June 26, 2003
ah, the Scandiwegian Genius
The bus service in Reykjavik offers riders popular paperback books to read in transit. Fantastic!
In contrast, the London Underground encourages passengers to take their papers with them in a effort to reduce litter on the tube. But what about people leaving their reading matter for others - they should install a magazine and paper rack on the tubes!
June 21, 2003
Cat Power, Union Chapel
Cat Power played at the Union Chapel in North London last night, I went down to see her.
Sitting waaaay back and up at the top, Paul, Suzanna and me could hardly see the stage as the band had no doubt asked for the lights to be left low.
Now I very much like the music of Cat Power. And most times I go and see a band, I end up liking the band even more, through some kinda live music bonding experience. With this gig however, the Cat Power persona was a little unpleasant and made for one of the weirdest gigs I've ever been too. Along with watching the gig without making out a single face of the band, Cat Powers strange booms and ahhhhs into the microphone kinda spoiled the music for me. It seemed she has a fixation with being on stage and in front of lots of fans (ok, a given for a pop star but...) and she really flirts with it, not in a nice way. She flirts in the way that the most popular girl at school flirts -teasing, playing, loving the attention but also knowing that she ain't going to be giving it away. She was courting the fans / admirers adulation, egging it on, basking in i, driving it. And it was somehow distasteful.
To top it off, it was when, during the last song which had seen her walk out into the crowd and sing the songs from amongst her 'disciples', she returned to the stage. She unclipped her mike and made to leave the stage in that time honored fashion that sees the band remain and continue playing the song. Except dear old Cat Power couldn't leave the straight so easily. She danced and waved her feet at stage side fans, letting them kiss and stroke her feet and she really took as age to leave. I dunno. We were in a church. Maybe it was irony. But she is american...
I mentioned all this to Neil this morning, and he told me that I was growing old. Young people love this kind of attitude, so I'm the old boy.
The other wierd thing was that so many people are in to Cat Power. I never knew she had soooo many fans, and all of them so young and trendy.
June 19, 2003
An early demo
I'm taking a couple of days in bedroom studio to record some ideas I've had floating around for a little while. Its is quite a genuine pleasure to concentrate on nothing else but recording for a few days, but I have to remind myself to leave the house occasionally.
I wrote an idea for a song this morning really easily between 9.30 and 9.50, then recorded a very quick demo - mp3, 1.9mb to see if it'll work.
The mess I call my studio...
June 11, 2003
Pub Quiz
aaahhhhh, The Pub Quiz - Monday Night, 9pm at the Swimmers just off Holloway Road.
June 08, 2003
Non Stop Pop is back
After her move to Seattle, Jen of NonStop Pop fame is back and blogging - www.nstop.com
June 01, 2003
I found a cool site
I got alerted to this site as the result of some marketing thinking by one of our clients other agencies - its a totally cool idea and has this really excellent quality like you're managing to jump into the lives of others who are miles and miles away, and whom you know nothing of, for a few seconds or minutes.
When so many big internet sites make the world seem even more same-y than yr high street already is (amazon, ebay, imdb), this site delivers on the webs early promise of transporting you around the world in a day - although that world is mostly America. Its kind of a celebration of the little people, the individual shit that goes on in someones life, rather than the popstar media common reference. The fact that you don't know much more of anything about, say, the lists, is just more satisfying to me - it feels really foreign then.