I’ve just been away for three days for a work conference. Being new to the world of lectures and finger food I wasn’t familiar with conference clichés. I was surprised to hear more than one person jokingly refer to the concept of ‘what happens on the conference stays on the conference’ – something you hear more associated with buck’s night and hen’s dos than work junkets. Naïve me... apparently conferences are full of people at it like middle-aged bunnies, revelling in the freedom from spouses and children in work-funded four star hotels.
That said, I have a shocking admission to reveal – one that I should have left on the conference but the guilt is too strong and I have to come clean. I am ashamed dear world, for I have fallen off the cheese wagon.
As with all weak-willed junkies of excess I could of course lay the blame with the fiends who stuck a cheese slice in my egg buttie without telling me until it had melted into the eggie-goodness. I could also state that the chilli prawn pizza I ordered on Friday night did not list cheese as an ingredient on the menu. I could have done that. I could also have lied, dear reader, but this is not the Mint Custard way. So I stand before you and I look you in the pixelated eye and say “Yes. Cheesy goodness has crossed my lips. And it was good. And cheesy. And I’m sorry.”
I shall complete my fromage-free March (after all there’s only 8 days to go) but just like Little Miss Muffet, I’ve learnt a very big lesson. Don’t f*ck with curds and whey.
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Only Missing Out Can Break Your Heart
Sometimes I hate being so far from Europe. Saint Etienne have announced gigs in May this year where they’ll be performing Fox Base Alpha from start to finish. How ace would that be? They’re only playing Glasgow, Sheffield and London. I wonder how I could persuade them to come to Melbourne. They can all stay at my house for free. I’d promise I wouldn’t stare.
Pending their arrival on our shores (I know, it’s never gonna happen) I’m off to dance around the room to So Tough in my Sarah wig and Jean Shrimpton mini-dress. Again.
http://www.saintetienne.com/news.html for more...
Pending their arrival on our shores (I know, it’s never gonna happen) I’m off to dance around the room to So Tough in my Sarah wig and Jean Shrimpton mini-dress. Again.http://www.saintetienne.com/news.html for more...
From tiny seeds – tiny things grow…
I’ve been tending to my veggie pots for three months now and despite drought and temperatures of up to 46 degrees things have gone quite well. I’ve loved pottering around in the garden with the radio on and am confident that one day I will make an excellent pensioner.
With this being my first attempt at growing things I’ve been a little bit sentimental about it all, treating each seed and seedling with love and admiration that they managed to grow at all. I clearly let my emotions get the better of me. Just about every packet of seeds tells you to thin to the strongest two or three seedlings, the idea being that there won’t be room for everyone to grow. This is like asking which of your children you’d like to send to Michael Jackson’s house for a holiday.
The consequence of my inability to be ruthless has been the world’s tiniest vegetables, displayed below for you as a warning. All were perfectly edible and quite delicious; just not very plate-filling.
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With this being my first attempt at growing things I’ve been a little bit sentimental about it all, treating each seed and seedling with love and admiration that they managed to grow at all. I clearly let my emotions get the better of me. Just about every packet of seeds tells you to thin to the strongest two or three seedlings, the idea being that there won’t be room for everyone to grow. This is like asking which of your children you’d like to send to Michael Jackson’s house for a holiday.
The consequence of my inability to be ruthless has been the world’s tiniest vegetables, displayed below for you as a warning. All were perfectly edible and quite delicious; just not very plate-filling.
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Like all second-time parents I’ve been far less precious about my next offspring and have already started ruthlessly plucking out the stragglers from my new autumn sowings. The result might not be as cute but it might fill my belly a bit better.
Friday, 13 March 2009
Cheesy Challenge – Half Time Report
So I’m almost two weeks into my fromage-free March and here’s what I know:
- As with all good addictions, the third day is the hardest. It’s a good job we cleared the fridge or I’d have been off the wagon
- Pizza without cheese still works, as long as you make it yourself. Sour cream and avocado are the bomb on a pizza and so, surprisingly, is balsamic vinegar and mushrooms. La di da me…
- There is no replacement for cheese and tomato toasties after a hang over. You just have to suffer
- People don’t like it when you give things up – even for a short while - and will try all sorts of techniques to make you stop
- Cafes lie about what is in their food. I’ve now bought two ostensibly cheese free salads only to find furtively placed bits of feta looking up at me from under a leaf going ‘you know you want to.’
