Wound Up and Ready to Play

I love music. Obviously.

Which is good because there's music everywhere! From the crap that you have to listen to when you're playing Fifa because the dicks who keep beating you some goals-no goals over and over and over again think that Akon is God to the awesome stuff that you've been listening to on YouTube for the past two months and finally bought the album for a fiver, it all colours in the whiteness that is otherwise life.

The past weekend has been particularly musicalicious for me, and as the too long sentence above suggested, it started with Cliffey and Tom making me listen to Akon while they beat me at Fifa. And yes I know I've already complained about Akon once here, and I almost kind of found him slightly okay prior to all this nonsense, but their insistence that I actually love him only makes me hate him all the more. Sorry chaps.

On Saturday I was up bright and early because my dad and I were heading to Bristol. It's a thing we do occasionally; he goes to lots of charity shops to buy Penguin Classics, then I go to Fopp and buy lots of CDs. I spent £34 there this time, on such wonderful artists as Tom Waits, Stephin Merritt, Sparklehorse, Grinderman, and Bombay Bicycle Club, although that last one was for Sarah. I also got a Tindersticks album, because they played this song at Green Man and I've been completely enamoured with it recently so I thought it was about time I bought the album. I put said album on in the car on the way back, and I think my dad would have been more open-minded about the whole experience if the first line hadn't been something about strangling.

Saturday evening, and a few of us (namely me, Sarah, Mark, and Elusive Dave, whom I may or may not have mentioned before) went to see Josh play his SCRIBER songs in great big capital letters at Cathays Community Centre. It was part of the Swn festival, although I feel that just seeing my friend Josh and some sort of youth punk band doesn't really count as "going to the Swn festival", so when my lecturer asked us in the session earlier who had been to the Swn festival, I kept quiet. Anyway, Josh was excellent as ever, and I managed to keep mostly quiet with my incessant heckling this time. He did a cover of Girl From The North Country and all was right with the world*.

That night we went out to see in Meic's 20th birthday at the Owain Glyndwr or however you crazy Welsh people might go about spelling it. Meic asked me to write a couple of rap songs to put on the album he has to produce for his course, so I should probably do that at some point; as good as P-Town is, it's only one track, and he needs six**. I also admitted to really liking Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny) by the Pussycat Dolls but was very pleased to find that Sarah, instead of mocking me, also confessed to liking it. Then Bad Romance came on and I was very pleased about that, too.

Yesterday, Sunday, was my mum's birthday, so Sarah and I went over to my parents' house to fork over her present and card. I got her a purple handbag from Sturff, because she said she liked it and I get honorary employee discount there so woohoo. My mum was just surprised to find that I was giving her anything other than a CD, which is all I usually stretch to. I even got her a card, generous bastard that I am.

Sarah and I somehow ended up reminiscing over Digimon memorabilia, before retreating to my room for a power nap on my far more comfortable than our bed in the student house bed. The nap was soundtracked by British Sea Power's Do You Like Rock Music?, which is a great album whether you're asleep or awake.

In the evening we went to The Globe to see oh my goodness it's British Sea Power what a coincidence. They played many wonderful songs with names like Lights Out For Darker Skies and Favours In The Beetroot Fields, and people had leafy branches to wave and I bought a t-shirt from the merch desk which had placemats with ducks on and Sarah reckoned the bassist and the violinist were going out because she touched his bum at one point but I didn't see it. I also managed to get my grubby hands on a setlist, which was itself fairly grubby because I think the keyboardist trod on it. Good times.

So that was my weekend in music. I'm currently listening to Freezepop's Here Comes A Special Boy for something like the seventh consecutive time, a song made all the more awesome by the fact that it's about Achewood, which everyone should read so here's a link to that too.

I was trying to play a Klezmer Kollectiv song on my baritone earlier. I'm getting quite good.

Joel.

*I was, however, absolutely APOPLECTIC that the free CDs Josh was handing out had moons printed on them. Mine just has writing on it, although it is a limited edition first pressing so that kind of makes up for it.

**Speaking of P-Town, some kind soul put it up on YouTube the other night, just over a year after it first went up. It's not got a whole lot of views yet, so everybody go watch it.