Furthermore: January 2008

January 20, 2008

More Music

More tracks from my ancient past:

• Cud - Only a Prawn in Whitby - there’s lots more on that site btw, it’s a real treasure trove of old indie stuff.


• Madder Rose - Beautiful John [YT] - another very good example of the twee genre. This was in the 1993 Festive 50 at number 36. The one I really want to find from the same year is Attagirl by Heavenly. So far no joy.


• StereoLab - French Disko - from the small sample I’ve heard, this seems to be the only StereoLab track I like.



• Palace Brothers - Ohio River Boat Song - beautiful melancholy American folk music.

I think that’s about it. If anyone’s ever heard of a song by Mighty Mighty called Imaginary Girlfriend then I’d love to hear that again. Oh, and somewhere there’s a really eerie recording of Ghost Riders… at about half normal speed.

January 16, 2008

Running

I seem to have been a bit slack since the start of the year. Still I’ve managed one midweek run this week and last week as well as the weekend run. As a baseline for the year I seem to be doing the weekend circuit in 55 mins (I think it’s about 6.5 miles) and the midweek one in 27m30. That’s a lot slower than my best times of just over 25 minutes last year, but at least I haven’t gone right back to 30 mins or so. So the goal is to get that down under 25 minutes, and then to work on distance.

January 12, 2008

Music History

I recently had a final clear out of audio tapes (well, nearly final - the car still has a tape player, so there are a few there). The only things I had left were a few compilation tapes from the early 90’s, mostly consisting of John Peel’s Festive 50.

I went through them to extract things I still liked, and came up with a few bands I’d like to get “Best Of” compilations for - Billy Bragg, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Nick Cave. There were also various one-off tracks I liked, and I’ve been trying to look some of those up on-line.

Apparently there was a defined genre which covers most of what I liked C86 or “twee pop” - strangely I’d never heard either term until I started looking for some of these. But there’s a blog devoted to the genre and it’s descendants.


Anyway, I found a few oldies that I enjoyed, and tantalising references to some others that I couldn’t quite pin down. So here’s what I turned up:

Bob - Convenience - Myspace page plays the track as background. An perfect example of the indie-pop genre. There’s a podcast that includes the track as part of it. They actually play the same recording from the Peel show that I have.

I, Ludicrous - Preposterous Tales - once heard, never forgotten comedy song, quite similar to Half Man, Half Biscuit. Alas, the site merely allows you to buy the music, you can’t hear the track there.

Field Mice - Sensitive - covered by the C86 All Stars (so the scene even has a covers band).

Eggs - Government Administrator - I like this one a lot. Quirky.

Hmm, I think there’s quite a lot more still, so I’m going to leave you with those and do another post later. Enjoy!

January 5, 2008

Over Christmas

I eased back into work this week - I took an extra day off after new year, so I only had to go in for two days. I think I’m mostly back into the swing of things now, and it’s now official that I’m taking on a new role: from March I will be managing bug fixes for our product. I’m looking forward to it.

Christmas and New Year were both good - we had Christmas at home with the girls, and they both now have a mountain of new stuff. I went to see my parents on the 27th, which was good fun, and dad was in good spirits. Then the 28th was the little one’s birthday, so we had a few people over for a small party. 29th we went round to Guy and Susie’s so Lizzie could play over there. Then New Years Eve we went over to Stevenage to see Neil and Justine - this was all in the afternoon, as everyone present had small children. Finally New Years Day some friends of ours from Japan came round - they were in Cambridge for a few days and their daughter had been in Lizzie’s class for a while when they were staying in Cambridge for a year.

Running has been a bit slack, but I’ve been managing to go out once a week for a leisurely run round the city. I think I may need some new shoes though - my current ones are the same ones that got me through the marathon, so I think they’re nearly a year old now.