The Luminaire R.I.P.

Not so long ago The Astoria in London closed down to make way for a new railway station. It’s a shame as it was a great medium sized venue right in the centre of the city. Today I found out that The Luminarie on Kilburn High Road has closed it’s doors for the last time. Along with The Borderline it was my favourite venues to see a band play. Small, with reasonably priced beer is always better than a larger venue like The Troxy(over four quid for half a larger! Go fuck yourself) or The Sheppard’s Bush Empire (with it's low stage you must be right up the front, upstairs in the seats or over six foot five to see anymore than the bands heads). It was a place that didn’t treat it’s punters like how a J D Wetherspoon’s pub does on closing time. It was a place to go and watch a band, not a place to go and spend more time chatting with your mates. To emphasise the point they had a sign on the wall that said 'Quiet if you’re talking when the band is playing we’ll tell you to shut up.'
One of the best gigs I saw at The luminarie was from San Francisco psych rock band Comets On Fire. On records they sound like an insane sonic mess that’s somehow being held together, but even more so close up at such volume.
It’s a same that small venues like The Lumanaire struggle to stay afloat. It shall be missed.



Get Comets On Fire: Antlers of the Midnight Sun mp3 Here

For Paddy's Day

What with it being St Patrick’s Day why not celebrate it with some music from one of the finest bands to hail from the emerald isle. No I’m not talking about the multi-million selling supergroup U2. Or fellow Dubliners The Pogues with their fine punked up traditional music. Or My Bloody Valentine. Or The Cranberries.
Must be Thin Lizzy then? Na, not really my thing, ‘There’s gonna be a jailbreak somewhere in this town.’ Well I guess it’s going to be in the jail.
Maybe a band from Northern Ireland like The Undertones (Teenage Kicks was John Peels favourite song you know. Yes I do know. It‘s mentioned every time the song is played on the radio!). Or Ash their first album had some great songs like Girl From Mars, Angel Interceptor and Kung Fu. No then it must be Therapy? After all Troublegum is a great indie/metal record.
No the band in question is the only band who could fit Dostesvedy and Polish footballer Zbigniew Boniek into a line of a song about S & M sex.
Who have a song about Nottingham Forest striker Nigel Clough.
About Telling someone who talks too much to shut up.
About thanking the urinal makers Armitage Shanks.
About A fish who likes to rock ‘n’ roll.
About loosing your jumper at a disco.
About liking Japanese girls.
About a sheepdog.
I’m of course talking about Cork City’s finest, The Sultans of Ping FC.



Get Sultans Of Ping FC: Armitage Shanks mp3 Here

Bitcrush To ZXYZXY

The last couple of days I’ve been listening to a lot of ambient electronic post-rock with a decent mix of shoegaze thrown into the mix.
First off is music made by Mike Magoo who goes under the name Bitcrush. The 2010 release Of Embers is a mix of synths, soundscapes and crashing live drums. The central focal point of the album is the Fray The Middle To Meet The Ends that clocks in just under fifteen minutes.



Then I spent some good time with an album called Hansuru by zxyzxy which is music from multi-instrumentalist Gregg Pappas. It doesn’t have a dull moment on it, with lots of intricate rhythms over acoustic guitars that build and build. There’s also a couple of post-rock distorted beasts that are let loose.

Then zxyzxy takes is up another level with the album C.A.B which has four pieces of music that range from fourteen to almost twenty two minutes.It’s an album to lie down and listen to as you’ll be transported into another world as it lifts you up, shakes you around and carefully lays you back down again.
It's a long ride of an album that I strongly recommend.

Get Hansuru:Zhu DI mp3 Here

Lets Take Turns To Sing

It was this time last year when the band Alcoholic Faith Mission came under my radar. Who are Alcoholic Faith Mission? They sound like a whiskey guzzling psychobilly band from South Carolina. Well no, they’re a Danish (the only Danish band I know) band who play beautiful folk/digi-folk/ambient/elements-of-post-rock/indie-pop type music.
A year on and they’re still buzzing around my radar. Infact so much so that in the last year the song Nut In The Eye from the album 421 Wythe Avenue is the most played song on my iTunes. What do I like about it so much? Well for one thing I would say that it’s one of my favourite Male/Female vocal combination on any song. I say combination because it certainly isn’t a duet. They don’t sing to each other. In the outro they repeatedly take turns to sing the line:
‘Complacent by the choices everyone is making for me, evidently I’m sinking deeper, deeper’
I would put it up there with the duet of Some Velvet Morning by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood. Though I wouldn’t really call that a duet as it sounds like two completely different songs cut and pasted together.

Get Alcoholic Faith Mission: Nut In The Eye mp3 Here

One song that certainly is a duet is Alone In The Makeup Room by Cambridge’s finest and now sadly defunct The Broken Family Band (yes I know that Pink Floyd were formed in Cambridge, sure they had some good songs and they sold a few records but I would say they are the second best band from Cambridge).

It’s a dirty slagging match between two ex lovers. As you can see from the first line in the song:
‘I want you to die with my hands round your throat, or with me in the castle and you in the moat and everyone you know stood around laughing.’

Get The Broken Family Band: Alone In The Makeup Room mp3 Here

The Black Angels Back In Form

Some albums take a while to get into, the first couple of listens just wash over. Nothing stands out then maybe on the third or fourth listen some of it sticks and the next few listens fill in the gaps. That’s all fine, but it’s so much more gratifying when on first listen you know you like it. When on second listen you already recognise the songs. The picture has been painted and it’s imprinted in your head.
In 2006 it only took me one listen of Austin Texas band The Black Angels (named after the violin screech of a song that everyone skips on The Velvet Underground’s first album) debut album Passover to realise it would be one of my top records of the year. It’s a record of dark psychedelic drone filled with guitar hooks and menacing vocals.



