dubious.biz(ness)

Ok I’m going to endeavour to update the blog despite the painfully cramped schedule of my life. Yesterday was my Birthday, it was quite nice, it began a bit early at 11:00pm on the 25th when a number of my friends showed up at my dirty dirty room and began pelting me with gifts. Namely a custom-made “Gettin’ Lucky in Kentucky” t-shirt, a metal water bottle, and a Mr. Slow book.

Aparently I’m slow. I think there is little credence to this story, I might call myself at times lazy or at the very least in desparate battle with my laziness, but I don’t think I’m slow. What is true is that by most standards I am not the best conversationalist. I… talk… real… slow. Of course if I had a good country accent I could drawl it out. Garsh missus, Issit true? But I don’t I have a TV anchor’s accent so I am expected to talk like one. Oh well. I’m practicin’.

So having been gifted I went to bed, got up, did some weights and work, then I was supposed to join up at the Cambridge Beer Festival, which is quite an even with a bajillion ales from around the country and beyond, the sort of English ale that you actually have a damned hard time finding in most pubs, the main reason for the existence of CamRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, who sponsored the event. However while they had ale in spades nearly no one from my boat turned up, so I wandered around in the muddy fields for an hour drinking a pint and looking for people to no avail before finally finding one person. I found out after that our organization had been pretty poor as several people had shown up but none of us found each other.

After this I went back to college and collected friends and went to the Rice Boat. It’s a fairly good restaurant specializing in south Indian food. I have had lots of masala dosa, idli, sambar, and vada, as well as the coconuty curries that are typical of the region and they are probably my favorite sort of Indian food. However this was expensive to say the least, two vada being £4! I do not what to think about the US price of the small amount of vada I bought. Further the curries did not come with rice or poori so overall the value of the meal was in the toilet. Fortunately the food was reasonably good and the fish curry I had was fresh if a bit bland.

I was gifted another Mr. Man book: Mr. Birthday, and cake, and everyone sung happy birthday. All in all, I have to say it was a really nice day, I had such low expectations for it but all my friends here are so kind, it was really nice to know that they had taken time out of their day to spend time with me and make my birthday happy.

Then, I came back, ended up collecting a few more gifts from Karan and a package in the mail from Ali, and went to bed early. That was my idea of a gift to myself. Now it’s back to the grindstone… these exams aren’t going to fail themselves!

The truth, truth be told, is that I have been thinking about you dear readers every moment. I feel… constipated… with new material but I feel guilty every time I start to type a blog. In fact I have seven drafted posts to the blog which are mostly nothing more than a title to remind me of the topic. And these are timeless classics too not that trashy “current mood” stuff you find on most other blogs.

But today is the 25th and tomorrow is the 26th, and that means my birthday. Usually the world knows when my birthday occurs. I’m stuck in crappy Cambridge which, it turns out, is not that cool once you’ve been here for more than two days. My birthday this year falls a few days before the beginning of exams, which are the purest form of evil available in Cambridge. In fact I should but am not going to go into it in great detail, because it’s (almost) my birthday.

Tomorrow is planned out to be chill, a group of friends are going to a newish Indian restaurant that does south Indian, so idli and dosa and sambar for me. And just before that the guys from my boat is going to a beer festival. So I have devoted the hours of 5:00pm-9:00pm to celebrating. I will then go back to work. I could also go into the details of the fact that I am now scheduling my studying to the hour and failing nearly every day not for lack of trying, but I won’t.

I am saving it all up for Barcelona and the June Event. All of it. And when it goes, dear laurd, it won’t be pretty. But before that I have to get through exams and bumps. I could tell you about bumps and boating as well. But I’m not. In fact, I may even stay in Spain a bit longer if I don’t have an obvious job to come back to, but I’m not going to talk about that.

Last year I was in Yogyakarta, the year before was a quite nice restaurant, small party. 21 was Vegas meltdown. 20 was a prebirthday at Coachella. You see, the benefit of being me is Memorial Day weekend, which is always conveniently scheduled within three days of my birthday (think about it) whereas here it is conveniently scheduled within three days of the start of exams. Joyously backward Britons, thank you so much for ruining what has been The Greatest Day. But alas in three years time your tyranny will end, and again my birthday will be restored to the podium of greatness that it rightfully deserves.

Oh faithful ones, I miss you, and soon, as soon as my educational orifice is closed, I shall open up again and give you what you’ve been missing.

“This girl I know, needs some shelter, she don’t believe anyone can help her.”

You know you are getting old when the bands you grew up with start releasing greatest hits albums. You start to feel a little like them: past your prime. I’ve noticed people tend to do one of two things when they realize all the music they grew up with is available on greatest hits collections: they either go VH1 and listen to the same crap over and over again, reliving their glorious youth, or they go MTV and continually find new crap and stay up to date with the latest.