- Thai noodle salad is lush. It’s like tangy cold spaghetti, which is nicer than I’ve made it sound
- I’m always hungry. Clearly cheese had permeated my system to such an extent that every nook and cranny had been filled to overflowing. These nooks now cry out into the night for their dairy cavity insulation
- Pasta without parmesan is rubbish. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. I’d rather eat that dried parmesan sawdust that smells of sick than go without.
- I declare April to be cheese-only month…
Must go, my belly is rumbling again…
Friday, 6 March 2009
Play and Record
It’s just over a month since I bought my Macbook. It’s both my first Mac and my first laptop, so playing around with it has been doubly fun. The novelty of indulging in nerdy pastimes whilst wandering around the house instead of being stuck in our cold spare room has yet to wear off.
I won’t harp on about the user-friendliness and general cuteness of Macs; you’ll either know already or won’t care, but one of the gadgets worth a mention is GarageBand. For the uninitiated it’s an audio recording program which most people use to create their own music to the extent that ‘laptop electronica’ has almost become a genre in itself. I have no rhythm or musical ability to speak of but it’s scarily easy to use and has built in functions for recording podcasts which is right up my ten-foot. However, for the moment I’ve been using GarageBand to digitise all my old cassette tapes. This is something I’ve tried before on my PC using Audacity, but for some reason Vista and Audacity never seemed to be good friends on my computer. Thankfully GarageBand is a bit easier to work and I’ve been happily trawling through my old c90’s.
I dumped most of my pre-recorded cassettes when I moved. I’ve since picked most of them up on CD for a dollar or two. However I have a special stash of tapes that have travelled with me that aren’t likely to appear on CD unless I make it happen.
I was a reasonably obsessive compilation maker in the day. I’d borrow friends’ tapes, CDs and records to make my own collections which I’d dutifully label and create artwork for. I’ve made a few tapes for mates and would-be-girlfriends over the years but mostly I just made them for me. I still have most of them. Some are almost 20 years old and have been with me through thick and thin, played on every walkman I’ve ever owned. Their track listings and orders are as familiar to me as any ‘proper’ album. Some songs are forever welded together, one always destined to follow another. Putting on these compilations is the closest thing I’ll ever come to time travel. The songs still have life in isolation, but strung together on these tapes they form an aural tapestry, dragging places and events back to life from somewhere in my head.
Listening to them recently, my favourite is still the Enormous Sigh, a compilation of songs that are so sad they never fail to make me feel happy. Things like Download by Super Furry Animals, I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine by Beth Orton, Aren’t you Glad by Spirit, Black Boys on Mopeds by Sinead O’Connor and That’s My Desire by Hadda Brooks are all still worthy of anyone’s two-bob on the heartbreak jukey.
I have a nice collection of tapes given away free with various magazines through the ages, especially the NME and Select. Most magazines these days seem incomplete without a free CD, but free music on magazines was a relatively rare occurrence in the nineties. Many of them were terrible; a couple of live tracks or remixes by big name acts, a couple of up and comers and a few that were never to be. However, short of cash and devoid of decent record shops, these tapes would occasionally offer up gems that I would tape to tape onto one of my own compilations where they would breathe new life. My favourite find in my stash was a long lost copy of Kylie’s Got a Crush on Us by Teenage Fanclub, given away on a 1992 tape celebrating the best of pre-Oasis Creation Records. It was all downhill for the Fannies from there…
Another notable was Beat up the NME, a 1997 Fatboy Slim mix tape that heralded a whole new era in genre hopping and spawned hundreds of cash-ins from the likes of Ministry of Sound. I literally wore this tape out listening to it, because at the time it was guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. I think it was the first place I ever heard Psyche Rock, Mr Cook’s remix of an old Pierre Henry song that got ripped off by the theme tune of Futurama. But I digress.
