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.

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.

So, naturally, Friday night involved a few pints so I slept in a bit on Saturday morning. I seem ptogrammed to wake up at 9:30 on weekends. Normally I’d be annoyed and try to get up earlier, but since I average only about six hours a night during the week I figure my body knows what it needs. I got piss all done during the day but that didn’t bother me much since I was off to see the folk supergroup Lau in the evening.

I’ve only seen Lau once before but they’re firmly cemented as one of my favourite live acts. They took the roof off the place with a stunning rendition of Horizontigo and that was only the second track. Amazingly, they upped the ante further and never let up for a second.

Adding to my vinyl collection I picked up a copy of Live on orange vinyl. Beautiful so it is. The acoustic arguments aside, the aesthetics of vinyl far outweigh that of any other media. The only problem with Live is that it has neither Horizontigo or The Burrian which are both on Arc Light. Ah well, guess I’ll just have to re-buy that as well.

I actually picked it up a little over a month ago but I’m been slacking on the blogging so fuck off. I’ve been meaning to add a turntable to my hi-fi for a decade now. You can tell by the fact that I specifically bought an amp with a phono stage back in 1999. I finally have something to plug into it.

None of your new stuff though, this thing is almost as old as me. Bought from Hi-Fi corner on Leith Walk 25 years ago by Dave in the office it’s served him and his family well until now and now it’ll do me for a good long time to come. I missed a trick though, apparently if he’d heard I was after a turntable a week earlier I’d have had it for free. Unfortunately he googled and found it’s something of a collector’s item. That didn’t stop him selling it to me for a song!

I’ve been really enjoying the few records I have over on this side of the country but I knew the needle was worn and a couple of discs were skipping. Tonight that’s all fixed though. A quick stop at the same store it was bought from and I came away with a new new needle and cartridge as well as the requisite knowledge to get it setup properly.

All the tutorials I’d read and tried to follow about setting the weight on the arm were as nothing next to a thirty second demonstration. The owner of the shop took me through a number of tables with various high end additions but none of it was sales speak. He was clearly just interested in showing off what was possible often dismissing what he was about to show me with a “You don’t need this but just look”. The silicon gel filled arm rest was something else.

Fitting the new cartridge was a doddle and it took seconds to get the weight fixed. Now none of the records skip and it’s borderline silent between tracks (the borderline only being noticeable if I put my head next to the speaker).

One of my favourite albums of all time, Workingman’s Dead, is filling my room with sonic wonder.

On Friday I nipped through to Glasgow to watch Yo La Tengo at the ABC. I own about half a dozen YLT albums but I’ve never managed to get into them all that much. It’s great background music but if you asked me to him a tune I wouldn’t be able to. I’m still not sure I could do that, but after seeing them live I have a much better appreciation for what they’re about.

Beautifully crisp, clear bass riffs came booming out of the stage and were the backbone of some stunning guitar wailing. Really epic music that leapt between styles all night. We got some feedback heavy rock ‘n’ roll, doo-wop, straight up jazz, slowcore and some amazing crescendos.

I bumped into Calum of Meursault (and ex-HMV pal) at that gig and found out that they were having a single launch party at the Bowery on Saturday night. I haven’t seen the guys play in about a year and they sound very different. Much, much tighter with some astonishing drumming from Fraser. They were supported by Neil’s other band, Withered Hand, who were incredible. Given the folk-punk kick I’m on at the moment they really did it for me. Must pick up the album. The third band on the line-up was Jesus H Lizard whom I’d never heard of before but, again, a really great sound came from the front. I couldn’ t see anything so just closed my eyes and marvelled at the harmonies.

Sunday was always going to be special. Sunday was JoCo day number one! I laughed so hard, I arrred! like a pirate and I mumbled my zombie chorus. Brilliant! And I’m off to see him again tomorrow. Huge success!

Also this week my moderatorship over at the Consolevania forums came to an end. It’s been a lot of fun but checking the boards has felt like a chore for some time now so it’s high time we let some new blood take over. Well, I say we, but John’s staying on as an admin in case anyone fucks things up royally. For my own part it’ll be nice to be able to participate in discussions without having to wonder if people will see the comments as coming from me or from the Mod Team.

Epic music find of the year – Baby Bird’s Original Lo-Fi collection for £3 in Fopp! Six discs of Stephen Jones’ genius. I am going to have so much fun listening intently to all of it and it’s spurred me on to plug the gaps in my Baby Bird collection.

