Yay...

She'll be back in the morning, I'm happy and excited....
Just a few more hours... (And I'll be sleeping for most of those...)

yay

It's Hot....

It's hot.... Too hot to do anything other than sit on my bed between the fan and the open window...

So, here's a picture of my niece, Lydia, a few months ago...

She Wants Revenge...

Guess who I'm going to see tonight.. (I'm really excited, as per usual...)

Have you guessed..?

Well, on the way into work this morning, I picked up a copy of the free 'Metro' newspaper and did what I usually do. I jumped to the cartoons page & read Nemi (which this morning was not particularly interesting..) Then I read Sunny’s & my horoscopes, which if truth be told would have been better off unread, so I'll gloss over those..

The next port of call is (and was) the 'Life' section, just to see if I have missed out on knowing about a rare gem of a gig.

Cardiff -based electro pop punksters 'The Automatic' are playing at the Academy tonight, so (in my mind, I’m sure they are very good, etc etc…) Nothing too much was missed. It's also sold out, so even if they were a band in my radar I would have been left wanting or touted...

So, I continue reading and flip onto the next page and there is anther gig listed, I check the name and nope it's no-one I have ever heard of. Not to let that stop me I continue to read "LA duo... blah blah... unflappable self confidence... etc etc.... " Nothing really of interest, then "Both with impressive hip-hop CVs (vocalist Justin Warfield...” and suddenly it hits me.. Justin Warfield, THE Justin Warfield....

I appreciate that he might not mean much to you, but I love Justin Warfield, or to be specific I love ‘The Tao of the One Inch Punch’ an album he put out about ten years ago, it ranks in one of my top ten albums of all time. Yay yay... (It was my birthday in 96 or 97 when we went to see the Sneaker Pimps at the Leadmill in Sheffield I was blown away by ‘One Inch Punch’ in support. Not for last, time I found myself to be the first one bounding energetically onto the dance floor.. When I spoke to Justin a little after that show and he complimented my dancing, nice bloke...)

I have tried to find out what happened to Justin Warfield for a few years now, I even wrote a letter to Q's where they are now, but as he's never been the biggest artist in the world I heard nothing back. (I guess that many people might have only heard of him either through being the 'Bug Powder Dust' guy or due to his track ‘Pretty Piece of Flesh’ being featured, as the first piece of music, in Baz Lurman’s wonderful Romeo & Juliet.)

So to just happen across the fact that he is playing in my town tonight is really rather exciting…

I carried on reading the article.. (The bands name is “She Wants Revenge” by the way)… And it turns out that “When they formed SWR in 2003 their intention was to produce hip hop. Quite how they ended up with the above-average synth pop/post punk of their debut LP, then, is anybody’s guess” Yay… “Warfield’s flat-yet dramatic vocals are cut from very similar cloth to Interpol’s Paul Banks, while their rumbling, monochrome musical move are unmistakably from the Bauhaus/Joy Division/early New Order school of synth-mopery…. More panache and with…” etc etc… It all sounds better and better.

Joaquin Phoenix directed their video too which (I don’t know why, but) impresses me…

So a quick trip to myspace reveals that even though they are a million miles from the fucked up fuzzy guitar hip-hop splendour of One Inch Punch (or the preceding Garage-Rock/Indie-Pop ‘Supernaut’ & Psychedelic Hip-hop ‘Field Trip to Planet 9’ albums..) the three track myspace offer have that Justin Warfield spark. A spark he seems to bring to everything I have heard his involvement in… Each albums shifts genres and he makes music which is just off kilter for each of those several different genres (and all genres that I like), and by being just off I mean more interesting, new twists on great ideas… The facts he has is making dark, dense, intense music at the same time as I am re-enjoying dark, dense, intense music again makes me happy..

Listen to tasters from the CD (which comes out next week for £9.99 or you could buy it on import now for £8.99) on Amazon

In just over three hours I will hopefully be standing watching and having a bit of dance to what I hope will become another of my firm favourites…

Pressing Buttons while Listening to Music...

I’m sitting here wishing I was far away… My life seems to have slowed to a stop, which is getting really rather irritating. I’m still waiting for my immigration papers to go through, we did know this was going to be a long process but didn’t really figure in the separation multiplyer…

If we were together the time would be flying, but we are apart & it is horrible…

I should really be doing practical things, I should be preparing, but without an end date in sight it’s hard to do. So instead I’m treading water, waiting & wishing my days to pass as quickly as possible. I find myself increasingly unable to do anything constructive…

We had open eyes at the beginning of this and open eyes now, these things take time & there is no use worrying about it… Yet, last June we thought we may be lucky & make it back to Seattle by Christmas 2005, but now it’s looking like we might be lucky to be there for Christmas 2006…

(But when we consider everything, we were lucky to meet each other all those years ago, we were lucky to find each other again after a number of years had passed & we are lucky to have each other now.)

So to continue thinking on the positive side, Sunny’s employers are amazing, and didn’t flutter when she requested another couple of months of remote working. (A few thousand miles and 8 hours time difference remote… Why can’t all employers be this good..)

Only 18 days till we’re together for a couple of months (which with fingers crossed might mean that I’m nearly, almost, soon going to be heading to the embassy for an interview…) I can’t stop thinking of just how happy we are when we are together, how everything is brighter, more interesting, happier, funnier, better… And how it’s going to be back to good so soon (if only for a temporarily-temporary time… Thinking positively, with good fortune and early interview dates maybe there is even a chance that we might be going home together in October… )

While sitting here I'm passing time by eating a box of tiny melon flavoured chocolate cone things from Japan & listening to ‘Introducing…’ by Hello Saferide. Hello Saferide are great, lots of happy, fun bitter-twistedness… So, thanks lots to milk-milk lemonade for the heads up.

I’m not sure if some of the songs are making me feel a little more melancholic or whether they are making me enjoy the melancholia… The latter I think… Sadly the pretty songs have killed my plans for this evening. Winnebago Deal are in Brum tonight, and I was supposed to be going to see them (having really enjoyed them in the guise of the Mondo Generator music boys a few weeks ago). But the last thing I need right now is rambunctious noise, even though I’m sure it would be very nice noise...

So tonight I will stay in and save my dancing up for Thursday night in Stourbridge, when I will once again be grooving along to The Wonder Stuff. The best band in the world. I’m hoping that Dharma Drive (or at Least Matt & Suzy) will be providing support, but nothing seems to be mentioned anywhere I guess that’s looking less likely..

(I ordered the ‘Hello Saferide’ CDs from Here on and Thursday they got from Sweden to the UK by Monday, can’t say fairer than that.. So if you have a listen to the tracks on their site why not make a purchase…)

Not really sure I have too much to say, but just wanted to have a little yabber, I should yabber more often. But the yabber is over for now…