Them’s The Vagaries #1: Inevitable Via Kanye

Here at 4fortyfour we promised you a different type of blog and that is exactly what we are going to deliver with the first in a series of blogs from Sean Mc Tiernan containing his unedited GChat conversations with Karl McDonald of Those Geese Were Stupefied. It’s a great insight into what goes on in the minds of people who write about music.

5:48 PM

sean: alright
so I was going to talk about like
how liking someone effects how you like their music

Karl: aha
via Kanye?

5:49 PM

sean: No
not everything is via Kanye
sure, it could be
but for the moment
there can be Other Things

5:50 PM

Karl: via Ted Leo then

sean: oh do you think, had Ted Leo not been so Sound On The Radio people would not like Brutalist Bricks as much?

5:51 PM

Karl: not just the radio thing
I think Ted Leo is embedded in the world as a sound dude now
and people go a bit mad for his kind of boring, better-live music because of it
but actually sometimes people only pretend to like it and don’t even listen to it

sean: I think I might be one of those people

5:52 PM

I liked Sons of Cain a lot or whatever that song is called

Karl: Matthew Perpetua was giving out about how Ted Leo has jumped past people really listening to Ted Leo

sean: but yeah, I think I really talked about liking BB more than listening to it
including my ludicrous review where I had a go a bruce springsteen

5:54 PM

What I was going to focus on, for both the effect of liking a person and liking the way it’s presented, is this song
http://player.vimeo.com/video/17826842

NEPHICIDE by JOGGER from Matthew Robinson on Vimeo.

5:55 PM

Karl: gimme some context

5:56 PM

sean: Well the thing is like
I know of the dudes who made this song and their sense of humor
and you don’t, right?
so like
without that, do you think this is a good song
or even A Song

5:57 PM

Karl: allow me to consider it when i have toast, in 40 seconds

5:58 PM

sean: You are welcome to your toast

5:59 PM

Karl: it’s pretty good
i wouldn’t be mad about listening to this

6:00 PM

sean: I always thought of it more as like an exercise than a song

Karl:

well like it’s a decent pop chillwavey song
with mental shit happening
for make joke
or whatever

6:01 PM

sean: but seeing the actual video makes sean think it’s like a genuine attempt to combine wistfulness about being young with the kid of shit you were probably listening to at the time
unlike a lot of those chillwave songs which are all about false nostalgia or whatever

Karl: that makes loads of sense and makes it way better, actually
like, this is what your memory is supposed to sound like now

sean: right? That’s what the video made me think

Karl: but THIS is what your memories actually are

6:02 PM

sean: when I first heard the song on the album I was like “never listening to this again chaps”
and was bummed when I saw they’d picked That song for a video video
but then it all made a lot more sense
and the fact it cuts in the two actual dudes from jogger is great

6:03 PM

Johnathan from Jogger does a podcast called Uhh Yeah Dude
and he is really sound on it, they both are
and that’s what made me listen to Jogger

6:04 PM

that rarely happens with me, thinking someone is a cool person and then listening to their music because of that
usually it is the other way around with the opposite effect

Karl: trying to think if that ever happened to me
i suppose within Ireland
which is a minefield to talk about

6:05 PM

sean: you don’t have to, but I will give an example and we can move on to twitter
I was really happy when REDACTED did REDACTED and revealed themselves as shit people
like the blandness of their music made even more sense
anyway
so twitter
there are rappers who are rubbish at twitter
and it kind of puts me off them

6:06 PM

Karl: there are also non-rappers with a similar problem
like Bethany ‘n’ Nate
but is that to do with this impression you get when you’re listening to music

6:07 PM

that the people making it are infinitely smart and like all the same stuff you do and are really cool and you should hang out

sean: That’s what gets a lot of people into music I think and it always stays a little
like me and This Singer Should Be Mates or whatever

6:08 PM

Karl: I had actually met Nathan from Wavves before the Twitter era
and he was like

sean: N-N-N-NAME DROP

Karl: broadly sound, but a bit of a prick
i know right
but on Twitter cos there’s no filter of actually people looking at you
he’s just insufferable

6:09 PM

sean: yeah, twitter can give you a really offputting look into people’s idea of how they think their fans want to perceive them
“Obvioulsy I need to write about dank nugs at all time”

Karl: it’s either that, which is a good description of some rappers especially

6:10 PM

or that they’re just not trying
but like, some people are sound. HEALTH are fun.
they’re not even that sound in reality either
like us, right?

6:11 PM

sean: oh totally
like if people met you or I
after only being on twitter

6:12 PM

I’m sure they’d be like
“eh…where are the jokes, then?”

Karl: “why aren’t you talking at a rate relative to how often you tweet”
etc

sean: “you’re spitting on me”

6:13 PM

“there’s none of that on twitter”

Karl: “when i picture you, you are making eye contact with me”
okay this is off topic.
this is the discussion yeah?

sean: yeah
but yeah like

6:14 PM

Kanye’s twitter feed
was most if not all the publicity for his album
(inevitable Via Kanye)

Karl: can this column be called Inevitable Via Kanye

sean: this edition can. But like no one watched that insane movie more than once and people stopped talking about it after a week

6:15 PM

you know he financed that himself?

