dr feelgood, oil city confidential

know bits of dr feelgood and the influence they had on punk and all that*, but nowhere near enough so really want to see this film.

from the trailer it looks stunning –  london in all it’s monochrome booze, fags/ cars, birds/ whistle, flute/ early 70s glory.  if only the sweeney had formed a band…..

*actually, “know bits of” probably amounts to this:



staygold, myspace

10 check staygold myspace

20 listen to all the tracks on the player

30 play roxanne shante’s smile again

40 then the self-titled track again

50 goto 10

run

very good indeed.

pacific!, hot lips (staygold remix)

morrissey, can we have the book please?

faber & faber in an interesting approach to get the ink on the contract:

“Dear Morrissey,

In the hope that you might consider bringing your much-rumoured memoir to The House of Eliot, I am posting this letter on the Faber website. Forlorn as this hope may be, I can only fantasise that at least you might read my letter through and consider the pleasures and prestige of being an author at Faber, the last great family-owned independent publishing house in the western hemisphere.

I have been trying to persuade you of the virtues and wisdom of this for some years now. You probably won’t remember. We even corresponded at one point via a friend of yours, an author of mine, most famous for his biography of Roxy Music which ends just as the band are getting together. You see, we love the perverse and the contrary at Faber. And we also like to think we are the custodians of twentieth-century Modernist poetry. In fact we are. Our shelves groan and bulge and spill over under the weight of Ezra, Larkin, Hughes and Heaney. And that’s just the surface; deep as it may seem. We feel very strongly that you belong in this company. To me (and to many of my colleagues) you are already in this company. It would be the fulfilment of my most pressing and persistent publishing dream to see that ‘ff’ sewn into the spine of your Life. Just any other publisher won’t do. You deserve Faber and the love we can give you. History demands it; destiny commands it.

I did receive a fax from you once to my invitation. And you responded with interest. I don’t know if at that stage you had embarked on your project but I have recently heard again that ‘it is on’.

Morrissey, the doors of our Georgian Bloomsbury-based publishing house are open to you wherever you may be: Rome, LA, Manchester. We recently published a book of Kevin Cummins’ photographs of Manchester popwhich you may have seen. If you read this and would like a copy I will gladly send one to you. Perhaps it could mark the start of a beautiful friendship.

With warm wishes,

Lee Brackstone”

6 we like

6 more this week, “thus” far:

goldfrapp, rocket (grum remix) (could’ve also been the richard x mix, both ace)

cassette kids, lying around

roxy cottontail, double dare (proper villains & jubilee remix)

hot club de paris, dance a ragged dance (cereal’s ragged remix)

felix cartal, popular music (can’t wait for this album – “i never liked music till i heard my own”, the boy’s got it…)

in flagranti, ex ex ex (dj wool remix)

bowie, big brother

celebrity big brother finished tonight.

bowie, great dodgy vhs quality big brother video montage  off some tour….

david bowie, big brother

music go music, light of love

posted this before, but a repost for those too lazy to dig back – which includes us.

it’s still all rather amazing:

(3.13 -3.48 is how we roll)

music go music myspace

los campesinos!, romance is boring

they’re back and they’re bigger:

los campesinos! myspace

the drums, the drums, the drums

remember coming up to manchester on a record buying trip, whenever it was, 93/94, and chemical beats was the only specific thing i was after.  was hugely into big beat at this time –  exited eastern bloc/vinyl exchange etc hours later with bags full of, well, more big beats.

i’d ordered a deck/mixer combo from one of those ads in the back of dj (these shops – nay, superstores – were always in essex or southend) and they brilliantly came the next day so that was me then for the forseeable.  mixing badly but loudly and loving it – actually taught rafik much of this routine:

sometimes only a very big chemical beat will do:

bomb the bass, bug powder dust (chemical brothers remix)

dust brothers, chemical beats

chemical brothers, block rockin beats

blende, remixes

first came across blende via dj cooks beats on toast mixtape, april 09-ish.

he’s popping up again recently so here’s a few remixes we like:

mstrkrft, breakaway (blende remix)

dj cat nyc, hot pink (blende remix, jfk edit)

adrian lux, strawberry (blende remix)

incidentally, cooks has gotten himself on that soundcloud caper so that’s worth a look too.

christopher reid, a scattering (extract)

now let me preface this with a disclaimer – it’s a post mainly for sb employees really, but bear with me on this one…

poetry isn’t something we’re particularly into round here at sb central but it’s been a funny, long week.

our staff have been spread over the globe so perhaps it’s all got a bit emotional, but when i heard this extract of a poem read out on the radio today i almost immediately got something in my eye and had to stop whatever i was doing.

it’s by christopher reid.

christopher reid has won the costa book of the year award with a volume about his late wife.

guardian review here

i doubt we’ll be posting back to back dylan thomas vs william wordsworth mashups from this point on, but hopefully it’s a tempo change.