the comment about Sun Ra!!

I remember a case of a Guy in Barnsley getting Tattoos of the 4 Members of Metallica. The day it was finished Metallica released new press photos of the band promoting their new look in which all 4 members had had their long hair cut short.The guy's tattoo was ,of course,of the band in long hair period. He was none too pleased.

I recall someone writing into Q magazine to announce that they had acquired a tattoo of the Shed Seven logo.

The Editor's comment underneath was something along the lines of:

"We have taken the decision not to print your name. You will thank us later."

I'm quite relieved to hear that I'm not the only one who isn't past series 2 of The Wire yet. It's not because the programme isn't great, it's just lack of free time (up until now). Heck, I only finished The West Wing last week.

When that special podcast appears I may have to put it to one side for a while though.

Interested to see the thread in this podcast and on the site as to what music is. Someone with a rather unique take on this is brain researcher, musician and former rock sound engineer Dan Levitin, see
http://www.brainonmusic.com/
for the nice website that accompanies his book. Perhaps a good guest sometime ???

He comes to the perhaps unsurprising conclusion that we like music which is predictable but not too predictable, so the brain has the fun of guessing. And that a tune we have heard many times can still have this quality-which can make it enduring for us. The particular novelty is that he can talk both about the experiments that have measured how the brain reacts to a tune, and how different areas activate as the tune "spreads" into the mind ... and about his discussions with Joni Mitchell about her tunings.

In fact I think I should go off and read the rest of it-thanks for prodding me.

with New Mag , podcast and new Cd .

It will definately cheer up a dull Tuesday.

This overplayed Dire Straits song is in the grand tradition of songs that are in fact much cleverer than they appear. If you take a look at the lyrics, it seems to be making quite a few rather dry points about the state of show business: namely, that it's not really a proper job. I think what happens is that, when a song is overplayed to the extent that this was, the listening public starts to take on prejudices that cloud the originality or artistry of said song. Its very existence appears crude and bombastic because, well, that's how its constant radio airing makes you feel: like you're being clobbered over the head. Andrew Harrison's comments on this interested me not because he made a good point, but because he didn't seem to be talking about Money For Nothing at all; rather, he was talking about the way the song's constant overexposure made him feel, which is nothing to do with the song and utterly the way that it was rammed down out throats in the mid 1980s. I think the same is true of Born In The USA: the song sounds like we're being bludgeoned, and it's almost impossible to hear the irony of the song even when you know it's there. Or Layla: do you hear the pure anguished howl of unrequited love, or do you hear that ubiquitous riff that's been played so often that when you hear it, your ears are far more tuned to its permanent presence than anything the song actually has to say? I do believe that when a song is overexposed to this degree, the listener can start to hear their own prejudices rather than the song in question.

On another point: although I have, once or twice, beamed my iTunes library to the TV downstairs, the time that I enjoy music the most is when I'm doing the kids' tea and my iPod is on shuffle. I could skip songs, but I seldom do - because I'm chopping chicken, or peeling potatoes, or whatever it is, and by the time I've got around to preparing to skip the next song, it's finished. Unless a bootlegged gem like The Rolling Stones' Cocksucker Blues pops up, in which case I'm over to the iPod before Mick Jagger can say anything about policemen.

Bring on the Wirecast. Unusually for me, who has been permanently behind on this series since reading about it in Word over a year ago, I've seen it all and have no fear of spoilers.

As mentioned:

btw Keri Davies who has rather a fine blog writes about how he researched Bestival, when he wrote last weeks episodes of The Archers here: http://keridavies.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/the-archers-goes-to-bestival/

you've presumably got an interview with david simon and perhaps mcnulty himself given the upcoming wire weekend at the renoir next week. very Looking forward to this...

During the discussion of "What is music," the highly recognisable two-note signature tune of The Sound of Young Islington...

Only halfway through the latest podcast (it has been long, long night, gotta go to bed...) but already the most fascinating edition in yonks. It highlights the tension of a listener, and the worry about getting older, and going all conservative.

I figured out from an early age that some of the records that now I have in my bones (Astral Weeks, The Clash, Exile On Main Street) are those records I thought first were the emperor's new clothes. Plus, if you love music as our constituency does, you have read Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs, and especially the jazz writers, like Leroi Jones, so doors are opened.

As as I remember the 80s, in the first half of the year, you thought nothing good came out, so you messed about.
So in, I think , 1981, I listened to reggae for the first six months of the year, then caught up with mainstream. 1982 it was soul ; again I caught in the second half; in 1983 it was country music and so it went on , until some time in the mid-80s when the second half of the year was as dull as the first half and off I went off. It helped ,if you are lucky, to have the proper municipal music libraries

Before you know it you are messing about in what you think are the wilder shores (though a moment's acquaintance with The Wire (no relation) magazine makes you think yourself a mere dilettante).

You start gently, and all of sudden you in the deep end : Billie, Duke, Louis Ella, Robert Johnson, Beethoven, Beefheart, Can, The Fall, Stravinsky, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Stockhausen.

And then you think you go Whoa ! Steady there ! So you retreat. But what is the mainstream ? Dire Straits ? Style Council ? Jackson Browne ? Horribly predictable. Yes you have The Smiths, Tom Waits, Talking Heads, But eventually that is not all there is either.

The tension between what is viewed as Good Tunes and Discordant Bollocks is as old as music itself, and won't go away .
What is important is the tension. Are you going to settle for someone with a guitar playing a tune which won't scare the horses,
or do you head off into what, comparatively at least, is the avant-garde ? And if you do the latter, are you right ?
And even if you are right, will your mates think you are an arse ?
The fear with Word Magazine is that somehow it aligns itself with the former.

By the way, the Messiaen Prom discussed was repeated two days later in Liverpool, and I went to it. The material was tough at first, but over 80 minutes or so, you got the hang of it, so by halfway you thought it was some of the most beautiful sounds you you had ever heard. And then it messed with you some more before it was done.

Gotta crash. But, so far, Andrew Harrison's's finest hour.

...years ago, the advice from someone like Don Arden or Larry Parnes to the stumbleabout diva, mumble-along-a-Winehouse, would have been to go away and learn her trade, pick up a bit of stagecraft before expecting a paying audience to show up for the honour of being showered with her leftovers.

I'd be really grateful for any help anyone could give me with this dull technical problem.
Like David Hepworth I recently bought an "Apple AirPort Express Base Station with AirTunes M9470B/A" so that my iTunes would come through my stereo's speakers.

My problem is that while I'm using it I can't connect to the internet (wireless broadband).

I'm sure there's a way round this (do I need to change some settings?), but I'm far too much of a 20th century boy to work it out. Please help.

Taking a 'The Wire' tally of the last seven days:

1) Mentioned in Mr Hepworth's letter accompanying subscriber copies of the latest issue
2) Mr Hepworth conducts an interview with David Simon in the latest issue
3) Mr Hepworth refers to it in his column towards the back of the magazine
4) Mr Hepworth refers to it in the latest podcast, reiterating the intention to do a Wire-based podcast soon

Given this - which is just the last week, there are many instances from prior to that - I'm not entirely sure that I'd agree with Mr H's suggestion in the podcast that he's never really been a 'fan' of anything to an obsessive degree!

At the current rate of increasing coverage, is it not just a matter of time before the 'O' and 'D' of the magazine's name are replaced with an 'I' and 'E'?

...a handgun, a copy of Catcher in the Rye, and a ticket to Baltimore in his satchel, has he?