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My decorating is complete. I finished painting the bathroom at 8pm this evening as planned. Hurrah! Both the bathroom and the fourth bedroom wall look much better after a second coat of paint. The most valuable lesson I've learnt through this process is not to worry too much about what the wall looks like after the first coat as most minor problems can be sorted out with a second coat. The blue wall in my bedroom looked really patchy after the first coat but after a careful second coat it looks fine. I now just need to hang the new curtains and get the stuff back into my bedroom. The 200+ books which normally live on bookcases in my bedroom are currently stacked on the top shelf of my wardrobe. It's going to take some time to replace them. I'm going to take the opportunity to rearrange the shelves a bit. Also, at the moment one whole shelf is taken up with folders and notebooks containing notes from my PG Dip. I'm not sure whether or not I should keep them. On one hand, this represents a lot of work and some of it might be useful again one day. On the other hand, I finished the course almost four years ago, I don't work in HR anymore and I don't plan to in the future and quite a lot of the stuff reflected in the notes is likely to be out of date already. I hate throwing things away so it's a difficult decision. I've still got a few things to buy. I'm going to replace my elderly, faded green towels with white ones and I need new bed linen to match the new colour scheme. Finally, there is still some stuff in my old bedroom at my parents' house which needs to be rehomed here. Most of it is just old collections from my childhood (badges, keyrings, letters from penfriends etc.) and notes from my first degree which can all go in one of the newish under bed boxes. The 50 odd VHS tapes of episodes of The Tribe my mum taped off the TV for me when I was away at uni in a place with horrific C5 reception can stay with my parents for now as, for reasons I don't remember, both my VHS players seem to live there.
In other news I watched two BBC4 shows about music from 1991 this evening. The first was about the album Screamadelica by Primal Scream. I only discovered Primal Scream relatively recently after a work colleague told me he was going to see them in concert. I was only 10 in 1991 so I guess I was a bit young to be appreciating the contribution the album was making to modern music (I've been trying to remember what I was listening to in 1991 and I have no idea) but I recognised quite a few of the songs. The second show was a selection of performances of what they described as acid house influenced rock tracks from 1991. I was suprised by some of the selections as many seemed to be more pure acid house tracks (808 State, The Shamen) than rock crossovers. Then at the end they showed the (in)famous footage of Nirvana's Top of the Pops debut during which Kurt Cobain appears to attempt to swallow the microphone. Now, I get the feeling Nirvana were influenced by acid (amongst other dubious substances) during this period but I really don't think that they were influenced by acid house. Anyway, most of the footage was taken from Top of the Pops which was going through its 'party in the studio involving lots of balloons hosted by Gary Davies' phase. This was clearly an era in which performers generally mimed their way through TOTP. Most obviously in this show The Happy Mondays as Shaun Ryder wasn't even singing into the mic! It got me thinking about the way kids must get a different experience of music these days. When I was at junior school I'd watch TOTP every Thursday night with my mum and younger sister. Mum would move the coffee table out of the way so that we could dance around our tiny living room. I'm sure I didn't realise which artists were miming (although mum would often complain about it) and I'm sure I wasn't aware how off their faces the artists were. I guess by the time I was old enough to twig this we'd moved out of the acid house era and people were less obviously drugged up. Things are so different for kids now. I assume that they mostly come into contact with music through super slick, mega expensive videos shown on music channels and online. They probably don't relish 'interestingly' styled bands miming badly for half an hour a week. It seems so absurd that an obviously talented live band like Blur would mime their way through TOTP whilst Kurt Cobain would sing to a backing track whilst the rest of the band mimed playing their instruments badly in the background. Strange times. I guess the difference now is that a lot of the music in the commercial charts now isn't performed by 'bands'. Much of it is performed to highly computerised backing track so it's easier for the main performer to sing live. 'Rock' bands seem to be largely outside of the mainstream and only perform in environments such as 'Later' where everything is set up for them to play live. I'll return to my thoughts on music at another time.
