god i love blissblog [here on IDM &c]

{TBH, my fave ever Planet Mu release or the one that means the most to me is frankly, remaining above larger or more well thought of affairs, is Paradinas/Spatula's 'Full Sunken Breaks' - i used to just rinse that focker bigstyle)

and another list that does matter is that musical obituaries one that The Rambler posted {in a small, small way i guess a link is a homage ja - huh you think somedisco?!}

best publication list yet - popjustice singles [still not heard that Kylie choon]

lookit!

a mate of Jon, and in the guardian (well you know it's got to be good) - hurei

well alright but we do know Lil' Wayne is signing to Def Jam ('rumours only' coff-coff eh but you can see it)

he's still only, like, 21 an that

outstanding

i just love it

actually you know in his marvellous marvellous list Jess admits he is a rap rockist and just has never recovered from NYC being knocked off its perch well in a recent issue of Vibe (Ashanti cover) there was a fascinating article about radio play in the hot100 sense and about 70% of songs were from the South or the Midwest now on the US stations with a slimmer remainder from the east coast or the west coast so it's the south of course mostly but also the midwest running things at the moment so there we have it but there again it's perhaps not surprising about the paucity (vocab ?) of the left coast given Guerilla Black is repping for there at the mo and isn't the jury still out on him
+
i don't know

comment or links to three webmags, a blog, a mag

Sherburne on Dark on IDM

i think Pitchfork deserve credit for putting Iron & Wine in their top 50 albums even if The Arcade Fire is a bit too much (though as American indie goes, the Animal Collective are OK i guess). the first two lines of their thoughts for Estelle's '1980' are a bit unfair and perhaps also lazy tho' the same writer loves 'Toxic' so one shouldn't be mean&pompous... [Simon has it]; - 'Strict Machine' into 'Some Girls' too mind gets brainstormed but again that writer likes Annie so one shouldnt etc, but damn there's some good choons in that write-up.

i think Stylus deserve credit for their fine editorialising on lists (and there's a certain rugged charm in putting C-Lo, Stina Nordenstam and John Frusciante above Girls Aloud in their albums chart; i wuv that comment from Nick Southall that "The lettering on FF t-shirts is always backwards. This is because their fans spend an inordinate amount of time observing themselves in mirrors.")

i think Dusted deserve credit entirely for their solid year in review, not least such pieces as Ben Tausig on Ethiopiques: Volume 17 and Matt Wellins' faves.

i don't think the NME deserve any credit for their capsule in the most recent edition about ten things to come out of the ODB's death. tongue in cheek or whatever and presumably over-sensitivity on this part and if you don't know what one means then you won't get any more bored here but
frankly,
offensive
[again i know this is to simplify and create crude problems and juvenile finger-pointing where there is a world of complexity and differences of opinion to be cherished but it was uncomfortable reading that one of their most rock'n'roll moments of the year was 50 Cent getting bottled at Reading: yeah, a load of mostly affluent white camping kids throwing receptacles of urine at ghettoed African-Americans but eh oh i suppose you wouldn't put tv on the radio high up the bill at an rnb festival]

MY LOVER IS A HOOSIER WITH THE MOST REMARKABLE EYES

Geeta means Von's here, which is indeed rather nice.

[partial] edited highlights

- jewels, bangles, baubles, bracelets and smelly stuff
- rather good Neruda anthologies/Pessoa/political thought/Saramago/'Latin American' studies &c
- some bargains to be had in the country, roots reggae and free jazz sections
- staff (well, some of the males in my experience) of both the DANCE and INDIE/ROCK variety wanting to abuse solitary English travellers with good cheer and questions of soccer inc. a genuine interest in reactions back in the day to England losing to the USA at the 1950 World Cup
- free and good (tracky, likes Carls Craig & Cox, quite meaty) mix cd-rs off the techno boy behind the counter who was all about his forthcoming Motor City allnighter with a certain Mr Hawtin
- GO BOILERMAKERS

overheard at the water cooler:

First bloke: My wife's coming tomorrow
Second bloke {w'out missing a beat}: Too much information mate.

Xmas sitcoms

there can be few finer moments in their history than that bit in the Blackadder effort where - on the tale of the Crucifixion - the Prince Regent describes it as

that terribly depressing one about the chap who gets born on Christmas Day, shoots his mouth off about everything under the sun, and then comes a cropper with a couple of rum coves on top of a hill in Johnny Arab land.

