Anyone else seen this documentary about a tour Sonic Youth did with Nirvana.

It's basically someone with a backstage pass and a really bad camcorder who has shot a load of crappy amateur footage of some concerts over a week or two. And has then edited the footage together in an uninformative way with no hint of narrative. In other words, it's a home movie. They don't conduct any direct interviews either. The results are pretty much unwatchable for anyone who isn't completely dedicated to the bands it features. I gave up after forty minutes.

The live performances seemed really, really bad to me. Just an awful racket with barely any hints of melody or good singing. The bands appear to be crap live. Also the music itself is boring and seriously lacking in interesting songwriting.

The band members act like annoying twats during the in between song parts. You really wouldn't want to meet any of them in real life.

Sonic Youth come across as a horrible, boring, self satisfied band. Nirvana are just deeply mediocre. Babes In Toyland are beyond terrible. Only Dinosaur Jr seemed okay live for the one song I saw them perform.

And I say all of this as someone who owns and enjoys some Sonic Youth and Nirvana CDs.

100 Country Music Hits Vol. 1

Download only £2.59.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/100-Country-Music-Hits-Vol/dp/B004XSW2ZG/ref=sr_...

I would have posted this in the Reads review section but I can't (or won't?) conform to the headings.

"Should have been the definitive book on Steve Jobs
The computer technology industries of Silicon Valley are fascinating to read about. And Steve Jobs in particular, along with his company Apple, are very fascinating. So this book, if competently assembled, was pretty much guaranteed to be at the very least a very interesting read. And potentially a masterpiece.

It's a well written book but it's not the definitive work on the subject. It's too prosaic a retelling of his story. Prosaic is not bad, as it's very readable and entertaining. It's just not the last word. I found some of the reporting to be a bit superficial and lacking in detail. For example I remember watching a TV documentary about the Apple Mac being created. This book didn't add anything substantial to what I learned from that programme all those years ago. I've also read extensively about the creation of the iPod. The book skims through its creation and leaves a fair amount of information out. So who knows what else it leaves out?

That Jobs was interviewed extensively for the book is not as big a plus as I expected. He doesn't really have much of interest to say for himself. He explains his motives, thinking and opinions on everything, but I didn't feel he had any great insight that was essential for his story to be told.

The book has its chapters sub-divided into mini-chapters with headings for what the subject is about. It makes the book easy to read, reduces the feeling of sprawl and should make re-reading specifics sections very easy if you want to dip in and out of it in future. It's very reference friendly - which might be why getting the thick, heavy hard copy might be preferable to the digital copy?

I estimate that it took me seventeen hours to read.

It's a very interesting book on two fascinating subjects (the man and his company). I strongly recommend it, although I expect a better book to appear in a few years that builds on these foundations."

Do you do it? Why? Is it nature or nurture?

When I was very young my Dad put the fear into me that if I as much as breathed anywhere near the shiny side, it will never work again. And so I've NEVER touched the underside of a disc on purpose (unless I was chucking it in the bin).

I suppose those who had parents etc that handled the underside wouldn't think twice about it, and would continue to desecrate their possessions with fingerprints?

And if you do fingerprint your discs, does it not get annoying when your movies pause from time to time or your music skips?

PS I came up with an "invention" last night. A £30 alarm clock with enough memory in it to store ten MP3 songs. Set it to play in order or have it play on shuffle. No more annoying DJs on the radio, or horrible piercing alarms. And when you get tired of the songs on it, just plug it into your computer and change the tracks. Simple. I would buy one.

I've re-sequenced Metals by Feist. I put a bit of thought into this so it's not just a random rearrangement of the songs.

1. Graveyard 4:18 2 of 12
2. A Commotion 3:53 5 of 12
3. How Come You Never Go There 3:25 4 of 12
4. Bittersweet Melodies 3:57 7 of 12
5. The Circle Married The Line 3:23 6 of 12
6. Comfort Me 4:04 11 of 12
7. Undiscovered First 4:59 9 of 12
8. The Bad In Each Other 4:45 1 of 12

It comes to just under 33 minutes.