Then in 2008 came Directions To See A Ghost. The first listen blew over me. I thought that maybe the second or third will catch me, but no. the fourth listen. Nothing. I just couldn’t get into it. There was a more dense drone and the sound was darker but the hooks were gone. The sixteen minute closer Snake In The Grass is such a struggle to get through I think I only managed it once.
This week I’ve been listening to The Black Angels album Phosphene Dream. Yes I know it came out last year but with my disappointment of their second album I was in no rush to get it. Straight away the first song Bad Vibrations signalled a return to form, and the songs Sunday Afternoon and Telephone are very much 13th floor elevator influenced. Well they been Rocky Erickson's backing band for some shows. I might not go back to this record as much as I do with Passover but I’m certainly glad I got around to hearing it.

Get The Black Angels: Bad Vibrations mp3 Here

Smoking Moss

Non-smoking day was this week, and some media outlets were criticising Kate Moss because she was smoking on the cat walk on this so called day of all days to kick the habit. For a start, if non smoking day is a day to encourage someone to stop then it won’t help as nobody knows it is non-smoking day until they hear it on the radio or read it in the paper that very day. Kate Moss had a fag, so what.
But wait, isn’t she a role model that children look up to for inspiration? No, she’s a model, not the guiding light for the nations future. A model. She wears clothes for a living and gets photographed. Also it was the fashion designers idea to have her smoking on the catwalk, maybe just maybe because it is non-smoking day and knowing full well the fuss it will cause. And the next day, guess what? Pictures of Kate Moss were in the papers with the designers clothes on.
The same day the government say that tobacco and tobacco products will have to be sold under the counter in supermarkets next year and by 2015 in all shops. The point being? To stop smoking. Yeah because people are going to go to the corner shop to buy cigarettes and forget they want them when they can’t see them. “I’m sure that I came in here for something? No can’t remember. Just a pack of chewing gum please mate.”

Mogwai... Intro

It’s taken me a few listens to get into the new Mogwai record Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. But I'm there now. There’s some driving Neu type motorik rhythms, a lot of riffing but without really shaking your for attention on the first few listens. It’s a more concise record than their last A hawk Is Howling but not with anything that stands out as much as the song Batcat or The Sun Smells Too Loud.
It was late one night back in early 1998 when I was first introduced to Mogwai. I was about to go to bed but thought I’d have a flick through the channels to see if there was anything worth staying up for. To my surprise and joy, on Chanel 4 The Super Furry Animals were playing the song The International Language Of Screaming. The programme was highlights of an NME award show gig at the Astoria. Next on was a band that I didn’t know, the song began quiet with clean guitars and a brooding baseline, then went super heavy, then quiet again, then back to heavy then a real cool guitar melody that followed the baseline. Then it built up to super intense heavy and then back down again.



The following weekend I went up to hmv in Oxford Street and bought their album Young Team. I’d never heard anything like it and I played it over and over.
The following week I went around to one of my mates, we were thinking about starting up another band and I asked if he’d heard of the band Mogwai. He hadn’t so I tried to explain them to him.
“Well most of their songs are long and instrumental, but without guitar solos. They start quiet and build up slowly to an intense crescendo.”
He wasn’t interested and we never did start another band. Though loads of other bands would soon start who were very much influenced by Mogwai.

Get Mogwai: San Pedro mp3 Here

Love/Hate The Last Waltz

Over the weekend I watched the Martin Scorsesse directed film about The Band’s last concert.

I’ve seen The Last Waltz before and it was my first introduction to The Band’s music. But watching the film again I think I like and dislike it in about equal measures. Some of the performances are top draw, such as The Weight with The Staple Singers and Ronnie Hawkins singing the Bo Diddley song Who Do You Love. But some not so great. Out of all the great songs the could have played with Neil Young why play the CSNY song Helpless. It’s an alright song but The Band and Neil Young doing something more full on like Cinnamon Girl would’ve been so much better. And then there’s Neil Diamond. Yawn. Van Morrison was alright but even in 1976 I’m sure a maroon jumpsuit with sequins wasn’t a good look.
Also the film smacks of self-importance, no more so when all the cast come on stage at the end to sing Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Realised. Oh and look there’s Ringo Starr on a drum kit and Ronnie Wood is strapping on a guitar. Look at us all on stage, we are the people who make music. We are music.
At the time punk rock was beginning to make noises.



Get The Band & The Staple Singers: The Weight Here

Drinking With The Drive-By Truckers

'You know the bottle ain't to blame and I ain't trying to, it don't make you do a thing it just lets you.
When I'm six feet underground, I'll need a drink or two, and I'll sure miss you.’

It’s the weekend, I don’t know what it’s like where you live but around these parts the weekend is drenched in booze. There's nothing like a cold beer at the end of the week and a soundtrack to go along with it.
Well the country rock southern swaggered sound of the Drive-By Truckers fit’s the bill perfectly. Not just that but have some great songs about drinking. Whether it’s about a four day bender that ‘was a lot of fun until I shot my gun and the neighbours called the law.'



Or a man who needs a drink when he gets home to deal with his mundane life. Or falling asleep on the floor again, with boots still on and a cut on the chin. Or going to a rock concert, getting drunk and being pulled over by the police on the way home. Or finding a new best friend called Jack Daniels.
Right, it’s beer o’clock time!

Get 'Women Without Whiskey' Here

Crap Covers On YouTube

Today I came across a website devoted to bad cover versions. Take a look at Robbie Williams doing Blur’s Song 2. Yeah Robbie you are so RAWW N’ ROLL! Ha, it’s so so bad. Then there's Peter Gabriel’s version of Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out). What a painful listen that is. Sure it’s good to take a song in a different direction, but Gabriel has taken it to the vets to have it put down. Gabriel's latest album is all cover songs done in this sparse style. Think I will give it a miss. But then Peter Gabriel has always been crap to me, what with him dressing up as a flower in crap prog rockers Genesis and then that annoying song Solsbury Hill. He rides around on a bike when he sings it live. How shit is that.

