Which is the best band in the world? What a stupid question. Naturally it's Radiohead.
This is of course a matter of opinion; you can share my opinion and be right, or disagree with it and be wrong.
Coldplay announce UK tour . I won't be going. It's a big venue, and they'd never let me in with a rifle.
First, Humphrey Lyttelton. Now, Jimmy Giuffre. Very sad. Jimmy Giuffre 3 is one of my favorite albums of all time.
I picked up Music Hole, and have been listening to it pretty much ever since.
I was a little disappointed to start with. It's a bit less consistent than the stellar Le Fil, and two of the weakest tracks are amongst the first four, so it's not a great start. Worse, she's singing in English half the time! That's terrible - the French is half the attraction.
But still, there's some great stuff here. Home is Where it Hurts, Cats and Dogs, Money Note and Waves are all fabulous. Inventive, catchy, surprising, funny; classic camille.
On my way home yesterday, I spotted a review of Music Hole in one of the free rags over someone's shoulder. Glad as I am to see camille getting some mainstream exposure, I was disappointed to see her compared to Björk. And in the first sentence of the review, no less.
Now I can see where this comes from. Both are talented female singer-songwriters, both have superb voices, both are rather experimental, both not native English speakers, both rather beautiful in an unconventional way. Not least, both are totally Upton Park.
But the thing is, though, that this was supposed to be a music review, and they don't really sound anything like one another.
The Guardian review was better, even if they didn't like as much as they should have done. Yes, should have done, dammit!
(Upton Park - two stops short of Barking.)
Camille in London - I do not want to miss this. Camille is fabulous.
I think I'm in love:
Anyone else up for it?
Update: Ooooh! New album on Monday!
Update: Sadly, her new website is dreadful. Can't make head nor tail of it.
Via El P, a classy piece of journalism.
The comments are great - I've not seen so many euphemisms in one place since the Profanisaurus.
Strap Schneier into a chair in a room with my two girls attempting I Try on SingStar and he'd hand over his private key in minutes.
I'd post a recording, only there's the Geneva Convention...
I was moderately pissed off when I read about the Radiohead boxed set that EMI have put out - I already owned everything on it except for I Might Be Wrong, which hasn't been available for ages. Much as I love Radiohead, I object to paying for a load of CDs I already have just to get hold of the obscure stuff. So I was resigned to never getting it.
Poked my head into HMV on the way home last might to see what the retail version of In Rainbows looks like, and there it was - I Might Be Wrong for sale. Just £6, too! Bliss. So much for not spending any more money this month...
BTW, check out Nude. Beautiful.
Ever had a song written about you? asks The Guardian.
Simple Simon by The Brunning Sunflower Blues Band is about me. Rubbish song, but it does have the incomparable Peter Green playing on it, so it's still a claim to fame.
Update: Oh yes, there's Big Belly Blues, too.
I just popped over to the CS team's area to help them with a spot of merging. Turns out my Shared iTunes Library is very popular over there. Nice.
I did have to point out that the High School Musical albums are Ella's, though. (I should also mention that the first album that Ella ever bought with her own money was Blondie, Parallel Lines, which is pretty cool for a nine-year-old I'd say.)
My music collection doesn't always get off so lightly. The other day the iTunes artwork screensaver was running. Negin asked me where all the album covers came from, and I told her that they were all covers from CDs I own.
"Funny," said Swells, "I thought it was my dad's record collection."
Ouch. When Swells insults you, you stay insulted.
Interesting that people seemed to assume that £2.90 per album was some kind of failure for Radiohead's In Rainbows. Thing is, it's not how much people are paying that is the issue, but how much the band gets. £2.90 is considerably more that they'd get per sale via traditional methods, and it seems that it's a lot more than they'd get via iTunes, too - so it looks like a success to me.
Whether this will work for anyone other than the best band in the world remains to be seen, of course. ;-)
El P just sent me a link to this:
Radiohead: 01 and 10 - wonderfully barking.
Also interesting - She Talks In Maths - hear some tracks on MySpace. Sounds fab, but is that just 'cos the material is so good? Might be worth picking up, anyway.
This Kraftwork take-off is hysterical:
Bill Bailey is a god.
The Wikipedia is wonderful, too - who would ever have guessed that the Hokey Cokey had its origins in anti-Catholic propaganda?
I'm a little disappointed with Overpowered, to be honest. The title track is lovely, but little of the rest of it shows the originally I was hoping for from Ms. Murphy. There's nothing like the mad inventiveness of a Ramalama (Bang Bang) here.
In fact, a lot of it sounds rather dated, rather 80s. And not in a good way. (Is there a good way of sounding rather 80s?) I might have been listening to the Eurythmics on an off-night half the time.
