FREE ISSUE 2 - AUTUMN 2000

Say Hello 2 Heaven

PLUS... PLACEBO . . LINKIN PARK . THE CROCKETTS . IDLEWILD . THE JUNKET

If you love you know what it’s like to live in an ALTERNATIVE dimension. When you listen to the records you LOVE, TIME becomes something you can fly back and forth through. The artists featured in CHILDREN OF GRAFFITI offer you a feeling of OMNIPRESENCE, a sense that something about the way we communicate is NOT TRANSITORY. This music is NOT DISPOSABLE. And neither is this magazine. Collect all 12 issues and use them as your doorway to an era when bands broke out of the backrooms and into your hearts. Contents

4. SAWYER SAYS Editorial. Rant. Diatribe. Discussion. Deep. Pointless. Call it what you want.

5. ALL TIME TWO Reflecting on Nirvana’s frightening finale, ‘In Utero’.

5. OOH... THIS IS NEW! Placebo, Queens Of The Stone Age, Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson album reports.

8. TIME OF OUR LIFE The Crocketts, Idlewild, The Junket live reviews.

9. WHERE WE ARE Profile of the best club night in the world: Fazer.

10. it means everything Devastating David writing devastatingly about Nirvana and how they make him feel funny.

11. SHAMELESS SELF- PROMOTION David talks hard about our song ‘Nights Like Wolves’.

12. TOP 10 Songs that rocked our year 2000. SAWYER SAYS ISSUE 2 - AUTUMN 2000 ALL TIME ALBUM TWO ISSUE 2 - AUTUMN 2000

“Welcome to the jungle.” that the crowd stop leaping was already weird that I’d NIRVANA, IN UTERO (GEFFEN) announcing that, “Teenage himself better at that “It’s a big, bad world.” around like wild animals. At just hopped into his van. angst has paid off well” to than any other musician “You’ll get eaten alive...” The Drive-In think jumping up those questions peppering around. And on ‘In Utero’ Blah blah blah. There’s no and down is too dangerous. Maybe, then, it’s people closing shot ‘All Apolo- he does it again – on need to get all metaphory. Which means they’re allowed like me who give the city a gies’: “What else could ‘Rape Me’ he re-uses the Just give it to me straight. to get their emotions out, bad name. I’m the stranger I be? What else should I ubiquitous ‘Smells Like And ‘it’ isn’t some kind of but everyone else just has to that will stick my head say?” You can’t listen Teen Spirit’ riff in a euphemism. Honestly. I’m stand there. Bloody bands. through your window simply to those lyrics without way that could only appear starting to think you don’t because it’s open. And I’m seeing the doomed rhetoric unimaginative to the know me at all. And, really, So, yeah, artists want the girl who will tap you flip-flopping on the floor densest of listeners. all this terrifying wordplay it all their own way. But on the shoulder because she like a fish out of water. seems to be the most fright- don’t we all? I know I thinks you might be Dave ‘In Utero’ is scarier than ening thing about the city. I do. Riches. Why not? Who Grohl. But really you’re ‘Dumb’ and ‘Pennyroyal Nirvana’s debut ‘Bleach’ haven’t come across anything wouldn’t want a diamond just someone who tries to Tea’ are perhaps the and a thousand times as else to be scared of. Apart tiara to wear around Camden look like him and I should tracks that set this album bitter as ‘Nevermind’. from all the moaning. Have Market? But then there’s have known better because apart from its prede- Like existence itself, you ever been surrounded by all the hard work that goes surely Dave Grohl would Whilst ‘Nevermind’ was the cessor, proof, as they it is at once confus- so many frowny faces in one into earning enough rubies never wear a Kurt Cobain album that broke Nirvana are, that Nirvana’s MTV ing and obvious, angry place? Every music T-shirt. Which means all over the world, it Unplugged set was far but resigned. It is a venue is packed at the if the city is a seems that ‘In Utero’ was from a fluke. Cobain may few hundred comedowns edges with the most EVERYBODY CHILL OUT. jungle at all, then the one that finally broke not write overtly sophis- too many. But it proved depressed people in the it’s the cartoon kind, Kurt Cobain. And listening ticated music, but the one thing for sure. Kurt world EVER. And I mean Be like Roddy Woomble. where the animals to this masterpiece now, best