They Shook

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Me getting frustrated at the internet. 20 years ago. In a parallel universe. On a 28k modem.

The internet is very frustrating. Getting on it I mean. I say this because I've been having problems recently and like a drug addiction or a lover, you only really miss it when you don't have it. Tune in for more ham-fisted analogies like that next wee...post.

As you may or may not have noticed, I've not posted for a while. I've been trying to sort my career out in truth, harder than it looks in the films I can assure you of that. Getting there though, one piece at a time. I feel I should comment on what's been going on since my last post but I can't really think now I'm here. We (England) got knocked out of the world cup which was disappointing yet, as always, a little reassuring too. We live in a country that really does live for the fall. If we won the thing, I don't know what we'd do actually. Send the trophy off to cashforgold.com and split the proceedings between the 51,000,000 of us I suppose. We love, just love, to hate hate hate in this country and our football team, well, they don't make it exactly hard sometimes. Example one below.

Example one.

Glastonbury went down last week too of course. The only weekend of the year where the nation's bongo players, roll-up smokers and teenagers in wayfarer sunglasses and straw hats descend on poor Somerset en masse. I didn't go. I watched a fair bit of it on the TV. That sentence itself "I watched a fair bit of it on TV" is an answer bores up and down the country have been trading off all week, you will have noticed. Tell you what though, you can really feel like you're there with that coverage. I hired a couple of fatties to sit either side of me on the couch and smelt their armpits at three minute intervals. It was amazingly effective. I had the sensation of being squashed in a crowd AND the waft of a spotty teens joint at the same time. All jokes aside though it looked pretty good and those guys had great weather too.

Glastonbury revellers kickin' stereotypes into touch last weekend

Couple of observations:

- Pet Shop Boys must be the definitive "can't-be-bothered-to-watch-them-but-when-you-doby accident-they-are-amazing" festival band.

- The xx are taking this moody/surly thing too far and that 'You've Got The Love' cover they did with Florence was shitty.

- Kele from Bloc Party is playing solo shows! As if there's ever been a slot more made to be buried deep in the 'red button' menu...

- Some of the Gorillaz collaborators would make brilliant dinner guests. Mark E Smith, Lou Reed, Shaun Ryder. In fact, Shaun Ryder looked like he'd been down a manhole since 1992 ingesting every drug imagin.....oh, he has. Still rocking the curtains haircut that I also had as a child I noted. For a bit of perspective, whilst I had this haircut I bought the single of MN8's 'I Got a Little Somethin' For Ya'.

- The National playing in the blazing sun doesn't look right.

- FAO Michael Eavis. Tom Waits and a reformed The Replacements next year and you've got my cash bro.

Other news:

This Eminem comeback sorry 'recovery' is a tad embarrassing. Have you seen how sincere he is in the 'Not Afraid' video?! Haha. Those scenes in the dirty room look like my imaginations picture of Stan (the nutter from the 'Stan' video) listening to an Eminem song and losing his shit in his bedroom. Probably whilst Dido bangs on the door incessantly going "Staaannlleeyy. Staaannleeyy". Also, can I just look at a few of the lines in that tune:

"Cause the way I feel/I'm strong enough to go to the club/
Or a corner pub and lift the whole liquor counter up/
Cause I'm raising the bar"

See what he's done there? I can almost seeing winking in the mirror as he wrote that line, it's that damn clever.

I haven't listened to that much new stuff recently in truth. I like that Wild Nothing record, 'Gemini', mainly because I can't believe it wasn't made in Manchester. I'm back all obsessive on Mobb Deep's 'The Infamous' too. Predictable I know but these guys were 21/22 when they made that record. That's ridiculous.

"Now take these words home and think it through/Or the next rhyme I write might be about you."



Straight outta Manchester Virginia...

Walk Away Now and You're Gonna Start a War.

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The National starting a war by just sittin' on steps. Jus' chillin', yesterday.

