How I Met Your Mother

The Best Thing Ever:

peely dan

So I know it's sad that we need to recontextualise things into our own sphere of experience to comprehend them, but nevertheless... I never listened to his show anything like regularly - Mark and Lard, yes, Mary-Anne Hobbs, yes, but never his.

Sufficed to say that: John Peel played their [Kenickie's] demo Catsuit City well before its April 1995 release by the Newcastle-based indie label, Slampt. And without that early exposure they might not have made it how they did, when they did.

And without Kenickie, my life would look quite different. Most of the interesting people and things that I've met and done have happened - either directly or indirectly - because of them. I wouldn't even be in the job I'm in now, and I certainly can't imagine my life without that.

So thanks John. Rest in peace.

my (ill?)informed thoughts on the music industry

Downloading - just like home taping before it - isn't killing music. Quite the reverse, in fact, and the music industry needs to embrace downloading if it is to survive in this current climate. iTunes and others like it are but small steps in the right direction - the model on which they're based is far from perfect (in fact the industry has much to be worried about in that they 'break' the album concept), but it's a start. What - if anything - is killing music is the globalisation of record companies into a few, huge multinationals and the resultant fracturing of already strained relationships with artists who are no longer treated as creators of art, progenitors of social change but as content providers. The sleeve notes to Dexys Midnight Runners' "Liars A To E" sagely inform us that (I'm paraphrasing) music never can invoke great change but that it needn't be so proudly disposable, so much aural bubblegum. Written in the '80s, never have these words rung so true.

gillingham vs charlton athletic

Texted this to Radio London yesterday as they were reporting on Gills' chairman deeming the Addicks' marketing activities in Kent a 'disgrace'. They didn't read it out. Bah.

While I'd prefer the club to enjoy good relations with its neighbouring clubs and this latest Scally outburst hardly helps matters, he does have a point. Charlton seem to want the prestige that goes with being a London club while cherry-picking the best youngsters from Kent schools. Gillingham are Kent's only league club and they shouldn't have to compete with a Premiership club for community goodwill. Charlton should decide where their priorities lie - they can't have the best of both worlds!

That's what I think, anywho, and that's what these things are for, innit?

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look at how important I think I am, so I'll bore you [with] details that no one really cares about