> This is the Thought-Record of Liam Astley. And like his thoughts, this journal is erratic and unreliable. Thank you for your time.
> Wednesday, April 30, 2008
>
Maybe I should start off every post with an announcement about dead people I liked. Though there's not many celebrities/artists I actually like, thinking about it. And I doubt they'd agree to conveniently pop their clogs just before each of my posts. Ah well.
Anyway I AM MOVING. To Manchester, the Capital of the North. I'm moving in with Tasha and Pete, and replacing Soph, in what people are already calling "the house where only people who used to have something to do with the Superkings can live". Actually Pete's moving out too shortly, so hopefully we can find someone to move in from the group of twenty or so other people who used to be in the Superkings.
I am quite excited about this (well, as excited as I ever get about anything) as hopefully it'll be a bit of a new start after the downward spiral of my last year or so in Lancaster and then the two years of limbo in Charlbury. Of course it all hangs on me getting a job ASAP so I may well be forced to try to reenter the heady world of retail for a while as I carry on looking for something more permanent. I'm going to have a housewarming party the weekend after I arrive which hopefully more than five people will turn up to, then the weekend after that it's ATP time again. I'm going to be truly skint this time, so I guess my plan will revolve around getting some Tesco Value vodka to take with me and just drink that in the cabin and then try desperately not to sober up while sitting around inside the big tent. Maybe I could sneak a hipflask in with me. REBEL. Whatever my monetary/sobriety situation ends up being I'm very much looking forward to seeing Sunset Rubdown and Animal Collective live, plus many other cool bands like Battles and Broken Social Scene and some Wu Tang dudes.
But I'm sure you're not interested in my musical or locational plans. No, what you're here for is your insatiable desire to find out how I'm currently doing on Facebook's Compare People. You've been kept up at night wondering about it, trying to place bets at the bookies, drawing charts to put on your wall, carving "OK TO NOTIFY WINNER" into your arm. You're sick. You make me sick. But I can't help but feel partially responsible so here are my latest stats. Now for god's sake go get some professional help.
Today's mp3 is courtesy of the new album by Canadian boat-botherers Wolf Parade. It is, to quote Dave, rad. Though of course Dave wouldn't actually like this song as it was recorded after 1985.
Wolf Parade - California Dreamer
> Posted by Liam at 11:03 PM
> Friday, April 04, 2008
> Probably due to a surfeit of Coca Cola this evening I'm still awake but in that wired caffeine type way where you don't actually have any energy, just feel tired and listless. So in an attempt to kill some time I copied this survey off Dan to fill in. ENJOY
-----------------------------
Has anyone ever told you you have pretty eyes?
Yes
What kind of computer do have?
A cranky old PC given to me in the early part of the decade by a coalition of dear friends and family, that for some time now has been steadily falling apart. I'm still running Windows 2000 on it because (a) the newer ones all look a bit too
for me, and (b) any processing power this thing has is taken up by just about managing to run Firefox, Winamp and Soulseek simultaneouslyWhat have you learned today?
That the asymmetric key algorithm was invented in the 1970s at GCHQ by a man called, I shit you not, Clifford Cocks
Do you like to smile?
I think I laugh more than I smile
How tall are you?
6'1
What do you want to be when you grow up?
6'2
What time do you usually wake up on the weekends?
11am-1pm
Do you like peanut butter?
Very rarely I'll have some sudden pregnant-woman-style craving for a peanut butter sandwich. I've usually already lost interest by the time I'm halfway through eating it though. I don't understand the American obsession with peanut butter in sandwiches/confectionery
How much did you weigh when you were born?
I have no idea
Should country music die?
The question should be; would you shoot country music in Reno, just to watch it die
If you could live in any other country, which one would you pick?
Well that 'could' is kind of a loaded premise isn't it? Does that mean my travel there would be sorted but then I'd be living much the same as I am now? In which case I'd have to go for an English-speaking country as I am barely monolingual and way to wimpy to try to live some place full of crazy foreign words if I couldn't make up for it by being indecently rich. I guess New York maybe?
Where were you when you heard about the World Trade Towers?
I was in the underground stock room at the Waterstones I used to work at in Lancaster. Someone ran down and told me, they were convinced it was a distraction for some invasion force that was about to nuke us with moon rocks or something. It was a bit disconcerting
Are camera phones worth it?
Aren't all phones camera phones these days?
How many times have you moved?
Four times as a kid in Oxfordshire, then up to Preston, then twice while I was there, then over to Lancaster, then three times there, then back down south. So twelve times in total. Plus another move up to Manchester coming in the near future. Haha, I hadn't realised till now that it was number thirteen. That bodes well
What colour are your bedsheets?
I don't really have any that are 'mine', I just nab some from the airing cupboard whenever the last set goes in the wash. Currently they are grey, black and white
What would you look for first in choosing a roommate?
Someone who has higher cleanliness standards than me
Do you ever keep arguing even when you know you’re wrong?
If it's a jokey argument, then potentially, though I might try to sneakily change my position while still arguing
What are the top physical traits you look for in a male/female?
Not to be prudish or anything but I'm not really interested in getting involved with a male-female. I mean more power to them, I wish them all the best in the world, but it's not for me. I'd rather just stick with girls
Do long distance relationships work?
I'm sure they can do. Not that I've ever been in one, but I don't think they're somehow guaranteed to destroy a relationship. However they do add an extra stress factor that could be the straw that breaks the camel's back
Scuba-diving or Skydiving?
Deep water kind of weirds me out so I'd probably go for skydiving
Spell your name without an E,R,S,H,K,I,M,A,:
L TLY
What are you listening to?
I'm not listening to anything. Past a certain hour I can't play music through my hifi for fear of waking other people in the house up, and plugging earphones into the back of the PC is a ballache
Is any part of your body sore?
No
Are you happy with your life now?
I don't think I've been happy with my life for... about ten years? But I wouldn't consider myself necessarily unhappy either
Are you missing anyone?
I am a rock, I am in iiiiiiisland
I settle quite easily into a status quo, my one at the moment involves minimal social contact outside the internet. Sometimes something I read or see or hear will remind me of a friend I haven't seen in some time and I'll have a pang, but generally I just sort of mooch through life thinking about the people I've seen in the last day or two. I guess I'm more of a goldfish than an island
When was the last time you felt unbearably guilty?
I consider it a character flaw of mine that I rarely feel guilty about anything for more than about ten seconds
When was the last time you held someone’s hand?
LOL I drunkenly held someone's hand a couple of weeks ago while trying to convince her of my sincerity about how awesome a party would be, but I think she just thought I was being creepy
Who can you tell everything to?
No one
What is the next concert you're going to?
There's quite a few gigs around at the moment I'd like to go to, but I haven't got the funds. So next music type thing will be ATP in May
-----------------------------
I'm afraid that the shoddy half-arsed nature of this post means I'm not going to up an mp3, but if you like you can go my muxtape page and listen to some songs I put on there. ENJOYx2
> Posted by Liam at 3:01 AM
> Wednesday, March 05, 2008
> GARY GYGAX IS DEAD :(
Cue websites full of "failed saving throw versus death" jokes.
