Had I heard about the drama, my landlady asked when I saw her last night. Since she’s not a big football fan, nor seems to be someone who is very worried about identidy theft, I thought it’d be safe to say I hadn’t. It turned out she had been in hospital over the weekend, suffering from pneumonia.

Now judging how to react in unexpected situations has never been a talent of mine, what made it worse in this case is that I didn’t know what pneumonia was. That is, from the way she told me, I became fairly convinced that I did know what it was in Dutch, and actually I had heard of the word pneumonia too, I just couldn’t link them. At least not in the split-second during which I had to decide how to react to the news. Should I react with a smile, telling her I’m happy she’s back home again and she’ll be fine in a couple of days? Or would moving my hands to my mounth and showing my most shocked facial expression be more appropriate?

I think my reaction, which was closer to the former, was taken to be the right one. Or perhaps she just didn’t notice. More importantly, since you asked, she seems to be doing alright now.

If you like shoegaze-y kind of indiepop –and it seems that some of you do– you might want to have a listen to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, from New York City, who would have been on Slumberland had it been 1992 still. Now it’s 2007 though, so they’re on Cloudberry, as one does these days, if one makes good music.

Because the band “don’t feel weird about people getting their music for free at all” here’s an mp3 of This Love is Fucking Right!, one of these rare cases when the f-word fits just right. A couple of other mp3s are available through the band’s website. It might also be worth noting that they’ll hop over to this Island here in February.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – This Love is Fucking Right!

And while we’re at it, fellow Americans Thee Yankee Dollar –which might be what you get if you lock a Spectorian girl group singer into her bedroom– have uploaded a couple of new songs to their website. They might not be as brilliant as The Day At Sandy Lake, but definitely worth a listen anyway; Ask Me Now is my favourite.

I have developed a facial expression to use during changeovers of my DJ sets. The expression is supposed to say ‘I had thought of such a brilliant change here, but due to being a few milliseconds late, it just didn’t sound as good as it could have sounded.’ Of course, it actually means that all my changes are random anyway and that this one turned out to be even worse than average.

To say that I wasn’t in the mood for DJ-ing is an understatement. We had a good evening though. After all, it’s always good to play some pop into the people; especially since somewhere else in the same venue, someone else was talking punk into them. Alistair played a couple of psych pop sets and I was thanking God for my current obsession with 60s girl groups, so I could play recent discoveries like The Plommons, The Cupons, The Four Pennies and Norma Jean. I played a set with more contemporary indiepop songs too, which might not have fit the theme of the evening very well, but at least it made Jello Biafra’s t-shirt seller come up to me and ask who did that Wham-cover.

Oh, and I of course couldn’t resist playing that Tullycraft song when all the punks came to the bar area during the break of Biafra’s performance.

Update These two songs were included in said indiepop playlist.

Tonight! At the Phoenix! In Exeter! From 8 to 11! For free!

With yours truly behind the desks, together with a fellow Devonian of equally low popularity. I haven’t really thought about what to play, but I’ve got a long train journey back to Devon to think about how playing only Lucksmiths-songs might fit under the psych pop moniker. Alternatively, I might just play a bunch of nice recent and less-recent tunes.

See you then.

So did I not listen to any music recently? In fact I did. I listened to this new The Lucksmiths compilation, Spring a Leak. And then I listened to it again. And again. And again. And after a while, when I knew all the songs by heart, but still wanted to hear more, I started digging through their back catalog.

And then I tried to grasp the essence of my current affair with the Lucksmiths in a blog post, which only resulted in a number of unfinished drafts still lying around here. Because it hardly has to do with the compilation itself, superb as it might be. It’s just that music has stopped being my way of being who I am or my way of making friends, but rather has become a way of taking me through the happy and sad times of my life. The Lucksmiths, who have managed to brilliantly catch this kind of everydayness into songs, are the ideal soundtrack for that. I kind of knew that already, I just needed to hear 45 songs –new tunes and ten year old ones, live versions and rare covers– of the bands music to realise it.

I had stopped having ‘best bands ever’ more than five years ago, but I’ve decided to undo that decision. Bands haven’t meant so much to me in a long while, if at all. The mere thought that there is a band like the Lucksmiths puts a smile on my face and makes me love life a little bit more.

Spring a Leak came out on Lost and Lonesome in the band’s home country Australia and on Matinée in the rest of the world. You might like to know that Bradley’s Almanac has put a full live show, as played in Cambridge, Massachusetts recently, online, while Nancy has some songs of a 2002 radio session. It was Nancy who had me sent this cd –in exchange for some football magazines– and she probably doesn’t know how happy she made me.

