It's a dull Thursday afternoon......

And i'm sitting here updating the globe. Afternoons like this are always a little bit odd, there's a luminosity to the sky which really gets me: the whole horizon just seems suffused with this creeping wave of frigid air, rolling up from the sea to the houses on Clifton Hill.
Seeing as the weather is making me feel like this, there can be only one course of action: give in.
It's time for some Thursday Afternoon.
(and BTW, it's available on DVD at last!)

Want to know what it's like inside my head at the moment?

It's like this.
"Droid"

This one's for Nick.....

Makes me think of the two of us going into the shopping centre in Leeds, to get matching Paisley shirts- Nick got one in dark blue, I got one in Crimson.
The Long Ryders- "I Had A Dream"

One of the reasons it's been so busy recently..

Is this. It's given me an immense feeling of pride, that this site Andy and I started, can change peoples lives.
In other news, I have a cold. How long has it been since I was properly under the weather? Well, quite some time, but that isn't much comfort to me right now.
*sniffles*

"I didn't get where I am today by selling ice cream tasting of bookends, pumice stone and West Germany."

I've been close to tears, laughing my head off for the last hour or so, digesting all of this.

Meme of the moment seems to be the whole "Fail" thing...

..and looks set to outstrip LOLCATS in the very near future.
Check it out here, and also here.

I've blogged about Panic! At The Disco before....

Specifically, how at a sunny Reading Festival, and as someone who'd previously been wholly suspicious of their theatrics, they suddenly made all the sense in the world. Now, to show that itwasn't just the beer and sunshine addling my brain, they've released one of the singles of the year.
Panic! At The Disco "Nine In The Afternoon"

And, as if all that wasn't enough, they appear to have morphed into the Monkees in "Head". This, as you can imagine, is a good thing.

So, Goodbye then, Xfm.

Well, perhaps that might be slightly premature, but it's fair to say that the decision of Gcap to sell the Xfm licences outside London marks the beginning of some very tough times for Xfm. The decision is one which is taken, ostensibly, to save money. £1.5 million will be saved, and it's pointed out that the stations are losing money. however in the case of Xfm south wales, surely this is down to one-off costs involved with starting the station, which let us not forget, only started in NOVEMBER. Jeez, how desperate can you get? To contemplate handing a licence back to Ofcom a matter of mere WEEKS after it started broadcasting! What pains me, is the fact that i've been in these situations before- when new managment arrives, sweeps that new broom, installs a raft of middle-managment idiots, and throws a number of hard-working, relatively low-paid, totally professional presenters, and employees of the station, on the scrapheap. The middle management goons will move on, effortlessly, to another job, when their experiments fail, and the real casualties will still languish on the scrapheap. It's playing hard and fast with peoples lives, careers, houses, incomes, and professions. It messes with peoples minds and their confidence, and all this so the managers can do all they can to protect their share options from shrinking.
Well, let's look on the bright side..all of this means that Gcap are running scared, trying to shed ballast from their rapidly-sinking balloon, as it drifts down to the welcoming arms of the Global group, who must surely fancy their chances of a successful takeover bid.
I'd say that would end the careers of those, whose malicious and spectacularly inept tinkering has sent Xfm London into a spiral, losing it's voice, it's passion for music, and it's reputation in the process. If a takeover would mean there was an outside chance of the station being run by people who actually understood ONE IOTA of the music it played, and the listeners it represented, then I for one, would welcome our new radio overlords. Global, (or anyone else for that matter) it's over to you.

OK, a bit of a hiatus...

..Should really be rewarded with something special. So, i'm not sure how many of you have seen this, but it's priceless. Aussie clebrity chef Peter Russell Clarke, with some rather NSFW bloopers from ads he filmed in the 80's. Warning: contains swearing. A lot of swearing.

Record fairs! Don'cha just love 'em?

