Heard - lots of Keith Jarrett, the Sunbear Concerts: the emusic gift that keeps on giving. Saturday Morning's Greatest Hits, pleasantly daft covers like the Ramones - Spiderman and Matthew Sweet - Scooby Doo. Perfect summertime sounds. 

Read - What The Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. A thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of essays on a range of topics including how The Dog Whisperer uses a balletic grace to let dogs know that he is the pack leader, and why the received wisdom about Enron is wrong. 

Suggs and The City - his cheeky chappie persona became rather wearing over time as he squeezed yet more mediocre puns into an otherwise interesting set of snapshots of disappearing London.

Them by Jon Ronson. A funny run through the alternate reality of outsiders - the KKK, Dr Ian Paisley, American militia - who all believe (in different ways) that the world is run by a secret cabal. A good holiday read.

I am trudging manfully through Blood's A Rover by James Ellroy.  The percussive rat-a-tat-tat of all the short sentences and the endless repetition of all the threads of the story (Hoover was gay! The Mob and the FBI killed JFK!) are rather a grind, but the characters seem even less defined than in his previous books. Maybe it's me, but I've enjoyed each of his books less. 

Peat Smoke and Spirit - a Portrait of Islay and it's Whiskies by Andrew Jefford is a perfect read for my current location, packed with historical details, whisky politics&lore and geology. Highly recommended to anyone interested on malt whisky.

Seen - no film or tv of any note but the best single thing i have seen this month is the view  from the ferry as she rounds the southern part of Islay , past Ardbeg, Laphraoig and Lagavullin. The main things I have seen are old rocks and fantastic sea views. 

AOB The part of Islay where I've been holidaying (the Rhinns) is formed of some of the older rocks on the planet. 

From the excellent Peat Smoke and Spirit by Andrew Jefford 

The southern part of the Rhinns came into being 1,800 million years ago, a period of time which altogether defeats the imagination. The English Channel, for example, did not exist 8,000 years ago; England was then part of France and the European mainland. The stone of the Rhinns coming into being is 225,000 times more ancient an event. Another way to put it is to imagine the earth's history as a 24 hour day. Human beings have evolved in the last 8 seconds of that day alone; even the dinosaurs didn't appear until 22:48(and they lasted just 51 minutes). These rocks, by contrast, date back to shortly after lunch. 

so have been able to get to grips with this lot

Listening to: Dar Williams on Spotify.Beautiful voice, folky, American songstress. Wife a big fan , too
Eels, my new favourite band. had only heard 3 or 4 of his songs before but it´s ideal for lounging around by the pool
and Crooked Still, bluegrass music with a modern twist.

Watching: Harper´s Island on satellite TV. Fun murder mystery series, type of "I Know What You Did Last Summer"- not normally my bunch of grapes but it´s 13 episode format where a cast member or two gets bludgeoned,slashed, incinerated or harpooned to death plays like a more gruesome Ten Little Indians

Reading: A Man Called Cash.Steve Turner´s well done biography of Johnny Cash. It´s short but the opning chapter on June carter´s illness and death is very well written
Norman Mailer´s "A Forest in the Castle" is heavy going at the moment. An imagined history of Hitler´s background.

Heard: Have rediscovered The Decemberists’ EP 5 Songs. By God, the first track Oceanside is so blummin’ lovely and romantic it’s like a handmade box of chocolates, a bottle of chilled Champagne, and a bed with fresh sheets. Have I said anywhere recently how much I bloody love The Decemberists? Well I do.
I've been getting to know The Arcade Fire's new album (verdict: promising, needs pruning, though) and the mad and wonderful delights of Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid (verdict: beautifully bonkers)
Also, much summer holiday skanking has been taking place to the heavy heavy monster sound of those Trojan boxsets as recommended in the magazine, and by Massive member Martin Simmonds (Thanks!). An absolute bargain for hours of dancing pleasure. And you simply cannot listen to these without jigging about. In the interests of science, I tried to remain still while the Harry J Allstars did their thing with Liquidator, and the ultimately fruitless effort nearly gave me an aneurism.

Read: Apart from enjoying the Massive’s blogs here and their tweets in the Massive twittosphere, I’ve not had much chance. Too busy dancing.

Seen: A broken projector has curtailed my home film viewing this month. Did see Bronson though, despite my misgivings about it glamourising an essentially despicable thug. It was surprisingly good, thanks to an inventive structure involving stylised music-hall style interludes, and a truly gob-smackingly good performance by Tom Hardy. It’s a vaudeville tour de force, and he’s as good as Olivier in The Entertainer. Only tooled up.

AOB: Very much enjoyed the delicious and deliberate irony of the following:
My daughter (who has a rare chromosome disorder which means she never feels physically full up yet has to be on a very strict low fat diet, and consequently is completely obsessed with food) won a school prize on the last day of term for ‘Dedication to Breakfast Club’.*

*I have a very strong suspicion (actually, I know) they made that prize up for her. Special schools are completely chuffin’ marvellous.

Read

I've taken a great deal of satisfaction from managing to get through my first two novels in Italian; Marcovaldo and Le Città Invisibili by Italo Calvino. Both are wonderful.

Heard

Over by Peter Hammill. What a fabulous record... intense, original, thoughtful, full of imagination. Crying Wolf is fast becoming one of my favourite songs.

Seen

I've been watching some episodes of the original Star Trek. Good fun.

of interest, new Devo album is pretty good, but otherwise Eels, Roky Erickson's album with Okkervil River, new Coral and of course plenty of "old".