Beat up the NME was a nice and digestible reflection of a world being broadcast nightly on late night BBC Radio 1, and specifically on the shows hosted by Annie Nightingale and Mary Anne Hobbs, and whose shows make up the remainder of my tape collection. The latter’s Breezeblock was like a dirty aural cocktail resulting in the type of soundtrack they now play on the Bill to signify that an estate is a bit dodgy. Hobbs seamlessly mixed hip hop, rap, rock, big beat, electronica, funk, dub, soul, space rock, krautrock, post rock, jungle, drum and bass and punk. It was a world where Jason Spaceman was the saviour of the universe; where Bentley Rhythm Ace were treated with as much reverence as Chuck D; where Stax and Motown were equal partners with Wall of Sound and Skint; where the Private Psychedelic Reel could fade into the skuzzy intro of I Wanna Be Your Dog. It was a world where you could hear exclusive DJ sets by Suicide, the Beastie Boys, Avalanches, Radiohead, Mogwai, the Beta Band, Primal Scream, David Holmes, DJ Shadow and even comedian Chris Morris. It opened up the old to the young and the new to the old. What’s more, in a period where you could define subcultures and genres by their poisons, the Breezeblock wasn't about bifta or pills or booze or speed; it was about bringing them all into the same space and saying let's go fucking ape. On the radio.
I treasure the shows that I still have on tape. Even when there was no special guest the music was ace. The shows still sound fresh, different and Mary Anne’s passions and obsessions are easy to share. If you look around online you’ll find a lot of the Breezeblock sessions and mixes – whether DJ sets or live sessions from Maida Vale. I’d suggest most would be worth a listen. One that isn’t up anywhere as far as I know is the first Breezeblock session by the Lo Fidelity Allstars. When I realised that GarageBand could convert my record my tapes to MP3, this was the first tape that went in the machine. I can vaguely recall sleeping on a friend’s floor after a night out and remembering that the Lo Fis were in session. I begged her for a tape to use and she managed to find one for me but the tabs were snapped off so we had to fold up some paper and fill the holes so it would be recordable again. It was worth it; I’m not sure if the Lo Fi’s were ever that good again. It was the start of a journey for them, before the hype and before they had to go back and change all their songs because they’d stolen all the samples. The versions of Battleflag, Disco Machine Gun and Vision Incision (‘dedicated to Jason Space-man. I’ll see you in space...’) were blistering, chaotic, irreverent, indecent, funky, naïve, epic and beautiful – everything that the Breezeblock was about. Every other version I heard of those songs seemed watered down afterwards. I have no idea what the legal ramifications are but if anyone wants a copy, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
Despite this nostalgia tapes were, of course, shite. Mix tapes were a cute thing to get – I think I still have every tape that anyone ever made me and they mean far more than the CDs that people have ripped me from i-tunes. But let’s be honest, they were cumbersome, could chew and destroy themselves in any player they went into, they were a pain to rewind and fast forward and had none of the appeal of vinyl, with their tiny covers and plastic cases that broke easily. That said I’ll probably still keep all my tapes when they’re all converted. It’s been 20 years after all and who knows what horrors might befall my hard drive over the next 20.
Post-Script Random Fact: the French commonly refer to tapes as K7’s (the letter K is pronounced ‘Ka’ and ‘7’ is pronounced as ‘sette.’ Em-pay-trois (MP3) isn’t quite as cute.
I won’t harp on about the user-friendliness and general cuteness of Macs; you’ll either know already or won’t care, but one of the gadgets worth a mention is GarageBand. For the uninitiated it’s an audio recording program which most people use to create their own music to the extent that ‘laptop electronica’ has almost become a genre in itself. I have no rhythm or musical ability to speak of but it’s scarily easy to use and has built in functions for recording podcasts which is right up my ten-foot. However, for the moment I’ve been using GarageBand to digitise all my old cassette tapes. This is something I’ve tried before on my PC using Audacity, but for some reason Vista and Audacity never seemed to be good friends on my computer. Thankfully GarageBand is a bit easier to work and I’ve been happily trawling through my old c90’s.
I dumped most of my pre-recorded cassettes when I moved. I’ve since picked most of them up on CD for a dollar or two. However I have a special stash of tapes that have travelled with me that aren’t likely to appear on CD unless I make it happen.
