Teletext came to an end yesterday, taking the mighty Planet Sound with it. I always liked the writing, even when I didn’t like the music. John Earls gave equal help and coverage to established and up-and-coming artists. It’ll be missed.

John Earls has formed a record label, WET Records. Its first release is by The Incredible Flight Of Birdman nd I’m looking forward to hearing it.

Well, I wanted to blog about the photography of Chris(tine) Boarts Larson who, in my mind, was/is THE live music photographer. I used to love opening up a new issue of Slug & Lettuce to see her ultra-energetic, atmospheric photos on newsprint. Sadly I couldn’t find enough of her work to post here. You can see her MySpace here although it doesn’t do justice seeing it on a computer screen, it looked even better in print.

Also, really sad to see the Wood St premises of Open Eye in Liverpool has shut. I know it’s re-opening elsewhere but I always liked that space.

I’ve been listening to Ben Folds a lot lately. It’s strange that I’d like his work, he’s really not what I usually listen to at all: he doesn’t sound like he has woke up on a strange sofa with a mouthful of cigarettes and a stomach full of whisky. He does, however, have some of the best first lines in music.

“I met this chick/she looked like Axl Rose”
“Well, I thought about the army/Dad said, “Son, you’re fucking high”"
“Sara spelled without an ‘H’ was getting bored”

He isn’t without fault, his songs can run into boring when he relies too heavily on his middle-class persona and the quality control of his albums could be better.
When he is on form: he really hits. One thing I’ve always liked about him is his piano playing – really percussive and aggressive sounding. I can’t fathom the Billy Joel/Elton John references, he’s surely much closer to someone like Little Richard.

I did look on YouTube for a decent video of one of my favourite Ben Folds songs (probably Kate, Gone or Annie Waits) but could find nothing but bad quality live footage (with his back to the camera, no less!) or terrible home-made videos people had made to his music. Sorry.

Allegedly this is my photoblog. Y’wouldn’t know this considering how little of my work I post! Here is something from the seemingly never ending Isn’t Anywhere series. Nobody should be surprised about the subject matter.

Isn’t Anywhere (2009)

You should all check out Surrender. I saw them supporting Lemuria last night, very impressed.

I’ve been working on my website lately, the new stuff should be updated in a few weeks. I’ve also started work on a new project, the plan is to show bits and pieces on this blog piecemeal.

I don’t talk a great deal about music on this blog. I guess I see it primarily as a photography blog. Anyway, I went to see Bridge And Tunnel last Friday. Fantastic. All three support bands (The Cost Of Living, Carraway and OK Pilot) were pretty good too, especially OK Pilot: kinda Lifetime/Avail sounding stuff. Was pleased to discover The Cost Of Living are Manchester based, they sound like Fifth Hour Hero with a little Servo thrown in, two bands I miss an awful lot.

The distro stand(s) caught my eye. Bought plenty goodies including a couple of Ergs! albums, the Superchinchillarescuemission/Bottledirt split 7″ on Snuffy Smile that I’ve been after for about five years, an Against Me! 7″ and various other bits.

Then Bridge And Tunnel came on. Brutal, tight, anthemic. Best gig of the year so far? Without a doubt.

Well, I’ve broken my wrist. I’m in plaster for the next five weeks or so. I had to have my wrist pinned in place. Obviously it makes using a camera pretty difficult – the progress of my work has been slowed right down. I can just about use my Mamiya 7, so I won’t be on a complete sabbatical.

In better news I today received Duncan Redmonds’ Bubble And Squeak from Japan, his album of collaborations with Loz, Jools, Lee and Duncan (from Snuff), Fat Mike (NOFX), Ken Yokoyama (Hi-Standard), NoMeansNo, Simon Wells (Southport/ex-Snuff), Wes Wasley (Consumed/Billy No Mates), Dickie Hammond (from Leatherface, HDQ, Stokoe and Doctor Bison)
and the mighty Frankie Stubbs. Hearing there’s four new tracks with Frankie on is enough to make my day, the others are the icing on a very special cake. Roll on the new Leatherface album. And buy Duncan’s album, I implore you!

I’ve been enjoying Adam Jeppesen’s wonderful little photo book Wake over the past few weeks. It’s a small and quiet meditation on the spaces and boundaries of society all over the world. It’s not really documentary or travel photography nor is it topographic yet it kind of is. Sensitive and thoughtful, it’s certainly worth an hour of your time.

Adam Jeppesen – DK Ørestaden 12·12·05

Iggy Pop Career Freefall

Following on from John Lydon’s Countrylife advert now Iggy Pop is selling car insurance. Poor poor poor.

What next? Blag Dahlia selling cat food? Shane McGowan advertising mouthwash? Hell, resurrecting Derby Crash and GG Allin to sell Sunny Delight!? This must stop!

Review Of 2008

Happy New Year! Best wishes to you all.

