take your time, don't hurry....

I already own quite a few Beatles albums: Abbey Road, The White Album, Revolver, Sergeant Pepper (obv.) and various collections.... but I only got around to finally getting myself a copy of "Rubber Soul" when I turned the corner in the supermarket to find myself confronted wall of top 40 albums that was unexpectedly dominated by old Beatles records. I knew about the digital remastering, of course, but for some reason I hadn't imagined that Michael Jackson's dominance of the album chart would be replaced by a band even older and still more successful.

It's an album that's intrigued me for a little while. I wouldn't say that I was a Beatles nut, but I am interested in the band, and I love dipping into Ian MacDonald's seminal piece of scholarship on their music, "Revolution in the Head". If you aren't aware of this book, it's a song-by-song breakdown of every single record the Beatles made. Apart from the obvious fascination of seeing who wrote and played what on every song, and a description of the various influences at play, what makes this book great and sets it apart from the crowd is the way that the author is most certainly not afraid of telling it how he hears it. Too often we see the work of this band being canonised. They are, after all, the great Beatles. I still find it refreshing to read the work of a critic who is (mostly) able to keep his objectivity intact whilst listening and commenting on songs we've all heard hundreds of times before. Much of their work still stands up, of course, but crucially, not all of it.

How about this on "All You Need is Love":

"One of the Beatles' less deserving hits...slapdash atmosphere in which it was made...sloppiness on show...The Beatles were now doing wilfully substandard work: paying little attention to musical values and settling for lyric first-thoughts on the principle that everything, however haphazard, meant something and if it didn't - so what? .... drug-sodden laziness...lotus eating delusion of an egalitarian life of ease...."

or this on "Helter Skelter":

"Condensed for release on 9th September, the result was nevertheless ridiculous, McCartney shrieking weedily against a massively tape-echoed backdrop of out-of-tune thrashing.. few have seen fit to describe this track as anything other than a literally drunken mess."

I could go on, but I think you probably catch my drift. Good band, but they sure weren't perfect. If anything, MacDonald generally sounds annoyed and disappointed when a great band, clearly capable of so much, fail to live up to their potential. Must try harder.

"Rubber Soul" is an especially interesting album because it is supposed to catch the moment that the Beatles stopped being the mop-topped pop band of their early albums and started to move into the more experimental second-half of their career. As Ian MacDonald wrote:

"Gradually realising, from Dylan's example, that they didn't have to segregate their professional work from their inner lives, they consciously experimented in much of the "Rubber Soul" material, feeling their way towards a new style - one which, defining the second half of their career together, would be inspired by their encounter with one of the biggest influences on life and culture in the late sixties: LSD."

Cue Revolver....

"Rubber Soul" proves that music doesn't have to be about great singles, but can also be about producing a great album. There's not a track on the album that was released as a single, but feel the quality: Drive My Car, Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown), Nowhere Man, Michelle (laughably described by The Sun the other day as being "Greek influenced"), Girl, In My Life.....

Not every song is great (What Goes On, The Word....), but it's a fine album, for sure.

Not that I'm claiming that as any great insight onto what is widely proclaimed as one of the greatest albums ever recorded. I'm not sure the digital remastering adds too much - not to my ears, anyway - but it's still a decent record by anyone's standard.

Great cover too. Growing out their mop tops, but pre-dodgy moustaches and afghan coats. The Beatles looked great around this time too.....

Good band - you should check them out. Remember you heard about them here first.

stupid bloody tuesday....

Um, Something Street?

Amongst all the coverage of the launch of Beatles Rock Band last week, I heard Nicky Campbell on Five Live wondering whether there could really be anybody who would be discovering the music of the Beatles through this game. The guy he was talking to, some expert who has written a book on the band, told him that he would be surprised how many people, especially those in their 20s and 30s, were relatively unfamiliar with the band. Well, I'm in my 30s and I own several Beatles albums, so I wasn't sure about that. To test the theory, as soon as I arrived in the office, I wandered over to the 22-year old in our team:

Me: "Have you heard of the Beatles"
22: "Yes"
Me: "Can you name them?"
22: "Ermmmm. Ahhhh. Hmmmm. Ummmmmm. Aha! Paul McCartney!"
Me: "Yes. And the other three?"
22: "Erm. No"
Me: "John Lennon?"
22: "Yes, heard of him"
Me: "George Harrison"
22: "Never heard of him"
Me: "Ringo Starr"
22: "Isn't he dead?"

This was a level of ignorance that I hadn't been expecting.

Me: "Can you name any of their songs or albums?"
22: "Um. Something Street or Road?"
Me: "Abbey Road?"
22: "That's it"
Me: "Anything else?"
22: "Um. Not off the top of my head"
Me: "Eleanor Rigby?"
22: "Nope"
Me: "Yesterday?"
22: "Yes, heard of that one. Long and Winding Road. Was that them?"
Me: "Yes. Yellow Submarine?"
22: "Is that the same as the song you sing in Nursery?"

....and so on.

22y.o. subsequently had a quick trawl through wikipedia and wrote down a number of other Beatles songs or albums he thought he had heard of ("Sergeant Pepper? I think I know that one"). He thought he was normal, and if anything, he was a little taken aback by the shock with which his lack of Beatles related knowledge was causing in those who had overheard our little conversation.

Not wishing to appear stupid, he set off to prove that he wasn't the anomaly, and that there were other people with a similar lack of knowledge.

He faced an initial setback when the 18 year old who has just joined us for a placement as part of his degree turned out to be something of a fan, but he was undeterred. His policy of asking people much older than him didn't bear much fruit ("Name the band? I can name the two that left!"), but he did have some success when a surprising number of people were completely unable to name George Harrison as a member of the Beatles (surprising in that there were about four or five people who didn't know. I was mildly surprised that anyone didn't know who he was. My Sweet Lord, indeed).

I've never been one of those people who thinks that the Beatles are somehow above criticism. A band that highly praised cannot help but be overrated, if you ask me. I think what's really amazing about them is how so much of their work still sounds pretty fresh today. Not all of it does: I'd just listened to "Revolver" in the car, so I was very well aware that some of the sitar-heavy numbers in particular were very much a product of their era (or perhaps the start of the era itself?). Much of the songwriting remains incredibly fresh though. How many better song lyrics have there ever been than those in "Eleanor Rigby"? Or am I now unable to view a song that is so embedded into our popular culture with anything approaching objectivity?

Meanwhile, as 22 y.o.'s quest continued, he faced an increasing level of incredulity from those around him:
"Are your retarded?"
"Is it too late to have him shot?"
Whilst it's true that I hadn't even been born by the time by the Beatles had split up, that I had parents who weren't really into music, I still managed to discover the band. I was therefore somewhat surprised by his total lack of knowledge on the subject. Even so, I soon started to feel mildly uncomfortable about what I'd started. Was it really fair to call him ignorant? After all, "Free As A Bird" and the fuss around the release of the Anthology albums happened as far back as 1995. 22 y.o. would have been 8 years old. Is it all that surprising that he might have missed out on the Beatles entirely?

I became more uncomfortable the next day when 22 y.o. was grilled about his knowledge of Queen - much harder than knowing about the Beatles, surely? Before long he was being asked about capital cities. Perhaps he should know what the capital of Australia is, but should we really be laughing at him? He took it all in good spirit, but by the time he was confronted with "The Ultimate Beatles Quiz" from the Times, I wouldn't blame him if he was thoroughly bored of the whole thing and starting to feel a little got at. He got 0 out of 40. A big fat zero. Then again, I don't think I got more than about half of the questions.

"Who was the first Beatle to sport a moptop?"
"Name the Beatles first wives"
"Who suggested that John Lennon change the line "Waiting for the man to come" to "waiting for the van to come" in I Am The Walrus?"
"Who pressed the panic button in Yellow Submarine?"
"Who is the only guest musician to be credited on the label of a Beatles record?"

Not impossible - but if you don't know who George Harrison was, then I'd suggest you're going to struggle with some of those.

22 y.o. hit back this morning with some questions for me:

He tried to test me initially by asking me to name the members of Girls Aloud, only to find that I could (I am seeing them live at Wembley on Friday, after all....), but he found more fertile ground with some questions from a football quiz he was at on Monday night.

"Tony Roberts (the old QPR goalkeeper) was the first goalkeeper to do what?"
"Which striker made his debut for Manchester Utd in the 2007 season, playing up front with Ole Gunnar Solskaer, and made a total of 3 appearances for the club?"
"Name the three Australian players in the Leeds Utd squad in 2001"

I got none of them right, and he felt a bit better about himself (even if he actually only knew the answer to one of those questions himself...)

I don't know though. Is it right to mock someone for something like that? I might perhaps marvel at how he hasn't been inquisitive enough to pick up practically anything at all about the Beatles, but it's entirely possible that they just haven't crossed his radar. Incredible though that sounds, they just don't register with him. Why should they? Is it fair to call him ignorant because of that? They're just a band, aren't they?

At what point does the teasing become bullying?