"you mean Jesus, sir"
Barabas a rum cove, love it {note also the absolutely perfect timing with which that episode ends}.

speaking of the newspapers i think this past week or so that ol' slum dunk presenting funk carioca [mr bongo] is the first piece of plastic and digipack jewelled case compact technology that all the main UK press (call it overground, call it Delingpole in the Telegraph, call it Marcus Dunk in the Express, call it David Mellor in the Mail on Sunday, call it what you want) has reviewed that could qualify as favela funk or whatever you want to call it.

so at least four people that wouldn't have known - and after the Love Shack burnt down! - have been alerted to Marcello's rather good (OK, frankly brilliant) top ten albums thanks to my badgering and i'm still peakin off the Jess list.

it's {probably} just my prejudices ["probably" : - who am i kidding? shyeah right!] aligning with his but damn right to all the boo urns for dance-punk and electro (but you're so cool electro, oh yes we're still cool), the bigs up for Infinite Livez and Lil Jon (this year's Neptunes is right tho', innit, although if you only read the likes of the NME, Guardian, or [free commuter] Metro you'd think it were Kanye...) and DJ Target and Ted Leo and Futureheads [the actual noise that has made me happier than any other this year is quite possibly the l/c shouting WE COULD HAVE A FEW DECENT DAYS AND NIGHTS]

and TBquiteH i don't think any sentence in 2004 has made more sense to me than 'was anyone honestly waiting...the new Chingy?' {sorry Chingy, i like your videos but let's get down to tacks}

Geeta on Justus Köhncke

I very much hope the Government won't appeal - that would be a callous act
+
an editorial in yesterday's Daily Express commenting about legal opinion on events at the military base in Darul Dhyafa last September where hotel worker Baha Mousa was allegedly tortured to death by British troops was particularly foolish and embarrassing.

something else that's a bit embarrassing (for the UK govt) - as well as long overdue - is this.
coupled with this it's not been the best couple of weeks for the Home Office (ahem).

"Other Music Yuletide Special ...

TUESDAY 21ST DECEMBER, 8pm
!! FREE ENTRY !! Well, it is Christmas.

Kelham Island Tavern, 62 Russell Street,
Sheffield S3 8RW (see below for venue details)

TATSUYA NAKATANI (percussion)
MARTIN ARCHER (reeds etc)

New York-based Japanese percussionist, has recorded with
Assif Tsahar, Billy Bang, Peter Kowald etc.

"infallible intuition ... a brilliant percussion improvisor,
capable of a wide range of sounds and qualities ... His work
dances full of thought with an overall easy clarity and
earthy groundedness." - Maria Klein, Boss-Improv

"Discussing all that beauty would take more roses than would
fill this space" - Stu Vandermark, Cadence Jazz Magazine

http://www.hhproduction.org/TATSUYA_NAKATANI_WORKS.html

Tatsuya will perform a solo set, followed by a duet
with Sheffield improv maestro Martin Archer.

--------------------

VENUE INFORMATION:

http://www.kelhamislandtavern.co.uk/

The pub is near to both the Shalesmoor tram stop and bus
stops served by numbers 13, 14, 81, 81A, 82, 87 etc. The
web site includes a link to a map of the immediate area.

It's also been deemed the best pub in Yorkshire, by CAMRA!

The other room in the pub will be hosting a traditional music
session, just in case you have non-improv-liking friends."

[actually this is still] a good idea

back then WoP was the astronaut's notepad of course (taps pipe on sideboard, stirs dying embers, trails last of stew from whiskers)

oh 4 x 4

grime

i geddit

oh mrs grime
how your children so good

+

I DON'T WANT TO ARSELICK BUT

when Matt Ingram recently wrote "It's with great sadness that I reflect that that small part of my brain where I'd go looking for the blogging thrill, the part of my cortex which glows in excitement when I ponder the fun I'm going to have writing here, feels like a spent ember. If this particular neck of the woods had a demi-semi-historic moment it lay between the dominance of NYPLM and the ascendancy of the mp3 blogs, pretty much coinciding with the rise of blissblog."
it really struck a chord with me.

it was at Luke's suggestion this blog was started and in the early days of this blog's existence the quartet of blogs i really looked up to were WoP, blissblog, heronbone and woebot, soon followed by an appreciation for lots of your other faves (naming no names but if i've ever read a music blog then i keep it up so that's loads of folk, though admittedly mostly of an continental Euro-Brit Isles-Aussie-Yank-Canuck flavour).
of course more recently there's hundreds and hundreds of ace music blogs you can check, all over the place, but on what you might call the 'familiar with the (peerless) dj martian/freaky trigger [i certainly read a recent Tom Ewing lament w' a sympathetic eye]/peking_o cathy's favourites/people who've heard of so and so or etc' list {well i do, that is my blogging fix save a few politics blogs etc such as my boy Harm}

i don't want to sound like a brown-noser above btw!

but anyway, er,
yeah!

but hundreds of brilliant music blogs on many different areas abounding is still something good and even though i've been personally really unenthusiastic about blogging for ages and ages (and even though this blog itself was never anything it did at least use to have more energetic and longer and more frequent posts etcetc) now i'd like to think the incomparable Erase The World might have jolted me awake with his round-up of the other day,
especially the sentence

Someone even said, I overheard him in a popular indie dive, saying that The Zombies were a better band! The Zombies!...go boil your head and hang out in Mono less, you vegan cunt

=
which just made me crease up/

so, er, yeah,

big up your chests

are the people that matter listening to what Shelter have to say?

are they fuck.

here's a must-read from Alexis Petridis [what other morsels in the graun review this morn: Rob Da Bank was a teenage goth!]

he would sport crimson

when i was 18 i had a Dimebag Darrell poster on the wall of my room.
the damson and purple hair streaks and the big smile made for a cheerful face.
from Texan titty bars and enjoying his bourbon to the appreciation of barbecued food and providing much of the crunch in 'Walk' Dimebag clearly knew what he was on about.

here then, was a bloke who could play guitar.

