Pun based title, when I think of one

I was just looking at one of those music lists , best albums of the year and so on, on the BBC web site. They'd viewed the year via aggregation of lists from all over, including entities like Rolling Stone magazine in the US. To their credit, also a French and probably other non-Anglosphere sources. So, some interesting artists mentioned, some I'd heard of, some I hadn't. But no one I spent any time listening to in 2025. I'm generally decades out of date. Of course, nothing dates you more like your taste in music. New music I do like - which I'm going to mention here - isn't of any consequence in current music media. Sometimes because it's Finnish, often because it's by the sort of rock band who do their very exciting thing live, but isn't much liked by image orientated tv. Though Die Spitz ought to be, as attractive young women. This (right) is the first full album, just out this September, Something to Consume . I love it, especially how heavy i...

I want to say that cinema's going to pot, but maybe it's just me that's jaded. I only went to an actual film theatre once, and that was to see the latest Alien film, much of which was a retread of the first Alien film I saw um over forty years ago I believe. It wasn't a total waste of time; at least it sidestepped the pointlessly distracting mythos of mankind's foundation which was introduced in Prometheus and Covenant .  I used to rely on Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode's film reviews on Radio 5 for new films to investigate, but since they decamped elsewhere I've been left with Empire magazine for reviews which I don't trust so much. The basic point is about just knowing what new films are out. But these days they merge films tv series and even games into their star reviews section. So book reading continues to dominate my cultural mindscape. There were three books which made an impact on me this year. The first was  Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks ...

Lists here, lists there, lists everywhere on the World Wide Web. They're ridicuous. The value of a 'best ever' list ends as soon as you've read it. Your taste isn't the same as the person's who devised the list. And when we're talking about pop culture, what could be more disposable? However, here is a list of favourite music videos. Mine, just mine. Its main purpose is to remind me of them - then I can go straight to YouTube and watch them. They're all there. You may have noticed I have a 'Desert Island Discs' page. But this isn't really appropriate for that. Partly because of the inevitable confusion with the 'favourite music' theme. A lot of 'best ever videos' lists I've seen are clearly lists of someone's favourite music, when they've simply gone and found the video made for the various songs. Not here. These are film pieces . True, they are all for songs I like. But in my humble opinion, with each one, a film...

"with James Fox" . Thoroughly engrossing, and eye opening. It's a quick read, despite topping 600 pages; and you sense it could have been much longer and still have stuff left out. For me, it strikes an ideal balance in its content. It covers almost everything you want it to cover, and despite its contradictions and changing moods - actually, because of those things - it feels honest and direct, and presents a pretty complete picture of the man . I'm in an odd position, as someone who despite being in a great demographic to be a Rolling Stones fan - I'm twelve years younger than Richards - I never really paid them much attention, and only once bought a Stones record, for a mate for his 21st. I instinctively preferred their sound to the Beatles' ie. for its explicit blues base. But, well, hard to say, apart from getting into prog early on. However, one was always aware of the Rolling Stones. They were often in the news , in reports which also mentioned the poli...

Books, films, music; but 2018 for me was mainly about books . The thing is, I've kept up a record of books I've read since childhood, in a succession of notebooks, and I noticed this year that - since even if I read little or no books, I still move on to a new page - I would run out of pages in a very few years. So, I bought a new fancy notebook and in thoroughly OCD fashion, copied it all out again. I made a few adjustments to correct various mistakes etc., but things are looking good once more. Especially since it led to a resurrection of my set of Rotring ArtPens, ie. my fountain pens . I ditched my use of disposable cartridges, and fitted them with refillable ones, and then a set of nice inks. Mostly blues and blacks but also red, green and so on. Some have been used to colour code types of book in the notebook - eg. blue for prose, purple for poetry. But more satisfyingly I began to write letters. I knew full well that only one or two friends and acquaintances were lik...

Let's start with cards. Christmas cards . For information, I make a list each year, and end up giving or sending around 70 cards, to family and various groups of friends from past and present. I keep up with who I'm not hearing from, who I'm still in touch with, that sort of thing. But the stat I want to mention here is one which gives me weird amusement; weird, because it doesn't mean anything. It's to do with the subjects featured on the Christmas cards, and the apparent trends each year. As far as figures go, it's almost always Santa that wins, or else it's the Holy Family. In the objects or symbols category, I noticed quite a few wreaths this year. But the big perennial fascination is animals. I have no idea how fashions or trends would work on this one, all I can say is that it doesn't seem to be utterly random. Some years there really is a predominance of eg. reindeers, others, of robins. As a footnote, when I was checking out the Christmas po...

So, I sometimes find I bring interesting things back from a trip. This particular lot is a nicely eclectic collection, even more noteworthy because of the industrial action at Helsinki-Vantaa airport which forced me to take only  carry-on luggage . And I'd paid extra to check it in. The original plan, as per normal for trips to Finland, was to fill another bag with sweets and stuff for the suomikoulu to sell from the school's shop. Frustrating. I threw a lot of things out in my room at Hotel Helka the day before the flight. On top of the nearly finished toothpaste, shaving gel and shampoo, out went a variety of oddments like nail clippers and assorted foodstuffs. Unimportant, but wasteful. Here's the Finnish cultural loot from my March 2017 trip. You might want to click on the picture to embiggen it. Somehow, I gathered rather more than I'd expected. You'll quickly spot the biggest challenge as far as the cabin bag is concerned. That's right, an actual vin...

This relates to something pleasingly odd which happened last week, but bear with me for the moment. Right - Ikara Colt in Preston, 2004 Like you and most people, I've seen some music acts more than once. I don't go to concerts so much now. Gigs. But I'd never rule out further outings. The melancholy truth is that it's less a matter of age, than that most acts have a short shelf life. At least two acts I saw quite a bit of were very open about it, saying things like, 'People shouldn't be playing rock music after 30' (That, frankly, is nonsense) or 'Five years and that's it' . I did a list some time ago on my old website, and this is how it totted up, by the end of the 2000s, with a few extras achieved since. Ikara Colt      9 times, 2003-2004 The Raveonettes      5 times, 2003-2007 Sahara Hotnights      4 times, 2003 The Washdown      3 times, 2003 Jeff Beck      2 times, a few years apart Bi...