I'm keeping to my promise to post here more regularly but there's going to be a break of a few days while I go off up to the Cairngorms for a winter hillwalking course. It's all part of this year's challenge and it's going to be cold and tiring but I'm so looking forward to it.
Back to normal city life at the end of the week. Stay tuned.

As Boadwee would say, this record is the shit. The Necks were one of (if I remember correctly) 2001’s New Favourite Bands. I was wandering around absent-mindedly in the jazz section of HMV’s flagship Oxford Street branch (one of the best jazz departments anywhere, I might add) and this unbelievable, hypnotic music was playing. And it kept playing and kept playing. I had to ask what it was. Hanging Gardens was the record, probably the first necks album to be easily available outside their native Australia.
For those who don’t know the deal about The Necks, it’s this. They’re ostensibly a jazz piano trio, but use a lot of electronics and odd percussion and effects. All of their ‘compositions’ are around an hour long. They never play the same thing twice, and everything is improvised and built up around a pre-ordained theme or riff. Sometimes it can be fairly mantra-like, sometimes more abstract and intermittently dissonant, sometimes barely there at all.
But Drive-By is probably their crowning glory. It’s got every element of their sound in its most accessible and realised form. The melodies (yes, there are melodies, or rather a melody) are beautiful. It’s a warm bath of electro-acoustic jazz. I decided to listen to it on my iPod while I was working this afternoon, and when I looked at the screen it had been going for 20 minutes and I was blissfully unaware of anything like that amount of time passing. I’d go so far as to say that if I had to give a list of my 20 favourite albums since the millennium it would be in there. It’s not dry or ambient or noodly – it’s got a real insistent energy to it and I’d forgotten how truly great it is.

The only merchandise I wanted at all at last December’s All Tomorrow’s Parties was a t-shirt that said I HAVE BATTLES IN MY LIFE. Where did the people wearing them get them – there were none at the concession stall, and believe me I checked. (Mind you, Acid Mothers Temple seemed to have colonised the table and floor space first thing every morning till last thing at night. And then at the very end when it was finally shut they just started selling from the front of the stage).
Which is by way of saying that I am currently obsessed with Battles. They remind me of why I so adored Tortoise in the beginning, before they became so stuck-up. Guitars, electronics, drums, really really short tracks, really r e a l l y l o n g tracks. I only saw about ten minutes of their set at ATP and it was enough to demonstrate how utterly compelling they are. I’m particularly loving their B EP disc, and all their early releases are about to be compiled by Warp records to whom they’ve recently signed. (For one brief album,,Tortoise were on Warp. Did they leave or were they shoved? Are the nice people at Warp currently thinking “Sod you, old farts. Now we’ve got the Arctic Monkeys of math rock.”)
So my first New Favourite Band of 2006. Live in London in February – more just after that I’m sure.

The other week The Guardian had a really clever feature where different artists from different musical genres were given each other’s iPods and asked to comment on the music contained within, and guess who got whose. The Scottish dance producer Mylo was given Devendra Banhart’s, and was quite scathing about the almost forced “coolness” of the music on it.
I often like to wander around with my iPod on Shuffle Play. On occasion this can be a challenge when it throws up too many slices of obscurantist Norwegian free electronica, but in general I like the way it skips through my varied musical tastes. Sometimes I hear an old song I’ve not listened to in a long time, sometimes I hear something I loaded from a brand new CD or one I’ve almost never played all the way through and think: Wow, that’samazing. (Step forward, on this count, ‘Bubblegum’ by The Mark Lanegan Band, loaned to me by my great chum Kieran and never actually listened to until it hit me by surprise on a boring tube journey to work.)
Shuffle was on relatively good behaviour this morning on my longer-than-normal walk to the office, via some camping gear shops on Sauchiehall Street. But I couldn’t help thinking if Mylo would be as cheeky about my selection as he was about Devendra’s – so I thought I’d list it to see how high I score on the Pretension Meter. Thus:

MANNEQUIN Wire
CHERRY BLOSSOM GIRL Air
KUNTZ Butthole Surfers
WEEK-END EN MER Serge Gainsbourg
PROVIDENCE Sonic Youth
LE PACHA Serge Gainsbourg
HEAVY FLOW OF EVIL The Hidden Cameras
DELTA SUN BOTTLENECK STOMP Mercury Rev
TAPER JEAN GIRL Kings Of Leon
LEAVES Oneida
GEMINI CHILD Kevin Ayers
IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING King Crimson
DOG ON WHEELS Belle and Sebastien

Hmmm …

CIMG8430
Originally uploaded by IanMac1.

In anticipation of saying "au revoir" to the world's most ruined dog, I couldn't resist this picture of her in a sweatshop-free, ethically perfect American Apparel t-shirt.
There was an extremely good article about American Apparel in the Guardian this week, but for some reason I am having real trouble loading links here, so go to www.guardian.co.uk and search it out. Well worth reading.