As I am sure you all know, G2 (as the kids on the street call him) was one of the chief creators of Dungeons & Dragons and therefore of roleplaying games as a whole. For all its flaws and weird quirks (most of them coming from its origins in wargaming), D&D was revolutionary in its time and still casts a long shadow over that hugely varied and much maligned hobby. It's been about 8 years or so since I handled any funny-shaped dice or plastic swords and tried to kill some goblins, but I have some fond memories of those times and the people I met through them. So I guess I owe Gaz for that. Thanks, beardy dude.
Meanwhile in the real world I'm still jobhunting and growing increasingly skint, which sucks. However thanks to the kindness of a friend I was able to go to the Maximum Black Festival in London last Friday. It wasn't really a festival, but rather a bunch of bands chosen by Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy to play with him for the evening. Overall it was an awesome night, what annoyances there were were due to the venue. For a start when we got there we were faced with a massive queue of people trying to buy tickets. No problem, we'd already bought ours. Except they were making people who'd booked tickets wait in the queue too, so it took us about half an hour to get in and we missed nearly all of Frog Eyes' set. Once we did get in I found out the place had a no readmissions policy, which they had kept despite the smoking ban. So you couldn't smoke indoors, and they wouldn't let you go outside to smoke either. I ended up puffing away on a cigarette in a toilet cubicle at one point in the evening, feeling like a naughty schoolkid. Entertainingly while I was sucking away at my deathstick I could hear a gaggle of London types in the cubicle next to me taking turns to hoover up cocaine. I bet anyone in the gents actually needing a shit must have been pissed off.
Maybe I've just been unlucky with the gigs I've been to but London audiences seem fucking terrible. I mean most gigs have people who seem determined to chat about their social lives in loud annoying voices all night, seemingly oblivious to the music being played by the bands they've paid to see, but London's the only place I've been to where people do it about five feet away from the actual stage. I suspect all that coke hoovering plays a part.
Anyway enough whingeing, the night as a whole was really nice and while I felt like I'd been on some Japanese endurance game show by the time I staggered to bed at 5am (having megabussed it back from London) it was all well worth it. Plus I had my opinion of the Dirty Projectors totally turned around, I hadn't been a fan of the albums I'd heard but was amazed at how good they were live.
In a weird coinkidink (well, not that weird I guess) the Final Fantasy set was Dungeons & Dragons inspired, with Owen playing the songs that he's based around the eight schools of magic that wizards use in D&D. All illustrated during the gig by a lady moving transparencies around on an OHP at the back of the stage.
In other news, I don't know if people have been pity-voting me in response to my last post on here but I actually now have first place in some categories on Compare People. I can finally rest easy, knowing I have achieved something in life.
Today's mp3 is from the 2007 Madonna tribute album Through The Wilderness.
Giant Drag - Oh Father
> Posted by Liam at 11:41 PM
> Wednesday, February 20, 2008
> Still no luck on the job front but I'm still waiting to hear back from some NHS ones so maybe I'll score an interview there. It would be kind of funny working in the hospital where I was born.
I've been watching Lost, the new season is going okay so far but I'm a bit concerned they're returning to the glacial pace of earlier mid-seasons. We've had three episodes now and barely a day's gone by in the show. Hmmm.
In other nerdTV news I watched the first couple of episodes of the new Terminator series and was surprised to find out it actually wasn't rubbish. Not great by any means, but not terrible. It's quite cool seeing Summer Glau doing her Waif Fu thing again.
Aside from that I've been enjoying The Wire and 30 Rock but not really downloading anything else at the moment. I'm a bit bored of media. I might start trying to channel visions from my spirit guide instead (by spirit guide I mean vodka).
So in the absence of a glut of geeky entertainment or anything like a social life, I've been looking for things on the internets to cheer me up. For example, this is solidly awesome. Also this.
Also I've discovered a simple way to judge my success as a human being, I just use the Compare People application on Facebook. This rigorously scientific system ranks me in various key areas, based on votes from my friends, to show whether I should just give it up and end it all right now, or struggle on for a few more years until dying anyway in the future TB epidemic.
So as you can see my scores aren't too bad but frustratingly I don't have first place in anything. I can only assume this is my friends' way of telling me they think I am a 'number two.'
Apparently people would like to date me, but ideally if the date consisted of having dinner on a desert island for a day while handcuffed to each other and cuddling. This suggests to me that my friends have some weird sexual kinks I am best off avoiding.
Also I am universally considered 'crazy.' I don't know if that means in a DUDE YR SO CRAZY!!! kind of way, or in a keep him away from children and animals kind of way. Maybe both?
Anyway enough fascinating self-absorption. Here is today's mp3, it's from the 2007 album Hymns For A Dark Horse by a band called Bowerbirds. I'd not heard of them before a couple of weeks ago, but it's a nice album and I really really like this track off it.
Bowerbirds - Dark Horse
> Posted by Liam at 7:34 PM
> Tuesday, February 05, 2008
> I don't know why I'm writing this now, I should be going to bed. In fact, I should be in bed. The more I let my bodyclock slide into the traditional twilight world of the doley/pothead/music journalist (please note I am the least offensive of those options) the more it's going to be a shuddering migraine-inducing gear change back to 9-to-5-land once I get a job again.
And no bones about it, despite my terrible pickiness and my amazingly flawed interview techniques, I really do need to sort out a new job soon. Being skint sucks. Especially when it means I can't afford to visit up north any more and try to (perhaps futilely) grab on to tatters of my old social life. Bah. Why can't I just win a million pounds on a scratchcard, or one of those that's-funny-I-don't-remember-having-entered lotteries they tell you about in emails. Is that so much to ask? So much for the universe being controlled by observers. I observe my need to be independently wealthy and yet the quantum field refuses to give up the goods. I can only assume it is all you other observers who are fucking things up for me. Selfish, selfish people.
At least I've got ATP to look forward to, that should be fun. Sunset Rubdown and Animal Collective! That is quite sex wee-ish. And various other randoms who could be entertaining. Including Saul Williams, who I remember seeing on wikipedia a while back is the brother of Michael Williams the actor - aka Omar Little on Oh-God-He's-Talking-About-The-Wire-Again. EXCEPT now all mention of them being related has disappeared off there so I guess they're not brothers at all, presumably someone just added that because he assumed that because they were both black and called Williams that they had to be in the same family. Good old wikipedia.
Meanwhile I've been trying to break into the comics world by sending Marvel my pitches for new superhuman characters, I've not heard anything back yet but fingers crossed. Here are some of my concepts, I've already got treatments worked out for potential movie adaptations and video games.
MR FANTA-STICK - Refreshing orange hero created by the Nazis
SPINERMAN - Bitten by an irradiated Brent Spiner, he has the proportional strength and agility of Brent Spiner
THE THIN - Bulimic rock monster
AIDS WOLVERINE - Terrifying Canadian who snarls and shouts a lot
HE-HULK - Male version of She-Hulk
CAPTAIN PUERTO RICO - Hangs out with the Avengers but they won't let him actually join
PROFESSOR xXx - Psychic slaphead Vin Diesel in a wheelchair (NOTE: wheels may be replaced with snowboards)
IRON BLACK MAN - Like Iron Man, but black! No wait, that's War Machine isn't it. Shit. Forget that one
PAEDOCTUS - Like Galactus, but a paedophile! As he is as old as the cosmos, this actually makes everyone fair game to his eternal creepy hunger
THE SILVER SUFER - Dean
Oh god, what am I doing, I'm making comics-based puns. This is what I've been reduced to. It really is time to go to bed.
