Thursday, July 19, 2007

Converted

Never thought that I'd find myself saying this but Arcade Fire have really grown on me after seeing them live. It's the kind of music that gets inside your head and you just can't get it out. Consequently I have finally succumbed to buying a couple of their albums and they are very good. In fact I have a veritable feast of listening to and downloading music this week - which in some ways makes up for the fact that since the end of term I seem to have completely lost the ability to write anything coherent or meaningful.

Current playlist includes:
Arcade Fire - No Cars Go
Placebo - Without You I'm Nothing
Muse - Bliss
Kasabian - Shoot the Runner
Gotan Project - Vuelvo Al Sur
White Stripes - Fell in Love With a Girl
White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
Killers - When You Were Young
Jarvis Cocker - i Will Kill Again
Arcade Fire - Rebellion

Monday, July 16, 2007

Latitude

It's a long time since have appreciated a bath so much as I did last night when we arrived back from Latitude Festival. Although I enjoyed the festival immensely it has to be said that the facilities were abysmal - especially in comparison to WOMAD. The showers broke on Saturday morning and were still out of action on Sunday.

That said the music was great, the weather held out, the location is beautiful and the poetry was excellent.

Highlights for me were Damien Rice on Friday evening, the brilliant and funny Simon Armitage in the poetry tent, the hugely entertaining Jarvis Cocker and The Gotan Project. I was sadly unmoved by The Good, The Bad and The Queen, I can appreciate that they are good musicians but the music always leaves me feeling a bit flat. Best outfit prize in my opinion should be awared to the lead singer of CSS for her metallic pink jumpsuit.

I was especially impressed by the stand-up poetry tent, which made the festival for me - nice to see poetry getting more exposure.

Compared to WOMAD though, there were a few areas that we found lacking - WOMAD has more of everything - stalls, food and one thing we really appreciated was chill out areas - bars and cafes that had areas where you could just hang out for a bit and get your breath back. We eneded up going to bed not long after midnight at Latitude but if there had been places where we could just chill for a bit we might have got a second wind and stayed up a lot longer. (spoken like a true oldie).

Strangely I didn't meet many people I knew - even though its only 40 miles from Norwich - there were only one or two familiar faces - and a couple of people that looked like people I used to know, but I was too embaressed to go and say hello in case they weren't!




Friday, July 06, 2007

Bargains and Favourites


I found myself in HMV yesterday looking for birthday presents. Didn't find a present but somehow ended up spending twenty quid in the sale - not sure how that happened. I console myself with the fact that one of the CDs was a complete bargain - Appetite for Destrution by Guns n Roses for three pounds! (yes I know it's cheesy but there are a few good tracks on there and I'm not proud!). The other CD was the latest Killers album which is very good. I can also console myself that the two DVDs were cheap too - five and three pounds which is as much as you might pay to rent a film and we can always sell them on or give them to the charity shop later.


N and I watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" last night, which I thoroughly enjoyed on a second viewing and N enjoyed it too - it's intesesting to see what 14 year olds like. He asked me last night to name my favourite film of all time. A hard task - there are so many. If I was really pushed I might say High Fidelity. I tried to narrow it down to a top ten and even found that difficult. Here they are in no particular order:

High Fidelity

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind













Yes I know that's more than ten! and then of course there are the music films:





Monday, July 02, 2007

Seven Ages of Rock


This picture kind of sums up how I feel today - a bit ragged round the edges - all over the place and nowhere at all!
I very much enjoyed the final episode of Seven Ages of Rock on BBC1 last night, although I can't believe that they covered Brit Pop without showing any music by Pulp, who were huge for a while back in the nineties and who easily outstripped Blur and Oasis in talent and originality in my opinion.
I could kick myself for missing last weeks episde though.....