WHITEHOUSE "Bird Seed"
Susan Lawly | SLCD025 | CD | 2003

Thoughts around the time of its release during two "first time I've heard it" very late night (= quiet) listens/with boiled beans, can be used as table.

"CAN I SUGGEST YOU: GET FUCKED"

What a great way to start the album. 12 lines further... "AND EVERY OTHER FUCKING ADIDAS-CLICHED CRINGE”. How I warm to that. An Intersection with my own personal millenium generation sportswear hatred. GAB hatred. NIKE hatred. UMBRO hatred. Three striped poppered yellow submarine meanie boot-like fuckwit pant hatred. The fucking baseball caps. The fucking hoods. Hoods over caps. The cunts. The fucking prawn-brained cunts. The pierced eyebrow brigade, those dregs and monsters Trisha has on that disgusting show. Furrowed foreheaded imbecilic idiots. NY on it. NIKE tick on it. ENGLAND on it. Shit in it. That pierced eyebrow. That fucking pierced eyebrow is driving me to distraction, 5 million years of evolution. Or 4. A ring is worse. Yes, I think a ring is worse. I know a ring is much, much worse than a... a ‘thing’. 2003 and I came full circle. Not the glamour roots. Not the avant-garde seed. No. The first actual flower. The thing they called the punk rock. Punk years. Punk industrial years. Punk thrash years. Punk metal years. Punk metal glam-fag fuckin’ pick up a Finnish au pair in the Marquee, in Wardour Street, in London, in England. In the STD clinic. Now it’s punk industrial. Again. ‘Industrial’ for always a wish for a better word... experimental? Difficult? Haggis is a thoroughly democratic dish? Noise? Weird? Extreme? Maggie Ponce took me to see T.V.Smith thursday night. In Camden. At the verge. Maggie Ponce. 21 years old. "No time to be 21". Young enough to be my daughter. You dirty old man! You dirty fucker!! What a fuckin’ rotter! Music stripped down, carrier solution boiled away, crystalline structures exposed. Truth. Just Tim. Just lovely Tim. Tim and acoustic guitar and passion and passion and passion and passion. No fillers. No let-up. The real thing. Veins bulging, veins pushing out of a skinney chest. An almost skeletal, lanky, aids-a-delic greyhaired and eccentric figure, face contorted as if in a hold-your-breath-for-one-minute contest, doing the cretin hop 25 years after and non-stop.