I could stay lost in this moment forever.....

Overcome by the inexplicable inertia that only strikes on a Friday night when you know you really should be going to bed, I found myself sat in front of the TV last week. This has happened to me before: in the days before I kicked the habit, I used to find myself watching the live infra-red camera feed of people sleeping in the Big Brother House; I've also found myself watching such unlikely films as "The Ron De Flores Story" (the story of an ex-con who finds unlikely fame in the major leagues), "Cursed" (where Christina Ricci and that bloke from Dawson's Creek turn out to be werewolves), "Shark Swarm" (where some sharks...er... swarm). Last Friday, I was thwarted in my attempts to watch "Vampyr", a 1930s horror film, on Sky Arts 3 because I didn't subscribe to the channel, so I found myself browsing the netherworld of the music channels.

I ended up on "Magic". No, I'd never heard of it either. Given that they were playing Shania Twain, I'm not quite sure why I stopped either. The fact that they then rolled straight into Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warne should also have given me pause for thought, but I was mesmerised now. It was, I quickly gathered, a countdown of the nation's most popular wedding first dance songs. I tuned in at number 9 and, apart from the odd flick over to Q tv, where they were counting down the top 100 Biggest Artists of All Time and lurching incontinently from the Spice Girls to Depeche Mode to Eurythmics to Pet Shop Boys to Bon Jovi to Dire Straits.... I was inexplicably hooked.

Now, I don't know about you, but why does the song you choose for the first dance at your wedding have to be a pile of irredeemably appalling shite? Yes, I appreciate that this is the happiest day of your life, and so on, and that you may want to have everything about your day, including your choice of song, as sugar-coated as your tiered wedding cake... but how does that justify Leann Rimes? or R Kelly? or Whitney Houston? or - spare me - another bloody Shania Twain song? Van Morrison is theoretically an improvement, but not when the song is "Have I Told You Lately". The Commodores can just about get away with "Three Times a Lady", but only because of their haircut, outfits and the fact that Lionel Richie is a bona-fide genius. The number one was Aerosmith's "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" from that not-very-good Asteroid film starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, and - rather disturbingly from a video point of view as her father gurned his way through the song - Liv Tyler. Now, Aerosmith have had a long and varied career, and have produced such classics as "Walk This Way", "Mama Kin", Sweet Emotion", "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" and "Love in an Elevator". They've had their ups and they've had their downs, but I think it's fair to say that this record, this tossed off soundtrack, is not amongst their finest moments. And yet, apparently, this is the song that people choose to have their first dance with their new spouse, in front of their families, at their weddings.

Apart from anything else, how do you dance to it? Is there any option but the close smooch, where you cling together and awkwardly shuffle your feet around on the dancefloor for the agonisingly long four minutes and fifty four seconds of the song? That must feel like HOURS, and you just know that nobody is going to put you out of your misery by joining you on the dancefloor either, no matter what they agreed at the bar.....

So why do it? Why show such devastating lack of imagination in your choice of song? Why not pick a song that actually does mean something to you, and isn't just the common denominator slow dance song that you picked from the shortlist the wedding DJ gave you? It's surely an opportunity to show a bit of personality as you officially launch your partnership, isn't it? No?

After a short discussion, we opted for "Fell In Love With A Girl" by the White Stripes. Partly this was because it was sharp, upbeat and resolutely non-smoochy, but it was also because it is a mere one minute and fifty-three seconds long. It still felt like hours, but at least it's a record that we both love and that we were happy to throw ourselves around like idiots to in front of our friends. Other people avoid cliche too: my brother-in-law and his wife danced to "Let's Spend the Night Together" by the Rolling Stones, and Sarah was telling me the other day that some friends of hers kicked the dancing off at their wedding with a spot of Muse. I was desperately hoping it would be something bonkers like "Knights of Cydonia", but apparently it was "Starlight", which I suppose makes a bit more sense. It can be done.

Of course, what I'd really like to see would be the couple brave enough to go with something like "Too Drunk To Fuck" by the Dead Kennedies.....

So come on..... I reckon you've got more imagination than the herd, and I reckon the survey is hokum. So to prove it, in a completely unscientific survey, here's a couple of questions for you (thanks to LazyGal for the suggestion):

-> What did you choose for your first dance? (or, if you're not married, what would you choose?)

-> What would be the most ridiculously inappropriate song that you could think of? (I'm thinking that R Kelly can't be far off this one....I mean, seriously?)

Apologies in advance, of course, if you opted for Leann Rimes or Shania Twain or Aersosmith because you really like them and because their beautiful songs speak to your entwined souls. It's a free country and it takes all sorts, innit.

the echoes they surround....

Swimming is pretty tedious. The best thing that can be said for tonight's swim was that, by the time I got to the gym after leaving the office, I virtually had the pool to myself. In fact, about the only other people there were two girls having a good old natter as they swam up and down in the lane next to me.

The thirty of so minutes I spend at the pool, two or three times a week, is about the only time that I am alone with my thoughts and without any kind of external distractions. They play music around the pool, but as my ears spend almost the whole time below water, I don't hear a damn thing. I'd love to be able to say that I spent this time productively, and that as well as exercising my body, I get some quality thinking done. The sad truth, however, is that I either spend the whole time trying not to forget how many lengths I have done ("twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six .... shit ....um .... twenty, twenty, twenty, etc.") or I find my brain gets stuck on a single thought that I just can't seem to shake off.

Today was little different, although at least I had a lane to myself for the duration and didn't need a battle of wills with anyone over their lack of end-of-lane courtesy.

As I surfaced at the end of my last length, I was just in time to catch a snippet of the two girls in the next door lane as they made their leisurely way back up the pool:

"Oh my God! Leanne had an orgy when she was 20!"
"No!"
"Yeah. She told me herself!"
"Really? Oh my God!"

Diverting though Leanne's dalliance with "Jonathan, Jonathan's dad and Lee" sounded, it wasn't quite enough to make me wish that I could hear underwater.

Perhaps it's just as well that this is one of my (soon to arrive) birthday presents from C. Maybe a waterproof MP3 player is just what I need to take my mind off the things I'm not thinking about whilst swimming.

rock and roll ain't noise pollution....

I think there's just time to squeeze in one more list before the Earworms of the Year countdown tomorrow, don't you?

How about a quick "best albums of 2008" countdown?

Over at The Auditorium, we've been counting down our albums of the year for 2008, and I thought it was worth putting the whole of that list up here - not least because I think it's interesting that between the three of us, LB, bedshaped and I have come up with 28 different albums from 30 picks, with LB and me both picking Coldplay, and bedshaped and me both picking Elbow. Just goes to show how different things float different people's musical boats, eh?

That list in full then.

Number 10s.

Santogold - Santogold (bedshaped)
James - Hey Ma! (ST)
The Killers - Day and Age (LB)

Number 9s.

Billy Bragg - Mr. Love & Justice (ST)
Sigur Ros - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (LB)
TV on the Radio - Dear Science (bedshaped)

Number 8s.

The Feeling - Join With Us (LB)
Glasvegas - Glasvegas (bedshaped)
Metallica - Death Magnetic (ST)

Number 7s.

Scars on Broadway - Scars on Broadway (bedshaped)
Laura Marling - Alas, I Cannot Swim (ST)
Alphabeat - This is Alphabeat (LB)

Number 6s.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (ST)
Royworld - Man in the Machine (LB)
Estelle - Shine (bedshaped)

Number 5s.

Paul Heaton - The Cross-Eyed Rambler (LB)
Albert Hammond Jr - Como Te Llama (bedshaped)
Coldplay - Viva La Vida (or Death and all his Friends) (ST)

Number 4s.

Britney Spears - Circus (bedshaped)
White Denim - Workout Holiday (ST)
Neil Diamond - Home Before Dark (LB)

Number 3s.

Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords (ST)
Coldplay - Viva La Vida (or Death and all his Friends) (LB)
Kings of Leon - Only by the Night (bedshaped)

Number 2s.

Keane - Perfect Symmetry (LB)
Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree (bedshaped)
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid (ST)

Number 1s.

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid (bedshaped)
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (ST)
Tina Dico - Count to Ten (LB)

Amazing how three people can hear the year so differently, isn't it? The write-ups are all well worth a read, anyway. LB went to a lot of trouble compiling that lot and adding pictures and links and stuff.....

Other end of year lists:

Mike's albums of the year
LBs singles of the year (50-21)
LB's singles of the year (20-1)
Your chance to vote the top 50 singles of 2008

Happy New Year to everyone. I'm not sure that you could really say that 2008 was a vintage year for music, exactly - in my view, lots of the really big releases were either not worth bothering with (Oasis, Kaiser Chiefs, Madonna....) or disappointing (Keane, Snow Patrol, Killers, Kings of Leon). Having said that, any year that brings me the divese likes of Bon Iver, Laura Marling, White Denim and the Fleet Foxes can't be all bad. Besides, it was also the year that I went retro and (re-)discovered the delights to be found in the back catalogues of AC/DC and the Clash, and you really can't argue with a bit of classic rock turned up to 11, can you?

