That Awful Song (fuck off James Blunt)

I don’t think that I would recognise any other James Blunt song apart from ‘Your Beautiful.’ I intend to keep it that way. I noticed that he was on Never Mind The Buzzcocks the other week so I took it that he has a new album out just in time for Christmas. I checked, he does. Who buys this mawkish shit? People who like James Morrison and think that Coldplay are edgy and want to get the new Rod Stewart American Songbook record (just in time) for Christmas. But at least James Blunts new record seems to have slipped under the radar. Not like in 2005 with that awful song Your Beautiful.
I fell out with a girl over that song. She was playing it on her phone. She’d recorded it onto her phone by holding it up against the TV speaker and pressing sound record. She had a load of recordings like this. I was bemused.
So I say to her, “Could you please not play that terrible song.”
“What do you mean terrible? If its so terrible then why has it sold so many records?” she says.
“Just because its sold loads doesn’t mean that it isn’t terrible.”
“I don’t think that you should criticise him until you’ve anywhere near as much money as he has. Which you never will.”
That comment really annoyed me. “Look, every time that I hear that shitty song from James fucking Blunt I want to punch him in thee face and keep on punching and punching,” I said as I smacked my right fist into my left palm.
“You couldn’t beat up James Blunt, He was in the army you know.” She then starts singing allow with the chorus.
“So what,? So is prince Harry and I’m sure that I could beat him in a fight.”
She dismissively tutted at me and said, “Prince Harry would beat you in a fight. He plays Rugby.”
“So, so fucking what if he plays a little bit of Rugby?” I was getting angry with her. She started to sing again.
“Look,” I say trying to compose myself, “whether I can or can not beat up James Blunt or Prince Harry is not the issue. That issue is that that song is shit.”
It ended there. I don’t see the girl around anymore and my feeling on that god damn has not mellowed.

Sport At School

The education secretary Michael Grove has said that £162m will no longer be set aside for the national PE scheme. The money that was for sport will now be spent as the headmasters see fit to.
Many people may think that its right that the headmasters should spend their budget how they please. Maybe so. But I think most headmasters will drastically cut their sports funding.
Well so it should be, right? I mean maths, English, biology, chemistry, physics, geography and history are much more important. Those are the subjects that are going to get you on in life aren’t they? Well for most people yes, but sport is good for all kids. To boil it down, sport keeps them fit. And for those who really like it and take it seriously it can keep them out of trouble.
Michael Grove’s proposal doesn’t surprise me as the last time the Tories were in power they didn’t care about sport and sold off as many sports fields as they could.

When I was at school in the 80s and early 90s I wish there was a certain amount of the money that our headmaster had to allocate to sport. Especially my secondary school as the sporting facilities were between nonexistent and pathetic.
There was no sports field so most of the our outside PE lessons took place in the school playground. That or we got on the school bus to the sports field or athletics track. This wasn’t so bad as it was only a few minutes away, but swimming lessons were a complete farce. A forty minute round trip to the pool, plus changing time left us with enough time in the water to do three or four lengths.
I appreciate that most comprehensive schools don’t have a sports field or swimming pool but some new tennis rackets and cricket bats wouldn’t have gone amiss. Our school football kit was tatty early 70s style kit that was used by all years. It was an embarrassment to play in.
My school wasn’t run down and in desperate need of funding, it was just that sport was low down on the headmasters priority.

Due to a spree of injuries and a girl getting a football in the face for about a week he banned us from playing football in the playground. Football in the playground was one of the few things I liked about going to school. There was always about four games going on at once, and when in position of the ball you had to try and remember who was on your team and had to dribble past people who were involved in another game. Instead of a Monday night bore of a game on Sky between two teams that are quite happy to settle for a nil nil draw I would rather see four professional teams play playground style.

