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2011-05-27T10:51:00.001-07:00

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Why do we always want what we can't have?

2009-12-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

Everyone is familiar with Dickens novel Great Expectations, which stars the evil Miss Havisham engineering a controversial relationship between the sweet orphan Pip and her adopted daughter Estella. In modern day terms, the dynamics of this relationship can be succulently termed the ‘treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen’ scenario (from now on TMKK). The question is then, would Pip have still been so utterly devoted to winning the affections of the arrogant Estella, had she immediately given in to his leanings? Was the admiration that he had for her, inexplicitly bound up with the denial of what he wanted? Or would he have quickly tired of her and moved on if there was no gaming aspect to his juvenile courtship with the prim little snob? Maybe yes, maybe no – I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that the TMKK game is, and has for a long time, been prevalent amongst my courting friends. In fact, one of my longest suffering friends fought with the afflictions of the TMKK game for nearly three years. It took her that long to rinse the heart from her eyes and realise, he was not a prince in a frog outfit, he just wasn’t interested in her – and the only reason that he was occasionally bed-shared with her was, well, because he couldn’t help himself. She is, after all, one hell of a lady.

But, I am aware, that I am talking about this as if I am inoculated, which is of course, incorrect. About a year ago, I met a hot guy. He represented everything that I wanted in my life at that time. He was tidy (yes – this is high in my list of priorities, don’t ask), intelligent (he read books and was witty), he was stylish (wore a careful mix of smart and trendy, new and old) – and he had a job (a.k.a. he was – and very much still is – independent and had a sense of self worth).

Everything started perfectly; the first date was full laughs, looks and sparks. Excellent. A few like this followed and then a bizarre thing began happening. Rather than turning up with flowers, he started to arrive late. I chose, at the time, to ignore this and except his excuses (stuck in the office, traffic, my brother called…) as genuine because I am, after all, a reasonable person – I told myself.

I’ll spare both you and I the grim details of the events that followed other than to say that his phone number was, or should I say has been, deleted on numerous occasions, notably after either a booty call or a shameless drink dialling experience. With retrospect, this was the TMKK game at its finest: there was no punishment too great that this man could inflict on me that I would not tolerate In The Name of Love.

Between a few friends of mine, the TMKK game is explainable by what we call the Rat Scenario (RS). Not because he was a rat (we are too big for name calling – and of course renaming A Love as a rat doesn’t change it in any other way but semantically. You can’t PR your heart, come on). And on this subject, I have to credit a friend (actually a friend of a friend), a psychologist, who first introduced me to this interpretation of the otherwise ridiculous love game. The RS, as we shall now refer to it, she tells us, can be explained by an experiment in which lab rats where fed through a tube into their cage.. Imagine this: three cages with three sets of rats and three tubes. Got that? Right, lady in white coat (could be a man, but in my imagination scientists are women) feeds the three cages every day BUT, she feeds cage A everyday through the tube at the same time. She feeds cage B at random through the tube and cage C through the tube, never. In my interpretation they don’t starve, the food just isn’t administered through the tube; it is put in another way.

Now, what is significant is that the rats in cage C never wait by the tube because they don’t associate it with their primary need (food). But the rats in BOTH cage A and in cage B ALWAYS wait by the bottom of the tube. This is interpreted to mean that even though the rats in B aren’t always fed through the tube they associate it with what they need (food) and so regardless of whether or not the tube provides them with that need, they wait.

Now, think back to my friend – OK, or to me – and you can think of us as a little bit like the rats in cage B. If the guys had never given us anything we would have been like the rats in cage C – we wouldn’t have associated them with what we need (substitute food with Love). If we had been like the rats in A, it would have made sense for us to wait by the tube because that was what provided us with what we needed. Thus, this can lead us to conclude that it was the intermittent provision of Love administered through the tube which kept us waiting, for what we believed to turn into something more like what was going on next door in cage A. But it wasn’t, we were stuck in the mother of all cages, cage B. The cage of the desperate hopefuls (but you have to give us credit for our optimism. The way I thought of it at the time, was like a telephone operator was keeping me on hold. I feared hanging up - despite the annoying music - in case the receiver did pick up the fucking phone. So, the longer I ‘held the bloody line’ the harder it became to hang up).

While the RS gives us something to dwell on, it doesn’t explain, not fully, why we always want what we can’t have. Pip’s adoration of Stella was also, lest we have forgotten, bound-up with his desire for social mobility. There was, an element of if only I could be with her, I could be like her too in it. We all know that Pip, as the name tells us, has Great Expectations and so what the novel is really about, is the way in which our desires are linked to our identity or sense of self.

