12. Old Lady DriversFormula
I’m not really into their grind stuff, I mean, if I listen to grind at all then it’s early Napalm Death – I had Musical Dimensions Of The Sleastak and a couple of other’s too – but Formula, I don’t know man, I think that James Plotkin, the guitar player, is one of the fucking greatest guitar players ever, I know he did Phantomsmasher and a bunch of other stuff as well – I’ve seen him play with Scorn at one point as well – but Formula man, there’s just something about it; the cover especially made it look like pop music from the year 3000 or something – my least favourite part of Formula, and I turn if off before it gets to it, is the last song where they go into the gnarly grind bit. It’s not that I’m not in to grind, it’s just that the thing that I like so much about Formula is that it’s just relentlessly beautiful music – those computerised vocals and all that stuff, man, Formula is among the records that I’ve listened to most in my life – right beside Rappon would be Formula.
Another important thing about Old Lady Drivers is that they point out that there is an inherent ridiculousness in life – life is fucking crazy! And the problem I have with bands like U2 or REM or Coldplay or any of that shit is that it’s all "we’re out to save the world" and that’s just a marketing ploy. You can’t fucking save the world! People have a certain amount invested in feeling like if they have a soundtrack of people "saving" the world then it makes them feel like it’s going to happen – it’s like religion man, it’s like hocking money at these people just so they can perpetuate this sort of feel good, "we’re all in this together" bullshit that is just not true to life, it’s just a soundtrack to it all; it’s just fucking music, it’s just ideas. At the end of the day music is all just ideas and to think of it as being so important that it can do anything other than just provide people some respite from their day to day life, or give them something else to think about, is just so fucking arrogant – that’s where the humour comes from.
