miketd: My inner thirteen-year old Gong fan is all of a-quiver, as I've bagged a last minute chat with Steve Hillage later today. Cosmic!
12:20 PM February 01, 2008 from web

miketd: Flipping heck, I've been blogrolled by Alison Moyet. (Oh come on, you LOVE it that I constantly name-drop. I do it for YOU, you know.)
01:28 PM February 01, 2008 from web

pal#1: @miketd: What a coincidence, only the other day Annie Lennox and I were discussing the impact of RSS/Atom feeds on traditional web stats.
02:17 PM February 01, 2008 from web in reply to miketd

pal#2: @miketd - I know! I got fanmail from 1980s TV presenter D****** D****** just the other day, asking advice on tip top blogging! Bless'em!
02:46 PM February 01, 2008 from web in reply to miketd

pal#3: @miketd. Never mind them. As I was telling Posh last night, they're just jealous.
10:03 AM February 01, 2008 from web in reply to miketd

pal#4: No Nelson, I will NOT promote your book 'Long Walk to Freedom' on my blog!!! Some people...!
03:03 PM February 01, 2008 from web

pal#2: @pal#3 - Yeah, David and the boys (Romeo etc) were saying you told her that over brunch. I said you were just trying to make her feel better.
03:09 PM February 01, 2008 from web in reply to pal#3

pal#1: @pal#2: You must have caught that cold from Brooklyn, he was really stuffed up the other day. Britney reckons Preston's got it too.
04:29 PM February 01, 2008 from web in reply to pal#2

Labels: celebs, community, twitter

Feeling slightly amazed that I've already been up for 2 hours. On a Sunday morning.

Worrying about the weather.

Nipping round the Myspace pages of the acts which I haven't heard before. Hmm. Really wish the Hold Steady hadn't cancelled.

Heavy showers forecast. Packing lightweight waterproof, Gore-tex lined cap, fleece & mat into day-sack, along with optimistic sunglasses.

Still agonising about the one major clash in the Summer Sundae line-up: Fujiya & Miyagi versus Spoon. It's not easy having leftfield tastes.

Questioning the purpose of wearing my "lucky pants". (Olive green Aussie Bum, white piping, curiously flattering.) (TMI?) (TMI.)

Sunday drivers plus traffic jams equals missed train. It's only a 30 minute wait though. And chill...

The Lea Shores. Jesus fronted post baggy/shoegaze, Ride meets Roses. With violin.

And that was our first mention of the word "shine". With stuff like this, it's a statuory obligation.

Now rhyming flyyy, hiiigh and "you're my butterflyyy". Time to move on.

Vetiver: a perfect sunday lunchtime band. Nothing to disturb the Observer readers mooching on the grass.

Foxy busty blonde lady, to me and Dymbel: "I fancy you. And you. It's for a dare... but maybe I would have done anyway." Oh dear!

Packed tent for The Strange Death Of Liberal England, possibly benefiting from We've Not Heard Of Any Of These People, So Let's Go For The Ones With The Interesting Name Syndrome. Ooh, 10 out of 10 for youthful energy and exuberance...

Ben Taylor. Son of James. Similar lack of hair. Acoustic. Droll. Best so far.

Ben Taylor throwing out so many Myspace addresses that one wonders if he's on a Murdoch kickback...

Cherry Ghost: the word "solid" could have been invented for him. Overly precarious trousers for a man in his 30s. Not his "lucky pants", one feels. Earnest, mildly dishy supply teacher rock. All very 6music/word magazine. I'm not won over.

In the market area, resisting the urge for a Tracy from Big Brother makeover.

Stephanie Dosen: seen her before, supporting Tina Dico was it? Kooky and lugubrious. Cameron Diaz goes folk.

Koop: pleasant Gilles Peterson approved mellow jazzy funkiness. And still no rain! Result!

Mm, tinkly vibes. Rob is texting me crap jokes from the cabaret tent. I shan't share.

Koop remind me a little too much of my snotty soulboy acid jazz years. I'd have loved them in 1992.

And the vibes tinkle on. Not the most emotionally expressive of instruments, are they?

Spoon: again, solid. Better than Cherry Ghost, but I am unmoved. Dymbel loves 'em though. Shall try Fujiya & Miyaji instead.

Spoon were improving as I left. But Fujiya & Miyaji are more my thing. Funky krautrock from Brighton.