But before I go, here is an mp3. Yes, an actual mp3! It's from the new Destroyer album, Trouble In Dreams.
Destroyer - My Favorite Year
> Posted by Liam at 3:15 AM
> Tuesday, January 29, 2008
> So yeah I still haven't got a job. I am a bum. A low down dirty bum. However I did just eat some choux pastry so it's difficult to feel bad at the moment.
Also this article made me do the LOLs this evening.
I am currently sitting in my room in Charlbury which since losing my job is where I spend roughly 90% of my life. Aside from occasional visits to the shop and/or toilet, I could actually be one of those bubble boys for all the difference it would make. Actually they seemed to generally have better luck with the ladies than I do, I might buy some plastic sheeting and start pretending I really am one. Obviously I'll have to delete all this shit though. Maybe alter my myspace as well so it says things like Would like to meet: the outside :(
Speaking of my room I took some photos of it for a thread on SUF, here they are for your delectation.
Exciting stuff, eh? And yes, that is a copy of Garden State. It was a gift alright? Fuck off.
Lost is starting soon which is good. Well, good assuming they realise they spent most of season 2 and half of season 3 treading water and actually have more stuff happen. I'm not one of those people who whinge about all the questions and mysteries that are always popping up, I mean that's the point of the show, but there's only so much you can watch people sitting on a beach not even telling each other about the crazy shit they've seen before you start wanting to bang heads together. Could be worse though, at least it's not Heroes. In the meantime I am of course watching the new season of The Wire (and have actually finally discovered someone who doesn't like it) and catching up on the last half of Dexter's second season. Dexter's been okay but doesn't seem to be as goofily fun as the first season was (if goofiness is a suitable word for a show about serial killers). Maybe it's the writing, maybe it's just the one-dimensional characters wearing a bit thing.
I realise I haven't been doing that mp3 thing I used to, I am intending to start again but just can't be arsed at the moment. Sorry I am a lame internetter these days. I'm not even any good at writing emails any more, I used to fire them out at a rate of knots. Now it takes me a day to reply to one. Maybe I really am a bubble boy and exposure to the filthy germs of your world is slowly but surely draining my life force away. YOUR FILTHY GERMS.
> Posted by Liam at 10:55 PM
> Thursday, January 10, 2008
> What January would be complete without me doing a top 20 albums list that I will probably totally disagree with in six months time? Well looking at previous posts on here, last January apparently. But let's forget about that.
For me 2007 was overall an OK year for music. There were a lot of good albums but not many great ones. And I noticed that most of the stuff I was listening to were new records by bands that had already had a few under their belts, or from spin-offs of longer running bands. Not much in the way of new debuts that impressed me. Of course, I don't hear even 1% of the music that actually comes out in a year so I'm sure there were new bands that I would have liked if I'd been aware of them. But there wasn't much that came to my attention. Anyway here's the top 20 -
20. The New Pornographers - Challengers
19. Radiohead - In Rainbows
18. Beirut - The Flying Cup Club
17. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
16. Electrelane - No Shouts, No Calls
15. Holy Fuck - Holy Fuck
14. Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity
13. Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings
12. The Shins - Wincing The Night Away
11. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
10. Mouthful of Bees - The End
9. The Besnard Lakes - Are The Dark Horse
8. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
7. Frog Eyes - Tears of the Valedictorian
6. The Apples in Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder
5. Battles - Mirrored
4. Akron/Family - Love Is Simple
3. Miracle Fortress - Five Roses
2. John Maus - Love Is Real
1. Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover
Sorry that's quite a pedestrian list isn't it. I'll try and find an album of glitchpsych throatsingers for next year.
My favourite EP was Alice Practice by Crystal Castles, the best single was Foundations by Kate Nash, and the C86 Award for Awesome Compilation goes to David Shrigley's Worried Noodles.
Couldn't really pick a film of the year, as I've not seen much and what I have seen has been mostly mediocre. I've kind of fallen by the wayside with movies over the last couple of years, not seen anything like the amount I used to. Even at home, let alone in the cinema. I'm kind of hoping that some of the releases coming up this year will reinvigorate my interest and get me back down to the local magic lantern show with my obligatory bag of outrageously overpriced M&Ms. Just a cursory glance at the list of some of the stuff coming out soonish certainly piques my interest (There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, Be Kind Rewind, Where The Wild Things Are, Cloverfield, Valkyrie). Even the big dumb action movie sequels in 2008 like Batman, Hellboy, Indiana Jones, Trek and co look more promising than 2007's bland efforts.
Book of the year? I'm even more behind in the literary world than I am the cinematic one. I think my favourite book was Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer but I'm pretty sure it actually came out a couple of years ago. And it's a translation anyway, the actual book was published back in the 80s. So uhhhh never mind.
Best thing I read on the internet was this.
Best TV was of course The Wire. Duh.
Oh and according to last.fm the twenty bands I actually listened to the most during 2007 were -
20. Félix Lajkó / Lightning Bolt
18. Feu Thérèse / Akron/Family
17. Joanna Newsom
16. The Arcade Fire
15. Swan Lake
14. Battles
13. Miracle Fortress
12. Grizzly Bear
11. The Magnetic Fields
10. Holy Shit
9. Frog Eyes
8. Pavement
7. Animal Collective
6. Vampire Weekend
5. Andrew Bird
4. Destroyer
3. Oneida
2. Sunset Rubdown
1. John Maus
So now you know.
As for the real world... ehhh I might just leave it to my slightly emo summary in the last post. Overall I guess it wasn't that bad a year, for me anyway. Some really cool bits (like going to ATP - twice! - and the Netherlands) mixed in with some fairly shitty bits and a whole lot of unremarkable mediocre bits. I'm left with the feeling of another year going by and nothing to show for it - money-wise, relationship-wise, creativity-wise - other than being another year older. Le sigh. But I remain hopeful that things will pick up this year, change is in store which is a good thing given my general lameness in getting stuff done off my own bat. We'll see.
> Posted by Liam at 1:11 AM
> Monday, January 07, 2008
> ATP
Bad timing
Cowardice
Drugs
Embarrassment
Fucking fuckers and the fucks that fuck them
Glenn
Hat
Idiot idiot idiot
Jews For Cheeses
Kamikaze heart
Laziness
Maus
Neoapatheticism
OMG
Prestoned
Queer envy
Regrets
SUFcons
Testosterone
Unemployment
Vegetarian kebab
Wire, The
Xenophobiaphobia
You never even noticed, and why should you
ZOMG
Roll on 2008, bitches
> Posted by Liam at 2:41 PM
> Saturday, June 30, 2007
> Well it's been a while hasn't it? More than half a year. As always with my big gaps between blogging I think it's down to feeling like I haven't actually got anything to talk about. Not that anything on note's happened now, I just felt like I should mark the middle of the year.
It's kind of scary to think that a year's now gone by since I moved down south, and nearly a year since I started working at TPR. Maybe it's part of growing older but I'm findng the idea of letting another year slip by without getting anywhere or doing anything or meeting anyone to be vaguely terrifying. Not that I appear to be doing anything about it of course, but maybe I've just been frozen in terror. Yeah that's it.
