke up and I really didn't want row upon row upon row of CDs I no longer listened to anymore. And you'd find there some EPs that are quite rare these days, special Japanese editions that cost me an arm and a leg, multiple limited editions of the same record - I'm looking at you, Cradle of Filth - deleted singles, you name it. My collection numbered in well over three thousand, and I wanted it gone. And gone indeed it was, and fairly soon. I had a guy from a local record store come to my house and appraise it and the number he offered me was so ridiculous that I accepted it anyway. I had no love for it anymore. And so, save for some that I had set aside out of sentimental reasons, my CD collection was gone.

The vinyl I kept, but come 2013 I would be selling it as well. This is not a happy story, and I won't go into much detail about it here, but suffice to say that in late 2013 I found myself broke, broken, hopeless, jobless, mirthless, slowly dying inside. Between May of that year and May of 2014 I barely left my room. And one day I gave into despair and sold my record collection. Again, I sold it for a fraction of what it'd cost me, and it grieves me greatly that I was so weak at the time, so weak that I couldn't fight my demons. Too weak to leash my black dog.

There and then I decided that I would not collect ever again. I'd had it. I'd literally had it and gave it up.
Ah, but fate makes fools of us all, doesn't it? I can't really recall what record it was that I first bought this time round. Maybe it was The National's 'Trouble will find me', but it might have also been Sinistro's 'Semente' at a gig I attended and thought why the hell not?
And so I got the bug again back in 2016 and started collecting once more. It's funny, because of my current collection I have so little of what I had on my previous one. To be fair, maybe I had outgrown some bands, or maybe they never felt like a priority anymore. I still have a list of the records I used to have, and if I'm honest out of that list there are only a handful that I would really want, but as luck would have it, they are the ones that are now crazy expensive on Discogs. To think that records I once had now go for the very high hundreds - *cough cough* She Wants Revenge *cough cough* - galls me.

But slowly and surely I've been rebuilding, not quite what I once had, but what I want. And for some reason that now completely escapes me, some years ago I started showcasing my records on an almost daily basis on my Instagram profile and my goal with this blog is to complement my posts there with maybe an anecdote or an incidental story connecting me to the particular song or band I chose for that day. It also gives me the opportunity to write again and to fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, to quote one of my favourite poems ever, Rudyard Kipling's 'If'.

I hope that I can keep up. It would indeed be a great thing for me.

Drop me a line, if you're so inclined.

All the best, and stay safe.