Nomad Radio

Advice Music Posted by Gargleman

Advice columns have moved on since the days when your choice was either pinching your sister’s Just17 to discover what “fingering” was (something to do with classical guitar?) or reading Woman’s Own in the dentist’s waiting room find out how to get your sex drive swinging again in your sixties.

The Sun came as something of an eye-opener for the teenage Gargleman, with its Dear Deirdre column and her photo casebook, though it did give me some strange ideas about sex (does everyone really wear a bra and panties during a threesome?). Then there was Viz’s Photo Stories, which weren’t advice, but were occasionally very funny.

Now, the internets have arrived and suddenly everyone has advice for you. Confused about life? Humiliate yourself at Yahoo Answers and sarcy little shits will explain your utter failure to you. Polyandrous/gay/into kinky shit (sometimes literally)? Dan Savage will give you often graphic advice that would make Dear Deirdre blush.

Need your advice in a musical format? Wondering where this post is going? Well, I just came across the lovely Rachel Zylstra’s Advice Music, which is kind of like Rebecca Mayes’ musical video games reviews, but with slightly less catchy songs. Which is weird considering Zylstra is an actual minor alt-pop-star. But it has got potential, for sure, especially if people start giving her more interesting problems to write songs about.

So – musical video game reviews: check. Musical problem pages: check. What’s next? Musical youtube party political broadcasts? What? The Greens did that back in 2006? God, I’m so out of the loop…

Nomad III Posted by zenzenzen

Nomad Version 3 is coming…
What features would you like to see?
Post a comment featuring your ideas, niggles and suggestions!

Go on, you must just get your wish!

DJ Shadow forgets why Hip-Hop Sucked in ‘96 Posted by zenzenzen

Thanks to Quim Abella for the image

Well… another decade has passed, and here we are living full time in the future that is 2010. I can see that you all handled the change gracefully and are excited about the future! Well Done! Not everyone however has managed the transition. I recommend these individuals remain humbly quiet until they fully understand and master their necessary evolution. There will however be cases where people, frustrated with the change in their mediums decide instead to launch a public tirade, and try to change the world rather than themselves.

Case in point is the venerable DJ Shadow…

Gone are the recording studios (including the historically important Plant down the road from me in Sausalito), the record shops, and the music magazines. Replaced by the oh-so-cynical, oh-so-corrosive AM talk radio of the new millennium, the Internet.

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copy©unts Posted by zenzenzen

Image courtesy of Loan Sameli

Because sometimes an idea is so awesome, those cheeky monkeys in advertising turn them into bad commercials. Always the original far outweighs in awesomeness than the cruddy TV ads. Sometimes they even re-do them so badly that you just can’t watch the original without thinking of the product!

Who can seriously enjoy scrimping these days since the Honey Monster got in on the act? You wonder if these ad execs want to ruin it for all of us with their lame campaigns – and what’s to stop them? They already use skateboarding, ponies and boobs to sell everything to everyone…
Well fear no longer as crusaders from all around the world now have a platform to alert people of injustice! Men, women and kids of the world unite and read copy©unts.

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Exploitation exploitation exploitation Posted by Gargleman

Two recent films, or rather trailers, got me thinking.

If you’re making an exploitation movie that isn’t tongue-in-cheek, you better be a fine fucking film-maker. Because the above trailer for Frankenpimp makes it look awesomely dodgy and probably worth watching with a few mates and a four-pack. Whereas Run Bitch, Run! (link really NSFW) looks a bit shit, and despite a House Of The Dead: Overkill style trailer and the copious levels of nudity and gore, I’d still probably rather watch Frankenpimp.

Actually, even the best “serious” exploitation films (Cannibal Holocaust, Beyond the Darkness aka Buio Omega, Last House on the Left) were made by people who at other times in their career churned out some of the least watchable movies ever made. Take the directors of those three movies: Ruggero Deodato also made the tedious Bodycount (aka Camping del Terrore), Joe D’Amato (aka Aristide Massaccesi) also cobbled together the inexplicable Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Wes Craven made, or presumably shat out, Vampire in Brooklyn. Take heed!

