Orange juice, pancakes, crispy bacon, sliced banana, maple syrup, mug of tea.
No lunch for me today!
Posts by Backdrifter
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Thanks. Yes pretty good. TC still as meat-and-potatoes as ever! The Man Who Died is especially good. CM in good voice.
You didn't want to get over to Swindon for any of the gigs? No plans for Edinburgh?
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All of you absolutely on the money with Chelsea v Tottenham. Sadly.
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I only just learned Terry Chambers has gone back on the road. In 2018 he and Colin Moulding got a band together and did 5 gigs at Swindon Arts Centre under the name TC&i. The idea was for Moulding to get the chance of doing some of his XTC songs live that he'd never got to perform before. That done, he went back into retirement.
Chambers has now reassembled the band minus CM and, with the blessing (and involvement in some of the arrangements) of Andy Partridge, called it EXTC. They have just got one date set up so far, at Edinburgh Queens Hall.
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My next gig is Elbow, 28th April at the Apollo.
I think that's the one I'm going to.
But before that, Fish at Islington Assembly Hall. A VIP freebie courtesy of my industry friend Super Dave.
The week after that, Karine Polwarth and Goldfrapp, back to back in Edinburgh.
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Toasted buttered cinnamon and raisin bagel, mug of tea.
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I'm halfway through crime drama Deadwater Fell. I wasn't sure at first but am getting into it more after the first two episodes.
It features a small community shocked by a house fire and its aftermath. We are starting to learn unexpected things about the fire, the events surrounding it and the people involved.
A big factor in my committing to it is that it's only 4 episodes long. I wish more series were as compact as this, too often they are given 6,8 or more episodes and they get stretched beyond reason.
I'm enjoying the latest series of Doctor Who, an improvement on the previous one.
I'm gorging on Elementary, the US Sherlock Holmes series which I find superior to the BBC's Sherlock. On dvd I've been binge-watching Seinfeld and Will & Grace.
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Ah...then I have a new recommendation!
Start from the beginning.
Blimey, make your mind up! 😜
The Freeview channel airing it in the UK is well into season 1 - from looking it up, based on the Mudd story I saw, I picked it up at S1 ep7. Unless they start again I won't have the chance to start at ep1 any time soon. I might return to it maybe having read a synopsis to that point if I can find one. I've got the general gist of it being placed 10yrs before the classic series.
I think one issue I had was that I found the lead character Michael Thingy quite bland and uninteresting.
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And, as highlighted by Dave Gorman, From the Gecko! It's a doggy dog world.
Those Gorman sayings - or should I say cat-phrases? - are infuriating and hilarious in equal measure. "He goes rushing in like a bowl in a china shop." How can anyone possibly think it makes sense?!
Others were:
"It's totally on accept a bowl"
"Things like that are a diamond dozen"
"It comes with all the Belgian whistles"
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I think I would like to know why Doctor Robert, another favourite of mine, is between Because & And I Love Her!
Probably nothing more than I liked the idea of going up-tempo after Because, then taking it back to a more sedate feel after Dr Robert. Also partly that on the album, Because is followed by the wistful reflective opening of You Never and I wanted a different transition.
In compilations I consciously try to do different things with tracks than what the artist did on the source album, e.g. not using openers and closers that they did.
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Curious to hear more about your reasons for the running order of the songs, as it sounds like you had thought a lot about it. Also interested to hear about how you decided what to leave out.
I took the approach I generally do when making compilations of a particular artist - I went through each album (and in this case non-album singles/b-sides) and picked out the ones I'd ideally include. Having decided beforehand it would be 4 x 80-minute discs I then matched the list with that capacity to see if there were any I needed to drop. There weren't really, everything I picked could've fitted in, but as I went along I dropped a few anyway for no firm reason other than they suddenly felt less favoured. Girl and Julia are two that were in that category.
I already knew there were key tracks I'd include regardless, being either firm favourites of mine or having what I regard as some significance, including:
Love Me Do
I Saw Her Standing There
Twist & Shout
The Abbey Road medley
Taxman
Eleanor Rigby
Tomorrow Never Knows
Every Little Thing
Rain
She Said She Said
Penny Lane
Come Together
Something
Come & Get It
A few others too, plus I already knew I wanted the 3-song closing sequence of the White Album intact as I find it very striking and somewhat creepy, though for timing reasons I had to cut R9 and it's the easily most editable.