I was a reasonably obsessive compilation maker in the day. I’d borrow friends’ tapes, CDs and records to make my own collections which I’d dutifully label and create artwork for. I’ve made a few tapes for mates and would-be-girlfriends over the years but mostly I just made them for me. I still have most of them. Some are almost 20 years old and have been with me through thick and thin, played on every walkman I’ve ever owned. Their track listings and orders are as familiar to me as any ‘proper’ album. Some songs are forever welded together, one always destined to follow another. Putting on these compilations is the closest thing I’ll ever come to time travel. The songs still have life in isolation, but strung together on these tapes they form an aural tapestry, dragging places and events back to life from somewhere in my head.
Listening to them recently, my favourite is still the Enormous Sigh, a compilation of songs that are so sad they never fail to make me feel happy. Things like Download by Super Furry Animals, I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine by Beth Orton, Aren’t you Glad by Spirit, Black Boys on Mopeds by Sinead O’Connor and That’s My Desire by Hadda Brooks are all still worthy of anyone’s two-bob on the heartbreak jukey.
I have a nice collection of tapes given away free with various magazines through the ages, especially the NME and Select. Most magazines these days seem incomplete without a free CD, but free music on magazines was a relatively rare occurrence in the nineties. Many of them were terrible; a couple of live tracks or remixes by big name acts, a couple of up and comers and a few that were never to be. However, short of cash and devoid of decent record shops, these tapes would occasionally offer up gems that I would tape to tape onto one of my own compilations where they would breathe new life. My favourite find in my stash was a long lost copy of Kylie’s Got a Crush on Us by Teenage Fanclub, given away on a 1992 tape celebrating the best of pre-Oasis Creation Records. It was all downhill for the Fannies from there…
Another notable was Beat up the NME, a 1997 Fatboy Slim mix tape that heralded a whole new era in genre hopping and spawned hundreds of cash-ins from the likes of Ministry of Sound. I literally wore this tape out listening to it, because at the time it was guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. I think it was the first place I ever heard Psyche Rock, Mr Cook’s remix of an old Pierre Henry song that got ripped off by the theme tune of Futurama. But I digress.
Beat up the NME was a nice and digestible reflection of a world being broadcast nightly on late night BBC Radio 1, and specifically on the shows hosted by Annie Nightingale and Mary Anne Hobbs, and whose shows make up the remainder of my tape collection. The latter’s Breezeblock was like a dirty aural cocktail resulting in the type of soundtrack they now play on the Bill to signify that an estate is a bit dodgy. Hobbs seamlessly mixed hip hop, rap, rock, big beat, electronica, funk, dub, soul, space rock, krautrock, post rock, jungle, drum and bass and punk. It was a world where Jason Spaceman was the saviour of the universe; where Bentley Rhythm Ace were treated with as much reverence as Chuck D; where Stax and Motown were equal partners with Wall of Sound and Skint; where the Private Psychedelic Reel could fade into the skuzzy intro of I Wanna Be Your Dog. It was a world where you could hear exclusive DJ sets by Suicide, the Beastie Boys, Avalanches, Radiohead, Mogwai, the Beta Band, Primal Scream, David Holmes, DJ Shadow and even comedian Chris Morris. It opened up the old to the young and the new to the old. What’s more, in a period where you could define subcultures and genres by their poisons, the Breezeblock wasn't about bifta or pills or booze or speed; it was about bringing them all into the same space and saying let's go fucking ape. On the radio.