I'll finally put 2008 (and all this pointless cataloguing) to bed with the Earworms of the Year post tomorrow......

Here's to a great musical 2009! May all your earworms for the coming year be enjoyable ones.

sing....

Well, how do you follow that?

By listing every single one of the 460(-ish) different songs nominated (or voted for) as an earworm on this blog in 2008?

OK. Your wish is my command.

2112, 20000007, 2 More Years (MSTRKRFT mix), 2 out of 3 ain't bad, 20th Century Boy, 2kindsalove, 4st7lb, 7 & 7 is, 9 in the afternoon, 99 Problems, a case of you, A Day In the Life, A Good Heart, A Sunday Smile, A Tender History in Rust, A&E, Ace of Spades, Addicted to Bass, After Hours, Aggro, All Good Things Come to an End, all nightmare long, All Summer Long, All Time High, All You Really Have To Do, Alphabet Street, always the last to know, Amarillo, American Boy, An Ill Wind, Another Rock and Roll Christmas, Another Suitcase in Another Hall, Any Other World, Apply Some Pressure, Are You Lonely, Ashes, Atomic, Automobile, back in black, Back When You Were Good, Bad Case (of Loving You), bad moon rising, Bare Necessities, battery, BBC olympic theme, big yellow taxi, Birdhouse in your soul, Bittersweet Symphony, Black and Gold, Blackened, Blister in the Sun, Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk, Blue Railroad Train, Bongo Jam, Boomshakalaka, Boy From School, Break My Stride, Brianstorm, Bright Tomorrow, Brown Eyed Girl, build me up buttercup, Bulls on Parade, Californication, Calm a Llama Down, Calm Like a Bomb, Canyons of your mind, Career Opportunities, Caribbean Moon, Celice, Cello Song, cemeteries of london, cemetry gates, Chemical World, Child Psychology, Chim Chim Cher-ee, chocolate salty balls, christobel, Cinematic, Clash City Rockers, climbing to the moon, Cocaine in my Brain, Cold Day in the Sun, Come As Your Are, Constructive Summer, Countdown, Cracklin' Rosie, Crawl, Cry For You, Da Doo Ron Ron, Dakota, Damn, Wish I Was Your Lover, Dance Wiv Me, devil woman, Distant Sun, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, down by the water, Down to the Wire, Down Under, dream a little dream, duchess, Duke's Place, Easy, Eat It, Eels Song, Eifach Sein, Elisabeth on the bathroom floor, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, everybody's changing, Everybody's Down, evolve or decay, Exit Music (For a Film), Faith, fake empire, Fall to Pieces, Falling, Falling Slowly, Fascination, fast car, feelgood inc, Fire, five to one, Fluorescent Adolescent, Flux, Folsom Prison Blues, Footloose, For Agent 13, Freeze Frame, Fugitive Motel, Future Sailors, Genie 2.0, Get Free, Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into my Car, Get Over It, get rhythm, Ghost Riders in the Sky, Gloria, Glory Box, god gave rock and roll to you, Gold, golden brown, Gone Daddy Gone, Good Girls Don't, Good Morning, good ship kangaroo, Goody Two Shoes, Got me Wrong, Graceland, graffiti, Greatest Day, Green is the Colour, Grounds for Divorce, half a person, Half a World Away, Hallelujah, Hallowed Be Thy Name, handlebars, Heart of Gold, Heavyweight Champion of the World, hey there delilah, Highly Evolved, Highly Suspicious, hold the line, Hometown Glory, hoppipolla, Hounds of Love, Human, Hurricane, Hush, I Am A Rock, I Can See Clearly Now, I Can See For Miles, I Can't Decide, I can't give you anything but love, I can't hold back, I Found Out, I Kissed A Girl, I Knew You Were Waiting, I know what I'm here for, I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked, I told her on Alderaan, I want you, I Want You To Stay, I will possess your heart, IEIEI, If I Had $1000000, If I Were A Boy, If there's a rocket tie me to it, If Tomorrow Never Comes, I'll Never Fall in Love Again,I'm Considering a Move to Memphis, I'm Fucking Matt Damon, I'm sticking with you, I'm throwing my arms around Paris, In My Life, In the Jungle, In The Mood, In Your Eyes, In-a-gadda-da-vida, Indiana Jones Theme, Inner Smile, inni mer syngur vitleysingur, Inside, Into the West, Is it any wonder, is it over, It Hurts Me Too, It's a Jungle Out There, It's Beginning to get to me, It's So Easy, junk shop clothes, Just, Justified and Ancient, Keep me in mind, sweetheart, Kennedy, Kiss Me, kokomo, last stop this town, Laughing Aloud, Laura, Lay Lady Lay, Left Behind, Less Is More, Let It Be, Let's Talk About It, Levi Stubbs Tears, Life for Rent, Lighthouse Keeper, livin' the vida loca, Living on a Prayer, living well is the best revenge, Losing, Lost Myself, Loughborough Suicide, Love Action, Love Games, Love Machine, Lovers In Japan, low, Makes me Wonder, Manic Depression, mannenberg, Mansard Roof, Me & Julio Down By The School Yard, Meat is Murder, meltdown, Mercy, Midlife Crisis, Milk, mmmbop, mogwai fear satan, Moonage Daydream, Moonchild, Morning After Midnight, Moving to New York, Mr E's Beautiful Blues, Mr Jones,mr sandman, My Favourite Waste of Time, My Heart Will Go On Forever, My Uncle used to love me but she died, My Year in Lists, names, Nancy Reagan's Head, Near Wild Heaven, Neighbourhood, Never Ever, Never Forget, New England, New Soul, New York, newborn, Night Nurse, Night Terror, Nightingale, No More Heroes, No One, No One Knows, Northern Lad, Nothing Ever Happens, Oedipus Rex, Oh My God, Old Cape Cod, Old Shit / New Shit, Once and Never Again, One and Only, One Day Like This, One Thing, Out Come the Wolves, Owner of a Lonely Heart, Oxford Comma, Paris to Berlin, Paris is Burning, Patience, phantom of the opera, Picture This, pioneer to the falls, Platinum, Please Read the Letter, Police and Thieves, Police on my Back, pork and beans, prince of parties, Private Psychedelic Reel, pub with no beer, queen of the world, ragged wood, Rapper's Delight, rattlesnakes, Ready for the Floor, Real Emotional Trash, Red Morning Light, Remember Tomorrow, Riders on the Storm, Right Beside You, Robots, Rocket, Rockstar, Romeo & Juliette, ruby, Rule The World, Nowhere With You, Run, Run Around, Run To Me, Sacre Coeur, Sally, Santa Claus is coming to town, Saved by Zero, Say it Right, See You Again, Sequestered in Memphis, Sex Bomb, Shadow of a Day, Shake Shake, Shake it! Shake it!, She don't use jelly, she wants to move, Sheila, Shipbuilding, Shirt, Sing Me Spanish Techno, Skinny Love,Skip to the End, Slow Hands, Slow Show, Songbird, Sonnet, Souljacker pt1, spiralling, Splendid Isolation, St Swithin's Day, stacey's mom, Stack-a-lee, Starship Trooper, Steady, As She Goes, Steppenwolf / Silver Machine, Straight Lines, Straighten Up And Fly Right, strawberry swing, stuck between stations, Substitute, Suburban Knights, Sunny Days, Sunset Coming On, Suzanne, Sweet About Me, Sweet Caroline, symphony number 9, Take Me Out, Tenterfield Saddler, that was just your life, That's Not My Name, The Auld Triangle, The Ballad of Ronnie Drew, The Beginning of the Twist, The Bitch Went Nutz, The Bucket, The Electrician, The Fall, the fallen, the fix, The Fountain of Salmacis, the loneliness of a tower crane driver,The President's Dead, The Saturday Boy, The Trooper, The Underdog, the warning, The Way I am, theme from airwolf, theme from buffy, Theme from Cheggers Plays Pop, theme from the flumps, Theme from Wizbit, theme to blind date, Theme to Paddington Bear, theme to sale of the century, Theme tune to big break, Theme Tune to Black Beauty, Theme Tune to Bullseye, Theme tune to Fraggle Rock, Theme Tune to Scooby Doo, theme tune to the muppet show, theme from shaft,There is only one of us, There's Power in the Union, They, This Girl Is Taking Bets, This Old House, Through the Morning, Through the night, Thunder Road, Time to Pretend, tired of sex,Tired of Waiting For You, Tonight, Tonight, Too Drunk To Fuck, too drunk to fuck, too much love will kill you, Touch Sensitive, touch too much, Toxic, Trampled Underfoot, Turn Tail, Two Hearts, umbrella, Us Against The World, Village Green Preservation Society, Violin Concerto, Viva La Vida, Volare, Voodoo Child, Waiting for a star to fall, Waving Flags, Way Down in the Hole, we didn't start the fire, We Hate The Kids, We'll Live and Die in these towns, what do you want from me, What Light, Whatever it Takes, When under Ether, white man in hammersmith palais, White Rock, white winter hymnal, Who Wants To Live Forever, wichita lineman, Winterborn, wired for sound, Witches' Hat, wordless chorus, Working for the MCA, Wow, Wuthering Heights, You Make Me Feel Like Dancin', Your Love Alone is Not Enough, Your Sweet Voice, You're Such A Good Looking Woman.