Sunday Truckin'

Last Sunday I went to see the Drive-By Truckers at the Shepherds Bush Empire. The Drive-By Truckers are one of my favourite bands. I’ve got every album of theirs, even a bootleg called Christmas At Cooley’s House which is a recording of them getting pissed and playing acoustic versions of their songs. I’ve seen them numerous times, including when I was passing through Chicago and had to pay a ticket tout way over the odds to get in.
On the way to the gig I wasn’t looking forward to it as much as other Drive-By Truckers gigs. Maybe because it was on a Sunday. I think it would be so much better if Sunday gigs began late afternoon as things start earlier and end earlier on a Sunday. On Sundays you eat the main meal of the day earlier, go to the pub for a few pints in the afternoon, then early evening go back home and sit in front of the TV trying not to think about getting up early for work in the morning. Well for most people of my age anyway (which is the demographic of the Drive-By Truckers fan base).

When I got there, went to the bar and had to fork out just over four quid for a beer that wasn’t even pint size I would’ve rather stayed at home, that is up until the band came onstage and banged out the opening chords to the song Uncle Frank.

The Drive-By Truckers are always good value for money, but it wasn’t one of the best gigs of theirs I’ve been to. Nothing to do with the band but I preferred it when I saw them at smaller venues like the Highbury Garage, The Carling Academy and Dingwals. Surely everyone would rather see a band in a small venue. Medium sized venues like the Sheppard’s Bush Empire and The Roundhouse are okay but I don’t think I’ll watch a gig in bigger places than that anymore.
One thing for sure is that I will never make the mistake of seeing a gig at either the Wembley or Docklands Arena again. Just awful.
The bigger the band the more money you pay to get a worst view and sound. Give me The Luminaire in Kilburn or The Borderline in Charing Cross anytime.

The Beatles On ITunes

So the Beatles are finally on iTunes. And on the first day of release they own 15% of the top 200 downloaded songs.
People must have been really waiting for this day. Why? Its not like its hard to get hold of The Beatles songs is it. If they are fans of The Beatles then surely most have them must have their music on CD anyway? Just import it to your iTunes library.
Or do they like to buy the same product on a different format? Maybe some of them even bought The Beatles back catalogue on Mini-disc.


Downloaded 3mps won’t last forever. What when the computer dies? Even if its backed up on an external hard rive, that could die one day. Or sometime in the future become redundant to some new format. That might seem hard to believe right now but twenty years ago who would’ve thought that something called an Mp3s would be the way most people listen to music.
There are other ways to loose Mp3s. Earlier this year I was trying to free up some space on my hard drive and I accidentally went a bit too far when I clicked the wrong button and lost a load of Mp3 files that I didn’t have backed up. To get most of these songs back I had to go to my folks place and go through my CDs stored in the garage and spent the whole afternoon importing them back on to my laptop.
Some of the lost files I had downloaded from iTunes but instead of buying them again I downloaded them illegally. I’ve bought it once so I don’t think that I should by it again.
When I was a teenager most of the music I bought was on tape and recently I’ve illegally downloaded some of those albums. Like Troublegum by Therapy and Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins. (I’ve yet to download the Ugly Kid Joe record and never will)

When CDs took over in the a the 80s people bought records that they already owned., and since then record companies have been trying to flog people the same product by bringing out remastered editions, which means the volume is a touch louder than on the original CD and deluxe editions which means there’s a few extra outtake songs that were never intended to be on the record in the first place.