It is either that our identity is shaped by what we want or what we want shapes our identity, I can’t quite work that out but take for example the ‘mine, yours’ game (for ease, M/Y). For those of you that don’t work with eight-year-old boys I’ll explain the rules. See if you can follow, it is tricky. The M/Y game involves walking down any street and identifying the cars you want as Mine and the ones you don’t want as Yours. Needless to say that, unless you have the mentality of an eight year old, the M/Y game is pretty tiresome but it serves to illustrate a point. What is remarkable, shall we say, about this game is that no one collaborates and everyone competes. It also lends itself rather easily to rows over exceptionally great cars. Blacked out BMW’s with alloy wheels provoke - amongst my little rebels at least - a particular sense of excitement. We can ascribe this to the probability that cars such as these might as well have ‘I’m a gangster’ splayed across their bonnet. The other significant aspect of this game is that the allocation of rusting tins on wheels to someone else is considered a sign of disrespect (“allow it man” is a standard means of expressing one’s disproval to another’s, albeit jovial, suggestion).

What I learn from my little cherubs/wannabe bad-boys then, is that identifying oneself with what you can’t have (i.e. a gangster-mobile) and cussing the other (through identifying them with poverty) is different to having desire stirred by intermittent offerings of our needs (food, I am going back to the rats – bare with me). This kind of desire for what we can’t have is about shaping our identities and embrocating what we are with what we want to be, in the hope of some osmosis. The material good is a symbol of the (social) status that we desire, much in the same way that a potential partner can represent the kind of person that we want to be.

Think back to when we were children though and how being ‘copied’ (by siblings or classmates) filled us with contempt, disgust even and how we were reassured that it was them expressing their approval and admiration, which was supposedly flattering but ultimately troubling. Why? Think about the well-recorded phenomenon of arriving at a party, and the horror of spying someone in matching attire. Is this ‘horror’ not owing to the way in which it reveals our lack of individualism, much in the same way that couples that dress the same are celebrating their unity? In other words, copying (sameness and difference) draws attention to the carefully sculptured nature of our identities.

So, let us retreat back to the question: why do we always want what we can’t have? I think that the answer lies in the old saying (that, no doubt some annoying fucker will remind you of next time you lose and find something): “it is always in the last place you look”. As we all know, the reason for this is that we aren’t bloody likely to continue looking for something we have already found. Similarly, and paradoxically differently, once we have found the prince (or princess) we aren’t going to continue looking for him or her. We won’t be the poor rats of cage B because we would have joined the cage A crew. However, when we get that dream blacked out BMW with super-duper wheels we might well keep looking at other cars (and for non-car people like me, cars can be substituted with other material things, like computers, clothes, houses, gardens, bikes, phones – you get my drift) that maintain, or strengthen even, the desire for acquisition. For it is through the acquisition of these objects that we shape what we want to be in the eyes of others and ourselves.

So, Pip might have been satisfied with Stella McBella, on the one hand, but equally if his cultural milieu reinforced the idea women are trophies, he might have felt obliged to knock up a few knots on his bedpost, in the hope that it would have provided him with what he felt he lacked (beauty, grace, charisma etc). From this I conclude that the reason we always want what we can’t have is that our wanting, our desires are our driving force, our fuel. From which we can deduce, that our desire for a certain job, a certain qualification and/or the perfection of a particular skill is what motivates us to get up and do what we do.

Our desire to be like certain people can be understood in a similar vein. They represent what we want to become, so we are drawn to them. I should not then be surprised to find that my most successful friends (i.e. the most interesting, not necessarily the richest) are also the hardest working. They are driven by what seems to be an inexplicable force that appears to involve a delicate mix of imagination and the setting of boundaries and targets, the latter of which, from the outside, can seem exhausting but from my own experiences I realise are perceived as their raison d'être.

To put it simply, if we get what we want we might be satisfied with what we have achieved but some of us aren’t because we enjoy our gains for a short while then think up new and exciting goals. It is the pursuit of these goals, which stirs the desire for more goals, for more dreams, for more wishes. Whether dreams are exhaustible or not is not something I have yet come to any solid conclusions about, so, in the meantime, I keep wishing, but not to be a rat in cage A or cage C. You see I have learnt, somewhere along the line it is important to love what you are equally to what you want to be but who that is (who I am) depends on precisely who I am with, so, who I am with is really what counts. Now we come to the all-important moral of the story (the bit that sounds like an opinion to make the rest of the article seem like it was built on facts): make friends with the rats in your cage – Love IS important (if not Everything) but where it comes from is not the lady in the white lab coat (that bit, you – ok, we - made up).

