Can't Get You Outta My Head #3

 Everyone harps on about Nirvana and quite frankly after Bleach they got a bit boring. Nevermind was never the album I hoped for and apart from Territorial Pissings and Endless,Nameless I can't think of much I'd play from it now.

But Mudhoney they were the original and the best. A Stooges for the 90s. And they rocked. Oh boy did they rock. Never meeting the acclaim and fandom of Nirvana but they did have longevity.  Good Enough is a great pop song from a great garage band. Holly Golightly does an ace cover of this too.

Nice Tee

In the mid 90s with references from Sonic Youth and UNKLE 'Sun Ra and his Arkestra' came on to my radar. These days I have about 20 Sun Ra albums.

You can believe wiki and that he's an American but the truth that I want to believe is that Sun Ra came from Saturn and had his orchestra and they rocked out. And why not? it's a bonkers mad story.

Anyway I was shopping this morning and a kid in the Supermarket was wearing the yellow one of these and I had to say to him that it was a great Sun Ra tee.

I have an addiction...

I can't stop making these posters and adding them to the  facebook page Vandalised Conservative Billboards here they all are:

Slot Jockey Jr.

Went to Blackpool yesterday and found this dummy sucking slot machine coin filling jockey he must have been 2 or so. Was kind of surprised at the sight of all these kids in pushchairs next to their gambling parents. it's not something that would ever occur for me to do with my two.

The day was an absolute blast though, we ended up on the beach, wandering around the amusements and eating hotdogs before getting back for the school collection.

Album cover of the Week #3

Godflesh are one of my favourite bands of all time and Pure is almost as good as it gets.

Released 18 years ago it's artwork is partial to blame for my obsession with photographing trees, cemetaries and moss. It was looking at mossy tree stumps today that made me think about the album sleeve.

The artwork was originally intended to be used on the Tiny Tears EP, it was shelved when the EP went unreleased. It is quite stunning with the gold lettering on the 12" sleeve.

The quality of sleeve artwork continues with the successor to Godflesh - Jesu and I'm sure one of those sleeves will appear here soon.

Vowel Movements!

I came across this a few years ago late one night and when I finally unpacked my CDs yesterday from when we moved originally in Nov 2008 I saw the Evens albums and remembered the song. The thing that I love about it is that it's the singer of Fugazi doing a sesame street type song. Genius!

I want a new tattoo.

I was in Booths today (a Northern version of Waitrose, but with only 23 or so stores, to the uninitiated) and the kiddie shelf stacker had a great Sonic Youth tattoo on his forearm and I was totally jealous. It looked really cool and me being a geeky fool went and told him so. He seemed chuffed that I know who Sonic Youth are.

The tattoo was a working on the Raymond Pettibon picture shown here.

Album cover of the Week #2

Not their most popular album by any stretch of the imagination but Sonic Youth have had some inspired artwork for flyers, posters and packaging often using the young and the hip before they make it big time and there is no pretence, there is no Saatchi style buy all artwork and see what becomes popular going on. They just have an eye and a gift for selecting interesting work.

The Murray Street album is no different. A couple of kids under some strawberry netting may not be an obvious cover for a now ageing experimental noise band from NYC, however it doesn't seem out of place either.

Sonic Youth rock, there's no debate required, it's fact.

The Death of Thumper

I started cycling again this week and the aim is to do 100 miles a week at the moment and build on that. I cycle up and down the A6  when it's dusk, however I don't have lights at the moment and so the return trip is currently a bit of a daredevil one.

As a reminder of what can happen, as I was headed towards Lancaster I watched a small rabbit make it across the road, only for it to turn around and be caught under the wheel of a car as it went back onto the road. I had hoped that the car would have seen and swerved or something but to no avail.

To make things worse I don't have a cycling playlist on my ipod at the moment, I have one called "Music to paint to" from when I was decorating the new house and music I wouldn't normally have for cycling is on there.

I had grabbed the most played songs (more than 5 times) on my ipod and bunged it into the playlist folder. A fatal mistake as the playlist littered with kids tunes, which I keep on finding more of despite having removed the majority of them.

But as Thumper met his untimely end it wasn't a kids tune that came on as I cycled on passed. It was REM's 'Everybody Hurts'
and it made the sad moment even sadder and the next mile or two didn't go by as fast as it should have done.


This one goes out to you Thumper!

viene la tormenta

There's a storm coming. There's an election imminent and the last bastion of Britishness  - The BBC itself is in the firing line. It knows it. Murdoch and his hate-fuelled clan are demanding everything should be paid for and that the Beeb is too powerful, quite funny for a man who owns the media world.


Or at least it would be if the Beeb didn't try and slit it's own throat trying to placate what could be the next Tory government. A government where the key advisor (Director of communications) to Cameron is a former Murdoch employee. Andy Coulson was the editor of the News of the World whilst cheques were written to people who spied on, bugged and checked on phone messages of celebrities, sports personalities and some politicians. 

Coulson was also found guilty of bullying a former employee (details can be found here), hardly the kind of person I'd ever want working for me. But he'll have the ear of (possibly) the next prime minister the same way Campbell had Blair's.


On the weekend the Guardian ran a rare interview with (soon to be former) controversial BBC employee Jonathan Ross (full interview here) and he said pretty much the same thing about the Beeb: "...the whole place has changed quite dramatically. I think it's a shame that the people running it are always trying to second-guess what the newspapers will say about them – and whatever the next government we wind up with will say about them. The experience of being there isn't quite the place it was. And it's a terrible, terrible shame." 


6Music one of the stations due for closure, now has an unlikely allie in Gordon Brown. he stated that the BBC "should not have succumbed to pressure" to axe some of its output. He said: "I don't think politicians should make that decision about what the BBC
produces."

It's got to the stage now that what ever the election outcome, the losers will be the licence payer with a reduced quality BBC.

Can't get you outta my head #2

Was cycling along the A6 tonight and this came on the ipod. My MPH went from 18.1 to 20.3 for the next three minutes. It was no co-incidence.

I saw something good today

Current scientist superstar professor Brian Cox is everywhere at the moment so why not here too? This is him playing with super slow motion and is quite good except for the awful music. But around the 50 secs is the crowning glory when he pops a water balloon.

Can't get you outta my head #1

It's not intending to be a list blog but that's how it's going at the moment. Can't get the 12" version of PiLs '(This is not a) love song' out of my head at the moment, the version is very different from the one here but is Plastic Box. Check it out it's ace!

Album cover of the Week #1

Here's the first of the Album cover of the Week section. Please note that this may not be as regular as the title suggests.


Here we have Herb Albert and his Tijuana Brass and the their album Whipped Cream and Other Delights


And what did they do? Just put a woman covered in whipped cream on the cover. When people mourn the end of sleeve art with digital downloads, I don't think that this will be used as an example.

Back once again the Renegade Master.

I started this yonks ago and then kept on binning it, however as a victim of procrastination I've decided to re-light the fire and use this as yet another tool to stop me from doing the things I should be doing.