Living In The Past To Make Money

The radio stations usually on at work are Magic FM or Absolute Radio. On the odd occasion XFM. I don’t care for these stations (XFM was a great station in its formative years up until Capital Radio bought it and turned it into play listed landfill indie) but at work whatever is on is just background noise.
The last couple of week its mainly been the Christian O’Donnell Breakfast Show on Absolute Radio, and they’ve had this feature about football players. Because of the general noise in the office I haven’t quite grabbed what its about but what I do know is that interviews with footballers are boring.
Players today’s are boring enough with their generic post-match clichés but players from the past are usually worse.
Martin Peters droned on to Christian O’Donnell about playing in the 1966 word cup. He was on autopilot as he’s no doubt repeated the same story time and time again. Geoff Hurst was on too and he droned on about the hat-trick he scored. He still protests that his second goal was over the line even though it blatantly wasn’t.
Geoff Hurst makes a living out of the hat-trick he scored and I don’t blame him. Footballers didn’t earn a huge amount back then (and they will make a point of telling people this and then protest that they‘re not at all bitter) and most of the 66 team have sold their winners medal. The other week Nobby Stiles sold his for £188200, good luck to him, your average Manchester City player earns that in a week.

But surely Peters and Hurst must be sick and tired of talking about something that they did in their twenty’s. It takes living in the past to a new level.
But it’s a living.

Today’s crap story from the metro

The free paper called the Metro that you can pick up from tube stations hardly contains the most in depth reporting. Its basically a paper of headlines with news snippets. And the sports reporting is just plain awful.
But there always seems to be a story that leaves me somewhat confused.
Today’s is about a woman with a rare condition that makes her vomit whenever she gets exited called cyclical vomiting syndrome. She says, “As much as I try not to think about exiting things, I can’t stop them happening.
She spent most of a holiday in Las Vegas being sick. (So she must have been on a good winning streak, so it couldn’t have been all bad).
Her husband surprised her with a break to Paris. Where she was sick 144 times in 24 hours.
144 times in 24 hours, that’s every ten minutes. That’s a lot of excitement. Surely after having your head down the toilet throwing up bile and stomach lining the excitement would wear a bit thin. And 144 is a specific number. Why was she counting?
Also why is her husband surprising her with a trip to Paris? To limit the excitement which leads to constant vomiting surely he should’ve eased her into it by suggesting the idea first.
I hope this condition developed after they got married as throwing up while walking down the aisle wouldn’t have been a pretty sight.
‘I pronounce you man and wife, you may kiss the bride.‘
‘Thanks vicar but I think I’ll wait until she’s brushed her teeth.‘
As for their sex life…
See I don’t think its fair that this poor woman suffers with this condition when it could be put to good use with some overly annoyingly excitable people. I’m thinking Jedward.

Fifa 11

Fifa 11 come out at the beginning of October and I had the following week off work. Which meant that all of the plans I had for the week went out the window. Be more productive than I usually am when off work, do some stuff I’ve been putting off, sort some stuff out, go out and see some stuff was the original plan. But the simple equation was week off work + new Xbox game = not getting a lot of shit done. My week went something like this. Wake up, TV, breakfast, look for something to watch on the internet, lunch, Fifa 11, dinner, pub. It was a good week off work.
A month later and I’m still playing it. Obviously not as vigorously but an hour here and there.
I’m playing in the virtual pro mode which means that you create a player. His position on the pitch, height, weight, facial features, hair. And you only control him on the pitch and over matches played you improve his ability. It might sound boring but its addictive.
My player looks as close as I can get him to me. Face, hair and the same height and weight. And the players name is the same as mine but with a Russian kind of flavour added. At times when I get drawn in I really do believe that the player I’m controlling is myself. Living out a football fantasy of curing in a 25 yard winner in the last minute.
I go through periods of playing video games every day. It engrosses me. Even when I’m not actually playing I can be in bed trying to get to sleep but running through my mind I’m planning out a strategy to use to get me past the bit in the game I’m stuck on. Run for cover, tack out the sniper in the window, throw a grenade down the alley way and take out the two of them as they run from the explosion, climb up the ladder to the roof, switch to the sniper riffle and take out all the hostiles approaching, then switch to the rocket launcher and bring down the chopper.
Then I can go weeks and weeks without switching the games console on. But I think I will never not play them completely, even when I’m an old man. In-fact when I’m retired I can spend every day like my week off work.