J-Punk spectacular

There's a new Shonen Knife album coming. It gives me warm fuzzy feelings:


I've always loved their cover of The Carpenters' wonderful 'Top of the World' too:


They're not the only brilliant Japanese punk band: Melt Banana are rather gleefully unhinged too. Seeing them live was a glorious experience. Though I'll never fit into the T-shirt I rather optimistically purchased. It mocks me from the back of the wardrobe.

Of Cheese and Indie

I won't go on about politics today - it's too hot, which is something I don't deal with very well. I will just mention that the Daily Mail, of all rightwing racist papers, is going after David Cameron for his mortgage dealings - and a good thing too. I presume that they've decided that they need to keep their bitter, jealous Poujadist readers even if that means turning against their natural leaders.

I've had an action-packed weekend. Well, not exactly active, but varied. For Dan's birthday, we planned a walk along the Severn around Bridgnorth, and then to Birmingham for some fine lo-fi. So we all met at 11.45 to get the bus, except for Phil, who turned up an hour early, then wandered the streets of Wolverhampton in his disreputable shorts and beer-logo t-shirt. We sort of missed that bus - Dan's train was delayed, but it was filled to capacity anyway. So we wandered, and some of us decided to buy tickets for Mark Steel tonight. (Dan seemed to like his presents: I gave him a bottle of excellent Islay single malt and 7 CDs themed around birds and walking, Neal made him a bee nesting box which impressed us all mightily, and we presented him with a vintage mixing desk acquired perfectly legally).

Off to lovely Bridgnorth, where I had hopes of storming Bill Cash's mansion in Upton Cressett, but instead, Christine and her bloke bravely invited us for 'bread and cheese', even though Christine only knew Mark and I, and her husband had never heard of us. 'Bread and cheese' turned out to be Stinking Bishop, brilliant stilton, salads and jugs of Pimms, served in their beautiful English cottage garden overlooking the Severn valley. Needless to say, we couldn't tear ourselves away from fine company and gourmet food: the walk was cancelled. I'll stick some photographs up when I get into the office on Tuesday (no, I'm not having Monday off - I'm going to a conference on how to turn my job into a career. It's the New Deal for academics).

Later on, we took advantage of subsidised fares to get 4 train tickets to Brum for £4 and hit the coolest bars - we may not have enhanced this coolness. The Sunflower Lounge loses points for having one screen showing Celebrity Mr and Mrs Starring Morten Harket (is that right?), and wins some back for presenting Repo Man - in French. From there, off to the Victoria, where some of our party unsubtly admired the human form, chatted to Mark's ex's brother, drank fine ales, met another Bangor graduate, Mary, who has the required robust humour to cope with us, and then headed off to The Island, which was most stylish. I temporarily switched to margaritas because I don't think that it demeans my undoubted masculinity at all. No doubt the student I met there and in the next place we went will post the photo in Facebook to my enduring shame… Should have worn my Melt Banana shirt.

From there, we went to Snobs, the legendary Birmingham indie club. I went about 9 years ago and had a wonderful time. This time, it's fair to say, we didn't. Despite dosing ourselves regularly with gin and tonic, we couldn't help noticing that the music was rubbish - an incredibly uninventive dependence on mainstream sixties soul worn out by over-repetition. It was, frankly, reminiscent of 'Sound of Summer' CDs given out by middle market tabloids, leavened only by the most obvious Smiths or Stone Roses track: no inventiveness, no innovation, just deeply conservative choices.

I love a lot of 60s music - Velvet Underground, Ligeti, Reich, Northern Soul - but dancing for hours to music by dead people is a form of cultural suicide. It betrays a total lack of confidence in one's own generation, whether it's the musicians or the revellers you insult with assumptions about their unadventurousness. Dropping the occasional Curtis Mayfield track into a finely crafted set is one thing: serving up constant Stones songs with sporadic chunks of Paul Weller and (ugh) Ocean Colour Scene is the equivalent of going to a UKIP rally, the pop version of Classic FM (exclusively playing Classical Music From The Adverts).

What would I play? Northern Soul, Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, Sons and Daughters, Magnetic Fields, G0-Betweens, Hydroplane, The Paradise Motel, Stereolab, Super Furries, Kraftwerk, Beulah, Tindersticks, Gil Scott Heron - lots of upbeat, interesting, danceable stuff which surprises and delights. Music for the brain and music for the groin. Music for the indie kids who carry library cards and make their own style.

