Would you beilieve it’s almost 2 months since I actually sat down here, and wrote about what’s going on in my life? the rest of the postings have been “recaps”, “best ofs”, or posts which I’d written well in advance, and then set the publish timer to look like I’ve actually been giving time to this site. Crafty old me. Oh yes, and I installed an automatic Twitter thing, which in hindsight was a stupid idea, and I probably should disable it.

Anyway, I have been, and still am, incredibly busy with stuff, which is one of the reasons I’ve not been updating this, plus I’ve had writers block up to the eyeballs. My “drafts” folder is, as usual, full of little snippets of posts I started, then never finished.

Music is one of the things which has been seriously influencing the past couple of months, especially an 8-second clip of a Kraftwerk song.

I was at work about six months ago. Ian, who sits behind me, had a bit of a “Kraftwek” night, and was playing some of their tunes. An 8 second piece of music got stuck in my head. It had been used as a sample in another song, and could I hell remember which song it was. I later found that the song he was playing was “The Robots”, but even after an extensive interwebs search, I couldn’t find out where else I’d heard it. I knew it was in a song from the 1990s.

Off to #speccy, nope, nobody had heard it there, not even Marko who is normally good at this type of stuff. I uploaded it to my phone, and played it to everyone I knew, in the vain hope that it would jog the memory. I even set it as my ringtone, thinking that if someone rang me, and I heard it out of the blue, I’d pick up on it straight away.

Sadly not. I joked to Chris (who also didn’t know it) about me hearing it when I least expect it, totally out of the blue.

That was months ago, fast forward to yesterday. After looking for a few things, I happened to spy my old video recorder in a box. It hadn’t been used for about 6 years, not since my TV card died. I hooked it up to the telly downstairs, and played some old tapes with the intention of transferring them to DVD. There was one particular tape I was after saving. A non-descript looking tape, with a ripped label. Amongst hours of me playing in the garden as a kid, with our old black and white camera, was the very last edition of “Northern Life”. Halfway through, they had an “outtake reel”, with music dubbed over it.

The track was a song I liked, instantly recognisable to me anyway. All of a sudden, 32 seconds into it, there it was. THAT BLOODY KRAFTWERK SAMPLE! I was delighted. And unsurprised that my prediction was right.

The Kraftwerk tune was “The Robots, and the sing I remembered was “I Can’t Stand It by Twenty 4 Seven. Chris shuld be bitterly disappointed that he didn’t get it, but then he doesn’t read here anymore!

Speaking of which, it was Wayne’s 30th the other day. I sent him an email, but it looks as if he’s gone AWOL again.

Technorati Tags: kraftwerk, Music, northern life, twenty 4 seven, tyne tees, videotape

I can’t believe I’ve not done one of those for previous years, but I thought I’d look back and highlight what I think has been the best songs of 2009.

And, there really aren’t that many. Maybe it’s due to me getting old. I don’t know. Either way.

1. Hockey – A Song Away

Embedding’s disabled, so you’ll need to click here to hear it.

“I wanna write a truthful song over an 80s groove”. And you do it very well too, whoever you are. The whole song reminds me of the Travelling Wilburys. First heard somewhere on the outskirts of Harrogate, on Radio 2.

2. Frankmusik – Confusion Girl

Wahey, I can embed this one…

A great song. Bonus points for the inclusion of…. erm, that ‘bewer’ whose name escapes me, the 80s style mobile phone, pink wheely bins (!) and infinitely shite “special effects”. The guy singing it looks like a pigeon.

Unfortunately, the first time I heard this song, I was in the less glamorous location of the Asda car park. This was obviously before the incident.

3. David Guetta / Kelly Rowland – When Love Takes Over

I like it, even though it has a very Coldplay-esque intro.

I’m now going to sit in a darkened room for the next three hours, and see if I can actually think of any others that entice my ageing eardrums like the afore mentioned trio. Probably not.

Technorati Tags: 2009, Music, records, singles, songs I like, tunes

You know, it’s just been a crap few days, and October’s always a shit month, so I’ll probably not be blogging much in the near future. Yes, even less than usual!

The past few months at work have been OK, but it’s now the silly period, and it’s even sillier than usual. I could go into details, but as the Facebook Grass (the “person” who grasses up lowly employees to the higher management should they even breathe a word of truth about our place of employment) is doing his/her thing again, I’ll just say one thing. “LOL”.

Mind you, I don’t think many people at work actually read this site any more, so I could sit here and blurt the whole thing out. It’s pure pantomime stuff, it really is.

Tonight, however, I’m going to hopefully forget about the whole fucking place, and let my hair down, for I shall be attening The Studio tonight, to watch a few local bands play, including Accidents By Design and the almighty Infernus. Should be a good night.

Back to the subject of blogging, I have completed blogging about that stupid sodding hard drive. It works, that’s the end of it. Therefore, the other morning, after another shocking 12-hour shift, I came home and decided to write a blog about music. I’d been listening to one of my favourite tracks, and decided I’d write an indepth blog about what I liked about it. Only thing was, I’d written an identical blog 18 months ago, and didn’t realise until I’d just about finished it.

ironically, that previous post also gives details about hard drive upgrade problems I’d been having around that time.

Anyway, because I’m not going to waste an hour’s worth of typing, here’s the post in its entirety..

I’ve had a shit day at work today, so you’ll have to forgive me for having one of my “ooooh, a song I like, and how I came about it” blogs.

It turned out that for the purpose of using it as a TV theme, it was sped up by approximately 10%. I think I prefer the original, slower version.

I’ve just noticed that this post contains more swearies than any I’ve written for a long time. Ah well, never mind, eh?

EDIT: Ooooh, I do like these edits. Missed out a quote mark which meant that the first section of text was missing. Quickly fixed, so sorry if the post didn;t make much sense originally.

Technorati Tags: accidents by design, already written, deja vu, disney, disney channel, glen, hartlepool, infernus, invent yourself, julian laxton, okavango, studio, television, theme, theme music

I’ve found a reason why Japan Korea was invented, never mind the internet!

EDIT: Video deleted. Bloody Youtube.

10 points for naming the game this music comes from. Infinity points if you manage to purge the tune from your mind within 3 days.

EDIT: Right continent, wrong location.

Technorati Tags: advert, game, japan, Music, noodle, retro

Ah yes, it’s the Great North Run today, and no doubt there’s going to be a few people wondering what the theme music is that the BBC use on their transmissions. Of course, it’s “Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero)” by Mark Knopfler. One of my favourite pieces of music.

Andy the Iridium Fan will be photographig the event.

Technorati Tags: bbc, great north run, local hero, mark knopfler, Music