I had a nice Christmas and New Year, I managed to drag people down to Charlbury for New Year's Eve which I think ended up being a bit of a mixed bag. It was lovely having some friends here, after six months of moping about and occasionally travelling up north, but for various reasons most of the people seemed a bit down at one point or another and I'd cunningly managed to not sleep properly for a week so spent the whole evening trying to get boozey and partyish but instead just feeling drowsy. ROCK + ROLL. I've had a few visits from friends since then which have been nice, and I still try to get up to Prestancaster on a nearly monthly basis, I've not really developed much if any of a social life down here though. I guess in my head I still haven't really moved, that's the problem, I'm not acting like someone starting a new phase of their life but instead like someone waiting for their normal life to kick back in. Hmmm.
We went to All Tomorrow's Parties in April, that was ace. I've not had much experience of festivals, I've always been put off by the whole camping aspect and the times when I did feel like the lineup was worth it I've ended up being too skint (or too late to get a ticket, like last year's ATP). But staying in chalets is awesome. I'm not totally convinced by the music venues themselves, there was something distinctly odd about standing in a giant shopping centre/dome in bright light while watching Low. But then again if we'd been standing in a field with the exact same setup otherwise it would have been normal. Anyway none of that matters because we got to watch Joanna Newsom play 1 and a half times and she was as awesome as I'd hoped. Also Glenn spotted Efrim from ASMZ playing on Ridge Racer in the arcades which is surely worth the price of admission in itself. I'm thinking of going to the Christmas one at the end of the year being curated by Portishead, if I can find some people interested and can sort out the cash before they sell out. I was a massive fan of Dummy when it first came out but lost interest in all that triphoppy business a long time ago - still I think they would be quite a cool band to see live. Plus they already have quite a few good bands on their early lineup - Ladytron, Aphex Twin, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, plus the distilled awesomeness that is Oneida.
The next couple of months should be pretty busy, I'm going up north next weekend for Sian's birthday, then later in the month it's the Truck Festival. I'm a bit unsure about Truck, I got tickets ages ago (it sold out in about three days) but they've only just released the lineup and I can't say there's anything on there that excites me. Still I guess that means there's lots of potential for hearing new stuff and being pleasantly surprised. More enthusiasm-inducing is Field Day in London in the middle of August, it's a one day music thing I'm going to and they have some ace bands on - Electrelane, Battles, Liars, Bat For Lashes. It's being done in the style of some sort of village fete, so there's a tug of war and welly throwing and biggest marrow competitions, sounds like a laugh.
The weekend before that I'm off to Leicester to see John 'Wild Man of the Woods' Woodhouse get married in a cathedral. A cathedral! I've never been to a proper religious type wedding before. I hope it's not one of those ones where the priest takes the opportunity to sneak in a sermon about Jesus and all that lot while we're all trapped there. I've been bullied into going to the one year anniversary special Indietron thing the night before, so like some sort of international jetsetter (only on trains and buses) I'll be going up to Preston from Oxford and then going back down to Leicester about 12 hours later. I have no idea what's happening after the wedding, I might try and get a train back in the evening or something. Though I suspect that will be a ballache.
The week after Field Day I'm thinking of going up north again so I can have some sort of birthday party type thing. I dunno, I'm in two minds about it. I'd quite like to have one, especially as it's the tombstonetastic 30th year, but on the other hand the shenanigans from last year kind of left a sour taste in my mouth about them, plus there's the pain in the arse of trying to organise something for up there from down here. I suppose I'll mull it over for a bit longer before I decide one way or the other.
The Indietron night might also be the launch night for the Superkings album, I don't know if that's still happening or not, everyone seems to be a bit vague and unsure. Be cool if it was though, I've barely seen the SK crowd other than Tash over the last few months (despite being labelled a "Superkings crony" on Prestone, LOL). I ended up sacking off doing the album cover, I just couldn't get inspired at all. I haven't had any luck doing anything creative so far this year really, which is a shame given the amount of time I'm just sitting around in my room. Sadly I don't think making mix CDs counts.
Anyway I guess I'm going to wrap this up now and go downstairs to watch some TV, see if those zany terrorists have tried blowing up anything else yet.
Here's this post's mp3, it's from Five Roses by Miracle Fortress which is easily one of my favourite albums of the year so far.
Miracle Fortress - Next Train
> Posted by Liam at 11:17 PM
> Tuesday, November 21, 2006
> Every year I am always surprised at how every year I am surprised at how dark it gets in the Winter. I mean, it happens every year. It's not like the planet was tilted differently when I was a kid. But it always freaks me out a bit. Anyway while I think I'm more of an Autumny Wintery person, there is something vaguely depressing about it being dark when you get up for work in the morning and dark when you get home again. Still at least it will be Christmas soon. Christmas! I like Christmas. Also New Year's, which looks like it might be a bit odd this year. Well, odd for me at least in that I won't be spending it in a house somewhere in Preston or Lancaster.
Probably the most exciting thing to happen to me since my last post is that one of my deaded hard drives became undeaded and suddenly I regained access to a load of mp3s, downloaded telly, comics and porn that I thought had been lost forevr (admiitedly I could have just downloaded them again but that's not the point). Speaking of my cranky and mercurial PC, I am currently rocking a new desktop background courtesy of my special internet friend Matt. Matt runs a music blog called Skatterbrain which is pretty awesome and worth checking out if you feel you may enjoy bands featuring ladies playing keyboards and perhaps wearing striped clothing.
I seem to have been roped into doing the artwork for the Superkings album, I don't really have any ideas as yet but I think I'm going to spend some of my time off work this week mucking about with photoshop and trying to come up with some starting point. Obviously it kind of demands more thought and effort than the flyers I used to knock off in a night or two in the past. Maybe a collagey thing... hmmm dunno.
To carry on the musical theme here is my mp3 of the day. It's off Andrew Bird's Fingerlings 3 record, which is a collection of live tracks, and I love it so hard.
Andrew Bird - Scythian Empire
> Posted by Liam at 3:28 PM
> Tuesday, November 07, 2006
> Uhhh yeah so Lost has been quite good so far though I have vague feelings in my gut that I may be starting to lose interest a bit. I dunno. Maybe they can get me back on-track with some more Giant Stone Foot action.
After the Summer dry spell we're back in Happy American Download Land and along with Lost I'm watching BSG, Studio 60 and Heroes. Also catching up in fits and starts on Veronica Mars and Deadwood. BSG continues to be maybe the best thing on telly, certainly the best thing with spaceships in. Studio 60 is fun but its world of supersmart dedicated moral people commited to creating quality art on television rings a little untrue given, well, anything I've ever read about actual people who work in television. I think Larry Sanders was a little closer to the mark there. But it's nice seeing Chandler in something again! Heroes is okay but it started out pretentious and seems to be heading towards farce. I dunno, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with daft scifi, Odyssey 5 was pretty loopy and that was ace. But it all feels a bit bland, it tries to seem a bit dark and moody but it's about as edgy as Smallville (which in fact it seems to share the producers for).
Anyway I bet what telly I watch is a deeply fascinating subject so I'll shut up about it now.
