you wake up late for school man you don't wanna go....

Right. One of my oldest and very bestest friends is in the chair as Guest Editor this week. We've grown up together, listening to various strands of ropey heavy metal over endless cups of coffee and as many Jaffa cakes as Des had left in the box: Iron Maiden, Poison, Slaughter, Motley Crue, Queensryche, Atom Seed, Infectious Grooves, Slayer.... you name it, we've listened to it (although I'm saying now that I never, ever owned a copy of "Flesh & Blood", right?). We went to our first gig together (The Cult), and then onto all kinds of brilliant shows by the likes of Thunder, Metallica, Faith No More, ZZ Top and the Little Angels. I think we even bought our first leather jackets on the same day. Oh yes, without any doubt, my hearing has suffered irreparable damage in the company of this man. He subsequently got into a load of dance shit, but I've never really held that entirely against him and we still go to Glastonbury together most years.

Ladies and gentleworms, it is my great pleasure to present for your earworming pleasure...... his music taste can't have changed that much, right?

Earworms of the week - guest editor #94 - Mik

Well I've been saying I would drop by and take part in this earworm thing for ages now, but have only just got my lazy arse into gear. So thanks ST for the open ended invitation and yes you're right, my musical tastes have changed dramatically since those angry thrash metal days of my youth!

I now work nightshifts in a factory where, unfortunately, local radio rules the airwaves. So for 10 hours a night, 4 nights a week I'm bombarded with love songs and other assorted dross. Try as I might to block it out, it's inevitable that some of this filth finds it's way in and sets up camp in my head, sometimes for a very long time. With this in mind, I can only apologise in advance for some of the songs listed below. But hey, honesty is the policy round here right......

> "Alone" - Celine Dion

I did warn you. Until recently, Celine Dion was occupying a residency at one of the big hotels in Las Vegas, performing several times a week in front of crowds who enjoy her music and had willingly paid to see her. Apparently such people do exist. Presumably due to the hard work involved in such a lengthy stint, she didn't release any new material during this time, so this source of evil was largely confined to the Nevada Desert. However, the residency is now over, and once again she has been unleashed onto an unsuspecting, undeserving audience. This cover of Heart's classic power ballad is every bit as annoying as you might imagine, and has been welcomed whole-heartedly by the late night DJ's on Rugby FM. I can only hope that she decides to take up another lengthy residency soon....I hear Guantanamo Bay will be available shortly.

> "So What" - Pink

This song has been out for a while now, but still gets played at least six times a night on the radio. Like many of her songs, it's very catchy, seems harmless at first, but ultimately becomes really quite annoying. What particularly winds me up with this one is the bit where she stretches the word "weren't" into two syllables by singing "were ent". Why not just say "were not" if you need the extra syllable? I know I'm perhaps nit-picking here, but after hearing the song so many times, it's the little things that start to grate.

> "Saturn 5" - The Inspiral Carpets

Fortunately, not every song that pops into my head comes straight from the local radio archives. I always listen to my ipod on the way to work, trying to build a kind of musical firewall to protect myself against the viruses that lie ahead. This cropped up on a random shuffle the other day and hasn't been far from my internal jukebox ever since. Great keyboards.

> "Use Somebody" - Kings Of Leon

I've been a fan of this band since their first album "Youth And Young Manhood".Back then they were a bunch of hairy blokes playing quite raw, edgy rock music. But with each new album both their music and image has become more polished and refined, culminating in their latest release "Only By The Night", which I found to be really quite disappointing indeed. This is the second single to be taken from the album and has become an integral part of the Rugby FM playlist, which in itself speaks volumes about the change in the band's musical direction. I must admit it has grown on me with each listen, but give me "Red Morning Light" or "Holy Roller Novocaine" any day.

> "Panic Attack" - The Sunshine Underground

A work mate lent me the album "Raise The Alarm" last year. I duly transferred it onto my ipod, where it lay dormant for about 3 months. When I finally got round to giving it a listen, I realised that I shouldn't have wasted so much time...it's a great album. This is the one that's been playing in my head recently, but in truth there isn't a bad song on there, each one as sing-alongable(?) as the next. My friend also lent me the latest releases by The Zutons and Hot Chip at the same time....perhaps I ought to give those a listen at some point.

> "Racing Green" - High Contrast

This one came from a very unlikely source indeed. I recently took a night off work and was unfortunate enough to find myself in the same room as my wife while she was watching Eastenders. (I should clarify that I don't take issue with sharing room space with my wife, it's just the programme that offends!) I busied myself reading the paper, trying to ignore the shouting Cockneys on TV, but couldn't help noticing the occasional snippet of drum 'n' bass coming from the corner of the room. It seemed some of the Walford residents had gone to a drum 'n' bass night at their local club. The characters were probably the least likely people you would find anywhere near such a place, but hey, it's not actually supposed to be a reflection of real life is it? Anyway, this was one of the tunes I heard and, being one of my favourites, I was more than happy to find myself having a little dance in the kitchen the following morning with this playing in my head. These are the sort of 'infectious grooves' I'm into nowadays!

> "Rule The World" - Take That

When I think of Take That I'm always reminded of a conversation I had with my good friend Statue John and his brother Bob, sitting on a train somewhere between Prague and Berlin. It was the mid 1990's, when the band were at the peak of their popularity and countless other boy bands were filling the charts, trying to cash in on the Take That phenomenon. Bob and I were of the opinion that, while neither of us would actually go out and buy any of their music, Take That did at least write their own material, most of which was fairly good if you were into that sort of thing. This, we pointed out, is what set them aside from the many, inferior boy bands of the time. John's counter argument to this went something along the lines of "Nah bollocks, they're rubbish".

With the band's recent, renewed success, my opinion of them remains unchanged. As I'm sure, does John's.

> "Fight For Your Right" - The Beastie Boys

This is a direct result of playing too much Guitar Hero. I've been feeling pretty pleased with myself recently as I've just progressed onto the hard level, but damn it really is difficult. Great game though, and not a bad song either.

So, there you have it. A fairly mixed bag I'm sure you'll agree.Thanks again Mr T for letting me drop by and hopefully exorcise a few demons. Unfortunately, I've just been given the bad news that, as of last night I've been made redundant. Bit of a bummer really, but at least I shouldn't be waking up with Celine Dion's god-awful wailing in my head anymore. Every cloud eh.....

