Nothing Compares "2U" is the bomb. That is all.

Ten Songs I would like Planet Sunflower to cover

Christina Aguilera: The Voice Within
Madder Rose: While Away
Tina Arena: Chains
Nick Cave, his quiff and his Bad Seeds: Papa Won't Leave You, Henry
Lots of people, but I'm thinking mainly of Johnnie Ray: My Ideal
The Shangri-Las: Out in the Streets
The Long Vacation: See the World
The Divine Comedy: Your Daddy's Car
Virginia Astley: Some Small Hope
The Jesus and Mary Chain: Taste the Floor

A C90 from 1993 or so

Sympathy for the Devil The Rolling Stones
Beautiful John Madder Rose
Taste the Floor The Jesus & Mary Chain
Year In Song Mary Margaret O'Hara
Words of Advice For Young People William S. Burroughs
Queen Bitch David Bowie
Spectators Of Suicide Manic Street Preachers
When I Get To Heaven Ice Cube
Thank You Friends Big Star
Hit The Sugarcubes
Suckling The Wendys
Love Will Tear Us Apart Joy Division
Slow My Bloody Valentine
Only Love Can Break Your Heart Saint Etienne
Transmitting Live From Mars De La Soul
Destroy the Heart The House of Love
Thieves Like Us New Order
The Needle And The Damage Done Neil Young
Another Girl, Another Planet The Only Ones
Hate My Way Throwing Muses
Would Not Be Denied Buffalo Tom
Gene Clark Teenage Fanclub

Not bad, really. I'd still happily listen to most of this. It owes a large debt to Chris F (Muses, JAMC, MMO'H, Bowie). Suckling was a favourite of Kes and I from a free Factory tape that came affixed to an issue of Select.

The Buffalo Tom is a bit of a mystery. I think Ben Jones lent me this record. It's good! Quite what I thought I was being denied at the time is equally a mystery...or maybe not.

I don't think Bjork has made a better record than Hit, except perhaps Ooops.

Sympathy now just brings the memory of Nick G's heroic dancing to it at Ross' wedding, the only time I have ever seen a round of applause for a man dancing to a record.

I don't really believe that Ice Cube is a very good muslim (though my evidence comes from his other records)

Terry Bickers should have made better records than he did after leaving The House of Love.

Third is a really depressing, druggy record, but songs from it in isolation ALWAYS make me smile.

Thieves Like Us really is peerless. Neil Tennant's favourite New Order, too (source: neworderstory).

"Never interfere in a boy and girl fight." Thanks Bill. Failed to follow that one. But then most of your "advice" is lunatic anyway. It is you who are the terminal fool.

I still love Gene Clark like a cretinous fanboy. I did love an 8 bar riff, didn't I? But this is one of the best.

A word on this whole "Hallelujah" nonsense. I was privileged to meet Jeff Buckley. By most other accounts, and certainly in my experience, he was at ease with people who liked his music, and wanted to share the music he liked with others. In the course of a five minute conversation with him, he recommended three bands he thought I might like, from the wildly obscure to the very popular. He obviously took great delight in interpreting other people’s songs, and I don’t think he would have condemned the interpretations of others, however they may have reached the public consciousness. The comparisons of worth between the Leonard Cohen original and his own would have been pretty dull to him, I think- he just wanted to get on to the next song, or the next voice, that entranced and inspired him. If more people are inclined to seek out, say, his version of “Satisfied Mind”, or “The Way Young Lovers Do”, or “Corpus Christi Carol”, because of The X-Factor, then so much the better. There is no innate worth in music. It’s just another thing that we share with each other- another way to relate.

Having noticed that I blog once every six months, and then only under duress, Tom has sent me another one of those meme things.

Four things

Four jobs I've had in my life:

Library Assistant
Sachet Packer
Wood Sander
Marketing Product Manager

These are actually the only four jobs I have had, except that the last one has involved a number of nominal promotions. And indeed, a number of nominal promotions. Arf.

Four films I can watch over and over:

Crumb
The English Patient
Sleeper
Twelve Monkeys

Four TV programmes I love to watch:

Anything directed by Stephen Poliakoff
CSI
Press Gang
Doctor Who

Four places I've been on holiday:

Aarhus
Corfu
Goteburg
Bochum

Four of my favourite dishes:

Bread Pudding
Corned Beef Rissoles
Honey Lemon Chicken
Flaeskesteg

Four websites I visit daily:

Ilxor
The Guardian
Comic Book Resources
Gmail

Four places I would rather be right now:

Denmark
Skye
Nijmegen
Asleep

I'm not sure I know any other 'bloggers'.

I said to K this morning that I still couldn't quite believe we'd won the Ashes. You didn't, she said, they're still playing in hell. I refrained from saying that that was exactly where we seemed to be playing Australia in the 1990s. Yesterday I put all of my newspaper clippings in a scrapbook with, to borrow from Gideon Haigh, all the concentration of a small boy over a complicated jigsaw. It was an amazing summer. Three things I will remember especially: (a) Harmison's ball to dismiss Clarke at Edgbaston; (b) Strauss' catch off Gilchrist at Trent Bridge and (c) see below. 

A marvellous article from the LRB comparing the fortunes of the superpowers, cricketing and otherwise, is here. Possibly the only article which draws the comparison between Kim Hughes and Jimmy Carter, but none the less entertaining for it.

Prebends Bridge, Durham. August 2005. (Courtesy H.J. Thomas) 

The Happy Couple. Morpeth, August 2005 

Hello Tom! Silver Street, Durham, August 2005 

Kriegersvej, Aarhus. February 2005. 