I treasure the shows that I still have on tape. Even when there was no special guest the music was ace. The shows still sound fresh, different and Mary Anne’s passions and obsessions are easy to share. If you look around online you’ll find a lot of the Breezeblock sessions and mixes – whether DJ sets or live sessions from Maida Vale. I’d suggest most would be worth a listen. One that isn’t up anywhere as far as I know is the first Breezeblock session by the Lo Fidelity Allstars. When I realised that GarageBand could convert my record my tapes to MP3, this was the first tape that went in the machine. I can vaguely recall sleeping on a friend’s floor after a night out and remembering that the Lo Fis were in session. I begged her for a tape to use and she managed to find one for me but the tabs were snapped off so we had to fold up some paper and fill the holes so it would be recordable again. It was worth it; I’m not sure if the Lo Fi’s were ever that good again. It was the start of a journey for them, before the hype and before they had to go back and change all their songs because they’d stolen all the samples. The versions of Battleflag, Disco Machine Gun and Vision Incision (‘dedicated to Jason Space-man. I’ll see you in space...’) were blistering, chaotic, irreverent, indecent, funky, naïve, epic and beautiful – everything that the Breezeblock was about. Every other version I heard of those songs seemed watered down afterwards. I have no idea what the legal ramifications are but if anyone wants a copy, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
Despite this nostalgia tapes were, of course, shite. Mix tapes were a cute thing to get – I think I still have every tape that anyone ever made me and they mean far more than the CDs that people have ripped me from i-tunes. But let’s be honest, they were cumbersome, could chew and destroy themselves in any player they went into, they were a pain to rewind and fast forward and had none of the appeal of vinyl, with their tiny covers and plastic cases that broke easily. That said I’ll probably still keep all my tapes when they’re all converted. It’s been 20 years after all and who knows what horrors might befall my hard drive over the next 20.
Post-Script Random Fact: the French commonly refer to tapes as K7’s (the letter K is pronounced ‘Ka’ and ‘7’ is pronounced as ‘sette.’ Em-pay-trois (MP3) isn’t quite as cute.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Some news that will likely slip under the world’s radar (indeed I only found out several weeks after the event) but apparently the Beautiful South have reformed - sort of. Two years after their official split and twenty years after their first incarnation was unleashed on the world, some of Hull’s second finest have decided that enough wasn’t enough and have become (wait for it) the New Beautiful South. I say some, because technically the only original members will be drummer Dave Stead and Dave Hemingway, singer and erstwhile second drummer of the Housemartins. They will be joined by Alison Wheeler, the last of the South’s three female vocalists (the one who never sang on any of their hits). So, there’s no Jacqui Abbott, no Sean Welch on bass, no Dave Rotheray on guitar and no Paul Heaton; the groups eccentric leader and, with Rotheray, chief songwriter.
It’s a path well-trod by many other bands - including cabaret circuit versions of Motown bands (checkout the website for the Drifters – precisely no original members!), glam stompers (Slade II - all Dave, no Noddy!) and ska revivalists (especially Neville Staples’ Specials - though it should be noted that the current ‘official’ Terry-Hall-included Specials doesn’t feature Jerry Dammers). Other higher profile car-crashes include the reality TV horrors undertaken by iNXS (I see that JD Fortune recently got the boot… poor love) and, lest we forget the original grave robbers, Queen. However, the New Beautiful South are unique in that they fulfill a prophecy created at their inception.
The Beautiful South circa 1989 Tired of the attention given to him as lead singer of the Housemartins, Heaton quite liked the idea of having more than one singer to front the Beautiful South. As well as offering some musical diversity, having three singers (theoretically at least) took some of the focus off him. On several occasions he half-joked that he saw the band as a franchise that he would leave when established. As Paul told NME spin-off Vox Magazine in 1992, “I was hoping to gradually wean myself out of the band, but I don't think they're ready for that - and it doesn't look like they will be for a while". Well, it only took 20 years and a second try at a solo career by Heaton but it looks like the kids are ready to flee the nest.
To be fair to Dave Hemingway, he has a great voice, and the South had plenty of good songs that didn’t feature Heaton. In fact for a while it was a bit of joke that any song featuring Paul on lead vocal would flop, evidenced by their biggest hit – A Little Time – being a #1 duet between Dave and Brianna Corrigan, followed up by Paul’s autobiographical My Book, getting to number 43. To be honest, what else are they going to do after 20 years in the same band? Said Hemmingway: "Dave, Alison and I wanted to continue. We've been twiddling our thumbs for a while, but this is what we do best." That cabaret circuit just got a little fuller.
THE NEW BEAUTIFUL SOUTH will perform at the Welly Club in Hull on 29 March 2009.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Hold the Cheese
I love cheese. Honestly, I really do. Look at my user profile; it’s writ large. Actually, look at my belly; it’s writ even larger. You know those adverts for chocolate where people look vaguely aroused after eating a Flake or the giggling Japanese actress cum food taster on Iron Chef who likes everything and makes sure everyone knows about it? Well I’m a bit like that with all things cheesy.