---

Rubbish news about the job and everything, but CELINE DION? Seriously? This list has been a long time coming, and -- Sealion notwithstanding -- I take my hat off to you for being so honest about what's been tracking around your head. You're dead right about the KoL too.... the last album was their most commercially successful, but probably artistically their least successful, I would say. And you can't argue with the Inspiral Carpets either, although I would have gone for the crackers Mark E. Smith version of "I Want You", as I've always had a soft-spot for that one. Remember watching them in the pissing rain at Glastonbury in 2002? It's also probably appropriate that you've finished your list with a song we used to listen to back in 1987 when they seemed like the most dangerous band in the world and you went around Horton Crescent nicking VW signs (and hockey nets).

Ah happy days.

Thanks for playing mate, and see you next weekend.

Mikworms: over.

Have a good weekend y'all, and stay classy.

Next week: Mark

[Previous Guest Editors: Flash, The Urban Fox, Lord Bargain, Retro-Boy, Statue John, Ben, OLS, Ka, Jenni, Aravis, Yoko, Bee, Charlie, Tom, Di, Spin, The Ultimate Olympian, Damo, Mike, RedOne, The NumNum, Leah, Le Moine Perdu, clm, Michael, Hyde, Adem, Alecya, bytheseashore, adamant, Earworms of the Year 2005, Delrico Bandito, Graham, Lithaborn, Phil, Mark II, Stef, Kaptain Kobold, bedshaped, I have ordinary addictions, TheCatGirlSpeaks, Lord B rides again, Tina, Charlie II, Cody Bones, Poll Star, Jenni II, Martin, Del II, The Eye in the Sky, RussL, Lizzy's Hoax, Ben II, Earworms of the Year 2006, Sarah, Flash II, Erika, Hen, Pynchon, Troubled Diva, Graham II, Cat II, Statue John II, Sweeping the Nation, Aravis II, Olympian II, C, Planet-Me, Mike, Michael II, Eye in the Sky II, Charlie III, The Great Grape Ape, asta, Ben III, Earworms of the Year 2007, Cat III, JamieS & Wombat, Pynchon II, Briskate, Craig Cliff, Fiery Little Sod, Cody II, J, Yoko II, Rol, Lisa, Pollstar II, Joe the Troll, Eye in the Sky III, Jerry Cornelius, Stevious, Luke, FLS II, FLS III]

what don't kill you make you more strong.....

Metallica @ Nottingham Arena, 25th February 2009

I still think that one of the best gigs I have ever been to was Metallica at the Milton Keynes Bowl in 1991. I'd discovered the band a few years before, at some point in 1988, when something had inspired me to -- without having heard the band -- to purchase a cassette copy of "...And Justice For All". I was already into bands like Iron Maiden, but I think it's fair to say that I hadn't heard anything like Metallica before. With that album, and completely unknown to the 14 year old me, the band had taken a significant stride away from their thrash past and were instead creating complex songs, many over ten minutes long, with lot of changes of pace and complex, dive-bombing guitar solos. Although I basked in the baffled looks I got from people who heard me playing the album, it took me quite a long time before I could really appreciate what I had discovered. In fact, it probably wasn't until after the release of "Enter Sandman" and the Black Album some years later.

Over the ensuing twenty years, I have slowly worked my way backwards through the band's back catalogue and -- thanks to Mark -- have also caught up on a lot of their more recent stuff too. Admirable though "Some Kind of Monster" might be for its honesty, there's surely no denying that the band's output of late has been somewhat patchy. Perhaps, we wondered, this was band whose time had gone (and don't even mention Napster). I'm not sure many people think that any more: the band's last album, "Death Magnetic" is immense, combining the complex arrangements of pomp era Metallica with the thrash of the early days. It's a fantastic record. The MP3s are even LOUDER than everything else I have on my iPod, scaring the bejesus out of me every time they pop up on shuffle. Oh yes, I was looking forward to this one.



Although I'm not a big fan of Arena gigs, I welcomed the arrival of an arena in Nottingham as it meant that we now had a good range of music venues of all sizes. Rock City is a brilliant place to watch live music, but its capacity is only a little over 2000 people, and the addition of an arena with five times that capacity meant that I was likely to get a chance to see bigger bands without needing to travel to the NEC. Whilst this has certainly been true, just take a look at the list of bands I have seen there over the last couple of years: The Darkness, Travis, Franz Ferdinand, Keane, Kaiser Chiefs, The Arcade Fire, Morrissey, Razorlight, James Blunt, Kings of Leon, Coldplay..... Yes, you could argue that they are all too big to comfortably play in Rock City, but are they really what you would call arena bands? Are any of them really big enough to fill the acoustics of the place? Mmmm. I'm not sure. The experience is generally an unsatisfactory one: you're too far away from the band for it to be a truly intimate experience, but the sound quality is usually often shockingly poor. It's better to see a band at the arena than not to see them at all, but it's often far from ideal.

I think I've just been to the gig that arenas were built for: Metallica. Let's put this into some context: Over the course of their 28 year career, Metallica have sold 100 million records worldwide. They are widely thought of as being the most influential hard rock / metal band of all time. They are a big, landmark act, famous across the world and responsible for indelibly shaping their genre . The Kaiser Chiefs they most assuredly are not. Although they have never played Nottingham before, Metallica have been playing arenas for decades, and that experience shows. This band fill the space like no other I have seen. Most acts approach an arena show by sizing up the stage at one end and wondering whether to bother having a runway or a secondary stage or something like that. The Kaiser Chiefs on Sunday had a tiny stage just big enough for Ricky Wilson to stand on up near the mixing desk, and he stood on it for one song. Coldplay at the NEC made a bit more of an effort by both having secondary stages at the end of runways out into the audience, and then by actually appearing amongst the crowd to do a little acoustic set. Both were still mainly bound by the main stage. Metallica throw this convention in the bin: the main stage is not used at all, and the band instead set up a large, rectangular stage in the middle of the arena floor and play in the round. The drumkit is placed in the centre and is slowly rotated around through the show, and there are eight microphones dotted around the edge of the stage and facing out into the crowd. The result is that everyone feels closer to the band, and the musicians themselves are able to move around dynamically engaging with different sections of the crowd. It works fantastically well, and makes every seat in the house a good seat.

At first glance, I write off tonight's crowd as being your sterotypical hairy, middle-aged, black t-shirted heavy metal crowd, and Sarah and I ponder whether there is an average of more than one tattoo for every person present. On closer inspection, however, there is a far wider demographic present. Sure, you don't get as many young trendies as you often see out at a gig here, and designer clothing is very much in the minority, but there are a surprising number of girls here, and not all of them are dressed up in standard rock chick uniform (as Sarah said, think "slutty goth"). There are a lot of thirty and forty-somethings here, but also a large number of kids too... not just people in their 20s, but actual kids. Metallica's demographic is apparently a reasonably large one. Lots of people look like they've been to metal gigs before, and have the t-shirts to prove it, but lots look as though this may be their first time. We wait for the support band to finish (Machine Head, who had been preceded by Sword...) and then head into the arena itself to find our seats.

