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Diamonds
/ Salami / 808 State
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A while
back I worked out why diamonds have such a hold over people. It's not
because they're rare, or because they're the hardest substance in nature
- men raised by wolves are unaware of either fact, but I have observed
that they find them fascinating nonetheless. No, it's because of our fingernails.
Whether because of evolution or God, our fingernails are there as a constant
reminder that very few natural solids are transparent. Diamonds are transparent,
and so are fingernails. Fingernails are less transparent than diamonds,
however, and this deficiency acts as an incentive for us to dig for the
most transparent solid we can find. Our fingernails are like carrots dangling
in front of a donkey, and we are the donkey.
Apparently, fingernails are made out of the same stuff as hair, but packed
tighter, and more see-through. We'd live very different lives if people
could see through normal hair. There would be no reason to have hair cut
short, for a start, and people would grow gigantic manes of hair which
they would wrap around their heads, like a waterproof scarf, but made
of hair, so that there would be no market for umbrellas, and thus that
guy who was assassinated by a poisoned umbrella would still be alive in
this parallel universe, and his kids might have ended up like Stalin or
Hitler and because of that we would all be dead. With all that hair, the
hair-care industry would be even bigger than it is, because there would
be so much more hair to care for, and the consequences of bad hair-care
would be even worse. People would make windows out of hair, and we might
never have invented glass, and without glass drinks would be served in
metal containers and television would not exist, unless it's possible
to coat hair with phosphor dots and project electrons against it. That's
the kind of thing you can't look up on the internet, because it's the
kind of thing you get taught at school.
For another example of this, the other week I developed a taste for salami.
For a while, almost all my meals involved salami. I had salami rolls for
lunch, I had salami-topped pizzas, and I considered buying some Pepperami,
but decided that I was probably taking things too far, and anyway Pepperami
is quite expensive, especially compared to other snackstuffs such as crisps
or yoghurt.
I didn't actually know what salami was, though. It's a big sausage with
white bits, and the white bits are probably fat, but I have no idea what
the meat is made of. It's red, which means that it isn't chicken, or fish,
but I could guess that from the taste. Is salami even made of meat, I
wondered, or is it just spices and stuff? Anyway, I tried to find out
what salami is made up of by using the internet, but it's one of those
obvious facts that you can't find out easily. After typing 'what is salami
made of' into Google, it came back with lots of pages of online shops
that sell salami, and recipes that involved salami, but nothing about
the actual composition of salami. Even typing 'of what is salami made'
failed to enlighten me. I started to wonder if, in fact, salami was merely
a way of presenting a variety of different meats, in the same way that
the word 'sausage', although usually referring to tubes of pork, can actually
be used to describe any tubular meat construction, no matter which type
of meat is used.
For example, you can get vegetable sausages, in the meat-free section
of the supermarket, and they're not made of meat because they're meat-free.
They're made of all kinds of things. But they're still sausages. After
a while it appeared as if salami was made of pork, but there seemed to
be no central repository for all salami-based knowledge, no history of
salami, no poetic appreciation of salami, no dissertation on the cultural
impact of salami, nothing. I would create one myself, but it would just
be a page of questions, and I doubt if anybody on the internet wants to
read a page of questions about salami. The dearth of such pages is testament
to this.
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"I doubt if
anybody on the internet wants to read a page of questions about salami."
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As I write
this I'm slightly drunk, and listening to 808 State's 'Ninety', and it's
just got to 'Pacific 202', and it's shit. I know we're all supposed to
be nice about 808 State, because they were dance pioneers and are very
trendy and so on, like Coldcut, and 'Pacific 202' is supposed to be a
classic, but the whole album sounds like muzak with light house beats
in the background. It sounds like the kind of bad dance music that pops
up in computer game soundtracks. 'Pacific 202' sounds like something by
Paul Hardcastle, who was also an ordinary passenger. It's rubbish. If
you think otherwise, I suggest you listen to the album yourself. Go on.
