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Wednesday, 30 March 2005

recently, it's been business as usual for the PM

Saturday, 26 March 2005

OK so i was being a bit tongue in cheek about Howard Flight earlier,

maybe he's onto something,

maybe he's mistaken


but you have to read from the same hymn-sheet


he's fair value about how only his local people can really get rid of him (if they so desire), fair's fair, that's what it's all about

a suspicion remains though...

...i've not got anything to top the likes of the spoofs Clampdown Joe posted (via somewhere) the other day


but my favourite graffito on the Tory posters so far (and i daresay there's been a lot)

was on one of the bog-standard ones (i can't think what it was, i think it was one about prison)

underneath the 'are you thinking what we're thinking?'

someone had written in black marker, thus

YES, I'M A SIMPLISTIC FASCIST TOO!
oh that new Snoop album, top bombing


so the new Dr Who, well tinkering with theme tunes apart what fun!

a Salford accent and thank whoever for Billie Piper, almost bee-stung lips like a young Swindon Kim Basinger, very cute indeed, Siena Miller eye makeup apparently, boho chic to interviewers who transcribe!

no good stuff highly exciting and laugh out loud.

Soderbergh's Traffic later on,

Don Cheadle


i mean i ask you


classy as fuck


when Guzman dies

and then walking away from the Zeta Jones house,



bugging mission accomplished (or whatnot)


classy as f u c k
filling out a survey the other day in the magazine bit i wrote 'for music the wire urb xlr8r'

OMFG

today for the first time ever i happened across copies of FACT (#8) {the excellent 'American issue'}

sure, certain ace blogging contributors had mentioned it, i'd read about it, but
wow
this beauty has gotta be up there and will be entered in future surveys GAH few days too late...

what a large variety of news and reviews

utterly utterly utterly superb!

Kano in a Stone Island coat, fab!!
the myth of the exceptionalism of Manchester United
RIP Lord Callaghan

three quotes, one interesting one sensible-sounding the other kind of poignant

the further you got from Britain, the more admired you found she was [on Thatcher]

"you cannot now, if you ever could, spend your way out of a recession"

you never reach the promised land. you can march towards it.

Friday, 25 March 2005

A few of my favourite football fanzine-type witterings this week have been as follows:

the United fan praising the class of the Milanese red and black after United lost at AC in European competition, tumbling out of the Champions League for this year.
they wrote that if you were in rounds with Milan you would never get a beer out of them as they were that tight.
With Southampton however, you’d be pissed as arseholes…

…the Chelsea fanzine CFCUK (in memory of Matthew Harding) is quite good, they print what songs they sing in all games (taunting Tottenham away with ‘worse than Orient’), some good banter however let’s be frank the west London club the Clash endorsed was QPR and that’s the end of that.
there was a review of a Laurel Aitken gig though so fair play.
CFCUK also has a bit too much of the ‘protest too much’ about it, with their frequent moans about how unfairly poor Jose gets treated by the media (for fuck’s sake, he buys his coats from Matalan), and harangues against Arsenal, United and even Liverpool.
their problem is they got less than 10,000 against Oxford in 1987 (and 10,000 against, incidentally, Man City around 1994 for a Monday night game) and football fans never forget.
yes, it’s all rather pathetic [to say the least] to go on about gates – though it does notoriously wind up the likes of Newcastle to sing ‘where were you when you were shit’ {in fact to be fair just about the only club utterly exempt from this is United} – but given the fanzine was moaning about it, a reaction is just amusing for someone with a childish sense of humour.

the final thing comes from the pen of Burfield, who writes for the more mannered of the two main Man City fanzines, King of the Kippax.
discussing the combative and – frankly – not that popular City defender Danny Mills he writes:

What message does it send to Nedum Onouha, who was absolutely superb down at Highbury, that Mills should walk back into the team (not to mention ‘and play like a cunt’)…

typing of things that people are fanatical about, there was an almost shocking review in the Sunday Telegraph arts supplement from Paul Morley about three weeks ago (well, two reviews in miniature).

firstly he was just rude and pompous about Embrace, all ‘who are these, laddism, blah blah blah’ and it was a truly bad review, it was actually quite dire.
then an attack on Procul Harum, one of those who birthed Embrace apparently.
now i may be like any other focker who likes the one Procul Harum tune and that’s it but this seemed to be wrong-headed and trying to fit the incorrect shape into the hole in front of him with a too robust hammer.
quite a shame really from Morley.

also a little bird told me – didn’t see it meself otherwise – but what was that Christgau review of Run the Road in the Village Voice?
alright an A- review isn’t that bad, but a rather patronising review that left something of an unpleasant, bitter taste at the back of the throat was less good.