So that was Saturday night. We returned by taxi, taking in every godforsaken urban sprawl between the Bullring and Beatties, arguing about whether dawn was breaking or just light pollution - both, I suspect. I got to sleep on my floor, thanks to my kind nature, and woke too early, feeling less than human. Lunch at the Newhampton Inn, reading newspapers under the fruit trees, then an ice cream in West Park restored my balance and here I am. Marking done, comedy to attend later, ironing not calling me for a change. I like ironing. There's a Zen-like calm which comes with achieving the perfect crease.

(Looking at the Bridgnorth tourism pages, reminds me to plug the Much Wenlock Olympian Games (10th-13th July) - I help run the fencing event, and compete too, and the Shropshire Biggest Liar Competition. Neal suggests that Bill Cash be given a clear run at this year's event).

So - you may not hear from me tomorrow - I'll be 'networking' (even typing the word makes me nauseous). Have a good day or so.

Lip it Up And Start Again, Or, A Kick In The Quantocks

… is a pun you'll only get if you know who Orange Juice and Melt Banana are, and have seen Lost in Translation. I'm back, and thought I'd start with a little dubious humour there.

So here, we are, all the lads. What have you been up to in my absence? I had a wonderful time at All Tomorrow's Parties. Good music, company and astonishingly good food - my comrades even brought a slow cooker with them!

Melt Banana were at ATP - I didn't catch much of their set, but that's what happens at these events. Merely being in their presence was enough (I had a fanboy moment with them and with Norman from Teenage Fanclub, much to the disgust of Kate and Anita). All you other fans of Japanese post-punk noise will understand. Shame Shonen Knife weren't there too…

So what were my impressions of ATP and the southwest? Somerset's beautiful, and weird - like the far west. It's so utterly rich, complacent and rightwing. Massive mansions and castles command every view, and the hedges are blooming with hawthorn blossom and Conservative Party election placards. Cynically and amusingly, the Tories have stolen Obama's slogan and are running with the message 'Vote for Change'. Ummm… they may have returned a Whig in the 1820s, but this area won't have elected a non-Tory since the Great Reform Act. Their euro-candidate is Mr Trollope-Bellew, whose family has owned the area since the elizabethan period. With such a glorious name, all I can imagine is a portly, beef-fed, red-faced man in a frock coat, beating his horses, tenants, dogs and children, riding to hounds and thrashing the poor if they vote against him.

He has, naturally, aided and abetted illegal hunting activity, hates Europe but claims EU subsidies on his extensive estate. Like all hypocritical Tory bigots.

The two men were caught hunting illegally in February last year. At least 17 riders, including children, followed the hunt, which had been called in by a landowner, Anthony Trollope-Bellew, to cull deer on his land near Taunton and move the herd on.

So anyway, my point is that all the best areas of this country are occupied by the worst sort of people. But on to ATP. It was held in the Butlin's holiday camp at Minehead, which is right by the sea, looking across to South Wales. The wind blew, the rain fell, and I was content. So were my companions, though they were disturbed by the absence of a chopping board, which did cast a pall over the weekend's festivities. Mineshead Revisited, anyone?

Despite this setback, we managed to survive on a diet of cider (for them), fine Exmoor ales, tagine and ROCK. It was a very American affair, curated as it was by The Breeders. Many of the musicians mingled with the crowds - Tricky seemed particularly lonely, though this is possibly because it was the whitest crowd outside the BNP's AGM. Kelley Deal joined the girls (mostly) for the knitting and crochet circle and a subsequent book reading, a guy from Mariachi El Bronx wandered forlornly for the whole event, looking for groupies presumably, and other musicians could be seen checking out other bands without airs and graces.

So who did I see and rate? Blood Red Shoes were OK - spiky pop-rock. Bon Iver was pretty and soulful, and occasionally rocked out a little. They went down well with the many teachers, social workers and couples in the audience. The Breeders, of course, rocked. The crowd was big, they were sparkling witty and bickered like twin sisters who've been playing together for 30 years would do. I thought that some of the audience weren't particularly interested in their new stuff, but I admired the way they threw away their indie dancefloor classic 'Last Splash' fairly early on and showed us all how consistently interesting they've been. It's great to see how an intelligent band can grow up without losing their fizz.

