What are your top 5 CDs/albums of 2006?
Submitted by eliz. s.
Ooh, I do love a good list...
1. The Rapture - 'Pieces Of The People We Love'
2. Primal Scream - 'Riot City Blues'
3. Giant Drag - 'Hearts and Unicorns' (was that this year? Well, I bought it this year)
4. Lily Allen - 'Alright... Still'
5. The Black Crowes - 'Tall / Band'
Stu
It's the official bar of the hotel I'm staying in in Amsterdam. I've resisted the urge to go in it so far though, despite the gaudy signage. I'm in Amsterdam for the Nokia World conference, and blogging it furiously for Tech Digest. There's been some good stuff.
I met a man who DJs with two Nokia N91 phones, started a war between Nokia and Apple (sort of), heard Ruud Gullit talk about 'The Wife's approach to gadgets, and have just finished writing a big post on what Nokia's chief technology officer had to say about phones in 2010 (clue: GPS, 10-megapixel cameras, HD-quality video recording, a built-in HD projector...). Phew!
It's been good though, my new dictaphone rules. Also, Alice had her second ante-natal scan yesterday - the 20-week one. I managed to get along before flying to Amsterdam. All good though, bub's got the right number of everything, and apparently looks in bonny health. Roll on April.
I think one of the Vox QOTDs was once about what's on your iPod if you shuffle it, which I missed at the time. But I just read this post, which appears to involve posting the first ten tracks it serves up, every Friday. And that seems like a mighty fine idea, so I'm going to start doing it. Join in everyone, it could be a trend! And I'm starting today, even though it's three days late.
Chemical Brothers - The Private Psychedelic Reel
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Heart And Soul
Queens Of The Stone Age - Tension Head
Radiohead - Creep
Holly Valance - Everything I Hate
The Black Keys - Just Couldn't Tie Me Down
Black Crowes - My Heart's Killing Me
Asian Dub Foundation - Taa Deem
White Stripes - You're Pretty Good Looking
Longpigs - Baby Blue
Not bad for a first attempt! And you can tell I'm not cheating, as I would've filtered out that Holly Valance track if I was... Although her electroclash album is marvellous...
Wow, when did it go live? Just downloade the application to my mobile, and using it now, while cooking a curry (pictured as proof). It's very easy to use, just like the one for Typepad. I'm loving the fact that you can import pics from elsewhere on the phone - it's a moblogger's dream!
It appears to be intercepting my camera though and asking me every time if I want to upload the shot I've just taken to Vox. Hmm, not too sure about that, but I'm assuming I can turn that off.
VERY impressed though, especially teamed with my new phone - with its slide-out QWERTY keypad - and unlimited data tariff. There's no reason not to use it. Apart from the curry burning, of course. *rushes to hob*
Went to see 'em on Friday night at the Hammersmith Apollo, and it was fantastic. Yes, that IS two gigs on two consecutive nights. I've still got it, etc. *clutches ringing ears*
They're a proper rock'n'soul revue now, having dropped the free-jazz bollocks that blighted their gigs around the XTMNTR and Evil Heat albums (and I love both. Just not the rubbish bits played live), brought in some proper gospelly backing singers, and started playing Rocks without trying to f*** it up. Hurrah for that.
They even played Loaded as an encore. Marvellous. The View supported too, they are hotly tipped, but as far as I can make out, they have an amazing first song, then it gradually descends into clattery Libertines-lite. The Kids love 'em, obviously.
Spent the weekend catching up with work, which was threatening to get on top of me. Sorted now, just waiting for Alice to get home from her girly weekend in Edinburgh. I have about two hours of tidying and an hour of cooking to squeeze into the next hour and a half...
Barley may look fluffy and frequently confused, but she is EVIL under the surface. Check this and tell me I'm wrong. She's just about to biff a sleeping Lola on the nose too. They should have zombie tortoiseshell cats in the next Resident Evil for sure.
Oh dear, I haven't Voxed for ages, and I don't even have good booze-related reasons like Gemma. I haven't been properly, respectably drunk in ages. And to compound my shame, I even managed to knock over a table of champagne glasses today at 3's press event WITHOUT the cause being earlier swigging. I'll be handing in my journalist credentials if this continues.
What else? Oh yes, Alice has been feeling movement-type stuff in her belly for a couple of weeks, without being entirely sure that it's the baby, but in the last few days it's been much more noticeable. It even obligingly kicked three times the other night when I had my hand on her tummy. It's all marvellous, obviously, very emotional. Next scan is the week after next, when we should get to see the bub again. We found this image, which is apparently what it roughly looks like now. Blee.
Also, we have 10 boys names and 10 girls names on a longlist, although I better not say what they are, for fear of jinxing things. Sadly, Busby didn't make the final list though, despite making us both snort tea out of our nostrils when we read it in the book. Neither did Ponce or Gaylord (likewise). Schoolkids can be so cruel, it's like giving them an open goal to aim for...
I've also started the final process of getting rid of my shitey old PC, by transferring over all the MP3s to my Mac. And there's a few thousand of them, being transferred 1GB at a time via memory stick.
Anyway, this means I've been listening to selected albums that I haven't heard in a while. This week: lots of Nick Drake, Led Zeppelin, and The Cure's marvellous reissue of Three Imaginary Boys, an album made when they were still scratchy post-punks. It has the best scratchy post-punk cover of Jimi Hendrix's 'Foxy Lady' you'll ever hear.
Work is mad busy too - full steam ahead on WiiWii, Tech Digest, Brandish etc, as well as my *gasp* non Shiny Media stuff (Pocket Gamer, Pocket Picks, T3 magazine, top-secret copywriting etc). Every time I think I've got this time management lark sorted, I take on too much work again and end up working until 10pm. Ah well, it will pay for lots of Wii games rusks and a Sky Sports subscription nappies. See how responsible I am.
What a long post. That's me done for five months then...
I was just thinking today, podcasting was The Big Thing a year or two ago, but it's kinda slipped out of the hype bubble recently, what with all the fuss around social networking, blogging and video sharing. I mean, look at Vox - photos and videos are a big part of it, but podcasting... isn't.
I guess it's because you need more techy knowledge to do it - making a vid and uploading it onto YouTube is easy if you have a webcam or digital camera, and there's no need to edit. But podcasts need swizzling about, and working out how to get them online. I guess all but the hardcore nerds and proper broadcasters are video-blogging nowadays, not podcasting. Ah well.
I have been subscribing to some podcasts through iTunes though. The Russell Brand ones from his Radio 6 show are funny, even if it is just making poo and bum jokes half the time. As a 29-year-old man, obviously, that's right up my street. They have a phone chat with Noel Gallagher every week too, and he's a genuinely funny bloke.
Alice went for her first blood test today - it's the one that's used to analyse the probability of your baby being born with Downs Syndrome. Apparently it was abit grim, the first vein they tried didn't work, and when they found one she had to fill up five small bottles. It makes me feel faint just thinking about it (he says, looking manly and brave). This evening, I am mostly cooking pasta'n'potatoes'n'pesto. And Spinach. Always the spinach at the moment. It's got lots of iron in...
