Julian Gough

 

My site traffic counter tells me there's been a lot of visits to a rather obscure page on the Forum this week (the Good Lord alone knows why). The page discusses Toasted Heretic's 1991 hit single, "Galway and Los Angeles", so I thought I'd add these links for the various versions of "Galway and Los Angeles" available free on Youtube...

1.) The second version of the original video (slightly muffled audio, I think it was uploaded from an old VHS tape). There was an earlier, artier version of this video, which I prefer (one long take of my mouth singing, it gets hypnotic, and the lips, when closed, start to look like a leaf or an old sofa after a while), but I don't know where to find it. Brian Shanley shot the original, but the record company freaked out and wanted another version, so we shot some stills of photos by Aengus McMahon and cut them in to make this second version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxIvxUvfIE


2.) Toasted Heretic playing "Galway and Los Angeles" live on the Late Late Show (RTE 1 television), 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlSa21EmHkw&feature=related


3.) Toasted Heretic play "Galway and Los Angeles" live in Róisín Dubh, Galway, August 2005, on the Now In New Nostalgia Flavour tour... (Very dodgy one-camera version! This was an all-ages, alcohol-free gig, in the daytime, so that the band's children and the children of our original fans could come. Thus the kids doing the amusing hand-gestures down the front. We did a far more blood, sweat and alcohol-soaked gig in Róisín Dubh the night before, for adults only, so don't worry if this version doesn't tally with your memory of the Róisín Dubh gig you attended...):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BtXFOSw650


While I'm at it, this is our most popular video on Youtube... Toasted Heretic do "Stay Tonight" (off Charm & Arrogance), on the Den with Zig and Zag... in which I stand on Zig, and throw a lot of dollars in the air, Declan speaks fluent Guitar, and Zig and Zag provide rather lovely backing vocals...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4mWrMOm51E&feature=related

 

 

"I've been warned about you lot..." - Zag

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've grown bored with my blogging style. My policy, recently, has been to say only nice things about nice people, which means I can't mention two-thirds of the people I'd like to, or say three-quarters of what I'd like.

 

(You will notice I said nothing at all about the recent Booker Prize, even though the winning book was written by a fellow Irish novelist, I used to share an agent with at least one of the judges, my brother knows another judge, and I had potential gossipy stories coming out my every orifice...)

 

So while I rethink my blogging style (what do you think, should I revoke the only-say-nice-things rule? Or can anyone think of a new rule that would liven things up?), I've decided to outsource my blog to someone who's much better at blogging than me...

 

Because this is Berlin, I found myself admiring sculptures of foetuses last Saturday while drinking whisky with Momus. Which led me to visit his magnificent blog, Click Opera. I hadn't been there for a while, and had forgotten how great it is. Much, much more interesting than mine. Go have a wander round it, while I build a new persona.

 

 

Meantime, feel free to make recommendations for my new personality, and blog style. What do you like in a blog? This blog? Other blogs?

 

What does nobody do with their blog, but should?

When people say that music doesn't sound as good these days, they usually just mean they aren't having as much sex these days.

But, if you liked the way pop music used to sound fifteen years ago, then the music genuinely doesn't sound as good these days, and it's for straightforward technical reasons.

For several years, record companies have been fighting a secret war, the Loudness War, and it has changed the sound of pop music. Really, "changed" is too small a word for it. It has abolished the dynamic range of pop music. The loud bits are no longer loud, and the quiet bits are no longer quiet. And here is why…

Record companies want their albums to sound louder than the other guy's album, in shops, on your hi-fi, wherever, because people tend to think that the louder of two songs is the better of two songs. That’s just the way our brains are wired.

So record companies have been boosting the overall loudness of CDs. But there's a maximum loudness limit to the digital signal on a CD. Increasing the overall loudness increases the loudness of the quiet bits: but it doesn't (it can't) increase the loudness of the bits that were already at maximum loudness.

