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.