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and in junk-box # 2…

mainly old school books sadly. Very dull, all now in the recycling. A large pile of old christmas cards, many from people I have no recollection of whatsoever, a handful of 20 year old letters, my 10 metres swimming certificate (acheived on 6th Oct 1980 – that’s getting framed and put on the wall!), my A Level project on pearl mussels, which might make an interesting read before I recycle it (hey, it was the only A level I got!), some of my college certificates (still stained with puke from where someone in the house I lived in at the time threw up in the bag they were in just after I got them, and before I could find out whether or not I’d acheived any sort of qualification at college – I still have no real idea to this day whether I passed my second year… not that I care, obviously, or I’d have rung the college to find out at some point.)

Oh, and a pile of old comics that I’m hoping are worth something, but probably aren’t.

All in all, a fun if not that revealing box of junk.

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my subbuteo-geek childhood…

So last time I visited my mum, she handed me two boxes of my crap that had been cluttering her house up for the last 14 years. The first one of which is full of Subbuteo stuff. For the unitiated, Subbuteo was a table football game, where you flicked little blokes at a ball, and tried to score before your younger brother sat on the fragile little blokes and broke them all –

Here’s a Subbuteo man –

and here’s what geeks like teenage-stevie looked like playing it –

So what to do with all this stuff? I clearly don’t want it. A few of the teams seem to be fetching a couple of quid on Ebay, but I’m not even sure I can be bothered to list them. I might just take them over to my local charity shop. The boxes for each team aren’t in good enough nick for collectors, and the occasional team appears to be meeting government requirements regarding equal opportunities, by having at least one player who’s been broken off at the legs and stuck back on with whatever sticky stuff came to hand (a plaster is the most fitting I’ve found so far!)

Back in the day, I was a full on Subbuteo nut – my brother and I had grandstands, floodlights, and other weirdness, and the range of teams I’ve got here goes from obvious ones like Wimbledon and Man U through to Vancouver Whitecaps and a team of subbuteo blokes in yellow tracksuits, presumably for warming up!! Did my geekery know no bounds??

Aha! And I’ve just found my pride and joy – a ‘wide arms’ goalie – normal goalies were long and thin, and you could get squat looking goalies in the interchangable goalie sets. But wide arms goalie was like the Subbuteo version of Pat Jennings – an inch-high force to be reckoned with, who somehow avoided being sat on, so remains intact to this day.

If any of you know any subbuteo geeks who’d like all this stuff, do let me know. I’m not planning on keeping it for long (unless anyone fancies coming round for a game… doh! I’ve not got the pitch anymore, unless it’s the other box of clutter from mum…!)

Soundtrack – Tommy Sims, ‘Peace And Love’.

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A fine looking new magazine…

From a former editor of Adbusters comes Geez Magazine – their strapline is “a new magazine thatserves a politically-charged readership at the fringes of faith.” and their mandate says

“Geez magazine has set up camp on the fringes of faith. It is a refuge and inspiration for people of restless faith and blessed instinct.

It is welcome relief for over-churched souls who are ready for compassionate, resistant and spiritually viable ways of living in our world.”

Sounds like a great premise for a mag, even moreso in the US where left-leaning Christians have been without a voice for so many years.

check it out.

Soundtrack – John Zorn, ‘Naked City’.

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When web-filters go mad..

So, there’s an article on World Music Central about Bruce Cockburn’s reissued albums.

However, their word filter doesn’t like the ‘cock’ half of his name, so his name is renders as Bruce *censor*burn. You couldn’t make it up…

Soundtrack – White Town, ‘Peek And Poke’ (most recent album from ‘Your Woman’ hit-bloke, and blog-buddy, Jyoti Mishra – tune-laden old school pop music, the way it used to be before attitude disolved all trace of tune. Some of it reminds me early Everything But The Girl in its mix of dryly recorded voice and minimal instrumentation and blatant pop melodicism. Good stuff!)

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Calling all US residents…

Just found out that my buddy Doug in California runs a company called EarthTones – who are, “The only communications company to donate 100% of its profits to environmental organizations. Help us help the environment.”

So come on, head over to his site, check it out, and sign up – but don’t call him today, as it’s his birthday and he’s been out for birthday drinks… though I guess you could end up with a new internet service and a new ‘besht mate’..!

Soundtrack – Augustus Pablo, ‘Classic Rockers’.

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More on the disaster of the PFI

One of this government’s biggest domestic balls-ups has been the continuation and expansion of the PPP/PFI schemes begun by the Tories. When the tories first put forward the idea for these ‘Private/Public Partnership’ and ‘Private Finance Initiative’ schemes for funding public service contracts, the then labour opposition opposed them, as well they should. The scheme was flawed beyond belief, and even at that stage everyone could tell just how costly it was going to be.

As a labour government got closer they changed their position from one of scrapping the scheme, to not commissioning any new ones. When they got into power, they kicked it up a gear, to a level that the Tories could only have dreamed of.

The definitive attack on the scheme is George Monbiot’s outstanding book, Captive State – subtitled ‘the corporate takeover of Britain’, it outlined just how hideous and insidious that takeover has been, and how the primary agent has been the PFI.

So now George has updated the statistics and re-presented the case in an article in today’s Guardian. The evidence is damning, and the governments position is entirely untenable. The catalogue of disasters, wastage, failed projects and unsuitable buildings is incredible. Tragic even.