Well, I do :)
Went to the record fair in Brighton yesterday; there's truly no more restful and cathartic way to spend your Sunday morning than flicking through piles of old vinyl....
So what did I buy? Well, a trio of singles for a pound a pop. Firstly, the true punk/pop GENIUS that is "Animal World" by The Last Words. Australia's first real slice of Independent Punk, it came out on a small label in Oz in 1978, and was re-released on Rough Trade here in 1979. Check the video, this is one of those lost Punk classics that EVERYONE should own.....
If you need a copy on CD, it's on this compilation, which has loads more Aussie Punk and Post-Punk gems on it......
But for me, it's the joy of getting old Rough Trade singles that puts the icing on the cake: as a record collector, they're just....amazing. I love the light green labels, the over sized grooves, the "Porky's" scrawl in the run-out...and the actual vinyl always seemed to be somehow more substantial than other indie labels...
With Rough Trade as well, you were buying things from a label which continually confused and amazed you, with it's breadth of styles and statements. Within just a year or so of releasing "Animal World", Rough Trade were releasing the next one of the singles which i bought yesterday: "Are You Glad To Be In America?" by James "Blood" Ulmer. From DIY garage punk to...well, to a slice of No-wave industrial alt-jazz - there's change for you.
I can just imagine Nigel in the Rough Trade Shop, back in 1981, slipping copies of this into customer's bags, with a cheery recommendation of "you'll love this, it's great!" and then when they got home, those self-same customers would have one of those "WTF?" moments, and send the single off to the Record+Tape...
Well, the joke's on them; because, you know what? It turns out Nigel was right all along- it is a great record. Ulmers vocals have this ghost-like, haunting bluesy wail, that suits the dense concrete-jazz stew behind him perfectly...it's a record that could only have emerged at the turn of the 80's when the experimental approach of people like The Red Crayola's Mayo Thompson (who produced the single) was at it's peak. It's a record that is defiantly of its time, and all the better for it.
Last of the three singles was a copy of "Life's A Gamble" by Penetration. I know I've blogged about my love for this record in the past, and it seems my love affair with it continues unabated, as this was a "double"....I've already got it on 5 separate compilation Cd's, the CD of "Moving Targets" , FOUR copies of it on the Luminous vinyl album issue of "Moving Targets", and I've already got a copy on 7". But this one had a Picture sleeve, so it was time for yet another copy. Will I ever learn? I sincerely hope not.
The rest of my haul? A bunch of cheap 12"s, Baby Ford "Oochy Koochy (because it was the Remix), some old Woodentops stuff, a Blancmange single (no, i'm not sure why either) and a picture disc of "So Hot" by the Haines Gang.
I'll say it again, I LOVE record fairs :)

I get the feeling....

That this is the start of a very slippery slope. It seems that a million facebook users have already been using this app, and filling their computers with adware as a result.... how long before this becomes the norm, as opposed to the exception? Social Networking has been such a great success over the past couple of years that it was an obvious target.....

Sounds filling my head....

At the start of this new year seem to have some sort of celebratory quality about them, albeit shot through with my usual dose of melancholia....
First up, "Weighty Ghost" by Wintersleep:
This is something I've learned to love via Shadowglobe , where it totally crept up on me. One moment it was just a song on the playlist, next moment I was lost in it. there's a certain mainstream sound running through it, but that poppy sensibility adds an edge to the confusion at the song's core. Great stuff.
Next up is "Comfy In Nautica" by Panda Bear, an offshoot from The Animal Collective. How can you not love something that sounds like the Beta Band channelling the spirit of Brian Wilson? Plus, there's a skating video to accompany it, Rah!
Enjoy :)

Happy New Year.....

And as usual, it was time for my standard Xmas/New Year blogging no-show. However, this years hiatus owed its existence to the fact that I did NOTHING, as opposed to being stuck in a studio the whole time- well, that and the fact I went to the Dominican Republic for a quick holiday....
So, I'm back, and blogging again. How was your festive break?

A little hiatus....

....but I'm back now :)
It's been a windy couple of days on the south coast, and we've been lashed by rain that you just wouldn't believe. One of the only advantages of the whole situation is that there's less people swarming around the centre of Brighton doing their Xmas shopping - hurrah!
Anyway, I shall return to the big smoke today, and be there tomorrow for the footy, and my first Xmas party of the season.