Ooh, I feel better for that. They can't all make the top 20, but they're all worth mentioning.

Earworms of the Year 2008 will be published on Friday.

...but instead I waste my time

...and people say they wonder what to do with themselves in the days between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve....

Listen, if I'm going to spend my time cataloguing the last twelve months worth of earworms, together with your votes, then I'm damn well going to do something with all that quality data. The Earworms of the Year for 2008 will be published on Friday, but in the meantime, get your chops around the 351(-ish) Artists nominated....

I for one love the fact that the world of earworms is one place where the likes of MGMT, Fuck Buttons, Lethal Bizzle and Brahms sit side-by-side with the likes of Adam Ant, Yes, Shakin' Stevens, Dick Van Dyke and Toto.

Anyway, the list:

Abdullah Ibrahim, ac/dc (two tracks), Ace of Bass, Adam Ant, Adam Green, Adele, Aha, Alice in Chains, Alicia Keys, All About Eve, All Saints, Alphabeat, Amerie, Amy MacDonald, Annie Lennox, Apache Indian, Arctic Monkeys (two tracks), Aretha Franklin & George Michael, ash, Athlete, Barenaked Ladies, Beach Boys, Bee Gees, Beethoven, Beirut, Ben Folds, Beyonce, Bikeforthree!, Billy Bragg (five tracks), billy joel, Billy Ocean , Black Box Recorder, Blake Leyh, Bloc Party (two tracks), Blondie (two tracks), Blues Traveller, Blur, Bobbie Gentry, Bon Iver, Bon Jovi, Bonzo Dog Band, Boy Meets Girl, Brahms, Brian May, British Sea Power, Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen, Calvin Harris, Cat Power (two tracks), Celine Dion, Chemical Brothers, Chesney Hawkes, chordettes, Christina Aguilera, The Clash (three tracks), cliff richard (two tracks), Coldplay (four tracks), Counting Crows, Crazy Cousinz ft Calista, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, creedence clearwater revival, Crowded House, Crux Shadows, Crystals, CSS, Culture Club, David Bowie, David Ford, Dead Kennedies, death cab for cutie, Debbie Reynolds, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Del Amitri (two tracks), diana krall, Dick Van Dyke, Dido, Die Fantastischen Vier, Dillinger, Dire Straits, Do Make Say Think, Domenigo Modringo, doris day, Dr John, Dubliners, Duffy, Eels (six tracks), Elbow (six tracks and an earworms special), Embrace, Estelle , Faith No More, Feargal Sharkey, Flaming Lips, fleet foxes (two tracks), Fleetwood Mac, Flight of the Conchords (two tracks), Flo Rida, flobots, Foo Fighters, fountains of wayne, Fourplay String Quartet, Franz Ferdinand (two tracks), Fuck Buttons, Gabriella Cilmi, Gary Glitter, gene, Gerry Monroe, Genesis, Geoff Proudley, George Michael, Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly, Girls Aloud, glen campbell, Glenn Hansard & Marketa Irglova, Goldfrapp, Gorillaz, Gregory Isaacs, Guillemots, Guns N'Roses, hanson, Hard Fi (two tracks), Hawkwind, Hold Steady (three tracks), Hot Chip (three tracks), Hoyt Axton, Human League, Ida Maria (three tracks), Incredible String Band, Infernal, Ingrid Michaelson, Interpol (two tracks), Iron Butterfly, Iron Maiden (four tracks), isaac hayes (two tracks, one as chef), Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan, J Geils Band, Jacob Golden, James, Jamie T, Jay Z, Jeff Beck, Jeff Buckley, Jem, Jimi Hendrix (two tracks), Jimmy Cliff, joan as policewoman, Joe Dolan, John Williams, johnny Cash (three tracks), Johnny Nash, jon spencer blues explosion, joni mitchell, Jorma Kaukonen, Joseph Spence, Junior Murvin, kaiser chiefs, Kate Walsh, Katy Perry, keane (three tracks), Keb'Mo, Kenny Loggins, Kevin Ayers, Kid British, Kid Rock, Killers, King Crimson, Kings of Leon (four tracks), Kinks, kiss, KLF, Knack, Kylie Minogue (two tracks), Ladyhawke, Laura Marling, Laura Veirs, Led Zeppelin, Leo Sayer, Leonard Cohen, Lethal Bizzle, Lifehouse, Linkin Park, Long Blondes, Longpigs, Los Campesinos, Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington, Love, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Mali Music, Manic Street Preachers (two tracks), Marie Digby, Mark Ronson , Maroon 5, Maximo Park (three tracks), Meatloaf, Men At Work , Metallica (four tracks), MGMT, Mighty Boosh (four tracks), Mika, Mike Oldfield, Miley Cyrus, Mission of Burma, modeselektor, mogwai, monaco, Morrissey, Motorhead, Mousse T, My Morning Jacket (two tracks), Nat King Cole, Neil Diamond (two tracks), Neil Young (two tracks), Nelly Furtado (two tracks), Neon Neon, NERD, New Pornographers, Nick Drake, Nickelback, Nirvana, Nitin Sawhney, No Age, nouvelle vague, Oasis, Okkervil River, Owen Paul, Panic at the disco, Patti Smith, Paul Simon, Peter Allen, Peter Gabriel, Peter Mulvey, Phil Harris, Pigeon Detectives, Pink Floyd, PJ Harvey (two tracks), plain white ts, planxty, Poison, Portishead, Prince, Pulp , Puppini Sisters (three tracks), Puretone, Queen, Queens of the Stone Age, Rachel and Niamh, Rachel Unthank & the Winterset, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine (two tracks), Randy Newman, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Reindeer Section, REM (two tracks), Reverend & The Makers, Joel Plaskett Emergency, Rick Wakeman, ricky martin, Rita Coolidge, Ronan Keating, Robert Palmer, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss (two tracks), Roger Miller, Rogue Traders, Ronnie Drew, Rufus Wainwright, Rush, Sam Sparro, Sarah Silverman, Scaremongers, Scissor Sisters (two tracks), September, Shakin' Stevens, sigur ros (two tracks), Silverchair, Simon & Garfunkel, Sixpence None The Richer, Sky+ menu music, Snow Patrol (two tracks), Snow Patrol, Sophie B. Hawkings (three tracks), Space, Spandau Ballet, Spoon, Stephen Duffy, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Stereophonics, Stiltskin, stranglers (three tracks), Suede, Sugar Hill Gang, Survivor, Take That (four songs), Texas, The A-Sides, the auteurs, The Beatles (two tracks), The Besard Lakes, The Colourblind James Experience, The Doors (two tracks), The Enemy (two tracks), The Fall, the foundations, The Fumes, The Futureheads (three tracks), The Hours, The Indelicates, The Kinks, The National (two tracks), The Raconteurs, the smiths (three tracks), The Subways, The Verve (two tracks), The Who (two tracks), Thea Gilmore, They Might Be Giants, Thomas Tantrum, Tight Fit, Tina Dico (two tracks), Ting Tings, Tom Lehrer, Tom Waits, Tony Christie, Tori Amos (two tracks), Toto, a Toyota Jingle, Tracey Thorn, tracy chapman, t-Rex, U2, Vampire Weekend (two tracks), Van Morrison, Velvet Revolver, Velvet Underground, Vines (two tracks), Violent Femmes (two tracks), Walker Brothers, Warren Zevon, We Are Scientists, Wedding Present, weezer (two tracks), Weird Al, Westlife, White Denim (three tracks), Wilco, Wombats, Yael Naim, Yes (two tracks!), Young Knives (two tracks).

Yeah, laugh it up. I'll stick the tracks up tomorrow. All of them.

standing in line to see the show tonight....

As regulars will know, as my history degrees might indicate and as the Earworms of the Year overload of the next few days is going to underline again and again, I am deeply drawn to pointless cataloguing. With that in mind, and given that I keep a nicely scored list of all of the gigs that I attend, if you had to guess, what did you think was going to happen eventually, as sure as night follows day?

I can't quite match Mike's 63 gigs this year (63!), but I am an amateur....and I reckon that 27 is still a pretty respectable number, don't you? (compared to 19 last year, 21 in 2006 and 18 in 2005...see, told you I liked lists.). It's plenty enough really, but even then there are gigs that I've missed in Nottingham or elsewhere over the last twelve months. With time, tour schedules, budget and stars all being aligned, perhaps I'll get to see a few more in 2009.

So, for the sake of completeness and my own warped sense of wellbeing, here they all are, all of the gigs I attended in 2008. They are sort of stacked by the scores that I gave each gig when I wrote then up, but that's so arbitrary as to be no scientific guide to anything, so as usual, I've ranked them on a combination of gut feel and an ever fading memory (which is one of the reasons I record these things in the first place).

