Hypocrisy is a wonderful thing, and thanks to the medium of social networking, it is a much easier thing to achieve. Every time Facebook chisels away at the privacy settings of the least private private network in the world, or Google adds another prohibitively anti privacy line to its terms and conditions, I do the little shudder that will be familiar to most users of the internet, then I open my Gmail anyway and post a YouTube clip to Facebook. I might also grumpily link to an article on some well meaning blog bemoaning the gradual slide into the dystopian future we are all party to, or grumble on Twitter a bit. Maybe sign a petition. Down with this sort of thing.

But, having bemoaned my personal information going to places not of my choosing I them completely undercut my own indignation by taking all of my information and spitting it at the internet like an excitable toddler might a particularly tasty pudding. Not only do I have not one but two blogs dedicated to churning my every waking thought into something vaguely readable, and I’ve spent the last three years on Twitter, where I have posted a quite alarming 12,000 tweets, most of which were probably revealing of myself either in their tedium or otherwise. I joined Last.fm, which takes note of every single song I listen to and turns them into spiffy charts, which it then spews out onto Twitter, as though anyone has the remotest interest in what the three bands I most listened to were over a seven day period. () I’m not alone in doing this, and I actually love to look at other people’s charts and compare their ‘musical compatibility’ with my own, even though it often leaves me feeling oddly voyeuristic even though they too have blurted their own taste out to the world, just like me.

It doesn’t stop their either. About six months back I joined a service called Miso, which you can use to log every single thing you watch and leave a little comment. It also then asks you if you would like to post it just to your friends on Miso, or your Twitter feed, or Facebook, or all three. It then gives you points based on who you tell. I gave up using it for a while based on the fact that I found it a step too far, but then I decided it would be a good idea at the beginning of the year to see just how many films I watch in a year. Because, well, why not. It’s the sort of thing someone as geekily anal retentive as myself might want to know at the end of the year. ‘Oh look Ethel this year I have watched 174 films, wasting an average of 350 hours of my life, roughly meaning I could have spend an entire fortnight doing something more productive. Isn’t that interesting? Ethel?’

But then I instantly fell back into the trap of broadcasting my every episode of Sherlock, or Desperate Housewives, or Coppers, blurting to the world like some kind of broken foghorn, spluttering meaningless titles at the void and hoping people will look at my viewing habits and somehow decide that I am so utterly and comprehensively amazing that they should give me a research grant. Or a medal of some kind. Quite disappointingly, it turns out that in the whole of January so far, I’ve only watched 6 films as well. Gutted.

Then, yesterday, this happened:

I need more! More ways to rivet you all with my every move. Well actually, I thought it would also be interesting to see how many books I actually manage to read in a year, but nonetheless, this needs to stop! Well actually, more than one person pointed me in the direction of GoodReads.com, and having signed up and listed my first books of the year maybe I won’t stop, thank you very much. And I love my last.fm, it listens to me far more than most human beings do and has a lovely recommendations page that isn’t a ‘You like metal?’ Have you heard of Metallica?’ exercise in obviousness. Every month I take heed of its recommendations and find at least two or three new bands that turn out to be pretty good. Also, my charts are too in depth, too complex, too massive to abandon now.

So if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook and find my constant need to transmit objectionable then I apologise. But not all that much. Your choice. I’m not going to change. Next month I’ll probably find something that broadcasts my every idle thought and I’ll sign up for that too, and link it to my Facebook feed and my Tumblr, just for kicks. But the next time you see me crying over privacy settings on the internet, please do give me a virtual punch on the ear, and tell me to stop being an idiot. I’ve lost all right to do that.

Oh, and if you are a fellow obsessive, you can find me on Twitter, Last.fm, Miso, Goodreads and Tumblr.

After the utter mindfuckery that was the worldwide news in 2011, you would be forgiven for hoping that absolutely nothing happens this year, that 2012 would be just a nice gentle, perhaps somewhat English affair. People not doing a lot, grumbling weakly about the smallest of inconveniences and then retiring to a nice cup of tea and perhaps an episode of Eastenders. Wouldn’t that be lovely? ‘No collapse of the Eurozone today please dear, the Omnibus edition is just starting and this brew is perfection.’

