"5-4-3-2-1" - manfred mann

"5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1. 54321 54321 54321 54321 ...."


its 12:11:10 09/08/07

i noticed

i cared

need i say more?

"august 8th" - nofx

"the air is sweet, the summer flowers blooming. nowhere in sight is there anything grey. feelings of joy are filling the street. yeah, august 8th is a beautiful day"



just noticed what the date was, and instantly thought of this song. because i'm so obvious and painfully cliche. maybe i will never have an original thought again.

i wonder what happened to my copy of eating lamb though.

"dedication" - roy castle

"dedication, dedication, dedication - that's what you need"



if you need dedication to succeed in the vaguely impressive but ultimately pointless field of being a record breaker, imagine how much more dedication you need to do anything actually worthwhile.
there are some things i'm pretty dedicated to, but only in a worryingly passive kind of way - and i'm not sure if that counts. i'm certainly not dedicated to doing much, but can fool myself comforted with my dedication to abstract concepts.

"one way or another" - blondie

"lead you to the supermarket checkout. some specials and rat food get lost in the crowd"



it's all emma kennedy's fault. she's been writing in her blog, which i always read, about having to sing this song for an audition, and after reading it i've spent literally hours poring over how i would sing it in such a situation.
and the most annoying thing is i wouldn't.
i can't act and i hate actors so i would never audition for a musical (though if anyone were to offer me a part in a production of return to the forbidden planet i might just die of excitement).
and even if i did i wouldn't sing a blondie song (although i have done so at karaoke more than once - its part of my only doing songs by female singers rule)
and even if i had to it wouldn't be this one (probably in the flesh since you ask)

so all i've done is waste a lot of time and thought on the artistic decision i would make were i to be in a situation i know - for a fact - i am so unlikely to be in that the probability is negligible.

"street spirit" - the darkness

"fade out again"



sitting in a pub in the countryside on a sunny afternoon, eating a moderately generous amount of reasonably pleasant food, and gently despairing at the choices of piped music at barely audible volume - an inoffensive-as-possible mix of 70s "classics" and modern ballads - when jamie cullum's smug little cover of high and dry came on. with my mind wandering away from the conversation in hand i was thinking of the folly of doing a radiohead cover when i remembered this one. it was one of the first darkness tracks i heard and at the time it raised my opinion of them beyond being a one trick novelty act - though i have since returned to the one-trick-novelty-act theory. but this reinvention of the song as a huge screaming rock song was invigourating and my mind kept returning to it throughout the afternoon - until the conversation turned to slagging off my ex which held my attention somewhat more

"ask" - the smiths

"spending warm summer days indoors"


i hate the sun.

obviously i am grateful for its life- and light-giving properties and recognise we'd be pretty stuck without it so i should clarify that i hate the sun as a weather condition rather than as an astronomical entity. in fairness to it, there are many weather conditions i hate more, but on a hot summer day everything i do seems to be tempered by avoiding pain.
firstly, bright lights hurt my eyes, and in the sunshine everything vaguely reflective, or even just very white, becomes a potential bright light, thus leaving me incapable of looking at anything without pain [although mild discomfort might be a more accurate term, i prefer the drama of pain].
secondly, the hot rays hurt my skin. i hate the feeling of sunlight on my bare flesh - the prickly frying sensation that imperceptibly slowly develops into the redrawness of searing flesh. i spend all my time wearing long-sleeved clothes and ridiculous hats and clinging to the patches of shade i can fit myself in. plus i really hate the way tanned skin looks. that's not a racist comment, by the way - there are some stunningly beautiful people of ethnicities different to my own - but porcelain whiteness is much more aesthetic than the blotchy honey-smeared look of the person whose body has just experienced hot sun for the first time in months.



later i put this song on in the car. i told my daughter that she had to be able to sing along to every song on louder than bombs by the time she is 10. my wife didn't seem to think this was a good plan - but i don't think it's much to ask. when i was a kid i knew pretty much all the words to any album of my parents' that i liked - and even many i didn't much - by the end of the third or fourth listen. i wish things came that easily to me now - i cant even remember all the lyrics to most songs i've written at the moment

"sumer of rock n roll" - outl4w

"don't wanna drive a bus or train catch a thief or fly a plane - i only wanna rock n roll"




what is it about the summer that makes people more willing to forgive inanity?
this song is sheer unadulterated drivel. even considering the fact i was written by small children, it is unbearably infantile. its even less clever than their stupid extraneous number in the band name [did someone just call me a hypocrite?].
the original remit for the competition on xfm that this song won was that it had to include the words "summer" and "beergarden". so there i was sitting in a beergarden in the summer and the train of thought left me thoroughly earwormed with this.