(there was an Anselmo interview in Metal Hammer once which memorably described as "horseshit" some demos he and some buddies had made when they were messing around, with Anselmo on drums. he was always interested in the New Orleans sludge scene.
now there went a band)

I'm not caught up in politics
I'm no black activist on a so-called scholar's dick

- GZA

the personalised landscape painting of Cecily Sash, "a white South African," informs Trustram, lest we forget there are some decent white South Africans.

er yeah, thanks for that mate

i didn't know it was 20 years ago today and yesterday but then 'there is a victim every day'

reading Simon's piece on 679's grime comp, firstly in the editor cut to be fully invigorated, i was reminded why - like a fair few by the numbers music publications (i bet that man 86400 is with me on this) - i've not got a massive amount of time for the OMM.
it's not the smug little pen portraits or the general lameness/one's-trumpetness of such asides as, re. grime, we were far from lagging behind the times, but a 65-year old grandfather had beaten us [let's be fair, you and Peelie were lagging behind 1Xtra and the blogs though], i don't really know what it is.

it's all just too much, er, much.

anyway, back to blissbog and the night advertised sounds rather tasty; for a Chi spin on UKG saw an interesting flyer {front, back, more details here} t'other day, bit intrigued by the flyer line-up (no one didn't make it), "speed garage and 4x4", "grime/sublow and 4x4", what is that 4x4, house?
i dinnae understand (tho' DJ Sushi is known as a Stateside UKG head it's true).

oh, btw, if you're into fanzines then this from the same site sounds niiiice

out of other rote mags (as, you know, opposed to always good ones like URB or songlines or the wire yea despite its faults), i think my fave recent moments in some of them include a recent Q if only for a notable/funny Stipe interview (in which he gets in a huff cause they rudely ask about his orientation), a Spin from last summer (July, if memory serves), in which someone compares M.O.P.'s 'Ante Up' to Carmina Burana, and seeing Dele Fadele wax lyrical about Go Betweens re-issues in the NME was nice, for memory's sake anyhoo.
i must admit, re. the NME, although slash is nice and all, not being someone who is overly enthused to hear which male member of the NME staff is making it with which bassist from which London guttersnipe punk outfit at the mo, the last genuinely exciting NME moment (i apologise for repeating myself) for me was quite possibly a frankly inspirational and really rather good review of that Big Youth threefer Blood & Fire once put out, by Dele Fadele (and that release is a few years old now i think), so...

speaking of Big Youth, the wonderful Simon SDC has a fab tee shirt with the mug of said chap on it that his mate made and i want one

having said that, the re-issues page here, on some Ali Farka Toure products, i know it's a honest mistake but "How very November 1967. But this was their masterpiece, and deserves its lavish repackaging, complete with outtakes, albeit no original acid blotter."
er, Ali being a solo artist, but hey nevermind...

mind, Lil' Jon is working with Twista right now.

(also, D12 get all their Crunk Juice from Trader Joe's)

there's lots of snow in rural Indiana and it's fucking cold

kinda interesting Lil' Jon video (presumably for his latest choon, given it was no.2 on m2's hip-hop countdown tonight) with a cameo of a Kanye lookalike, clearly indulging in a lil' bit of ribbing re. the boi from the Chi

-

South no luv for the Midwest??

Melanie McFadyean on a "pile-up of shameful contradictions" at the Home Office

Spanish press in one-eyed twattery shockah

one more thing

+

hail to the Matt

AIN'T NO FATHER TO HIS STYLE

a friend of mine sent me a txt msg yesterday that went

'remembering the Ol Dirty one by spinning some of that shit.
at least he went doing something he did best'

which is, eh, maybe you think it's a bit of a lame sentiment, but eh you know

___

Gary Younge makes some valuable points here whilst this is good [some sensible views on the Gbagbo regime from M. Chirac] and this is timely reading.

+

gone fishing - the wide and noble Shannon - thence to visit my lover in the Chi, via Philly {if a proper, juicy cheesesteak is ate there will be reports and mayhaps pictures} ///

really <333-ing e crunk right now

Diana Hulton - 'Resister'

i feel awful now btw for being so rude about Ally Fogg after they drew everyone's attention to a superb exhibition of South African art at Salford Museum and Art Gallery.