People are dancing! And about time too. Young people are holding up cardboard signs. FREE ANAL HERE! (plus arrow) and GET YOUR OWL OUT! Surreal...

Fujiya & Miyaji deffo the best yet. And now, the generic & wildly popular indie sounds of the Pigeon Detectives. Hmm, Johnny Borrell lite, anyone? Yes Virginia, there is such a thing.

Aw, I shouldn't be such an old curmudgeon. They're the right band at the right time and they're working it well. Cross generational respect!

Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals: performing solo inside a giant TV set, with cartoon test card. Experimental!

K is stuck on the phone with my aunt (a chatty woman), and sending increasingly angsty text messages.

Gruff Rhys now joined by lady singer inside TV set, both seated behind desk, news reader style. Oh, and now there's a band.

There's a bit of a lull, so I'm relaxing in the run with a beer. Nice day, if a little short on epochal, life changing music. Pleasant innocuous vibe.

Cheerfully ignoring Echo and his Bunny Men, to whom I fell asleep at the London Lyceum in 1980. 40-something blokes with eyes half shut are gyrating drunkenly in the evening sunshine.

Ok, The Cutter, I'll give them that. I was young once!

Polytechnic: competent guitar band, but I am developing indie indigestion. It's been a long day.

Oh! This one sounds like Los Campesinos: "You! Me! Dancing!" I can get behind this.

Spiritualized Acoustic Mainline. As my friend says, perhaps I've never taken the right drugs. That said, their symphonic lugubriousness is appropriately crepuscular.

Ah, me old mate Duke Special, headlining inside the De Montfort Hall. Nice to be on familiar ground. As cosy and comforting as a steaming mug of cocoa, and hence just what these aching old bones are in need of.

Duke Special was a lovely end to 10 hours of good, if not often great music... and my first festival to boot.

Searching in vain for meteor showers on the drive home. 45 degrees south, if you're looking...

Labels: gigs, journal, popmusic, twitter

Spotted on the side of a van: Fluid Transfer Solutions. It's hoses. They mean hoses. Hoses!

---

My Will Oldham interview for the Nottingham Evening Post has been made available online. Considering it was my first ever interview with anyone other than a job candidate, and considering Oldham's reputation as a reluctant and uncommunicative interviewee, and considering that the copy deadline made it impossible to flesh the piece out beyond a simple Q&A format, and considering that Sylvie Simmons from The Guardian beat me into print by a few hours with a clearly superior piece... then I thought I did quite well. Considering.

---

Have just read someone in the comments box of a US gay blog sniffily describing heterosexuality as "gender-discordant sex". Or is it merely another Fluid Transfer Solution?

(Just savour that word "discordant". It's almost as if the commenter was forced into being gay for aesthetic reasons... because man-bits and lady-bits, well, they clash, don't they?)

---

And for my next two Star Profiles, both scheduled for Wednesday, I shall be chewing the fat with Shayne Ward (from The X Factor), and Joan Baez (from the 1960s). If you have a question that you'd like me to put to Shayne or Joan, then do me a favour and leave it in the comments. (Saves valuable research time. Hooray for "user generated content".)

---

K says that for his next venture, he wants to start a vasectomy business.
He's callling it Snip and F*ck.

Labels: celebs, eveningpost, gay, interviews, twitter

1. Once again, K and I have become Big Brother's bitches. Once again, Grace Dent provides the sharpest commentary. Also on the telly tip, I was able to identify the precise moment when the hitherto flawless Shameless jumped the shark: namely, when an unconscious Frank Gallagher was dragged from his burning kitchen by his pet dog. I mean, really.

2. As the Hellen Affair rumbles on, Zinnia Cyclamen provides a neat rebuttal of his rebuttal.

3. Much to my surprise, since I'm not exactly Mister Gadget Man, I have been completely sucked into the Apple iPhone hype, and now find myself pining for ownership. Engadget has the most thorough explanation. Unfortunately, K's plans to surprise me with a Blackberry on my birthday now lie exposed and in tatters. If only he was going to Florida in June...

4. ...rather than today, six months short of the device hitting the shops. In preparation for this, my valeting services have been in great demand this week. We had a lovely time picking out fresh shirt-and-tie combinations for him a couple of evenings ago (does pink scream "Spring 2006", or can we get away with it for a while longer?), and I have never been far from an ironing board. Oh, I do have my practical uses.

