I'm off for a well-deserved rest for a few days. Please don't give up - normal service will resume middle of next week. Enjoy your weekend - listen to some Glenn Gould and think of me in sunny East Sussex.

It's only lack of time that's stopped me commenting on the truly amazing LIverpool match last Wednesday night, when the cream of The Kop managed to win the Champion's League trophy for a record fifth time, having come back after half time to totally transform the game. Faced with a three goal lead by AC Milan, it was inconceivable that Liverpool would return to equalise, but they actually did, after a corking goal by Steven Gerrard. Now, okay, I have a bit of a thing about young Steven, but that aside by the time the tension of the penalty shoot-out was over I really felt quite emotional. This was football drama at its absolute thrilling pinnacle and it will be a long time before we see excitement like that again.

Okay, so as I said, what happened to the cerebral stuff? What happened to the shows I referred to in the Turbonegro post, the ones that aren't ninety minutes of pure fun ..?
Last night Tortoise took to the stage at the Royal Festival Hall in London. That's the band Tortoise, at whose door the blame for the invention of the horribly named 'Post-Rock' genre is usually laid (often with dog turd connotations) and not the animal tortoise, which is a slow and lumbering creature given to going nowhere fast and retreating into its shell on a regular basis.

Come to think of it ...
Anyhow, the point is this. I love Tortoise. They are perhaps in my top five bands currently operating. So why do they frustrate me so much? Take the picture above - could a band look more aloof and unapproachable, as if they're waiting to be questioned about their tax returns. I know it's supposed to be ironic, and probably Kraftwerkian, but it just gives off wrong messages instantly. Then there's the unpredictability, for as a live prospect Tortoise can be very unpredictable indeed, veering from captivating to catatonic. I think the best metaphor for them would be the lover you really do care about, but whose foibles make it hard to see why you fell for them in the first place.
Last night was fairly typical. I think the review in tonight's Evening Standard actually preempted what I was going to say, which is that when they're at their worst the five members of Tortoise look like they all drifted in from different bands (not as unlikely as you might think, as they all have at least two side projects apiece.) There's cute Johnny, second from left above, who drums like a demon and looks as though the band is his life. Then there's annoying John, centre, whose demeanour either suggests a graceless arrogance, an overdependence on the kind of drugs nobody else in the group is using, or the sheer disbelief that any of us care about what he's up to. The guitarists amble away at the back, and Dan (on the right) seems amazed that he's been drafted into the group in the first place.
But close your eyes and the sound of Tortoise can very often be beautiful, and sometimes very unexpected. Bizarrely, their very best song, the one they encored with and that got the biggest cheer of the night, Seneca, is the closest they get to the absolute conventions of real rock music, albeit still in a brainy way, climbing an escalator that has Hendrix at the bottom and Steve Reich at the top. And can you believe it - they got the crowd down the front to dance. (Or rather, Johnny, for whom I admit I have a soft spot, got them down to dance. Johnny is the only member who ever speaks to the audience. John looks like he hates it when he does that. Maybe that's why John walked off stage first when they finished, ahead of the others, not even looking us in the eye.)
Ultimately I think this is a band that benefits from playing in small clubs or venues where people make some attempt at engagement - they've always been at their best at the All Tomorrow's Parties weekends or at the Thrill Jockey records 10th anniversary show, gigs where people are a bit fired up, a bit connected. Adrift on the stage at the RFH with a polite, all-seated audience listening with the rapt attention normally reserved for Stockhausen or a rendition of Bach's Cello Suites - well, it just doesn't work.
Message to Tortoise: we still love you. Start looking like you love us back.

It's been a good few weeks now and still no appearance by the delightful Marfa on the page. So to tide things over for now, here she is with my great friend Kieran enjoying a pint and the F.A. Cup Final last Saturday. By the way, Kieran didn't look this happy a couple of hours later, as Manchester United lost out at the very end of the penalty shoot-outs.

