This Is The End

I don't know if anyone even bothers reading this but as you can see, this is the first post for almost three months, and it's the last one. I've decided that there were other fish to fry (i.e I wanted to listen to whatever I wanted whenever I wanted - isn't that the point of these iPod deely-boppers anyway?) so farewell to the blog. If someone else makes money from this idea - I'll see you in court. Cheers.

Staggering and stumbling through F.

FM - Cornelius
Foods - Group_Inou
For Screening Purposes Only - Test Icicles
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood - Neko Case
Frances the Mute - The Mars Volta
Frankenchrist - Dead Kennedys
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Free the Bees - The Bees
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables - Dead Kennedys
From A Basement on the Hill - Elliot Smith

A week's worth of music, a fairly wide variety of styles and artists, and I find myself with nothing much to say. This blog is starting to resemble the condemned prisoner that no-one will talk to because everyone knows what's coming soon. Is there likely to be a reprieve?

Damn Achilles' Heel

Flux Trax - Various Artists

As with almost every plan that I ever come up with there is a substantial flaw in the one I outlined in my last post. Listening to the albums at home is all good and well but what's going to happen to all the random moments of perfect synchronicity and utter incongruity? Listening to the albums at home means that never again will I have Metallica blasting their way through the mental cobwebs as I sit jammed into the corner of a packed morning train. Likewise, it means that never again will I sit through the somnolent strummings of Mazzy Star as I head home on a Friday night, hatching plans for the weekend's bacchanalia.

Flux Trax is a perfect case in point. I'm with the bloke on the discogs website who says this is one of the best compilations ever. Look at the track listing and tell me, how you can possibly go wrong with it? I bought this album twelve years ago and it still sounds remarkable today, even without drugs. It would have been an ideal Monday morning soundtrack - "16 classic techno cuts" (according to the blurb) jack-hammering my skull into submission as I try not to inhale the Satanically rancid breath of the salaryman sitting next to me. Instead I listened to it as I sat whiling away a Sunday afternoon at home. This blog is barely justified in the first place, but that's just taking the piss. It looks like I'm going to have to work out some kind of shift system. Is this what it's like when you have two children? You have to try and balance your time between the older and younger ones? Fuck that for a lark.

Ch-ch-changes

As was pointed out in a comment to my last post (the one that was written when my trip to Vietnam was an impending adventure rather than a distant memory) I haven't done much round these parts recently. The reasons I gave, flimsy as the may seem, are nevertheless true. I don't want this blog to go the way of so many others and I am determined to see it through to the end, mainly because it's probably the only way I'll ever get through every song on the fucking thing and be in a position to honestly know what to keep and what to dump. So, some changes are in the offing. Instead of listening to the albums as I travel to and from work I'm going to listen to them at home and actually give myself time to write about them. This'll probably take more time but I'm sure there's a corny saying out there somewhere about the best things taking a while, so fuck it.

Let's call the last few weeks my winter break - I'm now back, refreshed and ready to go (that may or may not be utter bollocks), so bring it on.