unpopular

For those of you not going to the Orchids show in London on Friday night for reasons of living in, oh, let’s say New York, can I strongly recommend that head to the Cake Shop to catch the mighty My Teenage Stride perform to celebrate the launch of their never less than excellent new Ears Like Golden Bats set (released on Becalmed)?

For those of you who are going along to the Orchids show, meanwhile, do tap me on the shoulder and say hello. I’ll probably be coughing and spluttering, so maybe best to dose up on drugs and First Defence beforehand.

We've Got History

They still have the best line in sweet and simply sublime posters… So if you can be there, be there. Now I understand a new Pants Yell! album is currently in the making. I can’t wait. Actually I feel bad because I haven’t listened to them in ages so am having a Pants Yell! afternoon as of now. Man, they sound awesome. Of course they do. Why are Herman Dune on the cover of Plan B when it should be Pants Yell!? I mean, I like the Dune as much as the next person, but still and all. If Everett is to roll out that Jonathan Richman story again (and why not? It’s a great story, even if there might be conflict about who sent that tape to Stephen Pastel… but hey, why let facts get in the way of a great story? It’s never stopped us in the past, has it?) then it would fit so much better next to a piece about Pants Yell! Man, just listening to their ‘Songs For Siblings’ and ‘Recent Drama’ sets now, I yearn for last summer, and not just for the sun and the warmth and the good health… Ah the memories of that cramped room in the cellar of the Betsey and the Pants Yell! sound reverberating around with love and devotion. Ace. And of course that was the first time I was exposed to Esiotrot as well. Sigh. Memories, memories.

I just fell in love with Tigermilkshake's drawings. Why had I not come across them earlier? Silly really, as we have been ‘friends’ on Last FM for ages. They remind me of Emily Ryan’s illustrations, which is of course ace because Emily is super cool and groovy. And other such twee adjectives. Ahem. Anyway, I kinda think Tigermilkshake should do some drawings for Exeter Goes Pop! Or maybe I’m getting carried away… Maybe it’s the fever. I need to lie down.

Scars! Scars! Scars!

From the Paul Research / Scars site, the following:

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SCARS ON THE BBC

Don't miss Scars performing All About You on Top Of The Pops 2 on BBCTV, Saturday 3rd March 2007. It's a broadcast of the Whistle Test performance from Spring 1981.

AUTHOR! AUTHOR! NOW!!

In 1981, Edinburgh's SCARS released Author! Author!. The album was hailed by the music press as a masterpiece of new post-punk pop and Scars - who had emerged from the Edinburgh's hip Fast Product label with the milestone Horrorshow single in 1979 (sampled last year by Lemon Jelly' Shouty Track) - sparkled across the stages and screens of Europe and the USA.

Scars were Edinburgh's first punk band to build on their glam and disco roots, and were the first to move on, inspiring may of their contemporaries in the search for new futures. Unlike so many groups of the time, Scars managed to capture their fire and creativity on album. It is truly amazing that Author! Author! has never been available on CD, but now that is about to change.

Author! Author!, plus bonus tracks and additional singles IS NOW AVAILABLE on CD on Scars' own label PreVS, and can be ordered RIGHT HERE. Author! Author! has been remastered for this century and sounds bold, bright and very exciting.

PreVS is run by Scars, and all profits from album sales go directly to the original members of the band.

Buy it now.

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Buy it now, indeed. I just have. What are you waiting for?

As MJ Hibbet says, “feeling poorly is crap”. So true, so true. Me, I’m suffering from what seems to be the obligatory half term holiday cold. Thankfully it only descended with a vengeance last night and didn’t interfere with our couple of nights down on the Lizard in Cornwall. It was good to get away and switch off. No TV, no computer, just chilling out doing not very much except eat terrific food and drink fine wine. We were the only guests at the Landewednack House so it was like having our own personal chef for the two days. Yum.

I did take a few photos, although I left the battery charger in school so I was more circumspect than normal with the point and clickery. Still, I got a few shots that I am happy with. I just can’t resist those stripes and blocks of colour.

I also did some drawings, though oddly enough these were of robots from the Robots and Spaceships book that I bought at Tate St Ives. No highbrow art malarkey for me. No sir. It was actually done as preparation for the GCSE art exam period, which starts for my digital arts classes on Monday. I want to make sure I am modelling the process as clearly as possible, and actually doing the initial stages of the exam is the best way of doing it I have found. And yes, it was really nice to have the pen out and to be drawing again. I should do it more often… does that sound familiar? Ha ha. Because come Monday other school pressures will kick again and I won’t have the time. Oh well.

