Sounds Familiar

What, where did the time go?  For now let us just say that the depression came back and hit me like a hammer, to the point of having to take time off work to change medication and generally get back to reality (hello side effects, hello fresh scars from a spot of self-harming, hello therapy once more).  I might write more about that another time, but let's think of better things for now and look back at my top tunes of last year.

Here's the obligatory word cloud:

I don't suppose there will be many surprises in there for people who have read these posts before but some favourite releases and old favourites to note...

Of albums released during 2016, I can't speak highly enough of Iron Maiden's Book Of Souls, Public Service Broadcasting's The Race For Space and Anti-Nasty League from Pop Will Eat Itself.  About as different from each other as any three random discs could be but all played multiple times and loved equally.  And the second tier of newness belongs to Motorhead (RIP Lemmy), The Darkness Slayer, Thunder and Kim Boekbinder.

I also went to my first gig in far too many years when we went to see Ginger Wildheart on his Songs & Words tour.  OK, so that was a mix of spoken word and acoustic excerpts rather than the full-on rawk experience but it was still a damn good night out and I am so looking forward to the accompanying book and DVD which will hopefully be with us soon.

Being a fan of the comedy song, we also went to see Richard Digance at the newly re-opened Spa Pavilion here in Felixstowe.  We've seen him several times over the years, but this time he brought a support act - local lads the Broadside Boys.  Suffolk-centred folk and a real joy to encounter.  I'm looking forward to catching them again somewhere in the county this year.

If I had managed to stay at work for November and December I would have finally finished the epic in-car listening through of all CDs by artists I only have one disc by.  Not driving to work every day rather put paid to that, but only a few left to go before I dig into discs by artists I own two albums on CD by!

The amount of listening I did in the first month when I was off can be counted on the fingers of one hand.  Losing the will to stick an album on (and indeed the ability to stay focussed long enough to listen to a whole disc) was possibly the hardest thing for me to get through - music is such an integral part of my life.  I'm back with tunes all the time now, and it is such a relief.

Looking forward to 2016 we have new albums from the Wonder Stuff, CJ Wildheart, Love Zombies and the Dowling Poole already pre-ordered with Hey! Hello! Too and Megadeth also on the way.  Hopefully it is going to be another corker of newness and we will see if I can find some new to me oldies as well.

The new Friday feeling

And thus the habit of nearly 30 years is ended by the whims of the record industry…

Ever since I was old enough to understand the concept of album release dates and been able to find them out, Monday has been THE day.  It must have been somewhere around 14-15 when I started actually buying music magazines and perusing every page rather than just glancing through them in the library or newsagent if someone I knew was on the cover.  Up to then I would have just bought new music when I happened to see it (Or make a note of it for Christmas and birthday lists).  But getting an album or single the day it came out and thus being among the first to hear it was a thrill to make starting a new week of school/college/work somewhat more bearable.

After school walks or bike rides in to town (Welwyn Garden City) to visit Our Price or Woolworths or an outing to Stevenage or Hatfield for variety or school clothes giving an opportunity to visit the independent shops there.  Or their branches of OP and WW.  Heck, Hatfield even had an enormous Woolco store where I distinctly remember obtaining the Belle Stars album on cassette.

College bus journeys back to halls/shared houses taken via the town centre (Derby) to stake out Way Ahead, Woollies or HMV.

Mid-morning wandering in to town (Felixstowe) to pop into Ian’s Records or yet another branch of F.W.’s empire during the summer after I graduated when I was unemployed (and handy that I had to sign-on on a Monday so was forced into town once a fortnight).  And then dropped back to lunch time when I got a job in town.

Promotion to Ipswich bringing with it the variety of another Our Price, HMV, Virgin, John Menzies, Woollies and most importantly Compact Music.  They were a wonderful independent that gave a voucher with every disc purchased.  Collected enough of them for several free albums over the years.

A couple of years in Newmarket with yet another Woollies and another indie I can no longer remember the name of (last time I looked it was a branch of Costa).  Woollies again in Stowmarket with a back-up ASDA, and then back to Ipswich where I have been ever since and the options have whittled themselves down to just HMV.

But always, that Monday journey to obtain the eagerly anticipated or the unexpected surprises.  The scrutiny of sleeves and booklets and reading of lyrics and credits while eating lunch or in stolen moments during the afternoon.  The building anticipation on the journey home.  The first crackling kiss of stylus touching vinyl, the clunk of the cassette player or the whirr of the CD player and then the sounds themselves.  Something to discuss at school/college/work the next day.  A joy to be repeated daily or a disappointment to try and find the good in until the next batch of newness arrived.  The re-arranging of shelves to fit the new arrivals in.  Even the addition of entries to a database - all elements of the start of the week.

And now we have to transfer that feeling onto a Friday, with the weekend beckoning - full of its own entertainments and putting off the Monday drabness that new music helps to dispel.

I'll enjoy today's purchases over the weekend I'm sure but it just doesn't seem right.  (And before anyone wants to get pedantic yes, I know the Motorhead came out last week but I was off work and enjoying a day in the garden with MrsB).

Sound system

Oops. February already.  Still, finally written the 2014 music post...

No list of all the records enjoyed in the year (and I will still call them records even if they were nearly all CDs or MP3s) but the cloud does cover all the artists I heard a whole album by and represents their frequency of earhole assault. Much of the explanation for this can be found in last year’s post on music so I’m not going to repeat it now. Suffice it to say that the “single CD” quest is about to reach S and I have finally got more CDs by King’s X courtesy of the wonderful “original album series” box set of their first five which I received for Christmas. So expect them to appear at a reasonable size in next year’s cloud!

Other than regular trawls through Amazon, HMV and various charity shops for discs to plug holes in my collection – especially the MIND shop in Ipswich (I still cannot fathom out why people would choose to get rid of some of the CDs that end up in there, and then come home with me) – I have actually gained a bunch of genuinely new tunes this year rather than ones that are merely new to me. So we will start off with yer actual albums of the year, then newly discovered enjoyment before a round-up of old favourites that I just had to listen to.