2 hours or more. I love him. Maggie Ponce loves him. We feast on Tim. WHITEHOUSE: The more extreme they become, the more conventional they appear to sound. "The experimental has now become the conventional". A frontman who wears sunglasses. A frontman who removes his shirt during the set, who leaves the stage for his cohorts to perform a solo instrumental and then returns... "WHAT'S SO FUCKING CLEVER ABOUT THAT?" This is pure rock’n’roll showmanship. I believe in it. I’ll mastabate it. Philip Best "look's like an accountant", it has been said to me on two occasions. By a bemused person. By an irrate person. Easygoing uncle would be my impression after a short chat at the Slimelight. Philosophy? Wasn't that PHILOSOPHY OF THE WIFE BEATER? From the MUMMY AND DADDY CD? A new version in the same progessional approach as JUST LIKE A CUNT became A CUNT LIKE YOU. A new rendering of PHILOSOPHY with extra lyrics. Lyrics, lyrics, lyrics, lyrics. The lyrics in the booklet are white-out-of-black, Hurts my eyes. A strain. Eyestrain. Sotos? I remember Peter Sotos. Big American bloke. Seemed to do nothing much on stage except to wander around inciting thee audience, then waving effeminantly. He’s mentioned only once herein. A credit under BIRD SEED. “… erm… where’s Peter?” (“Question”!!!) “He’s not here". Another PRIVATE. Another PUBLIC. More delicacies to savour. To beat-off to. If that’s your bag. Barn will hate it. He calls it “bla bla bla”. I play this trilogy. I play them. Until I don't. Isn't that what the CD format can do? Is for? As opposed to vinyl? Condoms. “I’M NOTHING WITHOUT A CONDOM”. Condomania. Visited one once. In Tokyo. Tokyo. Gone now. Sleep now. SLEEP NOW. Strange to finally meet William at last. Gaya did it. What Gaya did. Katy. 20 years latus. 1982-2002. And I’ve passed Brackenbury Road scores of timers now. In the summer. In the blizzard. Rhythmic beats. Rhythmic beats. New equipment programmed with new sounds. A new ‘black’ version of M&D is brought into line, to a degree, with CRUISE and this latest release. Same layout and typeface as CRUISE. Almost. "THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH DETAILS". Similar title banner strip on the front. "THERE ARE NO FUCKING DETAILS". I’ll have to "MAKE IT UP". I’ll "FORCE THE OBVIOUS". You know, I always feel conspicuous-looking at, worse actually buying, those little girls magazines for the gorgeous photo of a teen/pre-teen ‘model’ on the cover. There’s a good one in circulation at the time of writing (mid February 2003) so buy fast, for she’ll ALWAYS BE THIS BEAUTIFULL… I didn’t even catch the name of this particular publication. Much too absorbed by little Miss Muffet’s cut and dried illegality and ‘come and get it’ camera stance. Just like the lies about the home PC being for 'the kids homework’, my swollen rainbowed arse! And "this mag is for my niece", like fuck! Lo is running toward you, bikini clad, open arms on Argos Additions sunny sandy beaches. You mean you didn't look? You mean you didn't think? Are you in any way alive at all? Could you "LISTEN TO THE SOUND OF BEING ALIVE"? Still, haggis is a thoroughly democratic dish, equally honoured in castle, farm and croft. CUT HANDS HAS THE SOLUTION. Solitary funerary drumbeat of the ancients. Simple. Minimal. Strip it down, strip it down. A "new era". Live, definately. Studio, possibly. Hard to define the boundaries precisely, it's not focking Lulu making a comeback. Extremity is easy. You just throw yourself off the edge. The difficulty is walking ALONG that edge, not falling. MUNKISI MUNKONDI begins like an air raid siren. Other sounds pile in, spurting and buzzing and reving up the engine, let's go! Who asked the question "who is the voice"? Someone at last friday's Hinoeuma. By the satisfying and seductary glow of the Hagshadow record stall. I played 'hard-to-get'. No one noticed. I was drunk. My intention. Maggie' Ponce speaks Spanish. I wouldn't know it from dalek. I forget so much. Always did. I'll take a guess; it's Williams’s voice, in Spanish. No? Ahh well, nice try. William just “winked” at the mystery badgerer, said the mystery badgerer. I saw a poster on the London tube (when it's fucking working!) for the new Solaris... a total surprise. Interesting indeed, although I can't help having a few reservations. Only know the NAME 'George Cloony'... is he good? That's hollywood, in'it? Jesus fucking christ! Love Solaris original: Tarkovskiy, Artemiev (senior!), Lem, Kelvin, Kris, Snoud, Barton. A Bach choral prelude in F minor that is not of THIS world, surely? As enchanting as young Miss Muffet herself. I’ll tell you, 'music-passionates’ give you everything. 'Look-at-me-passionates’ supply nought. Except the call to "inseminate me, inseminate me now, as of this very instant! Do it! Fucking do it now!" How cheap can you get? I said it before and T.A.T.U. are just fucking asking for such a plowing... the short-haired one's mine, something irresistably boyish about that one. But, at least they've put a flicker of life and wholesome contention back into a pop-world that’s been dead, had it's brain torn out, wrapped, mummified and then buried in the lifeless baking sands of musics dry and parched desert for, how many fucking years? I love the wet uniforms. I love to "FORCE THE TRUTH". 6000 naughty internet users can't be wrong. Or right. It's just reality. "BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL". Are you getting the message then officer? Can't you see what's going on here officer? You cunt officer. My lord. Teacher, Sir. The ingredients of haggis give a touch of romantic barbarism so dear to the Scottish heart. I am fully erect. William has turned his hand to poetry. The initial phase of Whitehouse albums had a sparsity of lyrical content. Oh, repetitious, yes, for maximum effect. Now it seems as if there are pages of lyrics. The next album will be spoken word pieces. This is STILL the final band. This is STILL the end of all music. Only MORE so.

AND THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

Gary Simmons
Gartina
Hermitage Walk
London E18 2BN
ENGLAND