I missed the anniversary of the actual fight....

But this month marks 25 years since the fight between Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini and the Korean challenger Duk Koo Kim. The fight left Kim in a coma, and he died a few days later. His mother commited suicide, as did the referee of the bout, haunted by his decision not to stop the fight and perhaps save Duk Koo Kim's life. There is footage of the fight, and it's aftermath on youtube...

It's truly heartbreaking, as opposed to being merely mawkish, or sensationalist.
For those who need some background info on the story, this is taken from a boxing forum, but I can't find it's actual source:
>>>>>>>



Of the thousands of times Ray Mancini pulled on a pair of boxing gloves and stepped inside a ring, the thought had never crossed his mind.
But as the pain increased during his fight with Duk Koo Kim in an outdoor stadium behind Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Nov. 13, 1982, Mancini considered throwing in the towel. Lightweight title be damned. His head throbbed. His hands ached. He couldn't breathe without feeling like he was being stabbed.As he considered his options, surrendering began to seem wise.
"I had never, ever, for a minute, a second, even considered quitting before," Mancini says. "There was shame in saying you'd even thought of it. But that day – that day – I did. As we hit the championship rounds, I felt like giving up."
Had he quit, 25 years of pain would have been washed away in an instant.
Mancini takes a deep breath and sighs."My body, physically, wanted to quit, but mentally, I wouldn't allow it," he said. "That's not who I was. Ray Mancini was not a quitter."

Sadly, neither was Duk Koo Kim.
JUST ANOTHER PAYDAY
The 21-year-old son of a World War II veteran and the 23-year-old child of South Korean rice and ginseng farmers battled fiercely for the WBA lightweight championship on that mild Saturday before a national network television audience.
Because there had been a major fight between Aaron Pryor and Alexis Arguello in Miami the previous night, few of the regulars on the boxing circuit attended the Mancini-Kim bout, despite the fact that Mancini was one of the game's rising attractions. He was personable and good-looking and had a style that frequently left his opponent's face, as well as his own, bruised and swollen.
"There got to be a point around that time when people realized that if you were a boxing fan, you had to see the kid fight," said Mancini's promoter, Bob Arum. "Each fight seemed to top the next. It didn't matter who he was matched against. It was Mancini they were coming to see. He was the show."
Mancini was being groomed for a fight against Pryor, who on that Friday night at the Orange Bowl stopped Arguello in the 14th round of a bout that the late boxing writer Pat Putnam of Sports Illustrated called, "one of the fiercest title fights in recent memory." Nothing of the kind was expected for the Mancini-Kim fight. It was just another payday for Mancini and an opportunity for CBS to develop a relationship with an emerging superstar. Little was known of Kim, who brought a 17-1-1 record but had never fought outside of Asia and had no opponents of note on his record. Royce Feour, the longtime boxing writer at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was one of the few reporters at ringside for the Mancini-Kim bout. "The talk around Caesars Palace the week of the fight was that, indeed, Kim was not a qualified opponent," Feour said. Curious to learn more about the mysterious South Korean, Feour arranged to meet Kim in Kim's suite at Caesars a few days before the fight. The introverted Kim offered little of himself, but Feour noticed a lamp shade on which Kim had handwritten something in Korean. Feour asked the interpreter what it said.

The answer: "Kill or be killed."