And to immediately contradict myself, we will start off with not an album at all, but a series of digital singles. Rather than a new album through a Pledge campaign, Ginger Wildheart went for it with his GASS project, releasing three new songs (and a couple of older demos) on to the world every month. We still have a couple of months to go but so far every track has been a winner. They offered three tiers of membership - £30 got all the music in electronic formats plus access to the web site with podcasts, videos, Q&A pages, diaries and other writings and loads of other stuff. £60 added a t-shirt and some other goodies, while £90 enabled meet and greets before shows. I have only gone for the music and definitely feel I have had value for my money. They are planning to keep it all live online after the year is up so anyone interested can still fork out the £30 and get all the music on one go.

Some of the tracks are going to get a CD release as part of his new Pledge offering. This is for a sort of autobiography told through the stories of the songs since the dawn of the Wildhearts along with an acoustic DVD which will do much the same. This could well be a highlight of 2015 for me, but we'll address that later in the year!

Wildhearts sidekick CJ also put out a solo album (Mable) in 2014 and is my favourite release of the year. Some real killer guitarwork, catchy choruses and magical melodies drew me in and won't let me go. If you want to pick it up from his Bandcamp page I can also highly recommend previous album “13” and his work with The Jellys.

Sticking with the extended Wildhearts family, sometime bassist Random Jon Poole (also a feature of Ginger's solo band) and occasional keyboard player Willie Dowling also produced an album as “The Dowling Poole” via Pledge music. Bleak Strategies is fascinating, although I will be the first to admit that I haven't listened to it enough yet to fully appreciate it. As part of the pledge package they also made available Jon Poole's solo and God Damn Whores albums and Willie's Jackdaw 4 discography. Having considered those before but been short of cash I was glad to get them at a good price and have enjoyed them as much as anything else I've heard this year.

Having had two great new albums this way was fab (not to mention the others obtained off the back of them) but part of me wishes CJ and Willie had teamed up for a new Honeycrack opus instead...

Other Pledge campaigns I backed were from Ricky Warwick (two albums – one electric and one acoustic, both enjoyable), Tony Wright (superb acoustic solo debut) and Pop Will Eat Itself (an e.p. rather than a whole album, but hopefully a good taste of what is to come this year when they do release a new full-length platter).

Going down the normal route through shops, I also really rated Mark Chadwick's second solo album Moment. Distinct enough from his day job with the Levellers to make it worth doing. The new Mark Lanegan, Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs and Linkin Park albums entertained in the ways I expected them to, and then there was U2. I've listened to it once so far and am still undecided. Never mind the delivery method, I've liked them for years so was just happy to hear something new. But am not sure if it is any real change over what has come before.

New out in 2014 from bands I adore, but not yet purchased, we have the new AC/DC and Gong albums. Hopefully more to say on those soon!

Not new in 2014 but getting their first listens from me I particularly enjoyed Anthrax's Worship Music, Public Service Broadcasting (thanks to Rigid Digit for the introduction to them) and some stuff I took a punt on from charity shops – Ben And Jason, Detritus and Three Corners.

So this year I am eagerly awaiting the new Thunder, Paul Miro and Prodigy and we will see what other surprises fate brings my way.

Who I listened to in 2013

2013 music, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned on here before that I don’t get as much time to listen to music as I would like, but the word cloud above is a good representation of what I have managed to get through in the last twelve months. (You can click it to go through to Flickr and then get to the full size version so you can actually read the smaller words). I started back in January to list every time any artist got played so while it doesn’t tell us whether I listened to someone more in summer or winter months, we do get an indication of how many times people cropped up. This is made up of in-car, in-house and in-walkphone listening with no differentiation between when and where (I may have been dedicated/sad enough to make a note of every aural experience, but not enough to further categorize them). And the cloud is a much nicer way of looking at them than just a list of artist names with. NB “Various artist” compilations or whoever popped up by sticking iTunes on shuffle aren’t here – only artists I have chosen to listen to a whole bunch of songs from.

As such, it needs to be pointed out that this is not a result of random choice or fully by the selection of who I want to hear on a given day. I realised a couple of years ago that I tended to stick to the same old stuff and was ignoring a goodly percentage of my music collection. To combat that I introduced a strict three-disc rotation system for in-car listening while still allowing myself free-reign over any other music. So the rotation is 1: Artist I have several albums by but haven’t necessarily listened to for a while (in chronological order for each artist as they come up), 2: Artists I only have one CD by (in alphabetical order) and 3: New discs. Two years in and I am still only up to K for number two, but I have rediscovered some absolute gems. Discs for number three seem to accumulate without me realising it (Santa and the sales have just added a slew more to that pile). So as an example starting today on the drive to work we had 1: Hayseed Dixie (actually started them last week so they got one entry on last year’s list. I have five official albums and two bootlegs – all will get played in order so if I do a similar word cloud next year they will end up quite “large”). This will be followed by 2: King’s X (always a surprise to me that I only have one of theirs on CD and really must get more); 3: Eat Static (a Christmas present replacing a 20year old cassette with the CD version at last) then 1: Hayseed Dixie again, 2: King Swamp and 3: Daevid Allen (another Christmas present) etc. On the rare occasions that I run out of new discs to bung in the rotation I generally double-up on the single cd artists. When I finally reach Z on the artists I only have one disc by I intend to go through again for those with just two on the shelf.

On my phone I listen mainly to Audio Books and podcasts (This American Life, Selected Shorts, Short Cuts, The Infinite Monkey Cage, Jon Ronson On…) but intersperse those with music too. That used to be just random tracks but as I am slowly getting all my CDs ripped I now generally fill up the memory card with four or five books, and then the same numbers of podcasts and albums. Although the album tracks get randomly shuffled between the books and pods they still count as full listens so the artists get added to the list. But as I am only about halfway through the ripping process this adds another level of bias into what I listen to. And there has been no structure at all to the ripping – just what I’ve fancied hearing when out and about or in the study so may as well rip the disc while I have it upstairs…

And then there is just general listening to whatever I fancy from whatever source when I’m home alone and can crank the volume up.

