May 24, 2019

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Music 🎶 | Permanently Moved 🔊

S2E10

A brief discussion of the ol’ venerable Bedey and I talk at length about one of the best bands ever: Mineral.

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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded in one hour by @thejaymo

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Palisades

Man I was so so sick last week. So therefore No podcast. Instead I did sweet FA except lay about with a chest cough and the occasional fever dream. 

Tomorrow is Saint Bede the Venerable’s saints day. He’s the patron of English writers and historians. If anyone out there in london is writing something, he’d be a good fellow to petition to make use of the last three weeks of good weather before June hits us with arguably the worst month of the year.

I read a bunch of the Venerable Bede Collection last year.

He has some fantastic one liners such as:

All the ways of this world are as fickle and unstable as a sudden storm at sea.

and

This life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.

As true today as they were Thirteen Hundred years ago. 

But that’s enough about old bedy. 

I went to see the band Mineral play at the dome in Tufnell park last night. It’s the second time i’ve seen them now, the first time was on their 20 year reunion tour in 2014 and exiting the show each time i’m extremely grateful to have had the experience.

If you aren’t familiar with the Mineral i don’t blame you. They were an emo slash indie rock band together for only four years from 1994–1998. 

During that short time time they released a bunch of 7”s including a split with the then fledgling Jimmy eat world and also two full length albums called The Power of Failing (1997) and EndSerenading (1998). 

Despite this short period of activity as a band mineral cast a long long shadow over all of indie rock. 

I’d argue that EndSerenading pretty much defines that era of emotional hardcore of the late 90’s early 2000’s. Mineral’s music is characterized by its alternation between soft and loud song structures, melodic vocals, and ethereal guitar-based instrumental bridges. 

What’s even more remarkable is EndSerenading was released after the band had already split up and they are still influencing people today. The massive track Hollywood Dreaming by lil peep and Gab used the song Love Letter Typewriter with an uncleared sample to some controversy at the time.

After the break up in 98 the band went its separate ways and members went on to form two other hugely influential emo/indie bands. The shoegazey Gloria Record and rawk band Pop Unknown.

As we was watching them last night my friend Phil mentioned to me, what must it be like to have been in a small town rock band 25 years ago and now be fortysomething and on tour again out of texas and playing London. This time with the recognition of just how influential your band was and yet still singing the lines ‘There I was, fourteen spinning, With my arms out like a scarecrow” Or the totally emo lines “You will never know, how much I love you”. Invoking states of mind fixed in music over half a lifetime ago. Wild. 

I tweeted during the gig that there were a lot of 30 somethings reliving their teenage angst in the audience, interspersed with folks i could quite rightly turn to and say “i was listening to mineral before you were born kid”. 

My favourite moment of the evening was perhaps the extremely hedge fund manager guy in a sweet suit, shirt untucked, wet from spilled beer absolutely losing his shit to Love Letter Typewriter. it was really rather cool. 

The merch table didn’t have a card reader or a sqaure app on an iphone so no tight t-shirt for me. That said the emo shirt look doesn’t look that great on a 30 something who drinks a bit too much beer and has the physique of a man that has worked behind a keyboard for his entire adult life – so maybe it is for the best.

Speak of sitting behind a keyboard im working on my talk for the border sessions festival at the hague. I’ll be speaking on the 13 June at 7.30. My talk will is going to be called – Solarpunk And The Great Unfolding: Building Keystones Of Continuity. It will be somewhat an expansion on my solarpunk as Grand dress rehearsal talk i gave last year in Rotterdam. 

It will include the lines “we’ve got 10 years to save the world, but its going to take 100 years to do it”.

If you are interested in coming, tickets are available at https://bordersessions.org. Paul mason is speaking on the opening night and the line up of the whole festival looks fantastic. Come along it’ll be fun!