artists are able to Cobain was indeed a voice literally at the edges. are nowhere near as it’s bloody obvious that streamline their complex for a generation. And The kids in the middle scary when you get up it’s as much a suicide ideas in ways that people ‘In Utero’ was his final, trying to get close to the to brighten up my grungey close to them. Take Liam note as an album. From the can understand. With shocking truth. stage are fine. It’s the A&R wardrobe. Do I really want Gallagher. I went to see masterful, knowing opening ‘Nevermind’ and to his own scouts, the sound engineers, that? Hmmm. Not so much. some weird Cajun-influenced line that finds Cobain distress, Cobain proved the promoters, the managers, Contradictions. Hypocrisies. band called Menlo Park at the journalists and the Paradoxes. We’re all full Shoreditch Town Hall and the producers – all those people of them. Whatever. EVERY- Oasis frontman happened to who linger on the fringes BODY CHILL OUT. Be like be standing next to me. From of every small gig. “Bloody Roddy Woomble. “I’ve been a distance, then, he’s the OOH... THIS IS NEW! bands!” they complain at looking for a nice pair tough guy of British indie every opportunity. of brogues,” the Scottish music. In reality, he’s terrier confided in me, smaller than you’d think. PLACEBO, BLACK MARKET in context. It may kick off me now,’ Molko sings on Maybe it’s fair enough. mid-power cut, at the Barfly I reckon even I’d have a MUSIC (ELEVATOR LADY) like The Chemical Brothers ‘Days Before You Came’ I went to Leeds Festival Sessions. Life’s easier when good chance with him in a but it’s not an attempt and if you absorb ‘Black recently and having ‘acci- you keep things in perspec- wrestle. And, yes, maybe Listening to a Placebo to jump a train – instead Market Music’ then you’ll dentally’ bumped into At The tive. A few months later, it’s a big, bad world. But record is like going to a it represents the futility have no choice. ‘Slave To Drive-In’s guitarist Omar the point was emphasised isn’t that true anywhere? party in an electric storm. of trying to start a dance The Wage’ is its hook, its Rodriguez, he told me about when I found Conor Oberst, And isn’t it better when And if the first self-ti- when no one wants to dance crack cocaine, but preced- their recent tour. “We came otherwise known as Bright you’ve got approximately a tled album was the yell of anymore. ‘Change your taste ing it are the hypnotic really close to death, almost Eyes, sitting in the back of million live music venues on revellers going full-throt- in men’ becomes ‘change the ‘Passive Aggressive’, the sliding off the road. It was his little touring vehicle your doorstep. tle and second release record’ becomes ‘change frank ‘Black-Eyed’ and the pretty scary,” he said. I outside The Monarch. It was ‘Without You I’m Nothing’ your life’ and the response desperate ‘Blue American’. put on my best little-fright- the middle of the afternoon As for getting eaten alive, was the soundtrack of the is always ‘I can’t’ or ‘I Placebo have lined these ened-girl look and gasped. and he was drinking steadily well, the city’s so expen- aftermath, ‘Black Market won’t’. The lead-off track, tracks up like a trail of His drummer friend Tony from a bottle of red wine. sive that you can hardly Music’ is the noise of the then, is typical of a gunpowder. Light a match Hajjar expanded: “Whatever “Writing is something I afford a bagel which means same party a year later. record that might look like and watch the world burn. feelings we have come out have to do to justify my you end up way too skinny It’s dislocating and it one thing but is actually in the music.” Which might existence as a person,” he to end up looking anything will devour you. something else. explain why the Texans sound insisted. “Even if it’s not like a decent meal. And if like a car crash, but it’s of worth to anyone other you wouldn’t even fill little Single ‘Taste Of Men’ makes It’s the sound of a body tricky to quite get past the than myself.” I wanted to Liam Gallagher up then you’ll for a powerful opening, its and mind as separate band’s mid-show instructions give him a cuddle. But it probably be okay. impact multiplied when set entities. ‘Won’t you join