Why do I make my life so complicated?

Hey! Hello!

201/365 Probable album of the year., a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.

Yes I know, it has been far too long, but I'm not dead just busy. And still got lots to say. So more posts soon, I hope.

Anyway, I did something the other night that I haven't done for years. I sat down and listened to an album. All the way through with no interruptions. Just me, the music and the lyric sheet.

That always used to be how my first consumption of music went. Not background music to dinner or reading or driving or whatever else was going on. Just straightforward songs to focus on and absorb. It is why I know the word to so many tracks and can replay them in my head at will. But life seems so busy these days that this was a rare luxury. One I intend to make more time for in the future though as it really was blissful.

As for the album it question, it was that one up there. Hey! Hello!'s self titled debut. Which is the latest Pledge funded album from Ginger WIldheart (also featuring Victoria Liedtke). I've had MP3s since before Christmas and already feel this to be the best music I've heard in a long while, but when the disc turned up I decided it deserved some reverence.

Bright, breezy pop-metal delights.

Check 'em out on the you tubes then do yourself a favour and buy it.

The sound of the crowd

ginger 555% cd set., a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.

Busy, lazy, uninspired, forgetful, enjoying other stuff... Take your pick from any of these excuses for the continued paucity of posts. A bit early for thinking about New Year's Resolutions but I guess being better at this in 2013 will be an ambition.

Anyhoo, I've been wanting to waffle on about crowdfunding for a while now and today seems to be the moment. Partly becuase Ginger's 555% (as pictured above) won "Event of the year" at the Classic Rock awards last night. That was my first toe-dip into the murky waters of paying up front for something to be created without support or backing from the traditional music biz (as opposed to paying up front for something that already exists, which is what most normal shopping is after all, not often you get to try before you buy).

I can't remember when I first encountered the concept, but do recall reading something about Marillion raising money through their web site to fund a new album many years ago. It only properly registered with me when I first joined Twitter though, and people I was following started plugging projects on Kickstarter or Pledge Music. First ones they were aware of and supporting themselves, but then their own. And Ginger was the first that intrigued me enough to part with some cash. Of course I now wish I had taken the plunge earlier, but there you go.

The whole recording process was laid open to backers, with regular updates and sneak previews etc which, to my mind, brought the project alive. Watching a couple of minutes of video now and then in the run-up to release just made the sense of anticipation all the greater. Lots of artists are opening up the recording process these days through web exclusives and tweets and the like but most of my finding out about new albums still comes from seeing a review or even just spotting it in HMV. While such surprises are nice, I do enjoy a good build-up. And in this case the end product didn't disappoint - a triple CD set (distilled to a single disc selection by fan vote for retail release) featuring 30 tracks that have had more than a few listens since arrival.

Since then I have also backed (and received) the new albums from Amanda Palmer (there is going to have to be something pretty spectacular arrive in the next couple of weeks for Theatre Is Evil not to be my album of the year) and Ben Folds Five. Paul Miro, former singer with Derby band Apes, Pigs & Spacemen has done a pledge release through his own site, rather than one of the main players in the field, and already delivered in mp3 form with the physical disc to follow. That one I learned about through a comment on one of Ginger's posts, which made me doubly glad I'd backed that project as I would probably not relaised Miro was still going otherwise. Due in the New Year is an album of space songs from Kim Boekbinder, who I found out about through Amanda Palmer so it is all a bit circular in the crowd-funding world. I do take the occasional look through the Kickstarter and Pledge Music sites for other things that might be worth the risk, but nothing has sparked my interest as yet.

And then there is Ginger again. Not content with a triple album he also has another three on the go for this year. Two extreme noise and weirdness collaborations under the name Mutation and a power-pop thing called Hey, Hello. The bits of both that have been dribbled out so far have again whetted my appetite to fever pitch.

Anybody got any recommendations for other projects worthy of my cash?

Into the Groove

Into the Groove, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.

I know I've been lax with this recently. Still can't think of anything earth-shattering to write, so here's part one of somehting I satrted a couple of years ago and really ought to get on with. Maybe publishing this bit will spur me on.

Music has provided the background to my life for as long as I can remember as well as being the focus for a number of key moments. If I’m not deliberately listening to something then I still have music running through my head (sometimes even when I am listening to something I’ll get another song intrude). I can’t shut it off. Sometimes it gets distracting when I want to concentrate but I’d rather have it there than not.

There was always music in our house, usually Dad’s choice of whatever he fancied (often classical but also lots of stuff from the 60s) and this wasn’t confined to the living room. I know my brother and I both had large valve radios we used to listen to, complete with little diamond shape stickers plastered over the front to indicate where each station could be found – no presets back then! Mine was attached to the underside of an old breakfast bar installed in my room as a large desk. Known as “the bar” until we moved out of the house it served as base for a thousand lego creations, half-written stories, airfix kits and was somewhere for homework to be tackled. But most importantly it was big enough to put a pair of speakers on and still leave room to use the rest. Sometime after the original transplant from the kitchen the bar gained an annex. A white conti-board construction, featuring one shelf just underneath the level of the bar and three open sections underneath used for storage. Two of them got filled with comics and magazines but what went on the shelf meant the third section got reserved.

My own record player. A Garrard 401 or 404 if memory serves. And with it a Pye integrated radio/amp/cassette player and all linked up to the speakers on the bar. The tape player in the Pye was later condemned to idleness by the arrival of a Panasonic tape deck with proper recording level controls and everything.

I’m not sure how Ma & Pa managed it as I remember getting the kit as a birthday present very clearly. As was traditional at the time presents were given out downstairs straight after breakfast and among other stuff that time has erased I unwrapped three LPs: K-Tel compilation “Music Explosion” (Seasons In The Sun, Kung-Fu Fighting and 20 others), David Essex – Rock On and the inevitable classical selection “Rock Gently with Beethoven, Bach and Brahms”. Anyway, on going back upstairs I found the kit to play them on all nicely set up and ready to rock – Dad must have done it while I was having breakfast or something.

