WOB'S WEDNESDAY WAFFLE #1

Band of Badgers Weekly....ish.

Due to the time constraints you hear (see?) me hark on about so much, I'm not able to publish the podcasts weekly or to complete everything I'd like to. Sponsors and job offers to do all this stuff on a more full time basis are still yet to come my way. I need to increase output. I need to be getting more out there. So, I'm aiming to do a little write up once each week, or more likely fortnightly at the very least. It will cover either new music I've come to throughout the week or over the weekend prior and any new stuff from other bands and artists already featured. Kind of a Band of Badgers Weekly Digest type thing. Unless it does become more a fortnightly thing in which case it will be a Band of Badgers Fortnightly Digest.

It is also so I can try to keep on top of it all. There is so much of it, that some bands I've contacted months ago now I still haven't managed to fit into a podcast. I will do of course but there is only so much room and I only have so much time. There it is again. A whine about time. Wow I even made a little rhyme. 'Shut up about sodding time!' I hear you all crying. Without much further ado. What the heck does that actually mean anyway? I know what it hints at but isn't it an odd turn of phrase? I may well have bought that one up before but there are giant holes in my memory thanks to being subjected to so much crap music when some of my office colleagues used to play radio 1 all day long.

Oh the trauma! I am still in therapy. It is touch and go whether I'll pull through yet but all this great new indie music is part of my treatment so I am getting there. I'm sure you don't need me to explain how I'd come home each night and the same infernal noise lingering inside my head would torture me all evening. Boom, boom, screech, scratch, bang, boom, boom, boom, boom, nonsense lyrics interlaced with more boom, boom, boom, screech, screech, screech, scream, boom!

How did I survive? Don't get me wrong here either. I'm not against certain types of trance or techno or the like (apart from Garage - my ears just will not permit any of it). I too have lived through clubbing days where I've danced from dusk til dawn (okay, more so my sorry excuse for dancing) on a hot summer's Gatecrasher night surrounded by an ocean of contemporaries who all feel as one being in tune with the music. Then comes the breakdown as everyone slows before the beat kicks off once more in a race to the end. In fact, in those younger days (which yes, still sat nicely alongside my growing fascination with the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Doors and Bob Dylan) I admit I rarely did do much of the dancing. Unless I was blotto as the saying goes. That does mean drunk, right? I do recall one night in the height of summer and actually at a Gatecrasher night in Birmingham, I danced like a crazy dancing fool. Apparently I danced quite well. That was always what stopped me you see. I was always too conscious of myself or what I looked like. Always believing I couldn't dance. But what is dancing exactly? Especially when people are all moving about to any kind of music. Isn't that all it is? Moving about to the music but making it appear to others that you have some kind of rhythm? Precisely. I didn't even drink that much on this particular night either. So what did my good friend at the time say of my new found dancing ability? Well, he was convinced I was on drugs. Typical. I honestly wasn't. I don't see the point in denying it if I had taken anything. I'm not ashamed. But I hadn't. I was rather annoyed at the time but looking back it makes me chuckle. I should have been in that movie, Human Traffic if my acting was that good. Then perhaps the badgers really would be playing banjos.

Oh dear. My penchant for digression seems to be seeping in. Don't worry. I won't be doing this too often. That said, this update can also be my area to vent or explain such things. Musical things for the most part and most certainly all things to do with music. That's the same thing isn't it? Oh dear, I best get on with it.

First off please do check out the single, Yr Not Alone from Cat Martino below. I was downloading the many albums and EPs I'd won from a competition run by Tom Morris (more on that in the next blogcast, but yes you read that correct, I won a competition, yey me) when Cat's bandcamp site with this link to the single popped up in the 'other artists you may be interested in' bit. Or something of the like. Seeing the name something in my mind made a loud chinging sound. It could have been a clink. Or even a ping. Anyway there was something that reminded me I'd come across the name before, if not the music. And sure enough Cat co-wrote Singing Sin City, with Robin Bennett of The Dreaming Spires. That's the opening track on Brothers in Brooklyn, the Spires' fantastic debut album which I really think should form part of your collection. It also featured on my walking to/from work soundtrack this evening, courtesy of my iPod shuffle. I believe another track Robin wrote called Cathie (Carry On) is loosely based on Cat too. Please don't quote me as such but I am almost pretty certain I read that. Anyway Yr Not Alone is a taster for a forthcoming full album which I have to admit now I've finally heard Cat, I am looking forward to hearing more. The single is just $1 so even less than £1 for anyone on this side of the pond (come on, I haven't said or typed that for some time now). Bargain! Go get!



