Does this instil confidence in you?

Oh help.

Cheap thrills at a high price

The new GoodBooks album is coming along nicely. It’s been a very very long time since we recorded anything ‘as finished’ – I believe it was July or August last year. And not having Columbia breathing down our necks to make something that sounds like it could shift units is the greatest relief I could imagine. I think it’s only once that pressure goes that you realise how crippling it was. I think we’re taking a break from recording to practise up the live set for shows at the start of October. We’ll be road testing a couple of songs, but I’m not sure which ones just yet.

I went to Thorpe Park yesterday for the first time in my life, and absolutely loved it. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with rollercoasters – I was taken on the Vampire Ride at Chessington when I was about 6 years old, and I’d not quite grasped what it was going to do. But yesterday I did myself proud, and did Colossus 5 times, Nemesis Inferno twice, Rush about 12 times, Stealth twice… I wimped out of Samurai, but I’ll get over that, Stealth looks way more impressive anyway!

And then another painful airport drive this morning. Long distance relationships aren’t good that way. But I bought a lottery ticket yesterday, so come saturday I’ll be able to private-jet it back and forth every evening. I’ve had a lot of practise at playing the lottery, so I should be pretty good now, I reckon I’ll do well.

What have we learned today?

Firstly, there is no such thing as ‘nipping up to London’.

Secondly, I think I may have trouble distinguishing Annie Lennox from Jamie Lee Curtis. I saw A Fish Called Wanda again the other day and my Eurythmics quota has gone through the roof as a result.

And lastly, ‘My’ (Chris’s) AC-30 is safely home and working again. Praise be.

Buskers

Sometimes buskers can be so bad that you just want to walk up to them and say ’shut up and go home, you’re making a terrible, terrible noise’.

Bleary-eyed

Had an interesting session today, after 4 hours’ sleep – recording a singer and actor in London, Richard de Winter. Very lively songs, actually very like recording vocal tracks for ‘pop’ recordings, my task simply being to plonk the mics where they sounded great, and then to egg Richard on and try to help him forget how odd it is singing the same song 4, 5 or 6 times in a row, with an audience of one. I’m loving the variety that recording work throws up – July’s session with Grunge band Gunner SGT should be another fascinating one.

Tomorrow evening back to Berlin for a week, but first me and JP have to mix a final version of our recent Sportsday Megaphone remix.

Had a letter from the council informing me that the name of my illness was Campylobacter. Even the council’s calling me camp now. But that’s well and truly gone now, thank god. Nasty business.

And my 3-year-old sister knows both the tune and the words to “She Loves You”, which I think is one of the best things that’s ever happened. In a way I’m jealous of her – I was 8 years old before the Beatles waltzed into my consciousness – that gives her a 6 year head start. Although, I can drive and she can’t, so I guess the joke’s on her.

I have a playlist on my iTunes with what I currently think the next album could be – I’m putting it here, solely so I can check it in 12 months’ time once the album’s out, and I can see how different it ends up being from how I think it might be now.

1. Signs

2. Momentum

3. Manifesto

4. Save Me

5. You Don’t Know Me

6. Get Me Through

7. All This Time

8. The Dark Room

9. Insomnia

10. You Said You Always Wanted To Do Something Different.

And now it’s bed time. And Eurythmics time.

The slight upside of being ill…

.. is discovering Hornblower, which was clearly a major omission from my ’90s existence.

Just as Ioan Gruffud goes in for the snog with a French peasant girl, ITV3 cuts to an ad break, in this instance for a gambling company. ‘JACKPOT’ shouts the voiceover girl.

Drink-driving, Germany and David Davis

At half time in the Germany-Croatia match today, I was struck by the anti drink-driving advert on ITV1. For anyone who’s not seen it, it focuses on what could happen if you get stopped by the boys in blue while over the legal alcohol limit for driving. Stuck in my mind that the THINK! campaign chose as their line of argument against drink-driving that you might lose your job and license, rather than that you might hit someone and end their life on the way home. Presumably there was a meeting where they decided this was the more likely way of the two to succeed.

In other news, megaprops to David Davis for having big, big balls. I’m not an expert on the situation, but I cannot believe that the security risk in the UK is more severe than it’s been ever since we established the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ 8000 years ago. We got through WW2 without 42 days, for god’s sake.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lzpodjxmHlI

Kids in vailant protest march for fuck all

Fans of American band My Herbal Remedy yesterday marched in terrifying numbers against the offices of the newspaper The Daily Tits, in protest against allegations and insinuations by the paper that the band was ‘odious’ and ‘a bit dull’, and was driving teenagers the world over to become similarly odious and a bit dull.

The articles in question appeared after Florence Jones from Tavistock became officially the most weird and socially reclusive teenager in the UK.

Said one fan on the march, ‘I’m not actually a fan, I just love to march. I’m a member of MarchRSS.com, where I get instant news to my inbox whenever there’s a jolly good march going on. I just love to blog up pavements’.

The Good Soldier

Just finished reading ‘The Good Soldier’ by Ford Madox Ford. Mixed feelings. While it is extremely thought-provoking and very sad indeed, I have the same problem with it as I had with William Codpiece Thackeray in the 6th form at school – in short that he comes across as a dickhead. To quote from the back cover, ‘…the classic unreliable narrator…’. I just find this way of writing quite irritating, with an aftertaste of slight laziness and egotism. It’s almost like the way a child might construct a story, ’surprising the reader’ whenever there’s plot-gaps to fill that they’ve not seen coming. It’s still a great story, with fascinating characters and relationships within it, but it’s like watching a movie where there was a smudge on the lens throughout the filming – and as a result you’re never quite able to get inside it.

Again returning to ideas from the already hazy days of the 6th form, I’m sure Monsieur Brecht would have been an avid supporter of this style of writing – it affords the author an opportunity to nudge the reader’s opinion and distort their viewpoint through the way the story’s told. And I’m sure that, if done in the relevant way, it could be riveting. Yet once again, the result is just a little irritating, like being told an anecdote by someone who thinks they’re more interesting than the story they’re telling. It’s like a song where impressive production and sounds steal your attention from the song itself. My reaction to Brecht flavoured theatrical productions has usually (with one notable exception – Mother Courage at the Hackney Empire) been similar – art should never get in the way of itself. Splendid intentions, but just not enough panache to avoid that frustrating jarring feeling. But, dear reader, at a mere 199 pages, I, a lowly bloggist, urge you to try it despite me. I’ll probably love it when I’m older.

In other news I asked a 28-year-old for ID in the pub tonight. Proper made her day.

just for the record

i didn’t get to the end…