05.06.09
mostly listening to: Dave Matthews Band, Big Whiskey & The Groo
Grux King
It's 'Boys
week' on Kickette, which means some of the
interweb's finest male football writers have been in control of a domain usually reserved for ladyfolk. Representing my
football news website The Spoiler, I've made a few contributions over the past
five days.
My debut on
Sky News,
discussing disgraced footballer Joey Barton.
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05.10.08
mostly listening to: Ben Folds,
Way To Normal
I
have just returned from Bilbao, a city that loves asymmetric
architecture as much as it loves selling week-old tapas to unsuspecting
foreigners in bars. The cultural highlight of the trip was undoubtedly
the Frank Gehry's Guggenheim - probably the one museum in the world
that's more interesting on the outside:
The
Spanish trip was by no means a sightseeing holiday, as I was presenting
a
travel show about Bilbao, which focused on the parallels between the
city and it's football team. Athletic Club have managed to survive in
Spain's top division for eighty years, despite the fact that they
operate a strict 'cantera' policy: while other teams may select their
players from all over the world, Athletic Bilbao may only pool
resources from the Basque region (population 3m).
This
policy
may effect their performance (indeed they lost to an outrageous last
minute lob at the game I witnessed at the San Mames stadium), but most
supporters would rather see their team relegated than resort to signing
non-Basque players. Admirable? Perhaps. Overtly xenophobic? Almost
certainly.
The insular mentality of the football
team is
reflected in the city and its inhabitants, who aren't that keen on the
rest of Spain. In fact, during our trip we didn't see a soul sporting
the national side's strip, but several proudly wearing the colours of
England and Scotland. Bizarre.
The travel show is
currently being knocked into shape in the editing room, and should be
on Sky early next year.
I
spent this morning recording a cover of Guster's 'I Hope Tomorrow Is
Like Today'. Check it
out at Myspace.
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06.08.08
mostly listening to: Counting Crows, Saturday Nights and Sunday
Mornings
I am now a
Contributing Editor for Redknapp Publishing's recently relaunched Icon
Magazine.
It's a fantastic publication aimed at footballers and 'high net worth'
individuals (read: 'folks who probably own a sea-faring vessel and who
don't live on the numbered streets'), and I have added a recent feature
detailing the incredible exploits of ultramarathon runner Mark Cockbain
to the writing
section.
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30.06.08
mostly listening to: John Mayer, Where The Light Is
When
I heard that John Mayer was coming to the UK to play Hyde Park’s
thoroughly middle class Hard Rock Calling festival, I snapped up a pair
of tickets immediately; after all, his show at the Royal Albert Hall
last year was one of the best musical performances I have ever
witnessed.
Shortly after my hasty purchase, the
gurning young
bluesman announced his own show at Brixton Academy, which I really
couldn’t afford to miss. So, this weekend I saw Mr Mayer twice, and for
once, the extortionate ticket were fully justified.
Mayer,
who won over Sunday afternoon’s Glastonbury
crowd
with his unparalleled lead guitar abilities and a well-chosen George
Harrison cover, put in an incredible performance at Brixton on Friday.
The normally-succinct guitarist may have interspersed his tunes with
ramblings about his media persecution in the US (including a poignant
speech before his ‘anti-pap’ anthem ‘Vultures’), butt this did little
to detract from the kind of chops that have put him in the same rock
‘n’ roll echelons as Buddy Guy, BB King and Eric Clapton.
I’m
guessing that very few of the Hyde Park calling crowd owned a John
Mayer record, but after seeing him ‘earn the right’ to play on the same
bill as Clapton (his words, not mine), I’m sure many will get hold of a
copy of his 2006 disc Continuum.
When he anounced a 'very,very popular Blues number,' and began
singing the first few lines of Duffy’s ‘Mercy’, the masses responded
with tutting, head scratching and a few boos. However, when a few
otustanding solos and a unique bluesy arrangement blasted out around
the park, even the elder couples who were busying themselves in their
M&S picnic hampers stood up to give him a round of applause.
Well
played, John. It was well worth the sunburn.
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19.06.08
mostly listening to: The Beatles, Revolver
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
was met with a universal 'meh' by the critics, who dismissed it as a
sub-par effort from the Apatow camp; I was easily producing the
loudest laughter in the press screening I attended.
However,
as I discovered by re-watching it on DVD this week, the scene where
Dewey meets the Beatles (played by Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Jason
Schwartzman and Justin Long) is utterly fantastic. Great record.
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16.06.08
mostly listening to: Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before The
Ship Even Sank
Due
to a penchant for all shiny pieces of kit with a half-eaten apple
embossed on them, I was eager to run out and buy an iPhone upon its
over-hyped release last year. After saving up more than a few pennies,
I finally got my hands on one a few months ago, and it has been love
ever since. In my opinion, it only suffers from a small hard drive
and a recessed head phone jack (so a third party adapter is needed if
you don’t want to use Apple’s laughably bad cans). Most people complain
about its sluggish EDGE internet, but for someone who works all
day and night online, having ‘2G’ web speeds in my pocket is a
useful deterrent and a blessing in disguise.
Like
many other
Applephiles, I closely followed the release of the new 3G iPhone last
week, and was absolutely delighted when I received a text from O2
telling me I qualified for a 'free' upgrade.
Except
it’s not quite free. To get my new handset, I need to buy another 18 month
contract, which costs ten pounds more per month.
iPhone
3G looks like a worthy upgrade, but not radical enough to warrant
another
180 notes. So for now, I think I’ll stick with my
soon-to-be-hideously-out-of-date talkbox.
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29.05.08
mostly listening to: Powderfinger,
Fingerprints
After
facing complete devastation in the Tsunami of 2004, the Thai island of
Phi Phi has gradually rebuilt its tourism-based infrastructure: now, it
has once
again become a place where large Australians with incongruous tattoos
can slowly destroy their livers to a backdrop of tropical wildlife,
turquoise waters and a sun that will turn pasty antipodean skin to an
unhealthy rouge in seconds. The beaches, which were used to bring the
excellent Alex Garland novel The
Beach to the big screen, were the closest thing to
paradise I am ever likely to see, and the experience of hand-feeding a
family of monkeys with their favourite fruit was worth the trip alone.
Fresh from
a break in the 'land of smiles', I have started to prepare some new
material for recording. Just as soon as I get my home studio set up,
I’ll have the new stuff laid down and compressed into a wonderfully
tinny mp3 for your listening pleasure.
Elsewhere,
I have just about recovered from the London Marathon (my time of
4:11:57 was approximately 12 minutes outside my desired time, but hey,
there’s always next year) and The Spoiler is going from strength
to strength. When we’re not riling up the über-sensitive inhabitants of
Newcastle, we’re winning hard-earned kudos from the web community
across the globe. In fact, this month, we’ve even had three visits from
the Vatican City. Obviously His Holiness has a soft spots for WAGs…
