new model army killed my camera

Suffering from post-gig hearing loss and a serious lack of sleep, I will attempt to write about New Model Army at the Astoria on Thursday night. Possibly the last gig they will perform there before it is knocked down, one of the casualties of the London cross rail project. It was also the first proper concert that I have taken my daughter too.
Being one of my favourite bands I was unfamiliar with only two songs (that I can remember), and it must be the first gig in 19 years where I didn’t drink (much). I will not go into play lists, for a start I can never remember everything that was played and in what order though they did open with Here Comes The War and finished with The Green And The Grey. As always with NMA it was a great atmosphere and a great way to introduce your offspring to live music. Thanks to a friend of mine she was also introduced to heckling and (at his persistent insistence) pogoing. In fact, he was so drunk he fell asleep on the tube, he tells me he cannot remember where he got off, what time he got home, or how much his taxi cost. Considering he lives in London my daughter and I probably got home before him and we live in the wilds of Essex.

I took a few photos at the gig and got some video of my daughter jumping up and down to Wonderful Way to Go but my camera seems to have stopped working and not only has it deleted everything but will no longer even switch on. Bollocks.

But a good time was had by all

117° - Izzy Stradlin

As I sit here on this cold October night, wearing two t-shirts and a woolly hat (indoors) I believe it is time to follow up on one of my latest Izzy Stradlin purchases. Now I like a bargain as much as the next person but this one rocks in its own right.117° goes for fairly large sums on Amazon, over £25 the last time I looked but a while back I got it for £4.26 including postage. What’s more it is a very pleasant listen.
Released in 1998 it now seems lost in the great musical archives in the sky, a nice laid-back album that you can do all manner of none strenuous tasks too.
This is now one of my favourite kitchen albums, also good for sitting at the computer and relaxing in the bath, not challenging, just good old rock and roll.
It’s a pity all his more recent releases have all been on i-tunes, I think CDs are much nicer, that tactile element is important (well it is to me) as is the ritual of placing the disc in the player, flipping through the little booklet (even if its only once) are all part of the experience.
Of all the post guns’n’roses stuff I have heard so far this is definitely my favourite.

a ray of light

I try to keep politics off this blog but I must say I am well chuffed with the House Of Lords throwing out the 42 day detention bill. Some principles still exist.

Now we just have to hope the sneaky bastards don't push it through under some other guise.

The Shadows Greatest Hits (2004 remasters)

I think I have mentioned before that I grew up in a musically starved household. My favourite albums amongst the meagre collection where Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture and the Shadows greatest hits. The Shadows greatest hits was originally released in 1963 and re-issued in stereo in 1974, I think dad’s copy may have been the re-issue because he told me that when I was a baby he had walked into a chip shop with the record under his arm and it warped in the heat. I would spend my time listening to this album mesmerized by the motion of the stylus undulating up and down on the wobbliest record in history.

A few days ago, while trawling youtube in a silly competition to find the best or unusual rock/metal covers of unlikely songs I stumbled across the shadows again. I say that like I had forgotten them but that’s not quite true, I had several mp3 tracks on my computer, but after several hours of listening to dodgy live recordings and the odd TV appearance I decided that my CD collection was incomplete.
A quick search of Amazon and the HMV website showed that there where dozens of releases. Too many compilations to choose from all with slightly varying track listings, I was then struck by a sudden recognition, there it was, the same cover that dad had, I had to have it, and now I have.

So here I sit, drinking red wine and eating dark chocolate, not very rock and roll I know but hey, we’re all getting older. I just keep thinking back in ‘92/’93 I would have put this album to a completely different activity. The CD doesn’t warble or produce its own visuals but satisfying none the less.

Wolfsbane - Massive noise injection

We are finally entering one of my favourite seasons, I love the autumn, for some reason it makes me feel that little bit more alive. My other favourite seasons are winter, summer and spring.

Wolfsbane are I think one terribly overlooked band, relegated to a footnote in Iron Maidens history. There was an interview I saw with a band featuring at this years download festival (I don’t remember who) who were talking about iron maiden and said something along the lines of “I love everything about maiden except when they had that terrible wolfsbane guy in it”(from memory, probably not correct but that’s the gist of it). Well bollocks to them I say.