There are a few warmly regarded ones, probably seen as classics but which I've never much liked, e.g. Here Comes The Sun, While My Guitar, Walrus, Lucy In The Sky, Day Tripper, hence they're not included.
I'd already decided Paperback Writer would start the whole thing and In My Life end it. With those bookends, I then wrote down from my pick-list a running order. I'm not sure I can fully describe how I do that other than thinking what will sound good in a sequence, having a mix of different dynamics/feels/textures, while trying to avoid too much bunching of certain albums or John/Paul tracks. I always want to have something that to me sounds good as an opener or closer. e.g. Getting Better and Hey Jude sound good in those respective roles, whereas Fixing A Hole and Don't Let Me Down wouldn't.
All that left a minimal bit of re-ordering and disc-switching. 1 and 2 still have capacity so I could still tweak them with additions but have no plans to yet.
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This is intended as the latest in the album threads sequence. The others haven't elicited much attention but I thought I'd have one final go at it with this. I'll leave it then, as we already have a ATTWT thread, then the remaining albums are pretty much covered by the recent "favourite 3 tracks" threads and it'd just be more duplication to try any further full album threads.
And so the album threads and the three-tracks threads finally intersect!
The universe didn't end, thankfully.
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Random thought in the morning:
Shouldn't people who say "I could care less" meaning 'I couldn't care less' rather say "I could care more"?
As you say, they're getting the phrase "I couldn't care less" wrong and should perhaps say "I couldn't care more"!
It's become one of those wrong things so often repeated it's now accepted. As with "it's a bit of a damp squid" and "expresso".
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The arrival of Collins and Hackett made such a difference, especially Collins but it's clear from NC that Hackett, however marginal he may have been portrayed (including occasionally by himself), did make an immediate impact. But for me the biggest change came with Collins's arrival. John Mayhew entered the band as a sole outsider and did his best. But PC's innate talent and flexibility made huge inroads from the start and Hogweed is a good example of that.
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May I please entreat you to go beyond the first two episodes of "Discovery"? It seriously gets better as it goes. There were really interesting plot twists that I simply did not see coming. I'm willing to bet you would get into it the further you went.
I haven't seen the first two episodes, I'm not sure where in its timeline I entered but can tell you the first one I watched featured Mudd in a much nastier incarnation than that of the classic series. The other one I saw, possibly the next episode in sequence, I can't remember anything about.
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I'll have to revisit it. It made too little impression on me to either remember it much or want to re-listen.
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I want to add that I like the jaunty flute line, and the lovely scansion, shape and sound of "They are immune to all our herbicidal battering". (To briefly jump bands, see also - and I think foxfeeder will appreciate this - XTC's "portable Sony entertainment centres").
Though I have to chuckle at the emphasis-mangling of "bo-ta-ni-cal"
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(Might want to check the running time, I'm sure it's over 8 minutes)
This is firmly in the category of Genesis tracks I liked as a teenager still exploring and discovering their music, but which I abandoned once I'd settled into my fandom, if that makes sense. I reckon I probably haven't listened to it since the 80s, except for when I got the 08 remaster.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's especially bad or anything, it's just not what I choose to listen to when I want to hear Genesis. There's stuff in it I like, such as the intro with its lovely deftly intertwined guitar and keyboard lines. Along with the confident drumming, the track does show how the arrival of Collins and Hackett had lifted the band to a new level. There's also the thunderous chords at the end, which along with the big exultant ones at the end of Salmacis marked a big step in the development of the Genesis sound.
I always liked Gabriel's rasping delivery of the line "They all need the sun to photosensitize their venom!" *
I have some affection for it but, as I say, it's just not on my radar.
Broadcaster Danny Baker loves early Genesis and especially this track, and when interviewing Rutherford in about 2004 he asked if they toured again would they play it. MR laughed and said "God, no!"
(* photosensitize goes on my list of words I love in Genesis songs along with undinal, unifaun, garlic and capsule)
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He tries twice. Head, banging and wall spring to mind.
I don't think the lyric is describing two reconciliation attempts, it's all about the one attempt.
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I love the keyboard line in the chorus that continues playing under "Those words how they hurt me..." - classic Banks, the sort of thing only he can come up with.