Nim Folb

Submit Your Gig Listings

2009-11-27T02:39:00.000-08:00

Burnt Toast is an Independent Listings magazine and is not affiliated with any particular Venues. We also try our best to promote gigs put on by independent promoters (especially those with a DIY ethos).

The best way to submit a gig listing to us is by emailing...

Ben
E: dwaingibson@yahoo.co.uk

Please include (preferably in this order)
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2009-11-27T02:34:00.000-08:00

If you are interested in Advertising in Burnt Toast, please contact...

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Burnt Toast's current circulation is 5000 distributed in various Shops, Bars, Night Clubs & Cafes around Leeds. The size of the publication depends on the amount of funding and content from month to month but will usually be an A3 document folded to A6.

Burnt Toast Issue 9 OUT NOW

2009-11-22T04:52:00.000-08:00

Burnt Toast 9 should hit the shelves in a few days time, in the meantime here is a downloadable easy to read PDF version. Click on the two lovely chaps above.

Tobias Green - Adventures of an Average Man - Part Two

2009-11-19T02:06:00.000-08:00

Pitying pinkies adroitly acquainted with indulgence? A punted melon? A rain shield swirled with candour? Peepers pugnaciously pitted for pleasure? How does one best harm a man…

Tobias Green woke red and tender and horrible on a makeshift gurney in a nameless ward of what smelled like St. Ignatius’ General Hospital. He swiftly ascertained that as an average man he had to go through trauma of monolithic proportions at some point in his life, and he hoped - logarithms hard - that this was said solid point.
Perhaps this was hell?
Perhaps this was the afterlife?
Through scored sclerotic coats he could make out the hues of the lower classes, bedecked in tawdry mechanical materials, stained in vomit, ash and saturated fats. Through wet bandages that obfuscated his noggin rang musical monstrosities carried high in manky bludgeoning mitts.
Through tubular tributaries trumped a troublesome husk, sashaying behind the niggardly nurse. A capricious summer zephyr signalling certitude seized the stank. It was no longer his birthday and this was not the malodorous afterlife.

Being an average man and therefore able to utilise the faculties of an everyday person, Tobias’ brain clutched and lurched before slipping into a low gear suitable for conquering inclines.

‘One two three four five six seven…’

All fingers and thumbs were in place.

‘One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven…’

Toothy pegs present and correct.

‘One two three…’

Little piggies were at home.

All seemed well. The cacophonous peeling in his ears would pass in time. Time... Time had become disposable. The breeze alluded to too many turns of the kitty cat kitchen calendar for sense to prevail. As an average man, Tobias began to rationalise all that had taken place.
Hmm.
The strangest thing…
Rational had been re-accommodated.
Now sleep.

When Tobias woke he discovered two things: Number ONE - he was no longer prostrate. Number TWO - his anus was particularly cold. Subsequent superciliousness needed abating. Rational required recovery.
‘A gentle jolt to begin with…’

It was white and rounded and pleasing. Surely nothing white and rounded and pleasing could result in reticent ramifications? Marshmallows and cotton balls: White and rounded and pleasing. It would be the right thing to do. A restart. He arched his head back and wrenched it forward against the thing that promised to be white and rounded and pleasing…

Waking at some section of the future, maybe a near present, Tobias was delighted to discover reams of rational had returned. Lifting the remainder of his face from perhaps 11 percent of his oxygenated haemoglobin, he rose wearily to find a smashed Saibot surveying the damage. They instinctively looked down at what was no longer white and rounded and pleasing and twisted its taps for freshness. The Fuzzy Wuzzy brown and red water swirled and cajoled the plughole into a gregarious gurgle. The childish burps made the sore man smile.

“Mon, you! Hur’rup! Do’er biz’niz! Geddit done! Mon! Gee’shush fug! Been’ages! Fugkin Chreest! Fugkin 9 min-nuts! Gerrout th’shitter! Fugkin spaaaaa!”