On the subject of music it looks like Spotify is moving towards a pay model. It's now only possible to listen to any individual track five times on the free model. I object on principle to having to pay for the service but I get the feeling I'm going to end up paying £4.99 a month for basic membership just because I use it so much. I guess £4.99 a month is pretty good value for being able to listen to tracks a limitless number of times when an single album is still around £5 to buy on CD.
It also looks like I'm going to two day festivals this year. I've already got my ticket for the Saturday of Wireless in Hyde Park (headlined by the Chemical Brothers with Aphex Twin and Janelle Monet playing during the day) and I'm hoping to go to the Sunday of Lovebox in Victoria Park (headlined by 2 Many DJs and The Scissor Sisters). The summer looks like it's going to be good this year :)
In other news I watched two BBC4 shows about music from 1991 this evening. The first was about the album Screamadelica by Primal Scream. I only discovered Primal Scream relatively recently after a work colleague told me he was going to see them in concert. I was only 10 in 1991 so I guess I was a bit young to be appreciating the contribution the album was making to modern music (I've been trying to remember what I was listening to in 1991 and I have no idea) but I recognised quite a few of the songs. The second show was a selection of performances of what they described as acid house influenced rock tracks from 1991. I was suprised by some of the selections as many seemed to be more pure acid house tracks (808 State, The Shamen) than rock crossovers. Then at the end they showed the (in)famous footage of Nirvana's Top of the Pops debut during which Kurt Cobain appears to attempt to swallow the microphone. Now, I get the feeling Nirvana were influenced by acid (amongst other dubious substances) during this period but I really don't think that they were influenced by acid house. Anyway, most of the footage was taken from Top of the Pops which was going through its 'party in the studio involving lots of balloons hosted by Gary Davies' phase. This was clearly an era in which performers generally mimed their way through TOTP. Most obviously in this show The Happy Mondays as Shaun Ryder wasn't even singing into the mic! It got me thinking about the way kids must get a different experience of music these days. When I was at junior school I'd watch TOTP every Thursday night with my mum and younger sister. Mum would move the coffee table out of the way so that we could dance around our tiny living room. I'm sure I didn't realise which artists were miming (although mum would often complain about it) and I'm sure I wasn't aware how off their faces the artists were. I guess by the time I was old enough to twig this we'd moved out of the acid house era and people were less obviously drugged up. Things are so different for kids now. I assume that they mostly come into contact with music through super slick, mega expensive videos shown on music channels and online. They probably don't relish 'interestingly' styled bands miming badly for half an hour a week. It seems so absurd that an obviously talented live band like Blur would mime their way through TOTP whilst Kurt Cobain would sing to a backing track whilst the rest of the band mimed playing their instruments badly in the background. Strange times. I guess the difference now is that a lot of the music in the commercial charts now isn't performed by 'bands'. Much of it is performed to highly computerised backing track so it's easier for the main performer to sing live. 'Rock' bands seem to be largely outside of the mainstream and only perform in environments such as 'Later' where everything is set up for them to play live. I'll return to my thoughts on music at another time.
On the subject of music it looks like Spotify is moving towards a pay model. It's now only possible to listen to any individual track five times on the free model. I object on principle to having to pay for the service but I get the feeling I'm going to end up paying £4.99 a month for basic membership just because I use it so much. I guess £4.99 a month is pretty good value for being able to listen to tracks a limitless number of times when an single album is still around £5 to buy on CD.
It also looks like I'm going to two day festivals this year. I've already got my ticket for the Saturday of Wireless in Hyde Park (headlined by the Chemical Brothers with Aphex Twin and Janelle Monet playing during the day) and I'm hoping to go to the Sunday of Lovebox in Victoria Park (headlined by 2 Many DJs and The Scissor Sisters). The summer looks like it's going to be good this year :)
