During our five hour stay in Borders bookshop I was reading Future Electronic Music Technology magazine [or something] and apparently you can now buy a program for Palm organiser things that turns them into a metronome! Now that‘s useful technology…

My glasses broke today and I had to stick them back together with superglue. Well, it was either that or go about wearing my prescription sunglasses and even I’m not cool enough to get away with that in winter. Although I could maybe have gone with risk of snow blindness. Except there isn’t much snow here.

I’ve been trying to overdose on films, Haribo and the 13th Note this last week and all three going very well. for some odd reason NTL have given us all the extra Film Four channels for free. we may not have the actual Film Four channel but we do have the Film Four repeated one hour later channel. so I’ve been watching all manner of films while eating the bucket full of sweets that Greg sent me and doing the incredibly difficult jigsaw he also sent me. Greg should never have got me started on jigsaws, I’m too determined and HAVE TO FINISH THEM or I feel like it’s an insult to my intelligence. or something. and then David came to save me from jigsaws and instead we tried to spend an entire 48 hours in the 13th Note before I sent him home with pockets filled with Haribo.

I’ve got a £10 voucher for Woolworths or HMV. suggestions on how I should spend it please. best suggestion so far is to buy £10 of pick’n’mix [thanks Ollie]. I tried really hard in HMV but I just cannot spend £15 on a cd even if I am getting £10 off.

hullo. I’m pished. ha. I’m still wearing a yellow plastic hairclasp that I got in a cracker at work christmas lunch today and I’m eating a finger of Fudge. I saw Belle and Sebastian last night at their Christmas Charity Do. I arrived while some people were playing cheesy keyboard covers of popular tunes while all disguised with big fluffy hats and fake moustache/glasses/nose combinations. it was fairly amusing. then this girl got up to do a speech on behalf of the anti-war campaign [one of the recipients of funds raised] and completely messed it up. Then Suckle came on. They were shambolically under-rehearsed and did all new songs but it was sounding like there was some lovely stuff going on. Once they get it together a bit more it should be fantastic. Must dig out their album on Chemikal in a minute. Then we got Alasdair Gray talking about politics again and he was even worse than the girl. Cringingly bad actually. It’s this kind of thing that gives politics a bad name. No-one’s interested in politics when some guy goes on about the collapse of Russia in the 1930s, especially not in the middle of a christmas gig. You want short sharp exciting politics. Aye.

So Belle and Sebastian finally came on and played for at least two hours. by about half way through I was feeling very old and wishing for a seat. and some slippers and a cup of tea. They were fab fun though. Most of the members did a little solo spot, singing a cover version and there was lots of fun and frolics including someone dressed as an orang-utang appearing during Isobel’s song about orang-utangs and wandering around the audience with some mistletoe collecting kisses. We also got a bunch more covers, some christmas songs [including a beee-utiful ‘Come O Come Emmanuel’] and a few top B&S hits. All jolly good fun. They also did a raffle half way through, giving out gifts donated by Chemikal Underground, Mogwai [“5 tenners in a brown paper envelope! Not much thought there!”] and B&S themselves including Isobel’s orang-utang and Stuart’s box full of extremely rare B&S stuff. Nice touch. Then they shouted for Monica Queen and she came down and they did Lazy Line Painter Jane. Aye, that was it. I might have some coffee now…

Saturday I went on the Anti War (try this site, they were there) march in Glasgow. It was OK but I’m very much not a fan of the ritualised shouting that these things can get stuck into (see bits of “face it, your politics..” in the Reading Library section here for why). Especially when the woman with the megaphone is right behind me. Some of the speakers were more interesting than I’d thought, though. And it was a good mix of people who probably wouldn’t have agreed on much else.

But then it was enough Hippy Peacenik nonsense and after some shopping (CAPITALIST!) I went to 6 Hours of HATE! at the 13th Note. It was closer to 8 really. Some good bands and beside that there was a lot of bands doing slow chunky metal with a singer with shaved head and goatee beard thing who were OK. Esp. good were In Decades Decline (formerly Unique Freak) and their mates Divide, they were on the more punk side of things. Also liked the silly fast metal bands Evidence of Trauma (short songs and old skool metal haircuts) and Regorge (? – re-something anyway, technical thrash but better than that sounds).

I survived (the folk there were actually friendlier than usual, I’m sure) and at 10 I left to go home and listen to John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano.

well, I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun on a saturday [actually, I’m that sad I probably can if I think about it]. DEATHLEHEM was funny as hell and great too. I arrived to find a group of teenage boys arguing with the doorman then descended into a dry-ice filled cavern full of rock. okay, I’m exaggerating but it was full of nu-metal kids, old metallers, scary people and no goths sadly. the bands I saw were mostly good as well although the presentation usually outdid the music somewhat. I liked EYEBOLT and the band that insisted all their songs were about the Ilisu Dam and the economy in Romania and the band that spent more time making jokes and arguing with the audience than playing their hardcore punk tunes. One of the bands had the most evil person I’ve ever seen in my life playing bass for them. He looked like a teenboy singer from Muse [scary enough] but he also had the most evil piercing eyes and stared at people all the time. it was like a twisted evil goblin was living inside his head. I was very very scared. I could only manage 6 and a bit bands but chris was enjoying himself far too much so ask him about it.

