This is Lima Mike calling Delta Charlie
I love Fear is the Key.
July 10, 2008
July 6, 2008
Dreams of californication
Just messing about with the guitar and wondering how Movable Type handles mp3 uploads:
test.mp3
May 1, 2008
opus mixtum
Photo credit: Dawn Sutter Madell
A couple of you (mr g. and k.r.) might remember my first venture into writing HTML – a few pages about the band Antietam, written in 1994 or 95 and hosted on geocities. Those pages moved to a home on demon internet in 1996 and lasted, more or less unchanged, until around 2005, when I bought eatyourgreens.org.uk. Well, the pages themselves still exist and you can nose around on them here. My favourites are the first appearance of the phrase ‘eat your greens!’ and a Guitar Player interview where Tara Key gets technical about amps and effects pedals. What's not to love about a librarian who plays guitar like Neil Young and waxes lyrical about Les Pauls?
Anyway, enough nostalgia. Antietam have a myspace page now and a new album, Opus Mixtum, which I just got hold of and have been playing pretty constantly for the last 3 days. 26 songs (11 of them instrumentals) sprawling over 2 CDs, it takes a while to sink in but first impressions are that this is a great record. It's an eclectic range of sounds, but no less powerful for it. There's Crazy Horse style rock, reminiscent of Rope A Dope or Burgoo, mixed with gentle acoustic guitar and piano that could have come from Tara's solo albums, Bourbon County and Ear and Echo. I think this is going to be one of my favourite records of 2008.
If you're in New York, Antietam are playing outside the Brooklyn Public Library on 31st May. More info on myspace.
March 23, 2008
Kitchen door
“I bet you could rip that out with a claw hammer”, said Neil C. He was right too…
So I've spent my Easter Sunday ripping the flat apart with my bare hands. Cos I'm a man, baby… There's something quite satisfying about demolishing 30-year-old DIY.
March 9, 2008
We call upon the author to explain
Blair Millen tagged me to write six unimportant things so here goes:
- My favourite record at the moment is Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!.
- I was born, and grew up, in Nottingham.
- I spent a semester of grad school on academic probation, with the threat of being kicked off my PhD if I didn't improve my grades.
- I spent this afternoon painting the spare room.
- I first used e-mail in 1989. No internet back then, as I recall.
- I'm about to make a nice cup of fairtrade tea. Cheers!
September 15, 2007
I guess this must be the place
It pleased the map geek within me to discover that Google Maps has street names in Mexico City. Which meant I could find my old place in del Valle, at Elena Arizmendi 18B.
August 18, 2007
Goin' against your mind
Bruce Lawson takes time out from exploring the sultry ladyboys ancient Bhuddist temples of southeast Asia to write about the landmine problem in Cambodia. Two people a day are blown up by Cambodian mines, on average.
Unrelated to that, I spent some birthday money (thanks Matt!) on new music this week and I wanted to say that Built to Spill's ‘Goin' against your mind' is one of the best songs I've heard in ages. You can listen to it free on builttospill.com.
February 23, 2007
She's a real left winger
…cos she's been down South and held peasants in her arms.
February 6, 2007
Colouring outside your guidelines…
…passing out while you were passing out your rules.
January 30, 2007
Interview feedback
“The board felt you could improve on your .NET experience and felt you could have been more inventive with your answers.”
Sigh. Anyone got any tips for inventive answers to interview questions?
January 28, 2007
No division
I haven't posted a music video for a while, so here's a rousing anthem from my current favourite band, Hot Water Music. Perhaps it'll go some way towards cleansing my brain of Celine Dion's truly awful cover of You Shook Me All Night Long. There are dark, nameless horrors lurking in the hidden corners of youtube, ready to catch the unwary.
Here's some more HWM. I saw 'em live in Camden just after they released No division. They were ace.
September 18, 2006
A glint of steel…
An animated title sequence, courtesy of Charlie Owen. Everyone should have a title sequence.
September 10, 2006
Our band could be your life
How do I love the Minutemen? Let me count the ways. Suffice it to say that on the insanely long train-and-night-bus journey home from Brighton yesterday, I listened to double nickels on the dime twice, all the way through.
So it was with some excitement that I greeted the discovery, on Friday night, of a fresh new copy of We Jam Econo (Disc 1), from Amazon rentals, on the welcome mat at O'Donnell Mansions. Tim Irwin's documentary is a work of love about a great band – three blokes who formed a punk band out of a love of making music and because they had something they wanted to say. And yes, the Minutemen were a punk band, even if they did do Blue Oyster Cult and CCR covers. In fact, maybe because they did Blue Oyster Cult and CCR covers.
Anyway, my excitement was not unwarranted. This is a great music documentary, about a band that still sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. Live film of the band is interspersed with interviews - Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, Chuck Dukowski, Kira, ed fROMOHIO and Mike Watt's mum among others. Much of the story is told by Mike Watt, with occasional stories from George Hurley. The DVD includes 222 minutes of extras, on two discs. I may have to buy myself a copy.
Such a shame that they'll be mostly remembered as the band that did the theme tune for Jackass.
History Lesson Part II
Our band could be your life real names'll be proof. me and Mike Watt we played for years. punk rock changed our lives. We learned punk rock in Hollywood drove up from Pedro we were fucking corndogs we'd go drink and pogo. Mr. Narrator! This is Bob Dylan to me my story could be his songs I'm his soldier child our band is scientist rock. but I was E Bloom then Richard Hell Joe Strummer and John Doe. me and Mike Watt playing guitar.
July 16, 2006
It's nice up north
Exciting news (if you're me): John Shuttleworth's film ‘It's nice up north’ is back, by popular demand, at the Greenwich Picturehouse on Tuesday night.
And I have a ticket!
July 12, 2006
Good feeling
Finding a brand new, as-yet-unpublished-in-the-UK book at the Amnesty book sale for £1.50, looking it up on amazon.co.uk and discovering that the retail price is ten times that. Go me! I am the king of bargain hunting.
So I've been reading Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's thoughtful and touching comic book account of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. This edition goes on to cover her life in Austria as a teenager and her return to Tehran before the Gulf War in 1991. It's well worth reading and quite enlightening about Persian culture and the Islamic state in Iran.
June 27, 2006
A dream passing by in the sky
Thought for the day: [Bill] Gates now spends more on global health in a year than the UN does.
Oh, and I picked up a Small Faces songbook at the Amnesty sale. Time to tune up my guitar, methinks.
April 24, 2006
No Blacks. No Dogs. No Irish.
I just tried to renew my passport online. I received this error message after filling out my name, which contains an apostrophe — ‘Only use A-Z, a-z, commas, hyphens & spaces. See More Help for guidance’
Am I supposed to change my name to ODonnell because some idiot can't write software capable of dealing with Irish surnames?
I used to be eligible for an Irish passport. It's tempting to look into that in more detail.
March 1, 2006
Slight Visual Impairment…
One of those strange, pre-migraine visual problems tonight. Generally referred to as an 'aura', I believe. Anyway, cue yours truly unable to see anything that's right in front of him, staggering around the flat like a gimp. Ever tried cooking when you can only see clearly in your peripheral vision? It's fun.
Damn, and I had been hoping to watch a film tonight too.
Still, no splitting headache, which is good. Used to get these frequently when I was a teenager. In the last year or so, the problem seems to have kicked off again. My head is not happy about something. I thought I'd note it down here when it occurs so I can maybe see how frequent they really are.