50 quid bloke

Let’s face it, I’ve been rather stuck in the past on here for the last couple of weeks. Free? King Crimson? Terry Riley? Even I am Kloot has a distinctly retro feel to it. This way pipe and slippers lie.

So, I’m very glad to get my teeth into something brand spankingly shiny and new that is worth getting unashamedly excited about: Atomic Hooligan’s You Are Here. The most fun I’ve had since LCD Soundsystem.

First heard by me on Sunday night on Eddie Temple Morris’s excellent Remix show on Xfm. I had to stop the car (on the way to the dump to get rid of a load of soil from the garden) to write down who they were because I can’t remember anything anymore.

What is it? Well they’re producer/ DJs who’ve roped in some very neat vocalists. Think breakbeats with lots of squelches and bleeps and all sorts of good honest messy, mildly anthemic dance stuff, add the odd tactical guitar riff, and then a layer of really quite funky vocals and there you go.

There’s five different vocalists. [One is called ‘carpet face’ - why?] - and the vocals mean that even though it’s all rather noisy it’s also quite melodic and listenable - which is the perfect mix for us ageing ex-clubbers.

Here’s their (rather scant) site, and you can find out more about them on the 4gmusic site (they’re from Watford and they’ve been on the cover of DJ Magazine). You can even try and hire them here.

There’s a review here on the BBC site - although it’s obviously written by a young person..and you might want to put it through some sort of translation engine to understand what a ‘grime joint’ is etc.

I have a recurring nightmare: One day.. I find myself at the Albert Hall ..in a corporate hospitality box..watching Eric Clapton and I’m really really enjoying it.

Nothing against Eric. He’s a wonderful man, who does a lot for charity. But I’m afraid he’s inextricably linked with what I find to he the very worst sort of middle aged music fan, and therefore has to be avoided on principle [it’s ok to like the Yardbirds…but you have to say, they were better with Jimmy Page…which incidentally doesn’t mean you can suddenly get into Robert Plant…as he has similar Clapton-like connotations].

This fear drives me away from all sorts of music. Generally the type that involved a lot of hair first time round. And, I’m afraid, Free have always fallen in to that category.

How many Free tracks can you name? OK, if you know you’re stuff I’m sure you can run through the whole story but for most of us, it starts and stops with All Right Now, which is a great song but let’s be honest, it’s completely Smashy and Nicey.

About a year ago, however, I got hold of a cheap copy of Stuck In The Middle - a quite wonderful, if rather random (Buggles, Boomtown Rats, Status Quo, Steelers Wheel) collection of videos from the 70s, which included some mesmerising live footage of All Right Now. I watched that clip about 10 times on the trot. Completely messy, louche rock and roll: all over the place - in the very best possibly way.

Since then, we’ve had Kings of Leon, and Jet and in fact, quite a lot of noisy, hairy guitar stuff. Hence my natural resistance to Free has been gradually whittled away.

So there’s been a two CD, Free ‘best of’ released this month called Chronicles. Thanks to the anonymity of the net, I was able to order it without anyone noticing. But I’m finally prepared to out myself. I love it. I can honestly say, it completely rocks in a quite brilliant, bluesy, completely un-reconstructed way.

I wish they’d left ‘All Right Now’ off - because it brings the whole thing back to work Xmas discos, but oh yes, it’s good. If you’re like me and you’ve refused to dabble with this sort of stuff out of principle - I suggest you sneakily buy a copy and take a listen. I’m not saying you should suddenly go all rock god, I suppose all I am saying, is give Free a chance.

However, I see problems on the horizon. There is a Cream re-release on its way. I fear I might like it. I must resist. Help please - I’m sure we can fight this together.

One day at school, someone turned up with a box of record they said they’d found at Lime Street station. I took two of them that I’d never heard of: King Crimson’s in the court of the Crimson King; and the seven inch single of Curved Air’s ‘Back Street Luv’.

I think I was a mod at the time, so these were deeply counter cultural. But as they were free, I persevered.

Anyway - I found the King Crimson album utterly unlistenable, except for one track ‘Epitaph’, and I really rather liked the whole rock and roll Curved Air thing…and felt very clever that I knew where Stuart Copeland came from.

Fast forward many, many years and here we are. Last year BBC 4 had an excellent documentary on Prog Rock, and there’s a general buzz that it’s back I also noticed last year that the King Crimson was re-released.

But still I resisted. I was - I’m proud to say - never into Rush, Genesis, Yes or any of that noodling nonsense. And while it’s quite good fun to read about, it I’m certainly not going to get into it now. [I have the same feeling about Formula 1 - fine in theory, deadly dull in practice]

Then a strange set of social/ professional co-incidences gets me looking at the very fine Real Reviews blog, where the enigmatic RS writes about Ulrich Schnauss’s Far Away Trains. An album I have been smitten with since the first time I heard it.

He draws a line back from that, via The Who’s Baba O’Reilly, and Won’t Get Fooled, to Terry Riley’s ‘A Rainbow in Curved Air‘, an album I’d never heard of, but which, you might be able to guess from the title has very hairy credentials indeed.

