Ain't That Always The Way

It's half term up here and I took the week off to look after the boys. I also figured that I would have plenty of time to get a load of blog posts down and bits and pieces done around the house.

 . . . well it's now Wednesday and I have done absolutely bugger all on either the DIY or as you will have noticed the blog fronts. We are going away for a few days tomorrow so I better get my arse in gear.

Paul Quinn - Ain't That Always The Way

It's Official, Drew Is A Wendy pt 1

We went, saw and fucked off kinda sharpish.

Those of you who have been foolish enough to keep up with events at, around, across or miles away from the kitchen table will be well aware of the dramas that revolve around me and my family getting in the car and deciding to go away on anything that could be losely termed as a break.

The journey down to Suffolk was uneventful but on arriving at Latitude it didn't bode well that the road into the field where the cars were parked was deeply rutted and extremely slippery due to the eighteen hours of rain that the area had had up until this point.

After getting some of our gear out of the car it took us about an hour to find the Tangerine Fields where our fully assembled tent awaited us. We had a pizza, a couple of beers and then I went back to the car park to get the rest of our stuff. By this time quite a few (several hundred) other cars had arrived and it was dark.

So . . .

after about an hour's searching I eventually found my car got the rest of our shit and trapsed back the couple of miles to where our tent was to find two children still up to high doe (on cloud nine) and a remarkably chilled wife.

And so to bed and good thoughts of the weekend to come.

Bright Eyes -Nothing Gets Crossed Out

Record Store Day pt2

Well, that was quite an enjoyable morning.

Max was none to pleased when I got him up at the back of seven this morning for our trip into Glasgow but once he was up he was his usual self, a sullen teenager six years too early, on the way in I had to promise that if there was anything by AC/DC I would have to buy him it.

We got to Glasgow and parked in the Kings Street car park across from MONO at 08:15 and could see that quite an orderly queue had already formed and there were about thirty people in front of us when we joined. Then the mental calculations started if there were 500 copies of such and such and there were 150 stores taking part then how many copies of the Cults single did MONO get and how many of the people in front of me look like they are here to buy that single? I have to admit that Max did his best to distract me from such thoughts by asking "how long now?" every couple of minutes and to inform me that "Gran (my mother) thinks that you need to grow up and stop going to all these concerts and buying records" I would like to say that on hearing this I was shocked but on the contrary as he said it I could hear my mother saying it.

At 9:00 am on the dot the doors opened and the agonising ten minutes of watching people coming out smiling and trying to peer through their bags and find out what they had bought, before it was my turn at the counter,  began. My wants list was actually quite restrained this year with only two must gets on my list the afore mentioned Cults single and the ARP Pastoral Symphony remix 12".  That was until I saw the list on the wall in Monorail, there near the end was a single that caught my eye, The Velvet Underground Foggy Notion/I Can't Stand It, where did this come from? It was not on any of the lists I had seen. In the second or two that it took me to absorb this information my priorities had changed and this was the essential purchase of the day as these are two of my favourite VU tracks and last night I had included I Can't Stand It on my compilation cd.

After what seemed an eternity but in fact would have been less than ten minutes from the doors opening I got to the counter.

In as nonchalant a voice as I could muster I said " Have you got any copies of the Velvet Underground single left?"

" Yes" was the reply.

I nearly screamed like I would have if Andy Smith had scored the winning goal in the 1995 Scottish Cup Final but instead retorted "I'll have that then and also the Cults seven inch?"

I then went on to get a few other things, The Warpaint and Red Crayola sevens, The Hangover Lounge 10" which was a rash heat of the moment tihng which I am regretting now as it is a bit, well twee for me, the ARP 12" and of course Shoot To Thrill by AC/DC because as Max rightly pointed out " a deal's a deal, dad".

I have to say that I think that some of the stuff was a bit over priced,  eighteen quid for a 10" of The Queen Is Dead, the same for The Vaccines bootleg but maybe that's just me.

So then it was over the road to RubaDub to purchase a new stylus and the buy of the day as it turned out,  not a Record Store Day exclusive but the latest installment of Jeff Mills Something In The Sky series, pt 7 an absolute belter of a record.

All in all not a bad day out but I am well and truly skint now.

The Velvet Underground - I Can't Stand It 

Sometimes Context Is Everything

This post was going to be about Joan As Policeman but after listening to her again I have decided that she is incredibly boring and I can't find anything enthusiastic to say about her music at all. This surprised me, as earlier in the week, I was in my used to be Swedish but then American and now Dutch owned car dealership waiting for my car which was in for new brake disks and pads in preparation for next weekend's mammoth drive ( more about which later) when a rather, at the time, pleasant track came on as I was enviously looking at the shiny new Saabs. I thought, I will do a post on that track later in the week.

So last night, I played the track, The Ride by Joan As Police Woman fully intending to then type a piece on how good this mellow track was. However after the first 30 seconds of listening to it all I could think is bland, bland, bland and couldn't wait for it to end, christ! I thought to myself this is boring. I had to play it again to confirm that this was actually the track I had listened to a couple of days previously and alas it was.

I started to ask myself, why did I think that the track was good only a couple of days earlier and the only thing that I could cone up with was,  that being the impatient git that I am, I will consider anything good if it takes my mind off of waiting about, doing nothing. But then I thought, I had seen this woman live and don't have any strong anti Joan As Police Woman feelings after the event but when I consider the performance I have absolutely no feelings about seeing her live whatsoever. I have vague recollections of her on stage at the QMU but cannot tell you anything she played or how I felt about it. What puzzles me even more is why did I then buy this single from the merchandise stall that night? I know it wasn't alcohol induced as I was driving but I have no recollection of why I made the purchase.

Anyway here is a track by the headliners that night four years ago and a single which I believe was my favourite single of the previous year, at least it is the number one track on my 2005 playlist and when I played it tonight I got the same rush as I got the first time I heard it on 6 music and every subsequent time since when I have played it.

Guillemots - Trains To Brazil.

BTW - the reason why the last few tracks have been on MediaFire and the like is because for the first time ever I have exceeded my bandwidth during the month on Box.net  which I suspect is a result of changing the posted files to MP3. If you cannot download something from earlier in the month you will have to wait 'til the 01/07 and you can blame Chocolategirl_64 and kendo as it is down to them that I changed the format.