Read: got about 2 chapters into Nicky Hornby's "Juliet Naked" and had to give up, I thought it was about me, old git into music, band web-sites, long-suffering other half, musical sightseeing, internet forums...BUT the book still somehow seems totally unrealistic.

Also finished off Larsson's "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" trilogy - thoroughly enjoyable nonsense, and far more realistic than Nick Hornby.

Seen: Truffaut's "400 Blows", finally...absolutely wonderful film, totally related to the troublesome little sod!
And then "Still Crazy", a fun Spinal Tappish little movie with a great cast - Bill Nighy was surprisingly good as the Jaggeresque singer, Timothy Spall as the drummer was a hoot, with a great farting on the tour-bus scene. Shame there was the contractual bit of Jimmy Nail having to get a bit of "serious" singing in there as though he's still trying to convince us that he's a serious artist. For god's sake man, you were brilliant as Oz in Auf Weidersehen Pet, don't be ashamed!

Heard: The Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse album which is excellent except for the Iggy Pop number which is predictable. Little Girl might be my favourite song this year.
The Trojan collections are excellent as well but the cd I enjoyed most this month is a burned copy of Fatboy Slims Late night tales compilation which is perfect in every way.

Read: Very little - currently reading Next Exit Magic Kingdom by Rory McLean as a prelude to my upcoming Florida holiday.

Seen: Moseley Jazz festival - the 2 acts I expected most from ie. Polar Bear and Sun Ra Arkestra delivered lacklustre sets. Quantic Soul Orchestra were excellent and rather surprisingly so was James Taylor Quartet who I had been disappointed with a couple of years ago. On this stage they were excellent and as funky as fuck.
Tinirawen at Birmingham Town hall - loved them.
Saw a lovely World cinema film The Popes Toilet about an impoverished village in Uruguay bordering Brazil that got excited at a forthcoming visit by the Pope. Expecting financial rewards the villagers sold all their worldly goods to embark upon businesses designed to make their fortune from the 50,000 people expected to turn up but who didnt show. Funny and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Lots of jollies away plus working away too plus being sickened by too much telly during World Cup meant a bumper month or so, with more in the last six weeks or so than the rest of the year.

Heard : Much of the listening hours have been taken by the rather wonderful CD collections curated by North-West Massive (report to follow, probably). Otherwise after a period of restraint have gone a bit mad in the record shops. Invested in the Janelle Monáe album - haven't made up my mind up yet : depending on mood this is Wildly Inventive or Completely Annoying, but there is enough to keep me amused. Visits to Glasgow and London means pilgrimages to Fopp, HMV, Harold Moore's (not Rough Trade /Honest John this time), so finally filled gaps on the shelf marked Robert Wyatt- Nothing Can Stop Us Now, and his Rock Bottom too, Tom Waits - Blood Money, Neu! - First Album, and Black Uhuru - Sinsimillia. And a set of Rossini's The Barber Of Seville , in the Gui version. Managed not to remember those Trojan boxes in any of the shops. This may be an error which needs rectifying.

Gigs : Not a Rawk month, this one. In London for two nights and two Proms. First the Stephen Sondheim Gala with Bryn Terfel, Maria Freidman , Daniel Evans and sundry Sondheimites. Highlights were Judi Dench, no-one's idea of a singer with range, but heartbreaking in Send In The Clowns, and Simon Russell Beale, whom I thought they had booked to be an Ac-Tor extolling in his most orotund fulsomeness the god-like genius of Stephen Sondheim. Wrong. They wanted him to be Frankie Howard, or maybe Zero Mostel. Sondheim himself was there for a bow, not a dry eye, apart from the fuckwit lasses standing beside me with attention span of six seconds.
Following night , Wagner's Tristan & Isolde. Oddly the roles of T&I were the weakest thing about it. Supports sang gorgeously, especially Sarah Connolly, and the band played like angels.
Loads of old 'uns rushing out the doors before Simon Rattle had turned round to take the applause. Had forgotten how rude London classical audiences can be.
Early in the month I took a break from The World Cup and went to Sefton Park in Liverpool for the Africa Oyé festival. Despite fab weather I though the turns were a bit under-par these year, but maybe I was just grumpy and craving the football.

Reading : Loads of trains, so a bumper month.

- The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell : said Esme is locked away for decades by her family : this had lots of predictable elements but tossed them up a bit.
- Part Two of the Steig Larsson trilogy, since the second film is out soon, which promptly led to Part Three, since it leads in so directly, and so subsequently hardly any sleep. Hardly great lit, but a proper page-turner.
- The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China by Lu Xun has been started, this being short stories from the early 20th century China. I was put on to this by Alan "Morvern Callar" Warner recommending it in one of those What You Should Read Next Millennium surveys (as we should learn about China, it seems), but it is has only just come out in Penguin. Hard to know what to make of it so far, esp. not knowing any other Chinese literature, with characters often cruel, stupid, servile and insane, with little redeeming Good Soldier Sjevk cunning, but I persevere.
- Also on the go is The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. My tipping point was it finally turned up on 3 for 2, though his other books were always so offered. It is as good as people say.

Seen : the best exhibition I saw this month was The Glasgow Boys in...er...Glasgow. Actually there is little of Glasgow in it, but a very well curated show, starting all pastoral/realist and then exploding into brasher colour. However loads of these pics are old friends so maybe I am being sentimental. It is in London later this year, so you dazzling urbanites can decide for yourselves. Also,
- the peculiar Rude Brittania show at Tate Britain : lots of smut, but a highlight is Carry On Up The Khyber redubbed in obscene Gujerati;
- Henry Moore show, also at Tate Britain, and that Harrier jet hanging from the ceiling too;
- the Picasso show at the Gagosian in London, covered the post-war Mediterranean years, and which, sadly, wiped the floor with the current show at Tate Liverpool
- The (ahem) BP Portrait Awards show at the National Portrait Gallery : always a joy. Loads of that hyper-real portrait style that they seem to like, but for once I agreed with the choice for first prize, a portriat of her dying mother by Daphne Todd.

