craner still the don
~
this here somedisco is my blog.
this is my homepage, due for a planned
re-design soon incidentally.
my mate dan is sorting it for me.

nerdosphere i LUV +

- Jess, you is the man
- moodymann goes blues, yeah! i've always thought that (not as eloquently, course)
- how good is this chap?
- "walk"
- she's right, ann arbor is well nice [shout to man like DAVE F.]
- startling run of uncarved form
- excellent points about the great Zevon
- the context is a little out (and that's what k-punk was getting at which is something that is misread one feels over at clap clap; still, i really respect clap clap which is more than can be said for one's views on all the dizzee ras naysayers... ...so, yunno, fairy nuff)
- adore this (MES' typewriter was quality; why stop there however? i could go and get you Liam's thesaurus...Mick's hair dye {he hates himself so____work it out}...Mozza's pruning shears...Shaun's stash...actually, that last one might be kind of difficult)
- kinda affirming, quotes Carpentier
- damn! can't find it [it was brilliant, trust me, it was an English language site specifically Pessoa-centric but it definitely wasn't that Ed Shepp bloke either....balls]
- Paul Morley i could go and see him debating tomorrow with the likes of Simon Napier-Bell, there's a big music bash thing in Mcr this weekend. however, i dunno. what questions would one suggest?

speaking of, has SR finished his book?

or wot?!

+...ten years...
=YES WELL, I'M A SLOW READER MYSELF

Aussies!
get a job thru their auspices.

real quick:
Jon is the best writer i know anywhere - and there's a fair few, both in the blogosphere and printed - on the subject of Bark Psychosis.

if you want a word about them, mail him and i'm sure he'll be happy to oblige.

actually, Cash, Zevon, Wesley Willis dying about three weeks ago and the lovely companion was most upset with the passing of John Ritter so i should keep my mouth shut.

terrible indeed.

salam pax speaks

Zevon, Cash, that comes in threes thing, shit that's not good... ...what now

?

~

RIP.

'at san quentin' is, of course, one of the greatest documents of popular song with a sixstring (or whatever else, for that matter) anywhere, ever.