I’ve read a fair bit about history, but I’ve hardly read books that were set in the not-so-distant past. Say, from before my grandparents were born. I always assumed that I wouldn’t be able to relate to the characters so easily. Ronan Bennett’s Havoc, in Its Third Year proved me wrong. Set in Northern England in the 1630s, it makes you believe it was actually written in that time, while at the same time it seems so relevant to today’s world. The way in which people blame a general distress that has overtaken the country on an easy target group (the Catholics, in this case) makes it a must-read for readers of the Daily Express, if not everyone with the slightest interest in current affairs. At the same time, the struggle of main character John Brigge between issues that seem important to the world and issues that seem important to his personal life is written in a very credible way. If I look at bit sleepy today at work, then that’s because I really wanted needed to finish the book last night. But that’s what good books should do to you.

I went to Abingdon today. I’ve spent a lot of time in Abingdson in the past ten months, but almost always in a three-floor office building on the edge of the town, where every hour extra spent, means an hour less work to do at home. But now I’m spending the weekend here in Oxfordshire –you knew that, didn’t you?– and since a man has to eat –well, this one does– I thought I may was well combine a visit to Waitrose with a walk through town.

Abingdon is too small to be impressive, too big to have character and has a high street with only high street shops. Quite like Exmouth, actually. (I do like Exmouth and I do like Exmouth a lot, but that’s mostly because it’s in Devon. I don’t think I feel any strong connection to the town itself.) Abingdon does have one great shop though. It’s called Mostly Books and it seels, surprisingly, mostly books. These books are stored in wooded book cases and the shops really smells like books. They make even Waterstone’s –which I do like as a shop– smell like a supermarket. It really made you feel like you were in someone’s livingroom, rather than in WH High Street whose sole purpose sometimes seems to be to make you buy that new Wayne Rooney biography. It’s this kind of shops where a short visit makes you a little bit happier for the rest of the day. We should appreciate them more.

It’s a question that comes back to me every now and again: would I have been better off, say in the past ten years, had I lived the life of a recluse? I don’t mean a proper recluse, who lives on a mountain and eschews interpersonal contact altogether, but one that spends most of his time on his own. Thinking, reading, writing. Enjoying the quietness in his head. And not all that fuss that involves other people, whom I never really got anyway, but whom I spent so much energy on: trying to understand them and, mostly, trying to make them understand me in a way that I thought was the right way to be understood.

The question came to me again when I read the latest novel of J. M. Coetzee and started to develop a fascination with the man’s personal life. A scientist without being blinded by the Absolute Truth of Science; always the right points of view when it comes to politics (anti-apartheid, anti-Vietnam); a good writer too. (Which might be a personal opinion, but they don’t give the Nobel Prize to AN Other who can hold a pencil, do they now?). He also won the Booker Prize twice, but never went to England to pick up the award. And, it is said, he used to attend dinner parties of his former university, without uttering a single word. Hey, that’s me! Or, actually, that could have been me, had I been more talented. Not?

Of course, the answer to my question is: no. I shouldn’t have been a recluse. Firstly, because I lack the self-discipline that differentiates a recluse from a sad loner. I have been a sad loner at times, mind you, when I spent my days collecting records –and talking about them on the web– in a Hornby-ish way. Secondly, because I don’t think I’m modest and patient enough to not speak up when I don’t really have something to say; although it would be good if I possessed such qualities. And thirdly, and most importantly, because in the end I do like other people and their companion. I just find them complicated.

That is not to say, of course, that I couldn’t have done quite a few things differently in the past ten years. And that I could (and should) have least made a bigger effort at things too. But well, if I had, what thoughts would I have to keep me up at night?

Said book, by the way, is called Diary of a Bad Year and wasn’t published until very recently. I thought it was pretty good. If only because, to me, it asked the same question I asked above; and came up with the same answer as well.

Some people have posted some stupid crap different points of view about Los Campensinos! in the comments of this site. Most likely, that’s because they have a taste that’s rubbish weren’t at The Cavern last Wednesday. I was, and I can tell you: they were really good. I mean: if you have to wait for 75 minutes in a dark and noisy underground venue, where everyone seemed to be 20 (or younger), know each other (or were getting to know each other) and dressed up for Halloween (or just look naturally weird), while you were sitting on a chair, drinking beer because you felt like you had to, wearing your shirt because you came straight from work (and was longing for a bed) and feeling like you were 75 and then a band still manages to let you leave the venue being all happy (a feeling that lasts for at least two days), than the band must be brilliant. Full stop.

I think they’ll play Amsterdam this weekend. In case someone from that part of the world still reads this blog. Meanwhile, in Exeter, Pony Up! –girlpop Canadian style with nice sing-along lyrics that you sometimes wish you could avoid singing along to– will play said Cavern. It’s on Tuesday, which is when your calendar will say 6 November. I won’t be able to make it, though I wish I could.