Film : Finally saw Avatar. It was OK.

In August....nothing planned.

in Chester.
Been a listening to :- Anais Mitchell's Hadestown,a folk opera no less.A simply wonderful re-telling of Orpheus and Eurydice set in Depression-era America.If that sounds a little daunting please don't be put off,give it a go,It's a contender for album of the year at Squeezer's Hovel.On a rather different tack Janelle Monae's ArchAndroid is a mixed bag of wildly creative fun.Never dull,constantly surprising and often damn groovy,It's another contender.This first week of August It's been Arcade Fire's new kid on the block that's been on heavy rotation.It's good,very good,certainly better than Neon Bible,a little judicious pruning may have made it even better.

Been a reading :- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.I expect you all know about that one.Just started Mr Toppit by Charles Elton and so far It's rather enjoyable.

Been a watching :- The seventh series of Curb Your Enthusiasm,as good as ever.Mr Larry David is much appreciated at The Hovel.On the film front It's been a mixture of old favourites such as Altman's Short Cuts and a few newer releases on Blu-ray,A Prophet and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,both rather swell.

Other stuff :-Painting & Drawing a fu*k of a lot.

2 books I enjoyed recently:

Simon Murray - Legionnaire: An Englishman in the French Foreign Legion. Diary/memoir by a 19 year old who joins the Legion during the independence struggle in Algeria.

David Hoffman - The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy.
Experienced journalist examines some critical facets and periods of the Cold War (mostly in and around the Reagan era).

Radio show/Podcast - Matthew Parris kicked off series 22 of his Great Lives show today with John Lennon. It is not one of the best episodes (there were some crackers in series 21). Journalist John Harris (music journo apparently) tries to make the case that John Lennon qualifies as a great man. Parris is not really convinced and even Harris seems to talk himself out of it during the show. Expert witness is a guy called Barry Miles, who seems an interesting guy in his own right.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qxsb

Listened to: The Steve Winwood Revolutions 4-cd set. Hadn't heard any of his stuff before, other than the 80s hits. What a revelation. Cracking box. The Janelle Monae record - have given it just a couple of listen and haven't fully got my head round it yet but it sounds really promising. Alex Kapranos sitting in for Janice Forsyth on Radio Scotland made for some good chat and a good selection of tracks.

Watched: Really enjoyed Gainsbourg. The film's very much in the spirit of the man's life and music, and another example of the stylishness, imagination and creativity of the best French cinema. Watching the last series of the Sopranos. Don't know why it's taken me this long to get round to it - I'd seen all the previous series on C4 - but it will be a shame when I've finished. Every epidode is a masterpiece, it almost seems wasteful to watch multiple episodes back to back - each instalment deserves a few days of reflection. Southland on More4 - one of the best things on TV this year. As mentioned on another thread, the brilliant In Search Of A Midnight Kiss is on the iPlayer for a couple more days - wonderful film, check it out.

Read: Just finished Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman. Love the man's writing, and there are some amazing passages in it, but I did find it a bit of a chore to work through at times. Just a little bit too long. Similarly, enjoyed William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms but not as much as his other work. Have just started the Cantona book by Philippe Auclair - shall report back next month.

Heard

A pile of podcasts of Joe Strummer's old radio show "London Calling" which went out on The World Service. Brilliant stuff, all free and all available here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/joe-strummer-london-calling/id2858779...

Seen

I am re-watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer with my FPO. We are half way through series 3. Also finally watched Moon which is bloody marvelous. Sam Rockwell is officially the most under rated actor of his generation. In this film he is completely brilliant in every way. Also watched Chinatown for the first time in years.

Read

I Came I Saw by Norman Lewis. Raved about him before. This is his autobiography; crazy aunts in Wales, spiritualist parents, Sicilian nobility as in laws and war in North Africa. A life well lived to put it mildly

The March Violets by Philip Kerr. The first Bernie Gunther book. Very good, but they do get better later on.

Read -

Christopher Brookmyre - Pandaemonium

This is probably as close to Science Fiction as you can get without it actually being so. A slightly different style from the author but as usual, it has plenty of gore along with the hilarity. There are two different threads in the story which merge halfway through. One of the threads, being a bit quantum theory and astro physics, was difficult to follow and I struggled with it, though the perseverance was worth it as it all became much clearer. A cracking read!

Lucie Whitehouse - The Bed I Made

This is one of the "summer reads" recommendations from the Channel 4 book club. My wife said I wouldn't like it much and she was right. It's the story of a woman being stalked by her psycopathic ex-boyfriend. I felt the story took too long to get anywhere and then ended too quickly. I have 2 or 3 others of these *recommendations* in the house....I'm hoping for something I'll like better.

Roddy Doyle - A Star Called Henry

Historical fiction. First in a trilogy about Henry Smart who was born in sheer poverty in Dublin at the beginning of the 20th century. By the time he's 14, he's fighting against the British in the Dublin GPO standoff of The Easter Rising. By the time he's in his early 20's, he's wanted by both sides, wants to flee but has a new baby daughter. Funny, sad and scary. I read this first time a good few years ago and got much more out of it this time. I recommend it. I must add that I'm re-reading the first two parts of this trilogy just to get up to speed because the 3rd part is out now and I'm next in the queue at the library.