But then you think about what we know about this year, the one that yawns like a chasm of despair ahead of us. Continuing financial austerity and bleakness, an American election between the most disappointing superhero ever and an even more depressing Republican field. Another Royal celebration of some kind. Oh, and the sodding Olympics. Oh, and the Middle East continuing to go utterly haywire. *sigh*

All of this before we can even contemplate the inevitable sudden new arrivals on the news scene. 2011 was chock full of stuff that you wouldn’t have imagined at the start of the year, who’s to say we won’t have the same again this, all heaping on top of the events hangover we still have from last year.

For example, who would have thought that in these 20-um, whatever we call this decade, we in Britain would be again embroiled in race rows across politics, the press and football? If nothing else I thought we’d have moved on from those dark days of the Eighties. But no. Now we have the England football captain facing charges of racial abuse, one of English Football’s biggest clubs seemingly unable to face the consequences of racial abuse from one of its own players, sickening crowd abuse of black players on the terraces and over Twitter, and politicians being castigated for their wayward and racially questionable tweets. (Ok, we’ll let Ed Miliband off his spelling mistake on the grounds that it was bloody hilarious and clearly a typo.) Oh, and throw in the Daily Sodding Mail somehow being able to claim the moral high ground on racism on the grounds that they once had a legally dodgy front page about the Stephen Lawrence killers.

The Daily Mail. Bastions of racial harmony. I may have to go and lie down.

You know when people were talking about this time being like the 80’s, all cuts and strikes and bad haircuts, I didn’t think we as a country would go the whole hog and try and bring back the decade wholesale, racism and all. Next you’ll be telling me that Timmy Mallet is back and Wham have reunited. Actually, please don’t because if you told me either of these things I’d have to do a big cry. Again I give you an almighty *sigh*

And we’re only 9 days in. Maybe the Mayans were right after all.*

On the other hand, maybe history repeating itself isn’t such a bad thing, having just watched my favourite footballer of all time return to the team he loves and which loves him like no other, and seen him score the winning goal in a vital FA Cup game against our old hated enemies. Which is nice.

*They weren’t, just so you know

Ok, so I can’t resist it. The end of year review is like catnip to bloggers, even though nobody really gives a rat’s arse about my views about the year. Mind you if I start thinking like that then I’d never manage to get another blog post out again. (Stop crossing your fingers there at the back).

I thought I’d avoid the traditional listing all the good albums and films and telly things and whatnot, because quite frankly I’ve spent most of the year listening to albums that weren’t released this year, most of it German drug bands introduced to me by peoples on the internets and last.fm. As for films, I’ve barely made it to the cinema at all. Telly is, well, telly. I’ve seen an insane amount of telly this year, and there’s been too much of it that I’ve enjoyed to give comment on. Ditto the news. Last night we watched 2011 wipe on BBC Four, and today I listened to the Bugle Podcast review of the year, and both of those were far funnier and more insightful than I could ever be on a year that Charlie Brooker aptly described as like ‘a series finale for all of humanity.’

Now it may be a measure of the fact that I’m beginning to become an actual rounded human being but where in previous years this inability to round up the year in list form would all seem a bit of a failure on my part (no gigs, no cinema, new music not really floating my boat) this year is a bit different. This year things have actually happened.

When you break it down to the main headlines it all sounds a bit daunting; New baby. Promoted twice. Passed my driving test. Not bad going for one year. Add on top of that I’ve done a creative writing course at York Uni, written a hell of a lot of my novel, and started a whole new blog, and I can be pretty chuffed about my personal achievements this year, and the achievements of my rather splendid family. But to call it a bit of a hectic year is as much of an understatement as to say that people on the internet seem to quite like looking at pictures of cats.

Looking ahead to 2012 what I really need is a bit more of a settled year. I’ve already outlined my writing hopes elsewhere, but I’ve got a new job to look forward to and get my head around, a flailing music website in dire need of attention and all the other life stuff that seems to be around. Oh, and the old perennial favourite of losing weight and getting into shape. I went to the gym today for the first time in over a month (a perforated ear drum kept me away for quite a while) and now feel like I’ve been trampled by wild bison. In short, I need to keep trying. Trying to write, trying to make my life a bit better. Oh, and I promise to spend more time here as well, and less of that time doing silly challenges to fill up space. Honest to blog.