The Black and White Album, OTOH, is great. It is more of the same on the whole, as I thought it would be, but my goodness aren't The Hives magnificent in full flight?
It's a good month for music. I got the new PJ Harvey's White Chalk a couple of weeks ago, the fabulous In Rainbows last week, and I'm picking up The Black and White Album (more of the same, I'm sure, but fun with it) and Overpowered (who knows, but a wonderfully barking cover) on my way home this evening.
Just came across the Overpowered video:
Superb.
Funny - In Rainbows reviewed in a Guardian Cricket stylee.
Update: I had a listen to much of it this lunchtime. First impressions - very dense, not especially jolly, beautiful. Typical Radiohead, really. More later.
And yes, it's finally arrived, thanks. Word is that it's pretty good - I'll let you know what I think of it when I get a chance to give it a listen or two.
No one else seems to be having any trouble. Is it only me?
Bah. Not happy.
I've fired off am email to W.A.S.T.E, but no reply yet. I hope they are good, 'cos there are some t-shirts I fancy from them too (Hadley or no Hadley) but if they don't answer customer queries, I'll keep my money.
In Rainbows is out tomorrow. Ooooh, I'm excited!
Naturally, I went for the box set. I'sd be in two minds about spending £40 on an album by anyone else, but this is Radiohead we are talking about here. No brainer.
I'm in two minds about the whole experiment, though, I must say. I'm perfectly happy to see the stupid record companies get it in the neck, but I'm less happy about cutting the record shops out of the loop. (Yes, I'm quite aware that this is inconsistent, but still.) I buy almost all my music from real, meatspace record shops. For me, poking around looking for stuff, more often than not stumbling across something I wasn't expecting, is half the fun. If we don't buy from them, they'll just disappear.
Ah well. Download tomorrow!
Update: Bah! Bloody download doesn't work!
I went to Fernando's stag night on Friday. Had a great time - I ended up smuggling them all into my local for a last beer or two just after midnight, just after we shouldn't really have been allowed in - thanks, Andy!
Fernando and Helen got married on Saturday morning, the day after the stag and hen nights. I hope it went well - I know I was feeling a bit dodgy on Saturday morning - but then I did have to get up before seven.
Fernando's a real gent. He's working in Paris at the moment, and he bought me a present - a copy of the live Camille album that I've not been able to get a hold of in the UK, Live au Trianon.
It's really fabulous. If you've not heard Camille, run, don't walk to your nearest record shop and pick up something - La Fil seems to be available in loads of places. I promise you, she's like nothing you've ever heard. And the fact that I don't understand a word of the lyrics seems to make it even better - it's a pure musical experience.
The French can't make good popular music, you say? Give her a try, trust me. I bought about half a dozen of her CDs as Christmas presents this year.
There's a downside, though. If there's one thing I hate more than copy protection, it's incompetent copy protection. I can't listen to the CD itself on my CD player - it sounds awful, clicks every few seconds. But I had no problem ripping the CD to iTunes, and burning myself a new copy that plays fine. What's the point of that?
Updated: It was Friday night, not Saturday night. Doh!
I swear my iPod takes the piss sometimes. I popped into a record shop on my way home on Monday to pick up Grinderman, only to find that it's not out 'till next week. And my iPod played me two Nick Cave tracks on the way home...
(I did grab Yours Truly, Angry Mob, though, so the trip wasn't totally wasted.)
It's lucky that I have to buy all this stuff, 'cos it's not only bookshelves I've run out of - my CD shelves are all full, too. Hundreds of the bloody things I have. (It's a bloody good thing I won't be working at ThoughtWorks' Holborn office - it's just too close to Charing Cross Road for all the great bookshops, Oxford Street and Berwick Street for record shops, and Regent's Street for the Apple Store. I'd be bankrupt in six months.)
I did love Help! I need somebody to sort my CD collection. It's a real problem. I've gone for grouped by artist, generally random otherwise - though I do have shelves specifically for jazz and classical. Err, classical and baroque. But there's a bit more grouping than that - solo artists are sometimes kept with bands that they've been in - Paul Weller with The Jam, Sting with The Police, Roger Waters with Pink Floyd, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood with Radiohead, The Raconteurs with The White Stripes. I think you get the idea. ;-)
Naturally, I can never find anything.
And sorting by Genre? That way lies madness. I spent ages fiddling with the genres in iTunes, then just gave up and put 90% of it under Rock/Pop.
Anyway, Recent new acquisitions that I'm enjoying include The Noisettes, Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly., Jamie T and Jonny Greenwood's Bodysong. Recent disappointments include The Good, The Bad and The Queen and the new Bloc Party album.