Tell The Internet

While rummaging through the cupboard I came across some old tapes, one of them was this - Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, recorded by Radio 1 (or 1FM as Mark Goodier seems to be contractually obliged to call it) and broadcast at some point in April that year.

As this link will tell you, Sound City was a music industry thing that aimed to highlight new bands:

“From arriving at Norwich station to be greeted by the sound of bands playing in the concourse, music was omnipresent. In the centre of town, busker-populated streets led to the market place where an open-air stage saw over45 daytime performances by mainly local bands throughout the week.

Seemingly countless night-time performances at pubs and clubs in the town were capped by the live broadcasts from the Waterfront encompassing all styles of music oft he moment. From name bands such as Carter USM and Brand New Heavies to the new contenders such as Jacob’s Mouse and Catherine Wheel.”

Enough of that, the tracklisting is:

Only Living Boy in New Cross

24 Hours from Tulse Hill

Rubbish

Do Re Me

Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere

Prince in a Pauper’s Grave

While You Were Out

After the Watershed

Sheriff Fatman

Bloodsport for All

I’m sure this is all illegal to put up on the internet but there you go, I’ll take it down if anyone complains.

Carter USM, Live at Norwich Sound City, 1992 (Right click and download to save, sorry I can’t stream it, it’s all in one and about 65 meg!).

So, it’s ‘odd punk tape find of the day’ time again with this: “The Frogs of War - The Gunpowder Plot Noodle”

While I was rummaging about for more Because Midway Still… stuff I came across this old tape (brilliantly it’s a C30) of a band from Huddersfield that I saw play live on numerous occasions as a lad and presumably bought this tape at one of their gigs. It’s from 1990, the quality is ropey and having listened to it I now know why my hearing is so shot to pieces; if this is what I listened to live at The Wharf and Top Spot on a Monday night in my youth, it’s no wonder I’m going deaf!

As you’ll be unlikely to have a copy of this here you go, tracks in order are (The live second half was recorded at The Wharf pub in Huddersfield on 29 January 1990. Blimey, that makes me feel old):

1. Eyes of the Free

2. Colder

3. That Perfect Day

4. Home Away from Home

5. Washing Your Car (Live)

6. Eyes of the Free Blues (Live)

7. Up Someones Ass (Live)

8. Short Cut (Live)

9. Citizen (Live)

10. Transmit the Message (Live)

And the whole lot as a massive zip file “The Frogs of War - The Gunpowder Plot Noodle” (which is 43 meg, so go easy!) and the cassette insert is here Side 1 and here side 2.

I realise that this is probably breaking all kinds of copyright laws so will take it down if needs be.

There’s a bit in the Guardian today about a missing link in evolution which, I’ve just had pointed out to me, looks like:

So i’m making it my mission to say “Pippy Longstocking’s Monkey” as often as possible today.

Also, he’s called Mr Nilsson, which is a great name for a monkey.

In this 21^st century ‘Web2.0 social networking’ twattery world in which we live, the next big thing is only ever just around the corner. For a while it looked like Myspace would rule the roost; then everyone over 13 realised it was just a migraine-inducing way for young boys pretending to be girls to talk dirty with other young boys pretending to be girls and moved onto Facebook.

Facebook was site du jour for a while and claims to have over 200 million active users. But, and it’s a big BUT; many people soon got sick of the enforced changes that made the site a pain to use, the constant barrage of advertising and the general “fuck you” attitude of the people who run it and lo! they leaveth for Twitter.

Facebook hate this. Not least because they have to have constant flow of people through the site so that they can sell page view advertising. So they hit upon a great idea to get people logging in. Somewhere, deep in the code is a tricky little algorithm that randomly disconnects a small percentage of people from the site. Just a tiny amount remember, just 0.0001%.

But, as they happily point out, the average user has 120 friends on the site. And most of these are within a text, tweet, shout across the office, messageboard post or phone call away from being asked “is Facebook down for you as well?”. The friend innocently pops over to check, they log in happily, spend 5 minutes checking their Scrabble game and being advertised at.

Thus Facebook keep their page impressions up…

The Daily Telegraph web editors decided that, for Budget Day 2009, they’d have something called a “Twitterfall”, which is essentially a clever way of collecting everything anyone says about something, as long as they use a “hash tag”; if you don’t use Twitter, don’t worry. Try it though, it’s addictive and for reference I’m @mattkitson.

Of course, we childish internet people soon discovered that the web feed on the Telegraph budget page wasn’t filtered, so just by adding the tag “#budget” to one of your tweets, anything you typed would appear on the front page of one of Britain’s most respected newspapers pretty much immediately and without anyone apparently checking it for swears.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what sort of thing happened next:

Click to make bigger

The experiment didn’t last very long…

A sad loss to the family. No one was hurt, but I don’t think it will buff out…

After too many months I’ve finally won a monthly title on Fantasy Football Agent. Sweet.

Amongst a certain proportion of English (possibly British) people the term “a shedload” is used to describe a lot of something; “mate, you’ve had a shedload”, “I’ve got a shedload of cash out of the machine”, that sort of thing. Next time you’re in the pub, listen out for it.

Anyway, this confused me for ages until I found out where the term came from. It turns out that the phrase “a shedload of money” came about because a British Standard Shed can hold £1 million in old one pound notes. This in turn became generically used to describe a whole lot of something.

So there you go, amaze your friends, stimulate conversation, bore your colleagues.

A shed, yesterday