I am fortunately too young to know exactly what I will do yet, but I’m getting there. Many of the bands I would have listed as my favorites in high school have broken up or released their final albums, and finding the motivation to look for new music harder and harder.

While walking through Borders today I found another victim: Massive Attack. I was not a huge fan of Massive Attack initially, I found the sound of trip-hop a bit too downtempo at first and to be honest their first few albums contained a lot of early nineties British pop-hop that sounded dated only a few months after release. But there is no doubt in retrospect that they are the preeminent Bristol sound and the best example of trip-hop, accessible to dance audiences and popular audiences alike.

Seeing one of my favorite bands’ careers reduced to a few singles rereleased in the hopes of squeezing that last little bit of cash out of a dying act does something to me though. It makes me realize that time has really moved on and the place and time I was in when I first listened to these songs is gone. To me music is really about context and I guess that means I should keep looking for new music lest I be stuck in some teenage past where every song brings memories of the same few years over and over again.

I happened to have my ipod with me while walking through the store and queued up my entire Massive Attack collection. It turns out that this is not much. A few weeks ago my 400GB hard drive died a terrible death after I managed to topple the desk (and therefore the contents of it) on to my fingers. Ever since, the hard drive has refused to boot. Ironically it performed the same death dance last year at about this time, although I was much less dependent on it. This time it has taken with it mainly movies and music, namely about 40% of my music collection. The other 60% is still on my ipod, and iTunes fills your ipod with preference to the frequently listened to and highly rated music, but for the most part it is a random selection of the music on your computer.

So my Massive Attack collection only contains a few random songs, many of them from the latest album which also happens to be by far the worst. One of the only good ones remaining on the iPod is “Protection”, an absolute classic from Massive’s glory days. There are a few songs I have heard that, when played, send shivers up my spine. Literally. When a song wraps itself around me: the tone, the rhythm, the lyrics, the mood, all of it, it sends a shiver up my spine every time I hear it. Very few songs have this quality and they are so powerful that it is difficult to listen to them frequently. “Protection” is one of these songs, and I had to sit down in Borders just to listen to it, it is that good.

“I stand in front of you, I’ll take the force of the blow… Protection.”

The vocals are done by Everything but the Girl’s vocalist Tracy Thorn. Thorn has a beautiful voice but I believe it shines more brightly on this track than on anything with her regular band. It is clean, clear and soulful with a sort of precision and confidence that lends itself to the lyrics. Of course Massive’s backing is impressive but it only showcases the vocals. The video of it is also one of my favorites. It’s directed by Michel Gondry, also the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and has a cute but weird “The wall is now the ceiling” effect.

Afterward I cycled around Cambridge for a while listening to some more Massive and played Protection a few more times. Every time I would hear it I’d nearly cry, it’s the sort of love song that says so much about love without the typical sap and platitudes. I would play it for you if I could, but unfortunately the RIAA would probably take down my blog in a moment if I put up a copy of it, so you’ll have to settle for the lyrics. More than that, it’s the sort of song that requires a really nice sound system and a clean, preferably CD quality copy. Even with the MP3 you are missing out some some spine-tingle.

So Massive Attack is officially dead, another of my childhood heros laid low. As promised here are the lyrics and if you’d like to get your own copy of Massive Attack’s Collected go for it, there are a ton of great tracks on there. By the way this is UK only so it’s an import in the US so I believe I will be buying a copy of it here.

Massive Attack - Protection:

This girl I know needs some shelter
She don’t believe anyone can help her
She’s doing so much harm, doing so much damage
But you don’t want to get involved
You tell her she can manage
And you can’t change the way she feels
But you could put your arms around her

I know you want to live yourself
But could you forgive yourself
If you left her just the way
You found her

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

You’re a boy and i’m a girl
But you know you can lean on me
And I don’t have no fear
I’ll take on any man here
Who says that’s not the way it should be

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

She’s a girl and you’re a boy
Sometimes you look so small, look so small
You’ve got a baby of your own
When your baby’s gone, she’ll be the one
To catch you when you fall

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

You’re a girl and i’m a boy [x4]

Sometimes you look so small, need some shelter
Just runnin’ round and round, helter skelter
And I’ve leaned on me for years
Now you can lean on me
And that’s more than love, that’s the way it should be
Now I can’t change the way you feel
But I can put my arms around you
That’s just part of the deal
That’s the way I feel
I’ll put my arms around you

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

I stand in front of you
I’ll take the force of the blow
Protection

You’re a boy and i’m a girl [x4]