Being an average man with Public School perspicacity, Tobias was mesmerised by the invisible ruffian’s attempt at the Queen’s English. He sounded like a Scotsman. A hard-handed, hard drinking, hard headed, hard healed Scotsman… or maybe some other sort of Celt. What did this malcontent’s mumblings mean? Tobias removed the crimson mulch bandage from its perch and brought sidekick Saibot in on the investigation.
Hmm.
The strangest thing…
A mark which could only be described as a…

BLATTER BLATTER BLATTER THUMP BANG

“Fugkin Chreest! Ne’ra shite! Fugk sake! Jeshush fugk! Spakka coont!”
Tobias rolled his shoulders as he laughed, getting high from the swirling and twirling of soft grey matter. The ostentatious mark pulsed and spewed a fetid yellowy puss, turning Tobias’ train to his pump. As an average man he thought about it every 4 minutes, and as he had been sedated for at least a day and maybe 20, Tobias summated that his warm stiff friend would be in desperate need of milking.

Being an average man with undeniably common arousal levels, the Celt’s crusade on the door was the suitable spark to drag Tobias’ mind through an Amsterdam gutter. He closed his eyes, thrust down his linens and waited for the inevitable explosion… The banging of fists became the reverberating firm naked buttocks of an averagely attractive woman. The horribly enunciated swears became the incoherent speech of ecstatic pleasure Tobias’ part provided her. The woman’s very nice breasts with normal nipples were rubbing against his battered face. She was licking and kissing and groaning and moaning and…

BLATTER BLATTER BLATTER THUMP BANG

Hmm.
The strangest thing…
Tobias returned to the light, tilted down and looked it in the eye. It was depressed and soft and cold. He blinked and looked to Saibot for help, but his backwards brother was similarly stumped. They flicked it in unison but to no response. It dangled low and shed a single tear, no more no less. This was far from average for this particular average man. Never before had he invented a more lurid sexual situation than that of the averagely attractive woman, breasts on display, being sired against a door.

“Check the ceiling…”

Often the private surges were so great the thick liquid clung to high objects beyond the reach of any average man and would require an extendable mop for cleansing. This expulsion was clearly so rapid as to render the speed-of-light an antiquated measurement of travel. Tobias breathed deeply, causing every rib in his body to shudder and wince, and smiled. As an average man, Tobias had played Hide and Seek for more than 1000 hours in his lifetime, so locating strands from his very own body in a confined space would be a mere formality.

BLATTER BLATTER BLATTER THUMP BANG

Hmm.
The strangest thing…
There were no self-made strands to be found, high or low. There was the globular crimson puddle on the floor. There was the soiled bandage. There was toilet paper. There was the…

SMASH

Oh dear.
The Celt had conquered the door.
The Celt was taller than average men and stronger than all but a few.
The Celt had no teeth in his smile.
The Celt was missing an entire eye.
The Celt wore boots so tough his toes were safe from elephants, be they Indian or African.
The Celt arced tangerine urine on Tobias’ wounds.
There was a lot for such an average man to consider…

Ray Kane

Burnt Toast Issue 8 - OUT NOW

2009-09-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

For those of you with a paper phobia you can read Issue 8 on your computer screen.

Burnt Toast Issue 8 - pdf

Tobias Green - Adventures of an Average Man - Part One

2009-08-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

Reverse him to the doorframe and accost his cranium with permanence and 12 stiff inches? Yank down his linens and emit an apposite grumble? Sample the girth of his idiot box? Hark an ear to his spluttering pipe? How do we measure a man…

However you care to do it, Tobias Green was definably average. Everything about him was quintessentially run of the mill. For instance, you could rely on the fact that Tobias had his hair cut on the first Saturday of every month. Nothing fancy Dan mind you: short back and sides, no more no less. For said coiffeury Tobias paid five English pounds, no more no less. He had paid the princely sum on each and every occasion of his adult life, which amounted to one hundred and forty-three haircuts. During that time he had saddled his bags to 14 different barbers but as a man of average intelligence, Tobias knew inflation and deflation were fair masters.

As the 12-squared cut would fall on the event of his 30th birthday, Tobias proposed to Saibot – his reliable reflection – they might break with tradition and do something a bit different. Little did Tobias front-and-back know but a break from the norm would squiggle his life up for keeps.

Haircut Saturday kicked off like any other. At 8.31am - one hour and 31 minutes beyond the weekdays - Tobias woke to the dependable sounds of Radio 4. He rubbed his left one once, his right twice, and then both a further four times. The seven rubs were for good luck, and the right always needed that extra tweak in the morning as it greedily slurped a 70/30 split of moisture during the darkness.