I not one for live albums as a rule but Massive noise injection is good, not because of any spectacular musicianship or nostalgic “I was there “ness (I wasn’t) but the dialogue from blaze bailey just makes me laugh, a lot. Recorded at the Marquee in February 1993 it (according to people in the know) captures their live energy extremely well.
I really wish I had seen these chaps when I had the chance, having been in the Marquee it is so get a sense of the atmosphere there must have been at this gig.

Massive noise injection as a cycling album does not do much I am afraid but then live albums rarely work for this 3/10
Reading while listening to this is also on a loser, you just cannot concentrate on a book and listen to it at the same time, it’s to distracting 2/10
Now cooking or general pottering about is another matter, while the album starts off as just background noise you are soon drawn in and it always makes you chuckle(well it works for me) 8/10

4.3333/10 ok so its not the highest scoring multi use album in the world bit I still enjoy it and I think its well worth a listen

long live Wolfsbane

what have I been up too?

Im coming to the end of a couple of days off in some of the shittiest weather possible in august, I know most people complain about English weather but this just takes the biscuit. Last time I remember a summer this bad must have been 84 or 85, on the first day of the summer break I came down with chicken pox which meant I was house bound for three weeks and then it rained for the rest of the summer, complete with an outdoor swimming contest with the scouts which left most of us with hypothermia.
Most of my free time in daylight hours has been spent gathering fruit for wine and jam making, my wife is starting to get pissed off saying I am making her look inadequate in the kitchen.
So I now have a cupboard full of home made jams and jellies , four demijohns bubbling away and another due to be filled tomorrow, loads of blackberries set aside for later use its time to make labels.
I already have requests for my homemade jam (considering this is my first attempt and nobody has tried it yet) and several people are expecting wine for Christmas I need to think presentation.

This was last years wine label

so here are this years ideas

for the cider

and for the jam

I had to keep it fairly clean as I am going to be giving some to my mum, looking up the nun picture was interesting but she is very catholic and would not have approved.

Let me know what you think

Warpaint- Black Crowes

While not huge on the Black Crowes, what I do own has always been enjoyable. A couple of years ago I bought Greatest Hits 1990-1999: A Tribute to a Work in Progress and that pretty much covered what I wanted. Anyway, Warpaint came along, I was bored, and it just went from there.
As always, I like to cook to music and it started well but found that after the first couple of tracks the album lost its culinary vibe, this being my main musical listening activity I was quite disappointed. Still somehow the album ends up on my mp3 player (actually its my sons, mine died a while back) and I find myself cycling to it, I resisted skipping it to something faster and heavier which I normally prefer to ride to and listened through, and it was surprisingly good. Next test was lounging, and yes you can lounge to it, be it in the bath, reading a book, or mooching along on a warm summer evening it’s a good listen. The one thing I have found strange about Warpaint is that it sounds better when you are alone, it’s a lonely album.
So for cooking 3/10, sorry. For cycling it gets 6/10 because its good but not great, it won’t help you win the Tour de France but it’ll get you to work. Finally, for monging out it gets a classy 9/10.
6/10 not bad for an album that makes you want to visit that bar in your imagination, you know the one, wooden floors and that ground in whisky smell, where they still smoke and everybody’s cool.

Izzy Stradlin & the Ju Ju Hounds

While nursing that post drinking session queasiness that doesn’t quite count as a hangover I thought I’d review something a little more gentle. Of the quartet of drinking buddies that took part last night one is a dedicated anti Guns’n’Roses indie fan, but as the inevitable “is appetite a great album” conversation went on we got onto Izzy Stradlin and his solo stuff.
Izzy Stradlin & the Ju Ju Hounds is the only album currently in my possession (another on the way from Amazon) and in my opinion a brilliant one at that. If you want something to fill that silent place in the background then this is it, fantastic to cook and relax to, even my wife doesn’t complain about Izzy when I’m taking control in the kitchen. It feels like grown up rock music if you get my meaning, the sort of music you can play when you reach sixty and not have your grandchildren laugh at you (like my mother-in-law playing the Stones), it has a timeless quality to it. Plus the opening track has that one line that always makes me smile when I hear it “shut that door”, its probably lost on any one not British and over 30.

