Wow, starting as I mean to go on, eh? This is my hundredth blog post so far this year… or at least it feels like it. anyway, this is a very quick update, mainly for my own benefit, but the music on the current Thomas Cook advert, with its wispy guitars, is “The Sea”, by Morcheeba.

I know it from something else, or at least I know that guitar riff. I probably have it on CD somewhere, I’ve bought a load of chillout albums over the years.

Well, it’s usually around this time of year and take a look through my extensive music collection, and see if I can find any music from this year which I’ve actually enjoyed. You may remember 2009 was a pretty slim year for me, with me only managing to blather about 2 songs. Unfortunately, this year, I’m probably going to struggle to get two.

It’s personally been an appalling year for music. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. Mine is that it was dreadful.

One song I did like was “Famous” by Scouting For Girls…

Unfortunately, I can’t embed official video link. I first heard this song somewhere in the Great Ayton area, after winning an ebay auction for many 80s LPs.

Thankfully, I have jst remembered another song from this year that I liked, namely “Choices” by The Hoosiers. It’s another horrible video rip-off I’m afraid…

The official videos don’t like being embedded, unfortunately.

Overall, there’s one piece of music that’s had an impact on me this year more than any other, and although it was released in 2009, it deserves a place in this posting. I posted about this in April, so instead of duplicating it, I’m just going to link to the post…

The Golden Age of Video

A stunning piece of work.

It’s time now, for my “guilty pleasures” – the songs I’d never actually buy, but wouldn’t reach for the dial if they suddenly came on the radio. The first is ‘Alejandro’ by Lady Gaga. Yes, I know, I feel like scraping out my own eardrums for this, but I’d heard the song at least 20 times before I knew who sung it. I’d actually convinced byself that Ace of Base had reformed. For those of you who know the Lady Gaga song, take a listen to this and tell me they’re not the same song…

My other guilty pleasure is “Raise Your Glass” by Pink. I probably shouldn’t like it, but I do. Sorry.

So, that’s it. My music purchases this year have been many and varied. Very little of it has been from this year.

I’m sure that calling it a “mixtape” is some type of American colloquialism, therefore I feel slightly dirty using it on my blog, but sod it, that’s what I’m going to call it. Those of you around my age will remember these, and the joy they used to bring you.

You give a friend a C90, it returns several days later, filled with questionable music. It was like the Napster of the Nineties. Or the eMule of the Eighties. And possibly the WinMX of the Sev… wait, that one doesn’t really work.

Andy the Iridium Fan is someone who still embraces the analogue era, and likes nothing more than to slap on his walkman, and ride around the streets of Hartlepool listening to his compilations of C120s, entitled “Music for the Weekend”.

You may know that I’m currently borrowing it a tape recorder of his, in the vain hope of getting the majority of my decaying tapes onto some type of digital media. This is a job not for the faint hearted. In payback for the loan of the tape deck, he thrust a C120 tape into my hand and DEMANDED I fill it with shit. OK, a little bit of artistic license there, I just had to fill it. Now, for obvious reasons, such as I don’t particularly want to be sued, I can’t divulge the contents of the afore-mentioned tape (Dear Lawyers, for all you know, it’s actually 120 minutes of me gargling in the bath), but choosing the tracks to go on there was extremely difficult.

I started the tape about 6 weeks ago, and only finished it two days ago. What was odd, is the complicated procedure that some of the songs…. no, sorry, sounds of me gargling in the bath, went through… it would have started life on record, recorded via USB turntable, compressed to MP3, written to CDR, played on CD player, recorded onto tape…. in fact, this tape…

It did drive one thing home, how much I missed the whole “mixtape” idea. With archives of entire music catalogues at our disposal at the click of a mouse, it seems that a once fine art is dying out, replaced with faceless playlists, on third-party websites. I still have tapes recorded for me by Chad, and I’m sure I’ve blogged about them in the past. As much as I hate to say it, these were my greatest influence when it comes to music I listen to 20 years later. In 2nd place, are the tapes Daddykins used to get from the petrol station. In fact, I’m listening to “No Regrets” by The Walker Brothers, which I first heard on one of those tapes.

And, for those of you of a nosey disposition, here’s a little behind-the-scenes look of me taking the above photo, courtesy of ATIF…

Resting my camera on a mug half-full of tea. Quinticenstally British. For those who have been following, I named my tape “Music For the Weak End 1″. I have no idea if there’ll be a followup.

It seems ages since I’ve done a proper update. Well, actually it doesn’t, as I’ve had writers’ block for several weeks now. I’ve written several drafts, got distracted halfway through, then disappeared somewhere else, or done something else. That’s not very good of me.