Roddy Doyle - Oh, Play That Thing

Second in the Henry Smart trilogy. Smart leaves Ireland for America to start a new life away from the IRA who want to kill him. After being chased out of New York, he arrives in Chicago where he meets and becomes best friends with Louis Armstrong. The Mafia want to manage Armstrong and think that Smart is stopping them, therefore he gets even more enemies.

Kate Kerrigan - Ellis Island

Love story. Another of these TV Book Club recommendations. Set in Ireland and New York City at the beginning of the 20th century. Ellie and John are childhood sweethearts and run away to get married. John gets injured in The War of Independance so Ellie has to go to USA to earn the money needed for John's operation. After a year in NYC, Ellie loves the lifestyle and doesn't want to go back to the poverty stricken farming life she's left behind.

Seen -

Nowhere Boy

Father's Day present from my son. Pre-Hamburg life of John Lennon. The only stuff I know about Lennon is what everyone else knows. I liked the film. My wife also liked the film and I doubt if she could name the members of the Beatles.

The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus

It finally dropped to around £8 so I bought it. I suppose it's ok if you like a bit of fantasy. There are also a couple of nods to Monty Python. I rarely watch films and it's not the type of film I'd normally watch...I bought it simply because I'm a Tom Waits fan.

Heard -

Tons of stuff! I was £50 man in Fopp last week and they've loads of older stuff at £3. So I've been listening to Louis Armstrong, Professor Longhair, Loudon Wainwright III, Steve Earle, Tom Petty, Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Abdullah Ibrahim and Dr. John.....to name but a few!

Seen - Nearly finished Sweeney Box Set. Enjoyed Sex & Drugs & Rock n Roll (the film, not the lifestyle). Saw Kevin Spacey film '21' based on the true story of MIT students counting cards in Las Vegas.
Found a film for two quid in Blockbuster (front cover called it "the best British Horror Comedy for Years") - The Cottage starring Reece Shearsmith & Andy Serkis. Just like watching an elongated League Of Gentleman sketch. Worth a watch.

Read - was on holiday and the only book I took was 'The Wit & Wisdom of Gene Hunt'. Finished that and found a second hand book stall in Tavistock market. Came away with 'The World According To Clarkson' (couldn't find much else to be honest). Halfway through Richard Herring's 'How Not to Grow Up' (pretty relevant as I have just become thirty-ten)

Heard - Ploughing my way through the Birthday Amazon Bonanza - History of Factory Communications (4 CD Box Set (some of it is hard work but one must persevere)), first four Eno albums (Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World & Before & After Science), Mod Revival (The Chords, Secret Affair & The Purple Hearts), The Professionals (Cook & Jones post-Pistols band), Jean Michel Jarre Best of (Images).

Heard:

Grum - Heartbeats. Like a less manic, more 80s Daft Punk, not a million miles away from Mylo, marvellous retro-dance-pop.

Read:

Don't Cry For Me Aberystwyth - Malcolm Pryce. Magnificent "Welsh Noir", a surreal twist on the detective thriller set in a modern day Wales filled with druids, stovepipe hat-wearing strumpets and veterans of the Patagonian war. 4th in a series of 5 books, all I've read so far being uniformly gripping and hilarious.

Seen:

Penn & Teller at the Hammersmith Apollo - Outstanding show of illusion, trickery and debunkery, from 2 of the best magicians in the business. After the show they promptly ran out to the front of the venue to sign autographs and pose for pictures with anyone who wanted to, and they must have been there a good 45 minutes, chatting and posing until the last person had left. Teller even spoke!

Thanks to ganglesprocket
Had no idea those Strummer shows were available on iTunes, ours to keep, and free as well ... will savour listening to them, cheers.

Reading: The Complaints - Ian Rankin, first non-Rebus one I've read - enjoying it.

Watched: Toy Story 3 - excellent.

Heard: Miss Monae is still doing it for me.

Read:
Set in Darkness (aka "Rebus 11"). Always enjoy these.
Of Mice and Men. My daughter's studying it for GCSE next year. As I'd never read it I thought I should so that we can discuss it if she wants to. Enjoyed it, but had that strange nagging sense that I should have been enjoying more because it's "a classic"...
Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn. Perfect toilet reading!

Heard:
Arcade Fire's Suburbs. Agree with drakeygirl that it's good but could have been even better with fewer tracks.
Jonsi's Go. Don't know why it's taken me so long to get round to this - it's really very good.
Ms Monae's The ArchAndroid. Some fantastic tracks, some very dull ones.
Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse's Dark Night of the Soul. Agree with Fraser's review in the August mag in which he described it as a "near masterpiece". I will investigate Sparklehorse's back catalogue over coming weeks.

Seen:
Toy Story 3. Totally deserving of the universal acclaim it's received.
Nowhere Boy. Couldn't get past the awful scouse accents (or my daughter's absolute disgust that the lead actor is now shacked up with Sam Taylor-Wood: "But she's way older than him. That's just wrong").
The Normans and Dan Snow's Norman Walks last night. One of my work colleagues described me as "a biff" today for having watched them. I have no idea what that means, but if it's anything to do with enjoying watching absolute top quality programmes on the BBC then I'm happily a biff!
Sherlock. Daft but fun.
Wicked last week during a short break in London. Ho hum.

AOB:
We went on a tour of The Globe while in London. Very enjoyable. We also whipped round a few of the "100 Objects" in the British Museum and took in Camden Market. I enjoy being a tourist in London...