Tobias tucked his knees to his chest as the acclaimed gymnastic instructor Andre Blachix had taught him, raised his arms to the all powerful Judge, muttered a blessing and rolled forward on his firm mattress. Again, these were merely the actions of an average man who had been abandoned in a Romanian orphanage aged 6 and a bit, found saviour at the firm hand of an acrobatic legend with a soft heart, and had Olympic dreams cruelly shattered on the eve of competition by the midnight intrusion of a devilish Doberman with a foot fetish…

He was average.
He really was.
Tobias Green was definitely an average man.
He kept telling himself he was so it must be true.

With perfect 10 precision the roll ended with both gnarled feet planted firmly in Garfield slippers, thus enabling the upwardly mobile section of haircut Saturday to begin. Tobias knew that as it was now 8.32am, the reliable gas boiler had treated the hard water to 92 minutes of silent heating, giving him sufficient reason to generously lather his orifices.

Naked and erect, like any average 30-year-old man who existed in self-imposed solemnity would be on the occasion of his birthday, Tobias flung open the curtains. The day greeted him with the glares of watery sunshine and Mrs. Glark - old enough to be his dead father’s mother - who waved from behind the telescopic lens in her living room. As ever, Tobias mirrored the gesture, put hands on hips, and waited for the reliable liquid surge. Like any average man who had never experienced the inside or outside of a woman, Tobias woke stiff and sore and expelled thick translucent streams from his reproductive organ without any manual coaxing.

8.54am. Soaped-dried-dressed-fed-watered, Tobias made the short journey to Bob’s, the only barber in town who tendered service for the amiable amount.
The fact it was his birthday didn’t matter.
The fact he hadn’t received cards or gifts or calls didn’t matter.
The fact he hated every breath he ever ingested for his fecund lungs didn’t matter.
He was an average man and average men felt this way, although… he had never actually received clarity from anyone the dictionary might decry a friend:
1. A person whom you know well and whom you like a lot, but who is usually not a member of your family.
2. Someone who is not an enemy and whom you can trust.
3. Someone who gives money to a theatre, other arts organization or charity in order to support it.

9.07am. Bob was late. Bob was always on time. Bob was reliable. Bob smoked Marlboro Reds. Bob wore cowboy boots. Bob listened to country music. Bob liked to whistle. Bob never asked questions. Bob did his job.
“Bob’s dead.”
Tobias introduced his eyebrows to one another and followed the man – perhaps 30 years old and perhaps muscular and perhaps alluring to women – into the shop that sold haircuts.
“Bob was my Da. Bob always opened his shop. Bob is my name too. Bobs cut hair”.
Tobias was uncertain about the new Bob, a man who modelled a shirt so colourful it made his eyes feel certain they had vomited. This was to be a day of change for everyone at the barbershop however, so Tobias took his place in the black pleather chair, wrenched himself to the desired plateau without invitation, gave a cursory smile to Saibot and spoke loud and true.
“Shaved”.
Bob ceased all fingering of the shiny silver scissors and without word of warning buzzed a strip from Tobias’ head. Bob then proceeded to take one small step back and to the left before pursing the crux of his face.
“Swastika”.
Saibot took a long hard look at Bob. New Bob.
“Shaved”.
Bob shook his head and pointed.
“Swastika”.
Tobias shaped his mouth for an extolling of great erudition when Bob stopped him in his tracks with the twice-handled mirror. On the back of the head of this average man raged a purple birthmark that one could only describe as a swastika. Poor chance or not, with bent arms and right angles, it was what it was.
“Oh… What now?”
Bob cogitated before proposing with all digits.
“Hat?”
Tobias shook his head at Saibot who shook back at his backward brother, rose from his seat, crossed Bob’s palm with 10 fifty pence pieces and strode to the street. Being of average intelligence, Tobias knew that the word for the mark on his cranium could be directly translated from the Sanskrit word svasktika meaning a thing that is auspicious. It was time to be average no more. But where to start…

Ray Kane

The Dark Side of the Authentic in Underground Music

2009-02-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

If there are two universal truths in human existence they are that one; people love music, and that two; they hate their jobs. The failure of human society to have evolved into anything other than a 24/7 party of love and utmost spiritual fulfilment can be attributed to an absence, thus far, of sufficient theorising on that which links these two fundamental certainties.