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QOTSA, RATED R (INTERSCOPE) friend Nick Oliveri, are this record, or Manson in clearly having the best general, you shouldn’t time ever? It’s their ignore the fact that he’s full-throttle approach good fun. ‘Godeatgod’ to life that fuels this addresses the big man record and from the moment himself and works perfectly it propels off into the as a build-up to the unknown, via a chemist’s, misleadingly titled ‘The with ‘Feel Good Hit Of The Love Song’. America-baiting Summer’, ‘Rated R’ feels and anti-religion, it’s as like a road trip in your big and catchy as a rock own front room. ‘n’ roll musical and, in fact, the whole album would No wonder people are work perfectly as just digging this record – who that. Yes, you feel like wouldn’t pay the price of you’re being shouted at but It’s an odd one this. a CD for the kind of expe- equally you’re encouraged Suddenly worshipped all rience you normally have to yell back or sing along. over the place – in the to travel to the highways Leave your self-conscious- pages of your indie-pindy of desert America for? ness at the door. weeklies and at the ‘Rated R’ is a trip in counters of your local more ways than one. And while you’re at it, heavy metal shop – Queens leave your preconcep- Of The Stone Age are tions behind too because getting everyone’s MARILYN MANSON, [IN as panto-ish as Marilyn adrenalin pumping. And in THE SHADOW OF THE VALLEY OF and his output may be, a market so heavily DEATH] (NOTHING/INTERSCOPE) there’s a mantra here dominated by image, worth gripping onto. “I’m appealing to such a broad not a slave to a god that cross-section of music doesn’t exist, I’m not listeners is something of a slave to a world that an achievement in itself. doesn’t give a shit,” he sings and frankly his But that’s not the only attitude bears scrutiny. LINKIN PARK, HYBRID THEORY (WARNER) accomplishment for which “We’re disposable teens,” ‘Rated R’ stands out. Its he hollers next and of “I’m paranoid,” “I’m about to break,” So it’s in that paradoxical frame of mind quality is what makes the course he’s not a teen “I’m left in the wake of the mistake” – that the melodramatic Chester Bennington second album from QOTSA at all but we take his so go the first three songs on this debut sings, “My life is broken”, “I’m stuck far more than a fashion point. And actually if you from California’s Linkin Park. No one can on the outside” etc. All this emotion is statement – and it’s can’t connect to Manson’s accuse this upset sextet of forgetting suitably over-egged by guitars like bull- refreshing to find that the perspective then you’re what their point is. Indeed, they tap dozers, not one but two panicky vocalists public have been crying missing a sense of spirit whole-heartedly into the unhappy psyche (the other is ‘rapper’ Mike Shinoda) plus out for something so Marilyn Manson’s fifth that should, in an ideal of a generation neatly warmed up by . a DJ – Linkin Park certainly aren’t ones original. Because, yeah, album, ‘Holy Wood’, is a world, survive into your This is teen angst at boiling point. for leaving space in their songs. it’s a rock record, but commentary on the battle twenties and beyond. it’s definitely not like between religion and And yet, despite its content, ‘Hybrid Which is fine; the result of this American any other rock record you entertainment, a report on It may be obvious and Theory’ is just as colourful as a high outfit’s kitchen sink packing is an album have heard. As stoned as a the ongoing wrestling it may be in a right old street window display. It’s nu-metal filled to bursting with melodic inten- hamster in an opium den, match between God and mood but ‘Holy Wood’ is for a Top Shop generation. Yes, the band sity. ‘In The End’ is a soaring anthem, it’s alive. And it’s also Television, a statement Marilyn Manson’s most have problems that keep them in floods of ‘With You’ is magnificently affecting and huge fun. about commercialism. Some listenable album. tears but there’s no denying the sense ‘Crawling’ is insanely infectious. The will understand it as a of satisfaction that comes from being list could go on. Despite being filled to How could it not be when call to arms, others will totally and utterly miserable. It almost the brim, this album has no filler. Resist the band’s lynchpins, hear a tantrum and shut makes you feel good. it if you can. former Kyuss guitarist the door on it. Josh Homme and weirdo But whatever you think of

