A is for Apple

I’ve decided to listen through my iPod’s collection in order by album title. This came about because I realised I was still listening to the same handful of albums repeatedly despite the fact I have a lot more to choose from these days. It’ll be a useful way of weeding out things I’m not interested in anymore or even, as I’ve done a couple of times, remove duplicates.

So, here’s the first batch.

#1 Reasons To Move To Gainesvill

A compilation from No Idea. There are some reasonable tracks on here but, to be honest, I’m struggling to remember what they are from looking at the track list.

Fugazi – 13 Songs

I’ve taken a long time to come around to listening to Fugazi which is a fairly criminal offense. I’m still warming to them slowly and I need need need to listen to this more often than I do. I think the problem is that I need to listen to it, rather than simply having it on in the background at work.

Bad Religion – 30 Years Live

Without doubt, Bad Religion are still one of my favourite bands of all time. I came to them in a slightly odd way, made all the more odd for the fact that it’s also the way I discovered Sparks. While holidaying in Germany many years ago, BR’s song 20th Century Digital Boy was on heavy rotation on their music channels and it stuck in my head. Several years later I met Mish, he knew the songs, lent me the album Stranger Than Fiction and the rest was history.

I’ve seen them live only once, but they’re touring again this year and I’ll be there. They’re often accused of churning out the same sound for every album. There’s definitely a BR sound, but if it ain’t broke…

Groovy Ghoulies – 99 Lives

The Groovy’s last album and the only one I  have. They’re a name I’ve heard around a fair bit and eventually grabbed this from emusic. I couldn’t hum a single tune from it. It’ll get a few more spins and then probably deleted.

Drive-By Truckers – A Blessing And A Curse

Aaahhh, DBT! DBT! DBT! I love the Truckers, I really do. First gig I ever wore ear plugs at and I’ve never looked back. This is one of their more recent efforts and, as with about the last five years worth of albums, initially felt like a letdown. Then it creeped into the back of my mind and squatted there, refusing to move until I acknowledge its awesomeness. Which I did and we’re now friends.

Alisha’s Attica – Alisha Rules The World

The first album from Brian Poole’s daughters and, I think, the first album I ever owned on CD. Apparently it came out on my birthday as well, which doesn’t fit with my memories, but never mind. It’s still a great piece of pop and I remain helpless for harmonies. I’ve got pretty much everything AA ever put out though I’ve given up hope of the second volume of the Vaults ever appearing.

Meursault – All Creatures Will Make Merry

I’ve not listened to this as much as I hoped I would as I find it a bit disappointing when compared to Meursault’s debut. There’s something wrong with the production to my ears and it doesn’t have the punch of a live show. Ho hum.

The Hold Steady – Almost Killed Me

Another debut album, this time from one of Brooklyn’s best exports. With this band I followed the trend by joining the bandwagon with Boys and Girls In America. If I was ever in a band that put out a debut as assured as this I could retire after that one album.

The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang

I just wrote about TGA the other day so I won’t repeat myself. This is a good album so far, I simply haven’t listened to it enough yet to bump it up in the greatness stakes. However, I’m confident it’ll get there.

Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

I doubt this will ever be one of my favourite YLT album. Mind you, I’m saying that as someone who still struggles to ping down what it is about YLT that keeps them coming back for more. I may simply stop listening to the albums and just attend concerts.

Anticon Label Sampler, 1999-2004

I think this was one of those albums that never made it out onto the shop floor. I don’t own nearly enough Anticon music, but I do come back to this reasonably often. It’s a great example to use when people say that hip-hop all sounds the same. Does it fuck and that’s coming from someone who had to have that message hammered home with extreme prejudice. However, I can now say I’ve bounced along to some great show with my hand in the air.

Lau – Arc Light

If Anticon’s what you use to show people that hip-hop has more to offer than the charts, Lau is what you’d use to show that Scottish folk music isn’t all beards and fingers in the ear. Then you’d take them to a gig and nudge them in the ribs just before Horizontigo saying “you’ll like this, a lot”.

Barenaked Ladies – Are Me

Part of a duo put out with the album below, or close together, or not. I’m not sure as I stopped paying much attention to BNL a few years ago. I’m still a fan of the early stuff and even these two albums have something to offer, it’s just not the same as before. Now that Stephen’s gone it’s also never going to be the same.

