Killing Fascists: Billy Bragg Vol 1

I bought the Billy Bragg box set- first four albums plus four bonus discs, plus two dvds, plus a wee book, plus a nice box, all for 30 bucks. Until yesterday I owned exactly none of Billy Bragg's stuff, but I'd always liked him, as does everybody. They'd been playing lots of it on the radio recently, and I'd liked everything I'd heard. He is, as it turns out, a fantastic genius of early-Darnielle stature. Absolute magic- please enjoy the fabulous first song off the first EP, The Milkman of Human Kindness.

Which sent me back to Kirsty MacColl's version of New England. I can't listen to Kirsty MacColl without feeling so sad, but these are undeniably four glorious moments of pop music.

Finally, check out a new Death Cab video here, and the excellent new video from Morrissey here (this one takes a while to load, but it's worth it).

Burnished, Undarkened- Death Cab for Cutie, Glasgow Barrowlands, 4/3/06

Has ever the Glasgow Barrowlands (and the have been some unbelievable nights in that place) seemed such a happy room? The Flaming Lips can do this, and the Roses could do it, and Death Cab can do it- just by walking into a room, they make everyone in it happy.

It was sparkling and aglow- Marching Bands of Manhattan, The New Year, Soul Meets Body and Title and Registration were the standouts: Plans is essential listening if you want to be in on music now, and this wee band are becoming central to more and more people's musical landscape. The performance was as perfect as anything we've heard, but it was the smiles, the appreciation that made it such a night as it was, from the top, all the way down...

Comes With a Smile (2)

And lest we get lost in a fog of pretentious seventies art noise, here's a gratuitous picture of the new Tomb Raider girl. Don't know her name, but it sounds funny. It's not Sarah, or Margaret or anything like that. It's stranger than that, weird sounding. Foreign, you know. Anyway, seems like a nice girl.



Sweet dreams.

Comes With A Smile

I started writing this an hour ago, had it finished, computer crashed, deleted the whole thing. It was rubbish anyway, and will probably read better in the note form that will follow.

NME awards last night- Arctic Monkeys? WTF? Ian Brown is NOT a Godlike Genius etc etc. NME makes Heat magazine look like the New Yorker, used to be so good in the eighties and ninties, used to make Wednesday mornings exciting, but is now an embrrassment. This was a picture I found to show that it used to be good:

Comes With A Smile, on the other hand, is a little gem of a magazine, now sadly in its tentieth and final edition- buy it here- you get a cracking cd as well as a genuinely good indie read for a fiver.

Thanks to Clum for a link to The Onion and this feature called Random Rules, where celebs are made to look stupid because they don't know the songs on their own Ipod- here's the guy from Death Cab for Cutie- seems nice, has a Jandek song on his Ipod.

Jandek- three (3) new albums out now- Khartoum sounds like a belter, but Newcastle Sunday, a live album, sounds like a facemelter. Read the reviews here.

And lastly, in a non-sequitar that fits better here, we shall now all listen to some Krautrock- here's the snappy little number called On the Way to Abamae by Faust...

Tiny Buttons- LastFM

Check out the little red button to the right hand side of the page (not the huge big one above, which is just a cracking image, I think, but the one saying 'click here to see bdoherty's profile' or something). Ok- you click on that, and you go to a site called 'Last FM', and there appears a chart of what has been playing through this computer over the last week, and I believe you can hear samples of the songs, or some of them, too.

Doubtless, this will be very embarrassing at some point- it seems like a good reason never to put Meat Loaf or Queen on the computer- but it is also a nice toy, and we love the stats. The more people who do it, the happier and quieter the world will become.

Interestingly, in the overall chart on that Last FM site, The Postal Service's 'Such Great Heights' is the number one listened to song- we're in good company. (The less said about Coldplay being number one listened to band the better).

Not that any of it matters: in fact, there's a book called 'Important Things That Don't Matter', which I think is a good title (although, that said, leaving out the word 'that' to make it 'Important Things Don't Matter' might have made it better), but that doesn't matter either. I ate a falafel sandwich today, which doesn't seem important, but it mattered at the time. I wouldn't have thought that I would like it (the sandwich, that is), but I did, and it seemed fairly healthy, or at least not too unhealthy, and I might have another one tomorrow.

Eck- The Jammy Man

I saw Eck backstage at Loch Lomond when Oasis played there in 1996. Gavin and John saw him on Gt Western Rd on their way back from a party late one Sunday morning in 1992. They said 'Eck!', and he said 'Alright, lads.'

