Jukebox 3000 redux

ok, ok so i don't update this nearly as much as i should although i may start using it for the jukebox thing more often now as it seems like a good way to pass the time, here's the next set of 5...

The Tornadoes and Tyra Hammond

ok, so i've admitted my love of the funk here before, this too good to pass up, heavy heavy kiwi styles.

The Climbers

fun little abstract indie band from london/brighton (ahh dreams of home...), lots of sparkly songwriting goodness

Hooligan Night

electro punk stuff from somewhere in the UK or possible somewhere slightly more nefarious there's a quote on the page from Mr Larry Love himself which just reads;
"You dirty, nasty, bastards"

Frankie Rose and the Outs

What self respecting post about musical bands could possibly not feature one from that hub or sardonic cool, Brooklyn. Here's one that reminds me of a few early nineties shoegazy bands that i always used to like.

Dokkebi Q

ok back to London once more (perhaps i'm a little homesick), this time to the depths of Dalston via korea for some electric dub picnic type things (or something) anyway it's very good and it's named after a rather cute furry thing from Korean folklore cheers!

So that's the selection for now, i will come up with some more soon i promise also as a little sign off and partially because i've become slightly addicted to their music and lyrics lately and because unfortunately they don't fit into the whole less than 4000 friends thing (good on 'em) here's a video of the rather wonderful Mumford and Sons, i must remember to go pick up my tickets for their show in November, bye.

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.

A nice slice of Spam

A couple of months ago i recieved via my work e-mail account a rather curious message. It was titled as: Tech Support requested update, but when i opened it i found a quote from Faulkner. I really liked the tone of the message and it was one of those strange moments of synchronicity where something seemingly random coincided with events at the time in order to make it seem profound. Anyway, here's the body of the quote;

I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field reveals to a man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury

I think it impressed on me that the desire to win can sometimes be counterproductive, blinding you to other possibilities. I also like the flipside of that, meaning that if the concept of winning in those circumstances is irrelevant then surely you can also never lose. There are also the time aspects to the statement, the whole thing seems to tie in with some eastern philosophies of allowing yourself to be taken along for the ride, allowing yourself to flow with the river rather than trying to control your passage over it.

Space for rent

So this is going to be what i hope will become a small but regular feature of this blog. I am without question a music geek, it's one of the reasons i do what i do for a living. I've found myself recently beginning to drift back to perusing Myspace, i think one of the reasons for this is since it's become usurped in the social networking stakes by the likes of Facebook it seems to be back to being a very good resource for finding interesting bands without all of the rest of the clutter. In this case i'm going to try and list a "b0bby's top 5ive" of bands that catch my ear. I know full well i'll be way behind the curve on some of these but it's really going to be a kind of, as and when i find them kind of thing.
So, here goes:

PAPADUB

Great, Leeds based roots music, including a track called "Honest Wranglin" as a homage i assume to the great Ernest Ranglin of Jamaica (who incidentally I'm going to see in a couple of days time but more on that later).

MR. CONFUSE

Fantastic funk band from Hannover in Germany.

JAPANTHER

I think I'm a little slow on the uptake with these guys, but they're energy filled indie kids from Brooklyn.

BRUCE PENINSULA

These guys have got loads of press here lately, lots of strings and folkie style pop goodness.

DEADMAU5

Because everyone loves people with numbers in their names, it's also pretty sweet house music with a heavy detroit influence, good times.

Sunrise, Sunset

On the subject of beginnings lets take it back to basics, to the classic dualism of day and night and the twilight times inbetween, full of magic.

There is so much to say about night and day, the expectations and fears of both, intricately woven into the fabric of everything we know.

I used to so love the night and the seductive anticipation of the sunset. The dark and illicit, the eternally youthful rush of hedonistic pleasure, where danger is welcomed but death scorned as a distant enemy.

More recently I have begun to appreciate mornings and the dawn more keenly. There is something incredibly hopeful about witnessing the fragility of a newborn morning.

There is a fantastic poem by Jorge Luis Borges which has an interesting perspective on the matter, i would like to quote directly but unfortunately many of my books are on another continent from me at the moment. The poem mentions the ideas of Schopenhauer and Berkeley that the world is a collective dream of souls conjured solely by those experiencing it, so that at the instant of daybreak when the people able to perform this act of magic are fewest, is the time when the world is at its most delicate.

Well you know what they say about pictures and words, so here's a couple of twilight shots from places I've been for you to make up your own mind about.

Seven Oaks, Ontario

Tofino, British Columbia

Hackney, London

And so to begin...

So here we are, or rather here I am, I'm assuming that there will be a you and I of writer and reader at some point but that may of course be wishful thinking.
I thought i'd start this in order to write out some ideas and share in some inspirations or frustrations depending on my mood.
It's strange though, there's so much out there, a sea of voices swelling into a roar of white noise. How do you follow a single wave in the ocean?
So i'm going to post things that mean something to me, music, books, art and ideas. I may even try to post from the fragments of stories I have in a multitude or worn notebooks that I seem to laboriously carry around with me at all times.
And i guess we'll just see what happens...