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IDLEWILD, MONARCH, that everybody here is being thrown, from second to second, between the past and It’s not often you find Idlewild playing the future. One moment it’s 2014, the Monarch-sized venues in London these days, but next it’s pre-the-beginning-of-time. Look back in Camden for the Barfly Sessions, Roddy one way and the world’s a black canvas, Woomble and co. look at home as ever. look again and it’s paint-spattered and graffitied. Not that anyone can promise us the band will actually be playing after all. A power Is the club as big as it seems or does failure has brought proceedings to a halt. each corner seem further away from the The television cameras don’t work. Neither last one just because it’s so hard to do the amps. Even for a band as chaotic as see where you’re going or who you’re Idlewild, this is out of the ordinary. passing? Faces loom out of the darkness when the lights flare up. It’s like Eventually, though, the Scottish outfit do living life inside a bipolar camera make it on stage. Someone in the crowd flash. The floor becomes sticky with THE CROCKETTS, HIGHBURY GARAGE, LONDON shouts: ‘You ugly bastard,’ and Roddy drinks. At the bar, they pour purple acknowledges the heckle with a quick, ‘Thank concoctions, clear, viscous liquids and Mr. Davey Crockett – recent hero of The you very much’. There are still technical FAZER anything else you want to ask for. If Sun’s Dear Dedire column – shakes like issues and an amplifier appears to explode, you’re not eighteen yet, well, chances he’s caught some kind of unknown disease but Idlewild bump onwards. Half-black hole, half-maze, Fazer is are no one can see you anyway so if you and claws at the low ceiling of the Garage hidden right out in the open. In the made it past the front door, then you’re like a resurrecting corpse. He’s in the The band had said they wouldn’t be playing heart of the city, lobbing distance safe here until tomorrow. middle of singing/howling the-biggest-pop- older material but having tested the patient from Tottenham Court Road, paper plane hit-that-will-never-be-a-pop-hit EVER. crowd with delays and hitches, they do treat throwing distance from Centre Point, It’s the music that defines Fazer. Named Why won’t it crack the mainstream? Maybe the crowd to ‘I’m A Message’ and ‘A Film For no one ever sees it. It’s underground after a song by band Quick- because it’s too intense and definitely The Future’. Perfectly unpredictable. in every different way that you want to sand, the club’s name gives you a clue because of the swearing. Still, though, understand the word. Boys and girls you to the DJ’s playlist. ‘Fazer’ itself there’s no ignoring the fact that ‘Will see playing in The Camden Falcon when the gets played every club night (every You Still Care?’ isn’t just a song, it’s a THE JUNKET, THE VENUE, NORTHAMPTON sun goes down fall south through the city other Tuesday) and it’s one of the more mainline artery and it tells everybody’s and are here when the sun comes up again. pogo-friendly tracks. Not that people story. ‘James Dean-esque’ is further The Junket are looking out at the crowd. The blonde-haired singer from Malluka jump up and down here. The dancing is evidence of this band’s high standards. Staring back at them is a roomful of Damned stands in a doorway, looking at the linear and symmetric. First time around, fans. The ancient punks headline tonight silhouettes being macheted by strobes. you won’t be able to do it. Or even The Crocketts’ new material, too, is both and The Junket are out of place. They’re Leo Ross, brother of Bomb The Bass if you can, you won’t be doing it the unsettling and upbeat. Maybe the sense still dazzling, though. Rik Flynn’s guitar programmer Atticus, is at the bar with way everyone else does. It’s breath- of maniacal, knife-wielding ecstasy that parts twist and turn, cartwheeling through his nuts-brilliant band Nojahoda. The taking, watching the shadows form and drives the earlier material is hidden each song like gangs of kids running with glittery, gaudy are falling dissolve, the silhouettes as sharp as deeper beneath the surface of songs such sparklers, whilst the three-way harmonies he around the corridors. fins cutting through those bassy subsur- as ‘Mrs Playing Dead’ but these tracks shares with bassist Stevie Rees and drummer face currents. Existing at Fazer is to remain familiarly lop-sided. Reuben Humphries emphasise the effect. It’s the music that everyone notices find you can live on a submarine. Or in first. It massages you into shapes you’d a box. As long as there’s a soundsystem In the year 2000, then, The Crocketts do Tracks from debut long-player ‘Lux Safari’ never thought of making before. Basslines playing Tool, Sunny Day Real Estate, certainly still think with their heart and preceding mini-album ‘Stamina’ make up like undercurrents. Guitars like heart Girls Against Boys, The Junket and rather than their head and they remain the majority of tonight’s set. ‘Night In monitors. Drums like army majors on acid. whoever else reveals your own interior drunk more often than they are sober, Red’ and ‘Adolessence’ are highlights. Like Vocals like the voices in your head. Is as a place a million miles deep and but the London-based alcoholics continue Cure songs written in a futuristic city, it the singer of a band speaking? Is it wide. And still expanding. to deliver performances that are utterly they take us miles away from Northampton. you speaking? By one in the morning, it trustworthy and insightful. Their songs New track, ‘The Blue On You’, brings us back will be impossible to tell. Kids inter- Stand atop the broken amplifiers scattered are like needles, their perspective is to reality. Alcoholic and unpredictable, twine with each other on the dancefloor, around the place and watch the people masochistic and they’re likely to turn it’s rockier than the older material but no coming together and parting again like dance. Throw yourselves amongst them and you as deranged as they already are. But less dynamic. And it’s definite evidence that atoms. In here, everybody is a molecule become part of the cobweb. Or just close as you’re half-laughing, half-crying your The Junket are making the sound of something coated in mineral oil. Each song is a new your eyes and listen. There’s no place way to hell, at least you will understand new. Something important. Maybe that much chemical bond. The lights flicker, flicker, like Fazer. something about your life. could be said of The Damned once. flicker, like old film, creating the sense