Then he became Rangers manager, was jammy, was rubbish, was jammy again, then was found out in the most dramatic way: presiding over the worst run of results in his club's history. For that he will hold a special place in Celtic fans' hearts.

I don't hate him or anything, but I've no sympathy for him, or the way he's been treated: serves him right for getting paid to be jammy, serves him right for working for liars.

Eck- never really got round to having any strong feelings for him. His chairman, on the other hand- lies to the fans over and over, blames everyone but himself, gloryhunter when winning things and the invisible man when things are going wrong. '132 years of unsurpassed dignity' indeed.

If we're being honest, we know that Eck only got the job because he was cheap, and would be easy to manipulate. He knew that too, and even writing this, it's hard to stop a little swell of pity for someone who knows he's out of his depth, but stays where he is only because he's allowed to, because the only way is down, and you were never that high in the first place.

Far Off Places

Just some stuff to hear.

Download a new Morrissey song here- to quote an old Smiths title, sounds rank.

The new Strokes, though- welcome back to Their Majesties- we are stunned by 'You Only live Once', and the rest of the new stuff.

What else? Highlights of three goal thriller at Ibrox earlier today can be downloaded here.

(Screen shot courtesy of Clum)

All That Glitters Is Not Gold, But At Least It Contains Free Electrons- We Are Scientists and The Shins

I clicked on a link, you know how it is, on the internet, and then clicked on another, and so on, until I ended up here, a site specifically dedicated to chemistry puns.

'Oxidants happen.'

'Q: What kind of ghosts haunt chemistry faculties?
A: Methylated Spirits.'

'The name's Bond, Covalent Bond.'

Which reminded me...

We Are Scientists. Another good name for a band- another good band, I think. See what you think by listening to them here, and see what they look like altogether and naked in a shower here.


To be honest, I'm not 100% on them- they're not my usual thing, but catchy and cool, and playing in Glasgow soon. Crucially, the gig is on a Saturday night- a reason in itself to go and see a band.

In fact, on second listenings, these are fab pop tunes- here's another winner...

While we're at it, the ever glorious Shins keep making the world a little bit more beautiful- watch them at work here. In fact, a passable way to spend one's life would be to upload a song a day from this beautiful band to help the world with all, all of its problems. And isn't this even a lovely photograph...

Zurawski- Soul on Ice: Motherwell 1 Celtic 3, 22/1/06

Highlights of Motherwell v Celtic here.

Difficult as always, but the positive points are as follows:
Adam Virgo- looking like a £1.5m footballer (or least like a footballer)
Aiden McGeady making the difference when he came on
Pearo looking energetic too
Zurawski- sharp and deadly
Super Mo bombing up the left like, ahem, the good old days...

Things to worry about:
Nakamura was quiet (he's allowed an off day once in a while, surely)
Telfer embarrassingly caught out for pace every time someone runs at him.

Never mind- points in the bag and so on. A big step towards the title was taken today, I think...

Meanwhile, Henrik Larsson's clearly missing life in Glasgow- doesn't seem popular with his teammates or the crowd in Spain- click here to see why... (If that doesn't work, go here.)

Changeless Children- Belle and Sebastian, ABC, Glasgow, 15th-17th January 2006

'What do you want? What do you expect?', asks the old man in The Great Gatsby. The Belles were good, but not great. Good songs, good sound, good playing. But where the big ones? Where was 'The Boy With the Arab Strap'?

And, there it was again, some of the old cringey between-song chat.

'Hi. I'm Stevie.' Jesus, who gives a chug?

'I'm really glad to be playing this song tonight, because my brother's here and the last time I was talking to him, he told me that his friend had been telling him...' Cut out the cock snot and just get on.

But then we think about 'The State That I Am In', 'I'm Losing It', 'Stars of Track and Field', 'If You Find Yourself Caught In Love'. And so on, and so on. The new songs are sunny and bright. At this stage, they have one of the strongest back catalogues of any band in the world. Which brings me back to 'The Boy with the Arab Strap'...

It must be a strange world, their world. Somewhere between pop and indie, BBC 6 and Radio 2, Top of the Pops and Kelvingrove Park. They're better than they were, but they're losing what they had, which makes us wonder- if time is growth, who wants a changeless child?

Sutton

Big Sutton's away to Birmingham. Thanks for the memories- who'll forget:
two goals in the 6-2 game,
an injury time winner at Celtic Park to complete a whitewash season over Rangers,
an equaliser against Barca, a winner against Juventus,
a fifty yard run after taking a throw in at the halfway line to get on the end of a sublime Henrik Larsson cross against Lyon,
even the late penalty winner that ensured the party at Hungry Roy's wedding could keep going (or even better, the funniest penalty ever in a Scottish Cup Final),
the interview accusing Dunfermline of 'lying down' to Rangers to help them win the league in 2003?

