"christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat..."

just a quick one tonight because "tis the season to be jolly", apparently. i don't know about you but i tend to be a bit "bah humbug" and then it hits me, and i enjoy it. don't know why, just been that way for a long time. i suppose i'm just a grumpy bastard at heart.

so what's been happening ? had my works do which was a great laugh, loads of booze ! i had to organise it too, so the fact it went well was a relief. got all the presents for christmas, got a decent tree (for once), the lights all worked and i'm off oop north to see my folks and mrs smackhead's folks too.

"faceless techno bollocks"

i read the above quote in DJ mag years ago (when it was good). some plonker was deriding (sic) the coverage of some techno track that was big at the time. all hell broke loose in a tit-for-tat on the letters page. i was on the fence because i loved house and techno. i couldn't choose either way and i'm glad i didn't. but i do fight techno's corner when i can (strange, i remember my english teachers always saying you can't start a sentence with "but". they never explained why...). not to sure where i'm going with this so bare with me.

i've read my last post a few times and have to say i was a bit premature in saying there have been bugger all house tracks to excite me in the last few years. backfired by masters at work, champagne by motorfunk (which criminally gets 3/5 on discogs and goes for £1.99 !) and eurodans by todd terje are but three of many (now that i think about it). so there you go, i was wrong and you were probably right. house is a feeling (apparently), but so is techno in my book (more of that later). my last post was also a bit of a shambles in terms of presentation too. apologies for that. i'd only just realised how to highlight text. i tried it in the last post and it all went tits up. so i left it all in white. i think i've got the hang of it now...

if you're getting bored of me why not pop over to innersounds (link on the right) ? the guy who runs it sent out a set of questions to some of his favourite bloggers and the results can be seen in his brothers on the side posts. it's great to see (and read) the people behind these blogs because a lot of them inspired me. i'm sure if you're on the same wavelength as me you'll have been going to their blogs anyway, but it's nice to know a little bit more about them. you'll be able to read my answers in a few weeks because i'm a bit shy at the moment.

christ sakes, there's so much i want to talk about with regards to music and putting the world to rights but it'll have to wait. so for now...i believe techno does have soul (there, i said it). not necessarily the club bangers but the stuff you can listen to at home. the person who originally made the "faceless techno bollocks" insult can only have been listening to something loud and harsh in a club. there's so much more to it.

"do you remember house ?"

i'll admit it's not the best picture of them. but then again it's all about the music, isn't it ? the title is from a blaze record from a few years back. y'know, one of them "it's not as good as it used to be" sort of records with a bloke going on about shelter this and sound factory that. i dig it out now and again when i get misty eyed about the old days...

it's one of the oldest arguements that rages on messageboards. is it as good as it used to be ? well frankly i don't care because if it was chances are i'd be totally skint and completely bollocksed (sic) all the time. my body wouldn't be able to take it and worse still i believe all the great records would have been made and there'd be nothing to look forward too. so now and again i listen to some old house stuff to see if it still stands up today. there's plenty that does and an awful lot that doesn't. thankfully i've got rid of most of my shit house records over the years and kept a few that still wiggle my toes.

those guys at the top wrote/produced some absolute killers that still sound good. here's one i found on youtube tonight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMn7ToUPizQ&feature=related

absolute belter ! i remember c j mackintosh playing it at cream one night (it was a ministry of sound tour). i'd only just bought it and to hear that voice and that bassline on a massive system was just brilliant. of course the pills helped, don't be so naive ! c j was one of my fave dj's at the time (suppose he still is) and to find out he was a nice person too made him double good in my book. (so where am i going with this ? not to sure really but that's half the fun.)

i always thought that i'd put up loads of house tracks when i got this whole blog thing going, but now i'm not so sure. a lot of my techno collection still sounds like it was made tomorrow, so there will be more of that to come. it takes a truly great house track to stand out these days because i've heard most if it before. the only house track that has had me spellbound this year is still going theme on dfa. i truly believe i'll still want to listen to it in 5 or 10 years time. i haven't been able to say that about a house record in years. strange thing is though, what i consider to be house and what others consider to be house are two entirely different things. but that's another post isn't it ?

so to tonight's track. of course it's not a masters at work record. keep up at the back ! tom middleton and mark pritchard have been churning out musical goodness for some years now. be it as global communication (deep house business) or chameleon (drum'n'bass) or one or two other aliases. tom produced the awesome summer in space and the "whistle on your way to work" plinky plonky hit take me with you as cosmos (the latter apparently written because his girlfriend had gone away for a few months working and he missed her, altogeth now...arrrrr). any way it started out as a b-side but sasha played it so much it became a hit. why they stuck a vocal on it i'll never know. they also did some electrofunk stuff too. even releasing an album of the stuff in 1996. there's a masters at work tribute track on it (got there in the end didn't i ?) that still makes me boogie around smackhead towers to this day, and here it is

jedi knights - one for m.a.w.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/552384815ce7d8/

scott and anita are getting married !

just a quick one today, i'm off to ireland this afternoon (my mate scott is getting married to anita). so if anyone is in johnstownbridge, county kildare over the next 3 days you can buy me a drink.

i went to see CSS at brixton academy this week and they were ace ! they were supported by justice (and also another band but i got in fashionably late). crikey, justice were loud ! i can only describe them as like daft punk but without the tunes. a lot of people enjoyed them, so maybe i'm just getting old.

"can you imagine a world without sound ?"

this week i've been trying to think of 3 records that i can put into a year end poll on my favourite messageboard. i'm struggling people ! i've mostly bought 2nd hand and re-issue stuff this year, and very little in the way of new stuff. there's been a lot of hyped stuff which just didn't do it for me and i've been searching the other blogs for inspiration. now some people can say what they like about blogs but for me they're better than any magazine for cutting through the bullshit. after all, no-one is gonna waste time posting something they don't like !

i think part of the problem has been the record stores taking any old shite in to stock and trying to pass it off as "cosmic" or "nu-disco" and "played by *insert name of current hot dj/edit meister*". there has to be some quality control at the record stores (i could say the same thing about download stores as well. i get e-mails saying "x amount of new tracks at beatport et al this week", but it's 99% guff anyway.) because i'm getting bored of trawling through all the new releases and not finding anything decent. i'd much rather the stores said "sorry guys, there's no new records this week because everything we've been sent is shit", than stock up on whatever they can get their hands on in order to make themselves look like a hot store. it's mostly the re-edit nonsense that needs to be knocked on the head. maybe if the stores took less off the distributors, less people would make them and only the cream would make it to sale. or am i being harsh on the creativity of others ? so here's hoping 2008 brings some more original material and less edits (if you do edits use your skills to make something original as well !).

okay, rant over. i've had a few kind words this week from other bloggers and it's given me the confidence to keep on doing what i'm doing ie. actually taking time to write something and posting tracks that mean something to me. i'd rather have a few people coming through and saying "hi", than 1000 people a day coming here for the new "justice" edit (site traffic was never the goal of starting a blog for me, although i was thinking of getting one of those site counter things but it'd probably be quite embarassing !). having said that i'm seeing "CSS" in brixton on monday night (dec 3) and "justice" are supporting. i suppose i'll be the only one there without one of those stupid haircuts that the styling gel adverts are convincing kids they should have. i'll be standing at the back somewhere because my brother and i are old and boring. if you see me (glasses and beer belly) mines a pint. cheers.