dandelionburdock
Friday, June 18, 2004
Well fuck me sideways - it's suddenly the middle of June.
All things db have had to take a back seat so far this year. Don't get me wrong, I haven't been gainfully employed elsewhere - it's just that there's so much shit in the room all the gear is set up in that you can barely get in there to see if you can swing a cat or not.
Of all things, the idea of doing a cover version suddenly got me all stupid, excited and productive. Not sure how it happened really - I was fucking around trying to mend all of my Outlook Express settings which I'd spent an hour or so decimating, and the next thing I knew I was laying me down some bitchin' beats.
I'm out shopping for things I can't really afford tomorrow (damn you Bank Of England with your interest rate rises! Damn your eyes!), but I hope to have something to report fairly soon.
Don't hold your breath, obviously.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
After a seriously underwhelming year as far as gig going is concerned, I've just been to two absolute blinders in the space of two days.
First of all, my first up close and personal experience of The Hives. I've been very wary of these folk for some time - they're one leotard away from being the Swedish version of The Darkness. Have to say they fucking tore the roof off the Electric Ballroom though (no bad thing - I think it had dry rot). That said, and although I was massively impressed with them as performers, I can't remember a single noteworthy thing about any of their new songs. Maybe they should just play live every night of their lives, but never release any records.
And then we come to The Pixies at Brixton Academy. I'd been veh excited about this for ages, so when I saw the storming reviews come in from the first two nights, my tail was well and truly up. And fuck a doodle do were they good. I genuinely can't think of any other band that can get through 6 top drawer songs in the first quarter of an hour of a live set (Jive Bunny doesn't count). They got through as many songs in half an hour as many bands try and get away with in an hour and a half, and to their credit - and let's not forget that Frank Black is one seriously pudgy bastard these days - they just gallavanted on without any acknowledgement of the fact that there were any people there. It was approx song 15 of the set when Kim Deal said "Hello!" to the biggest roar that I've ever heard in response to the utterance of one word.
AND there were shitloads of tube mice at the station on the way home. Beat that for a night out.
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Well it's June, and no, there's no double album.
I have no excuses. If you knew me, you'd know that me setting my mind to something doesn't necessarily equate to me following through with it within - say - a decade or so. The best things come to those who wait, so the ad tells me.
New rule: the same goes for underwhelming albums of cheaply recorded indie-schmindie.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
Tempted as I am to alter the date accompanying this post to stall for more time, I regret to announce that the coming of the new year has not coincided with good news for those expecting a last-minute flurry of activity to make my deadline. Unfortunately, my predictions of having some spare time over Christmas proved just a tad optimistic, and - although I had some time yesterday on New Year's Eve - the odds of actually recording a track and then registering some webspace to upload the tracks to prove I wasn't lying just weren't tempting.
Not all is lost though. December proved to me that I should stick with it instead of having me a big ebay sale of all my equipment. So, once I've eased myself into the new year, I've got a new challenge to get my teeth into:
Three tracks uploaded to the internet by 12midnight Feb 1, 2004.
Obviously, on past form I'll probably have to be setting myself the challenge of recording an entire double-album during June, but in the absence of Christmas and overtime, finding time for this in the month ahead should be more doable.
Happy new year to all, and here's to a slightly more productive year ahead...
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Oh shite.
As prophesised, I've overslept horrendously on the day that I intended to put some serious hours in. Intended to get up at 8am, in fact work up at 12.08pm - approx 3/4 of an hour before I'm due to leave for family festivities elsewhere in the country.
All isn't quite lost, however. I still have a little time on the 30th, which is now pretty much do or die time. I honestly think I can get this one nailed fairly quickly when I have the time, so this could - still - be fairly interesting.
Here's hoping. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, and doubtless I'll have more tales of db disappointment to tell prior to wishing you similar glad tidings for the New Year.
Only a matter of hours before I'm supposed to wake up for a half-day of mad db action. Having a terrible bout of insomnia though, and knowing me I'm now going to inadvertantly oversleep until noon.