Before I do go though, I really should put up some of the music that was rather good this year. If I were going to choose an album of the year then it would undoubtedly be Will Haven’s Voir Dire. But then there is only one video from that album, and it is the weakest track on the album. If there was a runner up, then it would be Origin’s Entity. But that doesn’t have any videos. So let’s go instead with the album I listened to most in 2011, even though it isn’t an album released in 2011. So not the sound of 2011 per se, but the sound of my 2011.

Happy New Year to you all.

Song 28, Colour Haze – Tempel.

I’ve been putting this one off for a while now, because quite frankly I don’t know if any music makes me feel particularly guilty. I suppose the intention in this task is to see if there’s any music that causes a memory recall for something bad you did. But I’m struggling to think of one. I suppose there’s the old chestnuts of songs that ‘belonged’ to a particular relationship or another, one where you perhaps acted badly, and have some remorse about. But as I believe every single one of the ladies who have crossed my path over the course of my life will testify, I am fundamentally the greatest living human being, and have nothing in my past love lives to feel guilty about. *ahem*

I’m kind of counting on none of them reading that last part, obviously. But still, the point holds, there’s no particular piece of music that can suddenly produce a wave of guilt over my past behaviour. I have a certain moments of remorse, or regret, but none of them have a soundtrack that I can particularly pinpoint. So I’m back to scratching my head. I was watching the X Factor (yes, yes, I know, bad me) over the weekend and they were doing songs that were ‘guilty’ choices, but this just seemed to mean 80’s pop music. I don’t really like 80’s pop music either, so no ground there. And besides, we’ve already had a ‘guilty pleasure’ song.

This is all rather exhausting. I’m sitting here trying to go through every single this I have guilt about in my life and seeing if it has a song attached to it, and none of them do. But then I’ve thought about them and felt a bit guilty in that way that raking over past regrets will make you feel. To top it all off I have work that I should be doing, coursework for my uni course, and a novel to write. So now I feel guilty about not doing any of that.

Hang on a second.

Writing this blog post is making me feel guilty, and I’m listening to music right now, so…yeah, ok, it’s a cop out. Not so much a song that makes me feel guilty as a ‘song I’m listening to right now while feeling guilty.’ That’ll do. You all understand that this is the ultimate cop out and just a way of putting up a cool video I found on YouTube and you’re not going to judge me, right? Excellent. Well in that case please be upstanding for the wonderful Colour Haze. This is a video I found of the band playing at what has to be the ultimate stoner rock venue, and makes me damn jealous for not being there.

Two to go.

Leveson is not a inquiry about the illegal activities at one newspaper, it is looking at the wider ethical standards of an industry that has used its considerable leverage to ensure it is accountable only to itself. The printed press in this country has long held itself up as the arbiters of common moral decency in this country, while at the same time huge swathes of the press has been engaging in such morally questionable activities as to beggar belief.

I heard Steve Coogan being interviewed on the Today programme the other day along with a Guardian journalist, who was accusing Coogan and the other celebrities of overleveraging their position to make their own self interested points, and of reducing the potency of the arguments of the ‘normal’ people like the McCanns who are appearing at the enquiry. Coogan very calmly expressed his view that actually the majority of people are uncomfortable with the practices of the press, but the celebrities are the ones who are called onto programmes like Today and as a result they have a responsibility to speak up for those who are never likely to be called onto discussions in the printed press or the radio or television, or those people who are smeared every day but do not have the funds or the profile to fight back. I think the media needs to realise that when the rich celebrities are the ones making sense in the argument, they’ve probably lost the moral high ground.

I had wondered if the Leveson inquiry might bring about some kind of soul searching among the media, that they might actually sit up and think; ‘Blimey, maybe some of what we do is a bit strong,eh? Maybe intruding onto people’s grief, their private lives, their property, maybe some of that is a bit out of order for what is essentially cheap voyeurism with no conceivable public interest whatsoever. In the wake of this enquiry and all the stories about us, maybe on the next story we don’t intrude into private grief, or indulge in speculation, or hang around outside someone’s home hoping to see someone crying. Maybe we just let them get on with it, yeah?’