Barenaked Ladies – Are Men

Of the two albums I’d say this is the weaker. That’s based on the fact that I can’t think how any of the songs go when looking down the tracklist.

Against Me! – As The Eternal Cowboy

I could listen to this album until the end of time. There are some who abandoned the band at this band but I had to work my way back to it. So good they then released the demo sessions as an album in its own right, though that was when the band had abandoned their roots and turned to the filthy dollar and horrible production of Butch Vig.

American Slang

I was sure I’d written about The Gaslight Anthem before but the search facility isn’t turning anything up. So; The Gaslight Anthem topped a few Best Of lists for 2009 (or maybe 2008) and I was late to the party. Not just late, but I stood in the kitchen and refused to acknowledge the fun.

The point where I got it is etched quite clearly in my mind. I was walking home from work, the sun was out and I rounded the corner at the bottom of Leith Walk and was barely able to contain my air drumming. The album had crept up on me and was now firmly lodged in my mind. It’s not a perfect album from a sonic point of view. I still think the production is flat, but that’s a problem that affects a lot of music these days. It’s fine for pop but anything with instruments suffers from this style of dull production.

But that was then, this is now. They’ve got a new album out and one that I’d only heard over online streams. Apparently it leaked early but it didn’t appear on my radar. Not only that but they were playing Glasgow. Fucking get in.

It’s accurate to say I was more than a little excite to see this band live. They’re unpretentious, balls out punk/rock. I was up for this, I’d be the only person there that I knew but I’d head into the pit and get sweaty.

Then they came on stage. And the lead vocals weren’t present in the mix. The opening song, the track that’s going to get everyone started and it’s fucked. The title track from the new album. Fucked. Okay, so let’s try on track two. Nope. The vocals are louder but the only instruments I can hear are bass and drums.

The night stayed like that to the point that I was contemplating leaving after half an hour. The only reason I stayed was that I didn’t feel like getting back in the car just yet. I even attempted a track without my ear plugs but, as with every time I try that, it was just painful and unpleasant. I left after an hour, at the end of the main set. A rousing Baba O’Riley wasn’t enough to keep me in place.

Ordinarily I’d dismiss it as just me, but Twitter tells me otherwise. My angry tweet towards the O2 Academy garnered a response to myself and another tweeter who was also complaining about the poor sound. From their feed it’s clear that it’s not a one off occurrence. The venue wanted us to know that the mix was handled by the band’s techs, but that doesn’t cut it for me. If you’re going to put the sound desk on the stage then you need to provide an on-floor feed so that it can be monitored.

From where I stood I could see that the sound tech was bored and presumably of the opinion that the sound was fine.

We’ve since been tweeted again by the venue saying “don’t give up on us, it wasn’t our fault”. I replied with “well, it kinda was”. We’ll see. If I attend another O2 Academy gig and the sound’s bad then their setup doesn’t work and I won’t waste my money there.

ConCon(Con?)

I’m pretty sure that the weekend was officially titled ConCon3. This time we weren’t going to just eat, drink and be merry. This time there would be games.

The World’s Wildest Dudes decided to lay on a party for us.  A full-on “book out a local hall” kind of party. It was great. We came, we drank, we ate, we sang, we played football and we laughed. I got to meet more people I’d only spoken to online and for the second time in a row we didn’t need to watch someone fall under the table.

Pictures tell more than words.

Playing football at a community centre in Govan at midnight has never been so much fun.

Teenage Dirtbag

Saturday night was Wheatus night through in Glasgow. I was struck afterwards that they’re a bit like going to see the Drive-By Truckers in concert. Sonically, no, nothing like it, but at both concerts you’ll see a band who are enjoying themselves and appear to be comfortable with where they are as well as being genuinely grateful to the people who have turned out to see them.

I initially found it a bit terrifying that this was a ten year anniversary tour for Wheatus’s first album. Surely it can’t be that long since I was in second year of university? Apparently so. The curse of one hit wonder groups is that people will turn up to their gigs for that one song. They have a following but only for a singalong for a top ten song from the audience’s youth. Thankfully, Wheatus seem to have avoided that to a great extent.

They’re definitely a band without pretensions. At the tail end of MC Frontalot’s opening set they came on to help him with a few songs. After that was done, they simple stayed on to do their own set. No walk-off, no being fashionably late, just get on with it. Straight into banter, straight into having the crowd on their feet and jumping. From the first verse of Hump ‘em, Dump ‘em we sang like it was our last concert ever. And by “we”, I mean just about everyone.