Obviously it's been a long time since I made a proper post on here, I guess I've just felt a bit deflated over the last few months and not really inspired to write anything about my life. Yeah yeah yeah, boo hoo etc. I guess the biggest letdown was my birthday party not happening, they've been a highlight of my year for me for a while now so while canceling it felt like the right thing to do at the time it left me feeling fairly emo. OH WELLZ. No point dwelling on the reasons and responses and stuff. Since then of course I've been up to Preston a few more times, popping up for the next three of Glenn's Indietron nights. At the latest one this weekend gone I did a guest DJ thing, it was pretty cool though the decks (official DJ term) wouldn't play half my songs and I got all stressed out and it wasn't much fun :( But the rest of the evening was good, and I also had The Funs on Saturday at Christian's 1996-themed birthday party where I pwned almost all contenders at SingStar. I obviously have a future in show business. On Sunday we went to see Borat which was WELL FUNNY though I don't really like telling people something is really funny because then they go with inflated expectations and end up liking it less. But it was really funny.
Yesterday I headed back in the evening and had an almost drama-free journey until I got to Oxford and then had to wait 90 minutes for the train to Charlbury because someone had jumped in front of it. Jesus, this must be like the fourth train I've been on in as many months that someone's decided was a more effective method than a fiver's worth of paracetomol. I hate it because I get super pissed off, I hate waiting for stuff, but then I feel guilty that I'm pissed off about being bored while meanwhile someone's actually dead. So then I feel selfish and bored. Feh.
Speaking of music and transport woes (and I totally was, just check out the previous paragraphs!), one of the highlights of an otherwise doldrumtastic Summer was Glenn taking me to the V Festival, that was pretty cool. I've never been to a big weekend camping thing before, I was always either too skint or there weren't enough bands on I liked. Most of the headliners at V weren't really my thing but there were quite a few cool bands on, the highlight for me though was definitely The Grates. Beforehand I liked the album, after seeing them live though I am actually in love their singer Patience. It's official. In other festival news I'm really tempted to go to next year's All Tomorrow's Parties, it looks mopetastic.
Aside from trips to Preston and music festivals I've basically just been sitting around Charlbury staring at a monitor in the evenings and then going to work to stare at a monitor during the day. Work is okay though the hours became a bit erratic over September and October, so I'm not even managing to save any money yet for my planned escape out of my parent's house at some point in the hopefully-not-too-distant future. Boo! Not that I imagine life in Oxford itself would instantly become some swirl of adventure and romance, but I do feel guilty about freeloading off my family so far.
Anyway that's about it for now I guess. Maybe I'll try to keep this a bit more up to date again. Not sure. In the meantime here's my mp3 for the day, it's from the forthcoming Apples In Stereo album and is so rockin' I played it in my ill-fated Indietron set
Apples In Stereo - Skyway
> Posted by Liam at 1:48 PM
> Thursday, October 26, 2006
>
My Personality
96 | |
5 | |
56 | |
33 | |
1 |
Find your soulmate / pysch twin MySpace Layouts and MySpace Layouts by Pulseware Survey Software |
> Posted by Liam at 4:38 PM
> Wednesday, July 19, 2006
> Jesus wept it is too fucking hot. As a former work colleague of mine used to say, "I'm sweating like a paedo in a creche". The one good thing about summertime is ladies wearing less clothes in public, and that becomes a moot point when it's so hot that when I try to leave the house all the moisture in my body immediately jets off my head in a plume of superheated steam. Apparently today is the hottest day EVVOR (in rainy England obv) and from tomorrow on it should get colder again, however the humidity is going to go up. Brilliant! I look forward to many delightful days of sitting in trains with broken air-con feeling my shirt slowly meld itself to my back through the medium of sweat.
Speaking of public transport I feel like whingeing about it AGAIN. Well, a pre-whinge really, my previous journey up north was surrisingly free of fuck ups (apart from an hour delay one way, but that's not much these days). I'm dreading this Friday though when I have to get on the MEGABUS for 8 and a half hours to reach Preston for Glenn's Indietron night. I imagine in this kind of heat it's going to be maybe the Most Fun Bustrip of All Time. Maybe I could cut up a load of those cooler bags and then stitch them back together into a sort of sleeping bag shape and climb inside it for the whole journey.
I think aside from the horrible icky sweatiness the main thing I don't like about all this heat is the Giant Fucking Insects. Insects should not be big enough for me to be able to see their face as they fly past. That's the sort of thing you expect in the Colonies, not in dear old Blighty. Unlike some I've never been bothered by spiders or moths or wasps, possibly an immunity built up from a childhood living in the sort of old country houses that have more creatures crawling in the walls than an HP Lovecraft story, but I don't like all the fucking weirdo ones like dragonflies and centipedes and weird big beetles that waddle about and then suddenly start flying. I do not approve of these things banging around against my lampshade like Friday night townies outside a club. Who the fuck wants to live in a country inhabited by mosquitoes and hornets? If this carries on I may have to move to Iceland (the country, I suspect Iceland the shop is crawling with the things).
Anyway it's my birthday party in a month's time and I'm hoping that things will be less horrid but still kind of warm by then, as it'd be nice to hang out in the garden during the evening. There's even talk of some people camping there for the night rather than trying to grab a sparebed or sofa indoors. I may start hassling people soon to give me definite answers on whether they're coming or not actually, I could do with knowing a fairly accurate number at least a week or two in advance so I can work out who's going where. Also I need to build some sort of cage around my bed so that WJ doesn't sneak off and steal it at some point in the evening. My actual birthday's on the 15th, which is a Tuesday. Dunno what I'll do, it's not like I've got any sort of social life going on down here. I guess I may end up going for a meal with my parents or something. Or maybe just watch the Brick DVD and then play some Oblivion. W00T for 2006!
It's been a bit of an odd year so far, for me at least. For a lot of other people I know it seems to have been one of settling down and finding a routine (with a few notable exceptions of course) whereas I'm bouncing about like a morose gummi bear. Maybe the next six months will involve me finding more of a steady pace to my life again and connecting with stuff down here. I guess I've got to get used to the fact that I'm probably spending the "rest of my life" (ie about as far into the future as I'm able to look, so a year or so) in Oxford. Well, Oxfordshire. I can't see me being able to actually live in the city any time soon, despite my keenness to escape the Ultimate Nerd Cliche that is "man in late 20s living with parents". At least my room isn't in the basement.
General skintness has stopped me getting much involved in 2006 outside social stuff really. I've hardly seen any movies or read any new books. Of course I've still listened to new music thanks to the wonders of (terrorism-funding) piracy but there's not been a lot that's got me particularly excited so far. The Lovely Feathers, CFTPA and Sunset Rubdown are probably the only albums so far that I'd give an unreservedly enthusiastic two-thumbs-up to. In fact the first half of the year seems to have been largely marked by new boring albums by bands whose previous records I loved - The Walkmen, Shearwater, Dresden Dolls, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Sleepy Jackson, Regina Spektor (to name just some of them)... It's like some terrifying Bland Virus is sweeping the indie rock world. Mind you I suppose this is all relative, they're still better than the horrid pap that's been trickling out of London via NME's arse the last year or two.
Today's mp3 is a bit of a comedy entry I'm afraid. It's the ever-lovely Spinto Band on Radio 1 earlier this year covering a classic tune by none other than Seal. Hoo-ha!
The Spinto Band - Kiss From A Rose
> Posted by Liam at 9:54 PM
> Monday, July 03, 2006
> My friend John has been predicting for the last few years that today the world is going to end, due to some dream/vision he had where an angel appeared and warned him about it. What a big freak.