The PFI has been doomed from the start, in the last 10 years, the failures have been spectacular, and still the government presses ahead with it, wasting our money. Please write to your MP, demanding an explaination.

if you’re an RSS/XML kind of person, here’s the feed for Monbiot.com – it’s a feed of all the articles he writes for the Guardian. Amazing, depressing stuff.

Soundtrack – me and Cleveland – need to get this demo finished ASAP.

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More of file sharing and the multi-nationals

From BBC news –

“The US Supreme Court has ruled that file-sharing companies are to blame for what users do with their software.”

This was apparently a surprise, because a similar case happened with the advent of home videos, where people could record off the TV. Then, the ruling went in favour of the Video manufacturers.

This time, I guess because the inventors of grokster, morpheus, limewire etc. aren’t mulitnationals themselves, the increasingly erroneous US Supreme Court have ruled in favour of the millionaires.

Now, the interesting thing here is, does this mean I can now sue Sony if someone uses a Sony CDR to copy one of my CDs? Of course not, because Sony have more money than me, so naturally they are in the right. But it’d be a fun test-case – I’m sure I could argue quite convincingly that they were facilitating the exchange, at least as much as limewire facilitate the downloading of my MP3s. Limewire can be used for legal exchange as well as illegal.

But no, Sony were happy to sell CDRs, because then they were making the money. The artists weren’t, but who gives a shit about artists? They claim to, but clearly don’t. When the blank CDR/cassette/video market became an obvious source of funds, they stopped protesting and started making blank media. At least they’d make the money. if you had shares in Sony, you’d still win, even if the artists they claim to care about so much didn’t make anything.

But file sharing is different. No-one’s making any money off it. The programs are free, the files are exchanged for free. So because they can’t take over, the prosecute. Any illusion of recourse to the law is pure BS. It’s all about control, nothing to do with artist’s rights. How many of these companies are fighting for fair trade laws? How many are fighting for the rights of people who work in CD plants across the developing world. No, they are talking about hardworking pop-stars, who might not make that extra few million quid, about hard working video directors, who might have to start charging as little as $200,000 for a three week shoot, instead of their customary cool million.

If anyone is wasting the artist’s money it’s the labels. The deception is huge, and the logic flawed. Who is going to get the money when the file sharers are sued? The artists? the little labels, the little venues? yeah, right. More money for the multi-nationals. That’s what the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll is all about.

Bollocks to them all.

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Guy Pratt's Edinburgh Show

Last night was the preview of My Bass And Other Animals – Guy Pratt’s Edinburgh show. Guy’s a fantastic bassist, with a CV any bassist would be hugely jealous of – he’s played for Pink Floyd, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Coverdale/Page, Jimmy Nail. Oh, and Fat Les.

His show is a collection of mad stories from his life as a musician, with a little bit of bass playing – no solo tunes, just bits to demonstrate the gags.

It’s all very funny, some of it very familiar for anyone who’s toured or played festivals, or stayed in hotels with drunken rock stars. If Guy wasn’t such a skilled musician, a lot of his jokes at the expense of bassists would seem a bit bitter, but as he is a marvellous player, and fine composer too, they just draw you in to the gag.

It’s great that he’s going to be at Edinburgh, as it makes the ‘one bassist on stage doing a show’ thing seem slightly less freakish. His is more talking, and my show is more playing, but I’m sure I’ll get him up to guest once or twice during the run.

Definitely not a show to be missed if you’re anywhere near Edinburgh during August, and definitely not a show just for bassists – he’s been fastidious in removing any hint of muso-ness, to the point of not using one of my favourite Whitesnake stories of his. But it’s to his credit and the show’s benefit that he keeps it on a more general level.

Soundtrack – M83, ‘Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts’; Soulfly, ‘Soulfly’; Kris Delmhorst, ‘Songs For A Hurricane’.

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Read this book.

Last night I finished one of the greatest works of non-fiction I’ve ever read.

I first heard about ‘Father Joe – The Man Who Saved My Soul’ when its writer, Tony Hendra, was interviewed on Danny Baker’s show on BBC London. My interest was piqued because Tony played Ian Faith in Spinal Tap, and Danny declared it straight away to be one of the greatest books he’d ever read.

As the interview went on, it became clear that Father Joe was an extraordinary character. He was a Benedictine monk at Quarr Abbey on the Isle Of Wight, off the south cost of England, who Tony met when he almost had an affair with a married woman, at the age of 14, and was sent to Joe for penance. Thus began a lifelong friendship, the story of which unfolds in the book, bought for me a few weeks ago by TSP.

It’s a truly remarkable story – Tony’s story in many ways is similar to a lot of people in the media – one of vocation, compromise, and hurting the ones nearest to you. The big difference is that always in the background are his visits to Quarr Abbey, and letters from Father Joe.

The end of the book is utterly heart-breaking. I finished it on the tube last night, and I’ve never sobbed on the tube before now – the odd tear as a sad part of a book, but never like this. I’m rather glad the train was pretty much empty.

When I got where I was going, I must’ve looked like I had the world’s worst hayfever, with my swollen red eyes…

Anyway, buy it, please. It’s amazing. A life-affirming, heart-warming inspirational story.

oh, and we SO need to get Tony Hendra for Greenbelt – The Cheat, get onto it.

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