I’ve been cleaning my house this afternoon. Whilst I’ve been doing that I’ve been starting to digitise my LP collection. This is entailing listening to them whilst the computer gets busy recording.
My word there’s some excellent music locked in them grooves.
I may be an old hippy but I’m absolutely loving listening to Echoes by Pink Floyd. Storming track.
And I’m only just scratching the surface (literally as well as metaphorically) of stuff that will delight. I have a fun few weeks (possibly months) of rediscovery ahead.
D sent me a text today from out of the blue. It made me awfy happy indeed.
It seems that one of the bands that I grew up with is re-forming.
Not any old band no but probably the band that influenced my tastes more than any other (thanks to my brother).
Yup SWANS are coming back. I somehow doubt they’ll be returning to the likes of classic pieces such as this but I’m still going to be looking out for albums and concerts.
On Saturday I was in Birmingham at the jazz festival. I’d specifically wanted to see “The Hot Djazz Trio of Cracow”. Never heard of them before but they sounded intriguing enough.
They turned out to be pretty decent. Two guitars and a double bass. No singing and no banter (I guess their English wasn’t too great) but the music was good. It reminded me of fillums of the Caribbean for some reason.
And that was Satdy.
Sunday was spent in the company of walkers in Derbyshire (not the “Vale of Pewter” tho). We started in Monyash and did about an 8 mile walk. Some lovely people and conversation for the day.
I think I may well be walking next Sunday too. Grand.
Me and teh gangz went to see Tim Minchin last night.
Nicely timed (totally coincidentally) to be on Darwin Day I was looking forward to him going on about that somewhat, seeing as that’s his schtick sort of thing.
But he didn’t really. He mentioned it but didn’t really go off on one.
The place wasn’t full though and it felt more like a private party for him and his mates. More than half the crowd were teen girls who all fancy him and go to as many of his shows as they can afford. Even to the extent that he mentioned one or two of them on the front row by name.
But how embarrassing for him.
He did spend quite a lot of his time talking about his wife and daughter. It seemed like a desperate attempt at times to deflect the horny masses from embarrassing him further.
But the majority of the horny masses were of the “I go to sci-fi conventions” type. You know the “find gangs of similarly obsessed people and then it’s not an obsession no more, strength in numbers etc” kind of people.
Like me and my pals who go to juggling festivals (of all things!)
Not impressed by the vibe I’m afraid.
And it’s a shame because he’s pretty darned good. I have to say that as he rather effectively hit back at a nasty critic by the medium of song at one point.
As far as the show went it started and ended poorly for me though.
He did acknowledge the bad start by saying that he’s always bad at starting. Then he tried to intimate that he’d never heard of “Cradle of Filth”, as if.
But it proper picked up after that with some excellent gags and just the wrong side of “wrong” comments. Very good indeed.
And then he finished a great evening with a pretty meh song. But the crowd loved it, I suppose some people need a bit of wry-smile-at-best pathos after a good night’s proper hilarity.
Oh and I agree, the dancing bear was really not needed. Even if embarrassing a physics nerd is quite a giggle under normal circumstances.
A very good night out, but you can’t have every note as a high one.
* 2: Go to Random quotations:
The last four words (more or less if it makes sense) of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
* 3: Cover art for the album sleeve – Go to flickrs ‘last seven days‘ section:
Pick the fourth picture.
Years ago I was walking through the city streets in Newcastle. I got to the Virgin Megastore to see an huge crowd of folk hanging around. I asked someone to tell me what was going on.
We’re waiting to see Take That.
said the spotty oik. Well at that time I’d never heard of them. Shows what I know.
Yesterday I cycled to work through the city centre here and saw an huge crowd outside HMV, at 8am. I didn’t fancy stopping so zoomed past and on to work.
After work I was off up to the uni for my german class and at DMH there was another huge queue of folk. Still didn’t stop to ask and wasn’t interested beyond “Oh there’s a queue”. Just read in the local rag that it was all about another new and thrusting young band. This time called “Paramore”. Never heard of them either.
Was a rubbish day at work today. Came home in a grump and started playing around with YouTube and found something that has put the biggest smile on my face.
You need to have headphones on and play at full volume:
Here’s a storming version of an old favourite. If the shops played this sort of stuff at this time of year then I might not loathe the hassle of christmas shopping quite so much.
Here you go. The productivity of insomnia at the weekend.
A list of the number 1′s in the UK singles chart on my birthday through the years as taken from the source of all truth aka Wikipedia.
1971 – Dave and Ansil Collins – Double Barrel
1972 – The Pipes & Drums & Military Band of The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards – Amazing Grace
1973 – Dawn featuring Tony Orlando – Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree
1974 – ABBA – Waterloo
1975 – Mud – Oh Boy
1976 – ABBA – Fernando
1977 – Deniece Williams – Free
1978 – The Bee Gees – Night Fever
1979 – Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
1980 – Dexys Midnight Runners – Geno
1981 – Adam and the Ants – Stand and Deliver
1982 – Nicole – A Little Peace
1983 – Spandau Ballet – True
1984 – Duran Duran – The Reflex
1985 – Paul Hardcastle – 19
1986 – Spitting Image – The Chicken Song
1987 – Starship – Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now
1988 – Fairground Attraction – Perfect
1989 – Kylie Minogue – Hand on Your Heart
1990 – Adamski – Killer
1991 – Cher – The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)
1992 – KWS – Please Don’t Go/Game Boy
1993 – George Michael & Queen with Lisa Stansfield – Five Live
1994 – Stiltskin – Inside
1995 – Livin’ Joy – Dreamer
1996 – George Michael – Fastlove
1997 – Olive – You’re Not Alone
1998 – Aqua – Turn Back Time
1999 – The Backstreet Boys – I Want It That Way
2000 – Britney Spears – Oops!…I Did It Again
2001 – Geri Halliwell – It’s Raining Men
2002 – Holly Valance – Kiss Kiss
2003 – R. Kelly – Ignition (Remix)
2004 – Eamon – F**k It (I Don’t Want You Back)
2005 – Akon – Lonely
2006 – Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
2007 – Beyoncé featuring Shakira – Beautiful Liar
So I’ve got the coolest ska track there when I was born, a couple of ABBA songs, a couple of Eurovision winners, one swear word (not counting a 4 letter word beginning with C), the odd novelty song and also a couple of good tracks.
I find it interesting that through the entire 90′s I don’t actually recognise, couldn’t hum, sing or tell you any lyrics of any of the songs EXCEPT the most annoying song on the list. In fact I looked through and can only recognise 18 of them and I only know Double Barrel ‘cos I downloaded it a while ago when I found out it was no 1 when I was born.
If you’re interested here’s the no 1′s for some other folk’s zeroth birthdays (in date in the year order):
K: Rolf Harris – Two Little Boys
Ana: Goombay Dance Band – Seven Tears
Pee: Art Garfunkel – Bright Eyes
Nicky: Bucks Fizz – My Camera Never Lies
Clurb: Irene Cara – Fame
My bro: The Equals – Baby Come Back
Unca D: Art Garfunkel – I Only Have Eyes for You
Rebecca: ABBA – The Name Of The Game
Well good heavens. What fun. Yet again Clurb has the coolest one (except maybe me).