5. Alarmingly, K will still be out of the country when the kitchen fitters arrive next week, thus leaving me as de facto Site Manager. But what if they ask me technical questions about, I don't know, angle brackets or something? I shall be all at sea. Thankfully, K's business partner's wife E - who is something of an expert in this field - has volunteered her services as Relief Manager. She knows her way round kitchens, does E. I don't usually stretch much further than the fridge, the kettle and the microwave.

6. Facing the prospect of being home alone with no working kitchen for a few nights, I intend to be Out and About as much as possible next week. Owt good at t'flicks?

7. My intensive pre-interview research into the Life and Times of Will Oldham/Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is yielding rich dividends. In particular, his most recent album The Letting Go is a quiet revelation. I don't have many alt-country moments these days, but this is one of them.

8. With the Amsterdam weekend imminent, blogging might be light, but Twittering will hopefully be moderate-to-heavy - so keep your eye on the newly expanded "we twitter" box on the sidebar. (I am SO PROUD at having hacked the code around for this, although it has rather buggered up my archived unordered lists.) In the meantime, why not refresh your memories with details of my previous visits in 1991 (in which I found myself the unwitting star of a Benny Hill sketch at a *cough* "men-only event") and 2002 (in which cracks appear in my carefully constructed professional facade)? Ah, for those heady devil-may-care early days, when Troubled Diva was still a byword for Too Much Information...

9. Preparations for Which Decade Is Tops For Pops and Post of the Week have taken up most of the rest of my spare time - and at the time of writing, there is still one more vacancy for another member of the Post of the Week editorial team. More details below.

10. If spin the list out to a nice round ten, I'll make myself late and miss my plane. Have a good weekend!

Labels: bigbrother, confessional, gadgets, journal, linkage, lists, media, onetrack, television, twitter

Mike T-D: K and I are hurling insults at the TV screen. Did Amy Jenkins start with a tick list of "Isshoos"? Aaargh. (about 1 hour ago from web)

Mike T-D: All across the UK, New Year vows of abstinence are being shattered, as the nation heaves a collective groan: "Christ, is this shite on till 10:30?" (about 1 hour ago from web)

Mike T-D: K to me, just now: "THAT IS THE LAMEST EXCUSE I HAVE EVER HEARD." He's just pissed off that I've snatched the last glass off him. (about 1 hour ago from web)

Mike T-D: OK, time to un-pause the Sky box and face the full horror of the Manic Street Preachers Formation Dancing Scene... (about 1 hour ago from web)

Gert: It's a shame that not one of them has acquired any understanding of anything in ten years. (33 minutes ago from web)

Gert: I'm kind of enjoying it as a revelation of what some media tw@ thinks people are like on a planet in parallel solar system to my own. (33 minutes ago from web)

Siobhan: is wondering if Mike is slightly the wrong side of the This Life Demographic age-line to care so passionately about these things? (11 minutes ago from web)

Labels: media, television, twitter

Haven't got a lot to say for myself right now, but feel I should check in with you anyway.

That "too much soy turns you boy-on-boy" link (see below) is now all over t'blogosphere. It's so two-days-ago! Such is the nature of our medium.

(I like Siobhan's comment: "You just watch, as every tranny in the country starts drinking Alpro.")

Après-Twitter, all my thoughts are manifesting themselves in the present continuous, with a 150-character maximum. Brevity's as good as a rest.

Random surfing has unearthed a great new hand-drawn blog, documenting its author's attempts to get a job in the UK advertising industry. Start here, working up from the bottom; then go here.

K and I (but mostly K) are still reeling from yesterday's entrance into the third circle of MFI Fitted Kitchen Hell, which commenced when the fitters turned up and discovered that key parts were undelivered.

Sparing you the details of K's quest to extract redress from MFI's intransigent "Customer Care" wonks, but suffice it to say that they're buying us a new washing machine. God, he's good.

Hoping that K has recovered from the ordeal, which stressed him so much that he filled his diesel tank with petrol and ended up stranded in Sainsburys car park for 2 hours, awaiting the recovery people.

Interrupting this post to read Tom "Random Reality" Reynolds writing about Twitter on his brand new "anything but ambulance stuff" blog. (via)

Streaming new-to-me music from Calvin Harris ("Acceptable In The 80s", also via) and Johann Johannsson (lush Icelandic orchestral electronica, recommended by the chap who made my lunchtime sandwich).