What's happened to me of late? No sooner was I ranting about singers' suicides and George Galloway than it was suddenly Scandinavian cross-dressing metal and cheap synthesiser rock. And here comes another one - straight out of the Nordic states. They must put something in the water over there. (And next week we get Jaga Jazzist and The Shining on the same bill in London but that will have to wait.)
So here is Annie. Her record is called Anniemal. It sounds like absolite pop genius - Kylie but sexier with better songs. As with virtually all modern albums, even the ones by cerebral rockers I love like Radiohead, it's way too long. I liked it when an LP was about 40 minutes and then over. Who needs 15 tracks. However, pick your favourite 8 or 9 from this record and your world is already a brighter, more summery place. Turns out Annie has some connection to Datarock (see below) as well as Kings Of Convenience and, of course, production courtesy of the amazing Richard X. I have Keith to thank for this one but boy was he on the button.
Back to normal with more gloom tomorrow probably ...

A couple of years back, on a hot summer afternoon at Barcelona's Sonar Festival, three men in boiler suits took to the stage. For the next half an hour they rocked the joint - like a latter day Devo if they'd ripped off Motorhead's stage show (cheaply). This was Datarock. H0w can you not love a band with a song titled I Used To Dance With My Daddy or another containing the lyrical couplet "I am into S&M/Are you butch or are you femme?" Their record releases have been limited to a couple of hard to buy EPs released only in Norway, but now they finally have an album out. I managed to order it online from a Finnish record shop today, but I'm too excited about it to even wait to review it. You can get a foretaste here but in the meantime I intend to spread the word on Datarock. My friend Boadwee is going to go ape over this record - I'm certain of it. As utterly ridiculous as Turbonegro, this will be the summer soundtrack round our way.

I forgot to mention that Turbonegro have a sort of roaming international fan club/cult called the Turbojungend, and there were many in attendance last night. This is one of their members, found on their website, and I post it here without further comment.

This page has been getting a little cerebral of late, so thanks be to Valhalla for last night's storming Turbonegro show at the Islington Academy. As you can see from the picture, Turbonegro look absolutely ridiculous, but as Adam Ant famously said, ridicule is nothing to be scared of. I would ordinarily be tempted to dismiss a band like this as a slight joke, but fortunately for them Turbonegro put on one of the greatest rock and roll shows of modern times. Imagine Queen, Kiss, Motley Crue, The Ramones and Spinal Tap put into a Norwegian blender. Throw in songs called Blow Me (like The Wind), City Of Satan, Sell Your Body (To The Night) and Rendevous With Anus and how can you resist? This is pure good time rock and roll at its best, tuneful and rousing and a fantastic knees up. Last night's show was an hour and a half of absolute pure fun, which is not something you'd say of many concerts I usually go to. In a world where the Darkness can sell stadium shows and have number one Christmas hits it's inexplicable that Turbonegro remain such a secret.

One of the great perks of working in television is that every now and again you get to meet somebody you've really always wanted to hang out with. This happened to me a couple of years back when I found myself in a London hotel room interviewing Christopher Hitchens about modernist literature and the merits of Saul Bellow and Martin Amis. Bear in mind that it was just gone 10 am and Hitchens had already offered me (as a gift) the half open bottle of Retsina sitting in a plastic ice bucket from the night before.
Though I don't agree with everything Hitchens writes, I tend to agree with about 75% of it. The other 25% is usually so brilliantly argued and articulated that it at least provokes thought rather than outrage - so all in all not a bad strike rate.
The interview began. He was dry, and sharp and totally engaging. The he asked if I'd like a Scotch. I declined, but he poured himself a giant tumbler of the stuff and as he drank it he became sharper, more engaging, and quite brilliant. I can truly say it was one of the most enjoyable interviews I've ever conducted. He was courteous, gentlemanly and fabulously off-the-record rude about a number of people. The only down side to the whole episode was that he had to catch a plane and therefore apologised that he couldn't buy us lunch, as he really wanted to carry on talking, and that out of pure courtesy I later had a Scotch with him and wrote off most of the rest of the working day as a result.
The purpose of this tale is to draw attention to today's Independent newspaper, wherein Hitchens is drop-dead hysterically pithy on the whole George Galloway/US Senate affair. At a press conference the other day Galloway refused to answer Hitchens' questions by haranguing him for being an alcoholic and a "Trotskyist popinjay". Galloway is without doubt a boorish, bullying arrogant son of a bitch as redolent of spin and doublespeak as the very New Labour politicians he tries to 'oppose'. Hitchens is not one to take things lying down, so he describes Galloway as "a thug and demagogue ... a very cheap character and a short arse ... puffed up like a turkey." So much name-calling would be the stuff of playground tittle-tattle were it not for one crucial thing: Galloway's refusal to even address Hitchens' questions about the Charity Commission, the oil issue and the very nature of his relationship with Saddam Hussein.
Hitchens was the subject of much oppobrium when he came out with his pro-War stance, and aggree with it or not as we are free to do, we should applaud his hatred of scandal, duplicity and all-out bullshit. A list of pieces by him seems to be collected here. The Independent doesn't allow the article to be read free online but I've pretty much summed it up anyway. And about Saul Bellow's Augie March, Martin Amis's Money and Joyce's Ulysses, what can I say - he was spot on perfect on the lot of them. Christopher Hitchens I salute you.