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NIRVANA BY DAVID DAVID ON ‘NIGHTS LIKE WOLVES’

As a kid, Nirvana seemed like they were from This was the song that made me look outer space or something. They were the gateway at JD and Chambers differently. It’s to everything else in my life. The Friday as dark as a hole, man. Before then, morning after their perfor- I hadn’t really considered the dudes mance, all the older kids who dug their music too much. I mean, I had better things were yabbering about it. At that point, I can’t to do, man. But if I’d thought about have consciously thought about the fact that the them at all, I guess I had them band, by singing out of key and falling out of down as kids who had split from the time with the synched instruments, were spitting country and arrived in the city to in the face of expectation and that corporate play at being grown-ups. But when I whoredom those T-shirts of theirs stood against. heard ‘Nights Like Wolves’, it was But maybe it fried my brain even more because a bit like when I first listened to I couldn’t figure what these cats were doing. ‘Jeremy’ by Pearl Jam. I mean, man, I mean, I thought they were fried themselves. obviously it’s a way different song, But really it was just the sight and sound of but inherent in it is still that idea someone going against the norm that made them of this quiet kid who had all these look so nuts and that goes to show how rarely crazy demons. I dug that. you see someone really defy the norm. Who has done it since? I don’t know exactly what moti- vated the lyrics – JD doesn’t say Those older dudes all went to Reading Festival much about that kind of thing once when Nirvana headlined but they didn’t invite something’s written, which maybe he me. I was allowed to knock around with them at should because when he does actually school but I knew not to push my luck. Still, open his talker he rarely says much I did get a ticket for Brixton Academy a couple that sounds half as interesting as of years later. I was going demented at the what he says in ‘Nights Like Wolves’. thought of Kurt Cobain starting up the ‘Teen Still, I do know that it’s one of Spirit’ riff. It was all I thought about for three tracks from ‘It’s All Make weeks – that moment when Brixton Academy would Believe, Isn’t It?’ that isn’t about go berserk. looking at the world through those rose-tinted spectacles JD likes to And then Cobain decided he was going to cut. carry about. Clearly he wrote ‘Nights Which was shocking but again it was one of Like Wolves’, ‘Voices’ and ‘When those Nirvana moments when the significance only Boys Are Boys’ without them. Man, I hit me later. At the time, it was kind of cele- wouldn’t like to be him when he loses brated that another rock icon had died at the those damn glasses for good. age of twenty seven. But all the others on that list actually died from excess and maybe they Personally, dude, I can’t wait weren’t having a good time (probably because of to turn this song into something too much excess) but they weren’t so dramati- bigger. The recordings so far have cally or particularly distressed by the concept all been done so quickly and have of being famous and adored. Their deaths didn’t been too tightly based around the really signify too much other than the fact limited set-up JD and Chambers had that rock stars have lots of money and lots of when writing the tracks in the first time to get wasted. place. So this song ended up being tracked all inside out – acoustic The Nirvana frontman, though, was a much more guitar and vocals first, drums later. powerful example for kids who understand beliefs When it came to laying my parts and principles as more valuable than money and down, it was like giving me a steak fame. Beyond signing to a major record deal, and telling me I had to eat it Cobain never acted in a way that any sensible without chewing. Sometimes I wonder cat trying to be successful would. He was an whether these kids are screwing with outsider and a maverick. me on purpose.

