Category: Random Catchup

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Douglas Coupland interview

Douglas Coupland is without doubt my favourite fiction writer. He’s the only one I can think of right now that writes in my language, where I don’t have to step out into someone else’s world to read it. Reading his books is like talking to friends you’ve known for years, with whom you have endless shared jokes and a whole private vocabulary.

I’ve just finished his book-before-last, Eleanor Rigby, which is wonderful – full of the usual Coupland-style reliance on huge coincidence and wrestling with the most enormous questions of modern life, without positing any particular answers, just challenging all of us to live for something bigger, better, more noble than the world as it’s presented to us.

There’s a wonderful interview in the back of the book, which I was trying to find a link to online, but all I found was this one which accompanied his latest book JPod. JPod’s another fine book, though it’s more impressive than deep, in the way that Eleanor Rigby is deep, or Girlfriend In A Coma… it’s back to the zeitgeist defining magic of Generation X, Life After God and Microserfs, rather than the more traditional novel narrative of Miss Wyoming or All Families Are Psychotic.

Anyway, if you haven’t read Eleanor Rigby yet, but the version got the interview in the back – the interview is worth the price of the book itself. Great stuff.

I just wish he’d keep a blog, but I guess after a day writing, the last thing you want to do is write more. It’d be like me putting tonnes of free music online daily. Great idea, but really, if I’m going to be recording music, it’s going to be working towards a bigger project, not just throw-away MusiBlog stuff…

And now that book’s finished, I’m reading ‘God Has A Dream’ by Desmond Tutu – more about this when I’ve finished it. Suffice to say, he’s one of the most profound and inspiring human beings I’ve ever come across.

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Annually Retentive

Dunno if you’ve been watching it (UK readers) but Rob Brydon’s new panel game show thing Annually Retentive is bloomin marvellous. The weirdness of it is that the celeb panel game show bit of it is only about 10 minutes of the whole show. the rest of it is the behind the scenes discussions about the jokes, the guests and Rob being a really miserable luvvie with a fragile ego. It’s brilliantly written and fantastically observed. Great stuff. Click the link above to watch it online.

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5 things

5 things list – was tagged by Jan (not worth posting a link to Jan’s blog, as you have to be subscribed to it to read it)

5 things in my fridge:
smoothie
salad
M & S red onion chutney (mmmmmmmmm)
pita bread
hummus

5 things in my wardrobe:
80s pointy suede goth boots
two old grandad coats from my college days
a bass case
many other reminders of fashion disasters gone by…

5 things in my bag:
my new CD
a sharpie
my wallet
out of date recycle collective flyers
scissors

5 things in my car:
litter
crap tapes
not so crap tapes
a road atlas
last night, Marcus Miller. (!)

tagged? anyone reading this with a blog. :o)

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Um, er, just stuff…

Getting ready to head out to a gig in Petersfield tonight – last one on this trip with Ned.

Been a good week so far – great rehearsal with Julie on Tuesday – our Edinburgh set has got to the point where we’re dropping great material to make way for even more marvellous stuff, and also medley-ing some of the songs, to get even more surprise and delight into the show. Our myspace page is getting loads of great interest, and many favourable comments, which is nice…

Yesterday was a bit of a disappointment in that I headed into town with the aim of getting my Cds stocked in a few shops – the manager of Ray’s Jazz wasn’t there, the dude in the Jazz dept at Virgin gave me the number of head office, the dude in the Oxford Street HMV said they have a jazz buyer but he wasn’t in, and the dude in the Bond Street one said everything has to go through head office!

I did drop a copy in for John Lewis at Time Out, so hopefully he’ll enjoy it and write nice things in the mag.

What else? Ah yes, Wimbledon has started, Henman’s out (no major surprise there as he met Federer in the second round), Andy Murray’s doing well, and some unseeded bloke who’s never got beyond the first round of anything til now has just taken the first set of Raphael Nadal… this could be a HUGE upset if it goes the distance. No breaks of serve as yet, just the tie-breaker between them…

Maybe see you in Petersfield later, fair bloglings of Hampshire, x

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New phone, panic over

Right, got a new phone yesterday afternoon, so mobile is back working again… :o)

You might be wondering why I’m blogging at 9.40 in the morning, given that I’m not normally awake now… well, I misread my diary last night, and thought I started teaching at 9, not 10… couldn’t work out why I’d booked teaching in for 9am anyway, so I guess that should’ve told me to double check…

Ah well, it’s made for a nice leisurely transition from the world of sleeps to the world of being awake.

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dead phone

OK, don’t bother phoning my mobile for a while – it’s dead as of last night. Took a call, ended the call, screen started flashing slowly, alternating white screen/off. Looked it up online, and it seems like the main board is dead. I think I’m out of contract, so should be able to get an upgrade pretty easily… will call Orange now.

If you need me, I’m on the landline, or email, or various messenger programs. If you haven’t got the details, you don’t need the details. :o)

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Surely anyone with a heart was rooting for T and T?

Actually ended up watching the last 15 minutes of the football yesterday. Was very disappointed when England scored – surely anyone with a heart was wanting it to be at least a draw? I have no idea at all how some spurious national pride can get in the way of wanting underdogs to do well. A load of the members of the Trinny team play well outside the premiership, for teams like Port Vale – I’d have loved to see them beat or draw with the bloated, overpaid, media-savvy pretty boys of England.

But sadly it wasn’t to be. And then Sweden won, which meant Trinidad can’t even go through just by beating Equador – they need to win by a few goals in order to go through on goal difference… so now I actually do want England to win their next game, and Trinidad to beat Ecuador, and then we’ll have them in the last 16, which would be fabulous.

Get me with my wikkid football-score-working-out skillz! Statto!

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Too long since I last wrote anything…

So what have I been up to, I hear you ask… Well, the usual stuff – teaching, practicing etc. More practicing over the last few days, as I’ve got two gigs this week – tomorrow and Friday (tomorrow is at the Half Moon in Putney, Friday is at The Free Church in St Ives) – need to get the new songs learnt as well as I possibly can!

Also been distributing posters for the Fret Phobia tour at the end of the month, with Ned Evett. Which reminds me, if any of you are anywhere near any of the venues (we’re playing London, Cambridge, Leeds, Wakefield, Manchester and Petersfield) please drop me an email or a comment and I’ll send you a handful of posters to stick up in music shops/coffee shops/waiting rooms/etc.

Been spending lots of time with the Ginger Fairly Aged Feline, who has made the most remarkable recovery… it’s the second time he’s come back from being that close to death. The vet’s amazed. We’re in Friday morning with him, to see what’s happening with his kidneys via the wonder of blood-tests. But as for now, he’s spending most of his time in the garden, running around (if you’d told us 10 days ago that he’d ever run again, we’d have laughed bitterly at you) and generally enjoying himself immensely. Hurrah for the tiny ginger one (no, not you Jude, the cat.) (well alright, hurrah for jude too…)

Tonight I was going to go and see Orphy Robinson do a solo gig in London, but got back from my postering outing and realised I hadn’t done the food-shopping I’d promised to do. So that took precedence. I was meant to be doing a gig tonight playing bass for a friend, but she’s disappeared off the face of the earth! how odd…

See you at the gig tomorrow!

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