The band come on at 9pm on the button, and the otherwise completely blacked-out stage is lit by an impressive set of lasers as the band launch into "That Was Just Your Life" and James Hetfield, underlit by floor spots, works his way around the microphones on the stage, with his colleagues remaining in darkness. It's the opening song from the new album, and it's a cracker. The rest of the stagelights come up at the conclusion of the song, and we're off to a flyer. The set itself is a good mixture of very old and very new. New songs like "The Day That Never Comes", "All Nightmare Long" and "Broken, Beat and Scarred" blend together really nicely with timeless classics like "Master of Puppets", "One", "Sad But True", "Nothing Else Matters", "Fight Fire With Fire" and, of course, "Enter Sandman". I'm already admiring the stage set up and lights when the entire lighting rig seems to break into four pieces and four coffins descend and pivot towards the crowd. It really doesn't get any better than this, and the crowd goes wild - and they haven't even started using the flamethrowers yet. The mosh pits look furious on first glance, with people running headlong into each other and aggressive looking bare-chested men rutting like stags. On closer inspection though, it's actually far more ordered, and there appear to be unspoken rules: anyone knocked over is carefully picked up before being shoved again, and, for the faster numbers, everyone moves around in a circle, like a very high-octane game of ring-a-ring-a-roses. It's fascinating stuff. The band themselves are great, with Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo working their way around the stage as Hetfield barks out his lyrics, and Lars Ulrich is a whirling dirvish, standing up from behind his drumkit as often as he can, and running to the edge of the stage to spout water onto his adoring fans. It's really impressive stuff. I have never seen a better arena act play this venue, and it's a damn good show.

In the end, the band play for something like two and a quarter hours, finishing with the enormous crowd singalong of "Seek and Destroy" as inflatable black Metallica balls rain from the ceiling.

"Searchin'... SEEK AND DESTROY"

Even when the band have finished, and the curfew is long past, the band seem reluctant to leave the stage. It won't be 28 years before they next play Nottingham, they promise, and the barely thinning crowd roars its approval.

Metallica are an absolutely brilliant, brilliant band, and after a bumpy few years, they appear to be back doing what they do better than anybody else. Arena gig? They slayed it. Best arena gig ever. An object lesson in how to play this sort of venue... are you watching Razorlight?

Verdict: 9.5 / 10.

a room is still a room....

My wife informed me the other day that I would be on my own this weekend because she is going home. It's an odd turn of phrase, isn't it? We've lived together for something like eight years, and we've been in the same house together for a little over six of those years... and yet when she goes to visit her mum and dad in France, she says she's going home. She hasn't lived there for fifteen years or so, and it's not really the house that she grew up in, but it's still home; it was the place her parents were living when she moved out.

Home. I'm not really sure what that means. I was born in Northampton and my parents lived in the same house a few miles outside that town for something like thirty-four years before they moved last year. Does that mean I should consider Northampton my home town? Did I think of that old house as my home? Was I sorry when my parents moved down the road? Not really.

Someone once told me that they thought I had a Northampton accent. If that's true, then I have absolutely no idea how I picked it up. My dad is from Plymouth and my mum is from Essex and I was born in Northampton General for the simple reason that both my parents were working there and living just by the hospital. The worked in the hospital itself, actually. Neither has an accent of any description, as far as I can tell, and anyway, I don't even know what a Northampton accent sounds like. I hardly picked one up by osmosis from the locals either - I was sent away to boarding school when I was seven years old. Although I suppose I technically didn't leave home for another eighteen years, when I finally finished University, to all intents and purposes, from the age of seven, I was spending more than thirty weeks of every year living somewhere completely different: at school until I was eighteen, then as an undergraduate at University for three years, and finally as a postgraduate for another twelve months. In that time, home was probably still near Northampton with my parents, but you were far more likely to find me in, successively, Brackley, Rugby, Coventry, Leamington Spa, Venice or York*

Northampton has never felt like my home town, it was just where I was born. Even the house that I called home wasn't where I spent the majority of my time or near where my friends were; it was just where my parents lived and where I spent my holidays.

I moved to Nottingham on the day that Princess Diana died in 1997, and I've lived here ever since. That's more than a decade now, and certainly the longest I have ever solidly lived in one town in my whole life. Since January 2003, I've even lived in the same house (I can remember painting the skirting board of the dining room on the day that Hans Blix revealed to the world that he had not been able to find any Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq).

Does that make Nottingham home? I suppose the fact that my parents have moved out of the house I grew up in helps clear things up a bit, but is Nottingham now my home town?

Home. It's just a word, isn't it?

* One of the great advantages of buying a house has been finally being able to fill in a form without needing to try and remember about twelve different addresses: I've now lived in one place for long enough that I only need to remember a couple.

everything is average nowadays....

The Kaiser Chiefs @ Nottingham Arena, 22nd February 2009

There are two supports at the arena tonight. Esser were fronted by a guy sporting both Vanilla Ice's haircut and a Pearly King's jacket. The music was suitably schizophrenic too, with each song apparently being taken from an entirely different genre, one minute wonky pop, the next sounding like the Hives and then sounding like the Basement Jaxx. Actually, I thought they were pretty good, and at least they made an effort to engage the crowd, with the frontman bouncing around energetically and taking swigs from his hip flask. As the second support, Black Kids were even allowed to have their own light show, and took to a stage resplendent with what looked like giant lightsabres. They're not an obvious arena band, for sure, but they filled the space pretty effectively, and had the crowd well on their side long before they played their two most famous songs, "Hurricane Jane" and "I'm Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You". Reggie Youngblood in particular surprised me by quite how good a guitarist he was, and Dawn Watley was beguilingly barefooted behind her keyboard.

....And so to the main event. I suppose it's only fair at this point that I disclose that I don't actually like the Kaiser Chiefs very much. I bought "Employment" on the strength of the first four singles, and then discovered that it pretty much consists entirely of the first few singles. If that in itself wasn't enough to turn me off them, they then had the bad grace to release "Ruby" as the lead single from their next album. Surely that's got to be a contender for the crown of the most irritating song ever committed to record? The band do have a formidable live reputation though, and although I've always been busy watching someone (anyone) else when they've played at Glastonbury, I was curious to see for myself if they could cut the mustard, and the "plus one" ticket from Mike certainly gave me the opportunity without needing to set myself back the best part of £30.