I’m sure I speak for the vast majority of readers of this text when I suggest that that which we are required to do during the day, for the sake of ‘earning a living,’ is at the sacrifice of living itself. Aside from a handful of freakish jobsworths and anomalous humanitarian aid-workers, sexy dancers and video-game testers, society is built on people who spend the majority of their lives being someone they really aren’t, or that they certainly rather they weren’t. Our jobs tend to be both demeaning and alienating, in as much as they demand that we adopt a character or mode of behaviour that isn’t ‘us.’ It is left to our activities outside of the 9–5 grind, then, to provide us with space to become who we ‘really are’. Whilst away from work we can engage in pursuits that let us express ourselves, unrestrained by the heavy chains of responsibility that dictate that we act ‘professionally’.

Capitalist society has addressed this dilemma by bestowing us with artists and musicians; a strange race of super beings granted the privilege to earn money, sometimes in vast quantities, to express themselves ‘sincerely’ as a job. What we lack in a qualitatively rich everyday existence is made up for by our opportunity to consume the produce of someone else’s authenticity. We are happy to provide musicians with a place in society where they can communicate how they feel and reflect upon life - whether that be through beauty, anger, machismo, sadness, joy, sexiness and so on - because of the absence of these qualities in our everyday lives. What we expect in return - when we turn on the radio, buy and album, watch a music programme on telly or go to a gig - is a concentrated hit of authenticity and unbridled ‘human expression’ to affirm that the musician’s side of this social contract is being upheld.

Following this logic through, I can begin to understand better my early attraction to punk and, subsequently, music done ‘DIY’. In this arena - one uncontaminated by the desire for profit, fame, sex, drugs and all the other clichéd incentives that ‘corrupt’ the mainstream music industry - I assumed to find the most authentic and sincere forms of musical expression. Indeed, the creative freedom gained when profit is not the motivating factor for a band, seemed to produce some of the most heartfelt and uninhibited music and performances I’d experienced. The gigs that I saw in the function rooms of pubs and social clubs and the records I bought by bands who had rejected the idea of commercial success as a guiding aspiration were, in the most, hitting my authenticity buttons hard, and madly flicking my sincerity-switches to boot.

That said, there were still a lot of DIY bands that I’d see, read about and hear records by, who’s freedom of expression would actually really wind me up. A lot of the noise and avant-garde acts I saw, for example, seemed to me to be taking the piss, or, to put it more politely, were being ‘contrived’. I could only imagine that this ‘outer-limits’ music was a deliberate attempt to be difficult, to get a rise out of the audience and, as such, was pure style over content. “Surely,” I’d convince myself, “these guys playing a single note for half an hour, or just jumping around screaming without demonstrating any musical skill aren’t sincere? They can’t actually enjoy it. They’re just doing it for show; in which case, it’s just as bad as the Spice Girls. All that’s happening in these experimental art-for-art’s-sake noise-outs is that spectacular entertainment has been substituted for spectacular anti-entertainment.” Similarly, I was, in earlier times, of the opinion that if a band weren’t competent musicians, or if they were playing music that was clearly derivative of other styles, then they mustn’t be ‘serious’ or ‘committed’. This, equally, fell under my critical fire as ‘inauthentic’ music, and was, therefore, not fulfilling the my-time-and-money-for-your-sincerity pact I assumed we had made. In short, I’d feel ripped off.

Over time, however, I began to re-evaluate this attitude. My experiences actually talking and meeting these groups of noise-makers and sloppy indie-nonsense players made me realise that, actually, they were just as committed and ‘into’ what they were doing as the technically proficient math-rock bands I’d revered. More importantly, though, I began to question the foundations underlying my desire for authenticity in music. Firstly, what was this elusive authenticity or sincerity I was expecting? How was I defining its limits? Was it possible, for instance, to see a band that sincerely enjoyed making money from music, or that genuinely enjoyed playing music that was derivative, or even outright cover-versions, of other bands? Would this prevent it from being authentic music? If not, then it doesn’t necessarily follow that the DIY scene is the only, or even the most likely, place to experience authentic music; it would be just as likely to occur or emanate from the commercially-driven mainstream as the ‘independent’ underground.

Secondly, and crucially, we should perhaps ask ourselves whether it is even healthy to crave the authentic in music or art. Wouldn’t we be better off spending that energy creating spaces for authenticity in our own lives, rather than delegating it to some other party, be they professional or otherwise? Furthermore, what is so socially beneficial about authenticity anyway? Although we might lack spaces where we feel we can act ‘as we really are’ and ‘be our true selves’, that rests on an assumption that there is a ‘real’, ‘true’ self to be expressed. By believing in such notions we are, of course, in real danger of encroaching on to the territory of reactionary, conservative, and even rightwing thought. A quest for the ‘true’, ‘uncontaminated’ essence of man has, historically, gone hand-in-hand with the partition of the ‘natural’ from the ‘unnatural’, the ‘pure’ from the ‘impure’ and, subsequently, the exclusion or division of peoples and the implementation of repressive hierarchies based on these ‘truths’. ‘The authentic’, then, is potentially as harmful a concept as it is an inspiring one, a Pandora’s box of sorts, and one who’s absence from our activities outside of our working lives is perhaps not such a bad thing.

