Love Is...

My new coffee machine, it can be programmed to switch on automatically. Even better, I'm able to do this while *a bit* drunk. So for the past two weekends I've woken to fresh brewed coffee. Bliss. I'm not saying I was drunk each night, but well ya know, the machine switched on and made me coffee.

I've never managed to get a wench to do that for me. Ever.

As a friend pointed out, get the coffee machine to give a BJ and you'll be sorted.

Hmmmm....
B

ps: I had to get a new one as I made the mistake of washing the pot in the old one, it promptly fell apart.

Keeping Science Cool

Make your doggie cool, make him safe !! Stop falling over him at night !! For this, and more, Science can be your friend.

How, how can this be? Why make your dog, in this case your beagle, glow !!!
Here for an article about this, and here for the picture, see below.

The authors claim proof of concept, personally I think it's vital research - find your dog in the dark, use your dog to light your way down steps. Frighten the crap out of children at halloween...or even anytime by making woooo-ing noises at night while the dog wanders past, shoving its noise in their groin.
How cool would that be.

Sign me up!!

B

Brunching with Bruce

More accurately dinner, but it's more a brunch dish. My take on mushrooms on toast.

This is the meat version cos I'm equal opportunist... (I used spicy tofu).

Fry good quality bacon, remove from frypan. Fry mushrooms and a couple of small fennel bulbs (chopped small), with some chilli, fresh ground pepper and a bit of lemon juice. Add chopped bacon at the last minute.

On the toast, place sliced buffalo mozzarella and dump mushroom mixture on top.

Simple. But damn it was good.

In Bruce we trust, Network toys

Today? well it's pissing down so I'm curled up on the chair thinking about a nice glass of wine or beer - since I only had two all yesterday (but let's not talk about Friday).

I did head into work to try and recover data from a couple of computers. Which I did successfully, to the relief of their owners. But FFSake who doesn't run backups? I've had three data recoveries to do over the last two weeks. Two of them I've got everything back, and the third probably 90-95% back. But still - backups people!! For those of you not on MacOS 10.5 and the superb TimeMachine, you can still drag n drop stuff to an external harddrive. Do you really wanna lose all those photos? the pr0n you've downloaded? There's masses off small apps that will run backups for you on Windows...

Speaking of which, I was getting a bit paranoid about mine, and in particular the iTunes library. So I've invested in a small NAS so I can run that as a multimedia center through the AppleTV as well. I'll let you know how that goes when it's arrived (has a 1TB drive in it, with space for a 2nd if I want to RAID it). I'm intending to tidy up my DVDs lying around the place and get them on there.

Figure the iTunes library can live there and be dragged to the 750GB FW800 drive periodically for redundency. Oohh I could write a script for that. No no no stop it. Geek !!!

I think it's wine weather and a nice classic movie, probably Errol Flynn.

Will just read the paper first.

Me xxx

Tony Joe White and Ian Moss

Wandered along to the FrontRoom last night to see TJW for, I think, the fourth time. The venue had sold out, which surprised me when a mate said he couldn't get tix. Turns out they had it seated for about 2/3-3/4 of the lower level. This was odd, but did have the advantage of keeping the temperature down. Although people were complaining. Speaking of the people, weird audience. Mostly old people (like 50+) which explains why when I arrived at 820 (doors opened at 730) that it was packed. And what a rude freekin audience. Talking to each other during both acts - fucks sake. Oh and their appearance - my god, there were mullets. I havent seen them for years! and they were all dressed like aging boguns. Horrid. Us young beautiful things were at the back as we all turned up late :D

Ian Moss (Cold Chisel) was supporting - and wot a revelation. Essentially a masterclass in acoustic guitar blues guitar. That's how good it was. His solo stuff, re-interpretations of classic Chisel - and he even did Tucker's Daughter!! Really cool gig, and yeah I think I'll be buying some of his solo stuff. Great vibe, stunning playing, go check out the free mp3s on his website.

TJW: the best gig of his I've seen was also at the James Cab that me and Adders went to years ago. But this was probably the 2nd best of his I've seen. This time in addition to the drummer we had a keyboardist - who was mainly doing bass-ish parts, and some hammond sounds. TJW was his usual laid-back self, which gives a great vibe (apart from the talking fuckheads) to the gig. the audience seemed to be there mainly for Polk Salad Annie, Even Trolls love Rock n Roll and Steamy Windows. But the rest of it, ahhh divine. huge sounds from that guitar, dirty swamp blues, very bass/mid heavy. I love it. TBH I could have done without Steamy Windows, which is quite overrated. But I can't complain too much as the tracklist was excellent, nicely balanced and well worth the wander.

And I was a healthy wee bugger by wandering to the gig and back again.

Some vids are in order.

Ian Moss - Tuckers Daughter

And in a blues orientated feel, Moss covering Georgia - just to give you an idea how good the gig was:

And now some TJW, I've stayed clear of the common ones:

Rather good combo ain't they :)

b

Quizzage!!!

