For the first time in history you can now go into a shop, browse through the CDs in it, and find one by FaceOmeter.

Admittedly it's only one shop, and if you're reading this you probably already have the CD that's there. BUT THIS DOESN'T MATTER. Why? Because Videosyncratic is a brilliant, brilliant place. It is a video ("dvd"?) rental shop which also sells graphic novels, comics, and local music.

Some of the lifeblood of Oxford's scene pumps through this place, so go and check it out. And hey, if you still don't have the album, hate digital media, live in Oxford and want to save on postage - an unlikely string of contingencies, I admit - then head down there!

Today is my first day off in quite a long while and I used my trip Videosyncratic to buy the latest installment of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't remember now if I've gone on and on about this on here before, but it really is terribly good you know. I am aware that as someone who owns seven graphic novels, four of which are by Alan Moore, my opinion is both valueless and cliché. BUT MY GOD I DON'T HALF LOVE THIS LEAGUE STUFF. Check out this picture if you don't believe me:


What else? A proper summary of the numerous bizarre and on-the-whole-excellent happenings of the last month would be almost impossible, so I resort to a scattergun bullet-point list of aides memoireses:

• Numerous sits on the Oxford tube, some more seminal than others.
• Alphebetising the entire horse section.
  
• The film 'Up' which, not to pump anything too much, is the best film of the last decade.
• A bizarre sequence of events involving cigarettes, the quadratic equation and a monkey-horse crossbreed.
• Putting maps on the wall, admiring them.
• Strawberry bullseyes from a garden centre.
• Genuine new song ideas, some even leading to words.
• A new hoover, fulfilling yet another dream.
  
• Delirious overuse of Pret.
• Fixing the Peug's radiator leak (we hope) and broken wing mirror (almost); dealing with the Peug's perennial fuel shortage.
• Being schooled in my new job by my infinitely superior 16-year-old colleague.
  
• U56 at sunset, complete with Capt. John Smith, Works.
• Posing inadvertantly for a range of different photo ID cards.
• Reacting to the fact that the first of my close friends to get engaged has got engaged.
• Basement Pizza.
  
• Discovering a Herschel telescope in the Oxford Museum of the History of Science.
• Discovering that the local Sainsbury's sells Thomas Hoe Stevenson's aged red leicester at the deli counter.
• Discovering that the 3 foot tall top hat made by Natalie out of card and paper to fit me also fits my in-development robot, The Optimist 08.
  
• Evenings in Witney with spiced nuts and posh crisps, incl. the 5p toll bridge.

Man, things are good.

So last night I got to hang out for some precious moments with an old friend of yours and mine...


Yes..! As this terrible photo indicates, MC Lars was at the roundhouse in London! I look tired because at this point I've been going since 8:30am (on stuff at least partly connected to Freud, incidentally) and I just missioned it up from the Strand after a seminar to see his show (which I missed).

I've become so busy in the few months since we toured together that it really was like having another life back for an hour. DJ, the failsafe boys, and Rob and George were also there, and all deserve honouring on this blog. The whole thing was a fabulous reminder of the good people and times that are out there for those prepared to seek them!

I look forward to Lars's next visit, when, I assume, we will build a house entirely of breadsticks and live in harmony in the woods. PEACE YO

Yes, I know. I'm a terrible correspondant. I have two jobs and am doing a full time degree.

But I want you to know that I'm still taxing musical things at every moment possible. Prove it, you say? Well how about this sodding jam I did with Triple Rosie last weekend? I wrote the lyrics on the shitter because I'm punk rock.

Consequential FaceOmeter news soon, I promise.

Housemate and musical ally Roxanne "Muh muhmuh muh muuh" Brennan departs tomorrow (today) for New York, city of dreams. You may recall that I once did that, with slightly less than dreamy results. But Roxy will have a much better time than me - for many reasons, but mostly because she's a lot better than I am at music.

Those in doubt - she's meeting up with ally Chris to re-form The World is Not Flat, a group who I've ranted about before and with good reason. They're playing shows all over the north-eastern USA, and I strongly recommend watching their myspace for details and hopefully some new tunes at some point!