Oh, never mind.

These stills are just from the newspaper you’d expect. Then there’s the idle speculation;

The Telegraph also ran a Live Blog of Gary Speed’s death, which is quite possibly the least respectful thing I can think of.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the great British Press.

The more astute of you will have noticed that this here blog has had a shiny new redesign, and is all sparkling and new. Unless of course your general method of entrance to this blog is through an RSS feed, in which case this blog post will look exactly the same as the last one. But rest assured, the main site is all shiny looking. Mad props to Woo Themes, who have provided the requisite themes for both sites.

The reason for this overhaul, aside from the fact that the last look was never meant to last particularly long, is that I have finally gotten off my rather unshapely behind and set up BloodOnTheMotorway.com. I’m not going to hash over the reasons again here, as I have rather helpfully done that here. Long and short, it will be a place to prattle on about writing. The main benefit for you, dear reader, is that you will no longer have to listen that stuff if you don’t want to. Of which I am sure you are all very pleased.

Anyway, there will be more normal blogging here shortly, including the thrilling conclusions to my Discography thingy (which was rather short lived, but hey let’s not get ahead of ourselves) and the 30 day song challenge that has taken rather a lot longer to complete, as well as the next thrilling instalment of Gym Films.

I can practically hear your excitement from here.

I haven’t blogged for a while but there’s nothing quite like the death of a celebrity that you have an anecdote about to bring a blogger back to his keyboard. I’ve written this tale before, so forgive me if I recount again the tale of when I was put into a headlock by an elderly man with muscles like power cables.

A few years back, I actually came pretty close to a career in journalism, or at least I thought I had. I was hired by a small company in Leeds to be first a writer for, then editor of, a publication called the Asian Express. Not being Asian myself I had a few misgivings about my ability to relate to the subject matter, but given this was largely an exercise in slightly rewriting the press releases that emanated from local organisations, and because a writing job is a writing job, I took it. It turned out to be a fairly unmitigated disaster, but that’s another, much duller story.

One of my first assignments with the paper did provide respite from the relentless churnalism however, when I was asked to interview Jimmy Saville. Again, a strange thing to do for an Asian newspaper, but apparently he was due to open a new community centre or some such. Jimmy had always been really active in community politics in Leeds, so along I trundled. As always I was to be both reporter and photographer (and editor and everything else), and when I got to the venue Jimmy was running late, so I got chatting to a few of the assembled crowd, all of them delighted to be meeting Jimmy, who had a genuine standing within the Asian community of West Yorkshire.

After an hour or so of waiting, Jimmy turned up suddenly with no announcement, other than to stand at the doors and say loudly through a cigar filled mouth; ‘Now then, now then.’ The crowd went as bonkers as a collection of middle aged Asian businessmen and their wives can reasonably be expected to go. I started snapping some pics, happy for Jimmy to make his way to me eventually.

This was my first time ever interviewing a celebrity outside of the music scene, and I have to admit I was a bit nervous. I mean, Jimmy Saville. A bona fide celebrity in the way that someone can only really be when you grow up seeing them every week on your telly. As he made his way over to me I panicked slightly and blurted out the first question that popped into my head: ‘So Jimmy, how come you never replied to the letter I sent you?’

It seemed quite erudite and witty in my head, but as soon as I said it I felt an utter buffoon and Jimmy fixed me with a look that showed exactly how many times he’d heard it. Quick as a flash the look was gone and he smiled that big silly grin of his and replied; ‘Because you forgot to put a stamp on it.’

Pleasantries exchanged and ice awkwardly broken, we continued with the rest of the interview, with both of us enjoying the fact that this was a puff piece of zero consequence. I found him to be a bit odd but hugely likable. I commented on how fit he looked (not like that) and he told me all about the marathons he runs each year, and about his time as a wrestler. He was very happy to talk around his charity work but I sensed his now waning TV career was off the agenda. Every time I brought it up he deftly brought the subject back round to what he wanted to talk about, and this being a puff piece I was happy to indulge him.