CULTURE IS A WEAPON

RIP the ODB, one of the greats.

the NME once called the ODB the most rock'n'roll person on earth, but that's not really it, just a beautiful human bean, with a fine and lovely heart and spirit from accounts.

god what am i saying, don't be a twat, a person a person, a person

not been this upset since Ray Charles passed, so the Stones shining a light may have to help tonight.

oh 'return to the 36 chambers' you had some balls.

you know when you don't want to believe it...
?!
god i'm inarticulate

:(

you know when you wish you were eloquent.


rest in peace

He is a poet of great intelligence and great ecstasy; his poetry wouldn’t have survived without both.

- Adam Zagajewski on Czeslaw Milosz.

Ninety-five per cent of the houses were destroyed. Seven hundred of my family and friends were killed. We fought and killed because we had to. We beat the Soviets and our forefathers beat the British twice. So many people died.
It is very hard for some mujahedin; they have known nothing but war.

- Izatullah Atif Rooz.

Perceptive and fine essay (first volume of two; the second nearly as enjoyable) on John Clare by James Fenton, touching on his interests in folk music, botany and ornithology, as well as his verse.
Blake was brave by instinct and choice, Clare believed, and did you know Clare collected around 260 tunes?
ineffably great.

What is very difficult to gauge, when we consider Clare, is the impact of ephemeral publishing such as these handkerchiefs, and broadsides, chap-books, newspapers, and magazines.

i was glad that Robin got Michael Gove in there

1999’s Venus Beauty Institute.
A film about women.

i'd like to hear more of Vakill, one of the Windy City's more interesting emcees, indeed more Molemen fullstop would be good

This is a nice little Sun Ra page
http://www.missioncreep.com/mw/sunra.html

BLOG LINKAGE
Pop Life's [O. Wang] playlist
Pop Life's [D. Walmsley] jungle/grime take
Geeta in a bar (and Dan Selzer!)
Oliver, piping up, shouting the odds (he's right about Vanunu, eh)
+
i'm off for the tie!fic {soon}

Samantha Power wrote a good article profiling Roméo Dallaire in a recent NYRB.

it's not available to read on the site but if you're arsed you could pay four sheets (US) to buy it for a bit, here

you may remember when i said 'babycakes' was the single of my year some weeks ago.

well i've not heard that for ages so my goldfish-like attention span has clearly let me down again reader(s)!

for example, i've been absolutely rinsing my CD copy of 'lose my breath' (1.97, music zone) all weekend, perhaps excessively so (though i'm currently hammering that jojo choon - incidentally she did a very enjoyable performance of leave right now on totp some weeks ago, in front of some i think it were Floridian swimming pool with some buff boys dancing with her - it's scary to think she essentially resembles lindsay lohan's jailbait sister as lindsay herself is only, what? 12? 13?).

'babycakes', top tune mind.

---

i must also admit to quite liking the most recent single efforts from gwen stefani, the libertines and especially kings of leon (not too sure about the dancey stylings of the magnetic fields tho, or rather the free commuter paper metro's decision to give it 5 stars but 'lose my breath' "only" 3 stars...also what was their Ally Fogg on about during their recent Dizzee Ras touring shows previews, he moves away from standard grime templates by incorporating Eastern melodies, global palettes {not to mention Cap'n Sensible, admittedly} and such, does she not hear all the shakuhachi stylings on age-old grime releases, has she not read about Wiley emerging from Sterns' arms-laden?

hmm,
clearly not
i admit i was a bit miffed by that,
especially as we've pronounced wednesday grime day where i work [the other four week days are deliberately absurd fusions of genre-names, you know the score])
+
oh, i think loaf is spot on - i tried it myself, didn't get very far, so went down the pub instead (for a very good pint of boddies)

right, i'm nearly done piping up in tabloid-style language about alleged Republican terrorist leaders but would just like to observe - real tabloid style - that here lies a work of brilliance

that's a shame

reports of the new OutKast album are very intriguing.

it will be fascinating to see what the apparently stripped down back to basics sound that 10 the Hard Way will be showcasing will do -

[must admit, i'm one of these cliched fans that quite possibly prefers 'Aquemini' above all else, though hearing Stankonia last night for the first time in ages made me remember just why i love it so much]

- in terms of sales and whatnot, it'll be especially interesting to see if some of the newer fans the boys picked up in the wake of their globe-straddling last LP will stick with 'em...

oh.
there's a thoughtful, provocative, and sobering letter in the guardian this morning.

The ones who passed away are still waiting for justice. Their eyes are still open and they are looking for it.

- Anonymous official at a Choeung Ek memorial, outside Phnom Penh.

Which ones will be killed in street fights or in the camps?
Which ones will join the Nazis?

oh, also, if you want to help, there's The Citizens Foundation - good, good people
[of all the hundreds of slums in Karachi you had to barrel into mine?!?]

+

...EIGHT DAYS A WEEK

It was so peaceful and we did not encounter German resistance for five hours. Then all hell broke loose.
Desmond Wiggins, 80.