They got off to a bad start. The conceit of having a couple of your stage crew dressed in long white coats and clutching clipboards is presumably meant to keep the crowd entertained in the minutes before the band take to the stage, but it only served to irritate me as they made a great show of strutting around the stage checking setlists and so on. My mood improved somewhat when the band made an entrance worthy of Spinal Tap themselves: the lights dimmed and dry ice began to flow out across the stage and into the arena. The crowd roared in anticipation and the band took to the stage.... but the dry ice kept coming. When the main lights came up and the band kicked into their first song, you actually could not see them at all through the fog. Sadly you could still hear them as they plodded their way through a song I've never heard before from their new record, but at least they'd genuinely given me something to laugh about. After this shakey start though, the band launched straight into "Every Day I Love You Less and Less" and then "Everything is Average Nowadays". In some ways it was quite a bold move to play the two together, as effectively they are the same song, but in practice they are both so up-tempo and performed with such gusto by the band, that they are impossible to resist. I'm sceptical about them to say the least, but watching the crowd bouncing up and down and Ricky Wilson jumping off every available monitor, and I soon found myself beginning to thaw. Perhaps they weren't so bad after all?

Sadly, that was as good as it got. There are other hits, of course: "I Predict A Riot", "Never Miss a Beat", "Oh My God", "Ruby", "Angry Mob", "Love's Not a Competition (But I'm Winning)"... but tellingly, it's those first 4 songs that caught my ear initially that are the ones that stand out, and it's been diminishing returns ever since, with last single "Good Days, Bad Days" being a case in point: it doesn't have much of a hook and it doesn't really go anywhere. Ricky Wilson can jump around all he likes and exhort the crowd to wave their arms in the air all he wants, but nothing can conceal their lack of substance. At one point, Wilson decamps to a tiny little stage in the middle of the arena underneath a single spotlight. He makes a great show of sprinting through the crowd to get there, and then when he's there, he can only play an album track and shout "We are the Kaiser Chiefs!!" a few times before sprinting back to the main stage. It's all he's got, and frankly it's not good enough.

The band sound alright, I suppose, although drummer Nick Hodgson is clearly a frustrated frontman (although, by the sounds of it, he wouldn't be half as good as Wilson) and guitarist Andrew White spends practically the entire set with his back to the audience and facing the drum riser. Wilson aside, they're a pretty anonymous bunch of Sleeper-blokes, truth be told. Wilson himself is all action: throwing his mic stand around, swinging the microphone about, bouncing his tambourine and drumsticks up off the stage floor, climbing around on the lighting rigging, hanging out into the crowd and soaking up their adulation... but he's all gesture. Like his band, they know how to work a crowd, and it feels to me as though they simply go through the motions. For all that they present themselves as the people's band, I actually find them to be a bit sneering. Wilson is at pains to point out that the angry mob of the song are not his audience, but who else is he talking about? Why else do the crowd belt the chorus back at him with so much gusto:

"We are the angry mob
We read the papers every day
We like what we like
We hate what we hate
But we're also easily swayed"

That's clearly meant to be commentary on the great unwashed, tabloid reading British public, but who does he think he's pitching his anthems at?

"I Predict A Riot" is practically irresistable as a song, but again the attitude is one of sneering condescension. The chip fat coated masses he sings about are the same people who sing the words back at him with uncritical adoration. The only thing worse than actually being clever is pretending that you're clever, and the Kaiser Chiefs certainly think they are smarter than their audience...although, to be fair, the audience have made the band very rich indeed by lapping up their anthemic but empty and soulless music. I was expecting the crowd to be made up of Oasis-like beer chuckers, but perhaps those apes know when they are being patronised and have largely stayed away, preferring more "authentic" bands like Kasabian, The Twang and Oasis themselves. There are one or two bare chested morons waving their football shirts over their heads, but the bulk of the crowd mainly consists of "nice" couples who are here to have a good singalong and who probably also enjoy the Pigeon Detectives, Scouting for Girls and other landfill indie. I'm generalising, I know, but watching a packed arena singing along to this empty, echoing nonsense is a very depressing experience.

The Kaiser Chiefs do have some good songs, but they're vapid and vacuous, and by the end of their 90 minute set, I am delighted to see the back of them.

Verdict: 4 / 10.

Mike's review of this gig can be found here.

...only stone and steel accept my love

-
Earworms of the Week

> "Mellow Yellow" - Donovan

Apparently this is often thought to be about the practice of smoking dried banana skins in lieu of marijuana, but the song is actually about a vibrator. So now you know. I have to say that my opinion of Donovan is somewhat sullied by his appearance as "a Glastonbury legend" alongside Starsailor (of all people) at Glastonbury a few years back. They weren't great, but he was awful. This was released in 1966 and sounds a bit like the Beatles - probably not surprising when you consider that Macca himself sings the backing vocals here. Still, it is catchy, eh?

> "Papillon" - Airbourne Toxic Event

I understand that Airborne Toxic Event were the proud recipients of a review of 1.6 out of 10 from Pitchfork that was (obviously) somewhat less than complimentary

"...an album that's almost insulting in its unoriginality"?

Ouch.

The reviewer goes on to suggest that "lead singer Mikel Jollett can alternately sound like Paul Banks [Interpol], Win Butler [Arcade Fire], Conor Oberst [Bright Eyes], or Matt Berninger [The National], what ties the LP together is quite possibly the most unlikeable lyric book of the year, rife with empty dramatic signifiers, AA/BB simplicity, and casual misogyny." An album inspired by market research, apparently.

I disagree. The vocals sound to me like a mix of Banks / Berninger / Edith Bowman's fella from The Editors, but that's simply because of the depth of his baritone and not though any great desire to copy, I don't think. I've listened to the album through a couple of times now, and I simply can't find anything to get quite so offended about. I quite like it, actually.

> "To Lose My Life" / "From the Stars" - White Lies

...although speaking of singers with deep voices who possibly sound a bit like Interpol / Editors / The National / Airborne Toxic Event..... that brings me nicely to White Lies. I've said before that if one band could be said to represent my music taste, then that band could very well be Interpol: vaguely doomy guitar music played by skinny white blokes. Very much the same thing could also be said to apply to all the aforementioned bands, and can certainly be applied to White Lies. Actually, it's so entirely predictable that I would like bands like this that it might just as well have been written to appeal to my demographic by some marketeers.

*pause as I reassess my whole musical life*

Nah, I just like the way the guitars sound.

> "No Distance Left to Run" - Blur

This popped up in the music quiz on Monday night in the intros round....it's one of those quizzes where they let the record play just a little bit too long (in the case of the Estelle record, long enough for us to hear the artist singing her own name). This one came on, and although I haven't listened to it in a long time, I found myself to be word perfect. It's a beautifully downbeat song charting the end of a relationship, but it's one of those songs that reminds us (and in the pre-Gorillaz, pre-Mali Music and pre-Monkey, "Country House", oom-paa-pa Blur era, God knows we needed to be reminded) that Damon Albarn really is quite fantastically talented. I love how bruised and tender he sounds in his vocal performance.