I've put Glastonbury at the top simply because it can't be compared to anything else and is such a special weekend..... so, with thanks to LB, Hen Mike, Sarah, Rich, Laura, Ali, the two Johns, Peter from Vienna, anyone else I've attended a gig with in the last twelve months....even, on occasion and if she's in the same country as me, C.... I give you my gigs of 2008.

1. The Glastonbury Festival - 27-29 June 2008
2. Elbow @ Leicester De Montfort, 16th October - 9.5 / 10
3. Elbow @ Rock City, 14th April - 9.5 / 10
4. White Denim @ Bodega Social, 7th July - 9 / 10
5. Fleet Foxes @ Nottingham Trent Uni, 2nd November - 8.5 / 10
6. Billy Bragg @ Rock City, 19th November - 8 / 10
7. James @ New Theatre, Oxford, 19th April - 8 / 10
8.The Feeling @ Rock City, 10th March - 8 / 10
9. Gilad Atzmon and the Oriental House Ensemble @ Porgy & Bess Jazz club, Vienna, 17th March - 8 / 10
10. Laura Marling @ Rescue Rooms, 4th November - 7.5 / 10
11. Coldplay @ Birmingham NIA, 2nd December - 7.5 / 10
12. REO Speedwagon @ Rock City, 9th June - 7.5 / 10
13. Tina Dico @ The Maze, 4th March - 7.5 / 10
14. Iron Maiden @ Twickenham Stadium, 5th July - 7 / 10
15. Tina Dico @ Rescue Rooms, 4th December - 7 / 10
16. Joan as Policewoman @ Rescue Rooms, 10th December - 7 / 10
17. Wonky Pop Tour feat. Alphabeat @ Stealth, 15th April - 7 / 10
18. Martha Wainwright @ Rock City, 3rd November - 7 / 10
19. Futureheads @ Rescue Rooms, 3rd June - 7 / 10
20. Heavy Trash @ Nottingham Bodega, 30 September - 7 / 10
21. NME Awards Tour 2008 with The Cribs, Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, Does it Offend You, Yeah? and The Ting Tings @ Rock City, 12th February - 7 / 10
22. Palladium & Alphabeat @ Bodega Social, 10th February - 3/10 (Palladium) & 8/10 (Alphabeat)
23. Nouvelle Vague @ Rescue Rooms, 7th February - 6.5 / 10
24. Def Leppard, Whitesnake & Thunder @ Nottingham Arena, 17th July - 6.5 / 10
25. One Night Only @ Rescue Rooms, 23rd February - 6/10
26. Seasick Steve @ Rock City, 9th October - 5.5 / 10
27. The Mighty Boosh @ Nottingham Arena, 8th November - 4 / 10

Elbow, eh? Go figure. Who ever heard of them anyway?

...and I think I mark too generously. Far too many 7s this year!

you should have known by now you were on my list....

As I sit in front of the fire and finish off the last of that cellared bottle of 1979 Sauternes left over from Christmas Day, with the leftovers of two bottles of excellent cellared reds still to come, I'm going to bore you to tears about Earworms of the Year 2008 again....

I'll start compiling this at the beginning of next week. It's a needlessly labour intensive process, probably, but I get a kick out of doing it and would like to have as many contributions from people as possible before I get started.

Here's what I need you to do:

1) Think of the five bits of music that have been most stuck in your head over the last twelve months. They don't have to be things that were released this year. Hell, they don't even have to be songs - I'm always earworming the tunes from adverts and jingles from the radio, and I'm never very far away from a Kia Ora or an Um Bongo moment....

2) Write them down in order and put a little bit of blurb about each one. It doesn't have to be much, but I'll put a few quotes next to every entry in the list, so the more soundbites I can get from people, the better.

3) Email them to me at the address in my profile.

4) um, that's it. I'll do the rest and will look to get the Earworms of the Year 2008 list published on Friday next week.

Thanks for all your votes so far, but I reckon I can squeeze a few more out of you before Monday. Anyone and everyone is entitled to a vote, incidentally.....

OK? Good.

The Earworms of the Year Roll of honour.

2005 Coldplay - "Speed of Sound"

2006 Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"

2007 Rihanna - "Umbrella"

2008 ???
---

Whilst we're on the subject of lists, the countdown of the albums of the year at The Auditorium continues... We've already had the likes of Alphabeat, Laura Marling, Metallica, Billy Bragg, The Feeling, Glasvegas, Sigur Ros, TV on the Radio, James, Santogold and the Killers, but

The number 6s feature albums by Vampire Weekend, Estelle and Royworld

The number 5s feature Albert Hammond Jr, Coldplay and Paul Heaton.

....I bet you can't begin to guess the ones nominated by bedshaped, LB and me, eh?

It's a pretty diverse list already, so I wonder what we'll pick tomorrow? No crossover between the nominations so far, anyway.

(my niece is still as cute as a button too....)

understand the world we're living in....

Morning. Everyone survived in one piece then? Excellent.

Two pieces of business today:

The first is Earworms of the Year. I'm going to start compiling this over the next few days and look to get it published this time next week. The basic idea is that I will go through all of this year's Earworm of the Week columns and come up with some sort of a ranking. That will throw up a whole random assortment of tracks, but what I really need to make it work though is votes from everyone on what's been looping on your internal jukeboxes over the last 12 months. So put your thinking caps on and think of the five tunes that have been most stuck in your head this year. Put them in ranking order of 1 to 5, write a little bit of blurb about each one and then email them to me at the address in my profile.

Thanks to everyone who has voted so far. It's nice to do a list that's a bit different from your average "best of 2008" lists, but it's your contributions and comments that really make the list, if you ask me..... so please email me your top 5.

The Earworms of the Year Roll of honour.

2005 Coldplay - "Speed of Sound"

2006 Gnarls Barkley - "Crazy"

2007 Rihanna - "Umbrella"

--

Meanwhile, at the Auditorium, the countdown of the ten best albums has now reached the number 7s. Between the three of us, LB, bedshaped and I have picked Scars on Broadway, Laura Marling and Alphabeat. Guess who picked each one......

Right, so I'm off to my parents to do Christmas all over again. Wish me luck. Should be back tomorrow......

gonna find out who's naughty or nice....

Today I carried out one of my favourite tasks of the year. It is also, as it happens, one of the most important jobs that I do every year.... I copied out some letters from Father Christmas for a colleague's two daughters.

We started doing this several years ago: my colleague is determined that her children should grow up in a house where Christmas is a magical time of the year, and as such she encourages her kids to write letters to Santa which they "post" up the chimney breast. Then, on Chrismas Day, these two little girls wake up to find their presents and a lovely letter in reply from Santa. More often than not, these letters are an exercise in expectation setting and a way of explaining why the girls may not have got everything that they asked for. It is also, clearly, a special moment for both of them - Santa's letters are stored away each year in a folder of precious things and are looked at from time to time. The eldest daughter is now nearly ten, but she has resolutely insisted that she still believes and has painstakingly made up a letter to Santa with stickers and glitter and all sorts on it. That said, she's also old enough to insist on checking the handwriting on the letter and making sure that:

a) it is the same handwriting as it was last year
and
b) that it is not the same as her mum and dad's handwriting

Luckily for everyone, she hasn't got around to thinking that it could easily be the handwriting of someone else her mum and dad know.... although C. did write our Christmas card to them this year just in case. So you can see, I pretty much have a job for life here, or at least for another few years. (Besides, every smart kid knows better than to be too loud or grown up in their declarations about Santa's existence or otherwise... after all, you wouldn't want to jeapordise the volume of presents you receive, would you? I officially "believed" until long after I left home. In fact, I think I may still....perhaps I'll put my stocking out just in case, eh?)



The ritual is always the same: my colleague provides me with some headed notepaper ("From the home of Santa Claus. Lapland, The North Pole") and a couple of letters to copy out. I get out my good fountain pen and carefully transcribe what's written in my best handwriting and in blue-black ink. This year, the eldest had to be steered away from her desire for a "Dareway" (which looks hideously dangerous) and set up to receive her surprise present - an MP3 player. The youngest was easier: she only really wants Hannah Montana and High School Musical stuff. She'd expressed a desire for a bike, but told her dad that she realised that Santa would really struggle to put it onto his sledge. Well, I'm pleased to say that Santa has managed to squeeze one on for her, and hopefully her parents will be able to see her face light up when she gets exactly what she wanted.

When I first mentioned that I did this a couple of years ago, I was surprised by the level of debate it kicked off around perpetuating gender roles. Well, I do think that Lizzie raised an interesting point, but I still cannot quite bring myself to believe that helping to keep a tiny piece of the magic of Christmas alive for these two little girls is anything other than a good thing.

I enjoy doing it, anyway.



Happy Christmas.

Ho ho ho, etc.