Once the interview was over, the organisers of the event were hovering close by, clearly wanting to be photographed by me so as to appear in the paper. I obliged, and as soon as I was finished, Jimmy motioned that I should get a photo with him. ‘I’m sure you want a photo with me!’ he said, and he had a point, although this instantly dissipated any sense of journalistic integrity I was clinging onto. I found someone who was willing to take the shot and went over to Jimmy.

I stood next to him, giving my best ‘look, I’m with Jimmy Saville’ expression, when suddenly his arm went around my neck and placed me into a rock-solid headlock, and not in a playful, ‘hey hey’ kind of way. This was a death grip of the kind that was probably used as a finishing move inside the wrestling ring. I grasped his arm and tried to remove it but it was like a steel cable around my neck. I tried to maintain a smile on my face despite being unable to breathe and being aware that I was being strangled by an old man in a shell suit and peroxide straggly hair while a small Indian man took a photo.

After the photo was taken Jimmy released me and patted me on the back, while I spluttered for air. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he said and then he was gone, with me bent double, trying hard to remember how to breathe normally.

And that was it, my afternoon with Jimmy Saville. Looking back now he was every bit as odd as you would expect, and there were little flashes of the unsettling creepiness that Louis Theroux would later hang a documentary around, but then at the same time there was the man very clearly plugged into a sense of community and charity.

Unfortunately, when I left the company many months later, I forgot to take the photo with me, and so I have no photographic proof of the incident, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. In the days since I heard about his death in the now traditional manner of seeing a joke about it on Twitter, I’ve searched through countless old discs to find it but to no avail, which is a shame.

I was certainly not close to the man, and can’t say I was ever really a fan of his, but I was saddened by the news of his death. I think the fabric of British Eccentricity lost a thread this week, the kind of man who liked to put nervous journalists into a headlock.

Rest in peace you magnificently strong old lunatic.

After my last post about discographies (go here if you haven’t read it, you a bad bad person) it seems somewhat appropriate that this week’s thrilling instalment of Gym Films is in itself a kind of Discography, except for films instead of albums, and Vin Diesel’s muscles rather than songs. I saw a review (by the excellent Mr Cairns) of the fifth instalment of the Fast and the Furious franchise, and thought it’d be perfect gym film fodder. But oh noes! I haven’t watched any of the others since the original film! How was I going to keep up with all of that plot and character development that I’d missed out on? There seemed only one solution; I had to indulge in a Fast and Furious marathon.

The Fast and the Furious: So we start at the beginning. It’s been ages since I’ve seen this and the film hasn’t really held up that well. Paul Walker, a man utterly devoid of the ability to do anything that involves moving his facial muscles, is a man trying to infiltrate an underground street racing circuit, because not only is he a man of no facial expression, but he’s also a po-po officer! Who would have thunk of it? Anyway, he infiltrates the gang led by Riddick from the Riddick films, who is a gravel voiced sweetie pie who once beat a man up and this makes him a very bad man. But then he also robs trucks in massively convoluted daring robberies, so he is a bad man, except he’s still a nice guy who looks after his Crew. It’s all very ambiguous. Paul Walker then sees that Riddick’s sister is someone as bland looking as himself and they get it on, which is a bit like watching furniture mating. Anyway the whole plot is lifted wholesale from Point Break, there are some car chases and some unbelievably clunky dialogue and in the end Keanu lets Patrick Swayze surf off to his death. Much fun.