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SAWYER DAVID

1. IDLEWILD: ACTUALLY IT’S DARKNESS 1. PEARL JAM: LIGHT YEARS 2. THE CROCKETTS: CHICKEN VS. MACHO 2. : FEITICEIRA 3. HIM: JOIN ME IN DEATH 3. GLASSJAW: PRETTY LUSH 4. GLASSJAW: PIANO 4. HIM: POISON GIRL 5. PEARL JAM: BREAKERFALL 5. AT THE DRIVE-IN : ONE ARMED SCISSOR 6. TURN: BERETTA 6. QOTSA: THE LOST ART OF KEEPING A SECRET 7. RACHEL STAMP: MONSTERS OF THE NEW WAVE 7. CAY: NEURONS LIKE BRANDY 8. DEFTONES: STREET CARP 8. A PERFECT CIRCLE: JUDITH 9. LINKIN PARK: IN THE END 9. THE JUNKET: THE KING OF THE LETTUCE LINE 10. MARILYN MANSON: DISPOSABLE TEENS 10. PLACEBO: DAYS BEFORE YOU CAME

CHAMBERS JD

1. INCUBUS: DRIVE 1. THE JUNKET: ADOLESSENCE 2. DEFTONES: CHANGE (IN THE HOUSE OF FLIES) 2. HUNDRED REASONS: CEREBRA 3. EELS: MR E’S BEAUTIFUL BLUES 3. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE: PHOTOBOOTH 4. DOVES: THE MAN WHO TOLD EVERYTHING 4. PLACEBO: BLACK-EYED 5. IDLEWILD: LET ME SLEEP 5. HIM: RIGHT HERE IN MY ARMS 6. THE JUNKET: CAGEBIRDS 6. : BIG ISN’T BEAUTIFUL 7. EMINEM: THE REAL SLIM SHADY 7. IDLEWILD: LITTLE DISCOURAGE 8. COLDPLAY: SHIVER 8. : CEMENTED SHOES 9. BRIGHT EYES: SOMETHING VAGUE 9. DEFTONES: KNIFE PRTY 10. ELLIOTT: CALM AMERICANS 10. TWIST: GLISTENING

CHILDREN OF GRAFFITI HAS BEEN ADORINGLY ASSEMBLED BY SAWYER WITH THE HELP OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL REVIEWER JD, CHILLED OUT, CLOSET OBSESSIVE CHAMBERS AND DROP-DEAD DEGENERATE DAVID. ALL FOUR OF THESE PEOPLE ARE ALSO IN A BAND CALLED CHILDREN OF GRAFFITI.

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