2 CDs I've just bought:

About a Boy. By Badly Drawn Boy.
The title is'nt about the Badly Drawn Boy, it is the soundtrack to a film 'About a Boy' based on a novel by Nick Horby. I've not read this, or any other of his books as he seems to write about football and I'm not really interested in football.
Anyway, the album. After enjoying The Hour of Bewilderbeast, I listened to this latest with some trepidation. I often find that if I enjoy a CD, then if the same artist releases something else, I am often disapointed, as in my opinion, it was'nt as good as the last release. I found this with New Order, their last CD was nowhere near as good as the one before, and that was not a patch on the one before that !
The first track was an instrumental, then a song, the album was like that, songs interspesed with instrumentals. Yes, I enjoyed them, but not as much as the previous album. Now I sometimes find that I need to listen to something a few times, then I begin to really enjoy it, so I will keep playing it. I have plenty of time stuck in traffic to do this.
The Hour of Bewilderbeast really struck me, even the first time of playing. Now this may be because I first heard this after listening to Silent Sigh, so my ear was tuned to enjoy Badly Drawn Boy, and if I heard About a Boy first, I would have liked this better than The Hour of Bewilderbeast. Only more listening will tell.
The second CD is CBGBs and American Punk. Various artists.
An excellent compilation of New York based groups from the 60s and 70s that performed at the CBGBs club.
Starting with Wating for my Man, and including Ramones, Blondie, Pere Ubu & Television this is a feast of what was once called 'alternative' before it was labelled as punk rock. I got into this stuff when I was a teenager, preferring it to the pompous rubbish my sixth form contemporaries listened to. I got into this after hearing Satellite of Love by Lou Reed. Prior to this I was a reggae loving boot boy, but something snapped when I was 17 and bought a motorbike. I managed to find a shop in London that sold alternative, even Virgin in Birmingham, then a hippy records shop did'nt carry any of this. Live at Maxs Kansas City was my first alternative album, as Lou Reed had gone somewhat mainstream with his album. Oh god, those years of teenage angst. Girlfriends, fights, looking for alternative music. There was a pub in Birmingham city centre, Bogarts, where the local bad motorbikers used to hang out. Well, I went over to the enemy here, from Doc Martins and braces to leather jacket and motorbike boots ! They played some good music, but a lot of rubbishy motorbikers stuff, such as Born to be Wild. Even in the mid seventies this was naff.
Fed up of typing, going to try and figure out how the users and documents interface and are set up on the NT box.