The interwebs tell me that Music Explosion was a 1974 release with the other two from 1973. So I would imagine this birthday was therefore either 1976 or 1977. I can’t imagine getting all that kit at age 4 in 1975 but at the same time can’t remember not having my own reproduction equipment so am not going to sweat on the details. I do remember the lectures on how to look after everything, cleaning the records before use (hello the EMItex cloth and Dust Bug), only holding them by their edges and so forth. That certainly left an impression as I have vivid memories of being a little know-it-all explaining to friends that their Dad’s records skipped because of all the finger prints be-smearing the surfaces. And at primary school we always went in to assembly to a record being played by a carefully selected duo of kids from the oldest class. When it finally got to be my turn I brought the EMItex in and cleaned all the records for the first time in years.

As well as the instructions to look after them, something else about the way Dad kept his records must have rubbed off as well. Until the mid 80s the albums were stored in the “bar annex” in the order I got them. Complete with a little red sticker in the top left corner with the number of acquisition on (these came from a Sasco year-planner which arrived one Christmas and was never used other than as a source of stickers, I later upgraded to letraset directly applied to the sleeve for anything with a light enough background). Unfortunately at some point this chronological system was replaced with a shift to storing alphabetically by artist and then within each artist in order of release; the stickers were removed and the letraset scratched off and all I have now is a bunch of scarred sleeves to testify to the old ways. They were all catalogued in a notebook as well, complete with track listings and carefully copied band and record label logos, which I wish I still had but has also been lost along the way. Probably when it got replaced by a database on the ZX Spectrum which has been continually updated and replaced via Atari ST and has now moved on to the PC.

That means that although I can make some good guesses I can’t be sure exactly of what albums followed the initial three. By the time I moved up to secondary school in September 1982 there were three sets from Geoff Love and his orchestra adapting themes from tv and film sci-fi into a disco style, a rip-off of the Star Wars soundtrack by an outfit known as The Sonic All-Stars (this is the first album I can remember buying with my own money), the real soundtrack to Return Of The Jedi, a Monkees collection on Music For Pleasure (I’ve just looked and it carried no release date), some Abba, some Madness and Dare from the Human League. But what order they arrived in can only be guessed at by the dates they hit the shops. Scattered in amongst this lot, and with the first two albums definitely being acquired the wrong way round (probably a Christmas present for the second followed by the first two months later as a birthday present), were the four albums released up to that point by the band I could not get enough of.

Flame on

Home From Home, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.

OK, so I missed last year due to laziness but the Summer Burn has opened for 2011 registration HERE and I'm in again.

If you don't know the score, sign up, burn a couple of CDs of your fave summery tunes and then send them off to the addresses you get given and receive a matched pair in return. Usually good fun, highly enjoyable and worth a punt in my book.

And if anyone wants to do a direct swap with me as well as or instead of taking a chance on the official burn then leave a comment and we'll sort out the address exchange.

Faded Formats

Faded Formats 6, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.

So last night I finally caved in and paid for my first ever music download (Mr Blue Sky by Jim Bob (you know, him off of Carter) which is to be the theme for a new Radio 4 comedy written by Andrew Collins and starting next week). I'm not sure where I stand on the technological progress line between early adopter and total luddite, but I guess this step has been a long time coming.

I've been a ready purchaser of music for as long as I can remember (starting with a rip off version of the Star Wars soundtrack performed by the Sonic All Stars) but I guess I have been putting this move off for a long time. I like an object when I splash my cash, and this was the first song I have wanted to own that I can't get in a physical format. And it feels a bit odd to have it this way - do I now add it to my database of owned music or not?

It was a wrench for me when I started buying some albums on cassette rather than vinyl. While I had gathered a few that way over the years I can remember precisely the moment that size of medium and non-scratchability outweighed the ease of being able to drop the needle on any given LP track.

October 1986 and a family day trip to London during half term. Before we hit the main objective of the day (a museum visit) we had time to visit the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street. The fact that I would have to carry them around with me for the rest of the day meant I ended up purchasing Emotional by Falco and Crash by the Human League on tape. OK, so they then went in my pockets but it somehow felt wrong. Especially as we then went on to buy a socking great dot-matrix printer around the corner on Tottenham Court Road and took turns carrying that for the rest of the day.

After that the die was cast and a succession of Walkmen were stuffed with tape after tape bought from the shops, rather than ones I'd recorded myself. Even the arrival of our first CD player in the house (and then my own) didn't stop me buying albums on tape despite the limitations of easy access to any given song and dodgy sound quality (well, they were half the price) until my final year at college in the early 90s. Something I regret now as there are stacks of them moldering away in the corner of my study and never being played.

But, if that day 26 years ago heralded the begining of the end of my vinyl purchases, have I now done the same for CDs? Probably not, because if nothing else for as long as they can be picked up on the high street or with the weekly shop I will continue to do just that. And my car stereo has no input jack so I'll need a continual supply of discs for the foreseeable there as well.

25 years gone

Simulator
Originally uploaded by The original SimonB

Just discovered it is 25 years since the Challenger launch explosion put the brakes on the US space programme and changed the lives of more than just the seven folks on board. I can see the explosion happening and the SRBs spiralling off as clear in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. A real tragic event. More here.

I know the remainder of the fleet is due to be grounded this year, but I am a child of the space age. I'd still give anything for a ride into the blackness on that big white bus. My admiration for those who do knows no limits.

Still not acheived my ambition of watching something go up in the flesh, but maybe if I start saving today we'll have enough in the bank for when the Orion/Aries or whatever they do build starts to fly.

And of course this means that in a day or two it will also be 25 years since Jean-Michel Jarre's Rendez-vous Houston concert, the tv broadcast of which is forever etched in my memory due to the snippets of crown footage they slipped in between the songs that then turned up on the album as well. "Kids, get off my car". "The most amazing sight ever seen by the human eye".

