Spoon and Belly

Long time readers might recall a post over a year ago proclaiming Spoon one of the most awesomest bands ever. Well, nothings changed. The last album was released around a year ago, and is still one of my favorite listens. All the tracks are also still available to listen to free of charge on there "jukebox" website as well. Plus they are Adam Buxton's favorite band too !

My belly (another great band) has felt like there is lead (the metal, not the dog thing) in it today. Ouch - cramptastic. Keep thinking it might still be that penny I swallowed a year ago ! Will find out what the next step is after my appointment (now set for a week Wednesday).

Have "frozen" my gym membership today (about 1 month later than I should). I am now paying about 25% of the cost for the privilege of not attending the gym now ! Silly really, but it preserves the good membership rate I have when I rejoin, which is quite a few quid below the cost should I "rejoin" later. I figure back into winter, with hopefully a restored tummy, I'll be heading down for vital happy-chemical inducing lunchtime runs. And maybe some training for this 10 mile run in October, which is looking less and less likely going forward.

Glastonbury cometh

Once again I have registered for the legendary festival of Glastonbury - last year saw 3 tired, frustrated hours refreshing browser pages and speed redialling phone lines before admitting defeat in April, but strangely I feel compelled to pre-register so I can try again come April 6th !

Anyone out there fancy joining me in this endeavour ? Get your pre-registration in by March 14th and together we can refresh browser screens in vain hope !

Bands from far away - come to the UK !

The world of the internet has opened up may newer resources for discovering bands. Simply google a few of your favourites and following links can often lead to new band ideas (not via the amazon.co.uk recommendations though, which whilst interesting to one or two degrees generally ends up recommending everyone would like "the killers" and whatever is in the charts that week).

But now I've followed the links, surfed some "MP3 blogs" - blogs like mine that track free download tracks of new bands, such as www.thecatbirdseat.com, read some indie review sites like www.pitchforkrecords.com, seen what others are listening to via their last.Fm profiles and maybe even played with some web2.0 music players such as the computer game like theSixtyOne. And from all this I now have a selection of bands I want to hear more from... but without the required level of fame, they don't want to play in the UK yet... because they are still fairly small bands.

This makes me more aware than usual of the gulf between bands who "have made it" and "are trying to make it". There doesn't appear to be a smooth curve, or gentle steps up those rungs. People have herd mentalities as my girlfriend's father often tells me, and with musical taste it is true. Not that this is a band thing, it helps define our "tribe" when we are young and gives us common interests at work and means we can go to cheap nightclubs and gleefully dance to shameful music, because we all know the songs and can dance to them together. But freeing yourself from the cycle really offers rewards - only then are you really into "music" for music alone, and it's a shocking world of discovering what quality works of music are relatively unheard outside of a few towns, despite the music being wildly more fun, accessible and tuneful than more famous artists of there genre.

But I digress from what was to be a "list post" - bands that should come to the UK, and until then, deserve your support :)

Belguim - Hooverphonic, dEUS
Australia - Howling Bells, Little Birdy
USA - Jonathan Coulton, Over the Rhine

Well, that's all I can think of. But anyone spotting UK gigs by these bands should contract me at the usual address !

Spoon are great and so is Italy and so am I

Joyful is I, for today my pre-ordered Spoon album entitled "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" arrived. For those unacquainted with them, Spoon are a superb band, probably one of my favourite of any genre. Catchy chords and tunes, a great singer (Britt Daniels), many different sounds in each album - like the Eels or Blur perhaps - and solid song writing skills add up to a several superb albums, the latest of which might be the greatest. Don't take my word for it though, go listen for yourself.

Just came back from a long weekend in Italy, seeing the Palio horse race. Photos should find themselves onto Smugmug once I've found a spare minute - not likely to be too soon though as this coming weekend sees me off to Wales for more partying and boys-weekend away fun. It's combined with some hardcore outdoor walking too, so net the health might not suffer to much...

Finally today was my financial exam. Felt like I did quite well, but no results yet. Hopefully an e-mail later today will supply that. I guess the last exams I did were many years ago, and I've always had a certain expectation to not just pass but to pass them well. So fingers crossed for 95%+ then :)

[BREAKING NEWS] I got 93% - which I am still pretty bloody happy with :)