edith bowman just pronounced 'feminine' as 'femme-nIne', with a distinct 'I' sound. So she's crap at being a radio dj on every level-she has no real passion for music and also can't speak english.

aint no party like a mountain goats party

why are people grudgeful?

last day pranks: the ultimate in middle class teenage ungratefulness? i think the whole idea of last days pranks is a pretty spoilt one; essentially, one of 'i've got all i need from you and you cant punish me anymore, so now i'm going to show you how much i actually dislike you/ruin something/upset you in whatever way is most effective and hilarious for my friends'.

clearly, all teachers want from a last day is to see their students leave and go into the world as mature, responsible people that they've had a hand in creating. and to spray graffiti, get drunk, vandalise in general or personally insult a teacher not only flys in the face of that, but specifically and deliberately upsets the very people we owe everything to.

hating your parents and teachers is such a typically middle class thing to do. its an attitude born of not appreciating what you have. schools give so much for so little return and i think the whole idea of getting out of control on the last day is essentially just saying 'whatever, fuck you anyway' in return.

they wont have the last laugh.

I saw the bbc philharmonic perform prokofiev with the leeds philharmonic tonight. being a conductor must be one of the best jobs in the world. It's like being a ships captain in a storm, with the ship being the audience as the conductors tries to subdue this swelling sea of sound, letting it crash onto us then sweeping it back away, totally absorbed in the task and nothing else. They do often have a real 'mad destitute' look about them, you can just imagine them at the helm..

Another great thing about tonight was that leeds town hall is one of those fantastic halls that are more like cathedrals than theatres; the far dome was painted deep blue with stars, and the main chamber was white with cherubs holding up the balconies, angels holding up biblical quotes and an ornate ceiling. It had the same 'heaven on earth' feel as a cathedral does. I'm fascinated by religiously inspired art: cathedrals because people really believed they were building a house for god, an equal of paradise itself, and religious symphonies because the composers were trying to channel the actual voice of god himself. Only absolute perfection was appropriate for such mammoth tasks. This motivation doesnt exist anymore, which is fine and i'm glad no one properly believes in god anymore, but now people are only expressing themselves, not the glory of god (or, rather, the universe, which was what they were really trying to convey but they just didnt know it). And that's a shame. But a lot of things are a shame, it doesn't mean it should be different.

Anyway, this cathedral-like atmosphere and heavenly music was compounded by a dove who sat at the top of one of the arches, its head tilted slightly towards the orchestra, listening intently. The depiction of god on earth has of course always been a dove, so it was quite symbolic. Like we were all in a painting of our own.

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It was also nice going to leeds town hall cos alan bennett often wrote about how important that place was to him and it was interesting to put a face to a name.

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Joe informs me that its impossible to read this blog in China. I'm a real enemy of the state!

remember the horrors?

"big red mush contorted with the animated delivery of constant speak"

-Mark E Smith's autobiography has odd chapters of prose stuck in randomly which embarrassingly are better than both the actual book and all his lyrics of the past twenty years.

i aim to get properly into gospel music very soon

girl gives brain, girl gives knowledge

whoa, lil mama's back (for those of us who ever knew she was once here). and shes gone serious. this is a world a way from 'lip gloss' but just as good. i love that wailing sample in the backround. such a powerful track-"i guess i'll never make a difference", love that bit. it's weird that the musicians i love are increasingly getting to be my age or younger than me and are capable of really worldly stuff like this.

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lyric of the day:

"you move it to the left,
then you go for yourself"

-harlem shuffle

from paris to berlin, in every disco i go in

Jeeeeeeez, just aint nuttin like the start of summer, eh gayboy? Everyone's in such a good mood, it's unstoppable. I wonder if violent crime goes down around this time. Probably not. Well, almost certainly not. Worth finding out though. Actually that's not true either. Just forget it.

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Anyway, enough nonsense. Wearing my rolex came out on cd on monday, so yesterday i went to HMV to buy a copy. Only apparently they dont sell singles anymore. So i bought one online, a big version that comes with 7 remixes. But then i got worried that this wouldn't boost wiley's chart performances, cos i once heard that singles with more than four tracks dont count. And so i considered getting the two-track version as well. But then i didnt.

Point is, i care about this. It's the first single i've bought since 'Something' by Ash when I was 10. Cos i like wiley, you see, and i like the song, so it really works out that i should buy the single. He just deserves this so much. It was weird going out to buy the single. It felt like voting. Which, actually, i guess you could actually say was what singles were in the olden days when kids had just the amount of pocket money to buy one single a week (as i did).

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The other day in oxfam someone seriously came up and asked me, 'do you have richard hammond's latest?'

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I've just found out mark ronson's supporting jay-z when i see him in july and i'm looking forward to it in a perverse way cos it'll be an opportunity to see what, if anything, mark ronson actually does.

