Jukebox3000

Ok so now for another music post and this time with a slight difference, it's not 'nam there are rules.
The myspace surfing project, now with a restriction of only including bands here that have fewer than 4000 friends (sounds like a lot but it's not as easy as it sounds always), hence the 3000 in the post name. I may or may not include some form of review but i'd kind of like to stay away from those kind of labels, so it's pretty much anything i've found that i like, anyway here goes:

Flogsta Danshall

Nice mellow electro from Stockholm, incidentally i nearly included one of their friends instead just for their name, which is the rather wonderful "Wankers United"

And now as they say, for something very different...

Pat King and his Designated Drivers

Great americana bluesy stuff from New Yoik State

OK, back to fun bands with mildly ridiculous names...

The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt

Actually i'm not sure how to categorise this, and even less sure if i should even try, it's good though.

Now, I'll freely admit it, i'm a big fan of old soul and (the more traditional type of) R&B, there's also been a ton of revivalist groups coming out over the last few years, and good thing too. I'm not sure if these guys are an old band getting new props or some new kids doing their thing but nonetheless, check them out.

Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens

And lastly, because it's nice to have a spiritually uplifting ending, an African master musician from Senegal.

Kadialy Kouyate

Enjoy!

Actually as a quick aside there was one last honourable mention, a band from Argentina who didnt quite make the under 4000 friends cut but who are great and coincidentally are offering their current album as a free download from their website.
http://www.negrofluo.com.ar/
check it, easy.

A return

So after apparently forgetting my password and having some trouble resetting said password, oh and generally being part lazy and part busy i seem to have missed a substantial chunk of time in this blog.
Anyway i thought it was time to try to come back to this, did y'all miss me? oh well, nevermind then eh.
Still, here i am again. Now i guess i should think of something interesting to write.....

Burning bright

So i first remember seeing this a couple of years ago and it's definitely worth sharing, it's by a Brazilian artist called Guilherme Marcondes who's done a load of very cool animations, it's inspired by the William Blake poem "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright"

Resonance

There are some pieces of Art, be they music, film, literature or something else that seem to be completely in tune with where you are when you first experience them. Some of these experiences fade through time but others have a peculiar resonance that keeps ringing true after a much longer period. There are a number of pieces i feel that way about at the moment and i hope that i'll continue to find more, but for now I'd just like to post about one. It's a book called "Hopscotch" written by an Argentinian called Julio Cortazar and now billed (although it was written in the sixties) as the first hypertext novel due to the fact that it has a number of "expendable chapters" and can be read in a variety of ways. I still remember being utterly hooked by the first few lines, and no matter how many times i go back to it i always seem to find new things that speak to where i am at the time. I'm going to type out the first main paragraph just to remind myself and for anyone else that cares to read it.

YES, but who will cure us of the dull fire, the colourless fire that at nightfall runs along the Rue de la Huchette, emerging from the crumbling doorways, from the little entranceways, of the imageless fire that licks the stones and lies in wait in doorways, how shall we cleanse ourselves of the sweet burning that comes after allied with time and memory, with sticky things that hold us here on this side, and which will burn sweetly in us until we have been left in ashes. How much better, then, to make a pact with cats and mosses, strike up friendship right away with hoarse-voiced concierges, with the pale and suffering creatures who wait in windows and toy with a dry branch. To burn like this without surcease to bear the inner burning coming on like fruits quick ripening, to be the pulse of a bonfire in the thicket of endless stone, walking through the nights of our life, obedient as our blood in its blind circuit.

.

Fragments

So i think i'm going to trawl through some old notebooks and see what i can find in them with regards to writing stories. Some of these posts are meant to be in characters voices, even if i don't have the characters fully realised yet, and a lot of them will very likely need to be rewritten (knowing me, probably several times) but we'll see what happens for now...


So, I've been watching you see and sometimes I notice these things. I'm not sure if they're just obvious to everyone but I think maybe it's just me who sees them. I mean, I was watching the TV the other day and I look at these people on there. Those people are perfect you know, I mean, picture fucking perfect and not me or anyone I know ever really looks like that. Then, the more I was looking at them the more I noticed. They don't have any shadows, not a single fucking one of them, you look for them next time you're watching, nothing. But that's the thing isn't it? we need the shadows, to know that they're there I mean. The dark side of us clutching at our heels making us try and stay one step ahead. I mean the only other time people don't have any shadows is when they're totally in darkness.