Monthly Archive for February, 2008

coming to the chorus: last month’s mix, february 2008;

This entry is part 17 of 28 in the series monthly mix club

In what I hope is the final, final teething problem I have to encounter as I get used to iRena, it’s taken me all night to upload this month’s mix. Just in from our Jo’s birthday/leaving Glasgow party, and not yet packed for the Hold Steady: Round 2, so not much in the way of insightful commentary. Except this selection seems even more random than last time around, and a little too heavy on the novelty covers.

In my defence, the first draft of this mix featured the original “Into The Mystic”, but I take part in a monthly mix exchange and the gentleman who will be receiving mine is a bigger Van Morrison fan than I am. And with Hansard & Irglova’s big triumph still fresh, it seemed appropriate.

And yes, the last track might have been a recent selection.

This should remain up for download until it’s time for the next instalment. Monthly Most Played will return next month, as according to my new iTunes library I’ve been listening to Steve Earle’s “If You Fall” and very little else. Back in Glasgow on Sunday – be good while I’m gone.

I Don’t Know Darlin’, But We’re Coming To The Chorus Now: last month’s mix, Feb 2008
1. Tom Waits: The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
2. Billy Bragg: Waiting For The Great Leap Forward
3. The Format: The First Single
4. Death Cab For Cutie: World Shut Your Mouth
5. Josh Ritter: Right Moves
6. The Damnwells: I’ve Got You
7. Thao Nguyen: Bag of Hammers
8. Red House Painters: Have You Forgotten
9. Marah: Songbirdz
10. The Mountain Goats: Heretic Pride
11. John Vanderslice: The Minaret
12. Songdog: A Prayer To Old Idols
13. Vampire Weekend: Exit Music (For A Film)
14. Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova: Into The Mystic
15. The Hold Steady: Killer Parties

[zipped mp3s, left click & save]

the hold steady almost killed me;

the hold steady (1)
Continue reading ‘the hold steady almost killed me;’

i killed the zeitgeist;




Specially-drawn tote bags

Originally uploaded by pennybofficial

In the current pop climate, where there isn’t a record label worth its salt without a pseudo-indie young, female singer-songwriter-with-a-strong-regional-accent type on its roster, the fact that Penny Broadhurst remains unsigned is a crime against humanity right up there with rhyming “bitt-ah” and “fitt-ah” when there are perfectly acceptable forms of those words with “r”s on the end which rhyme just as well.

If your knowledge of what it’s like to be an independent artist extends only as far as what you read about Vampire Weekend in G2 last Saturday, you’d be forgiven for thinking that all a musician has to do to guarantee success in the 21st century version of the industry is upload a couple of tracks to Myspace and wait for the offers to pour in. I would have been suspicious enough about the rags-to-riches mythology of Lily Allen or the Arctic Monkeys if I hadn’t been following Penny’s career since we got to know each other on that predecessor to all the social networking and blogging sites however many years ago. I’ve seen the work that she’s put in, the sacrifices she’s made and the dignity and determination with which she has solidly refused to compromise her principles in order to make a living from her art. It’s not as easy as all that, you know.

Two things, to my mind, stand in Penny’s way. The first is that she’s roughly the same age as me, which isn’t old – we’d be prodigies if we were pilots or politicians – but means a lazy record label doesn’t get to pop a lazy but she’s only… in their press pack. The second, related to this, is that she knows what she wants and isn’t willing to be moulded to fit somebody else’s idea of what she should sound like in order to make a few bob or get on whatever the equivalent of Top of the Pops is to all these Bebo kids (I have no idea, but I imagine they show it on T4 on a Sunday morning). She’s the ultimate non-sellout, and call me idealistic but I think that’s something that deserves to be applauded.

Having successfully made the transition to fully-fledged indie popstar goddess type over the course of 2007 (think a grittier, Northern Helen Love who’s swapped the rollerskates for purple DMs, but who can still dance with the best of them), Penny showcases the DIY aesthetic whenever she performs. She likes zines, cakes and badges, and I’m really looking forward to picking up one of these hand-made tote bags at her show at the Oran Mor on Sunday.

Yes, that would be the point of this post: if you’re in Glasgow on a Sunday evening with a fiver to spare, you could do worse than a bit of a dance in the West End. If you’re not in Glasgow, don’t fret: there are a bunch of Leeds and London dates up on the ubiquitous Myspace, along with some top tunes. Or if you know any decent promoters in your part of the country, have a word and see if they have any gaps in their schedule for the summer.

hole in my heart and a gun in my face;

jesse & lis (2)
Heheheh. There’s always an excuse to use this particular picture.

