Friday, April 12, 2002

This is from the Chelvis website;
www.chelvisonline.com,
The early history of Chelvis;

The story of Chelvis: The Chinese Elvis, takes place on a dark and stormy night in 1975. In a San Francisco hospital room laid a newborn, born that morning. The newborn was a boy, a chinese boy. He was normal in every sense of the word, delivered on time and was of healthy weight.
As the boy was asleep in the hospital nursery, there was a blackout. When the lights turned back on, the nurses noticed something had happened. It was a mystery that is still unsolved to this day. The boy had magically lost his diaper and was wearing a white jumpsuit with a gold plated belt buckle. Emblazoned on the belt buckle was one single word. That word was Chelvis.

Woo Hoo, this is ace !

Just looking at some recent blogs, 'bad fairy blog' mentioned that CHELVIS, the Chinese Elvis was coming to San Francisco. I must find out more about Chelvis, there are lots of Elvis impersonators in the UK, one of the best in a post-modern kind of way is the Sikh Elvis, he sings pretty well like Elvis, and looks great in a turban ! So the Chinese Elvis is something that can't be missed, does he sing in Cantonese ? !!$%
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.
Ah, John Peel read out my mail on air, and he met Ronny Ronalde, the demom whistler and will broadcast some of his stuff next week. My review of Badly Drawn Boy was put on the front page of BBC Manchester website. I enjoyed writing it, even though it was a little short, I think I'll have a go at some more reviews and post them on my own web site. I enjoy music, I suppose I am no different to anyone else in my likes and dislikes and if I can put my feelings down about something, it may get others interested. I like to think I have a broad interest in music (except country & western, but even there some good stuff lurks), so lets get off and get reviewing !
Maybe I should do some work as well, seeing this is what pays the bills, provides me with a nice car etc, and gives the taxman so much towards funding the health service, army, ploice and all that stuff that governments like to provide.
Yes, seeing as I'm being paid to do IT stuff, not post to blog, I'd best go off and actually do some 'work'.
The good thing about being an ITer is that I am tapping away on my laptop, what am I doing ? Hacking out code ? Writing specifications ? Working on a website ? Posting to blog ? Designing a database ? Designing a form ? Playing solitaire ?

Thursday, April 11, 2002

Teenage angst, I remember that, it struck me when I was just 17, in the form of a girlfreind that was only going out with me to be able to get to my freind. Everythings fair in love and war so this was a fair and succesfull strategey, she used me to get to him. This would have been ok but it happened again ! This time with someone i fell for hook line and sinker. I was 18 when this happened and felt so bad, later we got together and things hotted up, then her parents moved to Canada and took her, the next I heard was a postcard in which she mentioned the boys in Calgary were fighting each other to take her out. She was a stunner ! She married some rich guy from a famous perfume making family. I found her details on freindsreunited and sent her a mail in some vain hope some spark might get re-kindled, but no such luck.
However, I have had a number of e-mails from girls (now women I suppose) that remember me !

Lets send mr Peel a mail about Ronny Ronalde !
Sometimes a moment, a feeling, an instance in time becomes a good and happy moment. These happen so rarely in my life, and thus I assume the same in everybodies life, that this moment is worth recording. One of my cycling heroes, Mario Cippolini, won a hard Belgian race in a masterly style yesterday, My daughter seems to have got over her teenage angst, even though I took a hammering in the last race I rode and I felt lethargic when I tried to train hard yesterday evening I feel good, my legs feel good ! I think that my legs will behave well in some of the hilly races coming along, There are some really good records out; such as 'Silent Sigh' by Badly Drawn Boy, surely the best record of the 2000s so far, this song makes me feel good ! In fact so good I gave it a review which got posted on the BBC Manchester website.
Work; I have come up with a plan to recoup the loss caused by this project over-running, the rubbish project I was to do in Leamington has been given to someone else, and I am back off down to Kent next week !
Thinking back, the last record 'to do it for me' was 'To the River' by Groove Armada back in 1999 ! Some of the stuff by the Strokes, Hives, Gorillaz and Avalanches has been good, but not that something special.
I've eased off my alcahol intake, and feel good that I can control my urge to get smashed every night to just the odd heavy session.
Well, as they (who are they ?) say, pride comes before a fall, but I have felt down for so long that my brain was incapable of running along in depression mode for any longer, something had to give; either I felt better or it was back to the funny-pills. And I feel better ! Lets hope it lasts !

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Ah, ugh, back in the dark and frozen North; Horwich to be precise. I'd rather not be precise about being here, but here I am so I just better make the most of it. So I'm off for a barm cake, some Lancashire oven bottom muffins all washed down by a few pints of Boddingtons.
Oven bottom muffins; mmm, what delicious food.
The past couple of days staying at an old manor house in the Kent countryside, so relaxing. In fact so relaxing I did'nt even bother going in to London as I planned.

Monday, April 08, 2002

Seven years ago I was hacking code at a company in Kent, feeling that the world was my oyster, and the only way was up.
Now, I am hacking code at this company in Kent, feeling that the world is my lobster, and the only way is down. Is it the end of the modern dream or
just my own perspective, with an undercurrent of socialist tax and spend, higher personal taxation and the fin de sicle well and truly here.
But not all is doom and gloom ! I am in the South, I am not in dark and gloomy Lancashire ! London is the centre of the known world and I am
on its doorstep !