We realised what a cock-up it was pretty soon. It started with the RAF bombing a mental hospital because they were told it was a German camp. When the real Germans came across us, they threw everything at us – tank shells, mortars, flame-throwers, you name it. We did not have the firepower to match them.
Of course I remember losing my sight. I was told to lead some guys up into some woods from where we were getting a lot of flak. I was carrying a Bren gun and there was this almighty explosion. I rolled over and then it was as if someone had thrown a lot of grit into my eyes.
I rubbed them, apparently that was a mistake, because then a lot of blood started pouring out.

-Corporal Ray Sheriff, 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, 83-year old Arnhem veteran.

following the nine French peacekeepers (and one American aid or relief worker) being killed near Bouake yesterday i'm a bit puzzled by M. Chirac's insistence that the warplanes be destroyed.
apparently five of the country's military choppers will be destroyed also (said an official in Paris, according to the papers), leaving the Ivorian airforce with one item to call their own.

i can, er, appreciate the thinkingbehindthisreaction to such a calamitous tragedy, but, er, well, it's leaving the Ivorians a bit short eh...

+

Mark Steyn is truly obsessed with falling European birth rates; it seems he'll pipe up about it anywhere given half a chance (witness article mentioning same in today's Telegraph).
+

speaking of today's Telegraph, here's a sentence one doesn't type very often:

i was rather impressed with Michael Howard's interview conduct.

there again, he was being sensible in the face of the Telegraph's sloganeering and baiting on law and order issues.

quite nice lo-fi/ragged and_or fey Americana/hardcore (punk)/rock etc comp CD-R done for me by an indie colleague.
trklisting as follows:
1. American Football ‘Never Meant’
2. At the Drive-In ‘Initiation’
3. Cap’n Jazz ‘Oh Messy Life’
4. Modest Mouse ‘The World at Large’
5. Embrace (no, not those lot) ‘Dance of Days’
6. Fugazi ‘Cashout’
7. Josh Rouse ‘Straight to Hell’
8. Mates of State ‘I Have Space’
9. Minor Threat ‘Straight Edge’
10. Owen ‘Good Deeds’
11. Metronomes ‘Cub’
12. Pretty Girls Makes Graves ‘This is our emergency’
13. Rites of Spring ‘Hain’s Point’
14. Black Flag ‘I’m The One’
15. The Thermals ‘No Culture Icons’
16. These Arms Are Snakes ‘Diggers of Ditches Everywhere’
17. Very Secretary ‘Feeling Cheated’
18. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy ‘The Way’
19. Clinic ‘Distortions’
20. Interpol ‘Specialist’
21. Sufjan Stevens ‘The Dress Looks Nice on You’
22. Wheat ‘Don’t I Hold You’
23. Lullabye for the Working Class ‘The Man Vs. The Tide’

my favourite CD of recent weeks has been – shout to those in the know – the quite delightful Goin’ Crazy With The Blues: 19 tracks plotting a wonderful coverage of various roaring Twenties hits from Prague’s Original Syncopated Orchestra.
it really is adorable stuff, some of it so effervescent the music positively zings.

i did, however, listen to Duran Duran and Human League albums back to back the other day.

perhaps i’m spending too much time in TopShop.

although Amnesty are currently debating whether to drop their neutral position over the use of arms (Human Rights Watch have every intention of staying neutral).

they really shouldn't.

An asylum seeker from Somalia was murdered a few months after being deported by the Dutch authorities.
The UK has also forcibly returned Somali asylum applicants to southern Somalia, despite the lawlessness which results in frequent killings of civilians.

(Amnesty International UK)

pub team would not be a harsh description

I watch him in the kitchen, and I think of how much it hurts to love somebody. How deep the hurt is, how almost unbearable. It's not the love that hurts; it's the possibility of anything happening to the object of your love. Like, I would not want Dennis to lose his mind. But I'd be much more fearful of me losing my mind, because then he'd be the one left alone.

Just like I want him to die first, so that he doesn't have to lose me and then be alone. Or if I do have to die first, I want to find him another boyfriend beforehand, I want to hand-pick somebody and then get to know this person and make sure he's up to the task. I imagine there would be paperwork involved, with serious consequences if he breached the contract in any way. Love, unconditional. Or else you will lose your 401(k) plan, and your credit report will be forever destroyed, and there will be prison time.

So then I stop myself from thinking these thoughts because it's like tearing at a wound, opening it wider when it's trying to heal. Or actually, it's more like inflicting the wound yourself with a paring knife.

What's painful and wonderful about loving somebody is loving their small things, like the way he is able to smile when he sips his wine, the way his hands fall down at his sides, fingers slightly cupped, or the way he is conducting the orchestra on the radio. Or now, the way he is lighting candles, just now this one in front of me. This is the one he lit first, actually. The one in front of me. Even though there was one on the way, he passed that one, lit it next.

The truth is, Dennis has no bad qualities and no faults. When he's working late and I'm alone, or sometimes when we're in bed together, the lights off, I try and make even a small list in my mind of his faults: Things I Put Up With Out of Love. But I haven't been able to think of a single thing that I am not able to first overlook and then come to cherish. Even the fact that he sometimes loses things has led to a treasured nickname: Mittenclips.