Yo I just stumbled across a video that I'd completely forgotten about. It's The National performing 'Start a War' around some banquetesque dinner table in someone's dark basement and it's just brilliant. 'Banquetesque dinner table' and 'dark basement' shouldn't really be used in the same sentence, I know. It doesn't even make damn sense. Yes, I'm aware of the term oxymoron smartass.

I really hate to do another National post, I really do. You gotta keep these blog things mixed up ya see - Keep 'em fresh. You can't go posting the same old bilge every week about the same stuff and not expect people to start sleepin' on ya. With all that said, this video really is great so I'm disregarding the whole start of this second paragraph and posting something about The National despite only reviewing 'High Violet' recently. Sleep all ya want suckers.



Also whilst I'm here, Ryan Adams. I use to dig him BIG style when he was all about writing a million songs a day that were actually good and being a bit unpredictable and drunk and roundly hated by anyone who wasn't one of his fan boy/girls but since then he's really fallen off. I'm talking since 'Cold Roses' here by the way (although I see the merit in saying 'since Heartbreaker'). Yesterday I was reading about (and heard, regrettably) some of his most recent release, 'Orion', and yes, it's space metal or whatever and yes, it's shit. I thought it was only fair to somehow inform his wife in a polite manner on twitter about this. See she was moaning about dropping a table on her big toe (fascinating tweet Mandy! 2m followers too. God.) so I replied:

Neither Mr or Mrs Adams has replied as of yet.

The Millennium Bug Let Me Down.

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A bug with its legs dipped in ink crawling across a page and making more sense than me, yesterday.

So, I had a virus last week. Belie dat? A proper full blown virus this time too. I couldn't open any programs, I grew very accustomed to blank blue screens and my CDs kept ejecting from the computer at will. It was terrible. In all honesty, I didn't know what to do. I mean my first plan of action consisted of opening Google on another computer and typing 'virus' into the search field ffs. That didn't help at all by the way and I'm sort of surprised that typing that in didn't ensure that the other computer contracted a virus in itself. I can just imagine some idiot nerds hackers somewhere somehow watching what everyone on the internet is doing and thinking "Hey. Check this guy out searching 'virus' on Google. Wouldn't it just like totally own if we sent him a virus whilst he was trying to sort another virus out?! Major lol. It'd be like almost postmodern man."

Being 'offline' was pretty cool in a way. I rediscovered the joys of erm.. actually leaving the house once in a while. Y'know just talking to my fellow man about the world and what's going on and stuff. All joyous stuff of course. People killing people, a massive oil slick ruining the Gulf coast and whether Cheryl Cole is going out with will.i.am or not. Good news for people who love bad news.

There isn't really an aim to this post, I'm sure you've noticed. I've been listening to a lot of music lately, as always. Most recent purchases being the two albums below:

True love doesn't cast out viruses, regrettably.

Bang goes the RSPCA bustin' down the door.

I didn't just buy the Erickson album because I'm a pathetic Okkervil River fanboy. Oh no. Okay, I sort of did. I listened to it a couple of times on Spotify and first impressions are very good. It's not exactly a system up with the top down summer album. It seems very world weary and tired, in all the best ways. Whilst the Divine Comedy record I expect to be fresh, funny and very clever. Why? because Divine Comedy albums are always that way and it's criminal how few people care about them. I'll let you know in full what these albums are like soon, barring any unexpected viruses of course.

Just before I go and whilst we're on the subject: how on earth did the millennium bug work (or not work)? Wasn't it something about how computer calendars could deal with the dates being in a xx-xx-19xx format but once they ticked over at 23:59:59 on 31/12/99 they were going to just completely lose their minds and implode. This would of course mean the end of the internet which is obviously another way of saying it would be the end of the world. Maybe I'm alone in thinking this but I was a bit dissapointed to wake up on 01/01/00 and find that firstly, I was not dead and secondly, that my computer worked as always and there wasn't a bug in sight. So yeah, you sucked millennium bug and you didn't do your job in any way. You were meant to bring doom, instead you brought a slight bit of worry and confusion and that's about it. Get outta my sight.