Is that all you care about?
Reading the Mambogoddess talking about how she'd worked a 45-hour week made me bark a hollow laugh, not at her but at my own memories of 45 hours seeming like a long week. Those days are long gone: I've done 41 hours in just THREE DAYS, including a 29-hour shift (during which, mercifully, I at least managed a couple of hours of sleep). Such masochism is, of course, lunacy, but before you rush to decry my lunacy, bear in mind that it's not just necessary for the safe-running of the hotel, but also our financial situation at the moment, between fundraising for holidays and debt clearing.
Obsessed with music again, in other news. Particulary the debut album from The Strange Death Of Liberal England, Forward March!. Here, we have a band named after a 1919 political essay whose climactic chorus references a 1930s novel, then wrap this in dense layers of post-rock guitar, xylophone and massed vocals. Barking, clearly, but there's a load of potential here and 'A Day, Another Day' (with the aforementioned "WE ARE BANDINI!" chorus) is the best song of the year so far.
Less good, but more commercially successful, is 'Umbrella' by Rihanna, which I finally listened to the other day, having lived through its 10-week reign of terror at the top of the UK Charts without hearing it once. While I don't share my wife's obsessive hatred of the song, I can't understand why it was Number One for so long: it's just a bland R&B ballad that The 411 or the Sugababes would leave as an album track. If Aaliyah couldn't get to Number One with stuff like this, how did Rihanna?
Finally, onto my own stuff- I'm finally recording new demos, on my own at the moment, with plans to draft others in further down the line. The first song recorded is the mythical 'Crossing (East-West)', the counter-song to the much-heard 'Crossing (North-South)'. I'm trying to get all the songs in my concept series (gulp) recorded: that way, at least they exist in a form outside my mind. I'm saying it now though: if I die before it's completed, please don't flesh out the demos with collaborations involving people I loathe (like Notorious BIG/Tupac), would hate the politics of (like Tupac/Elton John), or just happen to be dead as well (like Biggie/Bob Marley). I'd only come back and haunt you.
Lots of work this week, again. And Brighton, which should be fun. Woo!
Obsessed with music again, in other news. Particulary the debut album from The Strange Death Of Liberal England, Forward March!. Here, we have a band named after a 1919 political essay whose climactic chorus references a 1930s novel, then wrap this in dense layers of post-rock guitar, xylophone and massed vocals. Barking, clearly, but there's a load of potential here and 'A Day, Another Day' (with the aforementioned "WE ARE BANDINI!" chorus) is the best song of the year so far.
Less good, but more commercially successful, is 'Umbrella' by Rihanna, which I finally listened to the other day, having lived through its 10-week reign of terror at the top of the UK Charts without hearing it once. While I don't share my wife's obsessive hatred of the song, I can't understand why it was Number One for so long: it's just a bland R&B ballad that The 411 or the Sugababes would leave as an album track. If Aaliyah couldn't get to Number One with stuff like this, how did Rihanna?
Finally, onto my own stuff- I'm finally recording new demos, on my own at the moment, with plans to draft others in further down the line. The first song recorded is the mythical 'Crossing (East-West)', the counter-song to the much-heard 'Crossing (North-South)'. I'm trying to get all the songs in my concept series (gulp) recorded: that way, at least they exist in a form outside my mind. I'm saying it now though: if I die before it's completed, please don't flesh out the demos with collaborations involving people I loathe (like Notorious BIG/Tupac), would hate the politics of (like Tupac/Elton John), or just happen to be dead as well (like Biggie/Bob Marley). I'd only come back and haunt you.
Lots of work this week, again. And Brighton, which should be fun. Woo!