12/5/2002
Celebrity spotting - Roland Gift from Fine Young Cannibals walking down Holloway Road. Well, celebrity to me at least. It's actually the second time I've seen him now. He doesn't look any different from his days singing, "she drives me crazy!" though. I've been having a weird 80's revival of sorts, thanks in no small part to that Spinbad mix. But coincidentally there've been lots of 80's related stuff going on as well. Like my discovery of a friend's former relationships with Marc Almond of Soft Cell and Jimmy Sommerville (I was like, "Dude, that's your claim to fame!"). And of course that celebrity spotting of mine. Perhaps I was too young to have enjoyed the 80's. I can vaguely remember how I fell in love with the melody of Heart's 'These Dreams' when I first saw the video on American Top 40 (I still love that song) and buying cassette compilations of current hits from the night market near my home, but that's about it really. Mmm ... times have changed haven't they? Sadly, I'm still a dork.

On the topic of dorkiness, I can't plug my article on James Lavelle enough. I sent the link to a bunch of my friends but none of them would read it ("It's too long! You have to capture your audience ..."). Thanks to those who did though. Well, the one who did really. And my imaginary best friend, the Shtikman.

"That was really good writing! You could be the next Lester Bangs!"
"Aww shucks, come on, it wasn't that good, I mean, I know I'm good, but it wasn't my best ..."
"You're the best writer of James Lavelle articles in the world!"
"Shtiky, you're my best friend!"
"And you're mine!"
"Aww, thanks ..."

What did you say Shtiky? You want me to cut someone's head open and sauté pieces of his brain? Oh of course, anything for you ol' buddy ol' pal ...

9/5/2002
All this work due in before the end of term is really doing my head in (and I can still find time to update my site - I must be mad already). And it doesn't help to have flatmates who continuously slam doors, have sex loudly and blast their music at 4 am.

For those of you who haven't heard Madlib's mix on KCRW yet, well, you have to. The man is a genius, period. If there's one contemporary hip-hop artist that I'm truly excited about, it's definitely him. Listen to the mix and you'll know what I mean.

Meanwhile, I've got a Jazzy Jeff mix recorded off Gilles Peterson's Worldwide show for download. I dunno, sounded a bit lacklustre to me compared to the last one he did. Looking forward to the show with Shadow though. Can't wait!

4/5/2002
Yeah!! Got my Eugene McDaniels CD on Friday, and it's superb! Kudos to Amazon.com. They gave me an initial estimate of 2 weeks for my CD to arrive, but it took only 1 week! And look, I'm so satisfied with them that I'm going to provide you with a link to their site to save you 14 keystrokes.

Picked up the Money Mark Third Version E.P. today. I thought I'd finally be able to compile my own US version of Mark's Keyboard Repair now that I have the EP and the UK version of Keyboard but there's still one missing track, 'Never Stop'. Darn! My search continues ...

Also, found a CD promo of the new High Contrast album True Colours. Haven't bought any drum'n'bass in quite a while (I think the last proper one was, shit, Bukem's Journey Inwards! That's VERY long ago!) but the price was good and it was a double CD. But I was really only looking for that one song, 'Return To Forever'. The rest of the album is not too bad, but nothing ground-breaking or new. Which basically sums it all up for every other drum'n'bass release of late.

I don't know what made me pick up 310's Downtown & Brooklyn Only. Wait, I do. It was the promo sticker on the cover with rave reviews from Straight No Chaser and Jockey Slut. Proves that those stickers actually work! But I should've known better than to trust a review from Jockey Slut of all mags. Didn't like it at all though. Your usual beats with ambient wash-outs.

There were some posts about Sixtoo on the Mo'Wax board, so I decided to give it a try. Couldn't find the latest release, so I settled for the previous album Psyche Intangible instead. Quite good actually, but too bad I heard Five Deez and the new J-Live first, so every other hip-hop album is gonna pale in comparison to those two for a while.

Refunds today: 2