Choons

Twice a year Ford and I exchange compilations to keep us both more informed about the stupid amount of music we miss all the time. While I miss tapes and their 90 minute running time, I can't deny the future rocks, and since he's posted his compilation, I might as well post mine.

It's a broadly funky set, with only a small dip in the middle to allow for Jenny Lewis. Tracks below, get it here. And if you can't be arsed to wade through it all, I'd advise you to get on your good foot, fire up the P2P and download It's My Thing by Marva Whitney, cos not even JB himself can be that insistent and in your face.

Mother Popcorn - James Brown

It's My Thing - Marva Whitney
Change My Thoughts From You - Erma Franklin
Proud Mary - Solomon Burke
When The Meth Comes Marching In - dj BC
How High The Moon - Slim Galliard
Streetlife - Randy Crawford & The Crusaders
Bottom Of The World - Tom Waits
A New England (live) - Kirsty MacColl & Billy Bragg
Paradise - Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins
Liv pa Mars - Anni-Frid Lyngstad
Shinjiro ft. Mos Def - DJ Krush
Mr. Pharmacist - The Other Half
Memo from Turner - The Rolling Stones
Ya Ya - Lee Dorsey
Susie-Q - Dale Hawkins
You've Been Drunk - Champion Jack Dupree
Night Train - James Brown

Happy Birthday Speccy

It was twenty-five years ago today that rubber-keyed goodness descended upon us. Clive Sinclair got a knighthood out of it before suddenly failing to invent anything decent ever again. At 8 I was totally blown away by games like Knight Lore or Alien 8, and while both the BBC and Commodore could be argued to be better, the Speccy looked way cooler, and was significantly smaller as well. I still sort of miss it.

10 Print "Mod Out"
20 Goto 10

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Bastard Bastard American Bastard Bastards*

Read this article from yesterday's Guardian. Go on. Written by one of the lawyers trying to help the prisoners in Guantanamo, it's a shocking indictment of how weird the US military is. Beyond the torture and the wider questions about how many of the men should actually be there, it details how hard they have made it for anyone to help them, let alone free them. Among the things he's prevented from taking into his clients are National Geographic and Runner's World; all his notes have to go via Washington where everything is censored, and they blatantly lie to him without seeming to care that he knows it.

What the fuck is their problem? This has gone so far through the looking glass and up the white rabbit's arse that I'm not even sure whether I know who to hate. Bush, Cheney, the US military, for sure, but what about the individuals involved at all levels? Don't they have a single bit of conscience? I guess you trade that at the door for a big shiny gun, and anyone who wants to be in an army is clearly psychotic to start with.

Although I do think that Runner's World looks dangerous. All those healthy people. It's not right.


*Not all of them, of course. Just the ones in uniform. And the rightwing ones. And the Dave Matthews Band.

New Yorker quote of the day

I've just read a 4 page article on Kingsley Amis on the New Yorker website (like you do) and this made me laugh...

"Pornography was to British writers of the fifties what the Communist Party was to French writers of the time; they didn’t entirely approve of it, but felt that being attached to it would keep them from being seen as mere intellectuals"

Maybe you had to have been there.

What about Paul and Ringo?

In scanning in graffiti photos for my fotolog, I noticed that I'd snapped two Beatles:-

It's going to really annoy me if I can't find the other two.

Fab Mod out.

Good weirdness

My latest web-comic find is A Softer World, which has just started replacing Steve Bell in the Guardian while he goes off and trims his beard or whatever it is that he does. It's appealingly bleak and odd while little pockets of truth shine through and make you nod in agreement, and the photographic format is definitely a winner. So that's at least 3, if not 4, online strips I'm checking daily now.

Mod out to find a life.

The Eye of the Duck Storm

David Lynch is doing weather forecasts. No, really. Every day on his site he sits there, peers up at the sky and announces the temperature, sky colour, passing cloud formations and other important data. Of course, being LA it's not very interesting weather, which is perhaps the point, but it's worth it for of his slightly out-there way of speaking and completely insane hair. I found it strangely comforting to be wished a good day by the director of Blue Velvet before I go to work.

Go see for yourself. It's the lower right button.

Beer and bonkers behaviour

So I went to Yorkshire properly for the first time over Easter. There was a duck race, too much food and lots of good beer. Under the influence of said beer I found myself admitting that ok, sure, Yorkshire beer was better than the Sussex stuff. In particular Absolution Ale from Sheffield, which at 5.3% was both delicious and deadly and made me into a turncoat for my county. Oh well.

I can't say too much about the Pace Egg play, beyond what was obvious. Some kind of St. George related mummery, performed four times in increasing stages of drunkenness, a character called Toss Pot and a lot of in-jokes and heckling. The performance we saw was the third, and was notable for St. George accidentally getting twatted over the head during a (drunken) duel and blood rushing down his face. Luckily a local mother darted in with a wetwipe to save the country's national icon from having to go to A&E. And on it went, bad singing, lines being forgotten, plenty of shouting and a sword fight every 3 minutes. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed something as much. Maybe it was the beer.