now, i want to rock n roll at least as much as the next man, but i don't want to do so soundtracked by a bunch of pre-pubescent punk-wannabes

"flicker" - kathryn williams

"but you sit there for hours watching programmes you don't plan to watch they just come on"



i made a decision this evening that i wasn't going to turn the tv on. this was mostly because i worry about the detrimental effect it has on my daughter's brain development (and mine for that matter) and because i wanted to get on with my plan to play her as wide a range of albums as possible. i started off with the angelou album because of how much it had been in my head earlier and them we moved on to this album.

i bought this record purely on the basis of seeing her perform one track on the mercury awards show and for the most part was not disappointed. it's pretty and witty and thoughtful and immaculately scored (though i'd like to hear the bass do more than plonk) and, even though its a bit too folky for me to listen to often, i enjoy it when i'm in the mood.

so in the middle of spooning yoghurt in the vague direction of a baby's face these lines jumped out at me and knocked me back. maybe it was just a guily conscience on this matter - but it felt like she was levelling this accusation straight at me. oh but its true. there are so many things i want to do, things my wife wants me to do and things i really should do that i just never get around to doing. and theres noone to blame but me. theres not enough time, but theres a lot more than im using - even on nights like this when the tv stays off.

"bitter honey" - angelou

"i am drunk on you"



first up, where did this blog go? i decided to have a couple of weeks off and it just somehow turned into 4 months. i really am pathetic.

secondly, who would have thought the first band i've not been a member of to have two songs mentioned in this blog would be angelou? but all through the last few hours i've had this song all over my mind so much it's made me want to get this blog back out.

and what a track to come back with. haunting, soft, beautiful, full of metaphor, ever so slightly strange, powerful at just the right moment, just enough of a twist of sadness - it is a love song that is so much like being in love. a song that makes you want to be in love. a song that celebrates love. love is the healthiest addiction i can think of.
go, take the one you love in your arms and get drunk on them.

"our velocity" - maximo park

"i've got no-one to call in the middle of the night anymore. i'm just alone with my thoughts"
"love is a lie, which means i've been lied to. love is a lie, which means i've been lying too"


i dont know what it is about the latest wave of indie bands, but the only parts of their songs i seem to like are the bridges. the bridge is supposed to just be a break from verses and choruses so you dont get bored of them. its supposed to make you want to hear the chorus again. there are many songs i love where i struggle to remember how the bridge goes or if i havent listened to it in a while the bridge comes as something as a surprise because id forgotten it entirely.

but this song has two bridges both of which are catchier, hookier and generally better than the chorus. these bridges have been in my head for days now, but i can barely remember how the chorus goes. theres something wrong with the world when things like this happen. its just twisted is what it is.

"thou shalt always kill" - dan le sac v scroobius pip

"thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls’ pants. use it to get into their heads."


this song is going to be huge.

i heard it twice on xfm yesterday and various bits of it have been in and out of my head ever since. a glorious slice of intelligent lo-fi.
that said, by the time it's been played to death this summer - and it will be - i will surely be sick of it, but for now i just want to be excited by it.


i don't think i've ever got into a girl's pants (or head for that matter) using any other method - which is the trouble with this song - it is too busy telling you what not to do without offering advice on replacement activities

"lonely this christmas" - mud

"that's where i'll be since you left me. my tears could melt the snow. what can i do without you? i've got no place, no place to go"



there's not often any real sense of appropriateness about my earworms, but mid march is a pretty inappropriate time to be infected by a christmas classic from that glam band from mitcham.

when i was a kid i was, for a time, obsessed with watching sounds of the seventies on the bbc - though at the time i didn't really appreciate the irony inherent in pretty much all the members of glam bands being really ugly. but then glam isn't about being good looking - its not even about looking good - its just about looking.


it was really cold today, and i was alone, if not strictly speaking lonely - i guess that's why

"shiver" - horny toad

"shiver - brrrrr - shiver - brrrrrr - shiver, shiver, shiver"


the only place i've ever heard this inconsequential ska-punk track is on some free compilation cd. i like it well enough, but it's not a great song in the scheme of things. yet it seem to crop up in my mind every time i shiver.

actually, it only happens when i'm shivering with cold not with any of the more significant forms of shiver - fear, illness, erotic tension, panic, caffeine tweaking, anxiety, resonance or random unknown reasons. i like all of these far better than coldness - not just because they come without this irritating little chorus filling my head, or even just because they are warmer, but because they are deeper. it's almost always good to feel.

"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.

