In the end I went to see King Creosote and fellow Fence-r
The Pictish Trail again the other night. Not quite the same without the rest of the Collective...

And on the subject of tea...for goodness sake put the milk in first!

Russell Davis who surely drinks more tea than most people, has finally come across one of my favourite places in London, The Regency Cafe in deepest Pimlico.
He's also been on a tour of coastal cafes around Britain.

I finally got around to reading The Boy Looked At Johnny Burchill and Parsons' pamphlet on the ruins of punk (it's been sitting on the shelf like a museum exhibit since I brought it back from finding it in the greatest bookshop ever, in Sydney)
Anyway thought I'd read it in anticipation of seeing
Julie Burchill Is Away on the Edinburgh Fringe. More about that later.

Mijim AKA my brother has a gig in Berlin this weekend.


William Shatner has a new album out!

I was on the Fred MacAuley Show this morning! My first time as a radio pundit.. didn't really get a word in edgewise, and I don't think I read enough tabloids or care enough about their contents to have much input, but the producer asked me (having seen my Funny Women set). I didn't seem to be able to interupt with my twopenarth...
Gah! In my dreams I'd be a music DJ anyway. I think as ever the problem is I just don't have much ambition to be just another voice yabbering away about nothing.

I've been wallowing in nostalgia for my lost youth with the arrival of the DVD of the second series of Press Gang reading the comments on Amazon gives a flavour of how important a show it was at the time. Watching it again, it was scarey how ingrained it was in my consciousness. Weird how spongey your brain still is when you're about 15...
It was just as enjoyable to watch now as it was when I used to rush home from school, to be parked in front of the telly in time for it to start. Julia Sawalha, (AKA Lynda Day, AKA Attilla The Skirt, Editrix, fashion disaster area and teen role model extraordinaire) says in the commentary for the last episode that it's kind of sad to look back on making the show because they were such good times, and I found myself feeing quite sad too, all the fresh faced (and in the case of Dexter - nearly fresh faced) actors will be in their wrinkly thirties by now...
Mind you for the rest of the commentary all she can remember from the show were the bits where they got to snog on screen. They were going out at the time, I remember reading about it in Look In!

Watching telly relieved me of the hangover caused by DJ-ing and hanging out with Kirby after their gig at Stereo...

I'm still doing my head in reading Words & Music - The History of Pop In The Shape of A City by Paul Morley. As the original pretentious music journalist, he's making all the right points, fitting together a version of musical history that goes from John Cage to Kylie Minogue and he pretty much lets his mind wander all over the subject, which is making this book hard going at times - some kind of technological innovation that allows you hear the music he's talking about automatically as you read the book would help. Maybe I'm being too prosaic about it. And it's reading this kind of journalism that fills my head with words like 'prosaic' in the first place. Maybe I just need to drag myself fully into the 21st century and get an iPod...
Anyway, I've nearly finished it, having yet to tackle all the lists.
Here's what City of Sound thinks of it.

The best site on the internet!!!

I have recovered from T in the Park. Having missed most of the afternoon on Saturday due to traffic, I saw the very right-on and incredibly tall Michael Franti and Spearhead, Ash and their pyrotechnic guitar, a sadly depleted Libertines, a few of the Wu Tang Clan shouting MummyFupper a lot, The Delays and the whole of The Bees set which meant I was completely oblivious to the Darkness! On Sunday I got there on time to see Scissor Sisters wearing a lot of tartan (but missed them 'not wearing' it), the whole of Franz Ferdinand's set, the one-that-sounds really-great by The Killers, the set-of-the-weekend by The Rapture, where I got covered in glitter and complimented a man on his pigeon (last seen at Glastonbury...) A rather underwhelming few songs from PJ Harvey and Kings of Leon both overshadowed by the all conquering Pixies as great as 3 bald men and Kim Deal could possibly have been. Distorted bass-noise from Massive Attack concluded the weekend because I wasn't going to stick around and watch The Strokes murdering a Clash track...

The Coen Brother's latest The Lady Killers was thoroughly disappointing. Put aside the fact it was a remake, put aside it was a remake of an Ealing Comedy with Alec Guinness, even put aside the fact it was a Coen Brothers movie, it was still just a straightforwardly not very good piece of work.
The question has to be asked -Have the Coens lost it? well, I quite liked The Hudsucker Proxy, controversially my least favorites of theirs have been Raising Arizona and The Man Who Wasn't There, and even though Intolerable Cruelty was below their usual par, it still made for a better than average comedy, but The Ladykillers was pointless, unfunny, and only made bearable by the gospel music.
The drunken ned who'd let himself in via the fire exit left the building in disgust!

Some times you just need a big dumb action movie. Like The Transporter or something - Ah noisy, thinly plotted, riotous nonsense!


Finally on a cinematic note. Does Brando's passing mean that they'll show some of his lost movies on TV - Viva Zapata?

Saw Toots & The Maytals last night. Rather a terrace singalong feel to the whole thing, but I put aside my qualms and danced anyway. Consequently my knees hurt from doing the reggae skank...

For some unknown reason the person selling Sopranos videos on eBay has got the theme tune to what we think is the Red Hand Gang. This prompted a flood of nostalgia, triggered mostly by this picture of the gang. Apparently there were only ever 12 episodes. Weird what an effect it had on the childhood imagination.

Mr Stooge made me a panda! Thanks Kenfold!


which in turn lead me to Google for pandas, and I found a music blog called Soviet Panda which is a little hectic but interesting.

As there is nothing but sport on TV, I intend to watch all of the episodes of The Sopranos again, hence visits to eBay. I won't look at that site though as it no doubt gives all the plotlines away!