I would suggest, then, that we are better off talking about that which we seek as an antidote to the boredom and alienation of everyday life - and the thing that is available to us in the experience and participation in music, especially in its DIY form - as honesty, not authenticity. This opens up space for us to accept the impure, the contradictory, the mistaken and the plain wrong – all those things, in fact, that we can’t be whilst at work, and all the things that make life worth living. In short, we’re not listening to music and going to gigs to experience pure, unadulterated emotional truth; we’re going to see people having, and have ourselves, as Freddy said, a real good time. Don’t let the desire for the authentic stop that now.

Andy Abbott

Andy Abbott fills his time being an artist and the guitarist in That Fucking Tank amongst other even lazier activities. If you are so inclined, a lot of the ‘produce’ of this can be found by visiting www.andyabbott.co.uk

Shield Your Eyes - S/T - Album Review

2008-10-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

Shield Your Eyes – S/T Debut LP
Available now on vinyl and CD from the band’s website.

I spent my first Friday off in a long time doing little other than looking on the internet for some new music that I might like. For nostalgia’s sake I looked to see if Skin Graft or Touch and Go had released anything lately that might point towards some exciting guitar-based rock music. Dischord, Load records and even some trusted online fanzines and record shops threw up little of interest and I began to give up hope. Little did I know that in the recesses of my back yard, left by the postie the day before and fast becoming damp, was a copy of Shield Your Eye’s debut album on vinyl that would have satiated my cravings and then some.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing London’s Shield Your Eye’s in either recorded or live format as yet then allow me to do them some injustice: they are a power-trio in the best sense of the term. Stef’s guitar work is as inventive and mesmerising as it is emotive and tasteful, Toby’s bass playing both melodic and driving, and Henri’s jaw-loosening drumming has the planned precision that keeps young men and women worshiping better known but no less deserving acts like Battles or Don Caballero.

The music they play is a distinctive, exhilarating mash of styles taking in the mathy hardcore of Melt Banana, raucous energetics of Pink and Brown or Coachwhips and the craftsmanship and pin-point execution of Shellac, Karate or Pinback. The fact that I’m reminded of such a heady cocktail of personally significant bands whilst listening to the album can only be to Shield Your Eyes’ credit. On top of this stunning instrumentality the lyrics and vocal delivery advance a strong heritage of sincere and emotive British post-hardcore that harks back to the days when emo wasn’t such a dirty word. Bands like Spy Vs Spy, Bob Tilton and Wolves of Greece, had they stuck with it and retained their sense of urgency and contemporariness, could have hoped to sound something like the superb album Shield Your Eyes have produced in 2008.

Well recorded, perfectly paced and released their fucking selves this album has truly restored my faith in the sphere of guitar-based rock music whether it be American, British, DIY or otherwise. If there’s a better release this year then I will eat my disease-incubating rusting aluminium guitar.

Buy it from http://www.myspace.com/leavethetapesrunning

Andy Abbott

Blacklisters Interview

2008-10-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

Even though I spent a good 25 mins probing these guys about the difficulty of fitting in one's local music scene, fears and aspirations for the future and upwardly facing male genitalia, I still walked away with a sense of not knowing whether I had actually connected with them or not.

During the interview I thought there might have been a chance for the three of us to bond through the mutual release of anger and frustration, a feeling so common in a metalhead's life. So I decided to spill my pint over their clothes, but they both seemed fairly jubilant about it and were keen to keep the ball rolling despite the sodden crotches.

More than once I made inferences to them enjoying reciprocal manual labour with undressed men, but this only added fuel to their fire and spurred them on to even more explicit descriptions of themselves accompanied by roarings of hearty laughter.

In the end I failed to beat them and so I joined them instead, which is why the final 5 mins of the interview can only be described as schoolboy smut. My sincerest apologies go out to my Mum and Dad. I know you like to keep up with what I'm doing in Leeds but I'm not normally like this I promise.