----

Over at The Auditorium, we've reached the number 9s in our countdown of our top 10 albums of the year. Between the three of us, LB, bedshaped and I have plumped for albums by Sigur Ros, TV on the Radio and Billy Bragg. It's a bit harder to spot which one is mine today, but I'm sure you can manage it......

You can also vote for your singles of the year here.

Oh, and I also need your 5 selections for Earworms of the Year 2008 please. You may as well give in and email them to me now - I'm only going to go on about it until you do.....

the final countdown...

Over at The Auditorium, just as we did last year, LB, bedshaped and I have started counting down our top ten albums of 2008. I imagine that we're all going to have quite differing views, so it's well worth a look.

Today..... it's the number tens: - Santogold, James and The Killers.

Go check it out.

(and can you guess which one was my pick? Dur....)

are you going backwards, or are you going forwards?

I've been listening to The Clash a lot recently and they seem to have been following me around a bit. A few weeks ago I bought the recently remastered and re-released album of their 1982 Shea Stadium gig. It dates from an era when Topper Headon had already left the band and disintegration wasn't very far away. It sounds fantastic through and I found myself rediscovering a band I haven't listened to in quite some little while. A few weeks later, Billy Bragg mentioned at his Rock City gig how it was the appearance of The Clash at "Rock Against Racism" that inspired him into mixing politics and music. Finally, as I was battling a mild case of jetlag the other day, I stumbled across a late night screening of the Julien Temple documentary "Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten". There's a bit of footage right at the beginning of the film that shows Strummer singing "White Riot" unaccompanied into the microphone in a studio. It's a brilliant piece of footage, and although Temple later intercuts the full band version of the song, it's Strummer singing alone that lingers in the memory.

Billy Bragg always finishes his gigs at the Leftfield stage at Glastonbury by singing a version of "Garage Land" with the union guys who organise the stage. His charity that distributes musical instruments to prisoners is called "Jail Guitar Doors" - both are songs on the debut album by The Clash. As is "Janie Jones", hailed in "High Fidelity" as being number one in the all time top five track one side ones of all time. As are "White Riot", "Remote Control", "London's Burning", "Career Opportunities"..... it's a pretty damn good album. Why did I not own it? This evening, I popped across to iTunes to download it. A quick search, a click on the "buy album" button, and we were done.

Easy.

Except it wasn't.

After I had downloaded the album and shifted it onto my iPod, I noticed that "Janie Jones", number one in the all time top five track one side ones of all time was apparently track 9. Hmmm. Maybe they'd just got the tracks jumbled up? Annoying but not fatal. I set about rearranging the album. I soon ran into problems: let's see..... according to iTunes, track one of this album was "Clash City Rockers"... which is odd, as it's not on the album at all as it was originally recorded. But then, neither was "Complete Control" or "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais", and both of them had appeared in the download too. I double-checked to make sure that I hadn't downloaded the wrong thing by mistake. Nope. Right album. Same name, same album cover.... and yet wrong tracks.

I'll be getting that £5.99 back off them then (after some fiddly and no doubt drawn out process that involved submitting a report via my iTunes profile. *sigh*). I could have bloody bought this album for less than that by going to Amazon, but I'd paid a bit extra because I wanted it right now. Surely it's not too much to ask that they get the bloody thing right? After all, it's only one of the most famous albums in rock history.....

Tsk. Downloads - they're the future, you know.

Good band though. If you're getting my shuffleathon, you have been warned....

like a monkey with a minature cymbal...

Want to know what I learned this weekend? Well let me tell you: I learned that I've got precisely 10,171 songs on my iPod.

This number is now burned indelibly onto the back of my brain after spending most of the weekend attempting to reconstruct my iTunes library and watching the slow tick-tick-tick of each track being processed in repeated library consolidations and reloads. After a while, I realised that it processed the songs in the same order: the order I ripped them. So I watched the long sequence of files from "Candy Says" by the Velvet Underground through to "Kicked in the Teeth" by AC/DC. Again and again and again over the whole weekend.

Why?

Well it's ultimately not a very interesting story, so if this is likely to bore you, I suggest you look away now. Seriously. There were times over the last couple of days when I just could have skipped to the end too.

Anyone still here?

OK, well.... this whole sorry story began when, at some point on Friday night, I realised there was a disconnection between iTunes and the music files on my external hard drive. I synced my iPod and watched as my library turned into a sea of exclamation marks as iTunes tried to tell me that it couldn't locate the tracks.

Obviously, when you've spent literally weeks and weeks of your life over the last four years ripping CDs and acquiring MP3s, and when your iPod is an increasingly central part of your day-to-day life, this is probably the last thing that you want to see. The immediate fear is that the underlying tracks themselves have somehow gone and that you'll have to start all over again. Can you imagine that? Ripping all those CDs? And what about all that other stuff you've somehow got your hands on over the years? What about that? I held my breath and did a quick search in my time capsule drive. Hmm. The source music files all still seem to be there (and anyway, I had only done a full backup onto a completely separate hard drive last weekend, so it wouldn't have been a total catastrophe if they had all gone, as I would be literally one song and 79p poorer. "Handlebars" by Flobots, actually).

Knowing my source material was intact was some comfort, but there then followed hours and hours and hours of fiddling about, trying to work out why the hell iTunes was so confused in the first place and then trying to fix it. iTunes is really a fairly simple beast: you tell it where the music is kept, and it builds a music library based upon that location, but without touching the music files at all. As long as you keep it in the know where your library is stored, then everything should be okay. When I had originally moved my library off my laptop and onto the networked external, wirelessly accessible hard drive, I had been careful to delete all of the residual music on my laptop so that my library was only ever in one place. This was the first thing that I checked, and I was a little troubled to see that a big pile of my library, as well as still being sat on my external drive, appeared to have magically moved back onto the laptop. The tracks that iTunes could actually see were the ones residing in here. No wonder iTunes was confused.

Hmm.

I checked the library settings in iTunes. It had changed back, apparently of its own accord to point at the laptop, and at that point must have copied back a big chunk of the library. I changed the setting, kicked off the magic consolidation process in iTunes that is supposed to make sure that all music files are sat in your specified library location, and I waited as it processed. This took several hours, and I watched as 10,171 files slowly processed. When that consolidation finished, I deleted all of the music remaining on the laptop. My intention was clear: to have only one place that iTunes should look to find my music library... my external drive. Sadly, upon deletion, the songs in iTunes that didn't have exclamation marks against them suddenly now did. All my songs were in one place, and one place only, but iTunes was trying to tell me that it didn't know where any of them were.

Bugger.

All my music was still safe, but how could I sleep until I worked out what was wrong?

By 2am, and several consolidations later (and several more happy hours watching 10,171 files process over and over again), things were no better. I wondered if having the music library in a folder called "My iTunes Music1" was somehow making a difference, and copied the whole lot into "My iTunes Music" on the same drive instead, and then sat and watched as it consolidated the whole lot again. 10,171 files.

No improvement.

At some point on Saturday morning, I managed to do something that duplicated the tracks - at least within iTunes - and I now had the missing tracks, together with all the playcounts and things, and a new set of tracks entirely, all freshly added today and with no playcounts or anything. I still only had the one set of music on the hard drive, which was comforting to some extent, but now iTunes was beginning to really piss me off.

In the end, I took the iTunes library xml file from my laptop and moved it somewhere safe. I reopened iTunes, and because it now had no concept of my library, it was completely (and mercifully) blank. This was definitely an improvement. Through the file menu in iTunes, I then reimported the library xml file, and then left the computer for most of the rest of the day as it processed through all 10,171 files. Again.

When it had finished, there was a message on the screen saying that it hadn't been able to import some files because it couldn't find them.... but as I looked through the library, I could have wept for joy when I saw that there were only 10,171 files present and not a single damn exclamation mark.

I'd done it.

Of course, every playlist and playcount that referenced one of the files that iTunes hadn't been able to find was now gone. I therefore spent most of Sunday afternoon reconstructing the most useful playlists from my iPod and telling myself I didn't care about the playcounts. Finally though, it was the moment of truth: I synced my iPods. My 6gb nano took a couple of hours, so it was no surprise that my 60gb iPod with everything on it took a little longer. So I watched as all 10,171 files transferred slowly -- again -- over the course of the next 12 hours or so.

Well, I didn't sit and watch it all. I read "Snuff" by Chuck Palahniuk too.

All of it.

So curious to know what I did this weekend? Well, for massive chunks of it, I watched a computer processing 10,171 media files over and over and over and over again because a piece of software was a touch confused about where to find them, even though throughout the whole damn process all 10,171 of them had never moved from where they started the weekend in the first place: on my external hard drive.

Wait.

Now I think of it, I actually started this process with 10,169 music files.

Where the hell did the other two come from?

[shrugs]

Stupid computers.

I trust your weekends were more relaxing?

and if you have five seconds to spare....

I've been thinking about the way that a single song can radically change the way you look at the world... well, or at least the way that you listen to the world. I've been looking back across my own life and trying to think about the songs that had the biggest impact upon me and upon the things that I listen to.

