Blog: Uprock Narratives and Unknown Pleasures

I am totally charmed by The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society . S sorted me out with a copy a few weeks back and I’ve only managed to play it seriously for the last day or two. I love Ray Davies’ style; when the rock and pop mainstream were singing of peace, love and psychedelia in the late 1960s, he rather quaintly released songs about village greens, grocer boys, old oak trees and Sunday Schools. I read somewhere that Davies had rejected all things American after Uncle Sam failed to grasp the whimsy of his Kinks and [...]

A busy time of the year for me this. A heady mix of too much to do elsewhere, the heat, the World Cup and recent dental miseries has kept me away from these pages. Regular visitors to these pages should expect a quietish period. England’s 2-0 victory against Trinidad and Tobago was probably deserved but was nonetheless frustrating and nerve-wracking. I am keen to sign up to the theory that a slow starting England might just peak at the right time and use later improvements to carry themselves a long way in the tournament. [...]

I bought the Midlake album this morning and am playing it now. It does possess a seventies soft-rock feel but I say this not as a bad thing. The Trials of Van Occupanther is charming. The song I love is Young Bride . I’ve heard it on BBC 6Music about three or four times and it is a stunning song full of haunting melody and a tangible melancholia. The use of violin is perfect. I don’t know if anyone shares this view but when I buy an album and I know one of the songs already, I’m [...]

The penicillin has started to kick in and swelling on my jowl/cheek/chin is diminishing although I still retain a hamsteresque countenance. A colleague remarked jauntily this morning that I appeared ‘more symmetrical’ today which is an encouragement of sorts. There are two albums I strongly desire. Twelve Stops and Home by The Feeling has harvested fine reviews for its melodic nods to the likes of Wings and E.L.O.and I reckon I could do with a dollop. Another album I’d like is The Trials of Van Occupanther by wistful Texans, Midlake. [...]

Although I spent much of the weekend at the Wychwood Festival, I didn’t really manage to catch much music. I savoured a few Squeeze classics played by Chris Difford, lounged about and enjoyed half an hour of Eliza Carthy’s collaboration with Salsa Celtica (which was superb!) and loved what I saw of Field Music (edgy and angular and sharp) to the extent that I’m keen to purchase some of their stuff. I did want to watch the Amadou et Miriam set but I had my elder daughter with me on the Sunday and it was getting late. School the next [...]

A few days away from here and toothache is to blame. I’ve been suffering all week and a (rare) trip to the dentist this morning confirmed that an abscess is causing me all this pain and is responsible for my newly acquired Desperate Dan chin. A course of penicillin shall ease the swelling and I’ve been popping more pills than the late period Happy Mondays to relieve the rotten pain. Naturally, I’m milking this for all it is worth. Of course, I have been following the Wayne Rooney broken foot saga with fierce concentration [...]

The Tesco receipt, humble and unassuming, that you see above, led to a bit of an unfortunate incident this lunchtime. The alert and mathematically skilled amongst you will notice that I, apart from favouring the cheaper end of the baked bean market, decided to approach the ‘ten items or fewer’ till with, shockingly, eleven separate grocery pieces. This led to problems. I am normally greeted cheerfully by whoever serves me and I regularly respond in a similar jovial fashion to the check-out person. Today’s lack of eye contact from a rather surly young lady should have warned me [...]

Vashti Bunyan at St. George’s Hall, Bristol This was tingles down spine territory. Vashti and her delightful band only played for 45 minutes but it was utterly gorgeous stuff, an enchanting mixture of newer songs from Lookaftering and old ‘classics’ from Just Another Diamond Day and beyond. The voice was hushed and whispered, the playing understated and dainty but the strength and quality of the songs underpinned everything. The three minute glimpses into gentle worlds and daydreams were captivating. Vashti herself was utterly shy and modest, timidly peering at the audience from behind a [...]

The latest Mojo Magazine is a corker featuring a piece on The Beatles’ 1966 opus, Revolver as well as the 101 (why not 100?) best Beatles songs chosen by a large panel of expert-texperts. All this Beatledom was, frankly, right up my street. Before I opened the edition I was keen to guess the Top Three and I was nearly right; A Day in the Life and Strawberry Fields Forever exotically claimed numbers one and two as predicted but my choice for third best song, I am the Walrus only came 38th. Goo goo [...]

It is fashionable on the Gloucester rugby messageboards to waft disrespect towards the round ball, association code of football but I quite enjoy watching soccer and especially the World Cup which remains the greatest sporting event on the planet. I love it deeply. Like a lot of folk, I am able to chart my life through the four-yearly tournament from the six-month old bairn perched in a high chair while Hurst netted his hat trick to a 36 year old father of three ejaculating a tremulous, ‘Gooooallllll!’ as Beckham’s penalty sinks Argentinian hearts in ’02. I recall little about my [...]

I haven’t done a great deal this weekend but the onus has been on relaxin’ and rechargin’ after a hectic few weeks. I have made a bit of an effort to play stuff on my MP3 player that I have neglected and hardly, if ever, listened to. The default setting seems to have been ‘Sufjan Stevens, Go-Betweens or Shack’ recently. Yesterday I lay on the bed and played Elliot Smith’s From a Basement on the Hill all the way through for the first time. I dug (sorry, I’m running out of synonyms for ‘enjoyed’ on these pages) its strong sense [...]