Durham in the Autumn, from Prebends Bridge. 

A musical baton.

Total volume of music files on my computer: 47GB.

The last CD I bought was: D.I. Go Pop by Disco Inferno

Song playing right now: The Elements by Tom Lehrer

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

1. A Year in Song: Mary Margaret O'Hara
2. The Viaduct: Bill Wells and Katrina Mitchell
3. MBV Arkestra: Primal Scream
4. Temporary Like Achilles: Bob Dylan
5. Blanket Roll Blues: Scott Walker

I dropped the baton in the river; the world needs fewer batons.

I'm back, o readers. I have always been a huge fan of Alistair Cooke, despite his rather dubious politics. The last ever Letter from America is online now at the BBC website, and rather bizarrely it's about comics. If the internet is a broadcast medium, then you could do worse than follow this example.

About a month ago I went on a pub crawl. It was a lot of fun.

Quoth Brian Potter: 'I want to speak to the organist, not the monkey grinder'. Tee hee!
I love Phoenix Nights. Nick and I saw the 'TV's Roy Walker' episode quite by chance and just fell in love with it instantly. I bought the DVD last week. My boss is particularly fond of: 'There's your problem- discarded fag.' 'I knew it, Bloody puff's burnt me club down.' The Radio Times is right, it should be on every week forever.

On a slightly different but no less happy note, my good friend Victoria is getting married! I have known her now for a jaw-dropping nine years, and she is marrying a canny lad of north-eastern origin. On the last occasion we met he was helpful enough to explain Schroedinger's cat to me, and also to Victoria, who despite having done Physics at Cambridge, didn't really understand it either.
Anyway, congratulations and I owe you both a pint.

Blogger ate my last three posts, so I'm not going to write much. Just to say that if anyone is feeling particularly flush, I'd like an 10GB iPod for Christmas, please. Or a lovely Pure Evoke 1, which my mother is getting for christmas and with which I have fallen in love.

My xmas bonus this year will be going towards the purchase of an eMac- then I will be able to BLOG FROM HOME. Look on my works, ye mighty, and P|-|34r me!

It is the 28th October and I can go and buy The Little Friend! Happy Birthday Me!
I don't think my one man protest will have made much difference. At least the embargo-breaking seems to have been universal, so no-one will have gained extra market share- which means that breaking it has achieved very little. You could also question the wisdom of publishing a big novel at the end of October, when budget-chasing retailers are pretty unlikely to leave it sitting in the stock cupboard because a publisher tells them to.

I am halfway through Genome. This morning I find myself idly searching for popular science books on 4m4zon. Reader, it is an affliction. I am consumed by these puffed up popinjays and their simplified explanations of the challenging scientific issues of the day. A cure might be to read a novel, but I am refusing to buy The Little Friend in W4t3r5t0|\|35 because they have broken the 28th October embargo and are therefore very bad people indeed. Luckily all this frantic adding of the dread popsci to my wishlist comes too late for my birthday, which, I feel it is my duty to point out, is nigh.

I had a superb rest in Dundee. Of course I didn't read any of the books I suggested I might, (apart from The Code Book, which I did indeed race through in one sitting on the way back) but I did gain many fantastic records from C____. Highlights include Why Me (Daniel Johnston Live in Berlin); an excellent Johnathan Richman album from 1985 (All through baseball he was loved and respected/Was there bitterness in Walter Johnson? Well, it was never detected); and The Man by Bill Drummond. Coincidentally he was in Dundee, and though I couldn't get a ticket, C____ went. The great man was talking about a piece of art mentalism that he has been concocting. A link when I find one. Suffice to say that I bought a piece of a $20,000 Richard Long photograph that had sheep excrement on it. And I was delighted.

On holiday in Scotland next week, to visit A____ in Edinburgh and C____ in Dundee (I like underscoring like that, it makes me feel like Thomas DeQuincey- or James Hogg, even). Long train journeys await, so I am whittling down my lists of books and records to take. Here are the options:

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Abridged version) by Edward 'do do do the funky' Gibbon. Pros: It is very long; I have read the introduction and it looks very interesting; it will fill a horrible gap in my knowledge of ancient history. Cons: It is very long; it is very heavy; I have slight doubts about its readability, depite what the introduction says; it is abridged.


The Code Book by Simon Singh. Bought in a remainder shoppe on impulse because it was cheap and because I enjoyed his book about Fermat's last theorem (which I stole from Jody. Sorry.) This would be a good read on the train I think- I would probably race through it.


Genome by Matt Ridley. Bought in the same remainder shoppe as the above, probably inadvisedly, because it was cheap. I'm sure I won't understand a single word, so the chances of this one making my travel bag are slim.

Records (I'll probably take all of these):

The Young Gods The Young Gods: Bought yesterday in Selectadisc ostensibly as a present for C____, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he already has it, and I want it anyway.


The Action Packed Mentalist Brings You the Fucking Jams Kid 606: Title of the decade! Brief listen to this this morning suggests that it is fab.


The Parker Tapes Cassetteboy: I might need a giggle if there's a delay or summat.


Straight Outta Compton NWA: Quoth Eazy E: 'With a gat it don't matter if you're smaller or you're bigger.' Which is just as well for Eazy, bless his soul, who stood about 2' 3" in his gangsta socks.

Other records I'll probably take to dazzle A___ with:

2 Many DJs

The Eminem Show

The Lost Weekend EP

Also in White