Stay Son

I mentioned the Italian group A Classic Education about a month ago. At the time I was playing their ‘Stay Son’ track a whole lot and frothing about how great they might potentially be if only other parts of the puzzle could fall into place. I remember being hopeful that facial hair would not be involved…

Well, a new website and ubiquitous MySpace page would suggest that beards are indeed to the fore, though I can almost forgive them for being in close proximity to white shirts, black ties, nicely tailored overcoats and fine shoes. The moody photos by ace fashion photographer Giulia Mazza are really rather lovely in fact, and remind me a little of the rural backgrounds to early shots of, say, The Poppyheads or The Razorcuts around the time of Storyteller. Not that A Classic Education sound anything like those dudes. Instead they are more epic, multi-layered and expansive. Or at least they are on the evidence of ‘Stay Son’, which would make for a truly classy and classic 7” single that you could surely file next to the likes of Arcade Fire and Decemberists with impunity. Quick, someone stump up the cash!

Exeter Went Pop

Lot’s of people have been asking how the first Exeter Goes Pop event went the other week. I should really have written about it immediately after the fact. But I really was so very tired afterwards and the stresses of three workshops last week in school have all but burnished it from my memory now.

However, I’m sure it was good. No, I know it was good. We certainly all had a fine time. Even though it looked for a while like we’d not be able to play anything at all for the first two hours. I swear I was that close to the edge that if that had been the case I’d have been straight outta there. As it was we played at low volume, which was really fine. It wasn’t as though we were playing banging dance tunes or anything.

It was difficult to know who had turned up for us and who was just there in the Phoenix bar, and I know we benefited from the theatre crowd, but certainly by the end of the night there were lots of people wandering around with our Exeter Goes Pop badges resplendently displayed on their shirts, sweaters and jackets. That was nice to see. Thirty-five quid well spent I hope.

It was great to see Phil Wilson in the audience. Strange how things go, isn’t it? How someone whose music was such a big influence on one’s life some twenty years ago can so easily feel like an established friend so quickly. There was much amusement at how my playlist was almost an exact mirror of Phil’s own collection, which was really cool.

All four of us got chance to spin various discs, and Dimitra even managed to get some complete strangers dancing to Jens Lekman’s ‘Black Cab’. And there I was thinking I probably knew every Jens fan in Exeter by name. Just goes to show, doesn’t it? I think people continued to shimmy a little as I span the Pipettes, Lucky Soul, Mary Love and The Rev-Lons but by then my mind was full of beer and I wasn’t really sure what was going down. Oh, and there was of course the obligatory moment of playing something at the wrong speed: me spinning ‘I Like A Boy In Uniform’, though I responded quickly and it was only the whistle blowing that sounded too obviously wrong. And everyone needs at least one John Peel moment whilst DJing after all, don’t they?

We do it all again on the 14th March, which being a Wednesday night will be a real test of the level of interest around the place. I’ll try and report back sooner after that…

Never trust a Microsoft product

Never use Microsoft if you can possibly help it. Unfortunately I’ve had to use Entourage for my work email because of the ineptitude of the school IMAP email server to work in any sensible way with Mac Mail. So today I spent half an hour adding a bunch of contacts to the Entourage address book, and spotting in the program preferences that it could sync the address book with the Mac address book, ticked all the boxes and hit ‘ok’. ‘OK’ is about as far from the truth as the result could be. Entourage promptly crashed, and when re-opened had retained only four of the email contacts I’d just added. Even worse, the Mac address book had the same four contacts in it. All of my 550 other contact details had been unceremoniously wiped. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I had that address book synced with my .Mac account, and thence to my work MacBook Pro, all would have been lost and I would have been an even more unhappy camper than I currently am. Probably serves me right for trying to do school work at the start of half term. Grrrr.

Roll the dice twice!

I just heard Lucky Lucky Pigeons and tonight they are my favourite group. They had a three track single out on Freedom Road Records last year, and it's also available on iTunes which is really cool because I couldn't wait for the record to come through the mail. I wanted to hear more immediatement... They sound like Bad Dream Fancy Dress crossed with early Bis, or Dolly Mixture crossed with CSS. Perhaps. They are freaking marvelllous anyway. Oh, and Swedish. Duh. And yes yes yes they will be on my playlist for EGP!

Counting down the days…

Just over a week until we launch the Exeter Goes Pop night in the bar at the Exeter Phoenix. I have no idea who will turn up, apart from a few friends and obviously the audience who will be attending the theatre. I do know that it’s gonna be fun spinning discs and hanging out with Martijn, Dimitra and Orlando who will all be playing some sounds as well. I suspect Orlando might spin some Mountain Goats and Triffids (at least I hope he does!) which would be super cool of course. Me, I’m steering towards a mix of contemporary Swedish Pop and sweet sixties soft Pop and baroque’n’roll. And I’m sure that Martijn and Dimitra will give us a fine smattering of tweepop. So yeah, it’s gonna be good. I just hope that all the gear works properly and that nothing skips and jumps too much. And that people don’t laugh at us. Or request the Arctic Monkeys / Coldplay / other indie schmindie monstrosities.

So if you are in the vicinity (or fancy an excuse to head to the South West for the weekend) please do join us.