Because sometimes, he misplaces things: keys, his wallet, our car once. But his face, when he sees that he's done this -- where are my keys? -- it's the most precious crestfallen face, and I tell him, "Have you checked the pockets on that jacket you wore last night?" And I check the bathroom and the floor under the sofa and all the unlikely but possible places for lost things to be. And we always, always manage to find whatever was missing.

Unconditional love. That's what this is. I love him, as is, fully. I've had to stop arm wrestling with the facts. Why me? Didn't I already have a big love once? And lost it? So why should I get it again? I've had to stop trying to look for cracks and flaws to prove that it's not as good as it seems. Because it's as good as it seems. Even when we fight, we fight inside the container of good.

Somehow, through the flip of a coin, I ended up here. Feeling like somebody at the top of the heart-lung transplant recipient list. Damaged but invigorated and fucking lucky.

from Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs

'I'm sorry mother.

I could not resist this delicious cobra.'

ALEXIS PETRIDIS
a sincere apology

gosh i've been a sour-spirited and inaccurate little moaner the last few days haven't i?
huge amounts of the most contrite brown-nosing must be sent to the guardian journo after my wrong-headed and mean attack on his article from wednesday.
it really isn't good enough.
simply unacceptable.

cheers.

Manchester Matters: Fri.05.Nov

the likes of Van Morrison, the Chemicals, Joss Stone and Anastacia might all be playing in town tonight, but look at this
- Kenny Dixon Jr's first ever Mancunian date

sublime

in the interests of balance, i should perhaps point out that they've a lo-fi champ playing the same venue 24 hours later

- indie in rude health,
what a contrast to the moribund blah haemorrhagic blah revolutionary ideals quashed in dead ends blah compromised and faded inert junk blah of 'dance music' eh

chilling words from the Prime Minister

sickening

txt from a friend sent the other evening (round about midnight)

I'm watching a clarinetist and a guy in a nappy play 30s jazz hits. They are astonishing. I wish, more than anything, you were here.

+

belated congratulations to President Karzai by the way
(oh, this blog is read by some of the top boys in Kabul, didn't you know?)

p.s.
say what you like about Mark Steyn (we do round our way) but he called Mr Daschle losing Dakota Sud ages ago
p.p.s.
here are some things that have recently happened in southern Thailand

has there been a general election then Mr Blackadder?

[oh, OK, go Barack go etc]
+
meanwhile

Alexis Petridis dance music dead blah blah - lots of strawmen, irrelevant or wrong side avenues, and the general foolish plucking at thin air Petridis can be solid at (grime abstruse, better stop listening to it
and you've got bad taste for liking 'call on me' tsk)

meanwhile

'twas announced a few days ago that
Bolton, northwest England {among others} welcomes African refugees in landmark programme - tad dispiriting the council leader had to point out "This group of people are not asylum seekers; they have been specially pre-selected on the basis of need and have already been granted full refugee status by the government" but one must be realistic about that...

but also
superb anti-European headline in the Daily Express this morning

QUEEN HAS TO EAT IN HITLER'S BANQUET HALL

i especially enjoyed that the front page got in that "pop-star Michael Jackson" dangled his baby from the balcony of same hotel
+

currently feeling

lex 'fourteen days'

here's that ENSAAF report, Twenty Years of Impunity

David Blunkett saying Asian families should speak English at home. I wonder if he says that to the Brits who buy second homes in Spain. Do they have to speak Spanish? How about his Labour friends in Tuscany? Do they speak Italian? The man has no sense of history and proportion.
Ken Loach.

David Aaronovitch on the subject of Adam Curtis and that BBC documentary series

oh,
it was, in fact

drag KINGS

=

thee best

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went to Hull for a day over the weekend which was quite good (friend was 23, old git!).

had the most astoundingly tasty balti bhuna (before getting to Hull, and watching the Everton match in a Manchester pub had one only okay pint of Landlord and one superb pint of London Pride and a great meal of mixed leaf salad, curly fries, and a delicious delicious lovely goats cheese/roasted peppers/pesto fancy bready thing) and drank in some okay bars, including that one associated with the only i suppose half-way cool in a sack-assed metropolitan sense contemporary music thing/label [contemporary on the music front because of course there is the small matter of the Housemartins] to come from the Humber area, which is downtempo type Pork Recordings (their in-house bar in central Hull is called the Lamp and is okay).
was confused by a flyer i saw there with the fine Larkin face advertising some bar-night they were doing in London soon, did 93 Feet East used to be at 93 Shoreditch (or whatever 'famed' street it is; you'll excuse my provincial cloth-eared-ness) cause this bar the flyers advertised was 91-95 on that same street whatever it is i forget but it was some place i'd never heard of [shouting the odds on one's ignorance]

chatted to a fabulously sozzled Finnish fisherman, stuck between screens showing football (Liverpool-Charlton; there are a lot of non-native {i mean Hullites, non-native to Liverpool, but i'm assuming glory years etc} Liverpool fans in Hull you notice) and rugby league (it is Hull).