"I hope you're with someone who makes you
feel safe in your sleeping tonight..."

Not a cheerful song, for sure... but how many really good songs are?

> "I Wanna Be Adored" - The Stone Roses

Unbelievably, it's the 20th anniversary of the Stone Roses debut album. Where does the time go? In time-honoured tradition, the Guardian has chosen to celebrate this fact by running an article pointing out that weren't they just the most incredibly overrated band?

Hmm. I couldn't abide the Stone Roses for years, and at the time they were actually in the charts, I actively loathed the whole baggy scene and the ridiculous flares the their scally fans used to wear. In fact, I didn't hear how good an album it really was until several years later when I was just on my way to university. "Second Coming" had yet to be released to spoil everything, but I am one of those people who would put this album somewhere near the top of my "best albums ever" lists. Not at the very top, for sure, but in the top 20. I had the good fortune to see them live, and even though I was struggling with glandular fever, they came onto the stage and played "I Wanna Be Adored", "She Bangs The Drums", "Waterfall" and "10 Storey Love Song" all in a row and they absolutely blew my socks off. Best start to a gig ever. I've seen Ian Brown several times since, always in support of someone else, and without fail he has been awful. We all know that he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but his sour and contemptuous attitude to the audience has been a real object lesson in how to piss off people who actually quite like you. A real high/low point was when he mistook a Manx flag in the crowd at Glastonbury for a George Cross and tried to burn it as some kind of demonstration against nationalism.... he couldn't get it to light and had to give up. Idiot. Shame really, as he seems like a nice enough guy in interviews, and he is famous for giving loads of his time and money to the needy in Manchester too. Terribly vocalist, but occasionally underrated lyricist too. I don't know if monkeys were dolphins exactly, but the lyric here: "I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me" is a brilliant line, isn't it? And F.E.A.R. is great too.

> "Mah Nà Mah Nà"

If I may quote wikipedia:

"'Mah Nà Mah Nà' debuted as part of Umiliani's soundtrack for the Italian mondo film Svezia, inferno e paradiso (Sweden: Heaven and Hell) (1968), a pseudo-documentary about wild sexual activity and other behavior in Sweden. The song accompanied a scene in the film set in a sauna. The lead part was sung by Italian singer/composer Alessandro Alessandroni The song also appeared on the 1968 soundtrack album released for the film."

Obviously. Where else would you have heard it? [the Umiliani version is here]

> "Mykonos" - Fleet Foxes

The song requested by an idiot in the crowd at the Foxes gig in Nottingham at the tail end of last year, and as featured on the band's "Sun Giant EP".

As you might expect, it's beautiful, other-worldly, and ever so slightly sinister.

> "Alison" - Elvis Costello

My favourite ever Elvis Costello song and another downbeat song about disappointment and regret to add to my list.

> "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" - Morrissey

Morrissey is, without doubt, the artist who has made the single biggest impact upon my musical life. I discovered him late, through The Smiths, but adore much of his solo work. I'm not as obsessed by him as I used to be (there was a time in the early 1990s where he was absolutely *everything* to me), but he's still one of my favourite artists. I've always been a big fan of intelligent lyrics and artists who have something to say, and there can surely be no question that Morrissey pretty much stands head and shoulders above everyone else in this respect. Sad to say, I have learnt to approach his more recent output with caution - certainly since I rushed out to buy "Maladjusted", anyway. "You Are the Quarry" was a welcome return from the wilderness, but "Ringleader of the Tormentors", in spite of the rave reviews that were typically coming one album too late, left me cold. I approached "Years of Refusal" with some trepidation, fearing that Morrissey had gone back off the boil, only to be pleasantly surprised. He's still very much an artist living and working within his comfort zone, and his insistence on continuing to surround himself with a band of lumpen pub rockers is really frustrating, but he remains peerless in his ability to work a lyric and to bear a grudge. It's not all good, sure, but here's some really good stuff on here. Best of all is this, his last single. It's sumptuous, it's shimmering, it's lyrical, it's wistful and - perhaps most importantly of all - it doesn't outstay its welcome. I wish that he would work with someone who could perhaps hold a candle to Johnny Marr, but notwithstanding that, this is probably as good as it gets, and it's been on repeat all week. God bless him, he's a treasure and we absolutely will miss him when he's gone.

Or is it about Paris Hilton?

--

Next week, with any luck, our Guest Editor will be Mik.... I'm hoping for some Infectious Grooves, but I fear his music taste may have changed since 1990.....

they say jump, you say how high....

As per usual, there's some self-important, over-complicated nonsense going on at work at the moment. I'll try not to bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that expensive consultants and contractors were hired, papers were written, a 'transformation' team was formed and months and months of nonsense have ensued. As is often the way with such things, the key recommendations from the experts are being ignored by the people who insisted on hiring them, and the whole sorry thing is now being rodded from powerpoint into reality without much concern for whether or not it actually works and certainly without listening to the needs of our customers. You know how it is.

I'm unable to keep my mouth shut. I was hired into this job in the first place because of my analytical mind, and I find that I'm inconveniently unable to stop applying it to the fruitless task of trying to find rhyme or reason within these 'transformation' plans. I will be working directly with our customers in the implementation of this plan, so I ask lots and lots of questions because I feel that I need to understand how it works because I will need to use it and to explain how it is supposed to work to others. If it doesn't make any sense to me, or if I think the person trying to explain it to me doesn't understand it either, then I will say as much. I'm acutely aware that this has been career limiting, but I am neither able nor want to stop myself. There are two reasons for this: the first is that I actually want to do a good job. I don't really like being at work, and it's far from being the first priority in my life, but as I'm here, I want to do the very best that I can. The other reason is that I actually find all of this nonsense incredibly entertaining. It never fails to amaze me how much time and effort and money can be poured into producing something that is so clearly a pile of shit. Clever people work on this stuff, and yet for all sorts of reasons, they often seem completely incapable of seeing the bigger picture. It really is like being in a real life Dilbert cartoon. It really cracks me up.

