indie-pop christmas

Christmas in Scotland was a good time. For the journey up and general reading i had just bought the Belle And Sebastian biography, Just A Modern Rock Story, by Paul Whitelaw. I was probably about 30 pages in when i started travelling. A really good read, even if the author can be a bit of an arsehole sometimes, and gets a bit fervent with his own opinions. Informative none-the-less, tho a bit rose-tinted in its portrayal of Glasgow, as being only populated with an army of bowlie kids, and bohemian coffee shops. Still, it did make me think of relocating back at some point, reminiscing on my own times living in the west end of glasgow, just into your twenties and wanting to do something different and interesting.
There were some Stuart Murdoch coincidences in place and time i wasn't aware of. He had moved out to San Francisco for a brief time in 1994, as had myself and Pat back then. Then in 1996, he had been about to move back, when the whole Stow College / Tigermilk record came about, thereby preventing him from doing so; '96 was the year that myself and Pat moved out there for good.
I wasn't a massive fan back then, and didnt know too much about them, although i remember missing out on the Mitchell Library gig, as it had sold out within about ten minutes or something silly. We were all skating around that area that evening, and i think we were minus Toby who had managed to go along.
I had actually made it to an earlier gig of theirs, without realising who it was - For around five minutes one saturday night, i had dated a girl called Aislay. I dont think thats how it is spelled, it was Gaelic. She was a quiet girl, and i thought we had gotten on well that evening, she came back to mine to stay after a night out at the Art School, just sleeping over mind. The next morning, i never did find out what was going through her head, and she took off. The following evening however, she had a gig she had told me about, for a band her college class was releasing a record by - guess who - at the Art School again. So i went along to that show in the Vic bar of the art school, but Aislay wasn't for talking to me again that evening, and i had no idea what was going on, and paid very little attention to the band in my confused ways. Alas, history!
While me and Pat were living out in San Francisco was when i got into "If You're Feeling Sinister" and "The Boy With The Arab Strab", so to me they are both San Francisco albums, and reading this biography was a nice way to tie them back into Glasgow for me, and yet to see some San Francisco parrallels in there, with the band and Stuart Murdock being such fans of the city also.
Funnily, i also learnt that one of my friends Thea Martin, now lives in Australia, through the book, and one of its footnotes - it mentioned how the band had bumped into her last summer in Australia and how they hadnt seen her for years either.
Reading the book, I also learnt of another band, called Camera Obscura who Stuart Murdoch had done some work producing and recording. When i got back home after christmas, my wife/ex-wife had actually bought me a copy of their album "Underachievers Please Try Harder", complete coincidence and a right good one at that, as the album is ace!

Feeling lazy about going out tonite. I just been sleeping since i got back from Glasgow...

music -= less

Not much musical content to report, i'm afraid.

I havent been out at a gig in at least a week, partially due to being floored by this Flu-bug; partially due to my dayjob, with us moving office this week, and the amount of IT prepartion is astronomical. Chasing our ISP (Star.net.uk - stay away from them, they are less than useless. I now hate them with a passion!), and waiting on BT. I am convinced our ISP has done absolutely nothing to speed this along. My contact for this job, wouldn't even email me a response to anything, until i contacted her manager to complain, so i'm sure that put me in the bad books from the beginning.
Anyway, big move day is friday, and as it stands, we still have no internet connection. bleurgh, i dont even wanna write about it!

Lisa left for Florida on sunday morning, so at least i have the house to myself which is great. I may even get up to Scotland myself on the 23rd, assuming this office move goes ok.

music-wise, i been listening to a few things and digging them..

DJ Koze - Kosi Comes Around
Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary

The DJ Koze one is sorta minimal german house music, not something i'm particuarily into, but this one stands out for some reason. I noticed its been reviewed on Pitchfork, so i'm assuming this is getting kinda big, and I'm just slow to pick up on it!

Wolf Parade is a Sub Pop release, which actually i think has been out for quite a while also. I got hold of a copy awhile back, and never gave it much chance, but after a few friends talking about how good it was, i went back to it and left it on repeat for a few plays. Its pretty good, not groundbreaking, but i think if you enjoy The Shins, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, its the sort of thing you'd like. I had it on the ipod on the way to work today and was loving it.

I also finished The Wild Highway today also, the book i ws reading, written by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning. It was amazing, i would highly recommend it to anyone. Its fucked up, weird, violent, funny (and thats just the Mark Manning chapters!), introspective, thoughtful, enlightening, and inspiring (bill's!). I'm not much of a person for role models, or admiring celebs, or looking up to anyone really, but ever i was offered the chance of meeting anyone you wanted to, Bill Drummond would be the only choice.

