Under The Covers

If you didn't know about Fairtilizer, you should do. Brilliant way to find out about rare mixes, unreleased promos and unusual bootlegs with a very cool interface and detachable Flash player.

Anyway, this week I discovered the 'Covers' genre section.

Fairtilizer: The DIY Music Club - Covers

Some splendid stuff, I'm sure you'll agree (or not, Andy...)

Christmas Crackers

Yes! Girls Aloud are hosting an ITV special this festive season:

The Girls Aloud Party (Sat 13th December @ 8pm)

This is excellent news and I will definitely be at home this Saturday evening, glued to the box...

7syd & Boottyboy

Fancy a pre-Christmas mashup or sixty?

Four great mixes found here:

sevensyd / boottyboy - mixes

(Currently working off that office party hangover with Boot Your Radio Vol. 2...)

Nothing against Welsh bands but...

I went and saw the Automatic the other week; good gig and all that. But when you say Automatic most people think "Monster" which I suppose is fair enough but I got to think The Alarm....and "68 guns".....another one hit wonder from the 80s.....wouldn't it be nice if the Stereophonics had followed the same Welsh rule...guess the curly haired drummer can't believe his luck now!

Now another thing that made me think of the Alarm was that their singer....Mike Peters(?)....had ridiculous hair which is sort of another 80's revival thing , currently pervading the music scene. No real point to this other than there's probably nothing wrong with one hit wonders although I do like "Steve McQueen" by the Automatic, probably because the aforementioned actor was really cool, well when I was growing up....and was in the Great Escape and Papillon, two of the best films ever.

Icelandic Music

For reasons I can't quite yet explain I'm going to this: http://www.icelandairwaves.com/

CSS are playing, and a few other people I've heard of but mostly its a load of Icelandic stuff I have no idea about. The only Icelandic music I know is the Sugarcubes/Bjork. Its all very exciting!

If you have any recommendations please let me know!!

Crazy P

Crazy P are great. The Unabombers are great. And this is great:



New album 'Stop, Space, Return' out in October. Nice.

Reading 08

Thought 'd share my annual Reading experience. My highlights were Late of the Pier, Blood Red Shoes, Last Shadow Puppets, Glasvegas, Crystal Castles and Cribs. Generally avoided the main stage but did see Subways, Automatic and British Sea Power who were good. Main headliners - nah. Listened to Henry Rollins' spoken word set...last time I saw him he was in Black Flag (supporting the Damned, those were the days) when half his "right on" audience weren't born. Entertaining though.

Biggest disappointment was Be Your Own Pet. Having released two no-nonsense albums but splitting up after this, I thought they'd put on a better show.

Nirvana covers are in (Feeder, Dirty Pretty Things) as are fake (hopefully) animal headwear and also circle pits - should help this tubby nation lose some weight.

Still don't get what all the fuss about Babyshambles/Pete Doherty is all about. Gave Simian Mobile Disco a listen, Fourstar mentioned them yonks ago, but a bit too rave-y for me.....tried to get a one man circle pit going but didn't work....

And I was called a dude by a fellow festival goer...hmm, freaky