2 Fast 2 Furious: The one without Riddick. Having realised that Riddick was the only thing about the first film that even remotely worked, the franchise then loses him when he thinks he’s about to become the next Arnie and instead they keep Paul Walker on, which must have been a shock to everyone, even Paul Walker. Of course Paul Walker can’t actually register surprise on his face, so they probably just thought he was playing it cool. This time the action relocates to Miami, and Paul Walker is now a bad guy, except he’s still a good guy, and he runs into a spot of bother and ends up being a good guy again, etc etc. With Riddick gone they bring in Tyrese Gibson to play a wisecracking sidekick and general irritating buffoon, except he’s also all cool and hard and carries a gun around and stuff. More of a straight action film than the first, this is actually not as disappointing as the title would suggest, what with the title being a total affront to anyone who lays eyes on it. But it’s only a passably entertaining action film, nothing more, and has Cole Hauser as the least convincing Latino drug lord you can imagine.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: No Paul Walker for this one, or indeed any relevance to the series so far, seeing as there’s no undercover po-po element to the plot. Instead we have Lucas Black, who used to be Caleb in the American Gothic series when he was a youngling, except he seems to have forgotten how to act or emote, which is presumably down to him method acting as Paul Walker. It’s all fairly tedious, he gets in trouble for racing, then goes to Tokyo for some unfathomable reason, then he gets in trouble for racing, then Mr Miyagi takes him under his wing and teaches him how to ‘drift’ apparently something to do with cornering), except Mr Miyagi is now in fact Sung Kang, who actually tells Paul Walker Jr that there’s ‘no wax on wax off for drifting.’ Kang is pretty much the best thing in the film, looking very much like a man who couldn’t give a monkeys what is going on until he gets killed by a Yakusa guy blah blah revenge blah blah blah racing blah blah triumph over adversity. Then it’s just time for a quick cameo from Riddick (!!) who apparently knew Mr Miyagi and then the whole tedious chapter is done, then it’s time for….

Fast and Furious: Riddick’s return. This film is so fast, so furious in fact that the title can no longer hold any definite articles in it. Riddick is back! So is Paul Walker! Riddick, having been in another franchise that didn’t work out so well and then ending up not being the new Arnie after all, seems to have been on the run, where he seems to be friends with Mr Miyagi from Tokyo Drift pre-death-by-killing. When his girlfriend from the first film is killed he comes back. For revenge. As you do. But it turns out that (small world) Paul Walker is hunting for the same guy, because he’s now an FBI agent (of course, why wouldn’t he be?) and they both have to go undercover as street racers (of course) to catch the real bad guy. So of course they start off as enemies, but then they are friends again, and soon Paul Walker is dating Riddick’s unfeasibly dull sister again and they end up getting on ok and racing each other to find out who is best even though Riddick is obviously best, and stuff. The whole thing is as tedious as can be, until the very end, when Riddick is sent down for being generally a bit Riddick and then there’s a big cliffhanger to set up…

Fast 5: Riddick v Rock. God it’s been a long time coming. Watch a film series as banal as this in one long go and the cracks really start to show. Not on Paul Walker’s face though, of course, that remains as uncrackable as ever. Anyway, we pick up where we left off, and now Riddick and his sister and Paul Walker are on the run together, and they’ve gone to Brazil, not entirely sure why. Anyway they get involved in a job that involves stealing cars in a manner so utterly preposterous as to make the heists in the first film look positively routine. This being a step up in the franchise, they then decide to bring back everyone who has been in a previous Fast and the Furious film who isn’t either dead or Lucas Black. Poor Lucas Black. They even brought back Tyrese Gibson even though he’s just as irritating as Lucas Black was. They even bring back Sung Kang even though he dies two films earlier. Although hang on, it may be that this is all set before Tokyo Drift, in which case Lucas Black isn’t even… oh whatever.

Anyway, then The Rock turns up as some kind of combination of Dog the Bounty Hunter and The Terminator, and suddenly the whole film moves up a gear (ho ho, oh god, did I just do that? Sorry) and becomes absolutely amazing. When Riddick finally faces up to The Rock and they do a fisticuffs fight, it is quite possibly the most homoerotic thing that can happen short of someone putting a willy in your bum. Suddenly there’s action sequences that are mind boggling in their pomp, and car chases that finally live up to the promise this franchise has previously never really fulfilled. There’s a climactic car chase (with a safe) that is so utterly ignorant of how many innocent bystanders would have been killed that if it were real life Riddick and Paul Walker would be considered on a level with Bin Laden. It’s no surprise that there’s now going to be a sixth instalment, although personally I’d just jettison everything else and have the teutonic twosome hitting each other in their slap headed skulls for two hours, until they are sated and curl up naked by a hearth fire and do the nasty.

No more Paul Walker though, eh?

