“Others find pleasure in things I despise…”

So the Mercury Prize went to those articulate little fella’s from the City of Steele. Watching the show last night I totally forgot that the rather excellent Richard Hawley had been nominated too- and despite my obvious affiliations with Hot Chip (of whom the TV sound engineer did a particularly poor effort of replicating their live sound) I was certainly routing for the chap. Once again the ceremony was, for a lack of a better description, a load of shite, as once more Jo Whiley’s over sincerity had me rolling my eyes, though there was a rather hilarious interview with the newly crowned winners- who appeared to have consumed a rather large intake of alcohol and quite possibly other substances. Obviously her renowned patience had worn pretty thin whilst trying to get a straight answer out of them, but nothing could top Marcus Brigstock’s attempts of trying to engage Mr. Hawley with witty banter:

(On watching footage of Hawley playing with Pulp at a previous Mercury Award Ceremony he noted the guitar he was playing)

RH: “Oh- that was a great guitar- someone stole it”
Brigstoke: “who stole it?”
RH: (With look of annoyance) “If I knew that I would find them and jump on their bastarding neck”
Brigstoke: “ah”

Tit!



Also boredom produces interesting random internet searches and after looking up details of Steve Irwin (RIP), once more I wasn’t let down by those (perhaps that should be “them’s”) crazy Yanks. Over here we had cock-er-nee wide boy chef Jamie Oliver on a crusade to make school dinners healthier, which no matter what you think of him is a really great thing to have happened, however; in Good Ole’ America, rather than spend money on improving food standards and re-educate the fat youth of America they’ve come up with an ingenious way of a) scanning in fingerprints of all the students for the continuation of the Big Brother prophesy, b) Ensuring that the School gets as much cash from its kids as possible and c) spending an exorbitant amount of money on this pile of

pish

Anyway, disillusioned with it all- please find several MP3s below for no significant reason- except I like them:


Casiotone For The Painfully Alone- Tonight was a disaster.
As referred to in my last blog.

Lisa Germano -Small Head
I was given this CD during my short lived life as a Student Magazine Music writer. I never got round to writing up the review- but this song is a corker- Lisa loves this album, and stole it from me during one summer break from university.

Kate Bush -- Hounds of Love
Barking mad and brilliant.

Dinosaur Jr –Whatever’s Cool With Me
Apparently this song was written after reading this blog.


Guided By Voices- Hold on Hope (XFM Acoustic Session)
There rides the Cowboy….


TV On The Radio - Dry Drunk Emperor.mp3
Best thing I’ve heard for a long time- gutted that I missed them in Leeds.

The Louvin Bros. - The Christian Life.
The Raconteurs covered this at the recent Leeds Festival- “Others find pleasure in things I despise…” Sums it up really.

Preston School Of Industry-Whalebones
A song about coming back home after a long tour- this song might have made Terror Twilight a better Pavement send off.

Sparklehorse -Happy Man [Memphis Version]
A better version than the ‘Good Morning Spider’ album- great riff and dedicated to all those who’ve woken up un a horses stomach.