and whilst i’m in an unflatteringly ugly argumentative mode i would just like to take a pop at David Gill.
this is the United chap who suggested some re-think of the Champions League format – the top knock-out competition for European soccer clubs of all nations – because with some big teams getting knocked out earlier than is ideal, it seems television receipts and sponsors, etc., are getting thinner on the ground (and make no bones about it, it’s all money these days).
Arsene Wenger (a one-eyed gent who manages Arsenal) is behind Mr Gill, i believe.
those naïve idealistic types that like to think football is all about competition, level playing fields, fair play, etc and other such boring ideas have snorted at Mr Gill’s suggestions.
personally i think my advice to United and Arsenal of
DON’T LOSE TO AC OR BAYERN
might soothe his brow.

who knows, if United were still in European competition this year right now, would Mr Gill be making this announcement at this stage?

who can say but clearly i’m cynical for even suggesting the above.

P.S.
why is Michael Howard trying to shaft that Howard Flight bloke?
sounds like he’s just giving a reasonable attempt at the truth of Tory spending plans to me..
P.P.S.
John Holt {avec Lloyd Parks} plays Birmingham, Bristol, London and Manchester [Sheridan Suite, Miles Platting]!
get yourself down!

Thursday, 24 March 2005

going through some old clothes last night.

one too-small corduroy beanie hat, with some woolen stripes of various colours.

what was i thinking?

just looked like a cunt with an acorn on his head.

Wednesday, 23 March 2005

todays rock piece is 'regular john' by QOTSA.

it's like fireflies with ancient violins playing traditional central European melodies or something, it's like a teeter-totter that's gotten loose and is bounding around.

a good choon and to start as the opening track on their s/t album {as previously noted :- don't use "eponymous" ever since Rob Young wrote in his editorial space in The Wire once that said word was pretentious} with such a fabulous song-title is great too [avon isn't bad either].

josh homme, huge arms, as Baal might say.

Tuesday, 22 March 2005

ooh i do like this blog

Monday, 21 March 2005

Jon on the Sunn 0))) dilemma {depressingly, i personally know more than one idiot who still uses 'gay' as a synonym for, well, rubbish or no good - what are you, nine or ten years of age? twats all}

Sunday, 20 March 2005

Every artist paints their own experience and I'm afraid my experience was the HIV virus

Derek Jarman

Friday, 18 March 2005

i went and got a (laughably unimaginatively named) livejournal {yes, one of those!} the other day, which is really one of those crock of shit self-obsessed things that horribly navel gazes, but it’s all good fun –
typically pretentious given who’s writing – and the lc wanted me to stop anonymously commenting on her own livejournal, so for the sake of pompous solipsism there’s a link to it here.

elsewhere, it’s not exactly roared back into life, but there’s been a few more ill thought out and stupid rants at the tap of late.

Thursday, 17 March 2005

Thomas Jones
don't wanna mention any other parts of this leader about the World Bank [though the Commission for Africa has a fine suggestion] and there's not too much to get worked up about, but is it me or is the particular sentence Some worry that his strong emphasis on human rights may complicate relations with China rather, well, weaselly from the guardian?
i'm so behind the door that for the first several times i heard people discussing Amarillo (actually the charity update of the golden single) i thought they were talking about some new modish Mexican-influenced fusion restaurant that had just opened.

i even whistled a bit in the shower this morning,

no more surely please.
listening to (GZA's) 'Swordsman' last night (god, it's so good, i love the drums, they're fantastic) recalled nothing so much, oddly, as glorying in the salad days {i mean the alt meaning of early success here, not youthful naivete...} of TWANBOC/WOEBOT

i was trawling the WOEBOTNiK archives before and want to link to this piece on Screw [scroll down to the 25th]

a fine last sentence, too
in a word, no

Wednesday, 16 March 2005

whoops!

got me lyrics mixed up and back to front... ...what i meant was i love the bird in a tree and beeps of train to skaville anyway..


ahem
heard Mittoo and the Soul Brothers do 'train to skaville' last night (for the first time ever).

certainly cooler than the Ethiopians version i suppose [though never as commercially successful, i'd guess], what with labels like Soul Jazz and others (names escape me elsewhere but you can find them, quite big name and all relatively recently) anthologising Jackie M so well over the last several years.

i suppose (i don't know) that the Skatalites might be playing on the Ethiopians vocal version i love so much; i just adore that stuff - "Kingston...Spanish Town...Montego Bay".
plus i was always a big fan of their 'Engine 54'.

i'd love to hear a really cool, slowed-down, truly rocksteady version of the first tune, stripped entirely of any ska anxieties.
I'm gonna go now n avoid the Chelsea village people on their way to the WBA game. As a small footnote...they were still YESTERDAY trying to flog tickets for the Albion game in the Evening Standard which considering they haven't won the League for 50 years and theres less than 10 games left, well I think it says all we need to know about them, the plastic JCL glory hunting tools.
reading about the new Yad Vashem museum - it is ours and ours alone - got me thinking about my attitudes towards the Holocaust as unique or not.

