The Opinionated Diner

We're havin fun and doin time/ Sucking on our samovar and lime

I’ve been keeping to myself a fair bit recently, working on project for my site, which is due to go up in the next few days, all things willing, not least of which is my understanding of, what may be to some, simple concepts in my, just read, FrontPage book, but to my basic mind are comparable to Mathematical Philosophy or some other alien discourse.

In the interim, I was please as hell to find that Jane Walker has just put up the brand spanking new Toy Love web site, and damned wonderful it is too. Lots and lots of information and trivia, history, a nice link to my Propeller page, and so much more. Why can’t all band sites be this good? No over reliance on Flash or gimmicks, no fucking songs that launch without a how’s yer father and take over the system, bashing themselves up against the perfectly selected piece of minimal German techno that you may be enjoying at the moment of entry.

That, changing the subject somewhat, in itself, is reason to avoid Myspace as much as possible. That and the fact that I don’t feel comfortable giving someone as historically unscrupulous as Rupert Murdoch too many ins to my life. There is, with that ownership, something unsettling about the site and I simply don’t trust Newscorp to do the right thing with all that power. I’m there, but only just.

And I’m listening to, today, mostly:

Fujiya Miyaki – Transparent Things (quirky pop on the eclectically mighty Tirk label)

North by Northwest (Paul Morleys’ rather fantastic boxed set of Northern UK post punk, complete with a couple of gems I’d completely forgotten, rough as hell, but that’s the point)

Deep Disco Culture Vol 1 (underground as fuck but soulful disco gems that most people have never heard of, and unless they are as obsessive as me, don’t really want to..)

You Better Believe It Soul Vol. 2 (more obscure old Warner, Elektra and Atlantic 45s)

Oh, and a bunch of bump bump bump singles that I won’t go into now