So I looked around to find some crap covers and I came across a version of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues done by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It starts with a drum solo which is never a good thing. Then they all come in with their funk and Anthony Kiedis does that crap faux rapping that he specialises in. Still, makes a bit more sense than his own lyrics.
But then I clicked onto the Alanis Morissette's version. It’s even worse. The Dylan version was the perfect take, it's one of them songs that should be left alone.



Then I looked around for some crap cover versions by unknown or bands. There are just too many, especially the bedroom guitarists that post up anything. Sometimes they’re just badly strumming away the basic chords while the song is playing in the background. “Yes! I’ve just learnt the intro to Come As You Are, I‘m going to post it up on YouTube!”

Jetscreamer

Jetscreamer were a three piece band formed in Denton Texas consisting of singer/guitarist Will Kapinos, guitarist Samantha Moss and drummer Alex Maples. No bassist and both guitarists mostly played slide guitar with Moss sliding crunching power chords and Kopinios taking up lead with full on attack that sounds like Sonic Youth playing blues rock.. In 2002 they signed to the UK label Bella Union Records and released their only album Starhead in 2003. I was lucky enough to catch them live at The Buffalo in Highbury on what I presume was their only tour over here.
Front Porch, the opening song on Starhead perfectly shows right from off how the two slide guitars work together, it also has in my opinion one of the best middle eight break downs recorded. No exaggeration, the song is going along like a train up until 2:40 when it sounds as if a Bowing 747 aeroplane is taking off.



Get Jetscreamer: Front Porch Here

Get Crazy With The Cheese Wiz

Since listening to last weeks NPR Music: All Things Considered Podcast about music in the 90s I’ve been going back to some records from that decade. Specifically ones that I haven’t heard for a while. Now I’m not really one for nostalgia, when I listen to music that I loved in my formative years it isn’t because I try to remember a time back when. I listen to it because it’s good music. Though sometimes when hearing a certain song I can’t help thinking about the a person or party or night out that it reminds me of. Though the memory might not always be a good one as documentation of life in songs means some songs are hard to listen to and tainted.
One song picked on the podcast as the anthem of the decade was Loser by Beck, and if I’m pushed to choose a song that defines that period in time then I can’t look much further than the song with slide guitar riff, sitar, hip hop brake beat drums with nonsensical lyrics ‘don't believe everything that you breathe you get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve’ and the most catchiest of choruses.
The album Mellow Gold that Loser is from is nowhere near as good as the follow up Odelay but going back to it over the last few days as well as the song Beercan there’s realised that there’s so many other great songs that I haven’t heard in years.



Beck: Pay No Mind (Snoozer) Here

Cover Me Blind

Cover bands have a place, and it’s playing for drunk people to dance and sing along to. I’ve seen my share of alright cover bands, and a good amount that were truly awful. A few years back I played drums in a band that used to practice in a rehearsal studio where numerous cover bands bashed away. I never want to hear Hey Joe, Alright Now or Sweet Home Alabama again.
Some of them were technically good but no matter how they played the worst bands were the ones who took themselves ever so seriously. They didn’t realise that the only reason to be in a cover band is to have a laugh and make a few quid. Don’t act as if it's anything else.
Personally I’ve never been remotely interested in playing in a band that knocks out a few well known tunes for beer money. But I've played in bands that have thrown in a couple of covers to fill out the set. A country punk version of I Shot The Sheriff anyone? Sadly (or more to my relief) no recording of it exists. We also played a couple of songs by the band Firehose called Rocket Sled/Fuel Tank and Down With The Bass. Of course the crowd had never heard the songs so the audience thought they were our own. Infact I didn’t get around to hearing the original versions myself until our band split. I just drummed along.
But one out of three people in the band not knowing the song is better than four in five not knowing the songs like when I played in a band in my late teens and the guitarist thought we should learn a song by Swervedriver. We played it live a couple of times and I still don’t know what song it was.

Download Firehose: Down With The Bass mp3 here

Voice Of Seven Thunders

I’ve recently came across a self-titled album on Tchantinler Records that came out last year by Voice Of The Seven Thunders. It’s a project by Bolton guitar virtuoso Rick Tomlinson who’s previously recorded under the name Voice Of The Seven Woods.
Where as Seven Woods is more an acoustic freak-folk affair that often has eastern styled leanings, Seven Woods is a much more a band record that rocks a whole lot more. There’s still acoustic guitar in there but it’s hammering out a rhythm underneath the electric guitar as it weaves out twisted psychedelic solos that reminds me of the Jimi Hendrix song Free Spirit.
For years I wasn’t sure if Free Spirit even was a Jimi Hendrix song. I got it on a bootleg called Fire that had some Live recordings of classic songs like Voodoo Child (Slight Return) and Purple Haze along with a couple of instrumental songs.



The reason why I’ve never been sure if the instrumental songs were played by the Jimi Hendrix Experience is that I’d bought another Hendrix bootleg from the same shop in Stratford that had a few songs that certainly weren’t Hendrix. Maybe Hendrix played in the backing band of the version of Bessie Mae but it certainly isn’t him singing. That CD also had some live recordings including a storming eight minute version of Red House and a song called Morrison’s Lament which features Jim Morrison drunkenly shouting rubbish over a laboured jam. Free Spirit was given an official release in 1998 on a compilation of Jimi Hendrix rarities.

Back to Voice Of Seven Thunders, it's an album well worth checking out and I look forward to whatever voices of seven Rick Tomlinson does next.



