CucosBlog

On the back of the ATP weekend, I wasn’t particularly excited to be going to another gig just the next day. But tickets get booked in that moment of desire/excitement/curiosity, and having already shelled out £16 a pop I had to make the effort. It turned out to be an inspiring and moving experience.

Birthdays are the perfect opportunity for a wander down memory lane. What a great expression. There are roads and lanes aren’t there - well trodden superhighways, massive distances connected by lightning modes of travel - and then quiet little paths that take some effort even to be found.

The seven best records of all time - in order - are (drumroll please)

Another night out going to see a gig in a vain attempt to see something which is beautiful and dangerous and moving… Oh Jesus, it really seems like I am going to have to make this shit myself.

So anyway, that was the kind of mental baggage I brought along with me to the ATP festival. Being in that environment - the Butlins holiday camp in Minehead just south of Bristol - was not pleasant. I understood that it was supposed to be ironic, or could be understood to be tacky-cool.

Anyway here’s my main contention regarding rock music: rock music is at its best when it embraces both pop and experiment, both harmony and noise, both exciting rhythm and abstraction, both pop song and poetry. The best periods of the best bands have been when they have managed to embrace both the popular and the experimental impulse.

Something happened with Sonic Youth. Something that for many years made me feel very sad about Sonic Youth, that made me think that, contrary to what Glenn Branca states in the liner notes to last year’s reissue of their first EP, Sonic Youth did artistically sell out.

Some time around the start of November, I decided that I just had to make the ATP Festival - aka The Nightmare Before Christmas - curated by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. By then the whole thing was sold out and I didn’t have anyone to go with.

At last! I have received no letters at all requesting my favourite CDs of 2006, so I have managed to find the time to collate the zero votes that came in and here is how the list looks. It includes all CDs that I had not heard before 2006 and that I liked best.

At the end of August, the call came to attend Camp Branca once again, this time in mellow Belgium…