Well, not much seems to be going on so far. Of course, if you're some alien archaeologist reading this off a fossilised computer while investigating the ruins of an Earth that was destroyed by meteors at 5pm then I guess John had the last laugh. Maybe you could build him a statue out of alien bronze or something?
Today I found out the "definite job" my brother had on the cards for me at his place is now "definitely not happening". Thanks bro! So I guess it's back to the jobcentre website and hunting for officey stuff in the city. I'll fire off CVs to agencies as well, hopefully there's a decent amount of work going in a place as busy as Oxford.
In the meantime though I've been doing important stuff like making a youtube account and killing goblins in Oblivion. Oblivion the computer game, not Oblivion the Preston gay bar.
At some point this week I'm venturing back up north for Julie and Sian's birthday activities at the weekend. I'd thought I was back on the MEGABUS again but it looks like I might score a train trip instead. Knowing my luck we'll drive over some dude's body again.
In other news, it is still too fucking hot.
Today's mp3 is from the new Nouvelle Vague (nouvelle Nouvelle Vague?) album. Like their first one it's bossanovaey covers of vaguely inappropriate 80s hits being sung by foxy French ladies. Cashback.
Nouvelle Vague - The Killing Moon
> Posted by Liam at 4:08 PM
> Saturday, June 17, 2006
> Well the final weekend in Lancaster+Preston came and went and I'm now some sort of protopermanent resident of Oxfordshire again. I went to see Corinthians play at the penultimate Feedback and later got to hear a dead dude's memorial in the form of a Stone Roses song. Some oddness happened but I didn't have time really to worry about it as I was then busy shifting boxes around for the next 48 hours. I was fucking knackered by the time I got back to Charlbury on Sunday evening, I think I must have changed my top about six or seven times over the two days. SWEATASTIC.
I think I'm going to apply for a job at the place my brother works at, it sounds interesting, I'll be keeping an eye out for other stuff though as well. I have no idea as yet how and when I can move out of here to a place in Oxford, I guess I should start looking into it now though I suspect I'll be here till July or August. Once I do start getting some cash it's going to rapidly disappear off to various debts owing before I can start saving up for deposits and stuff like that.
As long as I can sort out the money/time for it I'm going up North again a couple of times in July (having a job by then will mean more money, but less time). Early in the month it's Sian and Julie's birthdays. Then on the 21st it's Glenn's Indietron night at Time Square in Preston, followed by a teaparty at Lauren's the day after. I'm a social butterfly.
Uhhh I guess that's about it for now. This made me do LOLs.
Today's mp3 is by poppy Australian noisechiks The Grates.
The Grates - 19 20 20
> Posted by Liam at 2:12 PM
> Saturday, June 03, 2006
> I like New York in June, how about you?
Well, I'm not in the Big Apple, so I've made do with Oxfordshire instead. The Big Aubergine!
Yep, after a couple of weeks kindly being put up (with) by WJ Hudson at his palatial Preston townhouse (having finally exited Hope Street) I am now back down in the family home again. The journey south was the usual hilarious catalogue of missed trains, broken heaters, confusing bus routes, over-heavy bags, and smelly co-passengers that seems to accompany all my long-distance travels. Plus my phone (and alarm) broke the night before so I ended up staying up all night in fear of sleeping in. Bonus! Still I got here in the end and the last couple of days have been pretty nice and relaxing. The weather's lovely (though the charm might soon wear off if we get fucking water shortages) and it's been fun chilling out in the garden and playing with the three muskahounds.
Despite earlier assurances from the jobcentre types it turns out transferring my dole from one county to another is a massive ballache that will take at least a couple of weeks to sort out, if not longer. Of course this isn't too much of a disaster as I have food/tobacco/internet/alcohol to hand here (the essentials) but it does kind of put a dampener on my vague plan to do some fun stuff for the couple of days I'm back in Lancashire next week. Oh wells.
I think I'm going to drag people down here to Charlbury for my birthday in August, as I don't fancy trying to organise some sort of party from afar. That probably means I'll be breaking from tradition and not doing a fancy dress theme this year. But I'm already probably going to another fancy dresser back in Preston in July so I don't feel like I'm being too deprived.
Anyway there's not much else to report at the moment, I guess I'm going to get on with looking for work in Oxford. Maybe I could polish people's mortarboards or something.
Today's song is by the mighty mighty Daniel Bejar off the new Destroyer album.
Destroyer - European Oils
> Posted by Liam at 3:51 PM
> Thursday, April 27, 2006
> Well it's been a bit of another desert crossing between blog posts on here. I suppose there's been quite a lot going on over the last month or so and I just never got round to sitting down and talking about it. Though generally I guess there's not a lot to say.
The main big thing is my ever hilarious carcrash life antics. Basically due to fucking up my benefit money and then my rent as a result, I'm getting kicked out of the house by the landlady. So as of the middle of May I'm homeless. As a result I'm going to have to give up on any last shreds of dignity and head back down south with my tail between my legs to stay at my parents' for a while. Maybe a month or two. After that I'm not sure, I had thought I'd be able to come back up here and try to sort something out again. That's not looking too likely now, so it may be a more or less permanent stay in Oxford. Ah well, maybe I'll get a cool job down there and be able to whizz round the country visiting people. I'll be in easy striking distance of John and Amit for a start.
Other downer news from the last month - Stanislaw Lem died. Weirdly enough I was actually rereading A Perfect Vacuum the weekend before too.
Anyway, enough of the mopey shit, the last month has also been one for celebration as Karl and Corinna tied the knot. Before the wedding we went on a stag do in Manchester with Karl (which we nicknamed the elk do seeing as *gasp* girls were allowed). The obvious mission of the evening was to get Karl pissed out of his head, however I think we were all a little surprised at how easily this came about. At not much after 11pm Karl classily threw up in his pint glass and over himself in the middle of a bar and had to be taken home by his brothers. Hardcore! So that left me Sian and Christian sat around in Manchester waiting for a half 1 train, and we ended up going to the Fab Cafe for the rest of the night. The actual wedding a few weeks later was pretty cool, aside from some disappointing absences I guess, it was funny seeing everyone in suits and we got to meet Tazz's wife! He's been married for years but none of us had ever met her, we'd begun to believe she was fictional. Or maybe married to Columbo as well.
Well, I guess I haven't been up to much apart from that. I've been in Preston a bit more at the weekends, going to parties the last couple of weeks and also hanging out with Hudson and Glenn some more. I think I've probably eaten more strawberry laces in the last month then I have in the previous year, which probably isn't good for the intestines.
Best trailer ever? It makes me quite excited.
Today's mp3 is by The Lovely Feathers. I'd quite enjoyed their debut effort but it wasn't anything particularly great. Their new album though is fucking fantastic. So here's a track off it.
The Lovely Feathers - Breakfast Cake
> Posted by Liam at 6:00 PM
> Monday, March 20, 2006
> It was a pretty quiet weekend, I found myself entirely drained of cash so didn't go out on Friday and Saturday, did the staring-at-the-internet thing. On Sunday I met up with John and Glenn and we went to some laugh-a-minute war exhibition in the Harris Museum in Preston. Actually the museum trip overall was quite fun, they had weird bits and pieces there that were amusing. Like numbered boxes full of stench, an exhibition on red clothes, a revolving funeral urn with a glowing face, and ceramic tentacled vaginas.
