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Monster Bobby in the area

This popped in my inbox from the very wonderful Monster Bobby. He's playing some shows, so go along and be entertained. And then buy his lovely 3" CD release. You know it makes sense.

Friday 27th January @ The Attik, 15 Free Lane, Leicester LE1 1JX.  - New Potatoes club night 9pm - 2am ( i think i'm on about eleven..)
Sunday 29th Janury @ Bar 7, 6 Ilkeston Rd, Canning Cicus, Nottingham NG7 3GE  - A Quiet Night Out.
Wednesday 1st February @ The Amersham Arms, New Cross, London.  - The Glue Rooms

and just as a reminder...

wednesday Feb 15th = Totally Bored at the Fringe Bar with Relax Me; Roger Mason; Oscar Thomas Cash; Nick Hudson and Me (Monster Bobby)

The press release for the forthcoming TV Personalities tribute album came in the mail today, and very nice reading it is too. Bit of a surprise to be described as ‘the honourable Alistair Fitchett’, but pleasant nonetheless. My sleevenotes are adapted from the Tangents article I wrote some time ago, and I hope they read okay in the new context.

Speaking of the TVPs, I have been playing their new album My Dark Places an awful lot the past week or two. It is a fantastic record. I have a lot I want to say about it, so hopefully I will get the time this weekend to write something.

Cat’s tests came back the other week, just after my last post. He has lymphoma, poor soul. But remarkably, he is making amazing progress. I have the delightful pleasure of getting his chemo pill down his throat every morning, and whilst he fights and growls about it, it’s obviously doing him the world of good. He now has cat flap privileges again which is a relief. Tonight though he got himself stuck in the garage after we had been dumping old bags of loft insulation in there to go to the tip. Silly rabbit.

School, meanwhile, is as exhausting and stressful as ever. So many initiatives and projects to juggle… phew. And speaking of school, I had an offer of going out to the Cavern tonight to see a colleagues’ band play at the battle of the bands type night. I haven’t managed it though, as much because I just have way too much work to do (much of the night has been spent getting through a backlog of emails, writing reviews and listening to Doris Duke) as for the fact that the band are not exactly my cup of tea. Oh dear. I am, however, hoping to head out to the Cavern on Saturday night to see Jeniferever, a band of Swedish space rock chaps whose forthcoming ‘Choose A Bright Morning’ album is really rather lovely.

And then on Friday night we are off to see Robyn Hitchcock at the Phoenix. 18th Day of May are supporting, and I am really looking forward to meeting The Left Outsides whose 3” CDR I have just slipped out on my I Wish I Was Unpopular label. Woo hoo. I just hope that the new batch of 3” blanks I ordered come in time for me to get a bunch burned off for them. I managed to get behind on everything with the house move, and Bobby’s request for another bunch of Monster Bobby releases for his forthcoming dates up in Leicester and surrounds have wiped me out. Ooops.

I need to plan lessons.

Back from London. Tried to write Nightingales review on the train. Struggled. Cat is freaking us out… he is totally dazed and confused looking. Just spent a couple of hours out at the emergency vets to see what’s wrong. No idea. All blood tests say he is normal as anything, but he clearly isn’t. He had diarrhoea in his box on the way home which stressed everyone out. Just been washing him down, poor thing. He is now sat under my desk at my feet, staring into space. Bad smells permeate the house. I haven’t done any of the things I need to have done for next week and my head hurts.

I want to sleep until Spring.

The world is streaking past at light speed and I am dizzier than ever.

The weekend will be spent in London, with tomorrow night slated for the Nightingales show at the Spitz. I am looking forward to seeing them, and to seeing Rob Symmons in action with The Fallen Leaves, though I fear my mental state will be something approaching jelly. Oh dear. Apologies in advance to anyone to whom I make little sense. My head is making so many mistakes, forgetting too many things and being generally hopeless. I want to kick myself into some kind of sensible action, but it’s so difficult.