Love you both,

x

www.myspace.com/blacklisters

That Fucking Tank Interview

2008-10-09T07:32:00.000-07:00

Andy Abbott and James Islip combined make That Fucking Tank, a polyrhythmic unit of seismic proportions and before the interview I pre-interviewed them about a few niggling points that needed clearing up.

1. Why are you called That Fucking Tank?

It was a joke name for a joke band - others included 'Diners Club International', 'I'm Trapped in Cupboard' and '(Don't) Tell me About the War'. It was the best of a bad bunch.

2. I know the band was created for one gig, but what was the context of this gig?

We were organising a gig for our continental chums Vialka (who are a two-piece) and Like a Kind of Matador (also, at that time a duo) and thought it would be novel to have a gig of just duos. That probably is almost unavoidable nowadays.

3. Could you list a few other bands that both of you guys were in before this one.

The pair of us? Our first gig was when we were 13/14 as 'Grin' - James sang and played guitar and I played bass, doing covers of Nirvana, Therapy?, Sabbath, Green Day etc. Then we did 'Mad Things' (a badger-obsessed hardcore band), then 'Kill Yourself' (in Leeds with Giles) which was the first band to do 'proper' tours and release records and go to Europe etc.

Cheers son.

www.myspace.com/landsandbody

Wonderswan Interview -06/09/08

2008-09-23T02:45:00.000-07:00

Yes this is an interview of sorts, if one is able to condone the guffawing nature of your host.

Wonderswan Interview - 06/09/08 from Ben NCM on Vimeo.

Chops video for ILL EAGLE ready at last

2008-09-11T15:11:00.001-07:00

This is the finished video me and Herod McHugh did for CHOPS with the help of the guys from Uprights, Jon Nash, Dicko, Katie Moore, Aurora Fearnley and Charles Robert Arthur.

Here's an edit of the rough footage we incorporated into the final thing:

Dancing the Cake from Ben NCM on Vimeo.

And here's the finished final thing

Untitled from Ben NCM on Vimeo.

Photos of the last video shoot for Chops.

2008-09-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

I'm really gutted that I didn't get more photos at the time because everyone was really looking the part and it was excellent fun. Despite their obvious intoxication and general lethargic presence, I could see that those people who had scolded themselves into turning up for the shoot looked like they intended carrying out their jobs with an effervescent aplomb.

Of course! I should mention the gist of the video round about now. I've written this description and copy and pasted it so many times on other blogs and forums that I really can't be arsed doing it again right now but I'll be brief. On the island where my parents are from everyone forms a massive circle on the day of a wedding, the more confident women from the crowd take turns dancing with the wedding cake erotically in the centre. I don't know why they do this but I wouldn't be surprised if one of my aunties told me that it improved the flavour as they're quite a superstitious lot over there. When I visited (Petite Martinique) one time I filmed a wedding and have used this footage as material for the one we made on the day.

I took on the central role of chief erotically dancing woman and imitated to a certain extent some of the moves they were throwing in the original film which in turn my servile drones surrounding me would imitate. As for the idea behind it all I think it was about wanting something really badly but in the end not getting it in the form that you wanted, and also about forgetting what's best for yourself as a person and spending the bulk of your time gorging on simple pleasures to the point where you choke to death on them.

Anyway, check out these shots and be sure to get involved in the next venture which should be mid October in the Hyde Park area of Leeds for a great band called Cowtown - http://www.myspace.com/cowtownsuperstars

Do check out Chops too if you like your Can beats - www.myspace.com/mightychops

Helpers and werewolves needed for Cowtown video

2008-09-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

Me and Herod will be making a video for Leeds favourite Devo-esque partytime band Cowtown in October and would like for you guys to get involved.

As it stands at the moment, the premise of the video is based on the family comedy film Teenwolf and the moment when he is starting to get hairy in his bathroom. There is a knock on the door and to his amazement his Dad is stood there also with a werewolf's face! Then Teenwolf realises that everyone in his street are in fact werewolves and so all the werewolves in Hyde Park have a dance down Pearson Grove and that's it. This is the rough template I've been given but it will be perverted in some way. Teenwolf really couldn't have been played by anyone other than Dave Shields as he has the perfect hair, but a lot more people will be needed to create the illusion that every person in the world is a wolf. It will be also important for the video to contain a lot of wolf oriented imagery and visual gags so if there are any funnymen or women on here then we need to get together and have a laugh.

This production will be bigger than the last one so I'll be updating this space in the next few weeks with additional info.