The Next Big Thing

I’ll be glad to see the back of 2006. Not that I expect a great upswing in “the year of the great seventh number” but I’m sort of presuming that it can’t suck worse. This past week has seen flood and pestilence in Bonnie Scotchland. Not that your reporter has been adversely affected by the former. I made it home before they started closing roads and all that palaver. An ongoing, not life-threatening but uncomfortable ailment meant a stint at the local infirmary on Thursday. Bring on the results. Most likely the main thrust will be that it’s wear and tear through getting auld. You never know though. Am I concerned? No but thanks for asking. One gets used to situations even if they don’t understand them.

My ongoing tussles with keeping a myspace connection continue apace. I try to reply to mails but it generally ends up crashing. I am stoked however to have been added by JTFF today and can’t stop playing that video over and over. Going into myspace has the same kind of affect that going into one of those giant diy stores on me. I do want to dress up my page and all but the actuality of doing so sucks the will to live out of me.

There was a power cut here on Friday for acouple of hours. But, what if there was no power, no internet (ever!), the expectation that everything will work always is at best daft. Some supposedly higher power is quite feasibly fucking with us. Isn’t that what such entities do? Anyway, I’d like very much not to get perturbed when such bollocks but I haven’t mastered that level of understanding. Nope, all the toys get thrown outta the pram. Despite appearances, I is only - er - human...

Yesterday I left the bunker early and headed for Glasgow. Systematically managed to bodyswerve the shoppers and achieve what I set out to do. Mainly to hit up Volcanic Tongue to get my mitts on the only known available output of an SF phenom called Wooden Shjips. Yeah, with a J. Mr Hesske brought them to my attention earlier in the week and their sonic arsenal seemed to speak directly to my predicament in a ramalamafafafa meets Mac Rebennack’s "Storm Warning" backwards kinda way. More about them later but you can check out the YouTube clip that hooked me in the first instance. You can get it from VT here in the UK and I’ll sort out info for the US in due course.

Also went to see Stranger Than Fiction in one of those Multplex places. It takes a wee while to percolate but all in all it’s a decent way to spend just under 2 hours. There’s an irritating computer graphic effect involved toward the beginning but that soon passes. I’ve never been sure about Will Ferrell but he’s good in this and there’s a particularly pertinent use of a song that will strike a literal chord with hardcore NBT readers. It’ll hit you harder if I don’t tell you. It had quite an effect on Maggie Gyllenhaal's character - Ana, evidently a woman of taste. The soundtrack was put together by former Redd Kross man, Brian Reitzell.

Kudos to Mr Tom Morton who managed to get two Hello Saferide mentions into his Sunday Herald column this morning. Whilst we're on the subject - check out this version of "The Quiz", live from London.

And that’s about it. Time to get in about some music and I may be back this way again later today. Can’t say for sure.