Mariachi El Bronx were kind of cool - rock mariachi appeals, but they were a little too cocksure for my tastes. Respect for the massive acoustic bass guitar though. I skipped Buffalo Killers because there were plenty of other American bands sporting facial hair around for the weekend - the crowd were far more diverse in terms of indie tribes than the performers. While many of the bands seemed to be into, well, The Band, lots of the festival-goers, particularly the women, were into an interesting Fifties scene. Some were the established lesbian rockabilly bunch, but others were wearing headscarves, floral dresses, tightly sculpted twinsets - really interesting. The men largely opted for skinny jeans, competitively obscure band t-shirts, faux-scruffy facial hair and architectural glasses, other than the younger ones. All the public-school sixth-formers were lost in the 1980s. I skipped CSS because I'm too old and bitter for talentless scenesters, and stopped doing what NME told me to long ago.

Deerhunter and Dianogah were pleasantly dull - more beardy folk-rock with bits of punk and electronica thrown in. The first band that really rocked me was Th'Faith Healers (that's a MySpace link). I remember them being good when I was 18, but totally lost track of them. They're so good live - metronomic, loud Krautrock with Scottish woman's interesting vocals over the top - Stereolab meets My Bloody Valentine. Go see them. I bought their Peel Sessions CD after the set, and lots of other people seemed impressed too.

I didn't bother with Foals, but did go for The Frogs, who apparently founded grunge. For a few minutes, I thought they were a bunch of wankers - talentless, arrogant no-marks, then realised that this was the heart of their performance. They essentially make up songs as they go along, swear a lot, and parody other bands, while underneath the costumes (in the case of the lead singer, hologram-effect wings and a mask which made him 7ft tall and totally obscured his face), lurk some brilliant musicians. They really are a band you should experience. Once.

I was a bit disappointed by the post-punk bands, perhaps because I was so excited about seeing Wire and Gang of Four. Both groups just seemed to feel that they deserved adulation and pretty much went through the motions from what I saw - very disappointing. I still think that Wire's Pink Flag and Chairs Missing albums are amongst the greatest of the last 40 years.

Giant Sand - more Americana for the married Word reader. Heartless Bastards - good fun live, probably a bit derivative to follow. Erika Wennerstrom's voice is absolutely amazing though: a tuneful bellow which could drive ships onto the rocks. Sadly, I missed both Holy Fuck andthe Fuck Buttons' DJ set.

One real revelation was Kimya Dawson. She used to be in Moldy Peaches, and therefore off my radar, as I felt that New York anti-folk was too self-conscious and self-congratulatory. I'm still not that into deliberately nursery-rhymed style tunes and rhythms married with confessional lyrics, but her performance was amazing. She abolished the separation between performer and audience, pulling three kids up to perform with her (I suspect she regretted her choice before long), and launched into an hour of stunning emotional intensity, ranging from tragedy to comedy, allied to some good lefty politics. Definitely one to see live.

For a little light relief, I went to see a reading by Scarlett Thomas, from her book The End of Mr Y. I was vaguely aware of it, but was seriously impressed by her declamation. In the book, a lonely and poor PhD student (are you reading this, Deer Friend?) picks up a rare novel which catapults her into the minds of passing beings - cats, mice, etc. Allied to Thomas's brother playing scary organ music, the hour reminded me of the weirder end of Chris Morris's Blue Jam.

Have you ever seen Shellac? I have, ages ago, and though it was a boring RAWK side-project for uber-producer Steve Albini. I apologise to him publicly now. Yes, it his heavy, guitar rock, but live you get an hour or so of punishing guitars, hilariously witty lyrics (how many rockers use 'unattainable' and still make it scan?) and sheer fun - particularly when the bass player takes audience questions, the drummer (who looks like Animal) has cymbals mounted behind his head, and Steve carried him off, still playing. I am totally converted.

Styrofoam - wet indie/electro which will no doubt soundtrack countless ads and teen angst dramas. Teenage Fanclub: Fantastic more like. Kate and Anita were rather bored by their niceness and went off for Shellac's first set of the weekend, but I've got a massive soft spot for Scottish close-harmony Americana and loved every second. I also thought that Throwing Muses were brilliant - spiky, witty, relaxed and everything that America's most thoughtful indie-rock band should be. College Rock seems to be used with a faint sneer these days, but the Muses encapsulate everything about what it could have become.

So that was most of ATP. What did I learn? That beards and designer glasses can substitute for soul. That slow-cookers are the cherry on the festival cake. That indie bands genuinely are friendly, kind people. That however much I go swimming, I'm too fat and old to fit in. Am I going next year? I certainly am.