Russian silent film // London architecture // I am still in love with pop music // endangered species (esp.dating arrangements of) // urban planning // long cross-city walks under cover of darkness // most things to do with they came from the stars i saw them // overnight train journeys // 50s saxophones // libraries // darjeeling // jamesons and sloe gin (not together) // finding new artefacts for hunter and evercreatures' display cabinet // talking at length // battling cynicism, exhaustion, inertia // making life-changing decisions at short notice
Music
Os Mutantes // Rebel MC // Soft Cell // Kocani Orkestar // Adventures of Stevie V // Dexys // Silver Apples // Madness // Masada // Smiley Culture // Lady Saw // S.E. Rogie // Sidney Bechet // Kate Bush // Faust // David Krakauer // Amerie // Byrds // Barry Sisters // Bodysnatchers // A Certain Ratio // Adam Ant // Billy Fury // Buffy Sainte-Marie // Dizzee Rascal // Run DMC // Nico // Moz // Dion // Manuel Gottsching // Charles Mingus // Neneh Cherry // Kletka Red // Janacek // Death Kamp // Wiley // Diamanda Galas // Specials // Sonics // Slits // Smiths // Patti Smith // Bessie Smith // Stereolab // Sun Ra // Nancy Sinatra // Scott Walker // Iggy // Orange Juice // Woody Guthrie // White Denim // Lightning Bolt // Dave Tarras // Benjamin Britten // Clifford Curzon playing Schubert // Jon E Cash // Scott Walker // PRINCE // Raincoats // Matmos // Plug // Prodigy // Low Deep // they Came From the Stars (I Saw Them) // KLF // Alice Coltrane // John Coltrane // T Rex // Bowie // Suicide // De La Soul // The Fall // Mahler // Joan Baez // Yoko Ono // Yat-Kha // Black Box Recorder // Jeff Buckley // Leonard Cohen // Mountain Machine // Charlie Feathers // Taraf de Haidouks // Klaus Nomi // Kraftwerk // u-ziq // ESG // Glam Chops // Dave Tarras // JME // Monks // Phuture // Roxy Music // Eno // Joy Division // Harmonia-Neu-Cluster // Pentangle // Sculpture // Circulus // Naftule Brandwein // Ian Dury // Talking Heads // Nina Simone // Dusty Springfield // I could continue to bore you with really obvious things that everybody likes.
Movies
Zelig // Bronco Bullfrog // Billy Liar // Godfather // Heathers // Chinatown // October // Room At The Top // Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks // All About Eve // Live At Pompeii // Sunset Boulevard // Andrei Rublyov // Dawn Of The Dead // Shaun Of The Dead // Pandora's Box // That's The Way It Is // Sweet and Lowdown // Pirates Of The Carribbean // Maltese Falcon // Beat Girl // The Krays // Rockers // Saturday Night and Sunday Morning // The Hill // Underground // Stachka // Born To Boogie // Boston Strangler // Take It Or Leave It // The L-Shaped Room // Driller Killer // Carry On [...] // Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner // Jailhouse Rock // Brother // Amadeus // Brighton Rock // Some Like It Hot // Hudsucker Proxy // Grifters // Decline of Western Civilization // Went the Day Well // Infernal Affairs //
Television
The Collected Works of Larry David. Plastic Surgery Live, Britain's Hardest, Tribal Wives, Grange Hill in the Kendall era. The conclusion of The Sopranos was giving me a minor existential crisis until I discovered The Wire, so I can't watch series 5 until I've discovered the next thing. Suggestions?
Books
Emily Dickinson // Vladimir Mayakovsky // Morag Joss - HALF BROKEN THINGS // London Encyclopedia of Crime and Vice // Newgate Chronicles // Julie Burchill - LOVE IT OR SHOVE IT // Julian Cope - KRAUTROCKSAMPLER (and chapter 7 of JAPROCKSAMPLER) // Arthur Morrison // Benedict Anderson // Freud - CIVLISATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS // George Orwell // Edward Upward - IN THE THIRTIES // Thomas Hardy // Jim Thomson // Vladimir Nabokov // Elizabeth Smart // Gordon Burns - HAPPY LIKE MURDERERS // Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski - A WORLD APART // Helen Fielding // Isaac Deutscher // Henry Mayhew - LONDON LABOUR AND THE LONDON POOR // Andrea Ashworth - ONCE IN A HOUSE ON FIRE // Isaac Babel // Andrei Kurkov // Michael Frayn // Byron // Joanna Lipper - GROWING UP FAST // Iris Murdoch - UNDER THE NET // David Mitchell // Tony Harrison // Archie Camden - BASSOON TECHNIQUE // Edith Sitwell - ENGLISH ECCENTRICS // Orlando Figes - A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY // John Fowles - THE COLLECTOR // Dostoevsky // Charles McKay - EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS // Raymond Chandler // Robert Tressell - THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPISTS // Hubert Selby Jnr - LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN // Alan Bennett - THE HISTORY BOYS // Keith Waterhouse // Michael Muhammad Knight - THE TAQWACORES // Edward Hooper - THE RIVER // Jonathan Raban // Nicola Barker - DARKMANS // David Peace's Red Riding Quartet
Heroes
FOR STYLE: Dorothy Parker // Truman Capote // Archie Camden // Miss Rosie Meres // CLEVERNESS, COURAGE AND PERSEVERANCE: Raphael Lemkin // Daniel Kalicstein // Q.D Leavis // Annie Besant // NOT Rev. Osborne Jay, formerly of this parish E London
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Contributing editor for HARDCORE IS MORE THAN MUSIC and writer-at-large around the alleys and gutters of London E2. Sometime saxophist. I have a mind for trivia and an eye for the same.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
My primary activities include acquiring large piles of stuff which occasionally fall on me. I am easily distracted.