NO STEPPING STONE

Though Kim was widely viewed as a stepping stone, Mancini believed otherwise. He had pored over tapes of the South Korean and knew he would be a serious threat to his title. "People in America are not sophisticated about boxing from the sense that they just don't have an awareness of anything that goes on outside this country," said Mancini, at 46 an independent film producer and the owner of a cigar manufacturing company. The scheduled 15-round bout drew a number of A-list celebrities, including Frank Sinatra and Bill Cosby. They saw an unexpectedly competitive and highly grueling bout. Mancini tore at Kim at the opening bell, only to be met by fierce resistance. "Nobody really knew much about Kim, but it wasn't too long into the fight before we were looking at each other and saying, 'Hey, we have ourselves a fight here,' " said Sig Rogich, who was a member of the Nevada Athletic Commission before eventually becoming an advisor to President George H. W. Bush. "This wasn't one of those fights where you automatically expected the champion to win. Each round was incredibly hard-fought."
Mancini wasn't known as a devastating puncher; but he wore down his opponents with the volume of punches he threw and his sheer will to win. Mancini would take three to give one if he had to, and he fought with a religious fervor.
"I was competitive like that naturally, but I was raised that you just never quit and would come and come and come and give every last ounce you had inside of you," Mancini said. As he looked across the ring, he saw himself in the man he was battering. Kim took a series of flush, hard punches and not only didn't flinch, but fired back almost immediately. It wasn't long before Mancini's left eye was swelling grotesquely.
"I was very impressed at Kim's ability to absorb punishment and to dish out a lot of his own," said Jim Hunter, who covered the fight for Reuters.
The fight was uncomfortably tight for Mancini fans just past the midpoint, and for the first time in his career, Mancini was having doubts. Aching and uncertain, he considered asking his corner to stop the bout.
"The only thing that saved me was the way I trained," Mancini said. "I trained more physically than most fighters. I had an old-school trainer, Murphy Griffith, and we used to do a lot of things that fighters years ago would do. I'd go neck deep in water and shadow box four-minute rounds. I'd push a boulder up a hill. I'd do push-ups with a 60-pound sack of sand on my back. The thought of quitting entered my mind, but I thought about the way I had worked. I worked like a dog to get ready for my fights and I knew if I could dig down, I'd find a way to keep going." The frenetic pace was having a subtle effect on Kim, too. He was attacking in spite of Mancini's onslaught, but his rallies were fewer and the punches he took were cleaner. "Boom Boom never changed his strategy," said Marc Ratner, who attended the fight as a fan, but went on to become the most famous boxing administrator in the world when he ran the Nevada Athletic Commission for 13 years. "He was the stronger of the two and eventually, he began to wear Kim down."Mancini controlled the 10th through 12th rounds of the 15-round bout and pounded his gloves together with glee as he walked back to his corner after the 12th.
He was beginning to think positively. "One of the things that I think has really hurt boxing was going from 15 rounds to 12 for championship fights," Mancini said. "I lived for those championship rounds. "I always felt they were my rounds. I believed nobody had trained the way I had trained and that was going to pay off in those final three rounds." Mancini began to drop straight rights off Kim's head, which resonated with a thud. Kim's counters were less frequent and less powerful, though he would land a hard left often enough that he couldn't be discounted, something recognized by Tim Ryan, who was doing the blow-by-blow for CBS Sports. "Certainly, the underrated Kim is giving Mancini all he can handle," Ryan told his viewers in the 12th round.
THE FINAL MOMENTS
As the 13th opened – the first of Mancini's championship rounds – he landed a 35- or 40-punch combination, most of which were to Kim's head. Referee Richard Green, one of Nevada's most experienced judges, was keeping a close eye on Kim, but never seemed to be on the verge of halting the fight. And Ratner, who helped institute numerous safety measures during his term with the Nevada commission, never felt Green made a mistake by letting the fight continue.
"Ray was getting the better of most of the exchanges, but Kim was fighting back and he was defending himself and competing," Ratner said. TV analyst Gil Clancy, a highly regarded trainer, told CBS viewers that Kim was "still dangerous with that straight left hand." When the bell sounded to start the 14th, Mancini popped off his stool and sprinted toward Kim, who wearily pulled himself up. Seconds into the round, he whistled a straight right that landed. Kim managed to avoid the follow-up left, but he couldn't avoid the right hand behind that.