Read: James Lee Burke - Rain Gods. JLB revives Hack Holland, 40 years after he first appeared in Lay Down My Sword and Shield. The revival has done JLB a lot of good too. This is his finest book for many years (not that I've had too many complaints about his recent output). As in a number of JLB novels we find a crazed killer inspired by religion. Sparked by the mass murder of a group of prostitutes JLB conjures up another cast of degenerates for a flawed but essentially honourable man to try to bring to justice. New Orleans gangsters mix with the Russian mafia in pursuit of an aspiring singer and her ex soldier boyfriend to inspire an excellent Texas based novel. A fine addition to JLB's oeuvre.

Graham Farmelo - The Strangest Man. Farmelo's biography of British Nobel Laureate Paul Dirac is excellent. The tale tells of Dirac and his social ineptitude matched against his brilliant insights into the quantum world; his search for beautiful formulae and his role in the early days of quantum physics, his relationships with other scientists and his family and his wife all meld to provide an insight into a giant of physics who these days is almost an unknown. On top of everything he was a Cher fan.

Heard: Lissie - Catching A Tiger. I'd never heard of Lissie until a few weeks ago, but she appeared in Amazon's recommendations. A check on YouTube and away I went. Country based, but with more than a touch of soul and gospel Lissie is fast becoming my favourite album of the year.
Alejandro Escovedo - Street Songs Of Love. Another rocking collaboration with Chuck Prophet and Tony Visconti delivers the goods in fine style.
Tift Merritt - See You On The Moon. After Another Country I thought Tift's arc would level off, but dammit, she's gone and surpassed that . This collection rocks more than AC, but it also reverberates with newly wed Tift's happiness as in Danny's Song.

Seen: Actually the very end of June, but I didn't post in XIV, but Jackson Browne at the Albert Hall was excellent. Giving prominence to David Lindley in the light of their recently released live album, the whole gig was a joy, from the opening acoustic set through to the inevitable (near) closer of Running On Empty.

TV - I was sad to see the end of the second season of Sons Of Anarchy. What a cracking series, surpassing the first. The white supremacists actually did make me start rooting for the Sons. A fantastic twist at the end of the last episode re Gemma leaves me agog for series three.
Am I the only person watching Spartacus: Blood And Sand? Despite the often dodgy acting and extremely bloodthirsty CGI graphics that at times have me turning away from the screen in horror, I've found it quite compelling. John Hannah as the Dominus of the Gladiator Ludus, trying to connive his way to political power through manipulation of the crowds backing for his gladiators is a marvellous turn. Most of the other actors are unknown to me, but the guy playing Spartacus has grown into the role. Things are boiling up nicely with the rivalry between him and previous champion Crixus.

Heard:

Really love the new-ish Soundway compilation 'The World Ends' which is made up of, as it helpfully says on the cover, 'Afro Rock & Psychedelia in 1970s Nigeria'.

Also the new Martina Topley Bird record 'Some Place Simple', where she re-works and pares down some of her earlier stuff. Demanding, in the best sense: makes you want to just stop and listen properly.

And ongoing - playing plenty of Wild Beasts and Drive By Truckers.

Seen:

Inception (think it was this month) - loved it.

I was looking forward to the new 'Sherlock' - it's EXACTLY the kind of thing I like, and I wasn't disappointed.

And I've had some time off, so caught a couple of exhibitions - the Henry Moore extravaganza at Tate Britain, and the Surreal House at the Barbican. HM was great, but seeing so many pieces that in many rooms followed the same themes 'deadened' it slightly, as though each individual object might have been more powerful with a bit more room to breathe. Surreal House was amazing - an excuse to just show lots of surreal art, but innovatively planned and executed to be as disconcerting as possible. Great.

Read:

'In Search of Kazakhstan' by Christopher Robbins. Had a brief work trip to Kazakhstan recently, so sought out a bit of background reading. Fascinating stuff.

Heard: Early Simple Minds
Having only previously heard their mid-80s stuff onwards I never imagined myself voluntarily listening to a Simple Minds album. I mean my 18-year-old self would shoot me. But lately I've kept reading stuff - mainly on this here blog - about how they really used to be a great band. And blow me but they really were.

Read: Pandaemonium by Christopher Brookmyre
As covered by bigsteviecook above... although I wasn't quite as keen on it as him. It came together in the end, but not enough, for me, to justify the plodding earlier chapters - as a big Brookmyre fan I was a tad disappointed. Now reading The Chosen One by "Sam Bourne", a pseudonym presumably chosen (by Jonathan Freedland) because it looks as much like Dan Brown on the jacket as possible. The tagline promises "suspense with substance" - it delivers on the suspense front but is disappointingly substance-lite so far.

Seen: Toy Story 3
Like so many others here. And I wholeheartedly endorse every single column inch of praise it's received. I was a bit suspect about the whole "weepy bit" hype - after that montage in Up I began to feel Pixar were getting carried away with their own ability to tug the heart strings. I imagined they'd just shoehorned in some unbearably poignant moment just for the hell of it. But having now seen it, I'm glad to say I was completely wrong. Shame my hayfever came on at the exact moment of that scene, so I couldn't quite see it properly...

Read: The Help by Katherine Stockett. Recommended through Amazon's 'other people have bought' section, this is a novel about a young white woman and two black maids' attempt to bring some enlightenment to early-60s Mississipi. It is equal parts eye-opening, gripping, heart-warming and laugh-out-loud funny. I heartily recommend it.

I'm also part way through What the Dog Saw, which I see a few others have recommended.

Heard: This month has mostly been about Mumford and Sons, although the latest UNKLE album has also been growing on me. Was very disappointed with the third LCD Soundsytem album after the first couple of listens, but may give it another go in due course.

Seen: First series of Stargate Universe - I was not a fan of the other SG shows, but this is more my style. Strong shades of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek Voyager with a little bit of Lost thrown in, but the characters are quite well formed and Robert Carlyle is always fairly watchable.