Back in Blighty, Catweazle is 15 on Thursday. FIFTEEN. When Catweazle began, I was in PRIMARY SCHOOL. They are celebrating with "Hatweazle" - a night where you have to wear a great hat, and where you must play new material. I have plans for both contingencies, and I very much hope to see you there.

Edit: Matt Sage provides a brilliant interview about Catweazle twenty-ish minutes into this show on BBC Oxford!

This blog is proving a most imperfect chronicle of current times - things are so busy and so many that any accurate reportage is kinda falling by the wayside. I will try to stick something proper on here in due course, but meanwhile here's a picture kindly sent in by Wes of Colchester. It's from the tour I did with MC Lars earlier this year - you can tell this because the stage is really well lit and the photo looks positively professional...


Thanks to Wes and all at Street Team Promotions. Proper update later...

That's the West Country, for the uninitiated (Eddie "RIP North Bridge" Coate taught me the hand gesture) - although interestingly, the other WC was heavily involved in the events of this weekend by virtue of last night's somewhat stonking curry. Enjoyed with former housemate "Geoffrey the Beffrey", this particular Spice Magic return transported me to new levels of joy, pain and toilet - levels which continue even now, some 24 hours later.

But let's back up - this was a trip to Exeter, to a music festival at the Double Locks pub. It wasn't something I was looking forward to. I've done a lot of travelling lately, I'm not feeling great about my live material (FaceOmeter is now officially on haitus pending new songs), I had no particular personal investment in the gig, there's a lot of other more mundane stuff happening to me right now, the previous evening had been pretty shit, and so forth. The day dawned grey with flecks of autumnal rain and the walk to the train station in Oxford proved dispiriting, with insufficient time to procure a sandwich before boarding.

But clearly I still have not learned the teachings of Five Figs Down. The party isn't over until the vibe says so. After two days of river walks, cosy mill visits, video games, dogs, the moon, food, drink and good people, I am returned re-energised for the coming days. A guy on Queen St wanted a high five from me, and didn't get one. An incredibly drunk middle-aged woman wanted me to dance to a brilliant Dad Rock band playing Rolling Stones covers, and may have been marginally more successful (she then pretended to go down on me before throwing up and passing out, and I wish I could say that that was the most alarming thing that's happened to me lately). Geoff and I pissed in a river, the Let's Do café was visited, and I was gloriously reunited in Exwick Mill itself with Jess "Buttercup" Maidment and a piano.

The technical burps were the return journey (Sunday, trains, Britain, don't, not ever) and the PA (adminstered with enthusiasm if not ability by a man who certainly wasn't called Jarvis). I solved the first by learning lots about the scientist and musician William Herschel (1738-1822) and the second by playing unamplified whilst standing on a table in the pub beer garden, depicted (by Geoff's iPhone, la de da), thus:


Google Earth is the first thing I've seen that's made me want an iPhone, by the way. But for it to really convince me, the screen is going to need to be twice as big.

The BBC just let me know that they broadcast 'The Irritating Maze' on Radio Oxford last week. I'd sent them 3 tracks and included the maze in a sort of desperate 'why not' moment - knowing that all 8 weird minutes of it have been played on BBC radio, even if only locally, is a really good feeling for me.

I'm described as "a bit mad, but pretty awesome", which will do.

You can hear the show in question here, although only for one more day as of today unfortunately. Naturally, the song can also be heard if you download from iTunes &c. or pop over to the myspace page.

(Or if you want the keepsies subscribe to the BBC Oxford Introducing Podcast)

edit: for graphic footage of my jumper, check out this gem from the Introducing archives...

So Hullavington happened again a week ago. Regular readers will recall that in my post on Harfest 2008 I refused to chronologise events, but rather reported them in a scatter-gun way which was intended to sweeten the memories when I came to read them again a year later. This worked so well that I have decided to do it this year as well...

• An african drumming workshop in a beer garden, AGAIN
• Scrambled Eggs with Michael Graves, AGAIN
• Being paid for jamming... in jam. AND WHISKEY MARMALADE.
  