Not to do away with the scoring I will give this an 8/10 for culinary inspiration good for any meal at any time of day. Internet browsing gets a 7/10 because it’s not intrusive but not dismissible, like I said it fills up a space and admirably at that. I have not tried cycling to this and given the weather and my delicate constitution at the moment I wasn’t willing to try so we’ll leave the third category this time.
7.5/10
enjoy

faith no more - the real thing

This album needs no introduction. Being such a classic (in my opinion), it was hard to put through my grading system without colouring the result.
My first taste of Faith No More was watching the video for Epic on ITV’s Saturday chart show, this show would only perform the rock chart once every three weeks and this only lasted about six or seven minutes (that’s almost all the rock music we got on TV back then), and this video seemed to be there forever.
So to the crunch, cooking to The Real Thing was easy, getting funky in the kitchen to Faith No More seemed almost natural. In fact, you can do any number of household chores to this, washing, feeding the dog, loading the dishwasher (ah modern appliances, heaven on earth). For culinary soundtrack, this gets a grandiose 9/10.
Next, I came up with a new test, playing Delta Force Black Hawk Down (the only computer game I played so much I wore the disc out). Playing the game and listening to the music at the same time was a little distracting but amusing at the same time especially when the fantastic cover of war pigs came on, so for gaming it gets a 7/10.
Finally cycling, a bit mixed here, parts of the album were fantastic to ride to but others not so here The Real Thing gets 5/10.
An overall result of 7/10 and for some reason it sounds better in the sunshine but this s something I cannot explain.

Enjoy

Happy St George's day

I would just like to wish those that care a happy St Georges day. I have my flag flying(which was considered illegal until recently, I love being a little subversive) and some bottles of English ale sat in the fridge to toast the day when I get home from work, assuming it’s safe to drink them on top of the painkillers I am using to suppress a killer tooth ache.
Here’s a little something I found on Youtube a while back, I really think this should be used as the official English national anthem(seeing as we don’t have one, god save the queen is in fact the British anthem and that’s an entirely different animal (and a crap song)).

Saturday night in

While developing a passing interest in the origins of English, or should I say Anglo Saxon culture (beyond drinking tea and talking about the weather), I thought I would give the film Beowulf ago (I really wanted to rent I am Legend from the shop but it was out). I had read a translation of the poem years ago about the same time I was reading the Saga of Asgard and some Celtic legends too. I have always found any film-involving Ray Winston as amusing but probably not in the way intended but at least with this film, I did not have to look at him. His character (Beowulf) looked more like Sean Bean (another actor I have mixed feelings about). Another thing I noticed was all the characters eyes seemed to close together, I don’t know why but this bothered me. I found the animation style slightly irritating and on further reading discovered the story deviated considerably from the original, which always pisses me off (even though I can understand why it’s done).

You can see the link with Tolkien though but he never made a secret of using Beowulf as an inspiration. That was another film, or series of films that pissed me off, while everybody else was saying how fantastic Lord of the Rings was there was me being totally nerdy and listing all the things wrong with it.

At least ive got the four DVD boxed set of the Tremors series to watch that my son has just ordered on Amazon, that should cover a few Saturday nights.

nightwish - dark passion play

It’s taken a long time to get round to this but I can be a bit slow on the uptake at times. After seeing one of their videos on some music channel my daughter was watching I thought I would give it a go. I have read about them, seen pictures and known there was a scene and had it described to me by a radion dj, but to honest, it just went over my head and away into the subconscious. Symphonic metal sounds so …… cheesy.
Dark passion play by Nightwish is cheesy,pompous over the top nonsense, I love it. You can cook to it; not as good as a really good cooking album but it gets 7/10. You can cycle to it, though I had to work this one out on numerous short trips but I’ll give it 9/10. Moreover, you can listen to it while the little one nods off, a good 8/10 for that. You can also read (sci fi/fantasy) to it and bath to it.
Despite Anette Olzon looking like she should be working in a chip shop and for some reason reminding me of Abba crossed with Led Zeppelin ,Iron Maiden ,Sisters of Mercy and Clanned they are well worth listening and very very fun.