I then wandered the streets for a bit taking photos of the christmas lights and being a bit odd and then I went to see Amélie. I got there 20 minutes early so I could go and sleep in the cinema til it started. Amélie was so perfect I cried at the end. make sure you see it soon.

I also heard a salesman today describing fibre-optic christmas trees as ‘the latest technology’. wait til he hears about phones that fit in your pocket and spaceships that go to the moon!

this not gunna be a long blog but I just wanted to convey to you what happened to me on Monday when I was just trying to do something nice. I went to give blood. I’ve done this regularly since I was 18, about 10 times and never had a problem. This time however I did. As I lay down waiting for the nures to stick me I took a few deep breaths ‘cos it hurts to begin with. However I wasn’t prepared for the bloody butcher they had working that day. After being jabbed, she muttered ‘mmm…missed the vein’ and proceeded to wiggle the fucking needle about under the skin trying to find the vein. After 20 seconds of this she admitted defeat pulled out the needle then without warning stuck me again. The dozy bitch still couldn’t ‘find the vein’ but by now I had a fast spreading bruise where she’d been poking the needle. Deciding I’d not been mutilated sufficiently she thought it best to release the pressure of the bruise by using the needle to pierce the skin once again. I resisted the urge to strangle the bitch shouting I’m not a fucking pin cushion but another nurse wandered over and said ‘ah… sorry about that why don’t you get yourself a cup of tea and come back in a few weeks’. The temerity of the woman! Suffice to say I’m not going back their anytime soon although I’ll still give blood ‘cos it’s a good thing to do. Anyhow I’m off to hand in my essay and I’ll be back blogging again soon, once I’ve recovered from my ordeal. Toodle pip…

Hello. Fun weekend I had, with Instal on sunday just been covered well enough. Friday I went to Alec Empire followed by the 555 Records Extravaganza with Kid606.

Got attacked by Alec Empire when he invited me to mosh and I told him “actually Mr. Empire I think overall your Hypermodern Jazz album is ultimately a more rewarding experience than your enjoyable but slightly overblown for 8:30pm gabber”. “Riot!” he replied, “destroy 2000 years of culture!”

The 555 records folk are dead nice. They put out an album to celebrate their wedding. Aaaaah. Steward is the pair of them playing guitars and throwing rockstar shapes over borrowed beats from tunes like “Hey Micky, ” by Toni Basil. Can’t dislike that. Joan of Ass did similar stuff but without the guitars and a bit screechier. Amusing as all that was it did seem like Kid606 was the only one doing it properly, but he was well worth the wait. It’s somewhere between DJing and playing live and it’s fantastic he should be playing to much bigger crowds. But I can’t convince people of this so I’ll just have to console myself with saying “I told you so..” when he opens for Madonna in a couple of years time. Or she opens for him.

I was at Instal, a festival of experimental electronic and contemporary classical music yesterday and it was fantastic. seven hours and I wasn’t bored for a single moment. it was kind of like a cross between a music festival and an art gallery with new artists starting their sets in different parts of the venue moments after each other. nice mix of stuff as well although we managed to avoid most of the classical stuff which sounded least interesting to me. we did catch the Symphony for 100 Metronomes though, or rather, since we were a little late, the Symphony for 5 Metronomes. I was more interested in watching other peoples’ reactions to watching the last 2 metronomes click-click-clacking for ten minutes but then Koji Asano started his set and everyone got bored of watching metronomes. Koji Asano was probably my highlight of the event, loud but really textured and I could hear so much going on. Philip Jeck was another highlight, looking like a dusty old history teacher but bringing out the beauty of his old deteriorated records. Local acts Rhomboi and Defaalt gave different tones to the event with echoing throbbing guitar and interactive graphics respectively.

Headliners Icebreaker International were in a class of their own though. Funny, intriguing and vaguely mad in person, we left our interview just as confused as when we arrived, our heads full of economics and well-spun tales. Live, they were definitely the most acccessible act with their flowing electro-pop and NATOarts business suits. sadly they got cut short by a technical problem – a sad note on which to end such a well-organised event. I ended up stumbling home in the frost at 1am where I saw a fox watching me from the roadside. I then had seemingly endless strange electronic music soundtracked dreams and woke to a group of economists discussing world trade on the radio. my head’s been a bit odd since.

just sat through the whole of jo whiley’s sycophantic dribble in order to catch channel 4’s ‘pioneers’ programme about the mighty SONIC YOUTH. a disappointment? oh yes! i wondered how they’d manage to cram the whole of a 20+ year career into such a compact time (fifteen minutes – fifteen WHOLE minutes!) and – clever trick – they didn’t bother! effectively cutting the career in half, NOTHING pre-‘Goo’ was played, only hinted at in the vaguest of ways, and the band interview was giving secondary prececedence behind rambling obvious blather from a collection of low-rent 90s indie kids (debbie goodge excepted – a Snowpony member fair enough, but hmm… I seem to remember some other band called My Bloody something or other which seemed to have dropped off her caption…) Any reason why sonic youth have such a massive influence over so many bands from oooh… 1985 onwards (at least) wasn’t even partly explained: the closest we got is ‘because they got Nirvana signed to Geffen’. Yeah! DIY spirit!

fuck!!

i implore you all to go here and download the mp3.