went to surely one of the better/biggest clubs in Hull, Pozition, many rooms and floors, quite nice actually, when we did dance it was on the r'n'b floor, which was actually quite good.

unfortunately my friend got battered outside and has had to have reconstructive surgery on his face/forehead but is joking about it now and getting called Scarface so eh.

i love these small towns like Hull, i think there is something magical about Hull in particular, looking out east, the end of the world for its inhabitants once, Russians in the docks, John Prescott's constituency in east Hull, officially containing the most deprived ward in all Yorkshire [as long as you don't regard the Tees area as being N Yorks which of course it really was, but there we go, let's not count] (about the 50th most deprived ward in all England, out of over 8,000: of course the most deprived wards in England are unhealthily concentrated in Manchester, Merseyside and Middlesbrough).

across to the dykes, fabled folk tales and container ports of the Dutch lands, down the German industrial arteries, thinking of all the blind sailors and rheumy miners in coal-faces, looking over to Copenhagen cafe society, sweeping out over the endless steppes and once a host of yurts with Russian/Siberian resolve and that history and
always always the Polish forests with their brooding secrets and bloody past.

then into Ukraine and stop there, square the circle, official men, guns, it's all going dark,
everything's going dark.

yes it's never dull in Hull.

muckraker

as fatal shots are fired in Yala and deadly bombs are detonated in Narathiwat, PULO has vowed They will pay for what they have done, their cities will burn
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David Fullbrook w' a little analysis here
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Zimbabwe Election Support Network
-
JUST ISN'T
big up yr chests

'having sex. er...VISITING MY MOTHER'

FABULOUS

and true-



=
ALSO
Drag queens are my new favourite people

so, so right...

in the wake of the latest monstrous tragedy to smite southern Thailand Thaksin Shinawatra has tried conciliation but has also appeared in somewhat - frankly - blase mood
whilst, even after assurances on general human rights issues across Thailand, Amnesty International remains concerned.

+

whatever the machinations of Glazer with ref. to Man United (and while i respect Robin enormously and believe there might be something in his observations, the coalition was too broad, the brushstrokes too diverse, even the Mancunia battlers themselves too bubbling with differences, for any stinging points about the usual suspects to truly hit home for me; saying that, of course, as one astute commentator pointed out, if Glazer had refinanced any theoretical loan with index-linking and ticket prices had stayed the same for the ordinary fan, only rising for the prawn sandwich brigade, then some would have surely been converted: irrelevancies about the burning of American flags, petty vandalism and other such regrettable criminality aside, the strident tone of some of the Glazer opposition was perhaps too much for many moderates to stomach?) we can surely be glad Mr Thaksin's interest in Liverpool was stopped (a bid possibly with public money!; now that's cheap).

i'm no economist, but can you imagine the uproar if Gordon Brown made an impromptu announcement one day
We're raiding Treasury coffers to get Tony an executive box at the Seahawks

the press would have a field day, Andy Marr would probably do a glowing piece but we'd have Michael Howard pointing out, of course, he's a Bengals fan.

you can picture the scene
Nick Robinson: Chancellor, why Seattle?

Gordon Brown: Oh you know, it's the right time, we think

NR: Yes, but here we are, you are, you are, er, essentially taking from the public purse to get the Prime Minister an executive box at a grid-iron stadium. I mean, why?

GB: Well, Tony's always been a big fan of Jimi Hendrix, of course.
And he enjoys Frasier.
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Blunkett to set up a review of the laws on murder, proclaims the BBC news website ticker (alas, no details yet as i type).

perhaps the new proposals centre on just charging the nearest asylum seeker with the offence, as long as they're within, say, ooh, a 50 mile radius.

could cut down on paperwork and might win some votes.

yeah that'll probably be it.

Jelly Roll's style: http://www-music.duke.edu/jazz_archive/artists/morton.jelly.roll/04/

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great to see and hear the godlike Andy Kershaw [Radio 3 mini-site] discussing his friend on the television news tonight

i suppose my favourite ever John Peel moment came during one of his shows about, ooh, six or seven years ago now maybe (?) when he played some outfit and he said 'they were awful' or 'that was awful' when he actually said 'they were Awful' or...&c
then he pointed out in that lovelylovely avuncular tone of his that the band weren't awful and that wasn't him "editorialising", they were in fact "called" Awful.

gorgeous/

“The Grizzly Bear, Bunny Hug, Texas Tommy, and Turkey Trot are stages in an evolution toward the fast dances of the 1920’s.”

Dave Godin adored music and someone else who adores music is Simon silverdollarcircle.

Stacey Pullen in Fabric at 6am could have the potential to be awesome (every household should boast a copy of The Theory of Silent Phase) so whilst it's a shame he disappointed, i've been reading and re-reading Si's totally compelling and rather good review of the night for days now.