Angus puts to bed thoughts on Dizzee (increased sales btw) with a little eloquent wondering (plus k-punk has a fine summary of some of those BBC comments here). i'm not sure about left-wing governments tho'; one of the timeless reasons why the liberal democrats over here are so appealing is they can say all sorts of nonsense in their sums and know they're not going to be called on them, because they'll always be in opposition (though what they say on illegal immigration is of course more palatable than what either the government or the tories say).
because i now feel rude about being mean-hearted about the mercury prize, here's a quick run-down on the albums that have won in the past.
in '92, 'screamadelica'.
despite being one of these tedious types that would like to disown ver scream, this is clearly good. i'm a rockist at heart so don't have the elegant and informed dance fan attitood to rilly take this to task, but inna mainstream way Weatherall bosses it here, so that's all good. well done chaps!
in '93, suede's self-titled.
suede were brash and good with their axes and androgynous in a populist way and appealed to stalking cats and the like. another fine effort in a sort of 'stardust and glitter' manner. rum and black type drinking.
in '94, m people's 'elegant slumming' had tasty production and got the job done re. uplifting vox from diva-esque-cum-scary lookin' woman heather small. manc connections and such mean that although middlebrow rockists might not like it as much as some other winners, it's still a triumph.
in '95, it was portishead's 'dummy' (named for the posh bit of bristol they hail from). this was of course the indie angst-rocker's trip-hop of choice, and so it's been no surprise to see that recent beth gibbons collaboration with that bloke whose name escapes me, 'rustin man' or whatever, lauded in places on t'internet wherever solipsistically bad verse is waxed.
in '96, 'different class' (pulp are SR's britpoppers of choice i do believe!).
winsome, winning, wry observations, acutely done, delicate and skittish and bigger than Betelgeuse all at once, you've got to love Jarvis et al.
in '97 it was 'new forms' of course (one of two Mercury winners i own the albums of can you guess... ...well in the punchy one disc CD format) =[scroll down here to yellow or whatever colour is it, for a perfect SR reply that anticipates any 'daft' comments...]; quality sounds, just lovely and fat.
in '98, we had maligned Lancastrians gomez with 'bring it on'. they got kinda bluesy and bottletops and although it's fashionable for EVERYONE to malign them, it did have a good dry desert sound on some stages and then the hit singles sounded raucous, so, yunno, fair play to 'em like.
in '99 was talvin singh's 'OK' which - let's be honest - wasn't anything as good as the previous year's comp he'd helmed ("soundz of the asian underground"), but was really rather delightful, and live that year (as one recalls) he was quite special. coffee table maybe, but someone you could have a dalliance with.
the new 000k saw boltonian damon gough with highly acclaimed debut 'the hour of bewilderbeast' which is nice. well, i'm not a fan i must be honest but the sprightly arrangements (but not sprightly or spry you understand in an elderly way, more a jestering court trickster way Logaan be damned) and occasional gold-dust in the air showed gough had a few tricks up his sleeve.
in '01 our peej won with 'stories from the city, stories from the sea', one of those carthartic ones. i'm not a big fan of the likes of tori amos or polly harvey or cat power i must be frank with you, but this was a soaring big bruiser of an album, carving concrete slabs of grace and awesome ball-shrinking power but done by the chrimbo tree fairy so fair dos like.
and last year it was ms dynamite of course (the streets' album was better). ms dynamite's album tended towards bland american r'n'b style productions and too many bashing-up-men trax for some tastes, but the singles were largely ace.
and herein lies the rub. being a pretentious 'largely more underground than Top40' tedious tit every year i'd be able to list what i think are loads and loads of better british albums that don't get the nom (sheila chandra's 'abonecronedrone' in '96, for instance). but, yunno, live and let live.
this, more than anything else, is one of the thrusts that means that i am truly saddened when even a well regarded colleague can state something so totally wrong-headed as thus below:=
~
Elsewhere, one of those bonkers Mercury Prize awards, to go alongside the M People in 1994, and Gomez in 1998. Most winners of the Merc - Primal Scream, Suede, Portishead, Pulp, Roni Size, Talvin Singh, Badly Drawn Boy, PJ Harvey, and (er) whoever it was that won last year - have either gone on to make great albums, or capped superb careers. Those two, and last night's winner Dizzy Rascal, were and are one-trick ponies. Still, three failures in twelve years is a good enough strike rate.
'boy in da corner' is at least as good (worthy, invigorating, inviting, etc.and so on) an album as any previous winners, and so it's disappointing to see this sort of statement proliferate.

gah

in the city

he sounds tasty

Yes. Because.

grim reading

and an interesting anti-war (?) blog

and, finally, there's some truly disturbing instances, in this memo.

big up

"a man under pressure"
=+-_~
the FAC may be there but the Intelligence and Security Committee is such a bad-bwoy its site isn't even on the parliament homepage...

R.I.P. Anna Lindh.

a part of me wants to just say "how magnanimous of them!" and be done with it, but my cynicism comes too easily.
apologies only become an issue when they are refused, point blank, to be given.
Robert Hughes was commenting on Aboriginal reconciliation in Australia once and made some very insightful points on these sorts of issues.

and of course B.G. is brilliant.

i wonder how many people who only engage with the term "bling bling" in order to ridicule it, Ali G style, realise it was that man from Nola who essentially coined the phrase.

"i recall a story from a university prof who explained how a prof of his drove in his car at a specific speed, with the window down a specific height, so that the sound of the wind became a perfect note A (440)."
_the lovely companion.

i was gonna go off and shave me a kebab but i couldn't leave without cutting links props to peter at it's all in your mind, both here on dizzee ras (making me sound like the amateur i am) and here on bobby d., well done that man.
incidentally, Ingram has a big fuck-off guard dog i hear.