Playing newly bought CDs from Amy Winehouse (Fopp impulse buy, as it sounded "seasonal" over their speakers) and Beirut (orchestrated yet loose Balkan folk with mariachi trumpets, from 19-year old multi-instrumentalist).

Remembering how much I enjoyed seeing Shortbus on Tuesday. Beautifully acted; emotionally astute; explicit but not gratuitous; accurately portrays a recognisable attitude to sexuality which I have not seen represented on screen before; much gayer than expected (woo); can even forgive it for the unconvincing bolted-on happy ending.

Realising that brevity is rapidly deserting me, and so deciding to crack on with the rest of my evening.

Labels: linkage, twitter

12:20. Outside the village shop, our friend P opens the glass door which covers the communal noticeboard. A loose sheet of paper flies straight out at me, landing at my feet. I stoop to pick it up. It is a hand-written notice, advertising a terrier for sale.

As regular readers will remember, K has been hankering after a dog for months years, in the teeth of determined opposition. He's playing a long game. It's a war of attrition, in which K's considerable powers of finesse (he won't be satisified unless the suggestion comes voluntarily from me) are pitted against my immutable stubborness.

Despite being a near-evangelical atheist, K has evidently enlisted The Almighty onto his side. How mercenary. Truly, he still stop at nothing.

Defiantly, I shake my fist at the heavens. You're going to have to do better than this, God! Cheap conjuring tricks aren't going to change my mind!

12:30. Returning to the cottage, I check K's moblog for the photo of the rainbow which he has just taken (see two posts below). As I do so, a bootleg mix assembles itself in my head, in which Over The Rainbow (Judy Garland) is "mashed up" with Girlfriend In A Coma (The Smiths, as performed by Morrissey at Nottingham Arena a few days earlier). It's a bit of a mess - but as my mental jukebox has yet to be upgraded with Pro Tools, a rough manual mix will have to suffice.

12:40. We decide against trekking out to the Staffordshire Antiques Fair at Bingley Hall, as our advance party has declared itself unimpressed.

14:10. A simple bread and soup repast, before heading into Ashbourne to poke around the shops. P has tipped us off about a place called Eclectica, on the edge of town by the demolished Nestle factory. The owners run it mainly for fun, and so it only opens on Saturdays.

15:10. Leaving Eclectica, we experience a mutual rush of blood to the head, having just bought five darling little glass stopper bottles and an oil painting.

The painting, dated 1995, is by an obscure artist from Moscow, and was originally picked up as part of a job lot at a clearance sale at a now defunct Manchester gallery. It depicts a large ship, seemingly abandoned in an icy ocean, with wisps of white emerging from it that suggest the outlines of birds, or of escaping spirits. In the foreground, indistinct dwarf-like figures are standing on the ice. One is in the sea, arms aloft, drowning. While most of the ship is realistically portrayed, its rear section abruptly blurs, before fading away into thin air. The style is slightly naive and outsider-ish, but not without appreciable technical merit. It is a more realistic painting than we would normally go for, but its weird supernatural qualities have intrigued us and reeled us in.

16:40. Staring into space like a moody teenager in the fruit & veg section of Sainsburys. Decide to Twitter my mood from my mobile.

K (hotly): What on earth are you doing?
M (listlessly): 'S boring innit. Texting me mates aren't I.

16:45. Cheering up now that we've reached the cake section, because I get to choose. My sunny disposition is easily bought.

17:45. Judging by the admittedly scant information on the web, it would seem that, for once, we have landed ourselves a hefty bargain. It's a difficult one to hang, though. Stylistically, it's such a departure that it doesn't really fit anywhere. We may be looking at a mini-rehang.

18:10. Enjoying a respite from bickering over where to put the painting (it's all part of the ritual), as K's mum has rung and she, um, likes a chat.

18:30. Clapping our hands with delight, having successfully positioned the darling little glass stopper bottles on the landing table. Aw, cute.


19:20. Have just missed most of Leona performing Over The Rainbow (equal parts Houston, W. and Cassidy, E., and sensibly sans mash-up) on The X Factor, as I was mixing gin and tonics in the kitchen.

19:45. Chig and I have decided to give next year's Eurovision a miss. The tickets, which go on sale tomorrow morning, are expensive and in scarce supply; all but the very dearest hotels in Helsinki are already fully booked; and I don't much fancy going through all of the many hassles involved, and booking more time off work away from K - and more importantly, so close to the first anniversary of the death of his sister M - merely so that I can repeat the experience which I already enjoyed in Athens earlier this year. It never does any harm to skip a year.