And that’s what I was referring to when I wrote that they’ve avoided the curse of the hit single. Their other albums after the first didn’t perform well at all, but the people who turn up to the gigs know them as well as the first. Just as the last time, it was an all request show so we shouted, chanted and cheered for our favourite songs. No-one, not a soul, shouted for Teenage Dirtbag. Fair enough, we all know it’s coming, but not even those who were blind drunk destroyed the illusion.

When it did arrive as the last song of the set we belted it out like it was a decade ago and we were at the union with cheap, watered down lager, sticky floors and pool tables that weren’t level.

While looking for this video, I came across a version done by Girls Aloud. Somehow (gee, I wonder how), hearing the song being sung by a group of not unattractive women doesn’t quite have the same meaning of the nerdy original.

PB & ebay

The regular lunchtime running I’ve been doing for the last 6-8 months certainly paid off as I managed to shave roughly seven minutes off my previous best for a half marathon. To be honest, I was hoping to manage more but that just means I’ve got room to improve further.

It’s really interesting to have the GPS plot as it’s clear that the final few miles where I felt I put on a spurt and picked up the pace was all an illusion. It appear that this was my slowest part of the race. Oh well, I guess I should learn to put on a spurt further back in the race. That and to take stock of my time at the halfway mark.

All that said, I had a really good run and felt probably the strongest I have for a half. The sprint training has definitely helped as I managed to put on a burst at the last minute and ended in a 50m sprint for the line with another racer. It was great fun. The last minute burst also qualified me for a spot prize of a SIS water bottle. Fortuitous timing given that the my current bike bottle has acquired a black mold due to being left in the sun.

Long Weekend

Thankfully, this is nothing to do with being killed by woodland.

I feel like I’ve been ridiculously busy of late. I’m regularly doing something after work on four out of five nights. I’m really going to have to give up on the “I’m not all that sociable” idea. Weekends aren’t exempt either and this has led to a couple of evening and afternoons where I can do little but snooze on the sofa.

So, what’s been filling my time? A couple of weeks ago I met up with Alex and took in the Meursault gig at Sneaky Pete’s. It was a good night with good music, good craic and a few too many beers on my part. I remain somewhat unconvinced with the new Meursault album. While I like the songs and the sounds, I think the mix is a bit flat. It comes more alive using headphones in the ipod than on my hi-fi which is disappointing.

The following day was a glorious one and the call of the wild was in my ears. By which I mean I went to the zoo with Scott, James and Julia. A cracking day which culminated in a barbecue on the Links and having golf balls fired at us as we left. Good times. Sunday was as hot as Saturday and since the walk to Asda at half eight made my skin tingle I decided that seeking a day in the shade was in order and got stuck into the stack of unread progs.

And now another week has passed and it’s a bank holiday weekend. Saturday passed had my cycling into Edinburgh for a meal out. Again, good craic and good food though not enough spice. On Sunday I’d planned to wave off Ben Thomas and friend on their cycle from Edinburgh to Le Mans. Sadly, I was in the wrong place at the right time and missed them. Ah well.

The afternoon was a trip to see Rec 2 (not as good as the first one, but still fun), an aborted attempt at a barbecue and a successful game of Tapeball in the flat. Everyone seemed to be flagging in the evening so I hopped on my bike and returned home.

Today I’ve made bugger all use of my day off, preferring to catch up on some sleep, read some more progs, clean the bike and watch some extras on Doctor Who DVDs. Yet another fine day in a string of them.

I Know Where My Towel Is

So there are two things I’ve given up on this week and one that I’m doggedly sticking with.

After posting last night about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo I made it through another twenty pages before dropping the book on the coffee table, walking through to the back room and picking Peter Hamilton’s The Dreaming Void from the shelf. It’s a lovely big hardback I picked up from the discount book shop in town before it closed. In the first thirty pages I was already more interested in the characters and the story. Okay, so comparing the stories is probably unfair, but he’s certainly a better author.

So that’s one that I’ve given up on. The other was the game to the right; A Boy and His Blob. Note the age rating on the box. Okay, so the age ratings are for content not difficulty, but this is clearly a game aimed at young children. However, if was the very difficulty that put me off.

The main game is fun to play with simple puzzles, the kind where you wonder for a minute, try something a little left-field and yes, it works. But then you hit the boss battles and suddenly it’s twitch gaming with puzzles that bear little similarity to those of the main levels.