So as a fromage-ophile of some repute (apparently the proper word is turophile, from the Greek ‘tyros’ for cheese… but that’s a bit boring so I’ll stick to my own made-up words) I’ve taken the somewhat stupid decision not to eat any for a month.
At the risk of sounding like Edmund Blackadder’s puritan aunt and uncle, needlessly denying myself pleasure to atone for years of dairy substance abuse, I should state that I’m undertaking this mostly pointless act for reasons unrelated to Lent. I don’t recall ever giving up anything for Lent – I’m pretty sure that self-denial in all areas isn’t something that would be condoned by any higher presence and was probably just invented by Catholics to create more things to feel guilty about.
No, my cheesy abstinence is more secular in instigation. Mostly I’d like to see if I still possess any self-control whatsoever. I do have a reasonable track record in this area; it’s been three years since I went stopped the ciggies and over six since I last ate meat. However, despite their pleasures, eating meat and smoking both made me feel sick afterwards so they were relatively easy to give up. However, since I can’t actually see my arteries and I have several holes left in my belt, I can’t see any genuine downside to eating cheese so it may prove a harder beast to tame.
I’m also genuinely interested to see what I’ll eat if I can’t eat cheese. When I gave up meat I divided my mealtimes between gorging on Indian food, eating yet more cheese and (especially when eating out) experimenting with seafood. Pescetarian (or fishetarian if you prefer) living saw me raiding the ocean for all manner of exotic creatures, including swordfish, Balmain Bugs, crab, oysters, mussels and of course, fish fingers. Through eating Thai food I also broke my lifelong aversion to broccoli and discovered that I really like all manner of Asian greens. I don’t think I’d ever have gone there if I’d still been eating meat.
Whilst I don’t anticipate any Trainspotting-style cold turkey scenes with me clamouring at a locked fridge in the dead of night whilst cows with rotating udders walk upside on the kitchen ceiling, it’ll be interesting finding out where my cheese denied palate takes me. So remember, even if I turn up at your door screaming for crumbs of Roquefort or some melted Tasty on toast, just say no kids, just say no.
So as a fromage-ophile of some repute (apparently the proper word is turophile, from the Greek ‘tyros’ for cheese… but that’s a bit boring so I’ll stick to my own made-up words) I’ve taken the somewhat stupid decision not to eat any for a month.
At the risk of sounding like Edmund Blackadder’s puritan aunt and uncle, needlessly denying myself pleasure to atone for years of dairy substance abuse, I should state that I’m undertaking this mostly pointless act for reasons unrelated to Lent. I don’t recall ever giving up anything for Lent – I’m pretty sure that self-denial in all areas isn’t something that would be condoned by any higher presence and was probably just invented by Catholics to create more things to feel guilty about.
No, my cheesy abstinence is more secular in instigation. Mostly I’d like to see if I still possess any self-control whatsoever. I do have a reasonable track record in this area; it’s been three years since I went stopped the ciggies and over six since I last ate meat. However, despite their pleasures, eating meat and smoking both made me feel sick afterwards so they were relatively easy to give up. However, since I can’t actually see my arteries and I have several holes left in my belt, I can’t see any genuine downside to eating cheese so it may prove a harder beast to tame.
I’m also genuinely interested to see what I’ll eat if I can’t eat cheese. When I gave up meat I divided my mealtimes between gorging on Indian food, eating yet more cheese and (especially when eating out) experimenting with seafood. Pescetarian (or fishetarian if you prefer) living saw me raiding the ocean for all manner of exotic creatures, including swordfish, Balmain Bugs, crab, oysters, mussels and of course, fish fingers. Through eating Thai food I also broke my lifelong aversion to broccoli and discovered that I really like all manner of Asian greens. I don’t think I’d ever have gone there if I’d still been eating meat.
Whilst I don’t anticipate any Trainspotting-style cold turkey scenes with me clamouring at a locked fridge in the dead of night whilst cows with rotating udders walk upside on the kitchen ceiling, it’ll be interesting finding out where my cheese denied palate takes me. So remember, even if I turn up at your door screaming for crumbs of Roquefort or some melted Tasty on toast, just say no kids, just say no.
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