interrobang (‽)

OK, maybe it’s time to admit that I’m finally too old for all of this.  Last night I went to see another band - The Black Angels - and I’m starting to feel like I don’t belong.  It’s not the music.  The band were excellent, and I was shuffling along as enthusiastically as the next person (apart from the guy who was flailing his arms around wildly and making guttural grunts of appreciation at the end of every song, but I put that down to his superior drug intake and not the quality of the music - he would have […]

Many years ago (1988), I took my girlfriend-at-the-time to see Roy Harper play live.  He was supported by a young singer/songwriter/guitarist called James Varda.  The gig was excellent, and I was so impressed with James Varda, that I bought his debut LP, Hunger (direct from the record label , as HMV didn’t carry it).  It didn’t disappoint, with the best lyrical imagery this side of thin-wild-mercury Dylan, and some powerful use of a semi-accoustic 12-string.  I must have all but worn out the grooves on that album.  A year or so later the girlfriend left me and - I found out later […]

A couple of days ago I was rummaging around in one of the many boxes of crap piled up in my study, when I found my old Nintendo Donkey Kong game (you know, the old orange clam-shell one).  I don’t know why I’ve still got it - maybe out of sentimental gratitude for all the dull church services it helped me through during my boarding school days.  I showed it to my 8-year-old son (Finn) who was distinctly underwhelmed, until I told him that this was the ‘original Nintendo DS’ (hey, it has two screens…), and explained that the little guy was Mario of Super […]

For some reason I’ve got this real craving for Toffos.  Unfortunately, being some 10,000 miles from the nearest packet, it’s likely to remain unsatiated.  Despite globalization and the flattening of the world, some things just don’t seem to travel intercontinentally - and sweets (candy, snoep, what you will) seems to be one of them.  Although there’s not much I miss about England, sweets are something I certainly do.  Not enough to move back there, you understand, but enough to give me pangs of nostalgia.  Or of hunger.  It’s difficult to tell, this late in the afternoon.
I spent several years in Belgium, […]

Although I’m an iPod owner, and an avid iTunes user, until this morning I’d never downloaded a song from the Apple Music Store (or anywhere else for that matter).  Call me old-school, but I like having the CDs.  I do have all of my CDs ripped to my iPod, and some I’ve never even heard straight off the plastic, but I still feel happier having the physical backup.
A couple of days ago I read a buddy’s ‘blog entry describing how he’d recreated a vinyl-only compilation from yesteryear by purchasing the individual tracks online.  Co-oncidentally, at the same time, my service provider […]