Dag 774: The lunatic was on the gwarse

The mist was swirling through the woods, causing me to stumble and trip over a hidden root.

So, without further ado, let me introduce tonights very special guests.
We've got:
Sir Alan Sugar - I don't think much of your program so you're fired
Tamsin Greig - I like her a lot, she has been in some tip top top of the range comedies (and she was also in an episode of Jonathan Creek)
Ant and Dec - Weddy to Wumble
music will be by - Gorilaz, in the mist

Mr Woss started off by showing us what a top internet buff he is by telling us how he surfed right onto the web site of My Morrissey Smith (the no show from last weeks show) and found that someone had posted a message onto his site saying what a good interview Morrissey had done and how great the 2 songs he sung were.

All I can say is that if Mr Woss was such a good internet buff he would have found this site by now and would be posting a Wjeekly Bjork Bjiggler Rjeport on his blog each week.

So Alan Suger came on, said some stuff and went off again. I didn't pay too much attention as I am not much of a high flying businessman and I hate wearing a suit. See me in a suit and you know I'm wishing I was somewhere else.

I'm glad all that stuff is over because now it is Tamsin so I can start paying attention. I used to know a girl called Tamsin Eskdale and she borrowed a triple LP off me by Godley and Creme and never returned it. I can't remember what it was called but it featured Peter Cook and Dudley Moore doing some pretty funny stuff between songs. I wouldn't mind that back if you are reading this Tamsin. And while we're on the subject - please can I have my skateboard back Heather. In fact could all the girls I know please return all the stuff you have of mine? Thankyou.

While we are on the subject of Black Books, the other week I saw the end of a Bill Bailey live show and he did an impression of Kraftwerk doing a german version of the Hokey Kokey which I found really good.

I've hardly finished writing this up and Wossy boy is kicking her off. I've never seen a guest be on such a short time. I pressume it is because those high flyers Ant and Dec up next.

The puffs and the piano sang lets get ready to rumble as they came on so they obviously have the same sense of humour as me.

Wossy and teh 2 boys have waffled on now for about 3 times as long as Tamsin was on and I can't really remember much that has been said, but right now thay are talking about some new film that is out featuring Ant and Dec. The film is called alien autopsey or something and the clip of it showed that it included somebody who has been in an episode of Black Books, so it might actually end up having a few decent bits in it - maybe.

As the show draws to a close we are informed that there will be no Jonathan Ross show next week, that of course meens there will also be no Weekly Woss Weport, so I'd better try and come up with something else instead.

Now it is time for the Gorilaz and although the song sounds pretty good and the band are joined by a childrens choir and various other live instruments, the 4 members of the band seem a bit wooden in their performance.

So Weekly Woss may be over, but if you want to carry on watching some music you could watch Georgie fame on BBC2 or the Gorilaz in concert on Channel 4.

I think I'll watch channel 4 (but I should add that I would rather be watching a film of the Cocteau Twins in concert).

Dag 767: When Mamma was Woss

The watchlar stood in the fog, watching and waiting patiently. His tranquil eye caught site of a figure in the mist. Was that Bluebeard, with his rilkean heart, or had he just mistaken it for a Mizan? As the figure retreated into the background his gaze was drawn towards some frou-frou foxes frolicking in the midsummer fires beneath the pepper tree on the blue bell knoll.
It was nearly dawn and the sky turned pink orange red as the pearly dewdrops dropped. Throughout the dark months of april and may I would spend my time treasure hiding and I found that the thinner the air, the easier it was to bring a blush to the snow.

The watchlar had noticed that, with his treasure of glass candle grenades, the spanglemaker would travel by road river and rail to heaven or Las Vegas, while the moon waxed and wained in the gold dust rush.

The fifty fifty clown broke the silence of our angelhood with the sound of calfskin-smack.
"You should know who you are at every age" he said, "don't you know you have a Weekly Woss Weport to write".

He was right of course, so without further delay I put on my summerhead and began to pur.

The first bit of news is that Morrissey is a no show. The Radio Times said that last time he was on the wossy show he seemed very uncomfortable so they were a bit surprised he had agreed to go on it again, tough they did add that he had a new album to promote. I didn't catch who he had got instead, but it looked like some lady or other.

First up is Sir David Attenborough who is on TV at the moment with a new Planet Earth series. I have only watched a few clips of this so far, but I have been taping the series onto my hard disk recorder so I can put it on DVD and watch it in its entirety later. All the clips I have seen look brill and the use of Sigur rós as the background music adds to the atmospheere of the whole thing. The subject has somehow got onto religion and origins etc. Mr Attenborough is making some pretty good points in my opinion.

Now they are talking about global warming and stuff. My situation on that is that I have a smart car which is nice and green, but I also fly in a plane twice a week and today Leeds Bradford airport was fogbound so the plane I was in circled for around 45 minutes before heading off to Teeside thus negating all the savings my smart car had made in one fell swoop. I was offered a couch trip to Leeds Bradford airport so I asked if they could drop me off at Boroughbridge as the couch would go right past it, which would save me going all the way to LBA only to get a taxi bacl to my house (just outside Boroughbridge) only to be told "computer says no" - so I just got a taxi home from Teeside instead. It may have cost me £70 put it probably got me home at least 1 and a half hours earlier than I would have had I taken this couch. My taxi zoomed off while the other punters were still sorting out their luggage prior to boarding the coach.

Now it seem to be Charlotte Church's boyfriend being interviewed - maybe he is the Morrisey replacement. Mr Woss is basically taking the mikey out of him and talking in a Pakistani/Welsh accent. Once he got bored of doing that he spent the rest of the time going on about Charlotte Church. I think that teh guy being interviwed thought that wossy boy was a bit of a pratt.

Now it is Pink. When I was working in Germany we met a girl called pink in a mexican restaurant, but this one seems to be american. I like the german one better - though once she told us what her jack russel was called I warmed to her a bit more.
Now she is singing her new song and then suddenly the show was over - just as suddenly as it had started. The itchy glowblo blow worms had been suckling the mender and I just hadn't realised that Ella Megalast burls forever.

Maybe a trip in a kissed out red floatboat would make me feel multifoiled.

Dag 760: Heard, Duffy, Blatchford, Luxford, Rabie

I wasn't planning on doing a post tonight, but I've come to bed and while deciding what dvd I wanted to watch before dropping off into the eternal slumber of the neophite, I decided to see what was on TV. The answer is that some sort of common wealth games or something is on, and if the names in the title seem familiar to you, it is because you too are watching a group of women in very skimpy bathing costumes riding around on bicycles followed by some camera men on mopeds filming their bottoms. Each bottom has the name of its owner written just above it. Some of the bottoms don't have very much covering them at all. I didn't know this sort of thing was called sport.

Apart from watching women's butts I have also been to a few concerts of late and have a few more coming up. I have created a mysql database to store details of all my concerts in and will be adding these to it in due course, however, I still need to learn how to retrieve this data and display it on a web page. But once I learn how to do it there will be a top website featuring all the gigs I remember going to along with photos, thoughts, memories etc of the gig in question, appearing on an internet outlet near you.

Recent Gigs:
My latest Novel
St Judes Infirmary
The 55s
Goldfrapp
GoldFrapps support group - can't be botherd to find out who they were at the moment
Sigur Rós
Amina

Coming up:
The Australian Pink Floyd
Gary Numan

I should also like to add that these bathing costume clad women are now off their bikes and running along the road. Their bathing costumes are made out of very thin material and the cameras are now filming them from infront rather than behind.
Some of the girls are quite a long way behind the ones at the front.

