Boo's Bloke is Back

Increasingly these days I get puzzled and sometimes pitying looks when I mention that the Boo Radleys were/are my favourite band ever, usually from people who are perhaps a few years too young to remember Giant Steps and might just remember Wake Up Boo! as a sort of summer novelty single. Little do they know that this will prompt me into embarking on a well-practiced rant taking in everything from Coltrane to acid trips I've done, which boils down to the fact that the Boos were the bestest faroutest most risktaking and interesting band of the 90s and Martin Carr is up there with the best songwriters in the country.

So hurrah then, that having put his bravecaptain project to bed and disappeared from view for a year or two he's back with a myspace page and some new songs, sans laptop but with guitars and (yay!) some trumpets. Go listen...

They're stealing the skies

Just when you think they* couldn't find new ways to piss you off, this. Floating logos made from I don't care what. And illustrated with the CND/peace sign, too, as if to say "we're groovy and we want to make the planet a better place". Er. No. You're just a pair of fuckwit fratboys who want to take one of the last remaining unspoilt things about this planet and cover it in corporate faeces. You cunts.

Hanging is too good. Drawing, quartering, repeated exposure to Metal Machine Music, this is all too good for them. What would Bill do? Something pretty damn violent involving shotguns, perhaps.

The only crumb of comfort is that they're in Atlanta. Let's hope they stay there.


(*I don't know who "they" are as a group. But they're out there, for sure).

True

XKCD rocks. A few days ago he aped Calvin and Hobbes (or should that be tigered?). And this is nice and pithy. But hit the random button and you'll be away.

Coffee rant

Now, I've always thought coffee was shit. It tastes horrible, it gives me headaches, it gives rise to these vaguely culty chains of coffee shops where ordering is more complicated than filling out a tax return. And it isn't tea.

So, I'm not a fan. But I never imagined that even weirdo coffee drinkers could stoop as far as to drink coffee made from the undigested beans that have been shat by a civet. What. The. Fuck. Do tea drinkers piss on their tea leaves before brewing up? No. Do gourmets insists that truffles are covered in pig saliva? No. Has caffeine sent the whole planet mad?! Clearly.

Although the palm civet is rather cute...

...it won't prevent me from seeing Starbucks and Cafe Nero as some kind of respectable front for copraphiliacs from now on. And thinking that coffee really is shit.

"See my car keys? You'll never get these"

Yeah, boyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Tonight's Lesson from the Book of Eric

"The two facts which even now are not very widely grasped, and which should be made the centre of all anti-war agitation... are:

1. That war against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
2. That every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac."

- George Orwell, New Statesman, August 1937.

Big Brother is not a gamer

The beeb has a typically incisive report here about a new effort to locate terrorists online. Apparently it's inevitable that terrorists will make greater use of the internet. Who'd a thunk? And there's an increase in "horsepower" (no, really) in the attacks on the net's infrastructure. Those pesky equine jihadis.

Anyway. It's all much of a muchness, an article that was clearly written by an intern on secondment from the Worcestershire Dahlia Grower's Monthly. So hats off, then, to the subeditor that captioned this picture. Haven't laughed so much in ages...

No, they'll be playing Medal of Honor. As the bad guys.

A Space Warning from Sun Ra

Found this in an old magazine recently. Apparent the earth is on the note of G currently. Well I never...

Overheard on the train

Middle-aged woman 1:- "What does he know that we don't know?"
Middle-aged woman 2:- "Well, you just don't know, do you?"

Indeed.

Gerbil-jazz and other thought experiments

Plucked from the ether using a theremin made of jam...

Sun Ra: You make lots of noise?
John Cage: Yeah, pretty much.
Sun Ra: What are you doing on Thursday afternoon?
John Cage: Well, I have to swing by the ironmongers to pick up some prepared pianos, but I can make it at 3.
Sun Ra: Excellent. How does the key of ecce-ptang strike you?
John cage: My favourite!

(Later...)
Sun Ra: I've made a new instrument out of my own mind.
John Cage: Does it sound anything like this?

(Silence for three days).

Sun Ra: Yeah... yeah it does.
John Cage: I like the way you think.
Sun Ra: Press record will you, my dear fellow.
John Cage: Let's not get too conventional here. I've invented a new recording process using gerbils and muscle memory.
Sun Ra: Wow! Did you know that the ancient Egyptians worshipped gerbils as the bringers of wisdom?
John Cage: Yes.
Sun Ra: Ok, so which end do I blow into? And which one's the alto?

(Musical interlude while Sun Ra blows a complicated series of triplets that spell "smug git" in Assyrian).

John Cage: Can I wear your hat?

(The hat is handed over with much mumbling of chakras).

Sun Ra: Why did the road cross the chicken?
John Cage: For the same reason that makes you wear the robes, i guess.
Sun Ra: Can i have my hat back please?
John Cage: Just another five minutes and twenty three and a half seconds, i promise.
Sun Ra: Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
John Cage: I liked the aeolian cadences in the third movement.
Sun Ra: Give me my hat back.
John Cage: Oh, sorry. I've sewn it to the cheeks of 3 of the gerbils. Let's see how they decide to notate that.


Jon gets half the blame, incidentally. Mod far out.