Resting my ears

audible
Originally uploaded by The original SimonB

Normally about now I would be posting my top songs of the year, but as mentioned in the post below I have hardly heard anything new at all. In fact, looking at the shelves this morning I counted a grand total of two 2010 CDs. Plenty of re-issues and stuff bought cheap in sales, but only those two day of release jobs.

Personally, I blame the BBC. Ever since they stopped showing Top Of The Pops I have become completely ignorant of what's in the charts. And on Radio Suffolk I only really listen to the Breakfast Show (which is all talk) and the Flashback Year on a Sunday. But I have also not been enthusiastic about discovering anything new either.

It has been a year of cosy sentimentality and wallowing in the familiar.

Reading other blogs has kicked me up the backside somewhat though and when Christmas is out of the way and I can spend money on myself without feeling guilty I'm off to find some new musical horizons. Suggestions welcome.

Questionable Behaviour 1

You've seen them no doubt, perhaps even sought them out to see who the victim is this time. Tucked away in boxouts in the news section, front or back page features or just propping up the small ads pages. Regular question and answer features with celebrities or just readers of the magazine. Always the same questions but often wildly different answers. So in an attempt to bare my soul in a different manner from my normal waffling I thought I'd tackle some of these myself from time to time. Some of them will need a little tweaking as I'm not an international jet-setting rock star, actor from a series you watched as a child or, er, slimming club organiser but I hope to stay true to the spirit of the originals. No idea if this will actually work or I'll kepp going, but I do intend to...

First up, All Back To My Place from Mojo:

What music are you currently grooving to?
2010 has been a year of catching up with bands I've neglected for years thanks to re-releases and a bit of digging around on the sale shelves so lots of Saxon, Megadeth, Sigur Ros and The Beatles recently. Also been enjoying some Hayseed Dixie concerts from the Internet Archive.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album?
Possibly the trickiest question known to man! There are many that I turn to over and over again when I want to drop myself into something familiar and just go along with the music. Iron Maiden's Somewhere In Time, Chumbawamba's WYSIWYG, the first All About Eve album and Ned's Atomic Dustbin's God Fodder to name just four.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
This was an unofficial version of the Star Wars soundtrack in the Welwyn Department Store (Welwyn Garden City - now a John Lewis) which was in constant rotation after seeing the film. I got a lot of stuff in there in my early record purchasing days before discovering Our Price a few streets away and really going mad.

Which musician have you ever wanted to be?
Nobody in particular, I'd just like to be able to get a tune out of somethng well enough to entertain people.

What do you sing in the shower?
Whatever I've heard most recently as a rule. Which is one reason we listen to the Radio Suffolk breakfast show as they don't play music, meaning I'm less likely to scare the neighbourhood with out of tune screeching.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?
Back before I met MrsB if ever I was going out on an evening I would try to fire myself up with somethng heavy while getting ready. Particular favourites were Slayer's Reign In Blood and the first Wildhearts e.p. Mondo-Akimbo-A-Go-Go. I felt ready for anything after those, particularly if I knew the night to come was going to feature insipid chart music as a background.

And your Sunday morning record?
A perfect time for ambient electronica - The Orb, System 7, Drum Club and that ilk.


So there you have it, one down - more to follow!

Pages have been turned

So here I am a week into a fortnight away from work and finally getting fingers to keys. MrsB has come down with Sinusitis and spent the last couple of days in bed, so we haven't been out and about as much as planned, but that does mean I've got through a couple of books which I am going to waffle on about today. Site reports from where we have managed to go another time.

Following the Fiction Fatigue mentioned previously, I decided to try something out of my normal comfort zone. Grey Area, a collection of short stories by Will Self has been sat on the shelf for a number of years (MrsB bought it for me when he first became a team captain on Shooting Stars) and part of me kind of wishes it was still there untouched. At least then I'd still have a reason to be unsure if I liked it or not! As it is, I just don't know. I have tended to shy away from what I call "literary fiction" over the years as the bits I have dipped into just don't seem to go anywhere. I want my books to engage me and give me something to look forward to beyond my life. But when I have to stop to look words up, or people just sit around not doing much I tend to lose interest. It is the same reason I don't watch certain films or tv shows.

Here we meet junkies, researchers, office workers, school kids and more - all of whom have been given enough of a tale to stop me skipping any of the stories, but not enough to have me jumping ahead to make sure they come out OK or to want to meet them again. So, nothing that really engaged me and I wouldn't agree with the rave review quotes on the jacket either. I'll maybe try something else of his if I see it cheap (or venture into the Library) but I'm not exactly rushing to Amazon.

Far more enjoyable (and back in the real world of non-fiction) was Seb Hunter's memoir Hell Bent For Leather. As may have been made obvious by posts about music, I do like a bit of the old heavy metal and Seb lived the lifestyle to the full. Born the same year as me, he picked up a guitar and made use of it rather than just listening in from the sides. Never made it big, so I can't comment on whether any of his bands were any good, but a real page-turner to find out what happened next. (And I've just spotted his website here which has MP3s, so will have to investigate those later - and he has more books I will now have to order). My only problem was that I bought this in Canada so it is a North American edition, edited for that market. Surely they can cope with the London Underground being referred to as that (or the Tube) and don't need every reference changing to the Subway? And other such cross-culturalism.

Anyhow, this brought back loads of memories for me relating how I felt about the same bands, clothes, magazines etc that Hunter mentions and has also made me dig out several old tapes to add to the "find this on CD or at least digitise it" pile. Recommended for anyone who has ever liked a guitar played loud.

Music for the masses

Well, as much as I get frustrated by things being sealed before they are ready*, I have just cast my votes in the YakYak Dancing About Architecture Festive Fifty to add my views on the music of the year.