Big night for our music quizzage team last night, the regulars all turned up, we were pumped - as we'd found a $5 spirits pub beforehand. G-blonde saw that the QualityHotel on Cuba had specials on, so we went. This place was scary, it looked and felt like a waiting room for judgement day. It was so impersonal as to have become a cliche of itself. Awesome. the bartender, Corry, seemed nice enough and was ok with us just yelling orders to him :)

I headed to the pub to find us a seat (good plan, all bar one of the tables had been taken) while k-dawg and G-blonde got food.

We came second after some stunning rounds, particulary on 90s dance music - admittedly S2H and I weren't the best there (I did know Mark Morrison return of the mac...released about the sametime as his jobness came back (1996 and 1997 respectively!!)). But go team !!!

Final song was Meatloaf, which led to a Steinman walk home - well after the Tragically Hip had finished (the superb Fully Completely). Went for Bad for Good. Which is pretty good description of the album over all :)

Again, huzzah team!!!

Love, B

Music musings

It's interesting how memories are triggered by specific things. There's a very large number of papers devoted to this subject, but I'm focusing on personal memories here - in particular how music triggers certain memories. I won't go into too many examples, but to demonstrate:
- Men at Work : Down Under, always brings back memories of 2ZB morning show with Lindsay Yeo while eating toast and marmite [as a note: how much more kiwi can you get...]
- Genesis : Invisible Touch, two memories stick out here. Firstly biking down to Chelsea Records in the Hutt to buy the vinyl (apparently I was a connoisseur even then), and watching the performance on TV around the same time, which I guess was LiveAid? where Phil is lighting himself with a torch during the 'haha ha ha' section in Home by the Sea (yes I know it's a different album). Great stuff.

But the one that came up the other day was listening to Eric Woolfson's Freudiana (which is an Alan Parsons Project album in all but name). I hadn't listened to this for years as my tape had died, and it's difficult to find on CD. I borrowed the CD was via the Uni BBS (now that dates things somewhat!) where I found someone else who a) had heard of and b) liked, Alan Parsons. It was a horrendous night when I took the motorbike out to, I think, Southgate and spent sometime going through his CD collection - one of which I borrowed was Freudiana. I like the album, sure if you've heard APP you've heard most of the album, as it's not that original. But it does have some great tunes, and I love the overture.
It's also a bit of a rarity in that it's a musical, and I (generally) like it. I think I can count on one hand the musicals I like; Freudiana, Chess (well it is Abba...), Rocky Horror and um err that's about it. I might be able to come up with a couple more if I tried, but I'd be stretching. And yet I like Opera.

It's proven difficult to find audio samples of Freudiana, I've found the video for the title track - credited to the APP. I've also found a German recording of the album (not the English version I've got), but it's lacking the cool bass in the original - it's the stage show version. so I might try and sort out something.
In the meantime, here's the vid. And before I forget, happy birthday to S in Ireland. Which, as Stephen Fry says, is only greener than England as all the Irish are trampling the grass in England these days...


b.

J.G.Ballard

Died yesterday - or today - who knows with this silly timezone stuff from cancer. He of 'Crash' fame - not that crap recent movie, rather the book the Cronenberg movie was based on.

I like his stuff. It's bleak, visceral, sexual - powerful.

More info here.

me

International Record Store Day

To me, as important as Halloween is to the emo kids, the day dawned clear, sunny, and I got up. Did washing, cleaned the house, listened to music, and generally prepared myself for wandering into town.
Did some shopping, then headed to SlowBoat my indie record shop of choice. Quite crowded, so I wandered around intending to buy stuff, caught a little of Cassette's gig (I headed up to Real Groovy in the meantime), I liked the new stuff, so should really pick up that album.
So what did I buy? Well Scott 4 on vinyl, mmm Scott Walker, he really is the shizzle, Tilt and The Drift would be making it on a must own list of mine. So thought I should get some more of the early stuff. Also picked up The Handsome Family "Honey Moon". Sounds good so far. So lots of new stuff this weekend. Sorted my Sunday...

The 'canes won, currently 3rd on the table, admittedly not everyone has played, but woohoo.

Watched Red Dwarf (meh), drank beer (great - Morland Hen's Tooth). Talked to S, who suggested I have another beer while I watched OngBak2. The beer was crap (Golden Draak) so bad I tipped it out and ate some toast + marmalade to clear the palate. Whisky awaits.

Just need to get enthusiasm to move...

Addendum: I moved, I got whisky. And then a bloody moth went into it. It's not freekin tequila goddamnit.
I got another.

Big ups to the Chicken

The latest PsychoChicken collection arrived the other day. Huzzah indeed. A Marillion t-shirt (cos I'm running low...) which was unveiled at quiz night. These people actually realised it was a new one - sad, but true.
And now I'm curled up sipping Bruichladdich Rocks (which it does, if only it were cask...) and watching TalkTalk Live at Montreux.
I know I've ranted about how bloody brilliant Mark Hollis is. But goddamn he so is.

Thanks mate :D I'll get to the Po90 tomorrow methinks.