Blurg.

If you haven't yet, you should watch the first two seasons of 30rock. Trust me. I also believe you should do yourself a favour and watch Generation Kill as soon as you can. It's by the makers of The Wire and really that's all you should need to know. But just in case it isn't it follows a company of Recon Marines as they head the invasion into Iraq, but it's told in the brutally realistic point of view of the soldiers. Needless to say it paints almost as bad a picture of the war in Iraq as The Wire did the streets of Baltimore, and is uncompromisingly hilarious.

Yesterday I decided for the foreseeable future, to only listen to records on my i-pod that I haven't listened to in a long time. I have a tendency to listen to the same songs when going out into the world with my headphones on, but really you can only listen to Gangstarr and the first Wu Tang Clan album so many times. So yesterday on my way home I decided to listen to McCoy Tyner's 1968 album Expansions, I'm not a sophisticated enough listener of jazz to try and dissect the album or the genre too much, all I can say is Expansions and especially the 12min opening track Vision is a beautiful mix of the early 60's traditional sound and the more experimental sound of the late 60's. So you get this beautiful kind of melancholy sound over this free jazz experimentation and a subtle grooving bassline.
Then I put on a considerably more avant garde jazz record, Eric Dolphy's fantastic album Out There. Like I said earlier I don't know enough about jazz and its various subgenres, so all I can say here is find it, give it a chance and see what you think. Personally I think it would appeal to people who might not normally be into this sort of thing. Listened to at a decent volume on headphones it sucks you into its dark abstract world.
Today I continued my rediscovery of old albums I'd neglected over the past months because of my ever growing hip hop obsession. Today going into town I put on The Grateful Dead's iconic album American Beauty. A fantastic summertime record. This is a complete artifact. 35 min, 10 songs and everyone a gem. And it ends on one of the best album closers ever, Truckin'. When American Beauty ended I put on The Guess Who's record Live at the Paramount, and having listened to my vinyl copy many many many times when I was a teenager, was somehow still completely unprepared for the pure force of this record. On headphones at maximum volume it was almost overwhelming. Recorded in 1972 it sounds so warm. Burton Cummings sounds like he's singing from the top of the Rocky Mountains, his voice the only thing that could be heard from the west coast of British Columbia to the East Coast of Newfoundland. And Randy Bachman's guitar sounds so mean he probably should have been jailed after the show as a threat to mankind. And really, has a saloon piano ever sounded so incredible? Even American Woman, a song I've heard more times than I can remember and have grown to detest, had me dancing around the house. And the live rendition on this album is 16 minutes long. I honestly can't comprehend how these guys have remained relatively unknown in the UK. And the next time your reading an article in some mediocre music magazine, where some asshole critic questions the purpose of a band releasing a live album, and decrees it as nothing more than a money grab, put this album on, set the magazine on fire, smear blood on your face and dance around the flames in a primal trance.
Anyway,I'm gonna try and stay true to this game. Everyday I'm going to listen to records I've been neglecting for too long. I have about 3,000 albums on my i-pod,Clarence the 2nd,right now, so I have no excuse.

Well, I guess I should get back to doing what I was initially supposed to be doing on here, which is trying to book our trip to Barcelona in July.
Oh and can I say that the aftermath of my stag night Saturday, aside from leaving every single muscle in my body (and my thumbs), screaming in agony, has also left me full of nervous excitement with the big day looming ahead. I was playing it pretty cool up to now but after looking forward to my stag for so long now, the big day seems so close.

Can someone explain to me why they let American's other than John McEnroe commentate tennis? Oh and am I the only one hoping Andy Murray crashes out of this years Wimbledon?