Musically, I recognise that Jesse Malin’s heart-on-his-sleeve approach may not be to everybody’s tastes, but there’s one thing you can’t fault the guy on: I have never met anybody else as convinced of the vitalness of music. Malin reminds me of myself in the sense that he doesn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the American tune, but what he loves, he loves to distraction.

Cover songs have long been a staple of the Jesse Malin experience, from the quasi-religious sit-down singalong to Neil Young’s “Helpless” during his legendary live shows, to the haunting piano-led take on the Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” that closed 2007′s Glitter in the Gutter LP, via some of the early b-sides. I first heard about Malin’s desire to produce an album of cover versions from the man himself last year, a labour of love that the Replacements track was originally supposed to be a part of. I had asked him why a piano version of a bratty punk track, and he responded: “When I cover songs I don’t want to be the Human Karaoke Machine… I wanted to make [the song] a little more desperate, more exposed and tender because the lyrics are so phenomenal.” The result is perhaps a little more convincing live than on record, but I might be only saying that because I love the original.

Whether it turns out to be a disaster or not, I can’t help but be excited about On Your Sleeve, an album of covers to be released in April through One Little Indian. It’s the result of seven days of crazy fun, trying on other people’s clothes in my own apartment according to the press bumph that just hit my inbox, and the tracklist is as follows:

1. Looking For A Love (Neil Young)
2. Rock And Roll Radio (Ramones)
3. Sway (Rolling Stones)
4. Russian Roulette (Slime)
5. Gates Of The West (Clash)
6. Me And Julio Down By The School Yard (Paul Simon) (!!)
7. You Can Make Them Like You (The Hold Steady)
8. Walk On The Wild Side (Lou Reed)
9. Harmony (Elton John)
10. Rodeo Town (The Kills)
11. Wonderful World (Sam Cooke)
12. Operator (Jim Croce)
13. I Hope I Don’t Fall In Love (Tom Waits) (!!!!!)
14. Everybody’s Talking (Harry Nilsson)

Jesse’s only got one UK date on the horizon, at the Soho Revue Bar in London on 26th March. You should go – do it for the editor who cannot conceivably take time off work then.

Jesse Malin – Bastards of Young [Replacements cover] [YSI]
The Replacements – Bastards of Young [YSI]
Jesse Malin – You Can Make Him Like You [Hold Steady cover] [YouTube]

[On the subject of The Replacements, Jay and various blogs have reminded me that today is the anniversary of Bob Stinson's death. And of course I never met him, but I know what the music means to me. To go back to my Jesse Malin interview: "[T]hey were a band who influenced me a lot – they’re a band I got to see when they were like a “band”, and they were doing the alternative/country/punk/rock mix of music before there were labels for it – they just played music. They weren’t afraid to do an acoustic song and rip your heart out, or a fast punk thrash song.”]

can’t believe you faked it, stupid girl;

As you may be aware, the T in the Park lineup has just been announced: you can see it in all its mocking-my-cynicism glory, including the National, the Pogues and headliners REM, on the website.

My sister got early bird tickets, as per tradition. She would like to know who the hell that Rage Against The Machine headlining on the Saturday are, and whether they sing Enchanted songs.

Now begins the indoctrination process before I become a fully-fledged convert to the Church of Mac. You see, I sorta did a silly thing yesterday, and it went a little something like this: I’ve been having a wee problem with my iPod Touch in that every time I sync it to iTunes it resets the time to something ridiculous on the 22nd January. I’d managed to get it to stop when it originally started happening by doing a Google search and overriding some settings, but when Lola was up – as if in protest at its connection to my manky laptop when there were two pretty MacBooks in the room – it developed the fault again and I couldn’t fix it. So I took it to the nice iPod Doctor at the Apple Store in Buchanan Street, where they poked and prodded and overrode all the settings, before telling me that it was an incompatibility issue with Windows Vista and that I’d just have to put up with it.

On receiving the news I had been expecting, because Vista is a pig of an operating system and I hate it, I sighed and said, “Okay. I’m buying a MacBook.”

The Mac “Genius” smiled nervously, while somebody next to me burst out laughing.

I repeated my intentions again.

“It’s not supposed to work like that!” the “Genius” protested, as if to reassure other shoppers that he and his like are not employed to convince us to purchase sleek, shiny gadgets that we neither need or want. And I thanked him, stepped off the stool and headed downstairs, where after twenty minutes chatting with a salesman and trying out the merchandise I left with a sleek white MacBook by the name of iRena.

It’s just – can I work the bloody thing?! My first frustation came when trying to copy my iTunes Library over. I found a hack online, screwed it up because I don’t speak the language of Mac and have now lost all my playcounts, ratings and playlists. It took me ages to override my browser settings so that new windows always open in tabs, and even then it only does it when it feels like it. I can’t right-click and drag, or right-click and delete, or indeed right-click and anything since there is no right-click.