RIP Dave Godin

pioneers
that's one word for it

good piece by Tim Judah recently (‘Uganda: The Secret War’, The New York Review of Books, Vol. L1, No. 14, pp.62-4) about the LRA, and its bloodthirsty leader, Joseph Kony, a vicious fanatic notorious for claiming he is guided by spirits.

what i didn’t know, however, was the identity of some of the spirits. one, apparently, is called Who You Are, another Juma Oris, a third a woman called Selindi and another, supposedly an American spirit called Ali Salango.
as Judah grimly notes “all agreed that a man possessed by spirits is bound to be unpredictable and may be impossible to deal with”.

Judah makes a convincing case, incidentally, with his figures and whatnot that In recent months the world press has concentrated on the Darfur region of Sudan, calling it the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” In fact this claim is incorrect, although the situation in Darfur is indeed horrifying. He notes how “the Ugandan conflict has been going on a lot longer, fewer people may have died in Darfur than in northern Uganda, and almost twice as many Ugandans have been forced to flee their villages as have non-Arab Sudanese in Darfur”.
It might seem crass discussing almost a hierarchy of suffering but Judah’s point is nimbly made.
That point is observing the links between the two tragedies – via a third of civil war – given Kampala’s sponsorship of the SPLA, and seedy Khartoum’s sponsorship of the wicked LRA.
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only read an open letter from Irene Khan to South Korean politicians - here - this morning; concerning the National Security Law, it is sobering

i've long felt the Telegraph's Con Coughlin to be, frankly, something of an overly hawkish buffoon.

but, of course, this has always just been my prejudiced reading of his sometimes fantastical approach to journalism, so it's not something you mention very often.

so it's good to read LENIN'S TOMB wading into Mr Coughlin, and showing his working

to one of those country pubs yesterday, in the middle of nowhere, then a walk round various piles and astonishing rural views.

Old Speckled Hen, Greenall's Mild, Scrumpy Jack on tap (an intriguing sounding Bulgarian red, whose name escapes me, also got my attention), the Speckled Hen eventually on form.
food robust and hearty, with a surprisingly delicate sweet trolley, and an A to Z of ice cream flavours.

olde worlde maps of 'Chesshyre' on the walls, plenty of brass, engravings of workers hunkering down on flagstone floors, flagons nearby, images of threshing, stuffed pheasants, rifles above fireplaces, not to be exchanged for "a thousand Wetherspoons" as one mate put it.

i'd still rather have had the Saturday night the lovely companion did...

Lukashenko in vote rigging row - no, get away

believe it or not, but this guardian article on Western Sahara [James Baker's summer resignation, the security council poised for action] is the first i can remember seeing in a mainstream newspaper on the conflict for ages

good

there's a smashing recipe here for poblano rellenos with mole verde

+Quintana Roo crabs+

one for Marcello perhaps

~tarantula nebula~

impeccable opening two sentences from Timothy Garton Ash

In the UK they are active in urban centres - mostly London, Manchester, Glasgow and Hull.
The three main groups are the 14K, which is strongest in Birmingham and the north of England, Shui Fong (also known as Wo On Lok), which is dominant in London, Glasgow and the south coast, and Wo Shing Wo, which has its powerbase in Manchester.
~
oh, this is a really nice Robert Johnson page

Paris will host first ever Koons retrospective - fur&feathers to no doubt fly!

THE TOP HAWTIN PARTIES IN FULL

- The Hard Parties, various Michigan locations, 1993
Hard, Harder and Hardest. Reacting to the fluffiness of the nascent scene these were ultra-intense affairs.

> Spastik, Detroit, 1994
The first to cover everything in black plastic. Dancing in a pitch-black void you are truly consumed by, and lost in, the music.

> Jak 1 & Jak 2, Detroit, 1995
No advance word whatsoever and the Hawtin debut of The System (one moment when Hawtin couldn’t focus on his records because his eyeballs were wobbling and people were throwing up off the wall of bass inspired the Plastikman track ‘Sickness’).

- Jak O’Lantern, Windsor, Ont., 1995
More black plastic, orange snow fencing on the ceiling and a generator that needed cooling with water all night.

- Consumed, Pontiac, MI, 1998
Venue: old Masonic temple. Themed rooms and mikes that recorded conversations upon entering, playing back your own talk as one climbed the stairs.

1. Ali Farka Toure, Ali Farka Toure, Mango/World Circuit, 1988.

1. Timbarma (traditional)
2. Singya
3. Nawiye (traditional)
4. Bakoytereye
5. Tchigi Fo
6. Amandrai
7. Kadi Kadi
8. Yulli
9. Bakoye (adapted from Arabic praise song)
10. Amandrai [live]

Ten tracks of elongated vocals and unfussy instrumentation that pack an emotional punch; sounds this good should perhaps be criminalised.

i adore how he holds it on ‘Singya’.