happy st Georges day

I know I haven't posted for ages but I've not had anything worth saying, hope to remedy that soon. I see Quireboys and wolfsbane are playibg in London come December and hopefully I can get to that gig, also my wife is dragging me off to see U2 in August (each ticket four times the cost iof the bands I want to see...figures).

have a good one

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.