chrisp65

you are looking at Kevin Rowlands King Douche part genius part original douche virus wonderful and awful

currently in Dexys

ooh ooh ooh, Mick Talbot of Merton Parkas & Dexys & Style Council, nice quiet amicable man that not only signed my ancient copy of a Parkas EP but bought me a drink whilst he read the sleeve notes chuckling to himself!

From an earlier post, it got me thinking about ‘shopping local’ which gets plenty of lip service and everybody hears repeatedly how it’s a good idea. Yet, somehow, it’s quite difficult what with parking and not having stock and needing actual cash and a bag and, and, and… So, in that we are all happily killing off our High Streets whilst complaining our High Streets are dying, is there anything that you will deliberately get from a true sole trader rather than actually get from somewhere cheaper or more convenient? For me I have three obvious examples, an old school record shop, a tiny little bike shop with a current stock of about 10 bikes and a butcher that is further away than the supermarket and a pain in the proverbials for parking. The record shop is an obvious indulgence in that you could spend a lifetime downloading and have access to plenty of music that way. But, I prefer to pay a little more, browse using their human algorithms and get a chance to bump into other people with eclectic taste I may not have considered. In fact, the music is an odd one because you don’t really have to ‘buy’ music or tv or film at all anymore. My nipper has just watched all 8 series (so around 100 episodes) of Supernatural without paying a penny. I use youtube and twitter to discover stuff, then go to an old fashioned shop and buy what I want in my little collection! A local bike shop vs Halfords doesn’t really need explaining. I went in recently with a dead bike and he persuaded me a few replacement parts was a better investment on what was basically a good but old bike, rather than buying a new bike. I don’t imagine Argos online has a similar approach. The butcher, well, I was in school with him. But going there involves doing the slow drive of doom looking for street parking. But once parked, look! Actual people I know that I can talk to, a bit like a supermarket but outdoors and the people are alive not catatonic. Rather smugly, I like to think that my way employs a shop assistant, a bike nut and a butcher. The alternative employs an Amazon warehouse drone, a postman and makes somebody somewhere very rich.

Nah, you can't expect a shop of that size to stock everything. They had some Santana for the older gentleman, but they mostly had stuff for us hipsters that are way way under 50. You can't knock a shop that had Murray the Hump on the shelf, that's relatively obscure. I went in with a list, came out with 2 in my pocket and one on order that they'll have by Wednesday. That'll do for me. I'm sure I could have walked around the corner to HMV or just i-tuned it all but it's basic use it or lose it, and they've got me a good few difficult to obtain gig tickets over the years and they do those little in store mini gigs with many an artiste before their main gig elsewhere in town that evening.

bender?

I know if I had a choice of being homeless or super rich it wouldn't be an easy choice, I really like cardboard and getting my head kicked in. On the other hand, I also like extended foreign holidays and phoning a tory to tell him to jump. So it's a tricky one. There's a reason somebody pays a lot of tax, it's because they have a lot of money. If they don't like it, they can give enough away for the problem to be sorted.

No early Santana at a sensible price, so today it was a bit of Ben Folds Five (Songs for Silverman) for the lady wife and Murray the Hump (Songs of Ignorance) for me. Lots of variations on Santana box sets and wotnot but no £8.99 intro

Burt Weedon, love him, stayed at the hotel where I worked for a few summer seasons. Thoroughly lovely but with a really bad custard cream habit. Keep the little 3 packs of hotel custard creams flowing and he would chat all day.

I'm going to try to get in to Spillers at lunch time, I'll see what they've got.....

that's certainly appears to be the opinion of my wife who will be sat with a coffee awaiting my return, life assurance policy clutched in hand but for £8 it looked worth a go

I'm off to that London for the weekend and thought I might have a go on the newish cable car across the Thames if the weather is nice n clear. Has anybody been on it? Is there a best time of day for seeing the sites? Any idea how busy it is (surely not busy down that far east and mid November)?

is that why I can hear violins and tantric choral cow bells in the background?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv4_xjmSGm4

see, I'm a lot older now and if I press play it could cost me a fortune in back catalogue catch up...... ..that's fascinating, that live at Woodstock is bloody excellent, the rest I've just skimmed across on youtube is absolutely what I don't like and is the pointless point I was clumsily attempting to make. I wonder if Sanatana are a victim of 'production'? Live is far superior to recorded (on my 10 minute crash course), that track live has a real energy but recorded it's like somebody poured golden syrup all over it. Technically excellent I'm sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss0kXPOFtuE great song, any way up

I may have been slightly glib and short hand. I'm not sure I've ever actually heard any Santana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9PcNQxM_cQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nz_uSssKTw

you don't have to buy what they were about, they showed a whole bunch of people there was an alternative to being as boring as Santana or Sky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDX2A0gxMjM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jMq3bIpo0s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZDLZhrsfgE

They were a glimpse of an alternative world where you didn't have to have a perm or a 10 minute noodling solo or sing about wizards or California. I know you can conjur up bands like the New York Dolls and a dozen others that did it better earlier, but they were the ones that were suddenly visible, grabbed attention and showed 'you' can do this.

Were the Sex Pistols over rated? After all, they did save music, didn't they?