A 70 minute film about The Phantom Menace… Posted by Gargleman

…which also happens to be far, far more enjoyable than actually sitting through Star Wars: The Phantom Menace itself.

If you think that Jar Jar Binks is the beginning and the end of why this movie sucks, think again: this series of seven YouTube clips by RedLetterMedia is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages, and also contains some genuinely insightful moments to boot.

The original and worst? Posted by Gargleman

After reading this post about hating retro gaming I got to thinking: is the original also the best? Or is retro retarded? So here is Nomad Radio’s unacceptably geeky handy guide so you know what to think.

OBEY.

Movies

C3P0's mum

As RottenTomatoes “Top 50 science fiction films” shows, genre pioneers like Metropolis (1927) are still highly regarded. Directed by Fritz Lang, Metropolis was one of the earliest science fiction movies and was hugely influential on everything from Star Wars’s C3PO to Tim Burton’s Batman. It is also almost totally unwatchable and should be avoided unless you are a film student. Or George Lucas.

VERDICT: Original is worst. Really. Forget Serenity or Star Wars, I’d rather watch a compilation of the Anakin/Padme love scenes on repeat for two hours than watch Metropolis again. Though I’d rather watch stray dogs fight over the rotting carcass of a tramp than either. › Continue reading

Sweeping Genre-lisation Posted by robsteranium

So, I promised to defend the practice of writing about music. I said that music couldn’t be described in words. That was true once. But that was before tagging came along…

The need to classify music into genres used to infuriate me. How do I know you’re hearing what I’m hearing? “We can see other people’s behaviour but not their experience” says Laing. More to the point, is it Rhythmy Blues or Rock & Roll? Does Various Production count as light-Dubstep or heavy-electro-Folk?!

Now where did I put that Enya LP..?

The rigid hierarchy of genres was only a problem with physical records. If you’re in a record shop then you’ve got to choose where to put/ need to know where to get tunes: genres seem as sensible structure as any (unless you’re Rob Fleming in which case you’ll organise your personal CD collection into autobiographical order). Pigeon-holing (the filing metaphor not the blood sport) is inevitable when tunes have to be carved into plastic.

Now that music has a virtual as well as a physical presence, genres can be interpreted far more flexibly. Everything is miscellaneous. Various Production can be dubstep, folk, electro, and whatever else you want, all at the same time.

So, if everything is miscellaneous, and writing about music can now extend over an infinite range of possibility, then how do we read it? In other words, what use are tags to the listener? Enter meta-data…

Cultural review of 2009: was it shit? Posted by Gargleman

The mainstream musical highlight of 2009 actually came back in January with the release of Animal Collective’s magnificent My Girls (above).

As for February to December: for shame. Yes, that was an official shaming.

Music: There has been some very good stuff on Nomad Radio, of course, in particular the Borland track, Wildlife, that appears at the beginning of the Mind On Fire Podcast 2. But my own favoured genre, indie/rock/pop/blah has all been a bit cack, to be honest.

Movies: The best movies I saw all year were old – a download of the confusingly great Primer (2004) and the criminally neglected Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) on the TV. Of the dozen or so movies I went to see at the cinema, I can’t remember any except the excellent District 9 and the predictable fun of Star Trek, so the rest were quite probably all shit.

To sum up: C+, and that’ll be an D- if I start seeing “Best of the Noughties” articles in every newspaper and blog over the next few weeks. I really hate the term “noughties” and best of the year posts/articles are so fucking lazy, god…

Nasty’s Guide to Squatting Posted by zenzenzen

DJ Superstar and London’s finest barly, Nasty McQuaid takes time out from his Charity Shoppe events to put together a quintessential guide of the hows and how-nots to succeed in modern life squatting.

Take it from us, Nasty is a seasoned veteran of recycling cultures, his Rubbish&Nasty squatted record shop, next to New Cross Town Hall, was quite possibly the most diverse vinyl collection ever sold in London and one that more than likely helped with the birth of Basement Rock and numerous awesomagnificent DJ careers…

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