Music
by the Editor
I think I've got to say a few words about Alex Cox's interview of Kid Carpet this month, otherwise it's going to be nearly incomprehensible to most readers…
A little while ago, Alex, otherwise known as EAP's Chief Technical Consultant, as well as husband of the editor/publisher, went off to Japan and came home with a promo CD somebody'd given him. All it said on the front was "Kid Carpet," and then the list of songs. "I think maybe you'll like some of this; some of it's your kind of thing," he said cautiously, laying it on top of our State of the Art Flintstone-era cassette/CD player (bought for $89 at BiMart, circa turn of the century). "Maybe," he said.
We don't tend to have the same taste in music. He keeps his Morricone soundtrack habit in his hut. I play Steely Dan by myself in the car. We agree on Chumbawamba (both hard rock and acoustic), Danbert Nobacon , the Sex Patels, early Morcheeba, Pray for Rain soundtracks , and a Mexican composer named Ponce. That's about it.
So I put off playing it for awhile, till I noticed him eyeing it wistfully before dinner one night. Well, I love my husband, and it won't kill me to hear another tiresomely loud and/or whining group, I think to myself, so I put the CD on. And then stop dead on my way back to the kitchen.
First song, first lines: "No one gives a shit if you're not special/no one gives a shit if you're not special…"
I slowly wheel around and look at the cassette/CD player. Then I look at Alex. He's grinning.
"I thought you'd like that one. He plays all his stuff with nothing but kid's toys."
"Go on," I say, and settle down to listen to the rest of the CD.
There's a song about walking in the English countryside, "Green and Pleasant Land," that is so hilariously accurate about what it's like to walk around the pylons, while trying to follow a footpath that stops dead at a six lane highway, that I fall off my perch, laughing. And "Carrier Bag," about the frustrations of living in changing weather. And "Your Love," a song that manages to be both wistfully charming and highly accurate at the same time. And "Frank's Dance," that incorporates an old English guy's reminiscences about riding his bicycle fifteen miles to a rural dance with hard core dance music.
I mean, the whole thing just blows me away.
It blows Alex away, too. Though, as usual, the tracks he's the most taken with are different from mine. "Bristol Carpet Factory," an ad for a carpet factory, presumably where the Kid works. "Shiny Shiny New," — self explanatory title, really. And a hilarious mix of thwack thwack thwack music with a sound recording studio asking for fifteen hundred pounds for their work, "fifteen hundred pounds, that's it, job done, walk off, sorted," on which our tastes overlap, because I say it takes me right back to dealing with technicians in England on a film.
So I say, "Do me an interview with this guy, would you?" And Alex says, "Okay, but I'm warning you — I'm going to ask him all about the carpet business." And I say, "Perfect, fine, thwack, thwack, thwack, that's it, job done, walk off…"
Sorted.
(And while I have you here, let me say that you should under no circumstances miss reading Jack Carneal's Pilgrimage — his night out in Mali, with the local music. It'll make the hair on the back of your arms stand up. It did on mine.)
Welcome back.