And so here they are, the 5 (ish) songs that changed my life:

> "The Riddle" - Nik Kershaw



The year is 1984, and I am ten years old. Whilst it would not be accurate to say that this was the first piece of music that really grabbed my attention (that honour has to go to 1980s "Kings of the Wild Frontier" by Adam and the Ants, especially the song "Jolly Roger"), Nik Kershaw was certainly the first artist that I truly loved. I have my friend Will from down the road to thank for this one. I first met Will when he was brought into my class a few weeks after term had started and we were both 5 years old. His family had just moved into the village, and my first sight of him was when he was hiding behind his mother as he was introduced to the rest of class one red. He lived a little down the road from me, and we were firm friends, spending almost every day of every school holiday together. We lived in a village, so we didn't really get up to anything more than roaming through the fields, riding our bikes and playing "Bard's Tale", "Jet Set Willie" and "Graham Gooch Cricket" on the Commodore 64.. but they were happy days in those seemingly endless summers. I have an older brother, but he has never really been all that interested in music. Will, on the other hand, had an older brother and an older sister, and crucially both had some interest in music and had some records. I remember very clearly that we would much about in front of the turntable listening to things like "One Night in Bankok" and the Spitting Image records, until one day he popped on some Nik Kershaw. "The Riddle" has actually held up pretty well, and as well as the title track, has singles like "Wideboy" and "Don Quixote". I bought the album on cassette, and before long also picked up "Human Racing" too. I even went as far as writing to Jimmy Saville to see if he could fix it for me and for Will to meet our hero. It never happened, but my interest in music was up and running.

> "Run to the Hills" / "The Number of the Beast" - Iron Maiden



Nik Kershaw awakened my interest in music, and before long I was taping the chart show off the radio and asking for tapes for my birthday (one bumper year I was given both "Scoundrel Days" by Aha and "Silk and Steel" by Five Star. Happy days!). I even developed a pre-pubescent crush on a "You Came" era Kim Wilde. All fairly harmless stuff, but my music taste hadn't really taken shape yet. All that was to change when I went up to a new school in 1987, aged thirteen, and was suddenly surrounded by much older boys with much more sophisticated taste in music. I must have been receptive, because I distinctly remember buying a Bob Marley cassette from the local branch of WHSmith and feeling a touch disappointed with what I had because in my head I had managed to confuse him with Bob Dylan. A terrible error, I'm sure you'll agree, but at least one that shows that my musical horizons were starting to expand beyond the top 40. On a similar visit into town, I picked up another cassette simply because I liked the cover: a brightly coloured cartoon-style drawing of a long-haired Zombie and the devil. It was "Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden. I don't recall knowing anything about the band before I made the purchase, and that first listen must have been something of a shock as "Invaders" and Bruce Dickinson's foghorn screech filled my study. I was in love and my music tastes changed instantly. Out went the top 40, and along with much of the rest of Iron Maiden's back catalogue, including the newly released "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son", in came "...And Justice for All" by Metallica, "Open Up and Say Ahhhh!" by Poison, "Permanent Vacation" by Aerosmith and -- my first ever CD purchase -- a double album called "Protect the Innocent", featuring songs by the likes of Steppenwolf, Judas Priest, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and, best of all, "Ace of Spades" by Motorhead. In due course, I was listening to Whitesnake, Slaughter, Thunder, Little Angels, Stevie Salas Colourcode, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Cult, Faith No More, ZZ Top, Guns N'Roses, Def Leppard, Queensryche, Bon Jovi and all sorts of wonderful stuff. In retrospect, a lot of that was rubbish, but actually a lot of it still stands up today and it all had a huge impact on my taste in music. I don't listen to all that much "metal" today, but I am still drawn to driving guitar music. Another direct consequence of picking up that Iron Maiden album is that I started to attend gigs. My first was the Cult at Wembley Arena (if you look really closely, you can see me in the "Sweet Soul Sister" video that they filmed there), but soon I was off seeing bands like Thunder, Little Angels, Electric Boys, Def Leppard and even to the Monsters of Rock festival to see Skid Row, Slayer, The Almighty and Iron Maiden. Nik Kershaw got me started, but Iron Maiden took me to the next level.

> "Half a Person" - The Smiths



The first album that I had on the stereo after my parents had dropped me off at University for the first time in 1992 was "Southern Harmony and Musical Companion" by the Black Crowes. I no longer had Iron Maiden posters on my wall, but I did have a massive one of "Teethgrinder" by Therapy and was still happily lost in a world of guitars and screeching vocalists. A mere six months later there had been a shift in my musical taste so seismic that I spent an entire afternoon scouring a record fair at the NEC in search of an (elusive) copy of "Hatful of Hollow" by the Smiths. The Smiths! I hated The Smiths with a passion when they were actually still together as a band. It wasn't that I had heard them, exactly, it's more that I had decided that I hated everything that they stood for and I hated the kind of person who liked them. It's a stupid reason to reject a band, of course, but it was exactly the same reason that I had rejected bands like the Stone Roses, The Cure and the Happy Mondays. Ah, the folly of youth. In the case of The Smiths, I think that I simply wasn't ready for them, and that by the time I was a gauche nineteen year old wondering why I was unable to make any kind of meaningful connection with girls, I was suddenly right in Morrissey's constituency. A friend lent me a taped copy of the "Both Sides" compilation album, and although I was sceptical, I gave it a listen in my room in my halls of residence one afternoon. Nothing jumped out at me until I heard this song, when suddenly something clicked in my head. I listened to the song again. And again. And again. Suddenly it was like I had found the key, and I listened to the whole album again with new ears. Like millions of teenagers before me, and no doubt like millions of teenagers yet to come, I discovered a voice that seemed to be speaking to me directly, articulating all those feelings of alienation and loneliness so eloquently. I fell in love with Morrissey. An appreciation of quite how much Johnny Marr brought to The Smiths was to elude me for many years, but for now it was all about the lyrics. Oh, such wonderful, articulate, playful lyrics. I wanted more. It might seem hard to believe now, but at that time it was actually quite hard to find Smiths records in the shops as Warners had not yet re-released the back-catalogue. It was quite a task to hunt out some of those CDs, and yet somehow the search made the music all the much more precious. Maybe that's the reason that "Hatful of Hollow" remains to this day my favourite album of all. The solo work grabbed my attention soon too, and I moved from "Bona Drag" through to "Your Arsenal", "Viva Hate", "Beethoven Was Deaf" and even the terrible "Kill Uncle". I was a man possessed; a man obsessed. I listened to Morrissey almost to the exclusion of everything else, although my new love of The Smiths proved to be a doorway to widening my perceptions away from rock and into indie: Blur, The Auteurs, Belly, Suede.... all found their way into my record collection. Hell, I even began to discover previously dismissed bands like the Cure, The Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays. Radiohead weren't far behind, and looking back, I can see that this was the moment where my tastes began to take a real shape: rock music gave me an enduring love of driving drums and guitars, but The Smiths opened my eyes to a different kind of music and a different form of expression. It doesn't take a genius to see why I love bands like Interpol, does it? Ah, but Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey....because he spoke to me so eloquently at that formative time in my life, he will always be precious to me. And all because "Half A Person" caught my attention just enough to warrant another listen.

> "The Seventh Seal" - Scott Walker / "Daddy Sang Bass" - Johnny Cash



Whilst at University, I fell in with a mature student on my course. Well, I say "mature", but he was only 25 years old, so not really mature at all, but to my 18 year old eyes, he certainly seemed it. Mark was from Barrow, and as well as having an interest in Early Modern European History, he also had an extremely well developed musical radar and an extensive vinyl collection. We became pretty good friends, and in our third year, we shared a flat on campus and a radio show on the student station. Our show was on a Sunday evening, and we would usually alternate records. I would play something like "She is Suffering" by Manic Street Preachers, and Mark would instantly dismiss it as "Welsh heavy metal" and would insist that I played one of his records... it might be something like "The Man Who Sold the World" by Bowie, or it might be some obscure album of wurlitzer classics by an old bloke with a terrible toupee. I loved it, and I loved the music that he introduced me too. Foremost amongst the bands that I must credit Mark for turning me onto are the twin titans of Scott Walker and Johnny Cash. Mark pretty much insisted that I listen to them both, and I will forever be in his debt. Oh goodness. Having spent much of my adolescence listening to the likes of W.Axl Rose, Steven Tyler and James Hetfield, listening to Scott Walker's honeyed baritone was always going to be something of an eye-opener. What really got the hooks in though was a realisation that he wasn't just some MOR style easy listening singer, but that he was singing songs of love and death and wasted lives like some kind of latter day philosopher. Ah, genius. As with "Half a Person", it was Walker's Bergman inspired "The Seventh Seal" that provided me with the key, and once that strange song filled with apocalyptic visions of a knight playing chess with Death had crept under my skin, my way was cleared for the rest of Walker's material. Johnny Cash was perhaps easier, as somehow I was familiar with his voice and with his songs without even really knowing.



