Gigs, Albums and Why's?

Sorry, again, for the delay in posting. I'll get the boring stuff out of the way first. Things are still going well with job, girlfriend and life in general. BT finally admitted that we do exist and so have kindly started giving us access to their wonderful broadband so that's allnow sorted. Now for some (hopefully) more interesting stuff.

On Thursday night I went with James Underwood to the first Raconteurs gig in London. It was obviously some sort of big deal as we saw a bunch of music/radio people in the VIP section also waiting to hear exactly what Jack White's new band would sound like. I went to the gig having not heard anything that they'd done at all and came out knowing that I'd be buying the album as soon as it came out. It was proper rock and roll with a bit of pink floyd and an occasional country style flourish thrown in. Jack White is just an incredible, genius guitar player and hearing him play in the context of a band as oppose to him on his own with a drummer was something that everyone should try and see. He dominated the stage, not just because he looked about a foot taller than the other four in the band, but with his sheer stage presence and vituosity. The gig for me was like listening to an album by a new band that you'd not heard before and falling in love with it, except this time it was at a gig, live and loud, and that made it all the more exciting and all the easier to fall completely in love with the exciting, outstanding music of the Raconteurs. You should check out their website www.theraconteurs.com not only because it's just a very cool website, but so that you can listen to a couple of their songs too.

The other night I finally got wound to downloading Graham Coxon's new album 'love travels at illegal speeds' which is a great album title for a great album. Since leaving Blur Graham's made two fantastic guitar driven pop albums that, if they'd been made by a new band and not 'that guy from Blur' would have probably become much more popular. His singing's certainly not the best in the world but his voice is right for the songs which are consistently strong, exciting and excellent. As you'd expect from graham, the guitar playing is fantastic, but he's also got a great band together, which is something that he didn't have for his last album which makes this album sound better than 'Hapiness in Magazines' although I'll need a couple of listens more before I'm confident enough to say that this album is better.

After all that geeking out over music, I want to ask a question. Why are we so crap? Why, for example, do we always leave the washing up until the tea has grown so solid and attatched to the bottom of the mug that it takes 5 minutes soaking and 1 minutes rubbing with the cloth to go away? If we'd just rinsed it under the tap when we'd finished it, wiped it quickly with the cloth it would have been done in seconds. Why, when there's a job to be done, for instance cleaning the bathroom, writing an essay or finally sorting out that bill that should and could have been paid a couple of weeks ago do we, rather than actually just do it, find ourselves suddenly obsessed with beating blackburn on pro evo, fascinated by exactly what Philip Schofield thinks about todays heart warming/tear jerking story on This Morning or unable to do anything without the aid of at least three cups of tea/coffee/cigarettes/west wing episodes or whatever other substance gets you through the day. Why, when we see that the bin in the kitchen is full, do we start a game of jenga with the rubbish, delicately balancing an empty yoghurt pot on top of the pile of old tea bags which in turn are wavering dangerously on the bottom of an upturned empty jar of Lloyd Grossman's Tikka Masala sauce? Why do we do these things? Or is it just me?

The ongoing saga of our internet connection and some more news that's even harder to believe

After 3 months of complaining to Wanadoo that our internet connection isn't working properly, and three months of them saying it will be fixed in 5 days (their definition of days could be similar to the ones in Genesis where one day=an age of the earth) we finally had enough and cancelled our service with them. This means that for the last week we've been without internet access and explains the lack of posts from me this week. Today we found out that wanadoo had disconnected us and so I took on the job of signing us up with a new broadband company. This, technically should be easy but of course, isn't. I tried to sign up with Virgin.net. However, and this may explain the name of the company, every time I got to a certain point in the sign up procedure it told me that it really didn't want to go any further and that maybe I should take things slowly and look at some other broadband companies if I wanted that sort of instant gratification that means that it'll actually do what it says it will. So I tried BT instead, I knew their reputation for being cheap, easy and, according to Lloyd at least, going down at least once a week. I gave BT my phone number and my account number, both of which they originally gave me, and they told me they didn't exist and should go away unless I wanted to phone them, which would of course cost more money. So at this point, after 3 hours and 3 cappucicnos in the natural cafe I am no closer to having any sort of satisfying experience than I was when I got here in the first place.

Now for that hard to believe news.
For reasons that are unlikely to become clear at this point [it's a long story involving the charity I work for, a friend that will remain nameless (although certainly not blameless) and a rock and a hard place] I have been invited to join the Queen and possibly her diplomatically challenged husband at the Buckingham Palace Garden Party on the 20th July. I shall be taking Lizzy for moral support and also for the sandwiches. Obviously most people who know me know my particular feelings on the monarchy (somewhere between indifference and complete and utter pointlessness) will realise exactly how funny this is, especially given that I have to wear 'Morning Dress', whatever that is. I'm sure it will be an interesting experience, but just as a side note, I had to give mine and Lizzy's details to the palace this week so that the invitations would reach us by the date of the party. 'Surely the British post can't be that slow?' I can tell you're asking and of course, it's not. The reason the details now is that they need to write the 24'000 invitations (8'000 at each of the three garden parties) by hand. Yes, someone is paid (probably with our own tax money) to hand write 24'000 invitations. Surely the palace has at least one computer somewhere?

Anyway, should go now. No idea when I'll post again, hopefully I'll sort out our internet problems with a phonecall to BT (although I wouldn't bet on it). I wanted to post a poem by Spike Milligan that I discovered the other day, but I can't cos I forgot the book and can't find it on the internet so I'll do that next time.