Who I'd like to meet:
Albert Finney, Mei Sheng, Alain Whyte. Catriona Kelly, Shirley-Ann Field, Claire Barry. Ronnie O'Sullivan - and how! TOX07. Johnny Boy Soprano. Those who identify with any of the above. Peeps with passion and ideas to spare. PLEASE TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW ALREADY. Experts on local trivia and amur leopards. Milk bar enthusiasts. Lora Logic fans.
Jailed by Communists for playing the wrong kind of music, discovered by legendary producer Joe Boyd (Floyd, Clapton, Nick Drake...), admired by Frank Zappa.... Kazum! presents Bulgarian clarinet legend IVO PAPASOV... fast and furious Balkan music. Monday 20 October at Cargo, London
hello me lovely - sorry i never made it on saturday. only had an hours sleep the night before. how where the hoof and the chops? anyhoos what you up to tonight? fancy popping to catch? the tamborines are playing and i thought i might pop along. if not, you bardensing it tomorrow?
Hey there, it's the Nationwide Mercury Prize team here, we are checking out tracks, videos, albums, and live dates out on Myspace. Each week we post our top tips in our blog but we are really keen to hear what bands you think are cool right now and who we should be looking out for. Drop us a comment and let us know!
Big Bad Love July 10th Doors: 7pm-11pm £6.50 93 Feet East
This is our first 93 Feat East gig and we’re happy to be gracing this illustrious stage so look out for special door price offers a few days before the gig… Or you can buy in advance here: http://www. wegottickets. com/event/32336
Join us for another Big City Redneck Presents! Another wonderful eruption, nay, ejaculation of good music at the Buffalo Bar this month!
What can I say? We won’t disappoint.
Buffalo Bar June 19th £6 on the door… 8.30pm till they kick us out…
Mama Shamone – THESE GUYS AREN’T PLAYING LIVE (except one acoustic) EXCEPT AT GLASTO FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR! http://www. myspace. com/mamashamone “Put Mama Shamone on at any venue and they are likely to take the roof off, this was one of the best live shows I’ve seen in years - certainly one of the best in London. In my opinion these guys are destined for greatness, it felt like I was witnessing history being shaped-something was just so right about what they were doing up there.” Vibe Bar
We Yes You No www. myspace. com/weyesyouno “We Yes You No sing about the end of the world, the end of everything. But in an apocalypse that would sound like this I would buy god’s last EP” – Big City Redneck
Language http://www. myspace. com/languageuk “"The verbosity of funk, the poetic twang of intelligent pop. The bridge between Franz Ferdinand and Smashing Pumpkins perhaps" – Bugbear
and other things..... and blah, blah, blah........
SKITANJA
Amped up to gabba-strength and power. Guitars like Dick Dale on horse-strength steroids – single-mindedly aggressive, spastic and maddened – grating strings near the bridge, putting on the tremolo until it looks the strings might fall off, only changing chords when absolutely necessary. Staccato trumpet blasts, frightening synth blurts, sampled farm noises, razor-sharp guitar shards, sounding not unlike a 10 disc cd changer with ADD, loaded with jazz, gabba, skronk and opera, turned up loud and pushed down the stairs. Focused, deadly, visceral. They are musical pranksters of the first order, playing genres the way lesser men play instruments, slamming together and discarding one idea after another like a reorchestrated John Zorn or The Residents.
EYES
Nail In The Coffin Records (Xiu Xiu, Meth And Goats, Laser Mountain, etc).
Cosmic sensory overload of electro/R&B/pop/outsider free jazz worship! Totally good and totally from Chicago, USA.
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