The list goes on- he'll be remembered as one of the great number 9s ever to play at Celtic park.




Watch the video from Celtic Minded here...

The Pursuit of Happiness

Celtic v Hearts- enjoy extended highlights of the happy madness here. *

The good news is- the new Belle and Sebastian LP is their best yet- storming from more or less first till last- the single is a good example of what to expect, the shockingly titled, but actually bright and beautiful Funny Little Frog. Hear the equally shiny Another Sunny Day by clicking here...

PS:
See other 'Best Albums of 2005' from people we respect here.

*Note- I'm assuming everyone is a member of Celtic Minded (which is the new, independent version of Come on the Hoops)?

Walking on Snow Awards- Best of 2005

Is everyone kickin' out the jams for Christmas? Magical good wishes, and here's the rundown- the best of the year-

Best Album- The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree- Duh, obvious, but it beat off otherwise formidable opposition from Death Cab for Cutie's Plans, which I made ridiculous fun of eariler in the year, and Jandek's magisterial Glasgow Sunday, which tilted the axis of our world. It was a good year for music.

Best Single- Harder, but I'll take this opportunity to bring to world's attention The Pipettes with their mindless It Hurts To See You You Dance So Well. Special menties to Yeti for making the summer sunny with Never Lose Your Sense of Wonder, and Pussycat Dolls' Doncha (and for that matter, let's not be ungrateful to The Sugababes...)

Musical Discovery of the Year- Tilly and the Wall

get it, but I'll be expecting letters from unhappy members of the Casiotone for the Painfully Alone family.

Death of the Year- JPII wins this one, but Mitch Hedberg will feel aggrieved on this (he gets Rock n' Roll death of the year), and Luther Vandross, Sandra Dee and Arthur Miller get honourable mentions.

Best Gig- Belle and Sebastian in London gets night of the year, but for sheer love of life, Bright Eyes in Somerset House in London steps up. Four days after the London bombings, there was a perfect night on The Strand, and the people there still swear time stopped for seconds at a time when he played First Day of My Life.

Best Film- To be honest, I genuinely don't think I've seen a new film this and I'm ashamed- please nominate...

Best Goal- Bellamy at Ibrox? Nakamura v Motherwell? Surely to God wee Maloney, happy, happy wee Maloney wins this one...

Best TV Moment- Has anyone seen Totally Frank? Ahem, I'll say nothing then (episode 10 is the one to check out...). Otherwise, I hope you didn't miss Status Quo bringing the house down on Coronation Street?

Best Random Happiness- One word- Shunsuke?

Fill in your own and argue on the comments!

Keano- World Class and Playing For Us (Update)

He's here and he's staying- he's got something to prove, and he'll behave himself. Welcome, welcome, welcome Keano!

Streaming the video here dudes, streaming the video here...

And for anyone here who believes the nonsense about '£45, 000 a week' and 'highest ever paid player in Celtic's history', go here.

And click here for a cracking video of the man in action...

Explosions In The Sky

Is that not the most beautiful name for a band you've ever heard? I didn't rate them for ages, but they've got me now. Try this- twelve minutes of stratospheric transport called 'The Only Time We Were Alone'...

Three Seconds of Light

Here are the highlights from yesterday's game. Enjoy, because it was a cracker; the photo above was taken when Celtic were 2-1 down, seconds before Shaun Maloney equalised from the free kick pictured.

Celtic Park looked beautiful, both teams played open football, and the place was buzzing. High on football indeed...

Twenty Five Years Ago Today

High Five!

Iraqi freedom fighters and US troops take time out of conflict to celebrate the news that Alex McLeish stays as Rangers manager. Rangers fans on a fans' forum are less pleased...

The Fifth Element

5ive will make you get down...

Rangers earned another hard fought point at Ibrox on Saturday- it leaves them well placed to grab a much coveted top six place in the SPL. Manager Alex McLeish (left) said after the game, 'Those critics who said we were in freefall- they're not laughing now.'

Falkirk manager John Hughes (right) said, 'Ha ha ha ha ha- I thought when we gave them a two goal lead (through an own goal and a dodgy penalty) they would at least be able to hang on to that, but they blew it with only twenty two minutes to go. Ha ha ha ha ha ha- I just think it's really funny.' Then he started singing this little song.

This result leaves Rangers a heady fifth in the SPL, and extends their unbeaten run to one game in a row. See the action here...

Hey Music Fans

This is the single best music site I've found on the internet- oh my God, the possibilities...