a few weeks ago here i remember writing - during a post about genocide studies in Illinois schools - about the calamities that gouged the Armenians and, more recently, Rwanda.

i don't know if these three incidences are uniquely [my sic] evil, a litmus and standard for anything else, or if indeed the Holocaust should be regarded as horribly lonely (with all the political implications that can carry, some can argue).

ultimately, i don't know {surprising huh...}, but it's certainly right and proper this awesome place has opened in Jerusalem.
Thomas Heatherwick and blob
Ja Rule plays near me soon.

think might have to go in for that fabulously {rockist?} rites of passage thing of going for the support, then leaving early.

support in this case, being Rolldeep.
[minority of] Spanish football fans in racism shockah

Tuesday, 15 March 2005

Monday, 14 March 2005

I don’t spend all my time handing out chocolates.

Tim Gurney, deputy UK ambassador in Kabul

Wednesday, 9 March 2005

Geeta on M.I.A.
EDDIE EDDIE HUSSIN
EVERYONE KNOWS HIS NAME


two teams from Trafford were involved in different 1-0 matches last night although only one of them won their game.

Monday, 7 March 2005

Do you show the live sport?
'Well, there's the boxing in the car-park.'
~
why you wuv simon reynolds
+
REDUX:
why you WUV jon dale


&also
grateful for

Pearsall corrects {my mate} Mark Steyn's quick-to-weary Eurabia routine
-
and remember to watch out for Rod Liddle, nowadays a gloriously pro curmudgeon in the Spectator and GQ who'll be arguing on British telly later this wk on why you can have too many immigrants.

cheers Rod!

FINALLY

New bands cite you as an influence. What's your advice?
Peter Hook: Don't work with Tony Wilson.
MOJO magazine is quite decent this month (my brother got it for the Joy Division features).

there's a cool as photo of Jimmy Smith and Kenny Burrell in New York ["So what do you think?" Yeah! I said. That's all I could say], MES on Funhouse, something on Antony, David Katz on Count Ossie, a guy called gerald review that mentions 28 gun bad boy, a well-written capsule review of some Eno reissues by Sylvie Simmons, a How To? to Stax and Volt product, and most importantly imo a review of a Palaix des Beaux-Arts Brussels gig avec Toumani Diabate and my beloved Ali Farka Toure.

the one troo thread running thru here is an excuse to post a quote from a recent edition of British GQ magazine that seemed interesting.
certainly recalls the sort of debates about MIA/etc that Eppy and Simon have been having, etcetc.

in a good Sanjiv Bhattacharya article about Luke Dowdney, an anthropologist who runs a boxing club in a Rio de Janeiro shanty town, the Luta Pela Paz club in the Complexo Da Mare slum, a young guy called Cesar talks of how he prefers all-powerful drugs traffickers to the police:

But the traffickers are from here, and they at least make a contribution. They hold these baile funk parties where, it's true, they sell drugs, but they also bring the top DJs and bands.

quite interesting, i guess.

Sunday, 6 March 2005

here's some exhibitions

[A Canonical Excursion
todays best song in the world is the Stones with 'let it loose']

Friday, 4 March 2005

suppose it might be a bit uncool though the metro area debut album is still really enjoyable [and dubnobasswithmyheadman, for that matter].

i really wuv Tom Middleton's mix of 'House of Jealous Lovers', Basic Channel daddio!
By the way am aiming for a hat-trick of pissing off birds this Satd as last weekend when out in town and taking one for the team (brunette, 30, Salford, United fan say no more) so my mate Ian could pull her rf blonde mate I got accused of having an "attitude problem" in a disagreement over drinks. Close shave that one. South this Satd "Punani" eh Whitters.

+

talk about strawmen but what is Metro crit Ally Fogg driving at with "Those who say that Skinner is the voice of the underclass are mistaken. His is the voice of the H&M-clad, Nuts-reading, Stella-drinking, suburbia-dwelling, spliff-at-the-weekend everyman. Less the streets, more the Barratt Mews"?

genuinely have never seen, anywhere ever, anyone that has approached him with that angle.

from the very start of Skinner's overground success with interviews/profiles talking about Barratt Homes chic and stuff, will the real Ally Fogg please don their reading specs?

Thursday, 3 March 2005

Wednesday, 2 March 2005

FREEDOM, SOVEREIGNTY, INDEPENDENCE

We will be here every day until the last Syrian soldier withdraws

big up Cedar revolutionaries

Tuesday, 1 March 2005

not next month, but the one after [& shout to all those of Cymru, all the ever-ready, those with the eye of eryr]

iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou