bubblegum lemonade "unsafe at any speed" (mp3): strawberry whiplash "boy in the bubble car" (mp3)
after all that, the in love with these times, in spite of these times dream world cup squad is as follows. and yes, i know it's hard to explain the absence of ooh, gattuso, sancho, fabregas, barnetta and especially cupre, but that's the challenge, innit:
buffon (ita), ricardo (por), lahm (ger), sorin (arg), cannavaro (ita), sagnol (fra), zambrotta (ita), grosso (ita), heinze (arg), meira (por), vaschuk (ukr), maxi rodriguez (arg), zidane (fra) (capitaine), pirlo (ita), riquelme (arg), ronaldo (por) (young player of the tournament by kilometres), ze roberto (bra), maniche (por), mascherano (arg), robinho (bra), juan (gha), klose (ger), torres (esp).
but yes. this whole "myspace revolution" seems to me, like much of the interweb, 1stly to be for a generation more youthful than me, and 2ndly mainly to be a(nother) forum for the attention-seeking, rather than a genuine outlet for the disaffected or obscure. yet in terms of being the perfect road map to find all those bands that you'd forgotten about, would never otherwise have heard of, or who never got round to doing a website, you can't really knock it, and some of the parallels with the 80s' zine scene (not least the sycophantic networking and occasional over-preciousness of it all) are undisputable. (i have dutifully assembled the most perfunctory myspace possible for this "site", too, although i am not yet sure why - any hints for what to do with it are exceedingly welcome).
anyway, i hereby exempt from all this moaning both bubblegum lemonade and strawberry whiplash. it would be insane to suggest that bubblegum lemonade are quite as good as their name suggests (i.e. some frighteningly exciting melange of bubblegum splash! and baby lemonade, who between them produced two of the greatest 7" singles ever pressed, and that's even before we get on to flexis): similarly, it could only be folly to imagine that strawberry whiplash could match a sliver of the combined joys of strawberry story (or, mildly less convincingly, switchblade) and meat whiplash, but don't worry, neither band is that far off. their joint recognisably scotch buzzsaw pop sound is best displayed on the lemonade's "unsafe", which starts with a "hey hey hey" and some most familiar drum machine and fuzz and brings to mind within about 0.01 instants just three words namely jesus, mary "and" chain. as ever, the song would be only half as good without the generous helpings of feedback which are kind of spooned in in dollops every so often, like angel delight. mind you, strawberry w.'s pristine "boy in da bubble car" is similarly essential, again with that shoppies / baby lemonade / fizzbombs / early primitives feel. between them, the lemonade and the whiplash give new meaning to the phrase "glasgow kiss". yes, you could say this all sounds like 1986 (nowt wrong wit that), but then again people are saying that about the demiricous album, which is equally brilliant. i really can imagine, when i stayed up to listen to john peel 20 years ago, him playing these, as crackling, fizzing flexis - the way i was first introduced to bubblegum s., and so many others.
in other news, the new paul langley 12" (on 4x4) is excellent. i really think that john peel would have loved that, too.
Comments