Shredded...

Playlist
The Bad Plus - Prog
The Bad Plus – Pre-Prog (CD-R)
Sparks – Introducing Sparks
David Reilly – Anthology 1977-2007
Lemon Juice Quartet – Republic
Devo – Q:Are We Not Men A:We Are Devo
Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Christopher O’Riley – Live Downloads

Up unfeasibly early on this, the last day of my 49th year on Earth...

Commenced the day by adding even more free MP3s to The Crispycat Music Library for downloading...

Here's the latest from "Ersatzreal", "Lights Out"...

Then spent some time compiling a pre-“Prog” (their latest album) best of by The Bad Plus for our German chum Jorg, whose birthday it will be on Friday...



Off to the gym for my fourth visit this week - soundtracked this morning by the just created Bad Plus compilation ...

Thought of a better way to decide drawn football matches...

Why not make shots on target count for something – this would penalise negative play (as demonstrated by Glasgow Rangers the other night) – so, plus points might be shots on target, hitting the woodwork, winning corners, overall possession etc while negatives would be Red Cards, Yellow Cards, fouls committed etc – the stats could be totted up while play is going on and, through out the game, you’d be able to see who’d take the spoils in the event of a draw...

Just a thought...

Back home and a Sparks album arrived from Russia...



The two I await from an Edinburgh dealer are nowhere to be seen a full two weeks on from purchase – contacted them and they say the discs were posted the day after I bought them and that their record for rubbish service from Royal Mail for an Edinburgh delivery is three weeks to an address ten minutes walk from their warehouse...

Should be here on Tuesday they say – we’ll see...

What happened to the good old days when your first class mail was delivered the next day around 8 am? Now it’s two or three days and the postman doesn’t arrive till midday...

Anyway, “Introducing Sparks” is not the best Sparks album in the world but it’s better than I remembered...

Anne went off uptown and left me to my own devices – I ought to have been working but, after listening to Sparks and doing the dishes, I mucked about on the computer, starting to compile a list of hit albums from the 80’s, following last week’s “work” on the 70’s...

Also pulled the 40 or so 70’s albums not on the Jukebox with a view to uploading...

Anne returned with sandwiches for an enjoyable late lunch...

No footie of significance for us today although Anne was hoping of course that results would go against her arch rivals Hibernian to keep them out of Europe next year...

Queen of the South have no games between last Saturday and the Cup final on 24 May – Rangers have around 8 games in that period, including the UEFA Cup final...

The Bad Plus’ blog led me to Christopher O’Riley’s, as he recently performed covers of a couple of their tunes – I ended up downloading around 100 minutes of music from his site – great stuff – he’s released a couple of discs of Radiohead covers, one of which I have, don’t know if it’s jazz, classical or easy listening – well definitely not the last – but it’s all (mostly) solo piano music and it’s very good...



Recommended...

Whilst doing this, I realised I need to re-jig the Jukeboxes and have decided to combine Classical and Jazz on one of the 30GB boxes, leaving the other 30GB free for compilations. The "Rock & Pop" 60GB box will now only have original studio albums on board...

This is how I waste my time...

In the evening we were off out to meet up with Count Brodski and Lady Penelope over at Haymarket...

A drink at Cuba Norte firstly then down the road a block to Chinese eaterie, Chop Chop...



The food was superb – we followed the menu’s guidelines of one large and two small dishes per person and everyone just ate from any dish as they arrived...

Particularly good were the shredded potato salad and the North Chinese Shredded Beef...

Two bottles of tasty Rioja accompanied the proceedings...

A good couple of hours later we made our way over the road to a wee bar called Carter’s (judging from the paintings adorning the walls, it was named after the Michael Caine film “Get Carter”)....

Much to Anne’s chagrin, there were some musicians plying their trade – the rest of us were fine with it, but you may recall Anne’s reaction to singer-songwriters in bars from when we were on Arran at New Year...



We stayed till closing time at 1 am and headed for the taxis, the majority of our party (ok me and Alan) a little the worse for wear...

Arrived home and realised I’d left Alan & Penny’s present to me, including some tasty Kraftwerk and Sparks music, behind in the bar...

After some frantic scrabbling around trying to find the phone number, we got through and were advised the staff had found the package and I can pick it up tomorrow...

A good day...

Highlight of the Day : Birthday Bash with Alan and Penny