I sat in a meeting yesterday morning where a couple of guys tried to explain to me how to fill in a stakeholder spreadsheet. The idea, apparently, is not to capture who our stakeholders are, but to document who we are talking to on a regular basis, and to create a little pen-portrait of what they are like to work with. How many children have they got? What's their favourite colour? (I exaggerate, but you get the general idea). I told these two guys that I thought that this was a waste of time. We are supposed to be man-marking the key stakeholders in the business, but until we have a definitive list of who these people are and who is lining up against each one, then I thought that this additional information was a nonsense. Besides, it's no substitute for actually talking to people, is it? One of the two guys got upset. I think he was upset because he had agreed to fill this spreadsheet in and also to sell it to me. I was now asking him questions that he hadn't bothered to ask himself, and I suspect that - as well as thinking I was just being a pain in the arse - he felt that I was making him look stupid. They told him to jump and he asked how high. They asked me to jump and I was asking them why.

The other guy remained quiet. After the meeting, he approached me.

"We all agree with you, you know"
"What do you mean?"
"We all think that a lot of this stuff is rubbish"
"Right"
"Why don't you just put a few names into this spreadsheet though, just to get people off your back?"
"Because I think it's a waste of time and because there are more fundamental things we should be worrying about."
"Yeah, but if you popped a couple of names in, then everyone would leave you alone. It's stupid, I agree."
"So why don't you say anything?"

He didn't say anything, but smiled and the subtext was clear: he doesn't say anything because he knows that I will say it out loud, and he knows that the point will be made but it will be me that gets tarred as the troublemaker. His career is going very nicely. He's a nice enough chap, but he's trying to play a game that I'm not interested in playing. I know that the way I raise things probably gets people's backs up, and I know that if I worked a bit harder at playing the politics and dressing things up a bit, then I'd probably make my own life a bit easier. It's my choice to be like this. My customer feedback is consistently good, but it's my senior colleagues who do my reviews. If I'm a bit nicer to them and play their game a bit more, then I'd probably do a lot better in my reviews and my career might move forwards. Do you know what? I don't think I'm ever going to do it.

Who wants an easy life? Where's the fun in that?

--

Prince Charles is visiting my office tomorrow. Apparently "It would be really great if you could give our special visitor a warm welcome with a round of applause when you see him approaching your area".

Really? Do you think that's something that the Prince insists on, or it's a corporately organised piece of arsekissing? Is a round of applause a traditional welcome? How long should we applaud for? Should we stop when he's out of sight? Or if he starts talking to us? Do the people showing him around have to applaud for the whole duration of his visit?

Nonsense.

I will be in the office tomorrow, but if Charlie wants a round of applause from me, then he's going to have to come over to my desk and ask for one, as I'm certainly not going out looking for him.

bass and treble heal every hurt....

-
Shuffleathon 2008/9 Update

Still not much to report, although I'm not sure I should be nagging anybody to get their reviews done until I've got my own review written up. There has been some movement though: Mark has published his review of the CD he received from Charlie (a qualified success, I think - but I've been listening to some Elvis Costello this week too, so I can only heartily agree that "45" is a great choice). More significantly though, the last remaining outstanding CD has been sent out into the post, so I've been able to complete the "posted out" column, and hopefully in a few days I'll be able to fill in the last remaining blank on the "received" column. It's all good.

11 reviews still to go. Some distance left to run on this thing yet.

As always, any updates on progress should be sent to the email address in my profile. The reviews are always my favourite bit.

Shuffler	Posted out	Received?
1. Me	yes	yes
2. Mandy	yes	yes
3. Charlie	yes	yes
4. Planet Me	yes	review
5. Ian	yes	review
6. Mike	yes	yes
7. Jerry	yes	review
8. monogodo	yes	yes
9. Erika	yes	review
10. Michael	yes	review
11. Lisa	yes	review
12. Cody Bones	yes	review
13. Del	yes	review
14. RussL	yes	review
15. Tina	yes	review
16. Wombat	yes	yes
17. Joe the Troll	yes	yes
18. JamieS	yes	yes
19. Cat	yes	yes
20. Rol	yes	review
21. Beth	yes	review
22. asta	yes	yes
23. bedshaped	yes	review
24. Paul	yes	review
25. Alan	yes	review
26. Astronaut	yes	review
27. Threelight	yes	review
28. The Great Grape Ape	yes	review
29. Paul W	yes
30. Ben	yes	review

Oh, and as always, I must add that the shuffleathon is based upon an original concept by the lovely YokoSpungeon.... thanks Yoko.

don't stop moving....

After 11 consecutive days of exercise and something like 6250m in the pool, 17 miles running and around 3 hours of 5-a-side football, I finally gave my body a break and had the day off yesterday. I didn't set out to do that much in a row, it's just kind of the way that things worked out. I actually find it really difficult to do nothing, but I was absolutely worn out after my swim on Sunday night, and I knew I really needed to force myself to rest for at least a day. As it turned out, it was easy to take the day off, as I was at work until well past 7pm, then on the phone to some friends organising a birthday party in March and then straight out to the pub quiz until gone 11pm, so I hardly had time to catch my breath, never mind worry about whether or not I could have gone out for a quick run.

I wasn't sure how much room I had in my diary today, so I loaded my car with both my swimming bag and my running gear. An appointment tonight at the osteopath ruled out the former, so I squeezed in a quick 4 mile run by the river in my lunch hour. It was really, really hard work. My legs were heavy and I could really feel the WTs in my feet, thighs, shoulders and hands. The weather was almost spring-like, and I dragged myself around okay, but it certainly wasn't much fun. Perhaps my body is still telling me that I need to rest, but there's a part of my brain that is whispering insistently to me that if I don't keep going, then I'm simply not going to be able to get started again. One day off and I'm already struggling to get back into the swing of things. One week off and I might find myself without the energy to go running at all.

I'm sure that sounds like nonsense, and I'm fairly sure it is mostly nonsense... but there is a grain of truth: I have been told that I need to regularly exercise the muscles in my upper body to prevent them wasting. The WTs have caused a weakness in my upper body across my shoulders and down my arms; a weakness that means I can't do as much with them and so they don't get as much exercise as they might, and if I'm not careful, then they will wither away. Once they have withered away, that same weakness will make it almost impossible to get back to they physical capability I had before. Luckily for me, my osteopath noticed the changes in my physique and presented me with some specific strengthening exercises that I religiously carry out three times a week in addition to upping the amount of swimming that I was doing. Those two activities, the swimming and the upper body exercises, have helped to arrest - if not reverse - the decline in the muscle power in my upper body.

The rest of the exercise that I do, the running and the football and so on, are mostly cardio-vascular or work the muscles in my legs. Although the WTs have affected the sensation in my legs and the way I 'feel' some of my muscles, they don't appear to have impacted upon my lower body strength. Not yet, anyway. I instinctively feel as though my overall physical capability has declined since my diagnosis in 2005, but that may be as much due to my advancing age as it is to anything else. I know it's not entirely logical to equate a day's rest with a sliding feeling of declining physical prowess, but I definitely have to fight the urge to feel that once I stop, I will stop for good. It drives me to keep exercising even though I know that sometimes a rest is the best thing for me.