It’s amazing what a slight increase in temperature will do for the number of runners of an evening. I passed several couples and trios, several of whom I didn’t recognise. I didn’t see any at all for the latter half of my run though, as I decided that it’d be a good idea to run along the cycle track, around Townhill Loch and round the back of the sports grounds. Y’know, where there’s no lighting at all. It may be getting lighter but that doesn’t mean the ambience is enough to properly light the way.

However, there was enough to make out what was just ahead of me and I know the paths well so came to no harm.

If you look to the top right and see the last.fm widget you’ll notice several tracks by the Andrew Jackson Jihad appearing. I first heard them on the Vinyl Collective podcast and the song Rejoice blew me away. Enjoy this version being performed live in a parking lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBs3ived_Zw

I know that a lot of people enjoy driving, even find it relaxing but for me I feel both cut off from other people on the road and completely exposed at the same time. That said, I made it to Falkland and the Pillars of Hercules without incident, the only “interesting” part being getting onto the A92, a feat I’m told by many drivers still gives them the willies after many years of driving.

The Pillars has a lot of great veg and I stocked up on organic goodness. You certainly couldn’t call the place cheap, but I’ve got enough ingredients to see my easily through the week and beyond and since the quality it outstanding I really can’t complain. I made an aubergine curry with some of the haul and pronounce it an almost 100% success. I’d have preferred it to be a bit hotter so with any luck the chilli will have spread through it overnight.

Home via the motorway and again it was without incident. I didn’t bother trying to overtake anyone, just stayed behind the car in front of me and let them dictate the speed. Plenty of time to learn how to take part in Wacky Races at a later date.

Soundtrack for the trip; The Gaslight Anthem’s ‘59 Sound on the way out and Katy Perry on the way back. TGA’s album has cemented itself in my heart and head, it’s the Springsteen album that he should have released rather than the turkey that is his latest.

What I’ve been using it a lot for is best ofs for artists I’d only listen to once in a blue moon, artists I’d meant to listen to more, guilty pleasures and checking out what’s in the charts.

On that last one; how the fuck is that at the top of the emusic charts? Admittedly, I’ve just checked and it’s her other album that’s riding high but going by that one I still don’t understand why. I like a bit of new starlet country music, normally finding there’ll be a couple of okay tracks to an album but I just couldn’t make it all that way through that crap.

On a brighter note, Coralie Clément’s Bye Bye beauté arrived at work today. I’ve been listening to a digital copy but I really need to here it uncompressed through an amp and speakers rather than either laptop speakers or headphones.

Guano Apes

I had never heard of the Guano Apes before this year but Pyro stuck a couple of tracks on my mp3 player when he was up for the Edinburgh Rat Race and they instantly became entrenched in my regular listening. Shame they’re not still around anymore but Sandra Nasic’s solo album is pretty good and the other members have a new band which I’ve been meaning to check out, once I negotiate amazon.de. I’ll be doing more of that in 2009 anyway to buy up spaghetti western DVDs from Koch Media.

But I digress.

Wheatus

Yes, the Teenage Dirtbag band. They’re great, shut up. Despite being a fan of the first album (and seeing them when they toured for it in 2002) I’d never bought any of their other stuff. I noticed they were on emusic so grabbed the remaining albums and indulged in the guilty pleasure of pop songs with swearing. Not only did I discover two new albums of theirs but I saw the band live as well. When I say “band”, I mean Brendan and a backing singer doing an acoustic tour. It was bloody brilliant. They came out, did one song, brought the house lights up a bit and then played requests for the next ninety minutes or so. I requested, and got, BMX Bandits and would have requested Anyway as well but couldn’t remember the title at the time. Epic fail.

Related to my listening habits of 2008 is my discovery of podcasts. Of course I’ve known about them for a long time but never really got into the habit of listening, but I’ve swallowed my disgust at the Apple-centric name and got stuck in. This all stemmed from Phill and Phil’s Perfect Ten which started in the autumn. From there I’ve gone on to Collings and Herrin, The Bugle, This American Life and Weasel Radio. All of these have long back catalogues that I’m slowly working my way through and they make perfect commute material if I’m not in the mood for reading.

TLA in particular deserves a post all to itself once I’ve discovered a few more episodes of note in their ten year back catalogue.