The great Warren Zevon at his macabre best. Other bleak classics from the same 1978 album include Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner and the title track Excitable Boy. Co-produced by Jackson Browne of all people, it also featured James Taylor sidekicks Leland Sklar, Danny Kortchmar and Russ Kunkel. Though as it happens Mick Fleetwood was the guest drummer on this track, which could (at the time of writing this) be heard below courtesy of the late lamented Grooveshark.
The marvellous Grooveshark used to let you embed pretty much anything from Bach to The Beatles pretty much anywhere you want, for free. Predictably the RIAA and BPI stomped all over them with lawyers and injunctions, and the service is now defunct. Comparitech have compiled a list of all the available, legal successors here: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/grooveshark-limewire-alternatives
Enjoy them while they last… Meanwhile at least Warren Zevon’s Werewolves can be heard and seen on YouTube:
Described by The Urban Dictionary as “The act of playing music through the speaker on a mobile phone, usually on public transport. Commonly practised by young people wearing polyester, branded sportswear with dubious musical taste”
Quotes taken from BBC News Magazine dated 14 June 2011 [read full article]
“…I don’t think it is intrinsically anti-social, what I would say is that it is a fascinating human phenomenon of marking social territory,” says Dr Harry Witchel, author of You Are What You Hear. “With young people, usually loud music corresponds very strongly to owning the space. They are creating a social environment which is suitable for them and their social peers…. There is no excuse for why you would want to listen to tinny music, except if you were establishing territory. It just sounds rubbish. It must sound rubbish to them.”
A group of schoolchildren on the 277 bus in Hackney, East London, don’t all think that what they are doing is wrong. “I wouldn’t agree that it was anti-social,” says one. A second agrees that the bus would be dull without a little bit of music. “Fair enough, it might be anti-social but the bus is always quiet,” she says. “You need something to listen to, right? We give you something to listen to.”
“I don’t think the sodcasters are being selfish at all,” says Dmitry Fedotov, of the Youth Association. “I think if young people see sound as preferable to no sound then, if anything, they’re going to be thinking they’re doing people a favour.”
From The Guardian 6th June 2011:
“If the internet gave free back rubs, people would complain when it stopped because its thumbs were sore…” Spotify’s problem is that no one wants to pay for anything they access via a computer… [read more]
In case you haven’t seen this, The Guardian reports: “Féilim Mac An Iomaire, who erected an advertising hoarding on the busy Merrion Road in south Dublin in an attempt to find a job, has said he has been overwhelmed by the response.”
Brilliant, just brilliant. Stil no job, mind you: check out Féilim’s Jobless Paddy page on Facebook.
“The Scunthorpe problem occurs when a spam filter or search engine blocks e-mails or search results because their text contains a string of letters that are shared with an obscene word. While computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, broad blocking rules may result in false positives, causing innocent phrases to be blocked…”
Opened my eyes around 06:50 a sunny May morning, wife’s turn to make the tea downstairs. Idly flicking through Tweetdeck on my iPod, found that the Not For Resale blog had posted ten minutes of dawn chorus recorded in Patcham Village at 04:15 the same morning. A tweet to wake up to…
Drove to our local IKEA in Croydon with Wife and Child K, leaving Child A back home tidying his room and writing computer code. He did however ask us to buy him two cushions for his room, so I snapped a selection of covers and emailed them back for him to choose. Curiously enough he didn’t like this eyecatching retro 60s pattern, but it certainly made me feel all nostalgic.
IKEA furniture names have the power of making grown men in their 60s come over all Beavis & Butthead and snigger inanely at the weakest innuendo. It isn’t big, it isn’t clever. But it can’t be helped – this still struck me as funny enough to photograph.
![Patcham Village](="http://cockerel.net/assets/patcham.jpg)