While not achieving anything of note, and to add to the seasonal feel that everybody must be feeling, I've been racking my brains for various top 10s. Bear in mind that the absence of most things that are considered leagues ahead of all the cack in my charts can probably be explained by the fact that I've not heard or seen much new this year. For my film list in particular it's odd to think that I've only actually seen something like 13 new films throughout the entire year. Hence the inclusion of numbers 9 and 10 in particular, which I'm far from keen on, but have pretty much no choice but to list. Hopefully I can do a quick cinema blitz over the festive period and amend this list accordingly.
Anyway, here's what I've come up with:
Top 10 singles of 2003
1. Anjali - 7x 8
2. DJ Format Featuring Abdominal - The Hit Song
3. Mew - Am I Wry? No
4. Hope Of The States - Enemies/Friends
5. Outkast - Hey Ya
6. The Libertines - Don't Look Back Into The Sun
7. Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
8. The Stills - Still In Love Song
9. Cerys Matthews - Caught In The Middle
10. Beyonce - Crazy In Love
Top 10 albums of 2003
1. DJ Format - Songs For The Mature B-Boy
2. Ben Lee - Hey You Yes You
3. The White Stripes - Elephant
4. Outkast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
5. Cerys Matthews - Cockahoop
6. Evan Dando - Baby I'm Bored
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
8. Blur - Think Tank
9. Electric Six - Fire
10. The Wannadies - Before & After
Top 10 films of 2003
1. The Lord Of The Rings - Return Of The King
2. Terminator 3
3. Kill Bill Volume 1
4. Alien: The Director’s Cut
5. Gangs Of New York
6. Pirates Of The Caribbean
7. Finding Nemo
8. Luther
9. Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle
10. The Matrix Reloaded
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Found myself in a DIY shop earlier, shopping for bunny water bottles, cable clips and pipe insulation. Couldn't help but listen in to a purple faced old man waving his arms around and pointing at his wife during a shouted (one-way) conversation with an employee at the store. "Where are all the rest of your Christmas trees? Why have you got so few on the last weekend before Christmas?" Then my own personal favourite: "When are you next getting some in?" Poor employee - a weekend-shift only student type if ever I saw one - could offer barely any words at all in defence, and spent the duration of the conversation looking vainly for a non-existant supervisor to come bail him out. Spent so much time listening in that I completely forgot about the insulation, something which could bite me on the arse severely over the next week or so.
Having done my time working in the retail sector, I can't help but spare a thought for the poor unfortunates that find themselves having to deal with such cretins at this time of year. I remember working in a fags and booze kiosk for a chain of budget supermarkets that will remain nameless at this point, a job I stuck out for a mere four weeks in part because of some of the local Irish drunkards that'd come in exclusively - so it seemed - to give me shit. One guy in particularly made a habit out of coming in and insisting I looked after his piss-soaked coat while he went shopping, always flat out ignoring my point about me not being a fucking cloakroom and just leaving it on the counter. He was so shitfaced one Saturday that he completely forgot about it. Come the end of my shift, the duty security guard checked it out in case there was any clue to his address only to find his inside pockets and lining rammed solid with tinned tuna and tampons. The juxtaposition of these two items has always troubled me.
In further attempt to deflect from any kind of db activity, some thoughts on the last couple of days in the music world. Yesterday we had the Pop Idol final, basically a shoot-out between a future Blue Peter presenter and the most annoying Scotswoman outside Muriel Gray. Can't help but be amused at news that Pete Waterman left the studios in protest after Michelle won - this time last year the airwaves were flooded with the utter joke of a double A-side that his One True Voice "vocal harmony group" were given to promote. I think the man's idea of standards could do with some clarification. For the record, I hope Suzanne - the frog-throated Jeff Buckley fan with an irrational love of leggings under skirts that made it to the final 5 - wipes the fucking floor with the lot of them when the inevitable round of record deals sorts itself out in the next couple of months. More talent and personality in her teeth alone than the rest of them put together.
