After about five minutes of conversation with the painter-decorator, a charming gentleman from near Belfast, I still can't work out what he's saying. It's not white [something] we need, it's [something] [something], purple stuff, in a bottle, not the clear, don't ask him to spell it now. He'll leave a bottle on our doorstep if we're not in when he comes by next. He leaves: I shut the door, walk upstairs, put on Winamp, and suddenly my mind snaps into focus and I lean out the window -
"is that methylated spirits you mean?"

If it's not the brogue being incomprehensible, it's the sentence structure catching. Dammit. ^_^

The songs were - I believe the technical term is louder.
...petronia, I love you dearly. And, yeah, part of the charm of gigs is in the fact that the music doesn't so much get heard as seep in through the soles of your shoes and try to punch its way out of your epiglottis.

I have this extended... thing, about the qualities of live music as opposed to recorded - probably just a way of rationalising the seeming disparity between my love for production and my love for the kind of punkindie gigs where you can't actually hear the music, but you're pretty sure it's there - but I can never be bothered to think it through properly. Also, I'm off to see Radio 4 in the time known as "very soon", so no time to write a long post I'll probably delete for self-indulgence (which leads one into but it's my journal versus but it's got an audience, and that way madness lies).

Instead, if you please, a moment of pathos from 1999!harpy, because I've found my old day-to-day work diary, with cribnotes on the books I'd read and careful notation of what nefarious substances I'd been ingesting (I was coming off my painkiller thing, so it probably seemed important. Although I'd like to note the "childish boasting!" scribbled next to a list of drinks. Heh.) Not only the sudden crush I developed on Jenni from the Llama Farmers, of all people (!!! I only bought one of their singles, and I can't remember her at all), but, good lord, among the footnotes -
Woke up this morning, and all i can remember of my dream is that the coffee jar was full and that i liked S. Only the coffee jar being full surprised me.
...fuck. Poor baby me.

In other news, er, there is no other news. I go gig. *^____________^*

Despite myself, I rather like McLusky. They shout rather than sing, have a song which lyrically appears to consist of nothing but "don't go fucking in the barn because the barn's ON FIRE!", and their singer-guitarist looks too much like Swells for my peace of mind. On the other hand, they introduced "Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues" with "Here's a Shed Seven cover," and the first chord of "She Left Me On Friday", and it is physically impossible for me to dislike a band who do this. Also, you know, they're on Too Pure records. I like Too Pure. Too Pure have Hefner on their roster.

...andthenRadio4werefanTAStictheend. ^_^

Nah, seriously, Radio 4 are ace. Really bad equalisation at the beginning, with the guitar so low in the mix it was negatively there, but thankfully that got sorted out in time for the really good guitar lines. There's this bit in 'Calling All Enthusiasts' where you just get choppy guitar cutting out and then bass coming in alongside, and it's just so well done, and I love it to pieces. And they've this percussionist, with congas and timbales and cowbells and claves, who actually plays in the proper samba style. <333333333! (Am percussion geek, yes.) They're a real city band, you know? All the funkiness and polemic of Rage Against The Machine, but with the grittiness of the metropolis, that kind of single-minded urgency that can only be honed by jostling on underground trains and trying to walk a beat faster than everyone else on a crowded street. (I've been trying to compose an album review for a while now, will probably put something on them up on my sorta!super!secret!giglog at some point, so this is patchy.) And fuck but the Primal Scream influence appears in the strangest places.

Reasons to love Radio 4, #356 in an occasional series: 'Struggle' starts with the line "the ideas of the ruling class / should not be the ruling ideas". They read Marx. Eeeeeeeeeeeee! (my father, when told this, said "well, actually it's more Gramscian", which I feel is missing the point. But I should have expected no less from parents who, after all, survived the great Diehard Trot Wars of the Sixties.)

By the way, the Scala's a gorgeous venue. I wish I'd been to it before now.

[Edit: Oh, and if you want to hear 'lightsabre cocksucking blues' and have a high threshold for terror, here. Flash. Kittens. Fear.]