Dreechit
Originally uploaded by IanMac1.

Well, today (Saturday) I'm packing my bags and tomorrow I'll be on my way to Glasgow and trying to settle into being on my own for much of the time. I'm excited and nervous at the same time but there will be many many reports over the year on this page, that's for sure.
In preparation I'm loading a whole load of 'Glasgow music' on my iPod, or at least the stuff that isn't already on there. In particular, the entire back catalogue of Belle and Sebastian and the first two albums by The Blue Nile.
I absolutely adore Belle and Sebastian, and in case you're thinking that it's odd I don't already have them on my Pod, the fact is that they were on my old 'Early Adopter' model that I left on a plane sometime around this time last year and I never got round to redigitising them on my new one.
Maybe I'm just being a teary old nostalgist here, but there is something about the sound of B&S that says Glasgow to me, something in that slightly weary, resigned delivery of theirs, or at least up until recently when they appear to have discovered a bounce that was lacking before. My particular favourite song of theirs is a B-side called Slow Graffiti, a fantastic track that half steals the melody of the old country song 'Tennessee Waltz'. This is doubly odd because as you may or may not know country music is hugely popular in Glasgow's traditional working class population, and they even have a country club called The Grand Ole' Opry. (An aside - one of the oddest nights of my life was filming a traditional country and western club "shoot-out party" in a Glaswegian suburb, with everyone dressed in full western regalia, including a child of around nine or ten with cowboy boots and spurs whose mother took off her false leg at the end of the evening and spun it around her head like a lassoo. This is not a lie!)
Tennessee Waltz was also a huge favourite song of my dad's, and whenever I hear it it reminds me of him, and in particular the power cuts in early 1970s Britain that would plunge the streets and houses into absolute darkness as the utilities workers went on sporadic strikes. We'd light candles at home and play a brass band recording of the song in the dark from a scratchy old record on my battery operated child's record player.
My ultimate Glasgow nostalgia music though is The Blue Nile. Their first two albums 'A Walk Across The Rooftops' and 'Hats' are sonically and lyrically an unbelievable evocation of the mood and feel of Glasgow, or at least a particularly cliched version of it, a cliche though because it's true. Grand but a bit knackered, stoic but nostalgic, upbeat and alive despite the rain and the cold. Standing on a bridge looking at all the old victorian buildings as it gets dark or walking around the Trongate late at night (an image used on the cover of 'Rooftops'). One of their song titles puts it perfectly: Tinseltown In The Rain.
Time will tell if this is still how I feel about dear old Glasgow after months of being there, but there certainly is a part of me that's looking forward to communing with my home town again. By the end of next week I intend to have had a pint at the Variety Bar, a pizza in the King's Cafe and a long walk in Kelvingrove Park. And I'm even seeing Belle and Sebastian on Tuesday to add to the magic.

BCrow
Originally uploaded by IanMac1.

My great friend Boadwee will appreciate this. Frequently, I profess an attraction to men of dubious merit - morally, sometimes, but physically usually - that meets with an outraged response of "you're joking surely'" or just plain "eeeuurghhh!"
And so - for 2006 - I'm going to come out with it and nominate my Dubious Men Of The Year, month by month. Wayne Rooney is doubtless going to feature at some point, probably in World Cup season, but first someone who has been high on my eye candy radar for quite some time, and is currently in the news for his quite scandalously dubious behaviour. Step Forward RMT Union leader Bob Crow - the man who led his union to a tube strike in London on New Year's Eve while he himself was actually holidaying in Egypt. Bob, I cannot salute your actions by any means but hey - since when did being an emotionally manipulative shit stop Brad Pitt from topping the polls of the world's sexiest men??
Bob Crow - Man Of The Month for January.

Happy New Year to you all.
Well, crappy Resolutions aside, I've vowed to make more of an effort to keep this page updated in the coming year. For starters, I've made the colour more friendly and less funereal so I don't appear too dour. That aside, really big changes are afoot, which is part of the vow to make this a more regular forum for what's going on.
A mere ten days before Christmas I got a call from my agency asking if I would be interested in a big job for the BBC. The snag, as it were, was this - it's based in Glasgow, my home town I left 18 years ago. But the job, about which more in the days to come when I have a bigger grasp of what I'm doing, was too good to pass up. After a long interview I snagged the gig, and so tomorrow I go to Glasgow to house hunt and meet the team. This means that weekdays will be spent up there, with as many weekends as I can conceivably manage catching up with my 'real life' down south.
I'm excited, trepidatious, amazed and flabbergasted all at once. A mere two weeks or so ago this wasn't even a blip on the radar, now it's the template for 2006. Blimey - the things life throws at you.
So the deal is this - I have more time on my hands, no more slacking, and this site will be my way of staying in touch with everyone at once (though you'll all get calls and letters and the usual personal stuff too).
Stay tuned - and hopefully the new colour is an improvement. When I get the chance I'll redo the links section too, and add some more.