I turns out that Curved Air, took their name from Terry Riley’s album. So I think: I like Ulrich, and I liked that Curved Air song (albeit when I was 15), so I’ll try this. And as Curved Air are inextricably linked with King Crimson in my mind, I really have to retry In The Court of The Crimson King again.

Guess what? King Crimson is still rubbish! Not that there aren’t some good bits in it. But for ever minute of decent melody, or dramatic build or swoopy/ swirly bit, or haunting vocal, there’s 10 minutes of aural mush. I can see the whole thing working wonderfully on acid - but these days, Wrigleys Extra is the strongest thing to pass my lips so that’s not much good.

And the Terry Riley? This, I sort of get. Although it’s got two tracks, one 18 minutes long, the other 22, and I cant’ remember when I last focussed on something for that long. I think full appreciation requires a spliff, a set of headphones and at least an hour of uninterrupted time. Well, I have the headphones.

For completions sake, I’m glad I was introduced to it. Now I really do know where Pete Townshend got the idea for all that synth work that saw the Who through the late 70s. This is important to me.

However, that’s as prog as I’m going to get. If you ever find me writing: ‘So I thought I’d find out what Rush/Yes/ELP were really like..’, please come round and shoot me. You know where I live.

A few years ago, when my interest in music was completely rekindled, I Am Kloot was one of my great discoveries.

Grown up, intelligent, mellow, melodic stuff that was easy on the ear but never boring. Utterly lovely. And, in Titanic and Dark Star two absolutely classic signature songs.

I think I must have read about them in Uncut, or heard a track on their covermount CD, and then downloaded everything they’d done on Audiogalaxy. I have no qualms about this, though because I then went on to buy their album, Natural History, not only for myself, for half a dozen times for Xmas presents. I gave it to people who hadn’t bought any new music for a while…and it was generally much loved.

Anyway, I sort of liked their follow up, I Am Kloot, but it felt a bit too much of the same. Their latest, Gods and Monsters, arrived this week, and I’m utterly in love with it.

They’ve cranked things up just that little bit - a bit more dischord, a little less obviously melodic, just enough to make you listen up, but not so much that they lose their charm.

You don’t want them to get stuck in the same groove - but at the same time, I don’t think the world is ready for the I Am Kloot freeform jazz album, yet..

The funny thing is, the albums had pretty average reviews everywhere. A pretty much uniform three stars. In a way, I can understand this - if you’re a weary music hack ploughing your way through this months pile of hasbeens and wannabees this isn’t going to make your hair stand on end. It’s not genre-defining. They’re unlikely to appear on the cover of Dazed and Confused any time soon. But, it’s a very fine album, and worthy of your time.

A music journo I know told me that despite the fact he can get any cd he wants for free, there is some music he buys as an act of public service - because he feels the artists need the support. I suppose this is how I feel about I Am Kloot. I want there to be bands like this, producing music like this. Frankly, I’ll end up listening to this album about a hundred times more than I’ll listened to The Bravery or Arcade Fire.

..to all those who offered to help with MP3blogs.org - think I”m now going to turn this into a team effort. Jem Stone very kindly did the first trawl…others to follow.

When I was single, my music collection was front and centre in my/our living room. There is was hundreds of albums, singles and CDs screaming: ‘look how amazingly eclectic, and cool my tastes are. Admit it: if you are a man, you envy me, if you are a woman, you want to sleep with me’.

Well, that was the intention. I doubt I was the only teen/ 20something who tried the same.

Now I’m a married man and there’s three of us in the house, it’s all been shunted into the spare room. My vinyl sits untouched on the toppest of top shelves; my CDs are filed away in near-alphabetical order in habitat racks behind the door.

Meanwhile, any music that actually gets played in the house now comes out of either one of two iPods or from my laptop. Pretty much every CD I own and like is now ripped and stored in at least four places digitally (two ipods/ a laptop/ my work desktop/ a back up external drive). So I’m wondering, why on earth do I own all those CDs?

I know why I own my vinyl. I can’t bear to throw it away, and there’s no point in trying to sell it. It’s all scratched to shit either after being left in piles all over the various rooms and flats I lived in or as a result of my brief but spectacularly hamfisted career as a DJ.

Anyway, regardless of the music that’s actually on them - I love all those records as objects in their own right. I don’t want to sound too cheesy, but they hold the keys to all sorts of memories. They’re the closes thing I have to a diary of that time.

My CDs however, I care nothing for. I like looking at them all there on the wall, all neatly racked and stacked, and thinking: ‘gosh, haven’t I got a lot of CDs?’, but beyond that they mean diddley squat to me.

At the same time, I can’t stop buying CDs. God knows I’ve banged on enough about digital music, and I buy the odd thing of iTunes, but I like the whole DRM free thing of buying and ripping and being able to put it where you want. I want my MP3s - not AACs that I can only put on four machines, or WMAs that I lose after three weeks or whatever.

And yes, I like my wall of CDs.

In fact, I buy so many CDs that it’s starting to cost quite a bit. Not a huge amount - but enough to sometimes make me wince when I look at my credit card statement and see the word ‘Amazon’ scratched all over it. And we’re running out of space.