... is the name of this painting by Jane Harris, currently on show at Hales Gallery in London. Jane is an extremely textural and sensitive painter and I absolutely adore her work - in fact the first work of art I ever bought was by Jane. Though it's obviously a bad career anecdote, I always love that she was kind of dropped from a big london gallery by the owner on the pretext that her work was too 'girly'. Her drawings are fantastic too - dense and thick on one hand, and shimmery at the same time. Due to work pressures I've not been to her show yet, but it's on till June 4th and I will report further when I finally get there.

Though I've been way too busy to post recently, I could not let today go by without recognising that it's 25 years to the day that Ian Curtis from Joy Division took his own life in his home in Macclesfield, Machester.
Frightening though it is to think of myself as a 14 year old, I can to this day recall sitting at my desk in my horrible little bedroom, listening as always to John Peel, and hearing him announce Curtis's death at the start of his show on the Monday evening. I accept there's something eternally teenage existentialist about some of the guff that can surround Joy Division, but through all of that I cannot think of another band whose music has so touched me from the day I first heard it right through to now. (Kraftwerk of course comes close, but for very different reasons and in a less visceral way.)
I had the unbelievable privilege of seeing Joy Division the year before, supporting The Buzzcocks at the Glasgow Apollo, and it was an amazing experience. I intend to listen to some of my favourite JD songs tonight as a little tribute, and to eradicate the memory of hearing New Order murder them on their comeback tour some years back. As you can tell from the title of this page, New Dawn Fades is absolutely my favourite song of theirs (which I suppose makes it my favourite song of all time) with Heart And Soul and of course Atmosphere and Love Will Tear Us Apart coming very close. It's hard to believe 25 years have passed since then, and I have yet to tire of them.

Well, no sooner had I posted my notes on the Wolfgang Flur book than this picture cropped up on a French Kraftwerk fan site. In it we see Flur's robot dummy lying in its flight case, ready to be despatched to who knows where. Certainly not the band's European and US tour this summer, of which more - much more - in early July when I return from their show at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

I recently had the pleasure of going up to Glasgow to spend the day with David Shrigley. I've always loved his work - I like its paucity of means, and the interplay between mad art and a seriously dark humour. He's kind of in the Chris Morris vein, except there's a lot of silliness in it as well as foreboding - like in the example above. Shrigley also has seriously good taste in music, and has turned me on to to the psychedelic symphonic jazz of Moondog. Thanks for that, David. To save you the bother of me harping on any further you can access the wealth of fun that is Shriggers' own website by clicking here.

The reason I was dawdling in a bookshop yesterday was I had gone in to check out the series of little paperbacks Penguin have issued to mark their 70th anniversary as the world's first softcover imprint. Ten years ago they did the same thing - smaller format books with a generic look that I recall being given many times over as gifts for my 30th birthday. But these are something else altogether. The design of the books is astounding - there's barely a dud cover among them, although the Michael Moore one is a bit of a vulgar gross-out - and for aesthetics alone they deserve a place on anyone's shelves. But look at the quality: Freud, Woolf, Orwell, and new greats like Ali Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer. All mind nourishment of the highest order - and all of them a mere £1.50 each. That's cheaper than a copy of Heat (I think - it's been a while) and something of real lasting value for years to come.
As many of you will know, I'm 40 in July. I do so love sharing a major birthday with Penguin.