He's influenced my life in so many different ways..
My first encounter was in 1990, when me and a friend Gerry were first discovering the joys of psychedelics, and our other friends introduced us the KLF album Chillout.
There was all their pop antics with the KLF, which started out ok, but which we quickly tired of (all the Tammy Wynette tongue-in-cheek spoofs etc), tho we never tired of the KLF themselves.
I remember poring over The Face articles about their past, and the Billboard Liberation Front, and various other anti-art antics, trying to decipher truth from myth. Well in fact, not even trying to separate them, i believe they were the first people to make me think, 'whats the difference?', and to enjoy and relish the ambiguity of it all.
I read Bad Wisdom when it first came out, which i think was '96, and i remember randomly started a chat with some guy at the Sub Club, and somehow we got onto the subject and discovered we were both reading it at the same time, which fitted perfetcly with teh theme of synchronisity in the book (did it have a theme of synchronisity or is that my memory tying it together with the Merry Pranksters, who my friend and i considered ourselves direct descendents of, at least in spirit, and partially why we identified with Bill and Jimmy).
I remember watching the documentary about the burning of the million quid, sitting with my friend Pat, in what was my first ever flat away from home. At the end of the program, Pat got out a pound note (when they still made them) and was about to start burning it, when i quickly stopped him, to give him fifty pence, so that I could be part of the money burning!.
After that, theres been '45', and i read 'The Manual' at some point, tho not when it was first out. I could ramble for longer, and should probably re-read what i've written to see if its coherent, but alas, i need to dash out, and hadnt even figured on writing all that! Anyhoo, Bill if you're out there, and wanna meet up with a fello w Scot who thinks they are on the same level as yourself, get in touch!

numbers and books

Ace! the new randomNumber album came back yesterday after much wrangles with customs and VAT. Looks and sounds great.

I been working away hard tonight, updated all the Highpoint Lowlife website with new reviews, and updated it for the randomNumber release, caught up on stinky accounts and invoicing, bleurgh.

And thats about it. No wait, actually, during the daytime, well, for the past few days, I have been so lost in the new Bill Drummond and Mark Manning book, The Wild Highway - wow, its mad genius, absolute excellence. Only half way through at the moment, and really wanna savor it as much as possible.

Also, i think i'm getting rsi in my hands. That would suck really badly, but both my index fingers are hurting really badly.

weekender

Sunday night, knackered.. happy. that was a really good weekend.

thursday night I went to Eric's new monthly event, for Leafcutter John's performance of his new album. It was a great wee venue, the Flea Pit, and very intimate performance space, separated from the bar, for a really good listening experience. I had to leave tho, as Like A Stuntman had arrived off the plane from Germany, and were heading to my house. We stayed up smoking and drinking and catching up for a while. Friday eve, they had a show at Silver Rocket upstairs at the Garage with Rainer Maria, Blood Red Shows, and October All Over. Both opening bands were pretty good. Like A Stuntman started off a bit ropey, but pulled it together by half way through, and ended with one of their best performances of The Fuck Concert song. I got some early versions of their new songs they are working on, and they sound ace!

Saturday night, the Marcia Blaine School For Girls were down from Glasgow, Dave and Ruaridh were DJing at Werk, or at least thats what i had thought, but they actually did a Village Unit live set, which is their ragga dancehall mashup project, in full costumed regalia! Absolute genius!

Check the pictures from the weekend over at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sideb0ard/sets/1507973/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sideb0ard/sets/1508009/

crash2

Dreamt all last night about my website being back online, and awoke at 7:30am this morning - i dashed downstairs to check if my online presence was back, but alas not - there was an email in my gmail account, saying the earliest someone could reboot it would be 8:30am.. California time!! argh - thats like another whole UK day of downtime and untold frustration. I couldn't handle it, i needed control, so before i had even left for work, i registered a UK based hosting company, and transferred my domain over. If you try www.highpointlowlife.com now, depending on your DNS cache, you should see a holding page of sorts, and at least some of my emails are now getting through.

Ug, what a nightmare, but at least its all coming togther now. The webhosting company seems pretty decent - i get ssh shell access, a MySQL backend, and its all run on Redhat Linux.

Anyways, excellent weekend coming up, so i'm just going let it go, theres no point in stressing over things outside your control! Yes - tomorrow sees Like A Stuntman grace these shores once more, for a last UK show of 2005, and then saturday sees the Marcia Blaine School For Girls down DJing at the Werk party. And i have tomorrow off work! yay.