WOEBOT

I don't actually pick up the OMM, but my wife does like to get the Observer on Sundays from time to time. Actually make that "tries to read the Observer" because invariably we've children crawling on our heads and she probably only gets to look at the recipe bit.

When I do get look at the OMM I usually try and find things Simon Reynolds has written, I'll clock the body and feel an admixture of despondency and frustration at the middlebrow tenor (before reflecting that it's generally quite a solid and positive sort of mag), then finally I'll read Paul Morley's entertaining column.

Morley is almost guaranteed to be having a pop at music bloggers. This is four years after we ceased to be newsworthy. Three out of the three pieces I've seen written by him feature some kind of grumbling about or insulting of we. The latest piece is almost entirely about online music criticism. It's quite hilarious really.

Maybe Paul has failed to get that round-robin email by editorial which dictates that under no account should the conventional press write about forms of the internet which challenge the print hegemony? The petry dish guy got it. I suppose I'm glad he still does.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:41 PM | Permalink

The TV show is up and running now and the mailing list is in place. I've no less than four episodes "in production" (trying to make this sound as pseudo-professional as possible, winks). I never said I'd kill the written blog and actually there are things that I just couldn't possibly squeeze into the format, no matter how hard I tried.

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Just recently I acquired my beloved Granny and Granddad's record collection. 95% of it is is what I'd term "hardcore" classical recordings of Janacek, Belioz, Bruckner, Purcell, Monteverdi and Handel. What really enchanted me however was the errant 5%, recordings that could only possibly have come from their collection, which betrayed perhaps more accurately, who they were.

This is the odd one out as, shamefully, I stole it from their attic about ten years ago. I very nearly included it in my Un-Ra piece of a couple of years back. Recently I saw this priced high on the wall of Haggle Vinyl. Super cover-art innit.

My Grandparents lived in the Cotswolds. It seems like everyone and their dog has the weird Folkways records, but recordings like this? One for the Belbury Poly massive.

Tank-top, Galway!

We woz definitely a patriarchy.

Dorothy Ashby she ain't. My super-lovely aunt used to play the harp.

Alan Wicker style. Comes with a wee booklet.

Love the generation-wide ethnographical interest evident here. Nowadays no-one seems to give a hoot for this sort of thing. A tourist memento I suppose, though I don't think they ever visited New Zealand. Probably my Granny's record this one...

Shelley, Chatterton, Swinburne, De La Mere, Owen all in this nifty box-set.

Cheesy-listening.

A Reader's digest release no less.

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I suppose these represent the final remnants of my Grandparent's estate. My aunt started upon twisting my arm to take the records away, unclaimed stuff was to go to the charity shop, before realising that I was actually quite keen on having them. I tend not play up the WOEBOT shtick around my family. All of the above which serve to remind me, in the most heartfelt way imaginable, how great and good my Grandparents were.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:53 AM | Permalink