• Stadium-level cheer for the duck song.
• The Return of The Reclining Chair Which You Had Brilliantly Forgotten Was A Reclining Chair (my film adaptation of this event will be in all good cinemas next month).
  
• Tamsin's miracle conjuration of Dandelion & Burdock at the perfect moment.
• Foot-smelling session with Pip.
  
• Being really, creepily tired under blue skies and watching children do sooty and sweep, with a trace of concern...
• Humiliating Santana gavotte in front of entire village (can you believe I don't drink).
  
• The world's sluttiest cat.
• Michael Graves, standing before us in the living room, reads dramatically from his own writings in the Peter Warlock newsletter (subject: a re-enactment of the great man's conception).
  
• Pip/Tamsin's ultra-ridiculous Paris hip-hop night to Michael Graves Band no sleep boneless, compounded by, in Tamsin's case, forcing me to watch a 50s French film in which a woman with hair walks around town going "Julienne...!" a lot, and staying awake for nearly half of it.
• Mindbending discovery of key childhood books.
  
• Inspiring kids with talk about how money isn't everything.
• The world's lowest shower.
  
• T-SHIRTS. (see picture)

I will never hear a glider swoop troublingly low over my head again without the slightly eerie sound evoking the pastoral memories of [cont. p94]

Following my recent activities in Hullavington and Goring (Hullavington post en route pending reciept of key photographic image), it's satisfying to get back to Oxford and find this sentence in a review of the album: "It’s like a provincial amateur dramatics production composed after the village hall tea urn was spiked with magic mushrooms".

I'm not sure if Nightshift mean this as a complement, but I'm certainly taking it as one. For those who can't be bothered to read the thing (click here and go to page 6), it turns out I'm a bit of a Jeff Lewis-a-like and annoyingly clever, but that Stuffed Animals is good. They don't like Shaking Sabres, but they do like The Irritating Maze.

In particular I draw your attention to their description of that track as "a mythical underground maze that defeats all but a geeky IT guy". This sentence made me really happy because the maze is never described in the song as being underground, which means that there's at least an extent to which the reviewer's own imaginings of what an irritating maze would be like have been stimulated. This is exactly what I wanted to achieve with that track, so I'm over the moon with the review.

And not just any car...