The other thing that has taken up some of my time lately is http://www.myspace.com/. It took me 3 attempts to get mine set up with the right name etc and each time I deleted my incorrect account I have to wait a day or too before I could try setting it up again. I eventually got it up and running and found I already had one friend called Tom. It seems he is the sys admin or something and you automatically get him as a friend when you sign up. Although I was grateful that at least I didn't have zero friends, but it did cause me some stress too. What are you meant to do with Tom? Obviously, I don't know him in real life, so am I meant to keep him as a friend or is he some sort of demo friend that I should delete once you know what I am doing? Obviously, anybody visiting my profile will know that he isn't my real friend and would know I was really a saddo.

I felt a bit strange for a few days as I only had my sham friend and as far as I knew none of my real life friends had got a myspace account. But then I thought to myself, "Air must have one - I can't believe he hasn't got this far in life without having one". So I typed in a few possible myspace profile names, but they all belonged to other people. It looked like I was the only person I knew with a myspace account - which is a pretty lonely state to be in.

Some time later I saw a feature that will read you gmail address book in and allow you to send an email to each person telling them that if they don't set up a myspace account pretty soon and set me up as thier friend I will begin to look like a really sad individual indeed. During the import I got a message saying air already had a myspace account. I knew he wouldn't have let me down, it was just me not being able to do a proper seach that had failed me from finding him before. So, to send a friend request in ro Air was, with me, the work of a moment. Unfotunatley my imprt them bombed out so I never got to send my blanket email, but I now had the chance of getting a real friend to go with my token Tom friend.

Once I had sent the friend request out I was hooked and wanted more friends. So I sent one out to Sigur Rós too. I don't know any of them, but they already had 59958 friends so I hoped they might be able to squeeze little old me in there (and I would just sit at the back and not say very much).

I should add that I do not know the correct protocol for getting friends on mypace so I may well have done it all wrong, but as yet my request to them is still pending.

Meanwhile Adrian had come up with the goods and set up his own myspace account and put in a request to me.

So with that accepted I had 2 real friends, 1 pretend friend and a pending request with Sigur Rós. At this point I thought the right thing to do was sever my ties with Tom and go it alone. I felt very guilty removing him as a friend and I would just like to say no hard feelings were intended and I really enjoyed the time we were friends.

This brings us up to date. I have a myspace account with 2 friends and 7 people have viewed my profile and 5 people have listened to my songs. And, although Sigur Rós currently have 59958 friends I am not one of them.

So I still don't really know anything about the myspace etiquet, but for some reason I have a real desire to have more myspace friends. So if you know me or you are in one of the groups I really like - please be my myspace friend.

Dag 746 - Illusion makes me want you more.

It is exactly 1 month and 1 day since my last post around here. This is almost entirely due to the failure of Jonathan Ross to be on TV on Friday night anymore, which in turn means I have no weekly woss weport to write so I've been just watching TV downstairs and generally skiving.

So tonight things have changed. I'm in bed, I've got my new DVD on and when I've watched enough of it I will write a weekly woss style weport about it.

In the mean time I will fill you in on the important events since last we spoke.

I have recently come to the conclusion that I must be trying to go back in time to some seminal part in my life which seems to be around 1982 (which is when I was 18). This has manifested itself in me buying stuff that I had at that point in my life, and probably started about a year ago when I realised that I needed to buy an electric guitar and it had to be a Shergold because that is what I used to have. These guitars haven't been made for ages so it wasn't possible to get one straight away - it took me about 6 months to finally get my hands on one, so to keep me going while I was trying to find a decent Shergold I started buying music that I used to own at that time.

I thinks lists are pretty good so here is a list of what I have re-bought so far (I am still in the process of adding to this so I'll post an updated version at some future date):
Reproduction - Human league
The colour of spring - Talk Talk
Spirit of Eden - Talk Talk
154 - Wire
Real Life - Magazine
Play - Magazine
Some box set or other - magazine
Some double CD compilation CD or something (£2 from a church fete - mint and unplayed) - Simple Minds
Sulk - Associates
Seventeen seconds - The Cure
Unknown pleasures - Joy Division
Movement - New Order
Substance - New Order
Early - Scritti Politti
Blood - This Mortal Coil
I would have also re-bought all the Cocteau Twins albums on CD, but I already had them on CD so I just started listening to them again.

I'm sure there are some I've missed - and this includes the 2 CDs that were waiting for me when I arrived home tonight.

The first was The Scream by Siouxsie and the Banshees, whcih I had ordered earlier in the week from amazon, and the second was Y Su Conjunto by Senor Coconut, which I suspect must have been sent to me by Adrian. So, thankyou very much for that Adrian - I shall email a proper thankyou in due course.

So where were we up to?

Oh yes - I was listing things that I had bought that take me back to the late 70s/early 80s. My most recent must have aquisition was a Korg ms-10 synthersizer. I used to own one back then and not only can I not understand why I ever got rid of it, but I can't even remeber the circumstances involved with me getting rid of it. I have no idea when I sold it and I have no idea who bought it or how I even advertised its sale. Anyway my new vintage korg arrived about 3 weeks ago and its arrival enabled me to reform my 1980s synth band Strange Devotion and start recording new material.

All this pre-amble brings me to real subject mattter of this post. The DVD I am watching is called Made in Shefield and it has now finished so here is the One off Made in Sheffield Weport (which I shall write while watching the DVD extras):

There are 2 main reasons that I bought the DVD in the first place:
1) because I had reformed my 1980s synth combo and as this was all about synth music
2) it had some live footage of the Futurama Festival in Leeds which I had gone to. In fact I had managed to get myself in the first couple of rows so I secretly hoped I might even have managed to get myself caught on camera - though this didn't prove to be the case.

The last thing that struck me about this film is that it is very short. I was quite happily watching it and getting all nostalgic and getting back to my roots and all that and then suddenly it was all over.

The DVD is basically about the Sheffield scene from the late70s/early 80s and was therefore mainly about The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, Vice Versa, I'm So Hollow, ABC, Clock DVA and various other groups. For some reason this also included Pulp, but to me they are a much later generation, so I'm not quite sure why they were included here.

The film seemed to focus mainly on The Human League and Vice Versa/ABC in terms of the music played, but Chris Watson of cabaret Voltaire was also interviewed alot, but they didn't go into Caberet Voltaire as much as I would have liked.

This calls for another list, so here are the groups I have seen that were on the DVD:
Human League - 05/05/1979 - Leeds University (Supporting Magazine with Simple Minds) - I hadn't heard anything by the Human League before this, but I remember being really impressed by them.
Human League - date unknown - Some nightclub in Sheffield - 1st date of the Travelogue Tour - I managed to get there really early and got a place right at the front in the exact middle about 1 foot away from Phil Oakey
Human League - date unknonwn - Unity Hall Wakefield - last date of the Travalogue Tour (additional note: after the gig while I was back stage getting autographs of the band, Phil Oakey was out front chatting my Mum up, who had given us a lift there)
Caberet Voltaire - 30/12/1980 - Institute of contempory arts London
Heaven 17 - date unknown - Warehouse, Leeds - Not what I was expecting - they only did 3 or 4 songs and they were miming - they then sat down at the front in order to sign autographs - I wasn't impressed
Vice Versa - date unknown - venue unknown (most likely in Leeds - in fact it must have been the futurama) - really thought they were good
ABC - date unknown - Warehouse, Leeds - one of the first gigs after Vice Versa changed their name to ABC - I was hoping they would still be a synth band - they weren't - didn't like them at all
I'm So Hollow - 13/09/1980 - Futurama in Leeds - great concert, I'm So Hollow were one of the main reasons I went to the futurama in the first place

So, the DVD extras are still going strong and I am well and truly ensconsed in nostalgia city arizona.
I have to say that the whole DVD is great, but a particular poin of note was when I played the photo gallery section which goes with the song Genetic Warfaer by Vice Versa. I used to have this and had forgotten it even existed until just now. What a fantastic song that was.

I am the fly.

I love my wife.