Wednesday 21 October 2015

Autumn Arias

Some music I've heard and am liking of late.

Great to see Dave Gahan with some new stuff, this is his new single with his new arrangement the Soulsavers.

It's called All of This and Nothing and is from the forthcoming album Angels & Ghosts.



This is a nice tune from The Sherlocks, sounds very like the Courteeners
It's called Heart of Gold and is well worth a listen.



This is the new single from Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.
It's called Losing Touch from the New Album ‘Momentary Masters’ Out Now.



Wednesday 27 May 2015

A Book A Year For 2015

So here we are almost 5 months into 2015.

If you recall I vowed to read a book a month for 2015, here's what I've done so far.

1. For January I read Neal "Hoggie" Horgan's account of some extremely difficult times for Cork City Football Club. As we have come so far in the intervening years, I had actually forgotten a lot of it but no harm in remembering the difficult times.


2. For February I read Kevin Pietersens Autobiography KP.
He has a good moan about everything, the press, the players, the authorities and how everyone hates him. "Trust Issue" is right.
It's no surprise he isn't wanted back.





3. In March I went back to football, it was a book I had bought many moons ago but had never read.
It is written by an American author, Robert Andrew Powell, who moves to the most dangerous city on earth to find himself, it's called "This Love Is Not For Cowards - Salvation and Soccer in Ciudad Juarez".
Murder is an every day thing in Ciudad Juarez, human life has no value, it is a stones throw from the US border and El Paso. He begins to follow the local football team as they struggled in the top tier of Mexican football.
An Interesting book, worth the read.






4. April marked a move to my other great love, music. This was another book that was lying around for a while and is called "The Fallen"
Mark E. Smith is an enigma, making music with his band, The Fall since 1976, members have come and members have gone but Mark is there omnipresent, leading the line.
Dave Simpson is a Fall devotee who decided to take on the onerous task of tracking all those people who played over the years. It's in the region of 50 or so.
It's a fascinating take on the way Smith runs the band , treats new members, marries some and contains some crazy stories of the carry on throughout the years.
Marks quote on the front should be reason enough to read it.








5. May is the month of Morrissey.
A hero of mine, a man that spoke so vividly to me in the 1980's when in my bedroom writing poetry.
Len Brown (not the controversial Aussie mayor or the lad I went to school with) has spent an unbelievable amount of time with Morrissey over the years. Brown, like myself,  is a huge fan and intermingled Morrisseys career with the various meetings they have had. 
It takes one through his career piece by piece, interview by interview, album by album, controversy by controversy.
The reason it took me so long to read is that as Brown went through the back catalogue I kept going back to my Morrissey cd collection and started digging out all the albums to play over and over again.






And one we move to June.
I have Morrisseys own autobiography for later in the year so am always open to suggestions, please let me know if you have any book that may be of interest.

Wednesday 7 January 2015

Fresh Start

Kind of forgot about the blog in the last few months of 2014.
There was lots to be done in work and with CCFC so could not dedicate the time.
EOQ Support, new kit launch, getting merchandise to the shop for Christmas. etc etc
A huge elongated build up to the festive season, then you blink and it's gone.

Here are my brief list of resolutions for 2015.
1. I have vowed to read a book a month in 2015.
For January I have started this.


2. I'm going to climb Carrauntoohil.
3. I'm going to learn how to use the Nespresso machine at home.
4. I'm going to take the Kick Start 1 course.
5. I'm going to re-issue my 2010 book Reflections from the Shed in e-book format.

Have also taken my eye off the music ball over the last few months. Then I came upon this nugget from last year by my old friends We Are Scientists. It's beautiful.






I heard this on the radio last week and thought I never knew We Are Scientists had a new single out.
Turns out it wasn't them at all but a new bunch of lads called Circa Waves, this is called Fossils.
Sounds very like them though.