seriously

what a time I had resetting the password for this thing, I forgot the old one. Oh well, I'm back now, finish uni in 10 days, etc.
News has reached me that my old band have apparently reformed without me and under a new name. Now, provided they don't play my songs, I don't care, but I won't be supporting it. To be frank, the last 6 months in that band were hell. I was pretty much bullied by one member and as is often the case with me the best plan of action would be to get shitfaced drunk and announce my feelings. It worked...I guess. Anyway, I'm betting that this 'new band' won't get past a 'photoshoot' (like every band the other two have tried to start since). Not to get on the ego train, but if you reform an old band an change one member, make it someone like the drummer or maybe the glockenspeil player, just make sure its something no one will really notice. As I was the only guitarist and singer, its going to be noticeable. Not that we were even in the same ballpark, but who has gone to see Sham 69 since they replaced Jimmy Pursey? Nobody. Who saw Black Flag's reunion shows without Henry Rollins? Maybe a few people but unanimous reports say they suck. I may sound bitter but its just because one member was such a fucking arsehole that its difficult for me to see why they other guy would want to be in a band with him ever again, especially when he told me his feelings were the complete opposite.
Musically things are going pretty well for me, I feel like I'm gaining my confidence back. I'm recording my stuff and not cringing when I hear it, which is something new altogether. I've scored two films all by myself and they sound pretty good. I'm still into all the punk music that I've always liked, but over the last few years, Bruce Springsteen has become a bigger and bigger influence on my music. I've got to the point where it frustrates me to hear his music because I know I'll never be as good as him. Nick Cave has also been a huge influence on the soundtrack work, but I've liked him for about four years, and his music is pretty cinematic.
I also thought I'd never say this, but for one of my films, there's been a bit of a hip hop influence. When I listen to pieces like what the RZA did for the Kill Bill soundtrack, it inspires me. There's a lot of little ten second clips of music. I've also started doing a lot of electronic music again, which while I know its terribly hip just now (or a lot hipper than it was when I started five years ago), but it works really well. Gonna program some new pieces tonight and finish off this film, its looking a lot better than it was last week. I always get that kind of Bergman/Allen feeling when I finish a film that I might not ever do another, but like music and poetry, I'm hooked. I'll never stop writing and hopefully filmmaking will be the same.
That was a pretty good update for the last 4 months I guess. Now that I remember my password and all that hopefully there will be a lot more. I read this book called 31 Songs by Nick Hornby a few days ago, its one of the few books I've read all the way through in a day. Anyway, it inspired me. What he does is talk about songs that he loves and why and what they remind him of. I'd love to write about the effect Born to Run has had on me, or maybe even a short story based on the album. I've got a lot of love for it anyway. That's all from me for this time. Thank you for reading this, whoever you may be.

Best records of 2007 Part I

This is probably going to be a several part post cause I don't really have time to do it all at once. It's in no real order apart from the order I remember it by. So, let's begin:

Ringers - Dentention Halls: A great follow up to their first record. It's effectively more of the same but more Ringers is a good thing. Production is way way better as on Curses I felt the guitar was far too loud.

Lifetime - Lifetime: this has been a long time coming as Lifetime broke up quite a long time ago but evidently they came back to give us another album of influential melodic hardcore. As always its good but I haven't really listened to it enough to appreciate it as much as Hello Bastards.

Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger: I really like this record. It's somewhere between his countrified stuff and the kind of thing he did on Rock and Roll. The song Halloweenhead is great. He has such great delivery. Can't recommend this enough.

Ted Leo and The Pharmacists - Living With the Living: I don't like this as much as Shake The Sheets just because Bomb Repeat Bomb really gets on my nerves. Aside from that its great though, I love A Bottle of Buckie so much that its one of my all time favourite songs. Who Do You Love is also a really good one. It could maybe have done with being a little bit shorter as an album but I could never complain about getting more Ted Leo.

The Hold Steady - Boys And Girls in America: I'm fairly sure this came out in the UK in January last year. Definitely my album of the year, scrap that, my album and band of this decade. No one is doing what this band is doing right now. They hark back to proper rock and roll like Bruce Springsteen or the Replacements. Too many bands (whether it be Turbonegro or The Darkness) are doing tongue and cheek rock and roll which is funny for about two listens but has no staying power whatsoever. It doesn't matter who you are, this record will simply blow you way.

