Archive for July, 2010

Sound It Out

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

This makes me want to go to Teeside right now:

In fact, it makes me want to go to any record shop right now. But I’ve got too many things to do up here on the top floor of the mill I suppose.
There’s nothing like walking out of a proper record shop with a proper record.
Mailorder is exciting, but the online browsing/finding/buying experience isn’t as exciting as the physical one. I literally get goosebumps even if something looks similar to Red House Painter’s Rollercoaster LP. Derby has just got an independent record store back from the dead – BPM. From what I remember it was the main one once, dealt with everything, and then got marginalised by Way Ahead’s indie/rock A-Z prowess, and mainly dealt in House and Trance. Now it’s back it’s a one man job and is so far just full of fairweather stuff retrieved from fallen record shops or dead people. But there’s some gems. I got ‘Blood’ by This Mortal Coil last week on double LP. Beast of a record. Once the chap gets on his feet I can’t wait for the distributors to start chucking new releases his way.

On the flipside, I got this through the post today, and (as is now typical to point out on this here) there’s some nice links and thoughts on time therein lifted from the liner notes…

photo-2

“Time Out is a first experiment with time, which may well come to be regarded as more than an arrow pointing to the future. Something great has been attempted…and achieved. The very first arrow has found it’s mark.”
- Steve Race

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Posted in Music, Time | 1 Comment »

On The Inaccuracies Of The Back To The Future Related Twitter Meme

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Today a lot of people have been sending me messages about today being the day that Doctor Emmett L. Brown would have ended up in had he not ‘got shot’ at the start of Back To The Future. They’re not far wrong, but today is not THAT DAY that hundreds of people have been retweeting about. Prepare for a geek-off…

For one thing, Doc never got to set the clock, so we couldn’t have seen it in the film. That’s why Marty ends up back in time, on the “red letter date” of November 5th 1955 (the day Doc Brown hits his head on the toilet and wakes up with the vision of the Flux Capacitor).

Here’s Doc saying how far he’s going into the future:

Screen shot 2010-07-05 at 18.43.18

See there. Twenty Five Years To Be Exact. Damn straight. But…

Presuming he was going exactly twenty-five years into the future (can we presume that though, can we really?) he would have gone to October 26th. Check it:

Screen shot 2010-07-05 at 18.42.36

That’s from when Einstein (the dog) went one minute into the future. Oh, and even at the end when Doc does go to the future, he’s heading for “about thirty years” which could mean anything. See you there though…

So…right year, wrong date. Fucking cool though. Hopefully I won’t get sued for using these pictures…and if I do, maybe I can pay the legal fees by doing paid public speaking on Why It Might Be Necessary To Ignore The Opening Of Back To The Future Part II In Order To Fully Enjoy The Sequels, And Why In Doing So You’ll Enjoy Them More, You’ll Even Enjoy ZZ Top’s Appearance In Part III When They Were Allowed To Keep Their Twirly Guitars When Huey Lewis Wasn’t Allowed To Keep His Mullet.

“Run For It Marty!”

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Posted in Time | 2 Comments »

Always Celebrating

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Someone’s made a film about Fine Before You Came. I’ve been lucky enough to go to Italy a few time over the years, and travel around with these guys either with The Little Explorer or Crash of Rhinos, on my own or with company. Because of Fine Before You Came we met Maurizio from Triste who ended up inviting us to Turin for a week-long recording session. Good shit just seems to happen around these five Italians.

These guys are the best kind of people. Really. I met them at The Victoria Inn in 2002. Since then I’ve made sure to go and be with them at least once a year. It’s a poor year when that doesn’t happen. The title of this film, made about their recent shows since the release of their incredible fourth album ’sfortuna’, translates to ’self-congratulation’. Literally, I guess that would be a kind of bad thing…but these guys haven’t got a self-indulgent bone in their collective body. It’s more like the celebration of The Self. If you meet these guys you’ll have a good time, and probably end up laughing until you throw up, even though you can’t understand a word they say. Go and download ’sfortuna’ from them for free here, then order the 12″ (it sounds immenso), then go and see them and say “Hi”.

Posted in Crash Of Rhinos, Inspiration, Music | No Comments »