20:15. Flushed with triumph at the end of a particularly delicious supper, K insists that I Twitter the full list of ingredients, and proceeds to dictate them to me. Pork escalopes, Madeira, tarragon; watercress salad, lemon, porcini; and rye bread, for dunking. All the way through the day, he has been displaying a surprising interest in Twitter, often stopping to check my auto-refreshing "With Friends" page as he walks past the laptop on the kitchen table. He's normally only like this when I've mentioned him on the blog, and people are talking about him in the comments.

20:50. Pacing around in my posh clothes (stone coloured Gucci civil partnership jacket, brand new Paul Smith shirt, indestructible six-years-old Prada shoes), in readiness for L&M's 10th anniversary party at the memorial hall. This won't be our ususal crowd, and we're both a little nervous. A quick fag in the garden while K applies the finishing touches, and then we'll be off...

21:25. Down at the memorial hall, we are watching a loud six-piece semi-professional rock band from Liverpool called The Laze, whose members include M's brother. This isn't exactly what we're used to on a Saturday night in rural Derbyshire. Fab!

21:35. The band are playing a number called Your Poppa On Poppers. It is ace, especially with the sax. K and I are brain-storming their influences. Bluesy, rocky, jazzy and proggy. Shades of Little Feat, with a splash of Gong?

21:45. Oh my God, a recorder solo! Adding Jethro Tull to the list, I briefly step outside to get a signal on my mobile. A lone chuffer is out there already. He also mentions Little Feat - the fourth person to do so. Must be official, then.

21:50. They're getting heavier - and proggier, which is surprising for a band so young. The only contemporary comparison which I can make is with fellow Liverpudlians The Coral, whose live sets can also tend towards dense free-form psych-outs.

22:30. The band have finished, and I'm talking to L. He is a landscape artist, whose studio is also in the village, and we have bought several of his paintings over the years. L is telling me about the band, and of their shared reverence for Frank Zappa (of course, Zappa, duh, slap), and that record labels have been up to see them, but haven't known what stylistic bag to place them in for marketing purposes, and of the frustration which that causes.

22:40. E is telling me about his newly launched organic meat mail order site, and asking me how to boost its Googlejuice. I duly pledge a link. Every little helps.

23:50 S and I have just discovered that we were exact contemporaries at Nottingham University in the early 1980s, and that my major subject was her subsidiary subject. So that's why I have spent the past six years wondering why she looked naggingly familiar. Does she remember him and her? Of course she does! Do I remember her and him? Of course I do! We continue excitedly in this vein for some time.

00:20. I am talking with the couple down the road about Devendra Banhart, the Aphex Twin, raving in the 1990s, and the way that young children particularly respond to bass. Evidently, there are sides to this village which I never knew existed before. It is all coming as something of a revelation.

00:55. After hours jam session, yeah! The hall has thinned out, but the remaining lurching stragglers are doing a good job of filling the space. Is it just me, or is everyone here steaming drunk?

01:10. The five remaining band members are thrashing out a cover of Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King. People are hurling themselves off the front of the stage.

01:50. We're back from the party, and I have tracked down the band's Myspace page. Turns out that they have supported Damo Suzuki, the former lead singer of Can. Buzzing around the kitchen as the music blares from the laptop, we still cannot get over just how good they were, and what a great night it was, and how this extraordinary village never ceases to amaze us.

Labels: cottage, journal, twitter

Yes, I know that my sidebar is basically one great big pimpfest for the archives, and I know that you stopped looking at it months - if not years - ago, but I still adhere to the principle of keeping as much material as possible just one click away, rather than burying it away on never-visited sub-pages. The theory being that as newer readers scroll down the posts, something or other in the sidebar will catch their eyes, luring them into a bout of speculative clicking. (Judging by my stats, this would seem to happen reasonably often.)

Anyhow, I have added a new section which might be of interest, as it will lead you to EXCLUSIVE NEW SELF-PENNED CONTENT! (of an uncharacteristically "Web 2.0" nature for Little Old Luddite me, but it's the old-school "Spirit of 2002" aspect which hooked me in).

Let's see how long it takes for you to spot it. And once you have spotted it, do feel free to join in...

Labels: meta, twitter