Voice Of Seven Thunders: The Burning Mountain mp3 here

Talksport Bordom

The radio station Talksport was the obvious place where former Sky Sports employers Richard ‘smash it’ Keys and Andy ‘do this up will you love’ Gray would end up. Especially after Keys did his half hearted apology on the station where he claimed that his departure was part due to ‘dark forces at work’
Talksport is a station that encourages its hosts to air their own views, sometimes you get the feeling that they’re just doing it to get a reaction.
Keys said that he will be giving his own views on the programme and not just asking the questions. Well I’ve caught bits of their midmorning programme over the last two weeks and I’ve heard no such thing. All I’ve heard is two blokes drone on about football at a snails pace. It doesn’t fit radio. All they ever talk about is football, there are no tangents that they go off on. Three hours five days a week Richard keys asks Gray questions and he finds new ways to repeat himself. Its all so straight down the line and so boring it hurts.
They can’t last, how can they, what are they going to talk about when there’s no football going on.
Why am I still listening? I’m not, I only did a few times just to see how bad it could get. Once I watched paint dry to see if it really was boring. It was, so I stopped. I wont be doing it again.

Wooden Shjips For Midweek Monotony

It’s Wednesday, the middle of the week. Often I fall into a state of stagnant
purgatory when it comes around to Wednesday, the previous weekends exploits are way behind but the forthcoming weekend is not yet in grabbing distance.

It’s easy to feel like you’re going through the motions in a hypnotic monotonous state. And the repetitive space-drone-rock of San Francisco band Wooden Shjips are perfect to reflect that state of mind.
Most of the time they stick to the same formula, the rhythm section keeps it locked in tight to a simple driving groove, no drum fills, no bass scale runs. The Moog keyboard forms a bed underneath, a verse of echo dek vocals followed by the guitar going off on one with an overdrive delay pedal solo.



It may sound like they only have one song but what a great song it is.

Get Wooden Shjips For So Long mp3 here

Back To Arab Strap

The music of the Scottish duo Arab Strap, consisting of Vocalist Adrian Moffat and
multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton passed me by during their ten year recording career.

I wish I was into them at the time, and looked forward to their latest realises and checked out their tour dates in the listing sections of the NME but in the mid-nineties I guess I wasn’t ready for their restrained, brooding melancholy music. I was listening to generally more upbeat stuff like with distorted guitars like Super Furry Animals, Oasis, Sonic Youth and The Who. But of course the records are still there to be heard, so over the last year or so I’ve been making my way through Arab Strap’s back catalogue. If you’re unfamiliar with their stuff and don’t know where to begin then I would suggest starting with the album The Red Thread and work from there. But I wouldn’t recommend that you put it on when getting ready for a Saturday night out.



Get Arab Strap: The Love Detective here

Last of the Country Gentlemen

Ten years ago the Denton Texas three piece band Lift to Experience released their debut double album called ‘The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads.’ A concept album about the end of the world where Texas is the promised land set against a swirling psychedelic wall of sound.. It could even be called Christian-space-rock. If you read the songs titles after one another they read like chapters from the scripture.

Disk One titled Texas reads:
Just as Was Told, Down Came the Angels, Falling from Cloud 9, With Crippled Wings. Waiting to Hit, The Ground So Soft.

Disc Two titled Jerusalem reads:
These Are the Days, When We Shall Touch, Down with the Prophets, To Guard and to Guide You, Into the Storm.

But as the bands singer/guitarist and songwriter Josh T Pearson mentioned in an interview when asked about the records Christian leanings he noted that you can admire Michelangelo’s David as a great piece of art without having to believe in angels. I knew on the second listen that it would be an album I will never tire of.

If they sounded apocalyptic on record then they were even more so live. The first time I saw them was at The Garage in Highbury supporting Cat Power. I’d never heard and still haven’t heard a band play so loud. After they left the stage in a barrage of feedback Cat Power came on with an acoustic guitar and quietly strummed and mumbled while hiding behind her hair. I didn’t stay for much longer and left with my ears buzzing. To say that the main act was blown away by the support act is a massive understatement.

Lift To Experience soon split up and Pearson retreated to deepest darkest Texas. A couple of years later I saw him play a spellbinding solo acoustic gig above a pub next to Spitalfields Market. He played a bunch of new songs under the heading Angels Vs Devils. Over the years these songs would mutate to various degrees of success and have been documented in bootlegs available to buy at shows, such as Live In Paris, and one that I own called To Hull And Back (yes it’s a live album from the oh so great Yorkshire city of Hull). The only proper release was a spooky cover of the Hank Williams song ‘I’m So Lonesome I could Cry’ on a split single with The Dirty Three.

But next month is when Josh T Pearson finally puts out his debut solo album on Mute Records called Last of the Country Gentlemen.

Its not like the wall of sound that Lift To Experience played, its not like the Angels Vs Devil songs. It’s a beautiful, sparse, haunting, personal record. listening to it all the way through took something out of me, but with songs like ‘Woman When I’ve Raised Hell’ and ‘Sorry With A Song’ its well worth it.
I just hope the next record doesn’t take so long.


Josh T Pearson: Sorry With A Song (Alt Version)mp3

Band Name Prejudice

Elbow's new album ‘Build A Rocket Boys!’ is released on March 7th. I first got into Elbow when their second album and in my opinion their best ‘Cast of Thousands’ had been out about a year. I was aware of them before and what I ’d heard I quite liked, but I was put off by their name. I mean who would name their band after an awkward sounding body part. I don’t know how they all agreed on it. It’s so bad. But then again they were originally called Soft. That’s even worse.

Guy Garvey from Elbow has often stated that their music is influenced by the eighties band Talk Talk. Talk Talk made some great records but it’s a crap name. Not so much at the time but if you type their name into a search engine now you get a load of offers on a phone and broadband package. Until their fourth album The National used to have a Google search problem. You had to trawl through National Express, National Geographic, National Rail, National enquirer... it went on. But not as bad as any band with the word fuck in their name.



I'm over my band name prejudice's, apart from the band !!!.