Recognise this man?
No, thought not. This is Wolfgang Flur as he appears on the cover of Kraftwer's Trans-Europe Express album. Some years back, having been dropped from Kraftwerk - where he seemed to excel at playing little electronic drums with what looked like knitting needles, and not a great deal more - Herr Flur wrote a book about his years in the band titled I Was A Robot. Putting to one side the fact that his prose style suggested he still was a robot, this unintentionally hilarious book was a folly of gross proportions in which Flur talked up his importance in the group while trying to impress us with the shock revelations that in fact Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider (who are, in essence, Kraftwerk) are not soulless andriods who pluck genius melodies from a radiant ether but are in fact mere humans blessed with genius and a talent for melody who have bad days, can be grumpy and don't mind the odd gift of a Rolex watch from record company executives. Now I certainly won't deny that they are also exacting control freaks who don't even give out their telephone number to the head of their record company (no, not even for a precision engineered watch) and therefore Ralf and Florian tried to take out an injunction to prevent the book from ever seeing light of day, probably fearing it might break the unique mystique that is The World's Greatest Band.
Presumably in the same way that knowing the intimate details of the Beckhams' private life can be ruled to be in the public interest, so I Was A Robot duly appeared. In it we learn a little about Kraftwerk, such as that Ralf is a careful driver, and we learn a lot more about Flur himself. He was a former porn model, was a hit with the ladies, and had a few post-Kraftwerk solo records that are discussed at length in a huge section at the end.
All of which is to suggest that this is a book with a rather limited audience and therefore a rather limited shelf-life. So it was to absolute astonishment that I saw it in the new release section of Borders yesterday, in a snazzy new cover featuring the back of someone's head with a computer chip on the neck. Shouldn't it have been on the shoulder, surely? However, turn to the back and drink in the opening sentence of the author blurb - which I shall give a line of its own and perhaps some striking bold type:
Wolfgang Flur is an artist of internationally recognised importance ...
Oh well - beats being a robot any day.

No contest.

Right then.
Upon reflection, the really disturbing thing about my on-line election survey results was the fact that even in the negative percentages, I am one per cent closer to being a UKIP zombie than I am to being a wet Tory. Maybe it's the `regular drinking in Sussex country pubs that keep the Telegraph and the Mail at the end of the bar, I don't know. But it scares me.

Okay, I know I shouldn't be using an on-line survey to help me decide, but here goes ...

Who should I vote for? v2

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

	Labour 2
Conservative -22
	Liberal Democrat 41
UKIP -21
	Green 39

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

I don't feel the need to say anything more ...

This is a shot of my truly great friend Keith Boadwee wearing an original Supertramp shirt. This, to me, is the epitome of style. I thought to post this because on Radio 2 this morning I heard Supertramp's Logical Song for the first time in years. Now that is a tune.

I've been having a bit of a descent into Metal Hell recently - quite enjoyable it is too. There seems to be a sub-genre of heavy rock that is either called Stoner Rock or Intelligent Metal, depending on your viewpoint or pretension scale. These bands have great names: Mastodon, Converge, Jesu and Isis. The music is like darker Metallica and Mogwai with all the quiet bits removed. Last Wednesday we went to see Isis play live. Annoyingly, it was at one of London's truly worst venues, the Mean Fiddler on Charing Cross Road. Formerly a disco nightclub, the removal of the booths at the side of the dancefloor means that the centre of the room is now a raised platform, so anyone at the sides or back is denied any kind of decent view of the stage. That aside, the place doesn't appear to have been decorated since I first went there in 1987 (to a gay club night called Fruit, whose flyers were actual bananas or oranges with stickers on them, wrapped in a brown bag).
I digress. Isis were titanic. Pointless for me to even attempt to describe it. It's dense and yet melodic riffology that makes the hairs on my arms stand up and pay attention. Their lyrics are all inspired by the writings of Michel Foucault, and let's face it you certainly can't say that about Iron Maiden. And this is a picture of the singer because he's sort of cute in that former skateboarder, bearded stoner way.