The Nightcast. Yes, night. I am recording this at about two in the morning for the simple reason that for all I aim to do these once a week, on the weekend, once again it has been just plain impossible to actually get the damn thing done on the weekend just gone, so here I am squeezing it into the ungodly hours of Tuesday night. Well, Wednesday now. And of course I am off to The Great Escape in the morning. Actually, it already is the morning. Oh all right then, by the time this is [...]
I love videos like these. Some Australian chappie made loads, and I stumbled across them a few months ago and just couldn't stop watching them. You know, the funny thing about quitting my job is how incredibly easy I have found it to be disciplined about my new job. I don't sleep in, I still work late, although not as crazily late as I used to have to, and I don't even skive and piss about on the internet during the day. This morning, however, I slept in. Shit. Until eleven, which is quite bad, and [...]
Ah, Flower Communion Sunday. Traditionally the last Sunday service before a Universalist Unitarian parish moves to a lay-led summer, the Flower Communion celebrates both the contributory nature of the UU community and the natural world by bringing the blooming world into the church at its last, and then letting it go back out again as we ourselves turn to the world of social justice and peace-making. The beauty and diversity of life - of our own, and the bounty of the land - is present in the rich cornucopia of the green-stemmed bounty. [...]
I admitted in a comment yesterday that I don't really understand my general dislike of cover versions. I don't object to them at all, just the opposite in fact: generally I am really interested to hear them, and I like the fact that songs exist in that sort of malleable state, unfixed by any one 'correct' interpretation. The problem is not in principle, just practise; I simply tend not to like them very much, and I don't know why. To make matters even less logical, I love people playing folk songs, and of course the whole folk tradition [...]
Here's a bit of 73 pleasure that no-one with any vaguely folky inclinations should permit to pass them by. The Left Outsides were born in the fallout of the demise of brilliant London psych-folksters The 18th Day of May. Alison and Mark played viola and guitar respectively in that much-lamented band, and have since continued to play together, forming The Left Outsides fairly hot on the heels of the breakup. There are times when their music is a little glacial of pace for my liking, but they are capable of doing some really brilliant things at [...]
I've written about these guys before, and they made an appearance on the old podcast this week. They were a London psychedelic folk group whose brilliant self-titled debut album sounds uncannily like it could have been cut from the undiscovered sessions for Fairpost Convention's Liege & Lief masterpiece. Anyhow, they packed it all in about [...]
Ah, shit. Unfortunately, the quite fantastic Eighteenth Day of May have decided to call it a day, so to speak. They sent out a myspace bulletin saying very little, but that it was an amicable split and that they will be off to do new things. This is a right bloody shame as far as I'm concerned as I loved their album , released early last year, to the extent that I named it in my Top 10 of 2006 . I saw them play live at the ABC2 in Glasgow, [...]
Song, by Toad
Cover Lay Down
mp3hugger
The orchestra is dreaming
American Idol Finalists: where are they now?