Like Walker, he was another incredible vocalist, but this time I had to get past my stupid prejudices about country music to listen with open ears. Mark and I watched Cash performing at Glastonbury in 1994 on the telly in our flat, and from there Mark played me several albums of his early material - and this was really before his latter day work with Rick Rubin was really returning Cash from the wilderness, and when he was just on the cusp of returning from the wilderness of the terminally uncool. Mark didn't care about any of that: he just loved Cash as an artist and he passed that love onto me. Never mind "Hurt", I fell in love with Cash over "Daddy Sang Bass", an entirely silly song that he did with the Carter family. Walker and Cash: two absolute titans. It's not that they particularly led me onto other bands, more that they were both a complete, totally satisfying meal by themselves. Thank you Mark. Thank you.

> "Dylan in the Movies" / "Fox in the Snow" - Belle & Sebastian



You might have thought that my experiences with The Smiths would have warned me against being too vehemently opposed to a band that I had never listened to... but no. Without ever really hearing them, I was absolutely dead set on the opinion that Belle & Sebastian were everything I hated about music. Fey, weedy indie wastrels. My opinion of them seemed to be confirmed when I saw them playing their much heralded first appearance on Top of the Pops with "Legal Man". As an avid reader of the NME, I knew that this was a big thing, as previously the band had refused to appear. Curious, I checked them out: they were an absolute, tuneless shambles. Opinion confirmed..... and then I went to visit Justin, a friend of mine who lived in London - perhaps as late as 1998 or 1999. As we sat drinking wine, my friend popped an album on. Initially it was just background music, but after a while it started to creep under my skin and I had to ask him what it was. It was, of course, Belle & Sebastian. I looked at the album cover, "If You're Feeling Sinister", with amazement. Yet again, my stupid prejudices had to be discarded in the face of the evidence being presented to my own ears. I bought the album and I absolutely adore the album. It's one of my favourites still. Yes, they're fey, and yes, they sometimes sound a bit lightweight.... but they stuck a chord with me in a completely unexpected way and I couldn't get enough of them. Alright, I was already listening to piles of indie by this point, but much of it was still at the harder end of the spectrum. Belle & Sebastian opened my ears to a more folky sound and opened the door to people like Devendra Banhart, Sufjan Stevens and the like.... Mind you, I still haven't got any time for Lightspeed Champion. Fey, yes. Tosser? Definitely. Perhaps he'll be my favourite artist ever in a couple of years time. Justin ditched me as a friend years ago, and in 20 years of friendship, if this is his only legacy, then perhaps it wasn't all a total waste of time....

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And that's it. Five songs that each had a massive impact on my music taste. If I had to pick one of them though, it would have to be "Half a Person". I listened to it this morning on my way into work, and even now it tugs at something inside me.... brilliant song.

Music's brilliant, innit?

What music shaped you?

hey runner, what are you running from?

I was back at hospital today for a follow up on my eyes. It's now exactly 28 days since I had the operation to insert a lens into my right eye, my left having been done the week before that, and it was time to see what was going on in there.

You might remember that, a few weeks ago, I was busy fretting about the quality of the vision in my left eye. Well, apparently the antibiotic and steroid drops that I was prescribed to help with the healing process have the side effect of disrupting the membrane over the surface of the eye and thus have a negative effect on the quality of vision. You only use the drops for 28 days, so I stopped putting them into my left eye at the end of last week, and the quality of the vision in that eye has been improving ever since, to the extent that I have gained a whole line on the chart. Not bad. The quality in my right eye, the one that was noticeably better immediately after surgery, has been a bit more variable, but I stopped putting the drops in last night and I'm confident that it will get stronger and stronger with a bit of time. In any case, the professor tested my eyes this evening, and with both eyes together I can comfortably read the bottom line on the chart. That's one line better than either of my eyes on their own, and apparently an excellent sign that my brain is starting to adjust to the new balance of my eyes. Pressure was down too. It's all good.

My other big worry is the ghosting that I get in my right eye in dim light. It's absolutely fine during the day and most of the time at night (including night driving, thankfully), but I get a faint, but distinct ghosted double-image cast by some lights. It's not awful, by any means, but I notice it. And when I notice it, I focus on it. I mentioned it to the professor and he all but rolled his eyes at me. Apparently I have fairly large pupils, and the ghosting happens when my pupil dilates and approaches the edge of the implanted lens (which, as a rigid toric lens, is slightly smaller in my right eye than in my left). This is entirely to be expected and, I was told with a sigh, I just need to give my brain the time to adjust and tune out the superfluous images. It's not all that different to the way that a glasses wearer learns to tune out the unfocused image past the edge of the frame of their glasses. Indeed, apparently the same thing happens within the lenses of a pair of glasses, but your brain learns to only focus through the very centre of the lens. Apparently, so the professor told me, this only really bothers either the very intelligent or the very obsessive. I think that was a polite way of telling me to stop worrying about it and to let my brain work it out in its own time. I got the hint, anyway.

So. Good news, really good news.

Oh, and he told me I could start exercising again too. I have to wait another couple of months before I can climb into the bacterial soup that is a swimming pool, but I can go running again. In fact, as soon as I got home, that's exactly what I did. C. asked me if I had missed running terribly during my enforced lay-off. The honest answer, as I had time to reflect as I dragged my sorry, complaining body around the Trent Embankment, is that whilst I might have missed being able to go running, I missed the actual running itself rather less. I like pies, I like cake, I like beer and I like sitting on my arse doing nothing an awful lot more than I like running. This is why I have to run. So I ran, and now I can hardly walk. It seems that all that walking I did when I couldn't run is actually no substitute for the real thing. Still, I did manage to lose weight during my layoff, so....

In other news, look who's coming to town!



Looks like pastel coloured jackets with the sleeves rolled up are no longer a key part of his wardrobe, but he's a legend nonetheless.

you fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way....

Three days after the operation on my left eye, and things are coming along nicely. The eye itself is still pretty bloodshot and a little bit prickly and sore, but not too bad really considering the trauma of the procedure itself. Vision is not too bad: it's a bit blurry still, but apparently this is absolutely normal and my eyesight is basically fine when the left eye is used in conjunction with the other eye. Crucially, it also seems to be improving little by little every day. I think this might be the first time in my life that I haven't so much as touched a pair of glasses in more than 48 hours, and it's really quite liberating.

I'm still quite glad I've taken the time completely off work though. Not only do I not particularly want to spend all day in front of a computer screen (certainly not in the office), but it's also given me the time to do some other things: the garden's being done (not by me, I should hasten to add...by professionals); I've sorted out my iPhone; I've finally picked up some parcels from the Royal Mail and arranged for the delivery of some tickets (bloody couriers); I've been able to rip a load of CDs that have been kicking around for a while onto iTunes (Fleet Foxes, Hot Chip, Weezer, Neil Diamond, Paul Heaton, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, Black Kids, Panic at the Disco, Lloyd Cole, some Springsteen....). Who knows, I may even have some time to give them all a proper listen before they disappear into the bowels of my iPod forever.... The Open Golf starts tomorrow and the 2nd Test against the South Africans begins on Friday, but I'm also hoping to squeeze in a few DVDs around all that sport....

We went out to the cinema on Sunday evening, actually, in an attempt to take my mind off the following day's operation. Did it work? Well, yes it did, actually. I don't reckon that the plot of Hancock stands up to much scrutiny, but that's hardly unique in a blockbuster. More seriously, I think the movie suffers from not knowing what kind of a film it wants to be (superhero film? comedy? tragedy? drama?), but I thought that, all in all, it was all perfectly diverting stuff. Will Smith is usually fairly watchable, as is Charlize Theron....

Last night though, I popped over to Blockbuster and picked up a couple of more "worthy" films that I missed:



First up was the Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country For Old Men". Now. I won't go into any plot details, but I really enjoyed this up until about the last 20 minutes. The atmosphere before that point had been built up superbly, and Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and especially Javier Bardem put in magnificent performances. For me though, they shot their bolt and blew the ending, which I felt was abrupt and anti-climactic. Perhaps that's Cormac McCarthy's fault in the original novel (and I've never been able to get into any of his books), but I did feel a bit let down really. Shame, as it's otherwise an excellent film. You certainly wouldn't want to bump into a character like Anton Chiguhr anytime soon - that scene in the gas station was absolutely chilling, even when he didn't kill anyone. What a character. One of the best screen villains I've seen in a long time.

Up tonight: There Will Be Blood. I'm not a massive Day-Lewis fan, but he at least wears a hat for most of the film, so if I ever get round to writing up a sketchy and incomplete review of that any time soon, at least I get to bore you all with that.

Probably Juno after that, but I also want to catch up on my Wire boxsets.

Kicking around at home is actually pretty relaxing. I should do this more often.

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Thanks very much for all your good wishes and happy thoughts over the last few days. Much appreciated, as was LB and Hen supplementing theirs by popping round with a big box of cookies and a hand-painted card. Blog Street is all very well, but sometimes it's no substitute for having actual, honest-to-goodness real life neighbours who care. With a little understanding, etc....