Saturday, April 26, 2008

Ran outta music


So there hasn't been much going on here lately, I've had a real shortage of new music; my fav torrent website was shut down for a while and I've been working an office job (yikes) but luckily there I can listen to music all day. Old stuff, mostly; well, old as in stuff on my portable harddrive from a year ago. It is easy to be sapped of all inspiration working in an office; music has only really served as a distraction. Anyway, I'm done with the office this week and the torrent site is back up and I've found some new ways to find music (who would've thought a Radiohead forum was one of the best places to find new albums). Something I have been thinking about is Paul McCartney, the other day I was talking about favourite Beatles and I couldn't remember the last name of the Beatle who first name starts with George (it's Harrison, FYI). I always thought Paul McCartney was the shittest Beatle but now I'm thinking it just might be the case that my favourite Beatles songs are written by Paul and that I need to embark on a significant Paul McCartney phase. This will make my life better, it's undeniable, and I think it all started when I bought Paul Mccartney II on vinyl from Christchurch's finest and dustiest record store Penny Lane (along with Nick Lowe's Jesus of Cool and Neil Young's Trans - 3 for $10!!!). The only problem is, there's no record player here; what a doozy! So, if anyone has any tips on where to start in his catalogue then let me know. I'm looking at you, Faux Pas.

Other things, in bullet point form:

- Just did an interview with Randy Randall from No Age re: their new album. That will be up on TMT soon.

- Shiver Like Timber (finally) has some new songs on her MySpace: 'No Hesitation', 'ET and Me' and 'Silver Cyclone'.

- Last week I interviewed High Places re: slugs, Brooklyn, how they make their music. This will be up/published somewhere soon but I'll post some excerpts here soon too.

- The new Dosh record Wolves and Wishes is excellent! And the new Eddy Current record is kickin'.

- Still obsessed with everything Bradford Cox does. It's all up over here and it's a really great way to lose a few hours and pick up a whole lot of music in the process.

- (I think) I am DJing once again this week in Christchurch at Cartel in SOL Square. Thursday night, 10 til late.

- As mentioned a few weeks back, the full interview I did with Honey Owens aka Valet is up now at TMT

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

well he's even with john lennon in the beatles obviously, but his solo recording career is a bit funny.

mccartney (the one with the bowl of cherries on it) is nice for what it is... sort of just off-the-cuff home recordings. and then "maybe i'm amazed" for almost no reason. he has quite a few good tracks (like that one), but there's no really good paul mccartney albums i don't think.

the other immediately post-beatles stuff john and goerge did is all good though. the JL/POB record, imagine, all things must pass... apparently ringo was doing an "avant garde" moog album with maurice gibb at the time as well.

wings... there's a few good classic songs, but i don't really think it's necessary to listen to an actual album...

RICHARD M said...

i've only heard one song off mccartney ii (temporary secretary) and it's the fucking SHIT. i've really wanted to hear the rest of the album since then but haven't got around to it. the only other post beatles macca stuff i've listened to is band on the run. which was ok.

the only other solo beatles albums worth listening to (imo) would be all things must pass and maybe plastic ono band. don't know why i'm mentioning this since the dude above me has but w/e.

Anonymous said...

well that's confusing... a richard mk looking very much like a richard macf.

i actually think the first mccartney is at penny lane for really cheap. no-one picks it up because it's not very obvious what it is... or they don't want paul and linda mucking about making up some songs at home.

it's been a while since i've listened to all this stuff though... i don't even really listen to the beatles very much anymore. i still love them obviously, but i guess i've internalized their music from listening to it so much as a kid.

RICHARD said...

i need to get to penny lane again when i am not working. or get a record player. or both. someone else told me that another album of paul's is their favourite beatles solo album but i forget the name of that, i'm gonna try and find out cos im keen to hear it, because its not just the plain old beatles which yeah, is sometimes hard to listen to now that it is so internalized from overexposure (and there's that annoying institutionlisation of them, ie the end of high fidelity: boring husband character asks "do you like the beatles?" and rob is like "they're a good band", but anyway thats nothing new). yeah anyway, there are always a thousand copies of lennon's 'double fantasy' album, is that any good?

Anonymous said...

right i'm not sure why there are so many copies of that around... maybe some sort of post lennon assassination impulse buy or something?

i got a copy when i was 13 or something from a school fair and i mustn't have liked it much because i melted it and made it into a bowl... i don't know if a 13 year old me is to be trusted though.

i can't find any mention of this avant-starr-gibb album anywhere on the net though... damn! i read about it in this book about unreleased beatles stuff. lennon had his unfinished music series, harrison had his electric sound record, mccartney had his "cut ups" studio.... so ringo and maurice gibb hopped on the bandwagon and tried to make their very own "my first weird record". that would be priceless to hear!