Karl: i watched it more than once, and still try to talk about it

sean: That’s you though, you talk about Kanye so much I think you also have ties to the Black Panthers
that used to be The Fact to drop about him

6:16 PM

Karl: but he was so annoying on twitter
to the extent that i used to just troll him.

sean: A nation did
but it got him into your head
or something
I don’t think I’d listen to Odd Future as much

6:17 PM

if Tyler did not say deliberately repulsive things on twitter
to remind me to listen to him rapping deliberately repulsive things

Karl: Tyler is an excellent example. I regularly start listening to an OF album just because Tyler has typed “stop trying to eat dad out, mom”
or something
he’s great at Twitter

6:18 PM

sean: He really is
he was like that when he had 400 followers too

Karl: ok highminded question: do you need to follow Tyler on Twitter to fully “get” the Odd Future thing? the humour of it, the parody?

sean: as I said, he was always that crazy and aggressively bizarre and just waited for people to arrive

6:19 PM

oh you certainly don’t
like there’s less parody in Odd Future than some people seem to have projected into them
the actual music like

6:20 PM

like all the tapes they dropped this year, listen to them all and you know the characters and the world ect

Karl: yeah but the videos would broadly count as OF canon
and i could easily imagine people not getting them. like, i didn’t, for a while.

6:21 PM

Tyler’s voice is deep enough to make you think he’s never joking.

sean: It does help if you knew someone like Tyler

6:22 PM

who decided on a super-aggressive alienating persona at like 15
and then rarely if ever dropped it

Karl: hah
which, if we’re counting actual success into the equation, is like 1% of anyone

6:23 PM

are you referring to yourself there

sean: well I know a person like that
Nah, I’m just Actually mental

6:24 PM

this guy just used a defense mechanism to drive himself to that
then again, cause I knew a guy like that and he was a big part of my formative years, I could be projecting
which is kind of the problem with knowing too much about a musician, stops you being able to project

6:25 PM

Karl: it is kind of notable about Tyler that if you read interviews, he’s never off

sean: the youtube videos of him and his mates

Karl: like he told some interviewer that he was Steve
for no reason
or something

sean: maybe it’s just the camera though
cause like, the early Noz one is pretty straight faced

6:26 PM

Karl: the Wire one?
I guess Tyler probably knew of Noz and might’ve just been excited to get interviewed by a serious hip hop guy or something?

sean: that’s probably it
but like
Morrissey was popular

6:27 PM

partly because you could think you were him or imagine the nerdy fella in your class was secretly that interesting
twittering and blogging and shit has made it easier for musicians to maintain a persona but much harder to maintain it

6:28 PM

Karl: imagine Morrissey had a twitter
he was a genius in interviews and stuff

6:29 PM

but the racism woulda come up a lot earlier i’d say, if he wasn’t filtered

sean: I still maintain Morrissey is not a racist, merely one of those fellas who had racist parents and occasionally attempts to intellectualism the shit inside him
or something like that

6:30 PM

I dunno, I made up that justification when I was 15 and haven’t used it in years

Karl: he probably thinks he’s not a racist

sean: many racists do

Karl: but Anthony from Liveline thinks he’s not a dope
Rubberbandits & Willie O’Dea on RTE Liveline by rubberbanditsiv

sean: that’s some shocking shit though

6:31 PM

that Anthony could go “I see you with your art ect”
dismissing all art and culture in one fell swoop
harsh shit, anto

Karl: “i don’t know what “denotative’ means so i’m going to say the word disgrace again”

sean: “louder”

6:32 PM

Karl: Blind Boy is a good, current example of someone whose soundness will probably sell music for him

sean: Well if more people saw the few Rubberbandits interviews on youtube
they probably would have been famous even quicker
like researching the awl thing I watched a load of their interviews

6:33 PM

and they’ve scalded everyone they’ve come across
because people expect them to be stupid
and then they do shit like casually look at old paintings and tell you which pope the painting is of

Karl: People are stupid
I had an interview ready to go at Electric Picnic but I didn’t have a phone to meet them, which is a life regret.
they are the best

6:34 PM

sean: I’d be afraid to interview them
because, as you know, my needyness would supersede all good instincts
and I would try to be funny too and tank the whole thing
they are totally awesome though

6:35 PM

Karl: it would probably be better to just play a completely oblivious straight man

sean: I could never manage that, but I would know it would be the right thing to do

Karl: “what are your influences”

sean: In one interview they said if they were in control of the country they’d change the dail so it’d be in the shape of “hip hop”

6:36 PM

Karl: hahahaha
what?

sean: and the girl interviewing them actually said something like “what shape is hip hop”
I think they told her to feck off

Karl: that’s the best thing i’ve ever heard
i have to empty the dishwasher
good first column?

6:38 PM

sean: Yeah, we’ll finish it there
I hope people like it
if they don’t, we’ll have to fight loads of them

6:39 PM