Sunday, October 08, 2006

Brief, but More to Follow

Ladies and Gentlemen, after spending a weekend in its company I feel I have to take this opportunity to let you know how wonderfully brilliant Keane's Under The Iron Sea album is. I'm going to provide a full justification for this shortly, but it really is perfect. Watch this space...

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Equalisers, Indecision, and Stagnance

Well, what a difference a couple of minutes can make to your general state of being. A few moments ago,this post was going to begin with a doom-laden moan about how my beloved Exeter City were never going to get out of the Conference after losing at (one of my mortal enemies) Grays Athletic. Why are Grays Athletic mortal enemies of mine? Well, first of all they're from Essex, so that immediately puts them on the backfoot. Then there's the small fact that they beat us three times last season. Then add in the fact that they've an ex-Torquay United goalkeeper and they really don't have a lot going for them. However, as with the Stevenage game earlier in the season, Billy Jones' last gasp equaliser has completely changed my outlook. So stick that in your shopping centre-sized pipe and smoke it, Grays supporters!

Right, footy banter over and done with, on to more serious issues. The truth is, Dear Reader, I don't really know what to talk to you about as there seems to be so much I could talk about, and yet at the same time there's so little. The problem is I've been spreading myself a little thin by blogging here and on MySpace. As a result you either have to come up with two sets of mind-bogglingly brilliant observations on a weekly basis, or post the same thing there and here thus appearing as not having enough original ideas. However, MySpace appears to me to be too full of people being cool and striking Indie postures for me to be a little geeky and discuss things Who related at great length, such as the news that Mavis from Coronation Street is going to be in Season Three. Bizzare! I wonder if they could get Derek, with his paper-clip topped van, to appear as well? That'd be immensely cool. Oh, and the esteemed Mr. Mark Gatiss has moved from being a writer for the series to being an actor in the series. Surely that, however, was only a matter of time. Oh, and how rubbish was the finale to Season Two of Lost?

I could further discuss Season Three, but I like the way the production team is keeping its cards closer to its chest this time around. I could discuss that I'm rewatching all of Season Two at present, and enjoying it a lot more second time around. I could discuss how things are going in Cardiff, the fact that everyone here is really friendly, approachable and are probably some of the most inspiring and fascinating people I've ever met. I could equally write an appraisal of one of the four brilliant albums that have taken up residence in my CD player, but I can't choose which one to discuss first. I'm tempted to discuss the forthcoming DVD release of the last Tom Baker stories/first Peter Davison stories, but that really does require a full post in itself.

Instead, I'm going to focus on an article I found online yesterday concerning the best songs to play at an Indie club night. I have to say I found the list rather unoriginal and tiresome. The top-rated song was the bloody Arctic Monkeys (surprise surprise), and whilst 'Mr. Brightside' rightly came in second, the rest of the list was your usual suspects, such as the bloody awful Kooks and the song that, if you believe most people, saved British music from whatever it was doing previously, 'I Predict a Riot'. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by the songs on the list, but my attitude to DJing was to try and play some new stuff mixed in with older, lesser heard songs so as to give people a little bit of range and open their eyes to stuff that's been overlooked by the histories constructed by the NME. The point I'm trying to make is that if you keep to the 'established classics' then every single night you go to becomes pretty much the same, just in different surroundings. Despite the attempts to differentiate the nights in Cardiff, they're all basically an ironic name (either lifted from a cult film character or a popular song) that plays the same stuff in a different order. And if you go along to too many of them you get the impression that the Indie scene is becoming stagnant and begin to lose interest in it. So, Dear Readers, I'd ask people to be brave, take a risk, and play some forgotten classic/overlooked anthem/something you like and no-one else does. You never know, you might get some eejit like me come and congratulate you or enquire as to who it is you're playing, thus opening their eyes to a new favourite band.

CyberControl's Top 5 Anthems from the Undergraduate Days

Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows
The Coral - Dreaming of You
The Primitives - Crash
The Cooper Temple Clause - Panzer Attack
The Libertines - Up the Bracket