8/10

"vinegar with that love?"

poison - look what the cat dragged in

I had to find out, had this album matured like a good cheese, or would it turn out to be like a cup of hot chocolate left under the bed for several weeks, fuzzy but disgusting at the same time.
When this album was released I would have been more interested in playng dungeons and dragons and battling with my hormones. I do not remember much else about 1986, though a quick check on wikipedia shows it to be an eventful year and Highlander, Aliens, and Platoon are all in my favourite films list.
Look What The Cat Dragged In has the kind of cover that would confirm all your parents’ fears about rock music. To say to your dad “I want to look like these guys” would probably get you marched down to the army careers office faster than you could say “cross-dressing pansies”, but as I said, I was interested on other things at the time.
As before, I will asses the album using three criteria, today they are walking home in the rain, cooking, and pretending to be asleep while the little one goes to bed.
1. Walking home in the rain – I decided on this category because a, that’s what I was doing and b, I could not escape the album even if I wanted to. It was overall quite a pleasant experience, the music being bland enough to let my mind wander but not so flat or awful that I would just turn it off. 6/10.
2. Cooking – again the album just blended into the background without becoming irritating, not as good as some cooking music but acceptable so 5/10.
3. Pretending to be asleep while the little one goes to bed – my youngest son insists on somebody lying on his brother’s bed while he goes to sleep listening to cbeebies music. I have a habit of taking in an mp3 player turned down low when its my turn. Now this is a more difficult mark to give because I actually fell asleep. was I tired, relaxed or just bored? I do not know. So for this I will have to give 5/10 just to be fair.

Overall mark 5.3/10

Cheesy chocolate anyone?



Ps
This song includes the most romantic sounding phrase in the English language “cellar door”.

something different

While I sit here wallowing in misery, having trod on a nail in the garden then later in the afternoon I had a tooth extracted (aching at both ends), I thought I might share a new discovery (new for me anyway).
Jelonek by Michal Jelonek is a strange mix of violin driven rock from Poland, it’s very difficult to find out more about this chap as all the articles on the internet seem to be in polish.
I put the album to the three tests, the cycling test, the cooking test and the bathing test.
The cycling test- here I thought the changing pace of the album would be a problem, starting fast and then dropping off, but after five miles I was quite glad of the slowdown, just long enough to get it together before the pace picked up, only complaint was that it did not last long enough to get my home again (though I was out for two hours) – overall a good cycling album 9/10
The cooking test- I like to listen to music when I cook, its one of the few occasions I can listen to music and ignore the moans of other family members, when I cook I am god, anyone who comes into the kitchen had better tread carefully. Jelonek is not the best cooking album going, its ok but its not great, you can do a Sunday roast to it but breakfast and lunch just don’t work. So cooking gets 5/10
The bathing test- this involves nothing more than lying in a hot bath with a glass of something and listening to the music on an mp3 player, I think this is what did for my last two mp3 players. Again this is an ok album for chilling in the bath too, not great but not bad but it gets a bit boring after a while just doing nothing and listening to it so for bathing it gets 5/10

Overall 6.3/10

crock of shite

I went to my first gig in ages last night. An all-day event at Grays civic hall that was comprised of unsigned acts and local bands, it was also the first time my daughter was to see any live acts.
I can’t say it was a particularly pleasant experience, we arrived late due to other commitments and missed the first six hours (this turned out to be a blessing). I knew I would probably stand out as a bit old for this but was a little unprepared for the youthfulness of the crowd, I felt like a 70 year old in a school play. The sound was awful, the bands while all looking different all sounded the same though I don’t think this was an intended feature of the night, the only decent act we saw was a DJ who I never caught the name of doing some quite impressive stuff on his decks.
The crowd provided some amusement, watching over emotional alcohol fuelled teenagers interacting was interesting, with the homogenized style of dress and identi-haircuts it did make me wonder if this was how my crowd was viewed 19-20 years ago. The other odd thing about the young masses who inhabited this strange little get together was the tidal action you always get when bands come and go from the stage, normally you expect everybody to go to the bar between acts but here it was the other way round with people charging on to the dance floor to bounce around to the likes of Baggy Trousers or Enter Sandman and then all file out when the band came on. Weird or is it just me?

I will have to make it up to the poor girl, I thought this would be something she enjoyed but I know she was not impressed.

Last time I went to one of these events at the local civic hall was fifteen years ago, I now know why.