Beardyman

He's got a beard, he's the UK Beatboxing Champion, he's a Brightonian, and he cooks...
(arf).

FIP

Nope, it's definitely gone now. Both on 98.5 and 91. The man has won. Oh well.

Mod off to download another two Bob Dylan shows.


Edit - oh, it's back. I'm going to stop going on about it now...

Pulp Fiction

From a time when small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, the cover art of Ron Turner. More unlikely spaceships and angry Venusians than you could possibly need of a day. Gratuitous breasts, 1950s chrome-finned optimism, giant hands crushing the Empire State Building, it's all there. Magnificent. And isn't Vargo Statten is a superb name for a scifi writer?

Mod out to dust down his kill-o-ray and replenish the duodenium cells on his space hopper. Or something.

Dark Satanic Mills

I went to Yorkshire for the first time on the weekend. It weren't bad. Not as good as Sussex, or indeed Lancashire, but not bad. Nice hills and stuff. But I was mostly taken by the massive cooling towers right by the motorway going through Sheffield (above), about as dramatic a view as I've ever seen. They'd never allow that down south...

Reep Feep

One of the best things about living in Brighton (apart from the sea, the pubs, the overpriced everything, the Londoners and so on) is FIP. A French radio station which for years we've been mysteriously able to pick up on normal radios on exactly 91 FM. It plays everything from Billie Holiday to Wu Tang, and being French, they very sensibly play all the tunes with the swearwords left in. So refreshing. No ads, and almost no talking (and what talking there is is in French. Parfait). About one tune in four is actually French, and a similar amount are jazz, especially when you really need it on a Sunday afternoon. It's the sound of Brighton, they even come over and DJ in pubs and people sit round drinking red wine congratulating themselves on their taste. More than they usually do, that is.

But now it's gone. 91 FM is a wasteland of static, and I fear that maybe one of the urban myths about it was true; that some kind soul was boosting the signal in his loft, and he's just been busted. We can still listen to it online, but it's not the same as having it on a transistor radio in the park.

RIP FIP. Mod out to buy half of Maplins and put this injustice right.

Muse of the Month

Well, the last 3 months, really. Basquiat Scrawls' post on Joanna Newsom got me wondering why I haven't given her the time of day yet. The same friend that fixed her up pressed a copy of that album into my hand a while back, with what sound like the same fairly exacting listening instructions. And what have I done? Nothing. Because of Jenny Lewis. I only have time for one bewitching cute genius in my life, you see.

"Have mercy, have mercy, have mercy on me
Let's pretend that everybody here wants peace..."

"And it's a Pink Moon..."

Prague

No-one tells me anything. I was in the pub earlier when I noticed some people in the street pointing at the sky. Either it was the start of a bohemian production of War of the Worlds, or someone was naked up a lamp post. So I went outside and lo, it was a lunar eclipse in progress. Why don't people tell me these things?

All over the North Lanes people were standing outside pubs talking and looking at the sky, some trying, and mostly failing, to explain it to each other. I shared a Bonnie Tyler joke with someone while drinking a Lagavulin. Had to be done.

I was going to name this post after the Pink Floyd album. But then I went and sat on a bench across the street and watched it turning pink, or perhaps orangey-red if you're going to be pedantic, and thought of Nick Drake. Pink Moon's going to get us all, people...

Mod out to check on the celestial alignments for Doomsday.

PS Ok, so I can't resist it. "There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact it's all dark".

Billboard

Lovely. C/o the Gibson board.

Francis Wheen's Top 10 Delusions

Read this. He rants so much more elegantly than I ever could.

Pun of the day

I went to a stamp meeting tonight. Don't ask. Really. But it was sort of a family obligation and it ended up being mildly interesting, if only because I got talking to this guy who'd been a botanist and lived for many years in Borneo.

Apparently there's a family of trees out there with the latin name Fordia - Fordia Splendidissima, Fordia Coriacea, and so on (google tells me). Apparently this chap's friend who was constantly discovering new species discovered a new member of this family, and named it Fordia Cortina.

Genius. And a joke that will only apply for a few more decades before no-one will get it. See Ford Prefect.

From Shaolin to the Big Easy

I haven't checked out dj BC's site in a while, and there's lots of new mashed-up goodness to download there. Most thrillingly, Wu Orleans, a 10 track compilation of Staten Island's finest with various funky Louisiana grooves.

It's all a bit silly, but none the worst for it, and the final track "When the Meth Comes Marching In" does exactly what it says on the tin. Download it here.

I got the whole thing from a torrent, although it was sporadic and took a while to complete. In case anyone cares.

Mod out for gumbo, g.

PS In other news, I was right about 2000AD according to the BBC. And who else are you going to trust?

Pictures of New York

Fantastic old shots here. Make sure you have plenty of time, there are loads...