New series of Entourage (via the torrents, since we're about 3 series behind in NZ) is up to its usual very high standard. There's still another series and a movie to go, but I am already mourning the fact that it will 'soon' be ending.

Fringe fairly rubbish plots and scripting, but my wife likes it and the lead character Olivia is quite toothsome, so I go along with it.

AOB I just this morning attended the Big Latch On in support of my wife - 64 women (and babies) all breast-feeding at the same time in a local shopping mall as part of World Breastfeeding Week. A real triumph for my wife, given our daughter's near-total refusal to take to the breast for about the first 10 weeks.

Heard - Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. On a track by track basis it might be flawed but it adds up to more than the sum of its parts and is a true concept album with the songs sequenced in a specific order. Neon Bible might have some better songs on it but as an album it's dwarfed by The Suburbs which feels like a more convincing, more substantial piece of work.

As Backwards7 wrote:

"Listening to the new Arcade Fire album - The Suburbs from start to finish will take 64 minutes of your time. Stretched out on my bed after work with the CD playing on my hi-fi, that feels about right. Conversely its predecessor - [Neon Bible] - clocked in at 47 minutes and always felt too long.

...[A] good album isn't simply a load of killer tracks grouped together. It's a more nuanced, contextual creature, with songs carefully selected and positioned in the running order so that what goes before compliments what comes after.

Any record on the scale of The Suburbs is going to take a while to come into focus. Prune the track-listing and it will begin to lose its integrity as an album - the flow that transforms it from a collection of songs into something greater than the sum of its parts.

There are no titles listed on the outer sleeve of The Suburbs and I would struggle to tell you what any of the individual pieces were called. I’ve been enjoying it as a whole."

Read - Hellhound On His Trail by Hampton Sides. An easy, breezy read mostly from James Earl Ray's side of the ML King assassination story. I probably wouldn't know about the book if Word didn't review it. Currently reading an advance copy of a supernatural horror called So Cold the River by Michael Koryta which is like Clive Barker rewriting The Shining but this time with two hotels. Very promising so far.

Seen - Rewatching series one of House. It starts great right from the off. The last film I watched was Gosford Park which remains brilliant (rewatch inspired by Bill Bryson's talk about servants in his 16.5 hours audiobook At Home).

Heard: Restricting myself to new stuff (to me anyway).

Another J. Monae listener - modern R & B (with a soupcon of 1960s Love-stylee) concept album about Androids in the 27th century - what's not to love?
I Am Kloot's latest 40 minute Poetical Northern Miserablist newsflash keeps up the quality control. All-in-all 2010 is shaping up as a quality year.
Also recommended: I have just caught up with a piece of classic African funk, The Vodoun Effect by Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou, released by the excellent Analog Africa label.

Read: Started reading the doorstep Darkmans by Nichola Barker, got through the first 150 pages when I was waylaid by an Oxfam find.
Picked up Bare Faced Messiah, the biography of L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. This is great: the cast includes a couple of my favorite characters: Jack Parson, the Californian Rocket Scientist, founder member of the Jet Propulsion Lab, free love exponent and occultist. Also, briefly, The Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley has a walk in.
Hubbard really was an astonishing character that is all I'll say.
Also Read Smile or Die Barbara Ehrenreich's dissection of the positive thinking industry.

Seen: the usual stuff - Sherlock is not as good as the initial raves, but not as bad as the reviews of the second episode either. Really found the last episode of Rev interesting. I have come to the conclusion that I like pretty much anything that Tom Hollander is in. He seems to make really intelligent choices in the parts he takes and how he plays them.

AOB Went to Womad, where, I have to admit, one of my highlights was Nouvelle Vague. Very entertaining they were - but this MAY also have something to do with the fact that one of the vocalists is (allegedly) a former Miss France.....

because I've spent rather too much dawn/dusk time with a fishing rod in my hands. As usual am well behind the times.

Heard - have just reclaimed a pile of stuff left at my brother's for a year or more and starting to work my way through a pile of Can I came across cheaply on CD, particularly as I sold some of the vinyl originals when money was tight. I do want to hear the new Arcade Fire and will find some way to do so. Popping on a Beach House CD my younger daughter bought me from time to time.

Read - backtracking though Hari Kunzru's novels I got to "My Revolution" which is a page-turner and which I enjoyed but feels somewhat unresolved in the manner of the period of time it covers. Reading a Greek detective novel in translation, and feeling someday I'll have to admit it's the main course and not the sauce (Italian, Scandinavian, Greek, Portsmouth ?) that's the main thing - though I do like a good literary crime sauce. Portsmouth sauce somehow blows the analogy...

Seen: erm, not a lot for the reasons above. Not sure if I'd spend the £50 asking price for a Roxy Music gig and was happy enough to catch the Jonathan Ross goodbye. Observations: Andy Mackay does look like the doctor of divinity he is nowadays and Bryan Ferry's singing seems to actually have a Geordie flavour nowadays, though less range.

Coming up: my older daughter's father's day present was a ticket to go and see the Eels with her at the start of next month - eagerly anticipated.

SEEN "Extras" Series Two-like most people on here I am fed up with his smugness..but watching this again he really does take the piss out of himself as much as he doess out of everybody else..a great series!

HEARD; JJ Cale "5"
" Help" The Beatles
Amon Duul "Vive La Trance" my first encounter with the Duul which I found parts of it a bit Spinal Tappish, perhaps someone on here can point me in the right direction with this lot.

James Taylor "Hourglass" and "October Road" both lovely he gets better with age.

