Edward Woodward R.I.P.

Sometimes nostalgia starts to get the better of you.
You start to wear the rose tinted glasses when you delve into your memory banks.
Many people think about TV shows in particular and coming from the 80's with evenings filled with Knight Rider, Magnum PI, Airwolf, et al, it pains me to say, that half these characters where just cartoons...
Now, I know they were kiddie friendly, going out before the watershed, but during summer holidays, we got to stay up a little later, and occasionaly, there was a good show in between the political shows and lame British TV.
One of the characters that was really cool to me was 'The Equaliser' and the main character reminded me of a one-man A-Team, even if it was low on the cartoon action and high on drama and more adult themes. So, a nod of appreciation to Edward Woodward who died last week.
I'm sure there are many finer obituaries out there, recognising him for his many other roles on stage and screen such as 'Callen', 'The Wickerman' and 'Common as Muck', but I really wanted to write this so I could mark it here on my little internet space, and to give credit to Edgar Wright who worked with Edward Woodward on Hot Fuzz and who wrote a piece 10 times better than me>>>
>>>Here is a link to Edgar Wrights' blog

Open Fire

Clearing out the shed today. The previous occupants left a broken up pallet. As you do.
So now we have firewood for the evening!

CD Compilation

Last year at college (for now)
I'm now looking into creating an indie record label for the purposes of my final year project.
So far, I've proposed asking a bunch of punk/hardcore/metal bands to give me permission to use a track each for the CD. I want to know is there still a future for conventional CD releases. I'm pretty sure the current Record Industry model is dead, but the corpse doesn't know it yet.
Hopefully, bands in future can make a decent living out of touring and playing without signing away all those merchandising rights to record companies, and the physical release of an album can be used as a marketing tool and sold at gigs- which can be completely self financed for little cost.
Music albums were/are always overpriced anyway. At least if bands are in charge of their own releases, they can determine how many they need to publish, how much they spend on it etc., without the added pressure of having to sell platinum hanging over their heads. Cut out the middle men.
The list of bands and people destroyed by record company promises and lies is far longer than the successes, but yet people still believe that the million dollar advance is the Holy Grail.
If you do, you kinda deserve what you get.

CSound Headaches

How on earth do you learn the basics without completely losing your mind?
That said, I'm not sure if the computer is actually up for the task...ew've been spoiled by shiny front ends. Which makes me think - for all the bitching and moaning we do about Windows, with be pretty screwed if we had to use DOS for basic tasks.

Ah, but persevere I must!!!

New House, New Cat

We moved into a house in my hometown a few weeks ago, complete with its own cheese loving residents. We tried the humane approach with one of those ultra high frequency pest deterants. So, if you can't hear it, how do you know it works? Well, it didn't. We have now opted for the tried and true solution - The Cat.

Clap on the back for us - we got her at the GSPCA outside the town, so all the necessary jabs and tablets have been done, but thus far, she has failed to warm to me. She gets on better with Clarissa, which maybe down to her previous owner, but she still ended up in a shelter, so she might be just freaking out at another new house. She's about 2 years old, so we'll give her time...

Taking of Pelham 123

Reading about another pointless remake (haven't seen it, so I can't comment further),
I came across another version! Yes, aside from the brilliant '74 original with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, apparantly there's a made for TV version from '98 with the somewhat average cast of Vincent D'Onofrio, Edward James Olmos, Lorraine Braco and...Donnie Wahlberg, the bargain bin Mark Wahlberg,(who in turn is a bargain basement Matt Damon, who in turn...ah, you get the picture...)
IMDB link here

Raise a glass to Munich...

I've spent the last 4 months in Munich and it's been such a fun time. I only wish I was better at keeping a blog, if only to read back on my thoughts at a particular time. But i resolve to be better, as long as I've got something to say!
The weather hasn't been great by German standards, but by Irish standards, it's been tropical! Even as i type this in the middle of September, Oktoberfest has kicked off and the weather is fab!

Alas, my time here is nearing an end, so I'll spend the miserable wet & cold Irish winter with some fond memories of Munich '09. And promise to create my own micro-brew in honour of the finest (Guinness excepted) beer in the world.

Grandmaster Al - Remix Master

Without giving my location away, I have to say I'm not overly enthused by my current surroundings, so every so often, we have to get of out of the city. A few weeks ago, we managed to get to Lahinch. For no other reason than to breathe some fresh air and see and hear the sea on a sunny (freezing) January day. I forgot to change the batteries on the camera though, so I have minimal snapshots. Followed it up with some lovely chowder after.

2nd year music tech student, already have a bit of knowledge, building it by degrees.

We did have an official recording project before Christmas, which went well - not great but ok, so now the current project is a remix of someone elses track. Remix is a bit of a dirty word is it not? Moby has done some good stuff, lots of rubbish, Fatboy Slim has his followers, but really, my genre would be leaning towards Trent Reznor & Nine Inch Nails. Easy enough to remix, if you're already in an elecronica frame of mind. How would you go about remixing something that's got more organic roots? Would you take an acoustic guitar, sample it, stick through a vocoder and still call it an acoustic guitar? Does it automatically become techno?