Okay, a review of 2008 in lists. The most important one first:

Top Ten Albums Of 2008

1. Magnetic Fields – Distortion (Nonesuch). The sound of Stephin Merritt distorting every instrument and sound on the record and somehow producing the album of the year. An absolute masterpiece.
2. Former Cell Mates – Who’s Dead And What’s To Pay? (Household Name). Picking up where their last album ended this album is full of whisky, tales of regret and same good songwriting. They were fantastic live too.
3. Off With Their Heads – From The Bottom (No Idea). Raging, angry, heartfelt stuff from Ryan and the boys. I’d been waiting for this for quite a while; it didn’t disappoint. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there/From the bottom of my heart”.
4. Those Dancing Days – In Our Space Hero Suits (Wichita). A Swedish girl group with Hammond organ and Northern Soul drums? What could be better? This sounds like nothing else out this year – certainly a good thing. It takes a lot to make this cold heart of mine dance and this quartet managed it! Just a shame I never caught them live.
5. Tindersticks – The Hungry Saw (Beggars Banquet). Stuart A Staples might just have the best voice in music right now. This album is a kinda of lullaby songbook for adults. Beautiful and deep, one of the best bands in the UK – they certainly deserve more success than they receive.
6. Dillinger Four – CIVILWAR (Fat Wreck). This has been a long time coming. Four years since their last album, I feared there’d never be another D4 album. Luckily I was wrong. Great songs, great packaging, great song titles (Ode To The North American Snake Oil Distributor and parishiltonmetaphor being just two
7. Milloy – Creating Problems While Practising Solutions (Household Name/Boss Tuneage). With Leatherface on hiatus (not for long hopefully) Milloy are the premier raging/chiming/gruff/melodic hardcore band in the UK, and very good they are too.
8. American Music Club – The Golden Age (Cooking Vinyl). Is Mark Eitzel my generation’s Leonard Cohen? He covers similar ground but is a much more accurate observer of modern life. A continuation of the good work on Love Songs For Patriots.
9. Calexico – Carried To Dust (Quarterstick). A truly underrated band return with their best album since The Black Light. Less mariachi band more solid songwriting.
10. Virgins – Miscarriage (Kiss Of Death). From the remains of New Mexican Disaster Squad this is Sam’s new band. And it’s great. Very anthemic, very catchy and lyrically it takes no prisoners. Guitarmageddon sends shivers down my spine.

Other good albums out this year have included Jukebox by Cat Power, both rarities albums by Eels, Til The Wheels Fall Off by Hot Water Music, The Evangelist by Robert Forster, Bristle Ridge by Chuck Ragan and Austin Lucas, East/West by Bridge & Tunnel and Saturnalia by the Gutter Twins.

Top Three Singles Of 2008

1. Futureheads – Radio Heart (Nul). Snotty, driven, catchy. Fantastic. Can almost forgive them for being from Sunderland. Beginning Of The Twist was superb too.
2. REM – Supernatural Superserious (Warner). This could have been on Out Of Time, that’s reason enough.
3. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive (Vagrant). The best thing from the album of the same name. Majestic.

My movie of the year was Burn After Reading. I don’t watch many films so couldn’t really put together a list. JK Simmons must be the best actor in America at the moment. Rewatching Oz just drills that home – how on earth does he make Vern Schillinger seem almost likeable?

Top Six Books I’ve Read In 2008

1. Jonathan Lethem – Motherless Brooklyn. My first introduction to this fantastic author. The phrase “sinister mystery weed” made me laugh out loud on the plane to Reykjavik. Lionel Essrog is such a good character.
2. Douglas Coupland – The Gum Thief. More of the same from Coupland, a cast you care about, a dual-layered plot, a few neat twists and another book worth reading from one of my very favourite authors.
3. Patrick Neate – Where You’re At. A global account of hip-hop focusing mainly on race, society and belonging. Recommended even to people who don’t like hip-hop.
4. John Peel – The Olivetti Chronicles. John Peel had a really great easy-going writing style and this collection of his writings from various magazines proves this. He is still a huge miss.
5. Jennie Erdal – Ghosting. A literary account of a ghost writer but much better than that sounds. It’s on Amazon Marketplace for £0.01 – just buy it.
6. Ian Hamilton – In Search Of JD Salinger. After rereading the entire Salinger oeuvre this seemed a good book to read. It was. Hamilton casts a wry eye on the notoriously reclusive writer. It really made me want to read to unpublished Salinger work.

And that, my friends, was 2008.

Some thoughts

Productivity is a killer, eh? Business as usual:

• Editing my Icelandic series which still has no name. Maybe 15% complete.
• Continuing photographing my Nature series. This really needs a kick up the arse, I’ve been far too slack lately.
• Submitting work to the Mini Print exhibition at the Artlink.
• Blogging at least twice a month.
• The new Dillinger Four album is nowhere to be found. A poor effort.
• Hopefully a solo show at the beginning of next year. Fingers crossed.
• Gaslight Anthem/Former Cell Mates at Manchester Academy next month.
• To see the Rachel Goodyear exhibition at the International 3.
• A series of studies I’ve been working on to keep my mind fresh have produced some unexpectedly strong images; need to work out if this is worth continuing with.
• Completing the Teenage Fanclub and Buffalo Tom discographies.

Hopefully seeing this post staring at me will work as a mental post-it note. Ideally everything on this list should be completed or close to completion by January 1st 2009. And yes, I only included the crossed off ones so I didn’t feel lazy.

The construction soundtrack to this post was Pure Cane Sugar by the Sugarman 3 on Daptone Records.

Pop Will Eat Itself

Following on from his appearance in I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, John Lydon continues to run his reputation further and further into the ground in a manic grasp for money and fame. Or should that be more money – after all he was the singer for the most notorious band of the seventies and a successful businessman in his post-music business dealings. The voice of EMI, Public Image, Holidays In The Sun and many more.

Lydon was reportedly paid £5m for the advert at a time Dairy Crest are looking to cut jobs from its factories. This advert has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Punk rock.

In more joyful news: The Hungry Saw, the new album by Tindersticks, is a delight and should be bought as soon as possible.