Talk Talk: Life's What You Make It Here

Dogs Green Cross Code

Two weeks ago I was walking down the road when a dog charged out from an alleyway, ran past me and into the road. Luckily an approaching car braked just in time. Then a woman comes running out of the alley and shouts at the dog to come back to her. The driver of the car is making a gesture at her in the manner of, “What the fuck are you doing woman? Put your dog on a fucking lead you idiot!”
She grabs the dog by the scruff of the neck and drags him back to the pavement.
“What’s he moaning like that for? He can’t help it, he’s only a puppy,” she says as she turns to me, looking for me to respond. The dog then runs around and gets underneath my feet. My thoughts echo that of the driver, “Put it on a lead you fucking idiot!”
She grabs him again and guides him to the curb.
“Wait, wait,” she says as they look to cross the road. I walk on and she calls to me “Bless him, he’s only four months old so he doesn’t know his left and right yet.”
I’m sure she was being serious.
A week later the same dog ran out into a much busier road. A car breaks but still clips the dog, it barks and runs into the forest. The woman runs after it. The car then pulls up to the side of the road and the driver gets out.
“Did you see that?” he asks me.
“Yeah, I did” I said.
“I couldn’t do anything about it, it just ran out in front of me. Why doesn’t see put it on a bloody lead,” he says as he checks to see if there is any damage to his bumper.

I’ve not seen the dog this week so I guess its either dead or its learnt left and right and the rest of the green cross code.

Western Skyline

The last couple of weeks I’ve been trawling through a boxset of the HBO series Deadwood (yes that’s the bloke out of Lovejoy don’t you know). At the back end of last year I spent a good solid month on the Xbox playing Red Dead Redemption (yes that's righ,t it's like Grand Theft Auto with horses). This month I hope to see the Cohen brothers remake of the film True Grit. I guess I’m going through a wild west phase.
But you got to love a western, and the music is always great (well apart from that Jon Bon Jovi song in Young Guns). My favourite film soundtrack has to be the one that Neil Young did for the Jim Jarmusch western Dead Man. Young's trusty black Gibson guitar crackles away menacingly throughout.



Staying on the western theme, I've also been getting into the self-titled debut album from the Italian band Guano Padano. It’s a record heavily influenced by their fellow countryman Ennio Morricone spaghetti western film scores, mixed in with Tex-Mex Americana and some surf Guitar.



Guano Padano: El Divino mp3 Here

Great Opener, No Trail

So to get this off the ground I need an opener. Every album needs a great opener. It’s one of the rules of Rock n’ Roll. Start with something to grab the attention. Something to make the listener want to stick with the record. Some bands try to be smart and put one of their weaker songs at the beginning of a record. Maybe its because they think they’re far too cool to do the obvious thing of starting with one of the better songs. Maybe it’s because they think that every song on the album is a masterpiece.

A good proportion of albums stick to the rules and start with the best songs. Then usually it will trail off into filler.
Hear are some great opening tracks from great albums that don’t trail off:

There’s not a weak track on Bob Dylan’s Bring It All Back Home and no better way to kick it off than Subterranean Homesick Blues.



Nothing screams ‘Pay attention to me now!’ like Iggy And The Stooges Search And Destroy when you put on Raw Power.



My Bloody Valentine’s song Only Shallow from Loveless set’s the tone for the record perfectly.



Safe From Harm from the album Blue Lines by Massive Attack. What a bass line.



Ladies And Gentleman We Are Floating In Space eases you into Spiritualized album of the same name. On occasions I’ve skipped though the last track that’s seventeen minutes long but it’s a near to perfect record as you can get.



Massive Attack: Safe From Harm mp3 Here

Pointless Inquiries

Is anything going to come out of The Chilcot Inquiry? Will there be a conclusive outcome with repercussions to follow? No, of course not. Tony Blair was giving evidence last week, what’s going to come of that? Nothing. It will just drag on for weeks more at a huge expense and when it finally does grind to a halt there will be so little outcome that it will barley be reported and soon forgotten.

The inquest to the death of Princess Diana took six months and cost millions. What was the outcome? That the irresponsible driving by her chauffeur killed her not the Royal family. Was there ever going to any other outcome? Of course not, it seems like the whole point of the inquiry was to shut Mohammed Al-Fayed up.

Also going on at the moment is the 7/7 Inquest. Only BBC news seems bothered to report on it daily. Today’s news from the inquest is- “A senior paramedic was unaware of any deaths until 30 minutes after arriving at the suicide bus bombing in Tavistock Square.”
What is the point of such evidence? What is the point of this inquest? We know what happened and who the bombers were. Other days headlines are- “The 52 victims of the 7 July 2005 bombings were "murdered" in acts of "merciless savagery.” No shit, you don’t say.
At the inquest they’re also showing never seen CCTV footage. What’s the relevance of seeing twisted metal and people screaming at a new angle. “Out now the 7/7 bombings DVD special edition, with extra unseen footage.”
These inquiries are pointless and only happen so that it seems that the powers that be are doing something.

Cut Price Booze

The price of a pint in my local pub has gone up. Its now £3.10. Its not the cheapest pint in the area, but then I would rather drink in my local backstreet boozer than the JD Wetherspoon’s on the high road. Its not the most expensive as that that title will always be held by the shiny bar on the high road that’s filled with coked up Essex boys.
Its getting to expensive to spend all Saturday night in the pub so now a lot more people stay at home a little longer to have a couple more drinks at before they go out. Pubs are suffering as a result, but its not the customers fault. The price of alcohol in a pub has increased far beyond the rate in the off-licence. I can buy a can of beer in the shop around the corner from me for a pound. A rise of about 20p from when I bought booze (underage) in the early 90s.
Then I heard that the Coalition Government are going to bring in minimum alcohol pricing. “No,” I thought, “now its going to cost a lot more to have a couple of beers at home!”
Then they implemented the law and all was okay. It turns out that a can of beer can not be sold for less than 38p a can. So it will only effect (if at all) the super special promotion bulk buys that they have at Christmas.
Health campaigners are not happy with the new law as it’s a watered down outcome. Well they can stick their morale high ground kill joy stance. There’s nothing wrong with a couple of beers at the end of the working day, and a good few more at the end of the working week at an affordable price. Not everyone that cracks open a bottle is a binge drinking ASBO that’s ends the night puking in the gutter.