Paul showed us this, it looks fucking amazing. I haven't been into games for quite a while now, aside from the odd bit of console action round friends houses, but this new game looks like it could suck me back into the cyberworld again.
Pssst! If you are a bad thievy person you might be interested in this.
Sunday evening we watched a succession of bad movies. Well, three bad ones and one good one.
Heh, while getting those links I noticed this which made me laugh (you need to be registered at imdb to see it).
Today's mp3 is off the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. I have to say I've found the album really disappointing overall. There's no bite to it. But there's still a couple of tracks I like, and this is one of them.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cheated Hearts
> Posted by Liam at 11:29 PM
> Monday, March 13, 2006
> The season two finale of Battlestar Galactica was a thing of beauty. While some of the events I saw coming did happen, they were just plot points in the episode rather than the basis of a cliffhanger like I'd suspected. What actually happened at the end took my breath away. BSG felt like it was floundering a bit around the middle of this season, compared to the tightness of the first season I was worrying they might be losing it. But safe to say this week's episode has restored my confidence that BSG is the best thing on telly featuring spaceships, ever, and one of the best things on telly full stop.
In case anyone was worried due to my previous posts, yes I did manage to get some kung po sauce in the end. I did a stirfry thing with quorn pieces and very nice it was too.
Speaking of cooking, I've had a few nice catering-related evenings around Lancaster since my last post. Christian made us all pancakes on Pancake Day, and Dave cooked for us when we went round there to play Diplomacy. Will of Feedback fame provided the game, which I'd never played before. It was kind of a Risk type thing (based on my distant memories of Risk) where you tried to conquer Europe using little army dudes. But the game's quite cleverly set up so that you have fuck all chance of doing it by yourself, you pretty much have to make deals with other players to get anywhere. This weekend we were all round Sian's where she cooked us fajitas. I love fajitas, they're so tasty but so easy to make (not that anything's easy when you're catering for eight people of course, but I mean on an individual level). I like how they're "customisable", it's like having a sandwich at Subway or something (but you feel like you've actually eaten a meal rather than just eaten a big sandwich). Sian's soiree started off quite civilised, though by the time it got to midnight quite a lot of booze had been guzzled down by everyone there (shock horror) and there may have been incidents of bad rock karaoke, "urban" dancing, and Dave waltzing with a wooden cat.
I had a bit of a flashgeekback this weekend and somehow ended up lurking around some Call of Cthulhu sites. Don't judge me! I think I got weirdly excited at the idea of listening to a podcast featuring Sandy Petersen. It was quite cool actually though Peterson himself sounded like a slightly hysteric nerd. I don't know what I expected of a roleplaying game designer really, some sort of James Bond? Props to him though for creating such a lasting and (still) original game though. It made me worryingly nostalgic for my (now disturbingly distant) Uni days of rolling dice and avoiding any contact with fresh air or girls. Of course I still manage the fresh air and girls part these days though. Anyway while perusing the site I came across this short story by Charles Stross (author of scifi-laugh-a-minute-novel The Atrocity Archives), which I heartily recommend to anyone who has a passing interest in Lovecraftian stuff (though it won't make much sense if you haven't). A look at Stross's site reveals that he has actually put an entire novel of his up for free download as well, which is pretty cool. Much as I hate reading anything longer than a magazine article off a screen, I may well grab it and then print it off or something.
Heh, I've got into the habit of using the LJ spellcheck before I post an entry due to my spazzy typing style, and apparently "podcast" isn't a word. Good to know they're keeping on the cutting edge of the internet there.
Today's mp3 is by Islands, a nice Canadian band made up of two-thirds of the sadly defunct Unicorns. While the album isn't as good as The Unicorns' mighty WWCOHWWG it's pretty cool, you should probably buy it.
Islands - Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone
> Posted by Liam at 8:04 PM
> Monday, February 27, 2006
> They didn't have any Kung Po sauce in Asda ):
I'm kind of glad in a way that I didn't go out on Friday after all, or go to Preston on Saturday, as I appear to now have no money left after buying food and paying for the cyberweb connection. So if I'd spunked money on beer this weekend I'd have even less no money.
Hopefully I'll get my hands on some more cashmoney this week as I need a bit to oil my gears on Friday, I'm meant to be going to Feedback. I feel like I should, I haven't been to a non-Superkings one for like half a year. I was looking forward to seeing Y'r Impossible again as well, not seen them since their debut gig last year. Except Fil seems to have gone mad and fired Judith and taken over singing duties himself, which will be... er... interesting. But I fancy checking out Theoretical Girl anyways, I've heard good things about her.
Heard some sad news yesterday, Darren McGavin died on Saturday. He is of course the guy who played Kolchak in the 70s. Kolchak The Night Stalker is one of my all-time favourite TV shows, despite actually being pretty terrible. Part of its appeal is the ace idea, part of it nostalgia, but a big part of its charm is down to McGavin's portrayal of Kolchak as a perpetually cynical and down-at-heels hack. Still, McGavin did make it to the grand old age of 84 so that's not a bad run. I think I've actually only seen about two-thirds of the full run, I really should get the DVD they've released some time when my finances are a bit less laughable.
Today's song is from the mighty Stephen Merritt's Showtunes album, which is a collection of tunes he wrote for three musicals by Chen Shi-Zheng over the last couple of years. I'm not sure who the actual singer is on this, I think it's one of the cast rather than Merritt himself.
Stephin Merritt - What A Fucking Lovely Day!
> Posted by Liam at 8:54 PM
> Sunday, February 26, 2006
> I didn't make it to the AIDS Wolf gig in the end, due to various fuck-ups. Cue a following day of reading comments on Prestone about how it was "the best gig ever" :(
Oh well, I expect I'll survive. I suppose if I had gone I may have even walked away feeling a bit underwhelmed by all the awe evinced by everyone else. I tend to do that with gigs a bit. I like gigs. The concept of them, that is. Something about the idea of going to see a band can excite me. But generally the actual experience pales before the idea (as with most things in life I guess). I suppose to me music has always been a particularly personal experience. That indie trope of the boy in the bedroom listening to records by himself has always informed my relationship with music I think, both as an audience member and as someone peripherally involved in actually making it. Generally speaking the gigs I've enjoyed the most have involved good company and a lot of alcohol, which sort of suggest that they rather than the supposed focus of the night are where my enjoyment's coming from. The music becomes a hopefully pleasant and/or memorable backdrop to the evening, like in a nightclub. I don't think I've ever had that transcendent feeling that some people seem to get from it, of feeling that they're part of something that necessarily involves the music happening there and then to them and the others around them. Like I said, my connection with music seems to be personal rather than communal, as much as I like then discussing it with others. Gnostic or neurotic, depending on your point of view.
Anyway that's all just an amazingly long-winded way of saying that I'm annoyed at missing the gig but eh, whaddaya gonna do?. I think I felt a similar way about ATP selling out. I both really wanted to go due to the amazing line-up, but at the same time had this nagging voice in my head saying "yeah but do you really want to spend a hundred quid just to see some bands?" Hmmmm.
