jeez, where the hell have i been? here, there and everywhere (probably). well i'm back whether you like it or not. finally got myself a digital camera and a soundcard (all i need now are some leads). so on with the show...
i had a family bereavement earlier in the year and then i moved house and then my broadband connection was all fucked up, so that's where i've been. since then i'm enjoying life in a bigger house with a garden (hurrah). the tunes are still coming into smackhead towers at a decent rate so don't fret. most of the stuff i've been buying has been 2nd hand. any new stuff is mostly re-issues/bootlegs or edits. i've kept all the new stuff in a separate box to make the end of year chart easier to compile. it'll be dead easy because i've bought fuck all new stuff!
it comes down to economics and common sense. gone are the days when i would journey into town to check all the new releases and spend a chunk of change on records. over the following months i would listen to a few and forget about the rest. after a few years those forgotten records build up and before you know it your mates have a house and a nice car and you don't! so now i buy quality not quantity, and it's not as though i play out any more (i used to dj at a local nightspot in my home town, but that's another post for the future). so looking in my box for this year there can't be more than 30 records. in the past i'd have that in a fortnight. by the year end i don't expect to have more than 50. the box was a bargain though, it's one of those pro box copies and i got it for a fiver. only trouble is it has curved edges and bends your records. can't believe they were so popular some years back.
if i take a step back and look at the wider world a couple of bent records is nothing compared to the problems some are having. credit crunch this, credit crunch that. war. genocide. zimbabwe. then last night a family of six, including four children, killed in an accident on the M6. sad times all round...
not to sure how i'm going to approach this second half of cdwd's life. i normally use a picture that may or may not have anything to do with the track , and go all around the houses before finally getting to the music (with a little background to the track on the way). this may or may not continue (apologies to jez over at innersounds if this messes up his "brothers on the side" slot). let's play it by ear shall we? okay i've eased myself gently back into blogging tonight and you need a track. i'm sticking to my five year rule but other than that there are no rules.
so let's go back to 2000. yeah, Y2k and all that. what a load of fucking rubbish all that midnight 1999 stuff was. planes falling out of the sky due to computers breaking down, PAH! not so rubbish was an album by simon mills and nail tolliday. it was one of those that just seemed to creep up on you and word of it spread. as usual i dismissed it as hype until one day bored in hmv (or was it virgin?) in milton keynes i picked it up.
highly engaging stuff - NME
undoubtedly one of the albums of the year - GQ
first great chill-out album of the 21st century - MIXMAG
most essential album of the year - DJ
no i didn't remember that, it's on the sticker on the cover. well, with plaudits like that who was i to argue. got the bus home (i still wasn't driving then) and put it on. like a breath of fresh air and the last track was astounding. i'd like to hear another mix of that (i thought). well blow me if they didn't get ashley beedle to remix it a year later. it never fails to bring a smile to my face. hope you'll smile too because there's too much bad news in the world right now.
bent - always (ashley beedle's mahavishnu remix)