Stratford Spurs FC

So David Beckham is training at Tottenham. There was no big deal when he trained at Arsenal a couple of years back in the MLS off-season. But there wasn’t a chance that he might turn out in a Premier League game for them like he might at Spurs. So there’s been news reports from the Tottenham training ground in Chigwell and football hacks and pundits giving their opinion on whether it will be good for the team or not. Because they must be pro or against him in a lilywhite shirt.
“They only want him for the shirt sales,” is a lazy response I’ve heard various people say. A work colleague told me that in the Tottenham shop you can buy a shirt with Beckham on the back with the number 77. I told him that you can have anything printed on the back of a shirt if you ask for it. I can have my name printed on the back, it doesn’t mean that I will be running out at White Hart Lane this weekend.

Its been a Tottenham heavy news week. Should they move to the Olympic stadium? Well it makes obvious sense as a business decision. But tradition is a big part of any football club and that’s countering the pure business decision.
At first I was totally against them moving to east London. Tottenham Hotspur Football Club should play in Tottenham! North London, not east! But then most Tottenham fans like myself are from the surrounding areas, not Tottenham itself. And Stratford is not too far from Tottenham, its only that the postcode changes from N to E, its not like the Olympic stadium is in west London or on the other side of the river. The transport links to White Hart Lane are awful where as you don’t get any better than transport links at Strafford. On a selfish standpoint- Stratford is three tube stops away from me. I could be door to door in half an hour.
If it happens I’m sure that in time I will get used to it but at the moment even with all the plus points it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t help when there’s stories like the one in the Evening Standard on Thursday that said that Tottenham may have to change their name to something like ‘Stratford Hotspur.'

But of course that’s just bullshit scaremongering. I fucking hope so.

Vox Pop

If anyone comes up to you in the street or on the train and started talking to you, the natural thing for most people to do is ignore them. Maybe say as little as possible to them so they don’t realise that you want them to go away but by not totally engaging with them they will hopefully move on. like when a drunk starts talking to you at the bar or when outside smoking a cigarette. If the conversation comes naturally then fine, but its not like that when some drunk just wants to talk nonsense to whoever is in their line of vision. Usually they say some quip and laugh as they look for you at laugh back with them. I hate it the most when in happens in the gents at the urinal. Sorry but I don’t want to start a conversation with a drunk stranger while we’re both holding our dicks taking a piss.

But it seems that if a stranger comes up to you in the street with a microphone and starts asking questions then a lot more people are willing to converse. Vox pops- “Because your opinion matters.” Or rather because some idiot who feels they must give an ill informed opinion just because a microphone and a camera are shoved in their face.
Today the terror alert in the UK has being raised, so BBC news went to Heathrow Airport to see what people there thought about it. “Well its kind of unnerving but there’s not a lot you can do apart from looking out for something suspicious and reporting it to the police,” someone said in the as he struggled with his bag in the car park. Thanks I feel better now.

The January Lull

So the summer ends, the clocks go back and the nights draw in, Halloween shortly followed by Bon Fire Night, the build up to Christmas, Christmas eve, Christmas day, Boxing day, New Years Eve, New Years Day, the decorations come down and then its back to work feeling shattered and with serious damage done to your bank account, New Years resolutions broke and the New Year blues kick in, the Christmas trees left out for the dustmen and people still saying Happy New Year well into January.

Well I certainly feel shattered and my bank balance has taken a bit of a kicking but that’s what excessive drinking will do. I’m tired and I think too much time sat on the sofa playing video games has turned my brain to mush.
So my New Years resolution is to start doing more constructive productive stuff. But right now I can’t, I’m just too tired. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I promise.
Maybe I should start taking life more seriously this year and draw out a five year plan or something. Oh fuck off, I said do more productive stuff not become a complete bore.

Abbey Road Misleading Crossing

The Abbey Road crossing on The Beatles 1969 album has recently been made a grade two listed. “It means that its secure for a whole new generation of Beatles fans,” a BBC news reporter on London Tonight said last week. “People from all over the world come here just so they can have their picture taken on the famous crossing,” he went on to say as it cut to tourists walking on the crossing.
Then at t the end of the report he slips in he that its not the original crossing as the crossing made famous on the album cover was further down the road but no longer exists. Hold on a minute. So its not the crossing on the album cover at all, its just the nearest one to it. So why has it been made listed? Surely the original crossing should have been made listed before it was taken away. Its not the real one but sshhh don’t tell the tourists.
Marc Boland fans put flowers by the tree that his car crashed into and killed him. If that tree got cut down you can’t just put flowers up against the nearest tree to where the tree was. Well you could but that would be a bit of a dumb thing to do. But then again putting flowers by the tree is a bit dumb or a bit weird anyway. If you were a relative or good friend of Marc Boland’s then laying down a bunch of flowers on the anniversary of his death is understandable but not if you’re a fan of him. Especially as he died over thirty years ago. But then some fans are like this, I saw a documentary on Buddy Holly were every year fans of his would stand out in a freezing cold field in Iowa and pay their respects to him. Pointless.
If you’re passing a place where something is relevant to a musician you like then that’s fair enough, but I don’t think that going out of your way to stand in a field where a plane crashed is.
Going back to Abbey Road- I’ve just read a book on The Band and a lot of the book revolves around the time that they lived in a pink house in Woodstock New York. Bob Dylan used to come around and they would knock out a few tunes in the basement. The Bands first record was called Music From Big Pink ,and if I was passing through Woodstock I’m sure that I’d take a look at the house and its surroundings. But if it had been knocked down I wouldn’t get my camera out take a picture of a nearby house and show people and say, “Look this picture its the house just up the road from the pink house where The Band used to live.”