J Church - The Horror Of Life: Sadly this will no doubt be the last J Church LP as Lance Hahn passed away in October. It's a very solid record nonetheless. I wasn't that familiar with much J Church stuff past the late 90s but they seem to have matured a little and the songwriting is just incredible. Since hearing this I've also got Society is A Carnivorous flower which is also fantastic.

The Fall - Post TLC Reformation: I listened to this a lot at the start of 2007 when it first came out, its pretty good. The Fall are quite an intimidating band because they've got damn near 30 studio albums and that's not including live ones or compilations. It's a solid effort and I still put it on now and again.

Maximo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures: It wasn't a patch on A Certain Trigger but that was always going to be a hard album to follow for me as its one of my favourites. It's really good because after all it is Maximo Park but don't expect something (or much really to ever) that exceeds A Certain Trigger.

Various Artists - Mix CD for Lois: She made me put it here =)

Part II will come soon I guess.

long nights hard times anything that makes you feel tired

ARGH i have such a headache from all this uni work.

Feeling really alienated right now. Don't even know why, good old seasonal affective blues i guess.

There's a 'best of 2007' music list coming soon I PROMISE (although who am I promising I don't know, no one reads this thing)

my cd rack just collapsed (it houses about half my collection - so there's probably about 200 or so cds in there) and this makes me even sadder.

it seemed shaky but nice

for some reason my computer has started working again so I'll take the time to do a mega update of sorts.

Friday brought Skalloween to the Exchange in Edinburgh. I went. Here's how it went down:

Barely anyone was there for the first couple of hours (or even later for that matter), didn't stop me from dancing. For the first hour or two, the DJ spun a lot of old ska records, a lot of old Trojan stuff mostly.
First band on were Fandangle. I think they're from the South of England, but the singer was American anyway. Very 90s sounding, like Less Than Jake before they started sounding like Fallout Boy. They did a good cover of What I Got by Sublime, I really enjoyed them.
Another long break with loads of old stuff being played. Surprisingly heard Rudy Can't Fail and Timebomb, surprisingly didn't hear One Step Beyond. Every ska night needs that song. SERIOUSLY.
After that, I was getting pretty tipsy and Bombskare came on. I hadn't seen them before, but I'd heard all about them. They were good, sort of second wave ska sound or two-tone. Obvious comparison is Madness. There was about ten of them but they were a really good laugh.
Wasn't much of a delay between Bombskare and The Toasters. The Toasters were the only band that I had actually heard before, so I actually recognised a couple of tunes. They were tight as fuck and played some really good third wave ska. Think that's about it.

I was going to write about J Church's singer Lance Hahn's recent death too, but I'm in two minds about it. Aw fuck it, here's a little bit on that:

Lance passed away a few weeks ago after being in a coma. J Church are a band that I first discovered about five years ago when I started really falling in love with Jawbreaker. I found J Church through Jawbreaker as they had at one point shared a drummer. This is boring so let me skip to the end:
J Church are the sort of band that I can really dig. They didn't sing about wanting to be famous or anything, they sang songs about the guy who lives on the street, songs about working that job you hated but it was all worth it when that girl came over to talk afterwards, silly songs about wanting to meet Faye Wong. They were a great band, Prophylaxis may well be on of my favourite songs of all time.

That's about all for now, until next time...

hang on this tv doesn't work, its broken!

My computer is so broken that it barely switches on. Fuck.

hope

feeling down tonight. Things were good, then Stolson made a comment I know he regretted straight away. I know he didn't mean it and I forgive him, but that doesn't stop it from hurting like fucking christ.

Back to the old regime. Like Travis Bickle. Too much sitting around doing nothing. No more. I'll be running more, doing more sit ups. doing more press ups. Damaged.

I really like this girl and its a really stupid but I have this even stupider idea in my head it could work. She's totally my 'type', but my morals are driving me crazy for reasons I won't go into here.

up north until thursday. The TV just informed me that Iceland has a fish dish for everyone. Not for me they don't, I'm a vegetarian.
Watched the Rangers game with Hefner tonight, good result, really enjoyed it and it was good to see him again. Been feeling pretty good lately. Kind of figuring out what I want from life, or as much as can be expected at 21 years old. Think I'm over the breakup, she called me today and I didn't go John Cusack on her, in fact I was really calm the entire time. It was a nice conversation I guess.
Girl a is leaving tomorrow. I'm totally bummed out about it. I saw her on Sunday night, I'm really going to miss her. Like, so much. On a positive side, I got Luis' number so I'll be seeing the portuguese/brazillian guys more. Got her cute aussie friend's number too, go me or whatever.
I'll write more when I get back to the capital, don't like typing on the laptop.