6:14 At precisely the arranged time, the Peug and I deploy ourselves to Oxford railway station's short term car park. Roxanne "The Mountain Parade" "The World is Not Flat!" "Theearlyyears" "Brimstone Moth" Brennan is already waiting. Our other main guest, however, despite requesting an incredibly specific time, is nowhere in sight...
6:17 Sam "Sam Taplin" Taplin turns out to have been standing in a different part of the station, accompanied by Ed "No detectable web presence but check out this video" Pope, who we had hardly dared hope would join us.
6:20 We pile into the Peug. Our mission: travel to the Oxfordshire border town of Goring so that Sam can play the world famous Goring Unplugged night in the village hall. Sam had previously been intent on going alone on the train but we were like NOOOO
6:37 A34 conversations about eg. a rather pleasing line of poplar trees almost as french as the Peug itself.
6:42 Potential hilarity as accidental wrong exit takes us seamlessly back onto the exact same road; road atlas passed hurriedly around the back seat; consensus that satnav can go fuck itself.
6:50-7:10 Unbelievably pastoral country drive - weather perfect - during which the first of many animals attempts to end it all on my front bumper (see below).
7:12 Pulling into Goring, via the adjacent village of Streatley. Both are "-on-thames"; that mighty river, noticeably wider than up at Oxford, divides them as indeed it divides the counties of W. Berks. and Oxon. Presumably there is some kind of endearing bitter rivalry betweeen them that would make a smashing film.
7:14 I repeatedly trouser parking, incl. trying to pull into a driveway that doesn't exist. Ed, who has never driven ("I don't know the rules") indicates the absolutely enormous and perfectly-situated parking space which I have repeatedly missed.
7:16 We stroll across the bridge to Streatley, admiring the lock. Picturesqueness abounds, and we collapse upon the necessity of a riverside drink.
7:21 The only place for such a drink is a weird family hotel licensed for civil marriages. In a bizarre series of corridors and events ("We're in the shining" - Roxy), we emerge blinking into one of those 70s "new" pubs with the green carpet and the walls - you know the kind I mean. It's fawlty towers, basically.
7:25 Whilst the others deal with a barman who is actually called Manuel, I sit by the river and thumb through my moleskine, which I've recently learned is pronounced "Mol Eh Skinny"
7:35 At the outdoor table, Ed Pope fills us with trivia about the pubs near our house (1. The Duke of Monmouth is where his parents had their honeymoon; 2. The Crooked pot was the first pub in Berkshire).
7:40 Sam departs for a soundcheck (on an unamplified piano?!). We sit another moment and then stroll back across the bridge in the manner of Reservoir Dogs.
7:45 Joyously reunited with Sam on the other side of the bridge, we cruise Goring in search of foodstuffs. The idea is tabled by one of us (okay, it was me), that we should put on balaclavas and run around spraypainting umlauts on every 'o' on every sign in the village.
7:50 The search for food having gone badly (yet the whole town comprehensively explored in 5 minutes), Roxy's uncanny instincts lead us down an alley we would never have noticed into one of those 70s/80s archades which contains a chinese called (get ready for this) 'Chef King'. We immediately order, pop to the offy, return, collect food, collect forks, and head on out.
8:15 Sitting in the Peug, noshing down the Chinese, listening to Django Reinhardt. Life is good.
8:30 We venture into the village hall (sign outside: "Goring Unplugged: HEAR tonight") and struggle to find seats amongst the crowded tables. The hall is an old school one (that's "old school", not "old, school") with seating on the stage and a new stage set up for artists down on the floor... MUCH LIKE HULLAVINGTON (see the next post on this blog, which will be about events that haven't happened yet. Ah, the meta digital space).
8:35 Sam, Ed and I combine our powers to make the best group urinal line ever. MALE BONDING.
8:50 Sam and I crack some funnies together in the interval and start absolutely shitting it. It's pointless for me to try and recapture the giggles now (it all started with me saying "you're going to hit this crowd like a curry") but we are literally physically incapable for about ten minutes.
9:10 The second half begins and Sam and I are immediately incapable again. We go into the toilets together to iron out the laughs, at which point Sam says "okay, we can't sit together until I've been on stage".
9:45 I hold my breath as Sam takes to the stage.
9:46-10:01 Sam totally nukes Goring and is asked back for an encore.
10:30 After quite enjoying the final act, Sam gives out some CDs and we diminish and go into the, uh, north.
10:31-50 A misguided attempt to explain to the others what we were laughing about leads Sam and I to start cacking it again, in what is the most resumable laugh I have ever experienced. There are probably a total of about six seconds here where I'm driving with my eyes shut; at least one eye is closed due to uncontrollable mirth. Ed Pope attempts to defuse laughter by saying loads of the most boring things he can imagine; this makes us laugh more. Beautiful solitary night-drive single track country road factos do not past unnoticed despite all of this. Sam says "I'm really pissed" about once every four minutes.
10:51-11:03 On at A34 again, we have a powerful talk about the nature of songwriting. Is there such a thing as "good"? How often should you repeat a song live? What's the best way of writing? OH, SO DEEP.
11:05 Tea at the Abingdon Road house. Ed Pope reunited with his marrow briefly. Earlgreylavendar and leftover chinese eaten down, with bagels for Ed and Sam. Sam overheard speaking french for the first time (by me, that is. He didn't just suddenly break into fluency to his own surprise).
11:20 I lift the two guests back to the station. There were better places to drop them off, but we all decide that we're too into the circular thingy. "This is where I came in", chuckles Ed, dismounting from the car. I slow down long enough to shout "THEY CALL ME 'BITCH'" from the other side of the car park to their retreating forms.

Animals which ran in front of the Peug, nearly killing themselves because of their presumable disbelief that any car could be so cool:

• Fox
• Cat
• Rabbits (3)
• Deer (young; supple)