There was a fantastic quote about us in a review of "Heads smashed in" from Holland the other day; "For certain Betika new indie-lo-fi Abba" (translation via some website). Funnily enough, the band does at the moment consist of a blonde girl (Claire), a dark girl (Caz), a beardie bloke and a clean-shaven bloke (Steve and I are interchangeable in these roles, depending on how hairy we are, but it's most common that I am Benny and he is Bjorn). It's always hard to establish the tone of reviews from overseas, when so much of the nuance of the language gets lost in the coarse machine translation, so I can't really tell if the writer's implication is that we write timeless, classic pop songs that will still be danced to in indie-lo-fi discos by our huge and loyal gay-indie-lo-fi following in thirty years time, or if he believes us to be purveyors of vacuous cheese. I guess it all depends on where you stand on Abba. I have to confess to being unsure myself.
In bits at the moment are;
(1) a Columbus EB-3 bass copy that Mike from My Hi-fi Sister (and ex-Miss Black America) gave me. This is nearly finished, I've had to make a new nut, bridge, and almost all the plastic parts (all in a functional if not particularly attractive way) and it's playable again, but it's as ugly as sin where Mike started stripping off the finish with a power sander but gave up half way (I had a similar experience with some window frames once) and think it's probably going to stay that way as I can't be arsed either. Before Mike gave it to me it was living in his shed, along with the remains of several other guitars that had been sacrificed to the gods of rock and roll by various members of Miss Black America. I've always had a bit of a problem with people breaking guitars, which dates back to when I was about thirteen, when I was saving up all the money from my paper-round to buy my first electric guitar, and I saw that famous bit of film of Hendrix smashing his strat at Monterrey. I don't think I've ever coveted an object so much, or waited so long to eventually get my hands on something, and here on the screen in front of me was this guy wantonly destroying it. Torching and then smashing into pieces my heart's desire. It seemed completely decadent, the most obscenely wasteful thing I had ever witnessed. If he didn't want the guitar, why couldn't he give it to someone who did? I was upset about that for a long time afterwards. It was worse than watching the KLF burn a million quid. Nowadays I've become a pragmatist and a scavenger, resigned to the fact that guitar trashing is a rock-pantomime set piece crowd-pleaser (just like throwing shapes, guitar solos and the earnestly gurning singer who really, really means it, face distorted into gargollic rictus by faux-emotional affectation…..), but if I ever witness it or it's victims first-hand I descend vulture-like on the carcass and try to make off with as many reuseable bits as possible. One day, I'll have enough to make a whole guitar, which I'm going to build onstage at the end of a Betika gig, amid an orgy of construction. And, getting off my high-horse;
(2) a number of Zenit SLR cameras. I've had one or more Zenits for years, my dad gave me one when I was a kid, thinking I'd progress onto something better once I'd got the hang of taking pictures with it, but as I got older I just bought more of them. I used to take lots of pictures at gigs, and as it's possible to pick these cameras up in charity shops for the price you pay for a disposable camera in the high street I don't really have to worry about them getting lost, stolen or broken- but at the same time they're still capable of taking fantastic pictures. I've broken two lately through experimenting with using them in ways which nature never intended, one I managed to fix but the other's a goner.
I've been listening to, amongst others; Steve Malkmus, Beulah, a CD of music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a compilation of 'outsider' music called "Songs in the key of Z" (and reading the book of the same title) and some Shostakovich piano music. I'm simultaneously reading "Porno" by Irvine Welsh and "And the ass saw the angel" by Nick Cave, both of which are written in hard-to-fathom vernacular by drug-twits