So, for what it is worth, here are my favourite songs of the year:

1 – The Prodigy: Omen. This was destined to be my number one for the year as soon as I heard it, just top notch stuff.
2 – The Wildhearts: You Took The Sunshine From New York. Would have been number one if not for the Prodge. A sad song when you listen to it, but I find it quite uplifting musically and as some of my flickr contacts have been to the big apple this year I have some great images to go withi this.
3 – The Black Crowes: I Ain’t Hiding. The Crowes get funky in a 70s disco.
4 – Bruce Springsteen: Queen of The Supermarket. He can still do beautiful stuff about the ordinary world, although I wonder when he was last in a supermarket.
5 – Heaven And Hell: Eating The Cannibals. Dio/Iommi/Butler/Appice - Metal majesty!
6 – Jem: I Want You To… Not sure why, but this song has been stuck in my head all year so had to go on the list.
7 – Go Home Productions: Everybody’s Looking Rosy In My Garden. Home grown fun.
8 – Iron Maiden: Rime Of The Ancient Mariner (Live). A cheat really, but having loved the song since the 80s the live album gives me an excuse to vote for it.
9 – Pixie Lott: Girls And Boys. Fun pop and very catchy.
10 – Slayer: Americon. Maximum heaviosity.

Not expecting much from my selection to make the final fifty as I seem to be quite wide of the beam from many other forumites, but participation is the name of the game.

Other lists of things I liked this year to follow after it finishes!

* I can still recall being gobsmacked at seeing the book "The Chronicle Of The 20th Century" in the shops in the late '80s and thinking stuff might still happen that was worth putting in. Given that a few months later the Berlin Wall came down, communism collapsed etc I think I was ight to never buy the thing.

Not So Extreme

So yesterday saw Felixstowe's third Xtremefest over on the cliff top just along the road from us. A couple of my cousins and their offspring were up for the day so we all went along to watch people falling off their skateboards, climbing, judoing and so forth whilst being entertained by a number of up and coming local bands. It has to be said that it wasn't quite as interesting for the slightly older observer as last year - the mountain bike display team we saw twelve months ago didn't put in an appearance and we managed to miss the alternative demonstrations of martial arts and street dancing (possibly a blessing in disguise there of course). The wind was a bit fierce at times too, meaning that the water based activities were somewhat restricted.

Still, the music was pretty good at times, with Friendly Misunderstood Rabbits and Alex Body (as pictured) going down well in my ears and with those scattered in front of the stage. I picked up the second Soundwaves CD which features FMR along with nine others and follows on from the first compilation last year. It is great to see our local councils doing things like this to promote local young musicians rather than the usual ignoring of anything vaguely like "fun" for the youf!

It was also great to see the family on a happy occasion and without it being a party or anniversary or such like. Just everyone in the same place at the same time enjoying themselves.

The sounds of today

Don't let that Lastfm list over on the right lull you into a false sense of security about my musical tastes. That just happens to cover what has ended up on this PC through downloads and ripping of choice tracks to use on compilations or as ring tones or just to listen to while I'm up here. There are plenty of artists on the CD shelves not currently starring on this hard drive not to mention the drawers full of cassettes that still get the odd play and even the vinyl sat down to my left comes out once in a while (in fact the turntable has been quite busy of late as I've been sticking my old 12" singles onto the PC to then re-use as CDs). I'll come back to those some other time. Anyway, while I wouldn't go so far as to claim that the internet has revolutionised how I consume music, it has definitely had an impact in helping me find new artists as well as obtaining loads of bootleg concerts, unofficial mixes, mash-ups and the like. But I'm still one for a physical object.

I think I have conquered my past obsessive need to own every song released by certain artists with multiple format purchases of singles and albums (although knowing that there is a 1989 Dogs D'Amour B-side I'm still missing does nag at me in the wee small hours) but still have walls full of discs. It helps that the single has almost died off as a physical format of course, no temptation to wander off to the nearest record emporium every week to see what has come out, even if that does mean the supply of extra tracks to complement an album has gone too. I do still pop out once a week to look at the new albums of course, even if I then go home and order them online. Although not as often as I used to. If you'd told the 22 or 23 year old me that I'd be happy to wait for a new release until it came in the post (or even until the end of the month, or - shock horror - Christmas) I would probably have laughed in your face. With age comes patience and mortgage payments.

Which is why I am now listening to a CD I just burnt of The Future, The Past & The Present Tension - the new album from Mark Vidler aka Go Home Productions which is now available as a free download from his site. I first encountered GHP via the mash-up scene (and have several mini-discs featuring his past output, including longer mixes as well as loads of cut & paste stuff) but this is "proper" original music and I'm liking it a lot. Lots of real instruments with smaples and other stuff laced throughout. Well worth the effort of clicking on a download link and then bunging onto a shiny disc. I'm not sure really who to compare him to in terms of style - a bit of Lemon Jelly perhaps, with a smattering of indie guitar and a love of the Beatles. That doesn't really help I'm sure, but as you can find out for free don't let my feeble attempts at categorization put you off.

I have also downloaded a couple of discs worth of stuff from Soundhog tonight for future listening pleasure. Another one I found through mash-ups who has branched out into longer mix sets (which have had radio play) and remixes etc. And while I am recommending music from the interweb you could also try Paul Thorpe in his Braces Tower guise for some fun electronica.

Summer Burn 2009

Summer Burn 2009
Originally uploaded by The original SimonB

So it is Summer Burn time again. For those of you who don't know about this then sorry, you've missed out for another year but keep your eyes peeled at www.funjunkie.co.uk for next year. I also organise a copycat burn at the Llamasoft forum (www.yakyak.org) bringing together a few more people in search of a bit of music-sharing fun. You are too late to jon that one as well, but again it should be back next year.

Anyway, I thought I'd put some waffle on here about my choice of music for this year in case anyone who has received a copy of my selections wants a bit more information or anyone else is just interested.


Disc The First

1 - introduction. Edited down from the welcome message on the NME Cure cover versions CD issued back in February. Robert Smith himself invites us to listen on.