So, because of this, blogging has been on the back burner for a while. I must admit, the past few weeks have been hectic as hell. Some of you may remember over the last couple of years (well, since about 1998), I have been complaining about the heating system in Mercuryvapour Towers, and the fact that it’s been completely knackered for about 10 years. Over the least couple of years, I worked out that if you don’t run the hot tap, the heating will kick in after a couple of hours, with its distinctive “chink….. whoooof” noise, and all will be well until someone runs the hot tap. The house will then be plunged into the murky depths of coldness, and if we had a winter like we did last year, that clearly isn’t a good thing. There was only one thing for it. Invest in a new boiler, and invest we did!

Boiler has arrived, early. I’m either going to end up in hospital or prison 8:04 AM Sep 28th via Twitter for Android

I know that most people probably got sick to death of my incessant tweetings about the status of the boiler, but this was a big step. It was certainly something I was dreading. When the original boiler was installed back in 1994, the house was in uproar for about a week. I think every floorboard got lifted. I expected something similar. It wasn’t as bad this time, in fact, we even got the “blue carpet” treatment for a couple of days…

I expected having to completely dismantle everything in this room, as the old water filter is in my cupboard. The “crystals” in it haven’t been changed since it was fitted, so according to the plumber (whose name I can’t remember, but he had an apprentice called Lee), it was no surprise the old boiler packed up.

Thankfully, they didn’t need to get access to it, so I was safe. In fact, they only entered my room once….

There are strange people in my room. THERE ARE STRANGE PEOPLE IN M…. oh, he’s only bleeding the radiator. 29 September 2010 12:31:09 via web

I will never know if ‘Lee’ saw what I was typing. He was a bit shy, and if he had to ask the main guy a question, he referred to us as ‘The Customer’. I felt sorry for him in a way, obviously having to follow the rules to the letter. I felt like saying to him “Please! You can call me ‘His Royal Highness”, but I didn’t. My room must have been a whole new experience to him. Clean(ish) floor, yet a bed that had clearly not been slept in for days, as it was piled up like Steptoe’s yard. Either way, a day and a half after it started, the blue carpet was lifted, we were left with a terminally scarred bathroom floor, but most importantly…

It’s all over. We have heat! 29 September 2010 15:59:39 via txt

I clearly can’t decide on the best way to tweet, but yes, everything is warm and cosy here now. Unfortunately, I’ve left it a little too late to book a place at university to study the timer controls, so I’m making to with “off” and “on” at the moment. It does, however, mean a trip through the long dusty corridors of Mercuryvapour Towers each time I get too warm, but that’s a small price to pay.

In other news, I’ve bought a CD. No, really. I’ve invested in a dying format. Yes, I was drunk. Yes, I’d watched *that* episode of Eastenders where Peggy Mitchell “walked away”. Yes, I googled “Peggy’s Theme”. Yes, the result ended up with me buying “The Simon May Collection: Eastenders and Other Themes”. Yes, the arrival of the afore mentioned CD caused the postie to ring the doorbell, while I tried to gather some digtnity (in other words, underpants), while I went downstairs to collect the parcel. Except that the “parcel” fitted through the letterbox. Yes, I ended up stood on the doorstep, with hair half-past Wednesday, with the postie shouting “Oh, it fitted through your letterbox”. Of course it did. It was a CD.

Therefore: I was the proud owner of…

I intended to do a full review of the CD, in fact, most of the drafts I wrote centred around this particular purchase, and my attempts to review every track. It’s simply not possible, as it’s got to be the biggest hit ‘n’ miss CD I’ve ever purchased. The ultimate track, which I didn’t even know was on the CD, is “Barracuda”. You won’t recognise it by the name, but it’s the jazzy, synthed up end theme to “Howards Way”… linky here for those who missed my facebook jizzfest over my discovery of the afore mentioned theme. That alone is worth the £6.99 I paid. The ultimate downside to the entire CD is track 22, named “Glory Be To God On High”. When you realise that all of the lyrics are sung to the Eastenders theme tune, and sung by a bunch of kids, it equates to the most painful 3 minutes and 18 seconds known to mankind. If you’re after a song constructed around the Eastenders theme, however, you do get Anita Dobson’s “Anyone Can Fall In Love” as track 17, and in a rare move of theme-tune availablility, the 2009-present version of the Eastenders theme is included, though there’s no “extra” bits in this version, it’s literally just the theme, clocking in at a measly 1:10 in length. The other versions have been at least a little different from the ones used in the programme.

As I approach the sacred 1000-word mark, I’ll have to turn my attention to work. It’s been busy, and I can only assume it’s only going to get busier. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’m enjoying it being busy.

Oh yes, I’ve also got a new phone, if you couldn’t work that out by the last post. It’s also less than a month to this blog’s 10th birthday. To add to my ever growing of dead celebrity obituaries, Norman Wisdom left the station yesterday. A shame, but at 95, “bloody good innings”, etc.

Just a quickie before I head off to Hell…