No Music - My Arse!!

Well its NO MUSIC DAY tomorrrow and i think it is a load of tosh from that twat Bill Drummond and i for one will not be participating. Controversial or what? Don't care!The thinking behind this idea is at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1892833,00.html


Of music,bought the Sub Rosa CD "Music In The Margin", a colllection of outsider music, today from Across the tracks for only £8.

The new Joanna Newsom CD "Ys" is growing on me alot now,and could be one of my top favourites of the year when it comes to reflecting the highs and lows of the year.

Mystery shopped Weatherspoons pubs in Hove and Worthing yesterday,and had a lovely Sunday lunch time meal from them. What is even better is getting paid for it!

Today ,spent most of the time trying to finish off jobs and tying up loose ends,and getting to grips with the endless paperwork. However a pint down at my local Evening Star split the day up nicely from such tedium.

Finally bought that newish Thames and Hudson book "200 Trips From The Counterculture,Graphics And stories From The Underground Press Syndicate" from Fopp. The Guardian had a review of it some weeks back and it has been on my shopping list since then. Complements "High Art,A History of The Psychedelic Poster" and "Off The Wall, Psychedilic Rock Posters From San Francisco" well as each of these lovely books focus on various aspects of the counterculture of the sixties" Right on!

The start of the Cine City Festival again means there will some visits to The Fringe Basement again and to the Duke of Yorks on some days. I will report on what i have seen after deciding what to see next time.

No Music - What About Noise and Enviromental Sounds

Today is NO MUSIC DAY ,an idea suggested by Bill Drummond (ex-KLF),in which no music should be played. In a word,SILENCE,but as we know from John Cgae and his extraordinary piece called 4' 33" there is no absolute silence. We have the sound of our own bodies,the beating of our hearts and natural sounds of the planet All moise become music in his eyes and other like-minded fellows (like myself) would concur. SO today i will not play "music" in the musical sense but that area which could be filed under "noise" or "enviromental sounds" and other such ambiances. A good example of this is Alan Lamb's singing telegraph wires across the vast terrain of the Australian outback. Another exapmle is the sound of electricity and domestic appliances ,well documneted on Primes's "Domestic Science" CD and then there is the electrical activity in the sky and morse repeating stations which also been documented onto CD. So in a nutshell you cannot escape noise. EVP anyone?

Tha Drummond article is at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1892833,00.html

More Thoughts on NO MUSIC Day

Another thought came to me rather perversely. I might do a NO MUSIC playlist full of sounds that are not music. I suppose what Bill Drummond is getting at is the plethora of music around the world that is instantly available at a mouse click away,and that somehow music has become devalued. However, he is actually talking about music with hummable tunes or melodies. No wonder he feels jaded. There is also alot of mainstream shite out there. He should think outside the box a bit more.

No music day itself,in my humble opinion,will exclude all natural sounds and documentary work that contains no music. So how about some of those old Smithsoninan albums such as the "Sounds of North American Frogs" CD i have or Chris Watson's field recordings. What about bird songs and those two wonderful LPs of British Bird Songs on BBC Records? Also where we do we put sound poetry in all this?

In other words, how we define music is subject to our own perceptions of music,noise and ambient.In the case of Drummond's thesis music has tunes that are hummable. So in that sense, a playlist on Non-musical music is not so perverse.