The following songs did not make it onto my "improved" version of the album:

Caught A Long Wind 4:55 3 of 12
Anti-Pioneer 5:33 8 of 12
Cicadas And Gulls 3:16 10 of 12
Get It Wrong, Get It Right 3:39 12 of 12

It is acceptable, although frowned upon, to insert Cicadas And Gulls after The Circle Married The Line if you think I removed too many songs (I cut 17 minutes from the album).

I think the album is much improved.

My previous blog on the subject:

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/did-feist-mess-sequencing-metals

Musicians have a tendency to bang on about sequencing albums in a very particular way to take you on a journey, and seem to get rather annoyed at the idea of iPod users breaking their works up or altering them. And yet they never play albums live in sequence unless it's a 20 year reunion type of show (which is also a recent style of concert).

"Comfort Me" is track 11 of 12 on the new album Metals by Feist. Apparently she started a recent London concert with that song.

So why does Feist sequence a song at the back of her album, suddenly now think that song should be the opening track? If it was meant to be a late song then surely live it should be in a similar position? Why didn't she stick that song on her album as the opening?

Also in the Word review the writer made a big thing about moving track 2, Graveyard, to the back of the album to make it the closing song. A place where he thought it played much better.

Has she buggered up the sequencing on her album? Should we really respect album sequencing so much in general on any album that isn't a stone cold classic?

The live review:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f7636128-f97b-11e0-bf8f-00144feab49a.html

I've listened to Metals twice and I so far don't care for it. It's too slow and pared down to the point of being rather boring. There doesn't seem to be much energy to it, and I'm not detecting many signs of strong melodies hidden underneath. I think it's too stark. I admit I want left-field pop songs like "1234" from it, and I'm perhaps coming at it from the wrong direction. The assumption is that it's a grower, but I'm not convinced that it is.

After my second listen I followed it with another play of Nicola Roberts new album of eccentric pop. The energy and the sense of fun from it was so, so much better. And I suspect if I don't overplay that album I'll still be listening to it in full years later while Metals will be reduced to a four or five track EP playlist on my iPod.

Of course Metals might be a monster of a grower and I'm going to look stupid suggesting otherwise.

Damn good song.

.

Part 1 http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/non-conformist-opinions-lots-films

12 Monkeys 10 out of 10
A great film, one of my all time favourites. There's nothing to say as everything about it ranges from good to exceptional. Whatever negatives I can come up with are pointless niggles that don't matter.

The Man With Two Brains 8
I've never really liked this movie before. It started fine but quickly ran out of steam and was rather boring in my opinion. Or so it has been until now. For some reason I enjoyed it this time, properly enjoyed it from start to finish. It's a gloriously silly movie and often very funny. Certainly not a masterpiece but a very solid comedy.

Christie Malry's Own Double Entry 3
For me it’s an interesting story told with a decent script but a bad lead actor and a weak director. With an actor who can conjure up some charisma and a visually stylish director (think Brian De Palma) this could have been really good. As it is, I find it to be a bit of a plodding bore. I wouldn’t describe it as entertaining or even particularly thought provoking. The movie is often edited like a Nicholas Roeg film. That means two or three scenes are intercut with each other to draw out connections between past, present and future. I don’t think it really adds anything to the film, but at the same time I don’t think it does any harm. The editing is done in a nuts and bolts way and not with any great style or flash.

Are these boxsets of 25 albums any good? I'm not a fan of jazz but I don't mind the odd track coming up on shuffle. I like more up-tempo, heavier tracks than wispy floaty, tasteful things (60s freak out Electric Bath by The Don Ellis Orchestra is by far my favourite jazz album).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-Jazz-Collection-Original-Albums/dp/B003I...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-Jazz-Collection-Box/dp/B004Q9SO0O/ref=sr...

I’ve been keeping a list of every film I’ve watched for a little over a year. This is the first half of that list.

I’ll wait to see what way the arseholes are blowing before publishing the second half. No one needs to waste their time pointing out that it’s geeky.

Warning: Includes opinions on films I didn’t watch to the end. Some might be offended by this.

Sherlock Holmes (2009 Guy Ritchie film) 1 out of 10
Rubbish. Gave up after an hour (the bath death scene) as it was clearly not going to get any better. Very weak script that was too linear with little actual investigative stuff. Also the action was poorly filmed and out of place.