I hate Mancunians

I'm watching a late-night music show on channel 4 about some chancers from Manchester called the Courteneers. Rainy-day Arctic Monkeys with Oasis haircuts. Seemed inoffensive enough, but then the main man said "I'd never write anything I didn't think was brilliant..."

Oh for fuck's sake. How low are his standards? Take some acid and spend some time with Martin Carr's record collection you idiot.

Amazing the prejudices Ian Rush has installed in me.

The Sun Ra Quilt of Joy

Featuring...

and...

and who could forget...

That last one's a doozy. Can you imagine the racket they'd make?!

Mod out on the 12.53 Interstellar Spaceways local to Giza.

Top tunes of 2007

Off the top of my head of an evening...

1. Rhinestone Cowboy - MF Doom. "A lot of bitches think he's overly chauvinistic" and other gems.
2. Candylion - Gruff Rhys. Nutter.
3. Rocksteady - Aretha Franklin. An alternate mix I found with souped up bass that takes it from being a pop song into a serious piece of proto-funk. (Or summat like that).
4. White Chalk - PJ Harvey. Comforting bedtime nightmares from scary aunty Polly.
5. Like a Summer Thursday - Townes Van Zandt. I've still got a long way to go before I know even half his stuff, but this is just perfect.

As for 2008, where are you Roots Manuva?

I knew it

Tony Blair's a wanker,
Tony Blair's a wanker,
la la la la
la la la laaa.

Tony Blair's a wanker,
Tony Blair's a wanker,
la la la la
la la la laaa.........

Or Tony "I'd love to suck Jesus' cock" Bliar to give him his full title. Can't believe I ever voted for him.

Galaxies, sir, thousands of them

No way are we alone in this universe.

Paul Simon singing Brian Wilson

Ignore the annoying announcer bloke. This is just lovely...

Yep

(From the Gibson forum).

"Whaddaya gonna do?"

RIP Sopranos. Best. TV. Ever. (Even though the last series was a bit pants). Better swearing than the West Wing, better haircuts than the Wire, and less Lovejoy actors than Deadwood. Some of my random favourite things about it:-

1. Sil. The hair. The suits. The terrible Al Pacino impressions.
2. Paulie. Again with the hair. He loved his mum, the big cuddly psychopath. And the fact that he survived is kind of sweet.
3. Steve Buscemi. Turned an already genius series into the best goddam weekly fix that you've ever experienced.
4. The swearing. For me, the best swearing was one time when Tony was pulled over by a black cop for speeding. He tries to bribe him, but gets nowhere and a ticket anyway. As he pulls away and passes the cop he mutters "Affirmative action cocksucker". Not big, not clever, but it doesn't half trip off the tongue.
5. The music. The closing credits invariably had the perfect tune to come down off an episode with. If fucking Channel 4 hadn't trailed Big Brother and other shite over it that would have been perfect. Thanks, you idiots.
6. Lauren Bacall getting punched in the face. What other show could write that?!

And probably lots more. It got out just in time, the last series had a lot of padding but it picked up enough in the end to make me miss it now it's gone. Cheers Tony you fat fuck.

In praise of gambling

Hurrah for the boks. For all the media hype about England's brave band of crocked old men, the best team in the tournament won it. I watched it with a friend who loves to gamble on sports. He's way more interested in it than I could ever be and has developed an approach that's left him significantly up after several years. Not enough to buy a yacht, but it's certainly kept him in beers. Rule number one is don't bet on horses, with baseball a close second, apparently.

The South African win last night was a triple whammy for him, and it's interesting to note what his winning bets were. He had a tenner on the boks from the beginning of the tournament at 9-1, which is fair enough, and then two other bets on last night's game, neither of which I'd have ever considered but both of which make perfect sense. Firstly England to not score a try (nice one, Mark Cueto's little toe), and then the total points scored to be under 38. Both no-brainers, really, when you look at the form. So, beers on him, then.

Any doubts I had about whether I'd soften my usual anti-England stance and support them even a little bit evaporated the first time they showed the princes. Fucking leeches. And what was with Gordon Brown, the French rightwing bloke and Thabo "AIDS isn't a big deal" Mbeki all up on the podium? Just weird. Surely Catherine Deneuve would've sufficed?

Is it just me?

Front of the Observer Music Magazine today, Paul McCartney and Pete Doherty. Jesus. I don't know who to be more angry at. The Observer for printing this rubbish, Macca for being a publicity whore, or the smackhead for being a talentless, well, smackhead. What's the point? Who cares? When did this become worthy of an exclusive splash?

Ok, so the paper know people will buy it whatever they do. I do. But then I buy it for the crossword, and the sport. Macca knows it'll make him seem just a little less like a pensioner who spends too much on hair dye. And smackhead must just be a lunatic if he believes the hype.

Now, I admit, I never heard the Libertines. But they looked good, and made the right people make the right noises and fair enough. But since then what has he done? Where did he cross the line from tosser who's done a bit of music to troubadour in the lineage of Blake and Rimbaud? It's that bloody Kate Moss, that's who. The media now believe he farts Booker Prize winners. I wish he'd just overdose and put an end to it, frankly. Although that would lead to people calling it "the ultimate show of artistic self-expression" and putting him up with all the other corpses who punch below their weight, Morrison and Curtis and Cobain and so on. And that would that. The orthodoxy of iconography. And that would piss me off too. So I don't know. But he can fuck off whatever.