Son House-from the Mojo series recorded in 1965.astonishing stuff

READ Tourist Season-Carl Hiasson-his first novel hadn't quite hit his stride but still very good.

The Girl Who Played With Fire-Stieg Larrsen-to be honest I am starting to flag a little with this series but Lisbeth Salander is an fascinating bird!

Heard: The new Liz Phair album, Funstyle. Described by no less as an authority than the lovely Eamonn Forde as half-experimental/ half-classic Liz, I’d agree it’s probably not going to win over anyone who isn’t already a fan. I really like it though.

Read: Different for Girls: My True-Life Adventures In Pop by Louise Wener. A memoir written in the chick lit style, it’s a fun and entertaining read but without any real substance to it. To place it in the Britpop biography scale, it’s a hell of a lot better than the Alex James book, but nowhere near as good as the Luke Haines.

Seen: I’ve been regressing to my youth by watching the boxset of My So-Called Life. For those that don’t know this was a mid 90s American high school drama, from the makers of thirtysomething. Clever and funny and starring Jared Leto (sigh...), I think it’s stood up to the test of time. Though these days I seem to prefer the quietly devoted sweet nerd over the pretty but dim badboy heart-throb...

Heard:
Mass of the Fermenting Dregs - World is Yours. Girls, guitars. What more can I say?
Boris - Pink. Title track on high rotation - very loud.
Stereopony - Tsukiakari No Michishirube. The best thing about this band is their name. A regrettable purchase.

Seen:
Midnight Sun (Taiyo No Uta) - Mega-popstar Yui's first foray into film. Maudlin, predictable, kitsch and wonderful. I simply cannot imagine a comparable western A-lister making a similar movie (nor, indeed, being as talented a singer/song-writer/multi-instrumentalist).
Eden of the East - Anime surely can't get any better than this? An altruistic Jason Bourne character sets out to win his girl's heart and drag Japan back onto the righteous path, all wrapped in a post 9/11 theme. Stunning animation too.

Read:
Rarely re-read books but went through HST's Great Shark Hunt again like a dose of salts.
Eileen Chang - Love in a Fallen City. A great Chinese novel by a great Chinese novelist.

AOB:
Playing with a bootleg copy of Office for Mac 2011. Not half bad.

Wintertime here down under, so plenty of content to get through...

Heard
The XX version of You've Got the Love
The True Blood Soundtrack
Charlie Hayden and Pat Metheny in the background
The Mark Kermode podcast is new to me but seems to be the absolute business
Mike Scott's RTE broadcasts - Eclectic's not the word

Read
Still a bit sad after finishing the last of the Aubrey/Maturin Master and Commander novels. Girl with Dragon Tattoo was fine, but not quite sure what everyone's getting so worked up about. About to embark on Wolf Hall.

Seen
New series of True Blood continues to scare the living shite out of me. (But in a good way.) Mrs. F very keen on the latest Dexter, although there's something about the Miami sheen to it that I can't quite take to. Finally got around to District 9, which was unexpected, moving and astonishing, all at the same time. And just back from the new Tinkerbell movie, which got two very enthusiastic thumbs up from a cinema-debutante two year old.

AOB:
Bill Bailey at the Palais in St. Kilda last week, great tunes and great laughs from the master, as ever!

SEEN

Kontroll is a Hungarian movie directed by Nimród Antal – the man behind the recent reboot of the Predator franchise. Shot on the Budapest metro the film follows the lives of a gang of ticket inspectors and veers unevenly between black comedy, slapstick, murder mystery and surrealism before settling down as a religious allegory with the lead character as a fallen angel (possibly Lucifer himself) and the miles of track as purgatory, where hell is other people and nobody seems to have a ticket.

Turning on the TV in the morning before work I caught the end of The Dick and Dom Dairies (sic) which compiles highlights from their anarchic Saturday morning show. These include episodes of the pair’s gleefully childish game Bogies, featuring Dick and Dom (occasionally in the company of a celebrity) being covertly filmed in a museum, an art gallery, a library or some other setting where restrained behaviour is expected, taking it in turns to say the word “bogies” at ever increasing volumes. The match ends when one of the competitors can’t beat the volume of the previous bogie, loses their nerve or when the pair are thrown out of the venue. The whole thing is made even funnier by the reaction shots of passersby (from open-mouthed shock to stifled laughter) and the reverential commentary of the show’s producer Steve Ryde.

I particularly enjoyed horse racing pundit / Womble in exile - John McCririck relishing the opportunity to bellow “BOGIES!” while in close proximity to a waxwork of Princess Diana, or while standing at a podium in between reproductions of George Bush and Tony Blair.

The clip below features Rupert Grint from the Harry Potter movies.

HEARD

Is 2010 the year of the Prog Pop record? Albums that are broad in both scope and scale but fun at the same time. Already we’re had Gorillaz genre-hopping Plastic Beach with it’s CGI environmentalism and cast of A-list guest contributors.

The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe is even more ambitious, effectively taking your record collection, your parent’s record collection and your grandparent’s record collection and fusing these disparate elements together into a coherent 70 minutes of music. It’s an album that changes tack frequently but manages to retain a sense of its own identity through sheer attention to detail:- The way that the funky lightweight rhythm guitar that powers Faster makes its first appearance during a lull in the preceding song - a fiery Gloria Estefan-inspired Latino pop number called Dance Or Die.

Equally impressive is how well the running order is used to control the momentum. The early songs colour over the lines, segueing in one another without pause. It slows down with Neon Gumbo where the backwards vocals and muted squalls of electric guitar, buffeted by distant rumbles of thunder, have the air of a stopgap while scenery is shifted around backstage, paving the way for the trippiest section of the album:

Mushrooms & Roses, which sounds likes it’s being performed by a robot high on cough medicine, is mannered psychedelia carried along on leaden drumbeats, elegantly bookended by a string quartet. Overture III blossoms in soft-focus, like a pre WW II radio broadcast beamed into the future through the warped prism of the 1960s.