The right landed flush on Kim's head, sending him hurtling backward. His head banged off the canvas as he fell on his back.
"Finally," Mancini thought.
Green ushered Mancini to a neutral corner. When he turned toward Kim to pick up the count, Kim was on all fours, attempting to pull himself up. He got about three-quarters of the way before tumbling back into the ropes. Green quickly waved off the fight as jubilant Mancini fans stormed the ring.
What Mancini didn't realize as he raised his arms above his head in exultation was that the darkest days of his life were about to commence. "I don't think the average fan understands how much the fighters have to commit emotionally to a fight like that," Mancini said. "When it's over and you win, there is this overwhelming sense of relief. I was really badly beaten up, and I felt like I'd gone to hell and back, but I did what I came to do, which was to keep my title."
Mancini walked to Kim's corner several times after the fight ended in a bid to congratulate his opponent on his gallant effort. But Kim was beginning a bigger fight, one he had little chance to win.
TURN FOR THE WORSE
A blood clot had formed on Kim's brain during the fight. Dr. Lonnie Hammargren, who performed 2½ hours of surgery on Kim that night at Desert Springs Hospital, speculated that it was caused by one or two powerful punches.
The surgery could not effectively stem the pressure on Kim's brain, and a traumatized Arum suggested in the emergency room that the sport be suspended until a panel could examine ways to make it safer.
As a man's life and a sport's future hung in the balance, Mancini was facing problems of his own. Sensitive even in the best of times, he was about to face a boxer's biggest nightmare: Kim was about die. Four days later, on Nov. 17, 1982, a Nevada judge declared Kim legally dead and doctors removed him from life support. "He died once, and I felt I was dying every day," Mancini said, softly. "When you're a fighter, you develop a respect for your opponent and I had all the respect in the world for this guy. I just wanted to win the fight. I never wanted to see him hurt. It was devastating."
THE AFTERMATH
There had been deaths in boxing before, but none resonated with the public the way Kim's had. The bout featured a glamorous champion in a famous venue live on national television. Even those who never paid much attention to boxing knew of Boom Boom Mancini and Duk Koo Kim. Smiling strangers would approach Mancini and ask, "What does it feel like to actually kill someone?" Mancini wanted to vomit. His ire grew worse when his children were tormented at school. His daughter, Carmenina, was in second grade when a classmate approached her and said, "Your father is a murderer."
Mancini was distraught. He would lie in bed at night and see Kim's face, replaying the scene over and over in his mind. He knew it was an accident, but it wasn't one he would easily forget.
Mancini returned to the place he had long sought refuge, winning a 10-round decision over journeyman George Feeney in Italy just three months later, but it wasn't the same.
Mancini, who now lives in Beverly Hills, Calif., went 4-4 after the fateful fight, bouncing in and out of retirement before ending his career for good in 1992, after a loss to Greg Haugen, with a 29-5 record.
"He was never the same fighter," Arum said. "He just didn't have the thing that made him who he was. He was never as aggressive. He never threw the punches with the reckless abandon that he used to. He was shaken to his core."
It was a tragic fight in so many ways. Four months later, Kim's mother committed suicide. Green, the referee, committed suicide, too.
Ray Mancini lived on, haunted forever by the memory of that brilliant afternoon in the Las Vegas sun and a fight gone horribly wrong.
"The rest of my life, I'm not just Ray Mancini, I'm Ray Mancini, the guy who killed Duk Koo Kim," he said. "You never escape that. You wonder what it would have been like for the both of us if I had quit or if he had quit and this hadn't happened.
"I've done a lot of praying, a lot of thinking. I'm never really going to know why it happened. No one will. He was a tough kid. Too tough, really. Too tough."
>>>>>>>>>>
The events of that night in Las Vegas have been part of my life this year, due to the fact they form the backbone of the song "Duk Koo Kim" by Sun Kil Moon, AKA Mark Kozolek from the Red House Painters. The song is 14 minutes long, the same number of rounds that Duk Koo Kim endured, and it's structure follows the progress of the bout, even down to its abrupt and tragic end. It's one of the most perfect songs I know, and I can't recommend it highly enough. There's an excellent analysis of the song, plus a download, here.
It's been the soundtrack to my year.