Imagine the loudest part of a song as Mount Everest, and the quietest part as the bottom of a valley, five miles below. There is a physical upper limit on how loud the song can get on a CD: metaphorically, nothing can be taller than Mount Everest. Ten or twenty years ago, songs had a five-mile dynamic range: songs had dramatic peaks and troughs. Quiet bits whispered, and loud bits roared.

By raising the volume of the quiet bits, the Loudness War has filled in the valleys. Which makes the mountains seem much, much smaller.

The loud bits still roar: but now the quiet bits roar too. So you turn down the overall volume on your iPod or stereo or computer, to a more comfortable overall volume. Which means that, perversely, you don’t get the benefit of the “louder” album. But you do lose the dynamics which made the original song interesting.

This is why re-releases of old albums often sound strangely flat and undramatic compared to your memory of the vinyl or early CD original. They ARE less dramatic. They’ve been remastered “louder”.

It also makes them more tiring to listen to.

You know how you talk to your friends? Mostly you’re just talking away, but now and then one of you gets excited and shouts, and it’s exciting because it doesn’t happen very often? Well, if Warner Brothers reissued that conversation, YOU WOULD ALL BE SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. PASS THE SALT. THANKS. I’M GLAD IT’S RAINING, THE GARDEN NEEDS IT. WOULD ANYONE LIKE A COFFEE? SURE. ME TOO. YEAH I’LL HAVE A COFFEE, NO MILK. I LOVE YOUR HAT.

Very, very tiring. And if someone got shot in the middle of it, Jesus Christ appeared, and the world ended, you wouldn’t notice, because it would all happen at exactly the same volume as a polite request for a biscuit.

Here’s a great visual explanation of what’s been going on, in three minutes of excellent video:







More on this later maybe, if anyone cares.

One of the more peculiar side-effects of my winning the National Short Story Prize has been the appearance of my venerable old band, Toasted Heretic, on Ireland's oldest and most venerable television chat-show, the Late Late.

 

After a brief interview (where I was asked about the prize, modern Ireland, and Jude: Level 1), I wandered across the studio to join the rest of Toasted Heretic and we played "Galway and Los Angeles",  which was originally a hit single in Ireland in 1991. (It peaked at number 9. It was also Single of the Week in the dear, departed (Allan Jones/Chris Roberts era) Melody Maker in the UK. In France, an import copy was played by Bernard Lenoir on French national radio until the grooves wore flat, though the single was never officially released there.)

 The performance is up on Youtube.

A strange but enjoyable evening. Everyone who was ever in Heretic played, so it was the full wall-of-guitars line-up  (seen previously only on the Now In New Nostalgia Flavour tour): me on vocals, Neil Farrell on drums and sampler, Declan Collins on lead guitar, Aengus McMahon on electric rhythm guitar, Breffni O'Rourke on  acoustic rhythm, and Barry Wallace on bass guitar.

 

Let us draw a silken veil over the debauch which followed, in the Westbury Hotel.

 

I've been talking to Aengus, official photographer to the band (ie the only guy who had a camera in the old days... now a very successful professional photographer), and we're going to stick up a bunch of old Toasted Heretic photos here in the next month or two. Watch this embarrassing space...

 

I agree with Roswell's comment (which was made on my last post, but over on the dirty, under-class-oriented copy of my blog at www.myspace.com/juliangough: and ain't that the postmodern condition, baby): extra-thick, super-black, ultra-chunky vinyl is the way to go. This city is practically made out of vinyl. Winos live in mounds of old Chris DeBurgh albums, while students sleep insulated under warm, fashionable cardboard duvets, stitched together from the sleeves of New Order 12-inch singles. Berlin children, when they play, not only skip, but also crackle, and rotate at 45 rpm.

Ideally, "It Makes The Sex Exciting (When There's Been A Little Fighting)" will eventually come out as a yummy, limited-edition 7", on a Japanese label so obscure the owner's mother hasn't heard of it.

Meanwhile, we might put it out for nowt on Myspace. Cuz Free is the new Paid For. Broke is the new Rich. And Old is the new Young.

Yeah, I'm surfing a wave, I'm so smooth I don't shave...

Till later, my pop children.

-Julian