Listen to it. Actually listen to it, and ignore all the reviews you have
read, and don't worry about what other people think when you deliver your
opinion. Stop being as boring as the people you hate and don't think that
by nodding and agreeing with received opinion, you appear mature. You'll
make lots of friends that way, probably, but you'll live their life according
to their opinions, not your own. Don't say that I just don't understand,
because I do, and you're wrong, and don't just say that you think it's
a masterpiece of early ambient house, because it isn't, it's just boring
muzak shit, and I'm not being a philistine, it's just that it actually
is boring muzak shit.
You might think that I'm not taking the album seriously, or that I'm not
giving it the in-depth review it deserves, but you're wrong, because I
am taking it seriously, and 'boring muzak shit' is all the review it needs,
because it encapsulates in three words why 808 State's 'Ninety' is rubbish.
It's boring. It's muzak. It's shit. It could be piped through a public
address system in a mall or a supermarket or used as hold music on a telephone
and not a single human being in the entire world would complain, not because
they all like it, but because they just wouldn't notice it. It doesn't
have the crude brutalism of early acid house, which is also boring but
forgivable, or the quirkiness of modern groups such as those on Warp Records,
for example, or the late Warren Zevon. It sounds like the kind of dance
music a professional musician would produce for a film score; slick, professionally-produced,
utterly empty and dull. There's nothing there. Has it not occurred to
you to differ from standard opinion? Did it not cross your mind that everybody
else is wrong, and that you are right? Were you scared? You keep saying
that you're progressive, forward-thinking, a champion of innovation, but
you're just as conservative as the people you hate. So what if 'Ninety'
was cutting-edge in 1989? It's not 1989 any more. It's 1999. And was it
cutting-edge in 1989? Did people like it then, and if not, was it because
they didn't understand it, or was it because they did understand it, but
thought that it was rubbish? You don't know first-hand. You're relying
on something you read in a magazine or on the internet.
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Dating In Hong Kong On FirstClickFriend.Com Offers Online Dating Services And Online Personals For All Regions In Hong Kong. Dating In Hong Kong Can Be Really Successful Ith FirstClickFriend.Com "It took them a year to make
the album. They shouldn't have bothered."
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Now it's
gone onto 'Donkey doctor'. Which sounds like bad computer game music,
the kind of rubbish that soundtracked 'Unreal' and 'Deus Ex'. And as I
rewrite bits of the above, it goes onto '808080808', which also sounds
like bad computer game music and has bits from their earlier songs. And
whilst writing the 'it doesn't have the crude brutalism' bit above, it's
moved onto 'Sunrise', which starts off well enough but has a horrible
jazz-funk bassline that reminds me of a bit of 'Space', by Space, the
early Orb / KLF off-shoot project collaboration thing. But 'Space' worked,
because it was original and unusual, whereas 'Sunrise' is just the final
proper track on a dull album, one that, unforgivably, uses the name of
a far superior song by New Order, whose 'Ninety' contemporary, 'Technique',
still sounds fresh and original, unlike 'Ninety' which is just boring
muzak shit.
It took them a year to make the album. They shouldn't have bothered. A
Guy Called Gerald's 'Voodoo Ray', released a year before, was infinitely
better, and only went on for four and a half minutes, or less if you play
it slightly faster, which you probably will do because old dance music
sounds too slow to modern ears. I'd rather listen to it ten times in a
row than listen to 'Ninety'. And it's not just that I personally don't
like 'Ninety', or 808 State in general, it's an objective fact that it
was a rubbish album, and that but for a twist of critical opinion, we'd
have forgotten 808 State.
Now the album is over. There was a short novelty track at the end, like
The Orb's 'U F Orb', but whereas 'U F Orb' is a masterpiece of early-90s
ambient house, 'Ninety' is boring muzak shit. I'm probably never going
to play it again. Next time I move house, I'll probably throw the album
away to save weight. And in a few years I'll forget that I ever owned
it, but I won't want to buy a copy because a little part of my brain will
tell me that I don't want to buy a copy, and that I should buy something
else, or nothing at all.
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