I spend most of my day with one headphone in my ear, which is obviously preferable to spending the day with no headphones in my ear. Sometimes I go hog wild and put two in. Throughout the day I am free to listen to music whilst I do all the work type things that I do. Being a bit of a bore (as I am) this has meant that I plan my listening habits for the week in advance, and fall into little habits. For a while I would load up a load of stuff I wanted to listen to and then listen to the whole lot in song alphabetical order. My phone holds about 7gb of music, so this lasted quite a while, but this became slightly jarring after a while, no good for maintaining a consistent mood, and certainly no good when a lot of the music you listen to is from albums designed to be listened to as just that. Oh I’m sorry, have you lapsed into a coma there? I do apologise.

My next habit was to choose a load of albums I wanted to listen to and then make my way through them alphabetically, deleting each album once it had been listened to. This works a lot better, and when you are empty you go and fill it up again, which is all well and good until you realise you’ve gone to work with only two albums left on your phone. Nightmare. Sorry, do you need to sit down? Is the excitement of all this getting too much? Now though, I have a new fun way to get through the day, and thought you’d like to know. Well, actually, I just didn’t want to do a 30 day song challenge pst and I’m not quite ready for another thrilling instalment of Gym Films just yet.

Back when I was first getting into music, the band that really did it for me were Queen, although since I was getting into them at the tail end of their career (I believe it was around the time of The Miracle, trust me to jump on board at the exact same time as their absolute creative nadir) I quickly realised that I had a hell of a lot of back catalogue to get through. For the next four years or so nearly every trip to Our Price or other music outlet would see me heading straight to Q in the Rock/Pop section and rummaging through the cassette tapes for those elusive albums that had so far escaped my attention. Eventually I made it, I think, but during that period I imagine I ended up forking out a small fortune, and had probably missed out on a hell of a lot of other albums I could have bought. Mind you, they probably would have only been A-ha albums so perhaps I was better off.

These days however, get interested in a band or an artist and you can find their entire musical output available within maybe five minutes of looking, and I’m not just talking about putting a band name and ‘discography’ into a torrent search engine. Spotify, Last.fm, iTunes, it’s no effort at all to say, ‘hey, REM have split up, makes me nostalgic, so let’s download absolutely everything the band have ever recorded.’

Some would say that this takes something away, that music should be something that you have to work for, and they have a point. I certainly miss the effort and love that used to go into making myself little mixtapes (that’s right, I had no friends to make them for.) But at the same time, I think of all the wonderful music that my kids will experience that I had to wait until my late twenties or early thirties to even be exposed to. Gone are the days of cassette mixes, but here are the days where a musical education can be one band leading to a thousand others through links and recommendations.

The problem with getting access to all these vast back catalogues is actually getting around to listening to them. Invariably I’ll stare at the folder full of albums I don’t know and end up stumping for the one I know I like. After a few times of doing this I seem to convert that into thinking that I don’t actually like those other albums, when actually I’ve never heard them.

So, new game. For the next few weeks I’ll be taking the complete works (albums and proper ep’s only, I’m not doing any live albums or best of’s) of selected bands and I’ll be listening to them in chronological order, start to finish. The idea being that I’ll get to find out if these albums I neglect are actually any good, hopefully discover some little gems along the way. It’ll also be a good chance to chart the progress (or decline) of an artist as they go along. I have actually already started, having completed two discography’s last week:

Ryan Adams: It was this that started me off, when I realised I only really listen to three of his albums, even though I absolutely adore the three I do listen to. Verdict: By and large I think the albums I listen to are probably the best, although I’d never given Gold much of a chance and probably should have done, and I realised that Love Is Hell is staggeringly good. I prefer the stuff where he’s being all maudlin and melancholy rather than when he’s being all upbeat and straight country, but on every album there are at least a couple of outright stunning songs. Best album: Heartbreaker, which was my favourite before and after.

Bright Eyes: Having enjoyed doing the Ryan Adams discography, which at the very least made for an interesting day, the Bright Eyes one made sense for the same reason, loads of albums I just hadn’t gotten round to listening to. The biggest shock here was the first album Letting Off The Happiness, which is unfeasibly good, a howl of rage and unabashed emotion that I’d never even listened to before. In the main I realised there’s no such thing as a bad Bright Eyes album, and that listening to eight of them in a row is like taking a warm bath in lovely words. Quite how anyone can keep producing lyrics of that beauty and honesty over such a prolonged period is beyond me. Perhaps the last few albums are a little lacking in the rawness but still, pretty astounding. Verdict: I like Bright Eyes a lot more. Best Album: I’m Awake, It’s Morning.

