"there's no flaws in michaela strachan" - monsters4GODS

"i'd really love to get inside your country file"


the best way i ever celebrated st patricks day was by playing an acoustic gig. it was one of my favourite gigs i played in m4G. partly because we played well, but mostly beacuse the set was relaxed and self indulgent. we were only playing to half a dozen drunks, a soundguy and taming pandora who was playing later, and we treated ourselves by playing stuff we'd never done before - including the later verses of michaela that we didn't usually get round to, some of which got laughs from drunks.

michaela's on some wierd bbc adverts at the moment superimposed on some weak animation and trying to act. i think the fact that she's not very good at it is part of her charm. she's not a stunning beauty but she has always been nice looking and always comes accross as friendly and enthusiastic. her single h-a-p-p-y radio was much better than most people would think too. i don't think we were ever that serious about our devotion to her, despite the lyrics to this song, but she was cute back in her wide awake club days (when there's an incredibly unsubstatiated rumour she had a thing with mike myers who did some sketches for it) and she's still looking pretty good for 40.

"saints and sailors" - dashboard confessional

"this is about as social as i get now"



i like the first two dashboard albums. theres an undercurrent of something smug about the band i dont really like, and the over-reliance on open tunings feels weird on my ears after a while, and the songwriting is occasionally mawkish or linguistically awkward, but there are just some lines that leap out at you from the middle of songs. lines you feel a real empathy for. lines that sum up a moment so well that all similar moments from then on seem to be soundtracked by it.


i cant remember when i last did something properly social with a real friend


i do want to kick in the head all of the muppets singing along on the dashboard confessional mtv unplugged album. but something of the band's sound has coloured or informed my acoustic playing since i heard them.

"this is not a love song" - angelou

"we can sit and talk all night, spectate and philosophise but there's no rehearsal this is the real thing. so lets just say that you got it wrong and this is not a love song"



the monkey bar was one of those places that just had to exist. by day a scratty cafe, by night host to an eclectic range of gigs and club nights. i have a strange range of happy memories of it - the gig i played there was enhanced by the singing of drunken dutch sailors, the dub night had an open african drumming circle in the upstairs room and there was psycho's.

every third thursday a weak comedian would compere an acoustic night. i saw a lot of these gigs, but the only one that is specifically memorable was seeing angelou.

now, as you may have noticed, if you give a girl a guitar i am weak around her, and if you give a pretty and talented girl a guitar i am literally putty. they sung a complete set of soul-shatteringly lovely songs, threw in the best cover of buckley's hallelujah i have ever heard and were funny and endearing between songs. holly even seemed really sorry for having to take money from me in return for a copy of their cd afterwards.
it was an evening of beauty and i walked home in a daze that night with autumn thinking about turning into winter around me.

"j'aime pas l'amour" - olivia ruiz

"si tu crois me séduire ah ce que tu te goures. je suis sourde au désir et le désir rend sourd "



back when i had cable, and if noone else was around, i occasionally used to flick over to french-speaking channel tv5. far too often it was some news , or halfway through a tv movie or that thing about sailing, but if i was lucky the show acoustic would be on. the format was beautifully simple - set in a recording studio and artists would play a song, do a bit of an interview then do another song. then they would repeat the process for another artist, then it would all be over. i saw an eclectic variety of performances on this show, but my favourite one was seeing some cute alternative-folk girl with a heavily distorted guitar and some form of tuba in her band singing cute and funny sung "la tango de qui?" i know almost nothing about olivia ruiz except the songs on this album, but most of them are great.