So here’s my plan. I’m going to start selling off my CDs. In all, my target is to get rid of 100 CDs over the next few months on Amazon marketplace (despite the shocking charges they make, they sell for higher prices than on eBay). And my pricing tactic is simple: I’m going to undercut the lowest price on every CD I try to sell.

I’m slightly worried about the impact on my lovely wall of CDs and what’s left there. It will still have to look suitably impressive to the casual observer, a good mix of classics and contemporary - enough to make sure that the odd guest who stumbles in there while trying to find the loo knows that, (despite appearances) I can still cut it, but I’m confident that can be achieved even after it’s been thinned out.

That should help fund future CD splurges, but it is only the start.

Most CDs that I buy, I’m now going to rip and put straight back on Amazon marketplace . In fact, I sense this is the best way to sell, because you’re selling popular things are at their most popular. I’ve already resold Arcade Fire (didn’t like) and Teenage Kicks (good compilation, but once ripped..what use is it?) which went within 24 hours of going up. I sense it may take a while for Bob Scheider to shift. .

I thought about just ripping them and returning them, but that feels a bit immoral. I’m dithering over whether it’s unfair on some of the smaller artists I’ll be reselling, as I dont’ think they get royalties, but I think I promote enough stuff here to not feel so guilty. Amazon, of course, wins out - making money when I buy it first time, and then again when I sell. But hey, I already make them enough money, why stop now?

How will I know what to keep? Not sure yet - but it’ll only be stuff I love, or failing that stuff I quite like but will make me look cool if it’s on my shelves.

Some things never change.

I  haven’t been able to update mp3blogs.org for months now, and there’s a huge backlog of blogs to approve/ disapprove. Does anyone fancy helping me with this? I reckon it’ll take about a couple of hours…and you’ll make a lot of bloggers very happy. Best to mail me, if you’re interested - simon dot waldman at gmail.com

In my early teens, with punk in full fury, it was always very exciting and entertaining to hear a good bit of swearing on a record.   

The classic, of course, was Ian Dury’s Plaistow Patricia on New Boots and Panties (a moment’s silence please for one of the greatest albums ever…..) which, for the unacquainted starts with the late Mr Dury delivering a stream of full-blown expletives with no musical accompaniment. Oh how we laughed. 

However, I don’t remember anything with a title quite as fruity as ‘Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole’ - which is Martha Wainwright’s paean to her father Loudon, previously released as a single and now probably the best track on her eponymous debut album.   

Now, my daughter is only six weeks old, who knows what will go on between us in the future. I’m sure that at some point she’ll feel nothing but hatred for me. I just hope that should she get round to writing a song about me either a) it’s slightly nicer than that or b) if it’s horrible, it’s not very good.   

The rest of the album is also very fine, incidentally. She’s at the smart end of folk.. a little more poetic than her father, but more conventional than her brother (lots of nice guitar strumming, simple accompaniment etc). I’ve never listened to her mum so can’t compare.   

And yes, unfortunately for her dad, BMFA is a quite wonderful song. 

Poor old Loudon. I wonder if young ‘uns who hear Rufus and Martha singing and read their interviews are buying his albums to find out what sort of monster this man is…or whether they’re boycotting him out of principle.   

We all used to sit around and play Loudon Wainwright songs on the guitar when we were younger - well, ‘The Suicide Song’ in particular.

So I’ve been listening to him for years. Hey, I knew Rufus when he was just a tit man…(Wainwright in-joke, there)  Anyway, I’ve ordered his new album, so I’ve got he full Wainwright 2005 set to compare and contrast. i wonder if near simultaneous releases from all the family are going to become an annual thing now. 

If you’ve never listened to him..you should. If nothing else - he’s very funny. His live album - Career Moves is a pretty good starting place.

Well, we talked for a long time about should we or shouldn’t we. But she’s arrived..and I’m so glad we did it. She’s very small, and very cute, and I can’t put her down.

Yes, we’ve just  become a two iPod household and there is a lovely gleaming 60gb iPod photo in the house to go alongside the 30gb one I bought a few years ago.

I should add - this isn’t a ‘his and hers’ thing. It’s an ‘upstairs and downstairs’ thing. The 60gb is on display in the living room, while the 30gb is up in the room we now call ‘the nursery’.

I don’t really walk around with an iPod (enough gadgets already…or I’m cycling)..but it’s just the best way to listen to music at home.

I have to say, I went for 60gb just because you can never have enough disk space, and my 30gb is almost full. The photo thing was a bit of a novelty, but the screen on it is gorgeous..and it syncs effortlessly with iPhoto…so that’s a bit of an added bonus. Well worth the extra cash.(and someone is selling them for only £255 new and used on Amazon)

Yes, the geeks among you will say I should have gone network..but I keep all my digital music on a laptop which I often take out…and the price of a Slimp3 Squeezebox isn’t really that much cheaper.

Teenage Kicks, a new compliation out on Sanctuary on Monday. An almost perfect collection of 40 punk/ new wave singles. Yes, you’ve got all the originals - no doubt on 7 inch…but to have them all in one place…too good to resist.