2 - Jerry Keller - Here Comes Summer. I know nothing about Keller, but have this on a rock 'n' roll compilation set and it made a suitable summery start to proceedings.

3 - EMF - Long Summer Days. From the album Schubert Dip. One of my favourite bands it wasn't hip to like when I was at college due to their perceived one-hit wonder status and the ubiquity of Unbelievable. Many people are still surprised to learn they managed three albums before splitting.

4 - The Prodigy - Omen. From this year's superb Invaders Must Die set. Thought this was the best track on the album when I first heard it, and still hold that opinion.

5 - how deep. Dialogue from The Abyss.

6 - Metallica - Cyanide. First track I heard a snippet of from Death Magnetic and it stuck in my brain and wouldn't go away. Particularly attracted to the little bass noodles. Plus this came to me last year around the time my uncle comitted suicide and just resonated lyrically as well.

7 - Heaven & Hell - Rock & Roll Angel. Dio era Sabbath reform, find new name, release killer album. Had to have something on here.

8 - Iron Maiden - Can I Play With Madness. From Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son - reminds me of summer 1988 when it was first released and now of this year in the live version on Flight 666 soundtrack.

9 - Salty Dog - Lonesome Fool. I like a bit on banjo from time to time. From the album Every Dog Has Its Day.

10 - corsets. Angela Rippon helps us to shape up and dance.

11 - Muse - Man Of Mystery. They compiled a cover disc for the NME last year and recorded this Shadows cover especially for it. I like the original but also this verison, and it was time for an instrumental.

12 - Altered Images - I Could Be Happy. Was obsessed by Claire Grogan when I was younger so here's one of her best moments. From Pinky Blue.

13 - Living Colour - Type. 1991, end of the second year at College and I was bribed with a CD to get my hair cut and try to find a summer job. Time's Up was the CD and the summer job at Argos eventually lead to me meeting MrsB so in the end it was worth the sacrifice of a few inches of hair.

14 - The Monkees - Last Train To Clarksville. They may have been manufactured, and not written or even performed most of their hits, but some times the Monkees just can't be topped.

15 - Izzy Stradlin - Surf Roach. From the album 117 degrees, which is perfect for a warm summer afternoon when there's nothing else to do but sit back and play some tunes. Always was my favourite member of Guns N' Roses too.

16 - Monsterworks - Leaving Home. Found these guys on the interweb, not too keen on the vocals but this is a good interlude.

17 - Goat - Everybody Wants To Be There. Another band from my college days that disappeared without a trace. Still enjoy a spin of Medication Time every now and then though.

18 - Bomb The Bass - Liquid Metal (Fantastic 4 Mix). Tim Simenon helped me realise that dance music was not all rubbish. Original version can be found on Unknown Territories but this was a B-side.

19 - Pop Will Eat Itself - PWEIzation. B-side to Karmadrome, and I think it was also on the Very Metal Noise Pollution ep. Part of the Stourbridge trio also featuring Ned's Atomic Dustbin and The Wonder Stuff. Takes me back to Rock City in Nottingham.

20 - Unmen - Also With You. From an issue of Volume. Never found anything else by them, but I do like this.

21 - scruffy looking. I stole this snippet from the Radio Gnome Premix on the Gong rarities CD, no idea where they got it from though.

22 - Levellers - Burn America Burn. To be found on Letters From The Underground, I could listen to something by the Levellers every day and not get tired of them.

23 - Chumbawamba - Add Me. Taken from The Boy Bands Have Won, the Chumblies respond to Facebook and its ilk.

24 - Fleet Foxes - In The Hot, Hot Rays. Biggest find of last year for me, this comes from their debut ep sold at early gigs and, er, lurking on the magical electric intermaweb if you look hard enough. A nice summery tune to end this disc with.

25 - eod1. The end!


Disc The Second

1 - sagging bottoms. Some more sound advice from Angela.

2 - Whapweasel - Aren’t Crisps Brilliant? From a Rock & Reel cover disc, I know nothing more but like it.

3 - The Zutons - Valerie. Because, quite frankly, the original deserves to be heard more than the Amy Winehouse version.

4 - Chumbawamba - All Fur Coat And No Knickers. Another quick visit to the Boy Bands...

5 - Daevid Allen - Captain Shaw & Mr. Gilbert. A brief interlude of silliness before we get back to music.

6 - Angel Brothers - Django. Another Rock & Reel cover disc tune I like.

7 - The Dogs D’Amour - Drunk Like Me. From the Errol Flynn album.

8 - The Cure - Friday I’m In Love. One of those bands where I like everything I've ever heard, but never got round to investigating them properly hence at present I only own the greatest hits album. One of these days I'll invest in the whole set though, I'm sure.

9 - Johnny Marr & Billy Duffy - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. Taken from the NME Ruby Trax compilation which is well worth seeking out if you can find a copy second hand. Loads of great cover versions on there.

10 - Black Grape - Kelly’s Heroes. I never really got into the Happy Mondays, but Shaun Ryder's second project and I get on quite well. This one's from It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah!

11 - The Police - Canary In A Coalmine. A bit of light-heartedness from Zenyatta Mondatta. The band I am most likely to return to if I can't decide what to listen to when staring at the wall of CDs.

12 - Jem - I Want You To... From second album Down To Earth, which quite caught me by surprise when I saw it in the shops as I assumed she was doomed to just releasing the one.

13 - Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly - In Between Days. From the NME Cure covers compilation that also provided the introduction. I'm probably far too old to be a fan of Get Cape... but I was intrigued by the name, took a chance of the first album and really found something I like. A
great mix of acoustic guitars and technology.

14 - real men. Dialogue from Torchwood Series One episode Out Of Time.

15 - New Order - Regret. See The Cure above!

16 - Chumbawamba - The Ogre. A final trip to meet the Boy Bands.

17 - Gong - Clarence In Wonderland. This comes from their Peel sessions disc and features Kevin Ayers on vocals.

18 - the world. Dialogue from Dr Who (new) Series Two episode Love & Monsters.