Then BETT on Saturday, at which I need to track down the best deal on Virtual Learning Environments, when all I really want to do is play with the new Mac’s and iLife 06 on the Apple stand. As for Sunday, maybe the Rousseau show at Tate Modern though I am no fan… and if possible on Saturday I ought also to try and see the Richard Long work at the Haunch of Venison gallery that Harvey recommended.

The Art and ICT workshop today was really good, but exhausting, and tomorrow promises to be more of the same. I was meant to be with the other team members at the hotel tonight but came home instead because the cat has been ill of late and we didn’t know if he might have to be taken into the vets again tonight. Thankfully he seems somewhat more settled, so no emergencies for the time being. It is nevertheless very stressful, especially on top of everything else at the moment. So emotional shutters are drawn tighter than ever. Indeed sometimes they feel so tight I wonder if they might break my bones and crush out all of my breath. Which is unduly melodramatically, but there you are. That’s me all over.

As it is, music manages to bear me through. The Oppenheimer record is a beacon of light in a dark and gloomy landscape and as such has taken on the form of some strange talisman of optimism. It really is that good, is that spine tinglingly special. And of course I’ve been playing those old Stars records, specifically the ones from around 2001 or so like the Nightsongs collection. The new records are fine of course, but I’m a hopeless romantic and those old ones have the seeds of so many sparks of wonder, they still make me shiver.

But now, I need to write reports. I need to prepare for Monday’s mentoring day. I need to pack. I need to sleep.

400 Posts

Oh. My. God. I just opened my PO box mail and found the five track sampler CD for the forthcoming Oppenheimer album on Bar-None. It’s due for release in ‘Spring 2006’, and all I can say is man, I don’t think there is a better reason for willing the days to move faster. Honestly, I am bowled over. Music this sweet and perfectly formed must surely be illegal. There I was thinking that Sweden had the monopoly on magical new sensations, when all the time this pair of Belfast born dreamers were making an exquisite, heart pounding and breathless Pop just across the water. Listening to Oppenheimer makes me think of the dizzy feeling I once had on hearing Stars for the first time back in, gosh, was it really six years ago? Six years. Six years! SIX years! SIX YEARS! (in best Grosse Point Blank voice).

Well anyway, the thrill of hearing Stars’ glorious ‘When’ is replicated in the sound of the unfeasibly fabulous ‘Breakfast In New York’, or ‘My Son The Astronaut’ or ‘Saturday Looks Bad To Me’ or, uh, or any of these five songs in fact. I am fucking drooling over this record.

Oh, and apparently they have also been collaborating with Tim Wheeler from Ash recently, but don’t hold that against them.

And this from The Pipettes:

Fancy getting your mug onto the small screen alongside Becki, Gwenno and Rose?

The Pipettes are gearing up for the release of their latest Memphis Industries single - and they want YOU to be in the video.

Next Sunday, January 15, The Pipettes will shoot a music video for upcoming single "Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me". From mid-afternoon, and into the night, the girls will be pulling their finest shapes for the cameras at a fashionable North London nightspot. The plan is to recreate the excitement, panache and sparkle of a Pipettes gig for the benefit of the couch-flatteners of TV land.

So join us! We want people who aren't afraid to wear something polka-dotty and get down, boogie, shimmy and shake. Do the monkey, do the hussle, do the boogaloo twist... do whatever you want! Just do it with us, for a few hours, next Sunday. Got to be better than watching Maggot on 'celebrity' Big Brother right?

If you want to join us, please send your name and email address to: [email protected] as soon as possible. There'll be limited space in the club, so it's first come first served.

We'll get back to you with details of where and when in a few days. It's going to be a blast and a half. Come on, be part of our story!

Love,

The Pipettes
x

And wouldn't you know it, we will be heading home from London on a train at approximately the time the proceedings will be kicking off. Grrrr. Not that they would appreciate some old geeky teacher bringing the tone of the thing down, but meh.

One of my students said they saw a Pipettes t-shirt on the telly the other day. It was on E4 apparently.