I might try and have another rest day tomorrow.

Or I might try and squeeze in a quick swim before the Leftlion quiz.

Oh, who am I trying to fool? The swimming kit is already in my car....

territorial pissings....

If you'll pardon the lowering of the tone (and there are very few places where what I'm about to say wouldn't lower the tone, and I'm pretty sure that the ones where it doesn't are not really places that people like you or I would tend to frequent)..... it never fails to amaze me quite how disgusting the gents toilets can be.

I'm not talking about those dank squat affairs that you still occasionally find in places like rural France, South America or Africa. Oh no. When you're travelling somewhere remote, a disgusting toilet is pretty much par for the course. After all, hard though it may be to believe, there are still many toilets in the world which aren't systematically cleaned on an annual basis, nevermind on a twice daily basis, and one or two don't have access to fresh running water. I know! No, I'm talking here about the toilets in the head office building of a large, very well known and, you'd imagine, pretty cleanly company. People around here don't generally wear flip-flops and sarongs and have large back packs and horrible dirty white man's dreadlocks; they have neatly cut hair and tend to wear stiff-collared shirts, smart trousers and, more often than not, a tie. There isn't a shortage of clean, running water here. In fact, we have hot and cold running water on demand, and all of the toilets around here are connected to the sewage main and have flushes and everything. There's soap too, and occasionally those little pineapple cubes of bleachy freshness.

So how come they're so disgusting? And they are, let me tell you, utterly revolting. What does it say about the men who work here that we allow these toilets to get into such a state, even when they are all cleaned twice a day? I can understand that, how to put this, sometimes things can come out at an unexpected angle, but I fail to see how that would mean that you might miss a urinal entirely and spray the products of your mecturation all over the wall tiles and the floor. And why spit your chewing gum out into the drain? And am I the only man who doesn't feel the urge to pick my nose whilst standing at the urinal? Is there some kind of unspoken rule that the product of this nasal exploration should be smeared onto the wall next to where you stand?

It's even worse in the cubicles. Is it too hard to lift the toilet seat up before having a piss, or is it no big deal to spray your mark all across the seat and the floor? Is it really? And if you are planning a, shall we say, longer stay, is it really asking too much that you might consider flushing, or even that you might pay a bit of attention to where you are leaving your deposit (no, trust me, the seat is not the right place)? Is it wrong of me to expect that anyone leaving a cubicle might pause to wash their hands with the soap provided before heading back out into the office where they presumably then smear their microscopic particles of shit across everything that they touch? Or that, actually, a small smattering of water sprinkled on your hands after pissing is not really the same thing as spending an extra ten seconds doing the whole thing properly and using a dash of soap? Hell, when the people who do wash their hands throw their used hand towels onto the floor rather than into the bin, perhaps I should be grateful that more people don't wash their hands, else I might not be able to open the door to get inside in the first place.

Quite how people feel able to wash their coffee mugs in here, I really don't know.

Ick.

I'm the king of the divan....

Earworms time then. I've been lazy, as usual, and done nothing to get a Guest Editor lined up for this slot. Luckily for me, someone ignored my inertia and took matters into their own hands... so, in spite of my total lack of effort, for the first time since September last year, I do actually have a guest this week.

Ladies and gentleworms, without further ado, it is my great pleasure to introduce for your earworming pleasure.......

Earworms of the week - guest editor #93 - Fiery Little Sod

Hello to all and best wishes for the weekend - hope this sets you up well. I have had a lyrically driven week where I have not even needed to hear the songs to be nudged in certain musical directions..... we begin with a cover:

> Love Machine - Arctic Monkeys

Courtesy of the Radio 1 Live Lounge from a couple of years back, remarkably shows that its not a bad song, but there is still a quality moment when even Alex Turner can't stop himself laughing while the coolest guitar band of the moment lets rip on a a pop-tastic tune.

> Somewhere - West Side Story

No idea where this came in from, but something about precious time and the sense of aspiration. Does feel like it should be heard out of a back window on a fire escape......

> Mirror Man - Human League

The simple chorus in this song hides the rather searching verses, but matches up with their other work easily and the mid-song change of pace helps fix it in the internal jukebox

> One (Blake's got a new face) - Vampire Weekend

Recently re-visited this album and was reminded it contains more than just commentary on some punctuation. This one stuck after I randomly discovered an old public burial ground near my office contains the grave of William Blake, so I was to find some symmetry

> Stayin' Alive - Bee Gees

Courtesy of a work colleague pretending to be 'street' but left looking daft when I busted him for nicking someone else's words. Still had to stop myself strutting out of the office though......

> Ca plane pour moi - Plastic Bertrand

Even the most basic translation of this song makes it sound utterly bonkers, however the hook makes it impossible to get out of your head once it has sneaked in there, Whatever the heck it may be about, it works for me.

> The Message - Grandmaster Flash

Frankly this is rather hardcore for my usual day-to day listening but find myself incapable of hearing anything approximating the first line of the chorus without following up with the rest of it. Cannot honestly relate to everything he comments on, however he shows a (grand) mastery of lyric work that has been virtually unmatched since

> Letter from America - The Proclaimers

I would guess this is probably their second-best known song and it popped into my head on the back of a melody rather than random words. Once it got in there, there was no getting it out again. Still makes me wonder what the rail tracks would look like. No complaints mind. Quality tune.

> My Way - Frank Sinatra

Oddly, I don't think is the best version of the song I've heard. Once you have experienced this tune sung by a male voice church choir and been overwhelmed by the clarity of the words, Ol' Blue Eyes don't quite cut it. As for the tune..... hopefully I have, just with fewer comebacks

> One - Metallica

This slipped in late - winning its place over something almost diametrically opposed on the music scale and it is still a mighty hard listen, even after 20 years. No apology. Barely any explanation. Just proper, brutal, heavy metal of a kind that is rarely heard nowadays.

So there you go, I feel I may have thoroughly abused my earworm limits, but am finding them strangely addictive. Hope this week had something for everyone and that the ever-lengthening days bring a little light to all you readers. Lastly, for those yet to try this game - give it a go! You are bound to come up with something fresh and funky and it is excellent therapy too. So make the leap and get worming. My fine friend Mr Toni (thanks as always) can give you all the necessary. "

That should do the trick....

---

Thanks FLS. A rather peculiar coincidence that you were earworming Plastic Bertrand in the same week that he came up in the bontempi organ round of the Leftlion pub quiz.... There weren't any bonus points for pointing out to the team that guessed it was "that French bloke singing that French song" that the man in question is actually Belgian, but my overall smugness increased markedly. We won, naturally.