It's been a bit of a quiet weekend overall really, due to people generally being off and away. I did thankfully avoid a Saturday night spent sitting around in an empty house by going to Will & Cat's house to play boardgames. I wonder what it'll be like when I finally end up in a place of my own. In a lot of ways I find the idea of my own space to be more and more appealing, maybe as I get more of a sense of what I'd do with that space as I get older. Maybe just as I become more of a crotchety fucker obsessed with unwashed cutlery. But at the same time I've spent my whole life so far living with other people and I still get a bit weirded out by long periods of time by myself. It's funny how I could spend two basically identical evenings mostly sat in my room in an empty house or in a house where other people were in other rooms and for some reason the former has some sort of emotional effect on me. Like the inability to interact with other people upsets me in some way despite the fact that I may well not interact with them if they were there.
Meh, I'm waffling now. This is what happens if you leave me alone for too long!
So I'm going to go off and do some supermarket shopping. I hunger for kung po!
Speaking of the Orient, you should probably watch this.
Oh, the reason I'm being all verbose today is probably because I'm overcompensating after reading a vaguely fascinating online seminar about China Miéville's novels in general and most recent one in particular. Very well thought-out and terribly informed, two things guaranteed to make me feel stupid. So that's probably why I feel this sudden urge to muse and get all erudite (and use words like "erudite"). Sort of like whenever I watch The West Wing I want to start speaking entirely in quips and bulletpoints. Anyway the Miéville thing is interesting, a lot of political and literary criticism goes right over my head but I do agree with quite a few of the points made about what's both exciting and frustrating about his books.
Today's song follows the Wolf Parade trend and is by Sunset Rubdown, the sideproject of WP's Spencer Krug. It's off the forthcoming album which features the band actually fleshed out as a real band, rather than just being Spencer's bedroom recording hobby.
Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings
> Posted by Liam at 2:56 PM
> Monday, February 20, 2006
> I forgot to mention yesterday that I did make it to Lauren's party in the end and had The Fun. There was a slightly weird mix of people ranging from apparently random teenage college kids to elderly family members, I guess me and Paul were somewhere in the middle. At about 3am I remembered I had a camera and took a few exciting photos. Poor Paul was dragged into some sort of whiskey drinking vortex by a certain morose Punch lookalike and ended up being sick outside Lauren's house. We bring the class!
This Friday I'm off to Preston again, this time to experience the majesty of AIDS Wolf in someone's cellar. I'm looking forward to seeing them but I'm also slightly worried I'll end up stood next to them and get beaten with a microphone or they'll get naked or something. I'm a simple indie boy at heart, I'm not sure I'm built for subterranean noiserock moshpits.
Today's mp3 is by Atlas Strategic, Dan Boeckner's band that eventually split up (with him then going on to form Wolf Parade with Spencer Krug). This song was in fact recycled and retitled for one of WP's early EPs, but here's the original version.
Atlas Strategic - National Flag
> Posted by Liam at 3:25 PM
> Sunday, February 19, 2006
> Uhhhh yeah so I quit the band, for reasons too terrifyingly dull to go into here. So I guess that's probably my brief flirtation with musicmaking dead in the gutter then. Ah well. I expect I was ahead of my time anyway!
This of course leaves me with even more spare time on my hands. I seem to have been more or less roped into becoming Feedback's new poster designer so at least that's something to keep my creative juices leaking in some direction. I even put up some of my posters on gigposters.com which I found funny at the time but now feel mildly embarrassed about, as most of the posters on there are fucking amazing whereas mine are some ropey lackadaisical photoshop efforts I spent an afternoon on.
My old housemate Noel came up to visit this week, we spent Thursday night in some of the noisier pubs of Lancaster before ending up in the Sugarhouse. Jesus, it's been literally years since I've been in there, maybe five years? It seemed pretty much the same, except everyone looked horrifyingly young. Oh, and they seemed to have some sort of generic rock room now alongside the generic indie one. We ended up leaving after half an hour because Noel felt too old. I don't go to nightclubs that often anymore, when I do it seems to be ill-thought-out quests for more booze that end us up in shitty townie dives like Hustle. Of course being barred from half the places in Preston doesn't help. I guess if I got a job and had the money I might go to Manchester now and then, but I didn't used to when I had a job, so fuck knows. I guess most of my friends just aren't into the idea of clubbing anymore, and the appeal is fading for me now that I'm an old fart. Then again, once that fucking public smoking ban the health-nazis have brought in this week goes into effect next year I doubt I'll ever set foot in a nightclub again, so maybe this year is my last chance to squeeze out the last of the club-juice from my veins. Sian mentioned something last night actually about finally making Christian's dream of a trip to the Tache come true, maybe we should do that.
Er I thought I might start posting some mp3s on my blog as a way of making it less dull. Don't worry, I'm not trying to turn it into one of those music blogs, too many people already do it and I don't really have anything new or interesting to add. I just thought it might entertain the 3 and a half people who read mine. Of course it's also entirely illegal, I'm hoping I'll manage to avoid the wrath of the mighty Copyright Guild through sheer insignificance.
Here's the first one then, it's by Nebraskan newfolkwaveartnoiserock outfit Eagle*Seagull (terrible name, good band).
Eagle*Seagull - Your Beauty Is A Knife I Turn On My Throat
(I'll be uploading them using filesharing sites I think, rather than hosting them myself, so they should only be there for a week or two before expiring)
> Posted by Liam at 3:14 PM
> Saturday, February 11, 2006
> Odd quiz stolenoff Sian and Kerstin
After you die... Reincarnated as Yourself After death, you will be reborn again as yourself. You will live the same life, unbeknownst to you. However, you will have vivid moments of déjà vu, as you probably have now. | ||||
| ||||
Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com |
Reincarnated as myself? That doesn't even make sense
Tonight I head off to Sunny Preston to go to Lauren's birthday party, should be good but unfortunately I overdid it a bit last night and currently feel all mardy and ill. Partytime! Hopefully I'll have recovered in a couple more hours though.
> Posted by Liam at 6:16 PM
> Friday, February 10, 2006
> Yeah so the other day I found out Fiery Furnaces and Herman Dune and the Microphones are all playing at ATP as well! Then a couple hours later I found out all the tickets had sold out... :(
I suppose it's just as well, I shouldn't really be trying to organise a trip to a £125 festival when I have trouble affording pasta at the moment. Still, it's bummed me out a bit. Oh well. I just hope Destroyer does more UK appearances later in the year.
I subscribed to last.fm recently, it only costs £1.50 a month so I thought I'd give it a trial run. You get various fairly disinteresting features from being subscribed, but the cool thing is being able to listen to a streamed radio channel made up of bands you like. Similar to that launch site I used to use (and probably like a million other sites by now). It's nice because you can listen to mp3s normally via winamp or whatever, and it notes what bands you like, then if you fancy some random stuff you can put their radio on and it'll play similar stuff. Plus of course you can listen to other people's radio stations. Coolest of all is that when you tag bands, you can then listen to the tag as a station. So like I've tagged all the bands I like with female singers as "ladynoise", and now if I click on the ladynoise station I just get those bands played to me.
Superkings are back at Feedback again tonight, I haven't been there in ages, quite looking forward to it. Have to be strong and avoid the Revolution black hole though.
Oh, speaking of gigs, I've put some of the posters and flyers I've made recently on Flickr. Dunno why really, just thought it might be interesting to have non-photo stuff there too.
> Posted by Liam at 4:00 PM