“You just need to stop thinking like a Windows user,” says Jay, that boyfriend of mine who loves Apple more than he loves me. “Don’t approach things as a Windows user would, just ask yourself what the most logical thing to do would be and do it.” But I’m almost 26, and have been using Windows since they invented computers back when I was a lass, and the most logical thing to do is to do it the Windows way!!

Ignore my whining. I know I’m going to grow to love my MacBook like I’ve never loved anything, even my iPod Touch. But until then, I feel like a native Spanish speaker learning Portugese. Everything’s a little bit familiar, and does the same thing in the end, but it’s totally different.

The weekend starts here. I’ve just had a lovely lunch at Stereo with Tim and Jehane after finally finding the right city centre back-alley. Tonight my sister is coming over for much-needed Sister Time (both High School Musical movies back to back, I have been promised) and of course there is TROT later if ma wee legs can hack it. Saturday is Bingo Granny Night at the Blonde’s, and I intend to make experimental strawberry daiquiri cupcakes in preparation.

PS Damn timezones when things happen too late for you to post about timeously. If you ain’t got enough of that Valetine stuff yet, my dear American friend Douglas Martin has a little musical treat for y’all: download Bourbon and Bedsheets (ft. two original tracks plus covers of songs by Akron/Family, The Shins, PJ Harvey and others) at sound on the sound.

honest to blog: a state of the pixlet post;

I can be a grumpy beggar at times, but the truth is I love this messy, sparwling, noisy city of ours to distraction. Even now, it never ceases to catch me off guard. Just yesterday my bezzer and I were enjoying some tapas (those bits I could scrape the weird yoghurt dressings off of), when I remarked on the number of people streaming by the window in green and white considering it was Rangers playing in Europe that night. Later, as we headed for the bus, we heard distant singing. “Is it starting already?” I said, rolling my eyes, as I assumed it was the neighbours who were going to crowd our bus home and be offensive and loud. Only… wait. That singing wasn’t what I was used to..!

And then we rounded the corner and were greeted with this. It’s not only Cellick that play in green and white.

Shame the game wasn’t as exciting as the throng – I got home to find Lola and Jay half asleep on the sofas in front of a 0-0 draw on STV.

It’s been great having my bezzer all to myself for a couple of days. We didn’t do a huge amount: sat on our laptops; watched some Wing; related it to current US politics; went to see the sweet and enjoyable Juno*; had lunch; tried to figure out if the X-Files movie stills are taken in the FBI or in Mulder’s apartment or somewhere else and whether or not that’s “canon” (actually, wait, that was just me); bought a blender and made the most awesome dinner of fajitas, cheesy nachos with all the sour cream/guacamole/other things Lis can’t eat left out for other people to dip into as they wished, with homemade frozen daiquiris.

Lola and I rarely get to hang out just ourselves, since living in different cities means that there are often other demands on our time when we get together, but she’s my best girl ever for no reason other than she is, we just are and it’s effortless and ace, and it’s been a great, chilled-out couple of days. Just what I needed before magazine stress cranks up again, which is looking like sooner rather than later.

[*So, Kate: I was too busy during the week to chat about this properly but I loved it without reservation. The problems that the h8ers seem to have with it generally relate to the self-consciously hip dialogue and soundtrack, but as I loathe Bland & Sebastian the second isn't an issue for me - but, kudos where it's due, the DiS soundtrack review is funny. Some of the lines at the start of the film were a bit clunky, the sort that you and I would have rolled our eyes at, but I got into it pretty quickly and after the first twenty minutes didn't even notice. So there you go.]

In “knee-knack“, as The Fiver would so tactfully call it, news: my new exercises don’t seem to be doing anything to get rid of the pain when I un-bend my left leg. I’ve got calf muscles OF STEEL right now though.

Today is Valentines Day, which is not really something I’m down with as overt displays of affection make me uncomfortable. Although last year’s was good because Jay and I got to see The Hold Steady, and in ten days or so will be doing so again. Twice. Anyway, here’s a seasonal link for you: Carrie Brownstein on the rules of making Valentine mixes:

Yes, Juno is a great film. But that doesn’t mean you have to be one of the millions of people putting the song “Anyone Else But You” on your mix this Valentine’s Day… Forge your own path!

And with that, my lovlies, I bit you adieu.

with my own blood in my mouth;

I am struggling to find the time to blog at the moment, which I suppose is stating the obvious. It hasn’t been writer’s block as such – more Real Life catching up. I wanted to review the Mountain Goats album before it was released, but had let it go because I had gotten my wires crossed and thought it was today. It wouldn’t have read anything like this though… fuckssake, just tell us if you liked it, like.