And that was going to be that. But then I watched a Pink Floyd documentary on Friday night and realised I only really know about half of their albums, if that, and so they went on the phone. As it stands I’m seven albums in and I feel a bit like I’ve had a bath in Valium. Then Led Zeppelin and Pearl Jam followed. I actually know every Pearl Jam album off by heart but I thought since I am doing this thing, I might as well listen to my favourite band. So that should be this week sorted. But if I’m going to do this, perhaps I should open up the floor to other suggestions. What do you, dear reader, suggest I should be listening to? What classic band are ripe for this kind of treatment? I’m thinking REM might be a good idea, although I don’t know if that much Stipe would lead to some kind of shutdown of my internal organs. I had a notion of doing the Beatles albums as well, and I’ve never given the Stones a proper good go. But there are obviously thousands of great acts I have never gotten around to, so have at it, let me know your suggestions.

Last night I braved a downpour so severe I could barely make out my own headlights on the road ahead to make my way towards a modern building in an esteemed seat of learning, and found myself sitting in a classroom for the first time in over a decade. I was surprised to see that even in such surroundings as the starkly modern physics building of the University of York that they still resort to chalkboards. It was oddly comforting to be in such an austere high ceilinged room, reminiscent of all those lecture halls I failed to attend when I was at university proper.

I was back in the academic world for the first class of my creative writing evening class, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages but which only got decided on a whim a week ago. I’ve mentioned before that the more seriously I take my writing the more I realise how lacking I am in certain areas. Due to an idiotic decision to take English Literature at A level rather than English Language (actually I should have done both and dropped stupid Media Studies) I really have very little technical understanding of the fundamentals of writing, beyond that which I have picked up through trial and error or osmosis over the years. So here I am, back to school, trying to be better.

The class itself was great fun, and got me really quite excited. The module is very much introductory, but I’ll be learning about poetry, scriptwriting and prose, and getting a better grasp of the fundamentals. The group seemed a good mix, from a clearly very talented 18 year old with a keen eye for poetry, a shy girl with a lovely turn of phrase, a novice starting out on his journey, a few people who seem to be regulars of the creative writing courses and the old lady whose polite manner hides a burning political anger. The first session saw us introduced to ‘Fast Writing’ where we’re given a riff (think of a place and imagine yourself there) and then given five minutes to write as much as you can. For some reason my mind went straight to sweeping up the bar of Certificate 18 after the drunk metalheads had vacated and when we all read them out my piece seemed well received, which was nice. There was some lively debate on the nature of creativity and overall I left with a tangible sense of excitement about the whole thing.

As well as taking the step back into education, last week saw the first Demon Pigeon staff meeting in nearly a year, sparked by the impending renewal of the domain name. Seems we’re all really keen to pick it up again, who knows how long it will last but I did my first proper review in ages this week (which you can read here) and have a rather silly but good idea for an article next week so it seems it’s all systems go on that front as well. I’m making a real effort to find a few nights a week to sit down at the laptop rather than the telly, and the writing seems to be flowing really well. Tonight it is back to the novel, and I think I’m going to try and get some work done on sorting the plot.

On an unrelated matter, the picture you see at the top of this post is a rather lovely word cloud of all the ‘tags’ (ie genres) that I have listened to over the past few years over on my last.fm profile. For those of you who don’t know, last.fm is essentially a service which logs all the music you listen to and then makes recommendations based on your tastes, with the added bonus that stupidly geeky people such as myself can pore over the logs and lists and get lost in the detail. But I thought this was a really nice visual, and is a nice accurate description of my tastes. The more bands I listen to in a particular genre the larger it is, and it’s no real surprise to see the domination certain genres have achieved, even if it does rather put pay to the idea that I have a varied and eclectic music taste. Oh well, I can live with that. If you’re on last.fm why not add me as your friend!