Post-Pub Wii

I’ve always loved playing video games. I’m not a hardcore gamer who reads gaming magazines and who must have the new Call Of Duty game as soon as its released. I would rather buy it second hand a few months later. And I don’t have to have the latest games console that comes out, so I don’t have defunct consoles like the Game Cube and the Dreamcast laying about collecting dust.
The first games system I had was the Commodore 64 which at the time I thought was truly amazing. Now I have an Xbox 360 and I do believe that its truly amazing. Maybe in twenty years I will think of the Xbox 360 in the same way that I now think of the Commodore 64.
I’m guessing that the next step with gaming is 3D. This might make games consoles like Nintendo’s Wii slightly more interesting to me. But not that much more as I have no interest in the Wii. I’ve played it post-pub around a mates house a couple of times and the novelty rapidly ran thin.
“Come on its your turn to bowl.”
“Alight, how do I do it?”
“Its easy you just have to swing your hand back and up again.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah that’s it.”
Its so easy to play and that is why I don’t like it. That and the awful early nineties Lego type character graphics. The Wii advert on the TV at the moment is an old lady playing it as its aimed at people who don’t usually play video games.
Nintendo have this market sussed. I would never have imagined that I would buy a video game for my mum but the last two Christmases I’ve bought her a Nintendo DS game. Its good as I usually struggle to think what to get her (and everybody else) for Christmas.
The Nintendo Wii is good for social gaming, its just that I prefer to sit in on my own with the curtains drawn as I lose track of time trying to get past a certain point of a game.

Tuition Fees (another 2p worth opinion on the matter)

I really don’t know where I stand on these student protests that are going on. Should further education be free? Yes, no, in a way, well when you put it like that, yes, but saying that., no.
About five years after I left school it seemed like all of a sudden everybody was going to university. I’ve met some people who are at or who went to university who seem as plain dumb. Does that me and most people I went to school with were dumber? No, because only the really academic went to university.
Or maybe since the prominence of the internet more people are gaining the good A level results to get into university. Copy and paste from Wikipedia and then alter it a bit to make it look like their your own work. Or maybe I’m being over cynical. Or maybe I could have gone to university if Wikipedia was about then. Or maybe if I did any homework and studied at all.
Anyway, the students don’t have to pay the money back until they leave university and get a job. So what are they moaning about. Then again nine thousand pounds a year does seem excessive.
I’m all in favour of a protest and making a stand. But what’s the point in smashing windows and spray painting a Winston Churchill statue.
Are the police heavy handed? They have a history of it from the poll tax protests and miner strikes. But I can’t stand them protesters that shout right up in the faces of the police, spit at them, throw missiles and then scream police brutality when they get a slap back. But as long as they don't slap them as hard as they did in China.

The Heating

"Send in your pictures of the snow to our email address,” the BBC news presenter said., for a pointless edition to their website. That was when the snow first hit. The newsreaders aren’t so perky about the snow now that its been here for over a week and flights, roads, and rail have all been heavily disrupted.

At this time of year I prefer crisp cold whether and snow than mild grey skies that always threaten to drizzle. That is until it puts my travel arrangements in jeopardy.
For me the worst thing about winter is the gas bill. But not anymore as the gas bill is inclusive in the rent. The only drawback with that is that I have no control over the heating as the landlord has set the timer and the boiler door is locked. The heating comes on at five which is understandable because the other people in the flats get home about six. But I get home in the afternoon and yesterday I had the day off. I could see my own breath as I lay on the sofa covered under blankets.

But I would still rather that than have to pay my own heating bill. In a previous place I lived my flatmate would leave the heating on full blast all the time. I would wake up in the morning in a sweat as the heating had been left on all night. Then he wondered why our gas bill clocked in at £265.
It was much better with the previous flatmate when we used to play a game called first one to turn the heating on is a pussy.

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.

The Customer Is Not Always Right

Been watching a lot of food programmes lately. Each weekday at five is Come Dine With Me. Everyone who watches it knows that the food is secondary, no one watches it with the intention of getting a good recipe. The bigger the culinary disaster the better.
Then at half five its Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals. I know that Jamie Oliver can be a bit of a dick but I do like his cooking as its good hardy meals that are free from pretension. What I’ve learnt from watching it is that I need to get a food processor.
Then there’s Gordon Ramsay’s best restaurant. Its been the same every week. Two restaurants who both cook a certain type of food compete to go into the next round. These restaurants have been voted the best in the country, so there’s a lot less of Ramsay’s swearing rants that have turned into a parody.

But he still hovers around the kitchen telling them where they’re going wrong.
Then they’re tested unknowingly and filmed by restaurant critic types who deserve a punch in the face. In the Thai restaurant the waiter said that he’ll have to call the police if the bottle of wine wasn’t paid for. The waiter explained before hand that if the bottle is opened he will have to pay for it. Gordon Ramsay was astonished with the waiter. I’m on the waiters side. Why don’t you order a bottle that you know you will like? Are you going to get them to open bottles of wine until there’s one that you find suitable? Go wine tasting in a vineyard, not in a restaurant you fool.
On Tuesdays episode food was ordered then ten minutes later the undercover critic wanted to change the order. That’s why there’s a menu. You look at it, pick what you want and then order. That’s how it works. Its like they’ve never been to a restaurant before. They must’ve had so must gob in their food. If I was the chef I know I would've given them a ‘special ingredient.’

A trailer for the next round showed Gordon Ramsay in a helicopter. Why, we weren’t told. Maybe the chef has to come up with a dish using five ingredients while skydiving or something.

Chile Rocks

Don’t know why this miner was so happy, what with all his cheerleading and playing to cameras as he was one of the first to get evicted from the Chilean version of Big Brother. I prefer the Chilean version. Its so much more extreme. But the contestants still crave celebrity. I mean look at them now all walking around in sunglasses like rock stars.