I only made it to the second guardian according to the guide I consulted. Yes, even with the guide telling me what to do (which it’s doubtful I would have figured out) I couldn’t get the timing right. I’m glad to say I’m not the only person who’s found this and most people I talked to about it struggled to recall if they’d played the game through to the end or not.

So what am I doggedly hanging on to? Lost. There’s only a two part finale to go and I’ll be almost glad when it’s over. The final season has been a chore to sit through with the show feeling like it’s treading water. The last two episodes have been no better being alternately an infodump and an episode to drastically reduce the number of characters to worry about in the future.

Two episodes to go and then I think my TV watching schedule is free from US drama. Not that the UK side of things is much more populated as there’s only Doctor Who. More time for other pursuits I guess.

Girl With The Poorly Drawn Tattoo

People have been raving about this book a lot. It was apparently released to great acclaim in Sweden and then everywhere it went after that.

I’m normally one who avoids hype, especially around popular culture. It’s a bad habit of mine as it means I often miss out on some of the good stuff. So I relented and picked this up at the weekend.

So far, it’s borderline awful. The pacing is glacial, the story is spelled out in huge chunks of turgid dialogue and there are vast swathes of pointless background information. At least the first fifty pages could be removed with little subsequent editing.

Fair’s fair, the author died before they were published (AFAIK) so perhaps the publishing house didn’t feel too comfortable editing a dead man’s manuscripts for him. However, I really feel that the hype surrounding the books is more to do with the dead author than the stories themselves.

When I voiced this opinion the other night I was surprised to find a number of people agreeing with me. Where was the universal love for these “amazing” stories? Perhaps those who like them the most rarely read crime fiction. Most people acknowledged that while the story was interesting, the telling was not, even going so far as to suggest that I simply watch the films instead.

I’ll push on for now, but it’s far from a foregone conclusion that I’ll make it to the end.

Good Weekend/Bad Weekend

Right, I’m cheating a bit here as the good weekend happened a few weeks ago and I just haven’t got around to writing about it yet. I’ve written before about the epic bike journeys that Sandy, Tim and I have done. To be fair, only one of them has got its own post, but there have been others, the pictures from which are somewhat legendary.

I think this latest trip up to Aviemore was the most successful yet. I didn’t hit the bonk and my bike was already broken before I got there so I can’t blame the trip for that. Saturday involved a relatively easy ride around and about Loch Morlich, including a fantastic bit of downhill courtesy of the path to the Lairig Ghru (sorry, walkers!). The day started off a bit miserable but the weather stayed relatively dry, if still cold.

On the Sunday we came home via the Laggan Wolf Trax which was incredibly good fun! The downside of those tracks is that were Glentress uses wood, they use stone. When you’ve only got an inch of travel in your front forks that makes for a wrist shattering time of it. However, it still counts as one of my favourite downhills and I suspect I may call in from time to time when traveling up to Inverness.

So that was the good weekend.

This (long) weekend; not so much. More water through the roof during a brief rainstorm meant that I was going to be calling the roofer and the car was due its MOT on Monday. Turns out that the car needed a fair bit of work and the same could be said for the roof. Both are now fixed and my wallet is considerably lighter.

Ho hum, I’d rather not write such short and pointless posts but I’ve been slacking off due to lack of free time and want to try and get the ball rolling again.

Photosynthesis

I swear that I used to be able to sit still. I could spend a weekend watching boxed sets or just dicking about. Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe I never did those things. I just know that I can’t do it anymore without going out of my mind.

Okay, so yesterday wasn’t exactly an energetic day; I went into Edinburgh to watch Four Lions, met up with Scott and people afterwards (though my conversation reserves were running low and I resorted to making stupid jokes) and then an evening watching Body of Lies.

However, I got up this morning and decided that I wanted to go for a run. Which is fine, it means that I’d surely be staving off the in-the-flat-Sunday depression/funk but letting off a bit of steam and burning a few calories. Except that six hours later I felt the urge to get out again before I imploded and grabbed the bike for an hour of frustration venting.

It was probably my own fault today as I attempted to go shopping for clothes. I lasted less than two minutes before turning tail and heading to the coffee shop with a book instead. It appears that my pathological hatred of clothes shopping is showing no signs of abating. I’m sure my current tatty jeans will do for another year or so.