The latter part of the album is given over to experimentation and musical chimeras: Oh, Maker grafts 60s bedsit folk to a chorus that is more contemporary R&B. Come Alive (War of the Roses) is breathless Speakeasy jazz given a ragged electric blues backing and a berserk headshaking vocal. It ends with nine minutes of avant-garde classical lounge jazz. When you’ve made something as idiosyncratic and self-assured as this where you go next is anyone’s guess.

READ

Phillip K. Dick is well-known as a prolific writer of high concept sci-fi novels that provided plotlines for films such as Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly, as well planting the seeds of inspiration for mind-bending shows such as Lost.

Dick also wrote a small number of realist novels set in California during the 1950s that have more in common with the TV show Madmen than they do with any dystopian future reality. Mary and the Giant wasn’t published until after his death; a tragedy as it’s a very good book – one that highlights what a brilliant and insightful character writer he was.

Mary is a mass of contradictions – opinionated yet insecure; practical yet naive; attractive enough to draw men into her orbit but confused enough about what she wants to send them spinning away off-kilter. There are strong similarities between her and the character of Enid in Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel /film Ghost World.

The book centres around the lives of a handful of musicians, music retailers and hangers-on in the small town of Pacific Park. It has some fantastically awkward moments such as the first meeting between Carleton Tweany (whose hackneyed stagecraft teeters on the brink of anachronism) and the less self-assured Chad Lemming who delivers spoken political monologues accompanied on the guitar, marking him as a cross between Bob Dylan and some kind of proto-rapper.

Heard - The Kinks 'The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society'. £3.99 from the Co-op. An impulse buy while popping out for Knorr vegetable stock cubes. Bitter-sweet is probably the correct description. It's never too late to find something great you love and this is a wonderful album. Ray Davies has a rare ability in rock to write fun, daft, humourous, upbeat songs that are nevertheless excellent pieces of music - a refreshing change from the usual angst and anguish. As good as anything else released in what was a pretty good year, 1968. Something of a tortoise in the not necessarily thought of, long, slow race to be acknowledged and recognised as the best in pop.

Seen - 'Moon'. Intelligent movie that reminded me of the pre-Star Wars style, thoughful sci-fi of the seventies, which is a good thing I'd say.

Read - 'A Confederacy Of Dunces' a novel by John Kennedy Toole. This is a classic black comedy of course. Whilst it is clearly brilliantly done I did weary of the characters and the relentless sour view of humanity the writer presents. Books are often described as hilarious, but I rarely find myself laughing out loud at them. Is it funny? Not exactly. It's more of a view of life as absurd and full of ridiculous and appalling people - a view I can relate to at times, up to a point.

I have read and enjoyed: Richard Williams on Kind of Blue and its influence (although I did feel slightly mislead as he spends half the book building up to the making of the album which is much more detailed than what follows, but the chapter on the Velvets is good); David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries which is really interesting (and has a nice Word recommendation of the back page); Michael Bracewell on Roxy Music (which is much better than I expected, and much bigger in scope than most music book); and Murakami novel (one a month to make them last); and now just trying to finish One Day.

Listening: like others the new Arcade Fire album (although not as impressed as some above); Martina Topley Bird (which benefits from repeated listening); Holly Miranda (shaed of TV on the Radio of course, but a promising debut; and Dangermouse and Sparklehorse.

Seen: not that much but a couple of crackers! Toy Story 3 more than live dup to its billing; and by chance went in to a gallery in NY that what exhibiting the full set of prints from the Dangermouse album – they looked so good I bought the CD just for the booklet (although the music is pretty good as well).

but after being pointed in the direction of this thread by none other than el hombre himself, I feel I should contribute.

Seen
Rented I Love You, Philip Morris and really enjoyed it - certainly more than the review in this month's Word anyway. It may be a horrendous cliché, but if it wasn't true you couldn't have made it up.

I went to Latitude but that's been discussed to death on here, but now I've seen Belle and Sebastian live, I can shuffle off this mortal coil when my time is up happier than I would have done otherwise.

I also saw David Ford at Koko where I bumped into our very own Captain Underpants. Cue an awkward situation where I tried to introduce him to my girlfriend: "this is, um... er..."

Heard
I don't wish to sound like I'm Kate Mossman's parrot, but is there life beyond Janelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid? I think not.

One of the benefits of being relatively youthful is that there's a whole load of classic albums waiting to be discovered whenever I fancy, so this month, I finally got round to purchasing Abbey Road, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and The Faces' A Nod is as Good as a Wink. I've come to the following conclusions:
1) Maxwell's Silver Hammer is as bad as everyone says it is
2) Stay With Me may be one of the best songs ever written
3) It's impossible to listen to Gimme Shelter without feeling about ten times cooler than you actually are

Read
It's been a busy month book wise: Stewart Lee's How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Jerry Della Famina's From the Guys Who Brought You Pearl Harbor (the book that inspired Mad Men) have all been digested in the past ten days.

The book that really got me, though, was David Nicholls' One Day. It's a simple story, most of the periphery characters are barely formed, but there's something so believable about the central protagonists that it's hard to feel that they're not people you know personally. Nicholls' writing style is very similar to that of Nick Hornby, I think, and though it may not be the most literary style, it certainly works for me. I was almost in floods by the end of it.

AOB
I'm moving house this week. Exciting times.