Children Of Men 6
A film to admire more than love. Technically impressive if rather indifferent action scenes, usually filmed in long unbroken takes. So-so ending as I didn't even know the final action scene was the climax, I was thinking at the time that it was a pointless diversion that should have been removed! V For Vendetta, which has a similar fascist Britain setting, is a better film as it had clear bad guys with clear motives.

Shutter Island 3
Pretty beige movie. Doesn't really come together and the direction was rather drab and subdued. The ending was nothing great either. Just really indifferent overall. It held my attention, but beyond that there's nothing else positive to say. A minor film at best.

A Lot Like Love 6
The first hour is really good but it runs out of forward motion as soon as they go on a road trip out into the desert. The problem is that the end point of the plot becomes vague and it descends into fairly random scenes so it becomes meandering. The film should have ended when Kutcher plays the Bon Jovi song to her. For no obvious reason they threw up a needless roadblock (her engagement) which just meant we had to sit through another ten minutes for them to get together properly in the next sequence.

Kick-Ass 9
Very well made "real life" comic book movie with excellent stylised action scenes. The director's previous film, Layer Cake, did not suggest he was capable of something this good so this was a very pleasant surprise. Curiously violent with proper death being dealt out to the bad guys.

I've got a lot of master tapes on an obsolete format called Digital8 (a standard definition 1.33:1 format).

My Digital8 camcorder is 11 years old and in great condition. But if it snuffs it I might be in trouble as getting a replacement might be awkward or expensive.

I think the obvious thing to do is to feed my tapes into my computer where they can be stored, copied and duplicated for ever more with ease on endless external hard drives. Obviously I will be keeping my master tapes, but I would prefer them backed up on my computer.

I only want to do this once as I don't fancy repeating this years later. I'm planning to copy them as .avi files. Do you think this is future proof enough? Is it widely compatible with everything? Is there a better video format? Have you come a cropper with badly decided archiving practices? Any dos and don'ts?

Did you know?...

...that you can replace existing music files on iTunes so you don't lose playcounts, genre tags, comments, placements in playlists etc.

Insert the CD into the computer, make sure the artist, album and song titles are exactly the same and iTunes will recognise the pre-existing files and will ask if you want to replace them?

I updated Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan from 192 MP3 to 256 AAC. The songs "4th Time Around" and "Obviously 5 Believers" were spelled on my 192 rips with "Fourth" and "Five" so those were ripped as new songs instead of as replacements.

You need to keep an eye on what your computer is doing to make sure everything's going to plan, but this should be useful information to know.

I don't mean to be cruel but this is a comedy goldmine.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2PYA53EN6UB7L/ref=cm_pdp_...

The shocking thing is, she's part of the Vine programme which means she gets free books etc from time to time to review.

What do you think?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Santo-Spirito-Blues-Chris-Rea/dp/B005ADOQTI/ref=...

"Following his sell-out UK & European tour in 2010, and 2009’s UK top ten album Still So Far To Go - The Best Of Chris Rea, one of the UK’s foremost singer-songwriters returns with his first new material in over ten years [wildly inaccurate!]. The elaborate three-CD and two-DVD The Santo Spirito Project will include a brand new studio album, featuring "Dancing My Blues Away", "Never Tie Me Down", "The Chance Of Love", "Rock & Roll Tonight", "Electric Guitar" and "The Last Open Road".

Additionally, The Santo Spirito Project features two bespoke feature films on DVD, written and directed by Chris. The first feature is a raw and brutally honest chronicle on bullfighting, featuring neo-classical and Spanish-themed gypsy music. The second feature follows a man on a search for the truth in the city of Florence, a journey he may or may not wish he began. The music to accompany both films will be contained on two CDs. Here, Chris explains his rationale for such an ambitious project:

"I love creating things and passionately believe artists should be looking to try new ways of bringing what we do to the public. There should be no rules whatsoever and, for God’s sake, there are alternatives to TV talent shows. Sometimes, those who have had extremely good fortune in music allow only X Factor type TV shows to set the musical and cultural agenda of this country by actually doing nothing new or different themselves." "

The films sound like awful impressionistic arty crap. And made by a musician? I do not have high hopes. But for only £15 you get a new album and two, I assume, instrumental soundtrack albums. I'm buying. Better value than U2's new Achtung Baby box set anyway.