"freeze the atlantic" - cable

these lyrics are pretty incoherent - i usually just mumble the right sort of sounds and hope for the best


i've just been out for a walk through the city. i needed to buy a mother's day card, my feelings on which i dealt with on my old blog but which this year was further complicated for the first time by trying to find a card that expresses what i think my baby would want to express to my wife on mother's day. wandering back from an unrewarding chore at the card shop eating a far more rewarding sub (with extra jalapenos) there are loads of people lying around on the ground in patches of sunshine as if it were summer already. for no real reason it reminds me of the dreadful sprite advert that this great song soundtracked which was nothing at all like this really. just summery.

"little miss can't be wrong"/"two princes" - spin doctors

"what you gonna do to get into another one of these rock and roll songs?"
"one has diamonds in his pockets that sounds great, now. this one, said he wants to buy you lockets, ain't in his head, now."



a special kind of double earworm occurs when two songs by the same artist are so similar that bits of them become interchangeable.
everyone loved two princes at the time, even though lmcbr was a much better song.
i don't think either has aged very well, but they are the sort of thing that might come on the radio every now and then and remind you that they were better than you thought.

"nice guy eddie" - sleeper

"and i said hey love i’m making it easy on us. i’ll leave and a few of our dreams turn to dust"



songs always seem to know how to end a relationship - whereas i never have.
i wish i had had the guts to use this line to break up with someone, its honesty and simplicity being surely superior to the self-justifying, circuitous babble that i managed. sure, there's a certain level of cruelty in its detachment, but it's the sort of cruelty you might get at a hospital where they know how to hurt you in a way in which you'll get better. i reckon that if louise wener said this to you in her breathy tones you wouldn't even start crying until a few hours later, and it probably wouldn't take you long to forgive her. i, on the other hand, am not really on speaking terms with any of my exes.

the way i would most like to have broken up with someone would have been to stand outside her window and, in a parody of john cusack's boombox serenade, stand silently with gone for good by morphine playing at streetwaking volume, then turn and walk silently away whilst silent tears run down her face and all dogs and babies nearby bark and cry respectively.

is it wrong to have a fantasy breakup?

"this ain't a scene its an arms race" - fall out boy

"this ain't a scene, it’s a goddamn arms race"


this song is everywhere at the moment
it sounds so much like he's singing "goblin arse-face"
so i laugh inappropriately every time

"the radio still sucks" - ataris

"every now and then i turn it on again but it's plain to see that the radio still sucks"


i remember the death of xfm.

it had been a gloriously uncommercial, eclectic station prepared to take risks, to play stuff noone else was playing, to not be rigidly trapped in a playlist. it had had to make a few compromises to get a permanent licence, and i still didn't like all of the wide range of stuff they played, but it was great because they played bad stuff, sometimes barely listenable stuff, in amongst the fantastic stuff.

it came as a shock to me, though i later found out industry people were well aware of its imminence, when in late august of 1998 it just disappeared - with a short loop of mor repeating endlessly on the frequency.

a couple of weeks later it had turned, through some black magic, into a weak virgin radio clone, and it took many years for it to re-evolve into its current state which is at least listenable, particularly at night. but it can never again, i fear, be the revolutionary force it tried so hard to be.

the world would probably be a slightly better place if it had succeeded

"deeper shade of blue" - steps

"into each life some sun must shine - well someone else must be getting mine. the days are so empty, nights are so long, awaking to find again that you've gone"



i have a grudging sort of respect for steps. they're not good. i wouldn't endorse them, i wouldn't ever choose to listen to them but, the painful (and truly tragic) cover of tragedy aside, always enjoy it at least a little when i do. sure they were throwaway pop, but they had the redeeming value that they knew they were and didn't care. also, i think they had some pretty good people writing for them. lyrically at least, there are some well crafted pop songs, with more emotional lyrics than the bland child-friendly production would imply.

someone i know mentioned recently that he had had a thing for claire. i think i over-expressed my surprise and it came across as a criticism. i would never criticise anyone for finding another person attractive, however little i understood the reason for it. i was however surprised since i'd never met a claire-person before. i know of several faye-people, and i know i'm not alone in the lisa-people, and i've even met some h-people (though that's a very different thing), but no claire-people.

chaqu-un a son gout, je suppose

my wife asserts that steps were rubbish, and to an extent she has a point, but then she tries to claim that s-club were the far superior pop band. this is clearly an error of judgement since i have rarely heard an s-club song without wanting to hurt someone (this would preferably take the form of hannah-homicide, but has a range of options right down to scooping out my own inner ear with a screwdriver). the only faintly acceptable member of s-club was jo o, and she has now proven herself, through the medium of "celebrity" "reality" tv, to be a dull, slightly racist chav.


oh dear, how sad am i to even have an opinion about any of this rubbish?
(please note that this is rhetorical)