19 - The Prodigy - Omen Reprise. See above - they were very helpful in providing this on the album so I could re-visit the theme here!

20 - The Human League - Tell Me When (Mix 1). My favourite band to come from Sheffield, you can find the original verison on Octopus.

21 - snowball artists. Dialogue from Ghostbuster. Who you gonna call?

22 - The Wildhearts - Vanilla Radio. Single Version, also to be found on The Wildhearts Must Be Destroyed.

23 - Steve Hillage - Still Golden. From And Not Or. A sequencing cock-up here, this should have been track 25 but I didn't notice until I'd burnt the discs. Feel free to programme the CD player to make it appear in the right place.

24 - Bananarama - Venus. A feel good single, despite the Stock Aitken Waterman influence I do liek this a lot.

25 - this is an oldie. Dialogue from Back To The Future. As above, this should be swapped with Steve Hillage.

26 - Sarabeth Tucek - Good Night. The closer comes from the Mojo White Album covered set. I like to end these things with something gentle, and this is it.

Hope that tickles your tastebuds.

Not a diary

Just thought I'd mention, should anyone wonder, that I've not brought this back in order to keep it up as a diary as happened in the past. That was never my intention last time and somehow it slipped into a list of things I'd been up to rather than a place to get my thoughts down in words.

So don't expect daily posts and details of what we had for tea - unless it was something worth writing about of course! I do intend to go back to talking about the books I read, music I listen to and so forth though in amongst more discursive posts.

To that end, right now I have stuck Media Player on a random trawl through the music on the hard drive and so far have experienced:

808 State - Timebomb (Fon Mix)

Interference - Overload (Live)

Back To The Planet - Teenage Turtles (Extended Version)

A snippet of an interview between Jeremy from the Levellers and Simon Munnery, and

Hot Chocolate - Are You Getting Enough Happiness.

Which goes to prove something about which CDs I've ripped but quite what I'm not sure!

Tonight I have also listened to the latest Collings and Herrin Podcast (I get them here, but you can also find them on iTunes) as created by Andrew Collins and Richard Herring. For now suffice it to say that I enjoy them terribly and that Mr C's three volumes of memoirs are some of my favourite books and will probably get their own post at some point. Give the podcast a go if you can spare one hour, six minutes and thirty six second smetime.

Things to read

So, why have I decided to come back into the blogsphere just now?

Well, I've spent the last five years reading other people's words after getting fed up with trying to think of my own. Gradually the need to waffle on again has overtaken me and adding the occasional comment to the other blogs I read hasn't fulfilled that need, so here I am having a go a the real thing for myself once more. Hopefully someone, somewhere will get some enjoyment out of reading this along the line.

Some of those other blogs have been talking about magazines recently (see for example David Hepworth and five-centres) and that got me thinking about the ones I have pored my way through over the years.

There were always magazines in the house when I was growing up. Mum favoured My Weekly and Family Circle while Dad was a subscriber to National Geographic and also had some relating to his job as an Electrical Engineer. There were also two others we had all the time, but I'll come back to those later.

When we first got our ZX81 (and probably beforehand during the decision making) the Computer Magazine made it into our lives. Sinclair User was the first, to be followed in time and as the computer changed by Your Spectrum/Your Sinclair, Crash, Computer & Video Games, ST Format, Edge, Mean Machines, Mega, Games TM and Retro Gamer. I have subscribed to some of these over the years, and bought others off the shelf religiously every month but now find I read no computer or gaming magazines at all.

Music mags had a stronger hold on me, with Q, Kerrang, Raw Power, Sounds, NME, Mojo, Vox, Classic Rock, Rock & Reel and even Lime Lizard holding my weekly or monthly affections from time to time. But, as with the computer ones, I have stopped buying music magazines at present. I will still dip in when there is something particularly tasty on the cover or something I want to hear on a covermount CD but there is just too much out there and not enough time to consume it for me to be a regular reader right now.

So what do I still get month in, month out? Well, just SFX and Death Ray (and that one is a bi-monthly publication anyway). I've been buying SFX since the first issue and just can't seem to stop. Same with Death Ray. Even if I do only read half of most issues these days. Too many articles on films and tv shows I'm just not interested in, but enough wheat within the chaff to keep me going.

And then there's the Radio Times. This, along with the TV Times up until the listings market got de-regulated and we onlyhad to get one, has been the staple magazine of my entire life. I cannot remember a time when Tuesday evening wasn't spent ploughing through the listings to see what we might want to watch next week. The arrival of the Christmas double-issue, presaaged by a couple of weeks of early publications, is still one of the highlights of the year. Even if the amount I actually choose to sit down and watch shrinks on an almost daily basis, knowing what I have to choose from (or choose to avoid) is one of those things I just have to work out. Every Tuesday.

This is bizarre. Or totally expected. I have sneakily installed the BBC radio player software to the work PC and am typing this listening to a repeat of last Sunday's "Freak Zone" from BBC Radio 6. One of the stations only available through digital radio/satellite/the web. I would listen to it at home through the dish if I ever remembered to. We are not in a digital coverage zone yet in Felixstowe so not worth buying a proper digital radio (ideally I'd like a pocket one that could travel around with me, and indeed use at work as the quality via the web is pretty appalling). Anyway, the show in question is usually hosted by Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden but as he is off on tour at the moment Paul Morley of Words And Music fame. And he is talking just like the book was written. Which is, as stated, either bizarre or expected. However, I am prepared to put up with that and the low quality as he played some of the stuff mentioned in the book I'd not encountered before. Which is great.

So we are both back at work. Not too bad for me. Yesterday mainly spent catching up on loads of emails and sorting out staff discount and new stops for Park & Ride linked to the office move. Not so good for Joan but she is plodding on and only has to get to the end of next week before she is off again anyway. She did speak to someone high up in personnel about the whole situation which hopefully will help in the long term, but left her feeling sick when having to do it.

Oh, and we watched the film version of Chicago on Sunday night. Very glossy and fun.