These days, watching the video for “Sax Rohmer #1″, I wonder if John Darnielle is sending up his reputation as a “hyper-literate singer-songwriter dude” just a little. It’s still awesome, and if you haven’t seen it you should watch it right now.

Also in music posts I should have made: my favourite album turns 10. Although it just so happens that Neutral Milk Hotel’s opus has the same birthday as my good friend Bobby, so I was too hungover to jump on the blogging bandwagon. But that’s fine, because I only discovered the album during the currency of this blog anyway, so you can go back and read my original post which says it all a thousand times better than I seem capable of doing these days.

My bezzer is here, in my flat in Glasgow, for the first time which is HELLA EXCITING and also more of an excuse not to blog, but since she has arrived with her shiny new MacBook it may be that I get ignored and have to spend my two days off on the internets anyway. Let’s just say I’ll be back in a few days – and maybe, just maybe, with a shiny new website to show for it…

when there’s nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire;

I can’t imagine I’d be allowed to lift the strip in its entirety, so here are the always-astute Jesus and Mo on the case of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student journalist who was sentenced to death after downloading an internet report on women’s human rights.

Julie sent me the link to the Independent newspaper’s petition to the Foreign Office on Friday afternoon, and I mentioned at the time that I would blog about it but of course was signing off a magazine and disappearing to England at the time. The official word is that the student, who was sentenced to death under his country’s strict blasphemy laws after distributing an article to his journalism class which commented on Koranic verses about women’s rights, will not be executed but it remains to be seen what penalty he will suffer for something that we take for granted.

Oh, I don’t have to tell you this stuff. Draw the case to your attention, yes – but moralise? It’s funny, but as the blogosphere has expanded the dissenting voices seem to have got lost. We have formed our own cliques, we have our favourite reads and we don’t have time to seek out intelligent, challenging viewpoints. I’m not talking about HA HA YOU SUKK-type trolls but genuine, thought-provoking debate. This blog’s readership is predominantly drawn from my friends: intelligent, interesting, marvellous people who I hardly ever have cause to argue with. I wouldn’t want to swap them for strangers, but I guess I wish I was good enough for those who might stumble across this blog randomly to want to stick around.

I could do without the people Googling for bit trojan hardcore indian girls though.

Saying that, actually, I was delighted to get a lovely email last night from my old friend Paul who I suppose was one of those “random people who stuck around”. Paul used to blog at Doing The Dance, and we struck up a friendship after I left a comment on a post of his round about the time that Sleater-Kinney broke up. In his “Obama Dispatch from St. Paul, Minn” he asked if it was true that Super Tuesday had made the headlines on my side of the Atlantic, and said:

There is something happening in this country where the people who were against Bush/Iraq war from the beginning are energized, the apathetic have awoken and Republicans who gleefully voted in “the Decider” twice feel ashamed and are crossing the aisle to Obama or Hillary. The era of cowboy diplomacy is drawing to a close, and a willingness to work with the rest of the world is emerging as the smarter course.

I was happy to confirm, and speculated in my response that perhaps this interest stems from the feeling of participation that the US selection process seems to confer. It’s not like over here, where leaders are nominated from a crowd of grey men by a party of grey men, and I need to remind myself every morning who the Prime Minister is these days. Even my mother hasn’t been this excited by American politics since 9/11!

I was in the mood to pick a fight this morning, but it’s passed now in a wave of exhaustion. My sleep has been dreadful this week, and work is about to get busier than I anticipated. Still, my Hold Steady tickets have arrived and I’ve got a few unexpected days with my best friend next week, so there’s a lot to look forward to if only I can keep my eyes open!!

the day the music died;

122 of 365

I would like a minute’s silence please, for my gorgeous spotty brolly as pictured above. This versatile device – just long enough to double as a walking stick when ma wee knee was at its worst – was confiscated by Glasgow Airport security in the early hours of Saturday morning. I was too sleepy and shellshocked to put up much of a fight.

My sister was shocked that I had spent as much as I did on an umbrella, even one that put itself up at the touch of a button, given my propensity for leaving such things lying on public transport. Last night was a shining example – I left the crappy poundstore brolly I’ve been using since lying in the pub where I had dinner with friends, and David had to come running down the road after me so I wouldn’t have lost two in a week. This was the beauty of the spotty brolly though: I never forgot it, although I might have had a few close shaves. To be so cruelly robbed of it in circumstances beyond my control is therefore doubly harrowing.

It’s the little things you miss. Like being able to hook it over the seat in front of you rather than get your knees wet.

I’m going out to try and track down another one this lunchtime, as I have more money credit than sense, but it will never be the same.

Farewell, dear servant.

[PHOTO: Day 122]