Posted in Football, Crown, Beer at Thu 30 Mar 2006 by Stavros
There are things that naturally go together, fish and chips, gin and tonic, taxi-drivers and casual racism, trainspotters and thermos, and hangovers and Thursday mornings. Wednesday evenings in the Crown can be a temperamental mistress, sometimes it’s quiet and sober (-ish) and you’re left to wonder quite why you are there, is it habit or choice. Other nights, of which last night was one, get pretty surreal. Pushing eleven on the scale of drunkeness and boisterousness. Usually Old Man Rich is at the centre of things, or maybe Fulla’s been on the ciders. Not really sure what happened last night though. Now I’ve got my old friend Sergei Hangoverski cossack dancing on my brain. On a Thursday morning, again.
The number of bloggers who drink in the Crown has just risen by one. Fulla’s got a blog. Yes, Shropshire’s leading post-rock cheese poet has a weblog.
I’ve been reminiscing about the Playstation One. Sony have announced they are ceasing production on the console. To be honest, I didn’t know they were still making them. But I’ll raise a glass to WipEout, Silent Hill, Tekken, Final Fantasy VII and PaRappa the Rapper.
See Merk, Tokyo is the largest city in the world. Full stop. UN stuff here.
Pointless chart of the week. My favourite football players of all time:
1. Peter Beardsley - the face; 2. Alan Shearer - the goals; 3. Zinedine Zidane - the bald patch; 4. Roberto Baggio - the ponytail; 5. Diego Maradona - the girth, the drugs, the hand, the Che Guevara tattoo.
For now,
Stavros.
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Posted in Music, TV, Downloads at Sun 19 Mar 2006 by Stavros
Russell Grant told me that things were going to change on Friday. He lied. The fat git must’ve made it up. Just like the bastard tipsters for the Cheltenham festival. I won a mahoosive £20.25 over the four days… and only lost a piffling £43. Ahem. Mug’s game… rhubarb… rhubarb. Still I don’t think Victor Chandler will be buying a new house off my punts, in exactly one year I’ve made an initial tenner last 487 bets, which is pretty good going really. And now one year and nearly 500 bets later my balance is… £10.82. I could pull out now and I’d have made 82 pence! That’s probably more than if it’d stayed at Natwest, and certainly more than if it’d gone over the bar at the Crown like so many ten pound notes before it.
I wrote a love poem about being kidnpped in Belarus last night, pissed up. I read it this morning and it’s shit. Oh well at least I didn’t go on ebay trolleyed. We all know where that can lead.
I promised a new mp3 post soon. So here it is, this is what I’m filling my ears with at the moment. It’s quite North American and very Indie, so Grime fans and Jazz-Funk afficianados may want to look elsewhere (try here).
All the tunes listed below are for download for sample purposes only. If you want to buy anything you’ve heard on this site, try here, here or here. Downloads will be taken down immediately upon request.
Here’s Wolf Parade’s “I’ll Believe In Anything” from their 2005 album Apologies to the Queen Mary.
And here we have fellow Canadians Broken Social Scene’s “Almost Crimes“. I’ve talked about these lot before, I think it’s nowt short of genius.
And in this corner we have The Decemberists’ “The Sporting Life“, from the excellent 2005 album Picaresque. This track reminds me a bit of Belle & Sebastian’s Stars of Track and Field, and catches the band at their most land-lubber.
Spoiling you even more, I bring you something hot off the shelves, this is “Insistor” it is by a band called Tapes ‘n Tapes, it’s on their album The Loon, and it’s infectious in an odd tremolo bar bending kind of way. In fact the whole albums tops.
Next up on our whiste-stop tour (what does that mean? whistle-stop?) is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, which unlike most American indie bands has a fucking great band name. This is “Let The Cool Goddess Rust Away” from their self-titled, self-release album from last year. Now you’re either gonna cringe at the singer’s voice or like me you may just break out in a strange smile as he croons strenuously like David Byrne with his head stuck. After repeated listenings I still haven’t got a clue what any of the words are.
Right, what else shall I offer you? Errm, how do you fancy the new single from perrenial odd-balls The Flaming Lips, “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song“, this is from their forthcoming long-player At War With The Mystics.
I’ll end the generosity back on this side of the pond, with the coolest band in Britain at the moment, they’re from Ashby-de-la-Zouch, they look like salesmen and their bassist is called House of Lords (I shit you not), it’s The Young Knives and their latest single “Here Comes The Rumour Mill“, their debut album will be out in April.
So there it is, I hope Lord Lucan, Prof. Hawkin and the rest of my celebrity readers can forgive my recent bout of blogshyness, which was caused in part at least by buying two series of Shameless and two series of This Life on DVD. Mmmm tellytastic.
Stavros.
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Posted in Music at Sat 4 Mar 2006 by Stavros
I saw a pheasant yesterday. No shit. Strutting around the back of our house up by the garages like a cocky hoodie-child. The lesser spotted council estate pheasant. I tried to catch it, but it was all big and feathery and had these eyes that could pierce Batfink’s wings I swear. So I left it to it. Dunno what I’d have done if I had caught it, I’ve never plucked or gutted in me life (we live right near Tescos). I think it was just the hunter-gatherer instincts kicking in for a split second, before normality, idleness and cowardice resumed. I love it when mad shit happens though, just when you think you know everything and that 27th birthday just keeps hurtling ever faster, you’ve seen everything. Like upward snow and competitive pancake tossing in The Crown. Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve stumbled into a sit-com.
I’ve had a couple of days of work (a nasty combination of exaggerated sickness bug and televised Test cricket… again!). To be honest I’ve completely wasted them reading webcomics, watching the Shameless DVD, and filling my hard-drive full of cool music. One particular download has caught me by my aural short and curlies, as it were, Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It In People. Top album, think a less wanky Bono fronting The Arcade Fire using Dinosaur Jr’s guitars or summat like that. Not sure how I’ve missed it as it’s a couple of years old, I think my radar needs retuning. Also downloaded The Decemberists album, but I’m not sure about it, not sure if I’m ready for indie-pop sea shanties just yet.
I’m sure there was summat else I was going to write about, but I’ll be frigged if I can remember now. Ah well, for now.
Stavros.
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