They hate us in there, they really do.

Thanks for playing, and you're welcome around here anytime.

Another guest next week, perhaps? Well, we'll have to see about that. Let's not be hasty, eh?

Have a good weekend y'all, and stay classy.

[Previous Guest Editors: Flash, The Urban Fox, Lord Bargain, Retro-Boy, Statue John, Ben, OLS, Ka, Jenni, Aravis, Yoko, Bee, Charlie, Tom, Di, Spin, The Ultimate Olympian, Damo, Mike, RedOne, The NumNum, Leah, Le Moine Perdu, clm, Michael, Hyde, Adem, Alecya, bytheseashore, adamant, Earworms of the Year 2005, Delrico Bandito, Graham, Lithaborn, Phil, Mark II, Stef, Kaptain Kobold, bedshaped, I have ordinary addictions, TheCatGirlSpeaks, Lord B rides again, Tina, Charlie II, Cody Bones, Poll Star, Jenni II, Martin, Del II, The Eye in the Sky, RussL, Lizzy's Hoax, Ben II, Earworms of the Year 2006, Sarah, Flash II, Erika, Hen, Pynchon, Troubled Diva, Graham II, Cat II, Statue John II, Sweeping the Nation, Aravis II, Olympian II, C, Planet-Me, Mike, Michael II, Eye in the Sky II, Charlie III, The Great Grape Ape, asta, Ben III, Earworms of the Year 2007, Cat III, JamieS & Wombat, Pynchon II, Briskate, Craig Cliff, Fiery Little Sod, Cody II, J, Yoko II, Rol, Lisa, Pollstar II, Joe the Troll, Eye in the Sky III, Jerry Cornelius, Stevious, Luke, FLS II]

frozen

Shortly before I left the office to play football, it started to snow again. By the time I was in my car, the traffic was already well backed up and the snow was really starting to come down. The game was still on, but even as I ran out onto the pitch, there was already a fairly thick covering and it was still coming down pretty hard. I was wrapped up pretty warm, as you might expect from a man who runs in a long-sleeved Helly Hansen thermal base layer even in the summer: hat, gloves, a merino wool base layer, two other layers of football shirts. I draw the line at playing football in my running tights, but even though I was wearing shorts, I still thought I was wrapped up well enough.

Apparently not. After about twenty minutes, the snow was easing up a little, but now little crystals of ice were falling from the sky and the temperature was dropping. The game continued regardless, but I could now feel the cold starting to seep into my extremities. My neurologist told me in one of my earliest consultations after being diagnosed with Transverse Myelitis that the temperature could have a big impact upon my symptoms. He actually meant that most people find that their symptoms worsen as they get hotter. Personally, I've never really found that to be the case, but I have discovered that I am really affected by the cold: I lose all of the sensation in my arms from my shoulders and my fingers become extremely unresponsive; my feet rapidly become completely numb and then begin to really hurt. Although I'm generally okay when I go out running in the cold, and I have very few problems when I go skiing, for some reason football is the worst. In winter, I quite often find that I am really struggling to fumble for change at the end of the game when I collect the money from the team to pay for the pitch.

Today was the worst yet. We played for about ninety minutes in all, but after that first twenty minutes, I felt my arms and my feet slowly beginning to shut down, and I felt myself getting less and less effective on the pitch and more and more miserable. I played abysmally, of course, and I'm sure that was as much because of my state of mind as it was down to my symptoms, but by the end of the game, I was hobbling around and starting to actual think I might cry. I probably should have stopped at least thirty minutes earlier, but had decided to play on regardless. Ninety minutes after we stopped playing, and after a long, hot shower, I still can't feel my feet, my thighs feel a bit dead and my fingers are still numb and clumsy.

My symptoms have been a bit worse over the last two or three weeks anyway - since I fell over, actually - and as it's been two years since I last saw him, I was wondering if it might be time to go back for a checkup with my neurologist to see if anything has changed inside my head and around my spinal cord. My shoulders, especially my left shoulder, have been weak; my fingers have been buzzing and tingly; and my feet, especially my big toes, have been numb. I have found myself stumbling a few times when I miss my step or when my leg muscles don't quite hold my weight for a fraction of a second. I don't know if these are new symptoms, exactly, or if they're just a transient worsening of the symptoms that I already have. What I do know though, is that although I do my best to ignore my condition, when it makes me feel like I felt tonight, I'm reluctantly forced to acknowledge that I am being physically impeded by this thing, and I wouldn't be human if I didn't allow myself a moment to wonder if this is going to get any worse. It's not going to get any better any time soon, that much I do know. God forbid if it ever slips into self-pity though.

I'm going swimming tomorrow, my ninth consecutive day of exercise. That'll show my damn body who's boss.

lookin' sharp and lookin' for love....

-
Shuffleathon 2008/9 Update

It's all gone a bit quiet of late. I've been busy getting my first few plays of Mandy's mix as I drive to and from the office every day, but we haven't really had much in the way of other shuffleathon activity. There's one new review to report though - bedshaped has put up his review of Cody's CD. A mixed bag, I think it's fair to say, although I also feel that I should point out that some of us think that "Sharp Dressed Man" still sounds okay. Then, I did see ZZ Top live once, so perhaps I'm not the most objective pair of ears.

*ahem*

Anyway. We've one CD still to go out into the post and loads of reviews still pending. It's not that there's a major rush on or anything, but y'know.....?

As always, any updates on progress should be sent to the email address in my profile. The reviews are always my favourite bit.

Shuffler	Posted out	Received?
1. Me	yes	yes
2. Mandy	yes	yes
3. Charlie	yes	yes
4. Planet Me	yes	yes
5. Ian	yes	review
6. Mike	yes	yes
7. Jerry	yes	review
8. monogodo	yes	yes
9. Erika	yes	review
10. Michael	yes	review
11. Lisa	yes	review
12. Cody Bones	yes	review
13. Del	yes	review
14. RussL	yes	review
15. Tina	yes	review
16. Wombat	yes	yes
17. Joe the Troll	yes	yes
18. JamieS	yes	yes
19. Cat	yes	yes
20. Rol	yes	review
21. Beth	yes	review
22. asta	yes	yes
23. bedshaped	yes	review
24. Paul	yes	review
25. Alan	yes	review
26. Astronaut	yes	review
27. Threelight	yes	review
28. The Great Grape Ape	yes	review
29. Paul W	yes
30. Ben	yes	review

Oh, and as always, I must add that the shuffleathon is based upon an original concept by the lovely YokoSpungeon.... thanks Yoko. Truly the gift that keeps on giving.