If following this sensational taster, you are unable to wait for the new album then I kindly offer you the chance to check out her previous album, The Sea Closet (2009) below. This is available to buy. $8 for 10




While writing the majority of this post earlier this evening there was a bit of a summer rain shower. 'Summer?' I hear you gasp in shock. Yes we do have one in the UK. After a fashion, I guess. And yet we all still complain about how hot it is. How humid. How dry. That's just us Brits. It's like a third of us complain about pretty much everything all the time (always brings Everything All The Time, from The Dreaming Spires on to my mind radio - good times). Another third are so laid back they just take everything in their stride while the remaining third are a mix of both. There you go. Even some psychology of a nation in this post. I'm digressing again but please stick with me. There will be more music I promise. Anyway, I was typing away when I looked up out the front window to see a double rainbow. 'What's so exciting or wondrous about that?' You may well ask. To this I respond with the fact this double rainbow on 22/08/12 looks to be at roughly the exact same spatial coordinates as one I took a picture of on 18/08/2010. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, as fun as some of them can be when you really do start running with them. I don't believe it is due to some top secret government project testing the opening of interdimensional portals. Or creating doorways into a parallel universe. Or it being a time travel portal. As fun and interesting as all those things are I'm sure there is a regular scientific explanation.

That's it. Apologies the story didn't go anywhere else much. I too was hoping, nay I was actually preying I'd find a doorway into 1973, Madison Square Garden, New York. There I would be able to attend all three nights of Led Zeppelin's gig. To be honest I probably wouldn't return. I would be in so much awe I would lose all bodily and mental capacities. I would be stranded in 1973 and have to find my way back somehow. At least I wouldn't have to encounter the tosh that is trashy mindless, thoughtless pop these days. I try and steer as clear as possible but, you know, some seeps through here and there. Don't worry though, I do make sure I disinfect myself thoroughly when it does. I'll save my waffle about the return of The Crap Factor for the blogcast that will be up in a few days.



Ah. Watching this has bought forth a yearning to watch The Song Remains The Same again. It has been far too long. Years in fact which just isn't right. No wonder there are crazy interdimensional fluctuations occurring. You can guess what I'll be doing at some point over the coming bank holiday weekend. Yes as well as finishing off the mountain of writing I have to do. Including the Truck Festival review part II. I honestly haven't forgotten and can only use the excuse of time being a bitch. It may become a lame one but it is nevertheless very true. I also have to make sure I do the write ups I do, proper justice. If I don't then what's the point, right? Exactly. It will be very soon though I promise. As well as three more reviews plus the Bakewell Music Festival review. And another few albums after that. And more podcasts. I better stop listing here as it starts to make me dizzy. All good things. I am getting better organised.

Walk to Work Soundtrack Snapshot - being a peek at my iPod shuffle from this morning/evening.

Morning:

Fuel Up - Stornoway
Thou Art Loosed - Dry The River
Oxygen - Whitestar
Someone You'd Admire - Fleet Foxes
Mime To The Night - The Scholars
No Death - Or, the Whale
Immaculate - Shearwater
Clay & Ottie - Walsh & Pound
Ship - Andrew Page



Evening:

Silent Boulevard - Tom McRae
Glorious #1 - Remy Zero
If I Wanted Someone - Dawes
Look At The Stars (They're Really Out Tonight) - The Dreaming Spires
Get Over It - Guillemots
Walking to Hawaii - Tom McRae
Munich - Editors
Sleeper 1972 - Manchester Orchestra
Singing Sin City - The Dreaming Spires
White Blank Page - Mumford & Sons
Me, Myself & I - The Survival Code





Well I will leave it there for the moment or else this will turn into a Thursday post and not a Wednesday Waffle, meaning I'll have to come up with another name. Hope you enjoy what's here anyway and there'll be plenty more in due course.

Have a great weekend one and all and keep up to date as the podcast #7 will only be a few days away.

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