A mere five hours ago, twas the announcement of this year's Christmas number 1. Congrats to Gary Jules, who made all of The Darkness's shameless promotional efforts over the last week all a huge waste of time. Mainly I'm just glad that The Idols' single - the Pop Idol finalist's take on Merry Xmas (War Is Over) - didn't get anywhere near the top spot, but it's reassuring that a decent song can win out against all the hype and horseshit that goes along with releases at this time of year. My thoughts on The Darkness are mixed - I think they're relatively amusing, and have livened the charts up this year, but on the other hand I don't actually think they're any good. I suppose it could be summed up by me saying that I saw a copy of their album in a record store in the US for the equivalent of £1.50, and wasn't even nearly tempted to buy it.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
How indecisive can one man be? While watching the new Lord Of The Rings film (ace btw, although my arse no longer works), I've come up with an idea for yet another track that my head seems to think is the one I should go with. Seeing as though I've got around 50 in various stages of completion on paper already, the fact that a brand new, relatively simple idea crops up a matter of days before my deadline seems just random enough to be worth a shot.
Have just programmed a pretty funky drum track for it, and I've now got half an eye on Christmas Eve morning with a view to attempting to nail the whole thing to my hard drive. I've decided that if Mohammad (ie: the lead from the mic hooked up to record the guitar amp) won't go to the mountain (ie: the back of my PC without my cats pouncing on the leads and pulling it off the stand), then the mountain will have to be carried upstairs and set up next to Mohammad.
Of all the things I've earmarked to be the first completed track, this one is DEFINITELY the most appropriate. Working title - "Theme From Dandelionburdock".
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Waaaaah. This is really quite painful. Have managed to get a bit of practice in at peculiarly late times, but it's looking fairly certain that I'm just not going to have enough time to get a track done by the end of the year. I'm really furious with myself, as this last month has been a textbook example of how unbelievably shit I am at organising anything. I knew that work was going to be non-stop in the last couple of weeks before Christmas, and yet pretty much every day during my week off I slept in, assuming that I'd have an early morning bout of creativity the next day. All the way back to my A Level coursework, through my degree, and now even today in every DIY task I've ever planned to do this is a recurring theme, and it's not as if I'm ever surprised when the day of all such self-imposed deadlines arrives with me having absolutely bugger all done.
Thank god I'm a bit more sorted at my day job - I wouldn't last two minutes if my home self decided to try its various organisational sins in front of my boss.
For the record, primarily as a method of stopping me changing my mind again, the song I'm going to try and cram into no time at all is entitled "Our Eyes Are Both Green".
Monday, December 15, 2003
17 days until my self-made deadline. Since Christmas family visiting accounts for six of those days, I have seven evenings, part of next weekend and maybe part of Christmas Eve to cram in some kind of work on this blasted thing. Since last posting, I've been unable to find any spare time to even think about making any headway. Ominously, I've even changed my mind AGAIN about which track I'm going to attempt to cram in before the end of the year, having convinced myself that the one I'm opting for is even simpler than the very simple one (albeit with a potentially tricky harmony) that I've already created an outline drum track for. The main thing I've been able to take from my "attempts" this month are that I could actually achieve something fairly quickly if I apply a similar sense of urgency to a time of year that I'm not required to work and shop constantly. My consolation for failing to meet my deadline will definitely be that I'll have a ton of time to get something done during January. I'd best reiterate my almost inhuman desire to pull something out of the bag in the time I have though, before that sounds too much like a concession speech.
To excuse my complete waste of the last nine days, I have to make it clear that I've had a very busy week. Have had two office parties within six days, and I'm pleased to report than neither were particularly tragic, although I did fear that someone had stolen my shoes at one point during the first.
And, in an attempt to add historical context to my blog when all those millions of people decide to access my archives in months and years to come, it was reported that Saddam Hussein was captured today. Could not believe my eyes during the press conference - when the soldier spokesman guy suddenly said "...and we've got a short piece of film we'd like you to take a look at...", I couldn't help but feel utterly jipped by all of those tedious conferences given by Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld over the past couple of years, when all either of them said to any questioner was either "no comment at this time" or something to that effect. If they'd got out some footage of a clearly terrified old man at any of those, I'd have been utterly glued. Even a zoetrope or something would've improved matters. For the record, I'd like to mention that the "before shaving" and "after shaving" pics of Saddam in custody were notable because his skin tone and moustache colour bore no relation to those that were shown before they'd cleaned him up a bit. Unless the conditions under which he's being detained allow him access to a sun bed and a bottle of Just For Men, I smell a fucking great rat.
