Bullet for my bloody confusing valentine

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of their ‘Jazzmaster’ guitar, a few months ago Fender released a series of promotional videos featuring musicians who proudly opt for the Jazzmaster as their weapon of choice. Amongst these videos was a two part episode with Kevin Shields of ‘My Bloody Valentine’, who, it seems, is beyond passionate about the instrument, having amassed a collection of around 25 (which he doesn’t believe is enough). Check out the video here.

Upon hearing Shields’s calming Irish accent and discovering that his appearance is not too dissimilar to that of rustic celebrity chef: Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall, I couldn’t help but be perplexed… Weren’t this band for emo’s, scene kids, and heavy metal enthusiasts in the mid noughties???  Surely their frontman wears sleeveless leather jackets, Metallica t-shirts, and perhaps even eyeliner?… What on earth is this long curly haired, flannel-shirt wearing, old-timer who looks like he grows vegetables on an allotment doing? This bloke can’t be the front-man of My Bloody Valentine, surely?

Well, yes he is. As it turns out, My bloody Valentine are not to be confused with Bullet for my valentine…

Now some of you readers may be thinking, ‘OBVIOUSLY! you absolute fruitcake..’,  ‘how did you not know this already?’… ‘How can any self-respecting “music blogger” not know the difference between those pioneering ‘80s alternative, post-punk shoe-gazers, and a Welsh metalcore band from Bridgend???’

But the joke is not on me. And if you made the same mistake I did then the joke is not on you either, because we now have the distinct pleasure of discovering something potentially great which we previously overlooked. Here at Slider and the Goose we define ‘new music’ to merely mean: music which we have yet to discover. Given this subjective definition, for me, My Bloody Valentine just so happens to be a pretty decent discovery of new music.

If, like me, you weren’t alive in the ‘80s, you could be forgiven for making the same mistake I did in conflating the two bands and then dismissing them both after not particularly liking one, and making the assumption that the other must be fairly similar. To be fair, their names couldn’t be more alike. If anything, ‘my bloody valentine’ actually conjures up an even more gothic and gory image in my head than ‘bullet for my valentine’.

… I guess the moral of the story is don’t judge a book by its cover, or a band by its name.

Happy Valentine’s day,

Slider and Goose xxx