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Irish master of stream of consciousness and one of the most vociferous supporters of UK wonderband My Bloody Valentine, James Joyce, was recently quoted as saying, “I am glad Kevin [Shields] and Colm [O’Coisoig] gave up their dream to become The Butthole Surfers and used the money I gave them for something useful.” Well, of course the blood-soaked Valentines smoked most of the money they received to make Loveless. But, eventually, they completed it. (I’m pretty sure this is substantiated, but no other Irish authors were available to posthumously fact check.)

Oft-deified My Bloody Valentine recently chose their 30 best guitar pedals to play tremolo guitar in a searing desert, the Coachella Festival. They even did the 17-minute hallucinatory white noise flood at the end of “You Made Me Realise.” For those of us watching from an Internettery distance on YouTube, $300,000 worth of new sound equipment never sounded so good. (See last year’s NYTimes piece referencing the cost of the MBV reunion.) And anyone attending the show foolish enough not to wear the earplugs supplied by Coachella’s sponsors will be suing Shields in five years – for melted eardrums, as well as the mental anguish experienced anytime someone turns on a vacuum cleaner or hair dryer.
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