Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Rap Star

mood: X-Ray of a toddler's skull; ear-ache can now be attributed to a spider which has nested in the ear canal. Do we tell the child? Or do we discreetly operate to get rid of the 'infection'? Do we tell the child afterwards?

What would Judge Rheinhold do in this situation?

listening:
Richard Thompson - Small Town Romance
Sandy Denny - Box of Treasures
The National - Alligator
Hans Gruber - New mp3 of "Rap Star" on the Hans Gruber Myspace site. Please listen in full to for maximum enjoyment. The coda is particularly elegant.

Re: National Express/Sewage incident - full story will have to wait until our return from Europe.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Dear Sucker

US Tour summary:

Tour very good. On returning to England, I had yet another predictably bad experience on National Express which ended up in my shoes, socks, bag and jacket covered in raw sewage. Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my ongoing battle with this most complacent and arrogant of companies. Score so far:

National Express: 10
Nick Talbot: nil, excluding a £5 compensation voucher for a service I had told them I would never again be using. Stapled to the voucher was a note that read

Dear Sucker,

Yeah, whatever dude. We are fully aware of our total monopoly of the market, and are certain you'll be back. I mean, what else are you going to do when you need to get a coach from Bristol to Heathrow? Fly? Heh. Get a train instead? Only CEO's like me can afford the train. Please find attached insult, which you may like to add to your injury, loser.

National Express

P.S. Fuck you


Full story next issue.





Europe/UK tour:

30 Nov Leuven, Stuk, Belgium.
1st Dec Paris, Tryptique, France.
3rd Dec Amsterdam, Melkweg, Holland.
4th Dec Koln, Gebaude 9, Germany.
5th Dec Munich, Ampere, Germany.
6th Dec Zurich, G5 Club, Switzerland.
7th Dec Milan, La Casa, Italy.
9th Dec London, Islington Bar Academy, UK.
10th Dec Nottingham, Social, UK.
11th Dec Glasgow, Nice N Sleazy, UK.


Critical re-evaluation of the day:

"Cracklin' Rosie" - Neil Diamond's affectionate paean to the US equivalent of White Lightning, the favoured poison of the homeless alcoholic.

Tiscali Competition

Win a
Stagg Drum Kit, Stagg Electric Guitar and Amp and a Stagg Bass Guitar and Amp in a tenuously linked Gravenhurst competition, and watch the upcoming London show on a webcast:

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/music/competitions/comp11.html


Now you can be a power trio, like Gravenhurst, Husker Du, Nirvana and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Stagg also provide a range of delicious and wholesome canned meat dishes:




Bad Press

Uncut : "Early promise goes up in flames" heh heh.

Q: "Experimental songwriter experiments with tedium" That'll be Victoria Segal then, trying to decide which new scene she will be championing. Not ours, that's for sure. I'd love to meet her; i've never met a journalist who isn't wonderfully charismatic and charming in person, only to stab you in the back in writing. Janus-faced whores. Just like me.

Good Press

Many thanks to the excellent Mr. James Dellingpole for his praisesome Telegraph review. It's a shame the Telegraph sub-editor didn't read it, and in the headline described me as a shy young man who is worried about globalisation, when I make it clear in the body of the article that I am emphatically not worried about globalisation, and you'd have to be a dreadful judge of character to describe me as shy.

Pitchfork offered a very positive review, 7/10, though they did regard The Velvet Cell as an "Interpol clone", which means I must have pretty impressive powers of precognition as I wrote that song before Interpol had released a record. I am frequently staggered by hitherto unnoticed talents that just pour out of me like slugs from a discarded pair of swimming trunks.