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I saw dead poets society the other day. An alright film, but i think we've all now seen enough about stiff conformist schoolkids learning the beauty of the arts, havent we? What i really want to see is a film about a bunch of art students and young actors having a world-opening epiphany as they learn the beauty of consumer capitalism.

great

wiley's always last to mc on collaborative tracks like this, it's weird. he's always the one who sums up what those before him have said, and makes everything nice and clear.

worth going to james' blog to check out his unbelievable crystal castles remix. i'm not really that big a fan of crystal castles but he's added the lightfoot-or, as i believe he is now called, 'Deus'-touch to it. James is so good at that euphoric sound and he's made it a really great track.

Also james sent me this a few weeks ago. He said its just a bit of fun which says something about his talent. It's a remix of a marvin gaye song and it's amazing.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/63ncwj

I just love the way it's so cut up and looped that it sounds like all the instruments are sort of gasping.

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Really been listening to this song a lot recently.

It's a remix of a song by jay-z from the blueprint. The original features the high-pitched soul vocal (i love any song that has a helium soul vocal, even 'lonely' by akon) as well but this one takes it so much further and makes it stunning.

The verses arent even that good on this song but thats just not whats important. Whats great about this song is the sample; that beautiful voice. The way it sometimes randomly goes 'do you BELIEVE?', and the 'oh no's, the 'you dont know's, sounding really desperate, all trapped under this really forceful flow. The feminine quivering beneath the masculines overbearing agression.

'You dont know what you done to me, done to me, done to me, done to me...'

best thing heard tonight, coincidentally said by same person as 'luxembourg' comment from a few blogs back:

'I'm only seeing one of you and that's just not enough.'

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You can get UB40's new album free with the daily mail tomorrow.

i'm really not in the mood to go out tonight but i've just put on Wearing my Rolex as a 'getting ready' song and it does work magic. It's way its just an endless series of ascending notes, boosting your mood as the pitch goes up and up. As you've probably noticed, i'm fascinated by the journey music takes you on a night out, from getting ready to the club to coming home to the hangover, and wearing my rolex clearly now has an integral part in my routine.

Move it like you stood in something nasty

Joe asked me to fill up his mp3 player entirely with my music for his trip to China, essentially asking me to dictate what he listened to for three months. I was pretty honoured by this faith in my taste so took the whole thing very seriously. I knew from the beginning that i was going to completely ignore joe's taste, in a non-obnoxious way. Firstly, i dont really have much belonging to joe's taste and secondly i thought it would be refreshing and interesting for joe to have someone elses music as his form of escapism abroad. Would my favourite songs become as important to him if they were all he had? Anyway here is the list of the songs i put on it, amounting to 128mb exactly. It's not exactly my 'desert-island-discs' list, more of a list of songs that i feel sum up the various types of music that i love and the genres i'm most interested in. But there are, however, some pieces of music here that are indispensable to me and undoubtedly some of my favourite songs ever, and i absolutely love every song here.

Midnight Special-Leadbelly
Those Dancing Days-Those Dancing Days
We Love-Juergen Paape and Boy Schaufler
Song 4 Mutya-Mutya Buena
Milk Crisis-The Go Team
Party & Bullshit-Notorious B.I.G
The Beach Party-Hot Chip
Pomp & Pride-Toots and the Maytals
The Good Thing-Talking Heads
Beware of the bird-Justin Martin
Speakerphone-Kylie Minogue (should have been a single)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Earnest-Vegetables
The Old Landmark-James Brown
Who's Knockin (Benny Benassi remix)-FB feat Edun (there will be a blog post about this soon)
Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)-Jay-Z
My Cube-Lucio Aquilina
No 4 in F Minor(Winter)-Vivaldi
Shake a Leg-Roll Deep
The Wand of Youth, Suite No 2, Op 1b, VI 'the wild bears'- Elgar (Amusingly this turns up on joe's mp3 player as 'The Wand of Yo, Elgar')
Wanted Man-Johnny Cash
Remember the Days-Roll Deep
Special Rider Blues-Son House
Since You've Been Gone-Aretha Franklin
Life of Locomotion-National School
After Laughter Comes Tears-Wendy Rene
Effect and Cause-The White Stripes
Funky Town-Lipps Inc
Girls (Kanye remix)-Jay-Z
Going to Georgia-The Mountain Goats
Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?-The Mountain Goats
All Good Things (Come to an end)-Nelly Furtado
Popcorn-Gershon Kingsley
Naive Melody (stop making sense version)-Talking Heads
Le Chant du Pirate-Edith Piaf

So yeah-no punk, no girl groups, no metal, surprisingly. I'm not sure why these types of music, all of which have at some point dominated my life, just didnt turn up. Sad, in a way.

Some songs which would have turned up if i'd had the internet last week and thus the ability to rip them from youtube:
Body Movin' (Fatboy Slim remix)-Beastie Boys
I Wanna Dance with Somebody-David Byrne
Hot Stuff-Donna Summer
Something Good 08-Utah Saints (i considered putting only this on the mp3 player but thought that maybe, maybe it would get tiring after three months of nothing but. still not sure though)