This just in from the

This just in from the very marvelous Pathways:

Congratulations on making it to another January. If you find yourself missing good old 2005, then come to our show on Thursday. We'll be covering some of our favorite songs from last year, as well as showing slides of the giant squid and choosing a new pope. Bring doves!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 12th - Fat Baby (112 Rivington St. btwn Ludlow & Essex - New York, NY) with

The End of the World - http://www.theendoftheworld.net
The Subjects - http://www.gosubjectsgo.com
Emma La Reina - http://www.emmalareina.com

Another instance of making me wish I lived in New York. Or was at least there for a holiday. Of course it will be just be my luck that, should we actually manage to make good on our plans to visit at the end of May, there will be no Pop shows in effect. Grrrrr in advance.

Been listening a lot to the new Pop sounds of the New York (and Boston area) renaissance recently; notably the usual suspects like Pathways, Pants Yell! Soltero, My Teenage Stride, Ponies In The Surf (whose new Ponies On Fire set just arrived from the peerless Asaurus label), Metric Mile etc… but also the sounds of the truly great La Fea, who sound utterly fabulous in a romantically ravaged way. So the vocals on ‘I didn’t mean it’ might sound like The Strokes, but they also sound like The Legends and that’s a fine thing to sound like so there. Plussing as which they do an inspired cover of The Vaselines’ ace ‘the day I was a horse’. Yum. Also listening to the delectable Sarianna, who reminds me of early Magnetic Fields, which surely can’t be a bad thing? Ah yes, My Space can be such a grand place (it can also be a cesspit of utterly depressing rubbish, but meh, that’s the world for you).

The first bike ride of 2006 has left me with sore legs and a sore shoulder (the latter the result of trying to fit in the ludicrously tight shower we are currently forced to live with). It was nice to get out into the fresh air and feel the road under the tyres again though. I need to implement new routines, and bike riding is such a fine one. I always forget how the bike can help keep my mind on the straight and narrow and it’s always a delight when I rediscover that fact. It feels a little strange doing similar routes to the ones I did out of Exeter though. Today I headed out to Killerton and then on to Cullompton and Willand and from thence back via Halberton, Tivvy and the valley. What a relief not to have to haul my sorry ass over Stoke Hill at the end… but even so, it felt odd not to do it. And I’m sad enough so that these little feelings of change transform themselves into little feelings of loss. But that’s the nature of life I think; travelling on those spiralling ellipses and returning to a core of loss every so often before shooting off on a new trajectory. Or the nature of my life, at least.

Yesterday we walked out to the Agricultural Inn over in Brampford Speke for a New Year’s lunch with some friends from the city (ha ha). It was really lovely, and even the half hour walk over the fields (with suck your boots off mud in places) and the long abandoned railway line was, ah, bracing. We did the same walk a few days earlier in the frosty midday and it was glorious. There are some photos here if you care to have a nosey. The pub even does some halfway decent veggie food, which is a rarity, especially in this part of the world. Walking around the village afterwards we passed the site of my brush with death and/or the Parish Priest in his Volkswagen, and I realised with a shock that would have been around eight years or more ago. It made me suddenly very aware of the fact that I Have History sewn into the fabric of these roads, this countryside. And whilst that makes me feel old, there is also a degree of warm comfort to be had from it. Everyone needs their histories, after all.

Wrote an album review this morning for Plan B. My first piece of ‘real’ writing since the holidays started, and it was difficult. I feel rusty as hell. It’s supposed to be a lead review too, of the Commercially Unfriendly compilation which is sporadically brilliant. It’s nice to see The Nightingales getting more exposure too (they supply the excellent ‘Urban Osprey’), and incidentally, who’s going to see them play at the Spitz on January 13th? Fortuitously it coincides with a trip up to London for the BETT conference/show so I will be able to attend. Hurrah! Even more so as The Fallen Leaves are playing support, this being the band featuring Phil King and Rob Symmons amongst others. Should be a good night.