Me, in Lists

Posted by Alex | | Posted On Tuesday 9 November 2010 at 18:21

Okay, so this post follows on from a conversation held between Roxane, Rebecca and I. I guess I thought it appropriate to fill in the blanks from earlier, and to just give an all-round view of me for those of you who read this, but haven’t known me all that long. In short, it’s going to be a lot of Top 5 lists which will range from “Top Five Films” to “Top Five Celebrity Crushes,” all with the aim of giving you a better perspective, a look at what makes me tick. Things I feel should be seen/heard/understood are linked. So, let’s go:

Top Five Films

In order:
1. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
2. Dead Man
3. Twenty-Four Hour Party People
4. My Neighbour Totoro
5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Top Five Works of Fiction

In order:
1. Fiesta, Sun Also Rises
2. Invisible Cities
3. The Great Gatsby
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
5. Love in the Time of Cholera

Top Five Non-Fiction

1. Helter Skelter, the True Story of the Manson Murders
2. Stupid White Men
3. Who Killed Marten Hannett? The Story of Factory Records’ Musical Magician

(I actually don’t read enough non-fiction to warrant this at all…)

Five Bands I am Currently Listening to

1. Ben Folds & Nick Hornby
2. Anamanaguchi
3. Caparezza
4. From Monument to Masses
5. Explosions in the Sky

Five Bands I think You should listen to

1. Explosions in the Sky
2. Ratatat
3. The Shins
4. The Decemberists
5. Belle & Sebastian

Top Five Bands of All-Time

1. Adam and the Ants
2. Duran Duran
3. Bright Eyes
4. Daft Punk
5. The Eagles

Top Five Celebrity Crushes (Female)

1. Lauren Laverne
2. Natalie Portman
3. Karen Gillan
4. Siouxsie Sioux (hey, for a 50-something she’s still good-looking)
5. Melissa auf der Maur

Top Five Celebrity Man-Crushes

1. Kevin Spacey
2. Early 90s Richard Gere
3. Johnny Depp pre-Pirates, post-Scissorhands (i.e. in Blow, Fear and Loathing, Ed Wood etc)
4. Sean Connery 
5. Zach Braff

Top Five Languages (Because I find some nicer than others)

1. Italian
2. Catalan
3. Finnish
4. Icelandic
5. Dutch

Top Five Places in the World (so far)

1. Artà, Mallorca
2. Venice, Italy
3. Pavia, Italy
4. Toronto, Canada
5. Walt Disney World, Kissimmee, Florida

Just so this doesn’t end with a list, I thought I’d just give me a nice pretentious musical profile, to clear up any doubts:

I was brought up listening to the Eagles, country music, and 80s pop stars. Like every child of the 90s, I went through a phase of liking all the pop music available, from B*Witched to STEPS, before finally being pulled away from Britney and Michael Jackson to Eminem. I was never really that into his music, I guess I was only along for the ride. From there, I guess I started trying to outdo people, to ‘stay cool’, so when I met someone who said they liked Alice Cooper, I tried to one up them by saying I liked Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath (having never listened to either before) – within a few weeks, I owned their greatest hits, as well as a Rob Zombie album, because it had a nice psychedelic cover.

For the next few years, I bounced between the tame (Marilyn Manson, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus) and the extreme (Satyricon, Opera XIII, Hypocrisy etc) in the hopes of being taken seriously, and looked upon less as a mall-goth and more as a ‘real goth’. During that time I attended my first real gig, Slayer’s Unholy Alliance Tour (Hatebreed, Mastodon, Slipknot and Slayer), but didn’t get my first taste of moshing probably until Taste of Chaos 2005, when I got punched square in the face by a girl. From then on, any moshing was done in the style of “get from an edge to an edge quickly” – though, within a year I’d moved on to bigger and better things.

2006 was when I grew out of being such a narrow-minded fool. I discovered Mercury Rev, Explosions in the Sky, Animal Collective, The Decemberists, and a host of other groups. This opened my eyes to the fact that chugging riffs weren’t everything. Within a year or two I was listening to Justice, Daft Punk, The Knife, Klaxons, CSS, and all that was vaguely electronic, but I still kept my old musical tastes. Four years later, having stumbled blindly through Dubstep, Dancehall, Grime, Hip-Hop, Blues, Rock n Roll (and so on),  I think the only genre I have yet to explore is jazz – with the exception of Kenny G’s The Moment (which is as far from Jazz as Britney is from being a hardcore punk…in the literal sense, because we all know Britney is “p.u.n.x. 4 lyf yo”)

I try to avoid reading Pitchfork and the NME as much as possible, and pretty much take my musical recommendations from those outlets I trust: Leigh, Jake, and Metacritic. Serves me right for being, despite my protestations to the contrary, so closed-minded and pretentious when it comes to my musical habits. And if you don’t look at me now and think “My God, he’s an ass” then we may just get along for a long time…

(Any questions, other lists you want from me, ask away. Maybe next time “The story of how I became such an ass”)

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