Thursday, July 27, 2006

Nice to see that Simon Reynold’s lovely erstwhile research assistant Geeta (how do you know she’s lovely, smirking phallocrat?! Ok, err..minging research assistant then.. err…*panics*) is also a “bargain hunter” reluctant to shell out more than a dollar on a record (yes folks, at the current exchange rate that’s 0.539375 GBP! Respect! Tighten up yer own nasty belt, ghal!) and presumably we are just the tip of the iceberg, the first of a massive subterranean movement to come up out of the trenches, waving our Cheap-Flag, unashamedly dedicated to spending as little of our (in my case only moderately) hard-earned moolah on the poxy bloody “Kulture” that THEY ( yes that’s right THEM , AGAIN!) have addicted US to.

Don’t know exactly what Geeta’s motives are but mine are basically the fact that its so easy to get so much stuff for free that paying for it seems wrong, somehow against the spirit of the times and also that I’m increasingly less and less selective, or maybe less and less trusting in hype and critical-consensus (“What kind of stuff are you into?” “Two-quid stuff.”) and more keen to take absurd low-cost gambles. Godley and Crème’s “L” anyone? Van Dyke Park’s pastiche Light-Opera “Tokyo Rose?” (probably Stephen Merritt’s favourite LP, or something.)

I think it’s also oddly that, even though I have never been anywhere near a pair of “Dexs” and have yet to be initiated in even the most basic precepts of the arcane art of “Mixology” I spend my entire time creating mixes in my head and am actually, on any given disc looking for just one track, one perfect track of ideally really suprising provenance ( “you mean this is actually Bruce Forsyth? I could have sworn it was early Omni- trio!”) that I can fold into say “Dark Congo Rain Mix” or “ Industrial Dub-wound” or “Folkgabba.”

However, point remains that there must be a term for this kind of behaviour, whatever its motives. I see a semantic gap, mate, I fill it, common sense, innit? Initially I went for “Pounding” as in “ I’ve been pounding up and down Berwick street all day” or “ I gave Southend Oxfam’s tape section a good pounding the other day” “ Your missus never says no to a spot of pounding of a Sunday afternoon, does she Jezz?” etc. However, after sober consideration I’ve decided that the complaint itself, rather than the activity should be what were looking to define, I therefore suggest (with no apologies whatsoever to J.KKK.Rowling) “Quidditch” as in, “I’m off down to the bargain basement to scratch the old Quidditch.”

Talking of all things Merritt-tricious, just heard The Divine Comedy’s version of “Party Fears Two” (and then had to sluice the original round me lugholes thirteen or so times in order to rinse Hannon’s version away) however even at that remove it’s impossible not to be struck by the sheer abandoned, desperate… well… fear of the end of love and the collapse into bingeing and burnout in the lyrics, it really is a hell of song isn’t it? Puts a sheet of ice up your spine even when being nasaled-up horribly by those unfit to suck the spilled claret from the hem of Billy Mackenzie’s magnificently purple cape

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In our house we call it "trawling" (vt, usage: "Just off to trawl Oxfam"). The allusion to sifting through vast piles of unpleasant dead tuna in search of one sleek dolphin not entirely unconnected.