I shall stop being facetious for a moment. It’s a truly great story. A rare feel good news story that captured the world. And it was interesting because you could watch the rescue happen as it was happening. Perfect for 24hr news channels who usually struggle to fill time.
One thing for sure is that the Chilean president Sebastian Pinera is loving it. Its a vote winner wrapped up in national pride. Until this accident I had no idea who the president of Chile was or what he looked like. Not many people outside Chile did. Why would you? Now his face is in ever paper in the world.

So well done in the rescue, but in truth it was an awful mining exertion. After 69 days down there they never came back with one piece of copper.

Passing Trade

When I walk down the high road where the main shops are in the east London suburb where I live. I have often thought: ‘How the hell do these shops make any money? Maybe there’re a front for something.’
Well since the recession a lot of the shops have closed down, especially at the end of the high road. They’ve been boarded up for a while now and a doubt if even a charity shop would open up there.
There’s a few shops that are hanging in. A shop that sells art work, a women’s clothes shop and a shop that sells modern design lamps and tables and stuff like that for the home. But if you want a paint brush or hoover bags then forget it. You have to go to a big DIY store for that.
Its become a one dimensional high road that’s all about eating and drinking. There’s supermarkets, takeaways, restaurants, cafes and pubs in abundance.

The high road where I work still has a healthy mix of shops, and they all seem to be doing good business. All apart from any shop in the arcade. The only constant shops in there are a café and a beauty parlour for dogs. The rest are a constant turn over. Traditional sweet shop, six months, clothes shop, six months, fancy dress shop, six months, shoe shop, six months, physic reading place, six months. She should’ve predicted that that wouldn’t last long.
What do they expect when there’s no passing trade.

Are great place for passing trade are shops in airports. Well its not really passing trade its more like: I’m stuck here with nothing but these shops until I can board my flight and I need to get rid of this foreign money trade.
But in all the times that I’ve been to an airport I’ve never seen anyone buy a pen from the pen shop. Never. How does this shop survive? It’s a pen, so what if it looks nice and expensive, it’s a pen and it writes. I’ve never received a birthday card and thought, ‘That looks as if it was written with a nice pen.’

The Second/Third Cheapest

Yet another series of MasterChef is starting again tonight. If I come across a cookery programme while in front of the telly then I will usually give it a bit of a watch, but I get annoyed with the way the medicine ball headed one on MasterChief tastes the food. He takes his fork to the plate, scoops up the food and then ever so slowly moves the fork to his mouth. When the fork is almost there he leans his big head slowly towards the fork then puts the fork in his mouth and holds it there for two or three seconds. This dramatised way of tasting food just grinds at me.
Also I usually find the food a bit too poncy. Poncy food in poncy restaurants doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve been to a couple and sure the food was good but about on par as the restaurant I went to a couple of weeks before where the main course cost as much as the fifteen percent tip that I left at the poncy restaurant.

When I was at this restaurant I ordered the second cheapest bottle of white wine. I would’ve ordered the cheapest but the girl I was with suggested the second cheapest and I didn’t want to look cheep. There was a bottle on the wine list for a grand. I found this obscene. The only reason someone would order that bottle is to show off that they can afford to blow money on a bottle of wine that costs as much as an round the world plane ticket. Is the taste in the twenty pound bottle and the thousand pound bottle really worth that greater margin in price range?
In my experience with wine there’s the dirt cheep wine from the off-licence that’s so foul you need a mixer with it. Then the second cheapest wine which is usually fine, and then the rest which all tastes a little better than the second cheapest. My experience with whiskey is the same. But to me the most over rated drink is champagne. It’s glorified cheep fizzy wine. Rather have a beer anytime.

Popemania

So the Pope has ended his tour of the UK 2010 by playing Hyde Park and is now back in the confines of The Vatican City.
His visit was building up in the news for weeks, and when he finally came it was all so overblown. I doubt if all that pomp and ceremony would endear anyone to become a catholic. And all that riding around in the popemobile waving like the queen.
The truth is that he’s not some holy divine god like supreme being. No, he’s just some old German man who wears a dress and a stupid hat who bangs on about the dangers of an increasingly secular society and how condoms will not help prevent the spread of aids.
Will his visit have a lasting impression and put more bums on pews on a Sunday morning? I doubt it.
Phoney popemania has bitten the dust.

Birthday Grime

I’m rapidly approaching my 34th birthday. Since being in my thirties I don’t think too much about upcoming birthdays. I used to. When I was in high school I never cared for the month of September. Back to school, the nights drawing in and my birthday just around the corner. Which meant a year closer to being an adult. Being an adult meant acting responsible, and acting responsible didn’t seem too much fun at all.

As a kid I can’t recall ever having any type of party for my birthday. On my 18th I remember going to a grimmy pub in Leytonstone with three mates where the barman made any drink that they told him to give me. I think that the tipping point was a pint of Guinness mixed with Gold Label. Gold label makes Super Tennants seem like a nice cold Red Stripe on a hot summer evening at the end of the working week.
I have no recollection of any other birthdays. Even last years.

But I’ve never been one to celebrate it. Usually I have to be dragged out for a few beers. Only this year it falls on a Saturday. Which means I have to go out anyway as its kind of the Saturday night law. And I guess that people will ask me what I want to do. Well I don’t want to go to the west end or on a pub crawl around Shoreditch or Camden. No I want to go to my local grimmy pub. The pub that gets filled out when a big football match is on but is then almost empty as soon as the final whistle goes because most people don’t want to stay there any longer than need be. But I genuinely like it there. If you want to pull then its no place to go as its not the sort of place that any right minded girl would drink. If you want to eat then its not the place to go. Apparently they do food, I’ve seen a menu on the wall. But the only food I’ve ever seen anyone eat there is bar snacks. If you want a good beer selection then its not the place to be. There’s no strawberry flavoured shit on tap. The toilet floor is never dry and it stinks awful. But it’s a cheep local working class pub with no pretensions and every suburb and town needs a place like that.

34, officially mid thirties, oh well at least if I make it to the beginning of next month then I outlived Jesus.