Second City Skeptics

Scepticism is the new rock’n’roll and as usual Brum seems to have been slightly left behind. I didn't realise we even had a skeptics in the pub group and it doesn't look like they ever got further than discussing possible venues (I realise I'm hardly in the best position to critisise them for letting an online project fizzle out but I doubt they've been stoned for as much of the past few months as I have)

I've contacted the creator of the group to try and poke some life back into it, if there's anyone still out there please join and help get it going.

Stewart Lee - Comedy God

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle #4 - Global Financial Crisis

11.14-16.34: 5 minutes and 20 seconds of the best set up and (extended) punchline you will see in a long, long time.

Oh, and did the estate agents sketch remind anyone else of Big Train?* (and I mean by more than just including the actor Kevin Eldon)

*My all time favourite sketch show.

Rock n Roll Recipe Requests

Alright, 'cakes wot I dun made for an indie-pop night' may have been a more accurate title, but who doesn't love a bit of alliteration. Anyway, Dunc from The Autumn Store asked for the recipes and after putting on another ace gig its the least I can do:

Maple Syrup and Pecan Cake
Easy one this as I nicked it from here on the bbc website in the first place. Only changes for my version are I use an 8" tin and it seems to take more like 35-40 minutes, plus I can't resist cutting it in half and filling it with blackcurrant jam, the slight sharpness complements the cake really well.

Coffee and Oat Cake
(apologies for the imperial measurements, this is a very old recipe I got from my mum and I can't be arsed to convert it)

cake:
6 oz porridge oats
9 oz butter/margarine
9 oz castor sugar
5 eggs
6 oz self-raising flour
3 teaspoons coffee essence*

Preheat oven to 190C/gas mark 5.

Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy

Add eggs one at a time with a little flour, then fold in remaining flour, oats and coffee essence

Pour mixture into greased 10" round tin and cook for 35-40 minutes.

Coffee Butter Icing:
2 oz butter
4 oz icing sugar
1 tbsp coffee essence*
2 oz good quality oats
1 tbsp milk/hot water (ignored in my version, see note on coffee essence)

Spread the oats on a baking tray and cook at 180C/gas mark 4 for a few minutes until lightly browned.

Cream the butter until soft and gradually beat in the sugar and liquids until soft and creamy (make sure if using my method for coffee essence that it has had a chance to cool first)

Spread icing thinly over the cake and sprinkle the oats over the top, pressing down gently to stop them all falling off the moment you pick up a slice.

*I have no idea what coffee essence is and have never spotted it in the baking section of a supermarket, so assuming its basically really strong coffee I fudge together a replacement by making a strong pot of coffee and then taking a few tablespoons of it and mixing it with as much instant coffee as it'll take into solution. I think I ended up adding about 2-3 tablespoons of it to the main cake recipe and the same again to the icing (but no additional liquid in the icing)

p.s. The gig was fantastic, Ace Bushy Striptease were particularly impressive and are the first local band I've seen since starting (and generally failing at) this whole blogging malarky who I can wholeheartedly recommend (David Leach doesn't count as he's no longer local, although he's still rather good)

Things I didn't know there were words for #1: Wyatting

As usual, Wikipedia explains:

"Wyatting"

Recently the verb "Wyatting", named obviously after Robert Wyatt, appeared in some blogs and music magazines to describe the practice of playing weird tracks on a pub jukebox to annoy the other pub goers. The name was coined by Carl Neville, a 36-year-old English teacher from London, because one of the favourite LPs for this effect is Dondestan.

I have got to try this...

The Star Wars Holiday Special

From wikipedia:

The second musical number is the song "Light the Sky on Fire", performed by Jefferson Starship, which is presented as a 3-D music video watched by one of the Imperial guards

So did the entire world know about this and just decide not to tell me? Bastards, the lot of you. Many thanks to Chicken Yoghurt for finally breaking the silence. To give anyone else who was being kept in the dark an idea of what you've been missing, here are a few comments I made to people on MSN as I was watching:

-THIS THING IS FUCKING WEIRD. THERE ARE ACROBATS
-a child wookie is watching a small holographic acrobat
-who is, incidentally, green.

-this has taken a dark, dark turn
-a geriatric wookie seems to be watching porn
-or possibly having it beamed directly into his head
-and now its turned into a song

(not me*) -What is this a variety performance or something?!
(me) - its a fucking mess is what it is
(not me) - WTF! I was distracted and now it's turned into a cartoon?!"

*This guy knew about it, but had never watched it. He got sucked in along with me to what must be the greatest example of car-crash TV ever made. Two hours long and terrible from start to finish but at the same time utterly impossible to stop watching. I'm surprised George Lucas has tried to bury it, if anything can make episode 1 look good this is it.

In Brief

Various things I almost posted about over the last few weeks before deciding I couldn't be arsed:

- The Shred Yr Face tour. 300+ miles travelling to make it to and from the two closest gigs to Brum (Manchester and Leeds) but it had to be done, how often does a tour come along with a decent headliner and two even better support bands, both coming from the U.S. and probably not back any time soon?

- Cloned Mammoths. Fuck yes!

- We are Beautiful, We are Doomed. Ok so its a good album/record/extended EP/bunch of songs/whatever else they want to call it this week and they had to fit in a fancy booklet, bonus DVD, mini poster and badges but did the box have to be quite so big? Surely most people like to keep CDs in some sort of order, which becomes a bit tricky when one of them refuses to fit on the shelf (I couldn't even slide it in above the others, did it really need to be the best part of an inch thick?)

- Jeffrey Lewis. Playing Brum in two days, yay. Got paid yesterday so I can afford to go to Island for post-work/pre-gig half price cocktails. Fuck going home and madly rushing to get back to town before the first band is on (Kategoes apparently on at 7.30, I'd never make it anyway)

- 9 Lessons & Carols for Godless People. Less than a month away! Now its on for 3 nights can I legitimately refer to having 'opening night, front row tickets' like a smug cunt?

- Andrew Gilligan. He appears to have fucked with the wrong blogger.

2008: The Year That Shitgaze Stole My Heart

Seriously: Shitgaze

The sobriquet "shitgaze" is an amalgamation of the name of another indie rock genre, shoegaze, of which shitgaze shares some common elements, and the word "shit", presumably because shitgaze recordings and performances regularly "push the needle in the red", i.e., they stretch the limits of their amplifiers to produce distorted sounds. In, other words, according to San Diego CityBeat, "it sounds shitty"

I already had more than half the albums listed so I ordered Magic Flowers Droned (which is a mess, but in a good way)

Not sure I agree with the name, can't really argue with the shit part but just what "common elements" does it have with shoegaze, except that they've decided to lump A Place To Bury Strangers in there despite them not really fitting. Times New Viking certainly don't deserve that, I was just listening to the Shred Yr Face tour 7" and I'm pretty sure that hidden under an ocean of noise TNV's contribution contains the best pop song of the year.

p.s. Yeah, long gap since the last post, been a bit depressed recently and not felt like it but Milk is Politics and Have You Ever Heard The Lovely Eggs? turned up in the post today and I ended up digging out a few other 7"s I'd bought this year* which has cheered me up enough for long enough to get this far.

*I'd forgotten how good The Boat Song/Temptation single is, David Holmes has some competition for single of the year after all...