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I finally managed to get to listen to Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows, today after I left it downloading painfully slowly yesterday. I’d pre-ordered it a week or two ago and it’s got a lot of attention as they’re free from a record company and so have released the entire album on the internet and let people name their price. Technically, you could give them nothing (though would still pay a 45p handling charge…), but it’s a great show of how meaningless record labels are becoming. Another of my favorite bands, Nine Inch Nails, also recently announced the same kinda thing after years of recommending people grab their music illegally off P2P networks to screw their label I’ve been a fan of Radiohead for years, and still class their 2003 gig at Newcastle Arena as one of the best I’ve been to (only matched by front row pressed against the barriers right in front of Noel Gallagher watching Oasis in 2002) and thankfully In Rainbows isn’t quite as weird as Kid A, but a nice progression from Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief. Not quite as electronic, which is nice being able to pick out actual instruments, and understand Thom Yorke’s lyrics about as much as any Radiohead song! Definately worth dropping the guys a few quid and getting In Rainbows, just make sure you do actually buy their other albums (or at least OK Computer if nothing else!).

The last week or so has been different working outside. It’s moved from rain to a couple of snow showers on Friday and a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of ice across puddles this morning. Has been very frosty every morning this week making working first thing a bit dicey carrying a skillsaw or jigsaw! There’s a shade under 300 feet of 16″ square wooden sections (each 8ft long) raised anywhere between 1 to 4 feet off the ground, with 2 inches of insulating foam in the bottom and plywood sides all round. Has taken six weeks, and there’s no pipes in yet! But, the rest of the pipework and connectors should be here next week so we can start laying the sewer pipe, hot water feed (meaning each house can simply open a valve to fill their water tank up,) and a glycol heat loop.

I also found out that the stack of pre-insulated metal pipe sections that have been sat by the school for months are to connect our houses up in the same manner. The two duplexes over here will have the sewer tanks ran straight back to the school along with a hot water feed linked into the water tanks. Will certainly be easier than hauling water once a week during winter with our ickle 180 gallon tanks! It’s nice there’s going to be work for at least another 6 weeks realistically even though our duplexes shouldn’t be anywhere near as much work without the need for wooden sections to hold all the pipes, but the idea of digging snow out the way to run the lines over here in the middle of November isn’t as appealing

Still, should have a pay check from September tomorrow - can see if it’s all been worth it!

Since this is pretty much just my personal blog, it doesn’t get all that much attention apart from some of the computing stuff I’ve written. So, was pretty surprised to see around 300-400 hits per day recently. Driving up to Gateshead to get some more tattoo work done (pictures in a few days when it starts to heal…), I was listening to Radio 1 and now it makes sense why I’ve suddenly been getting so many hits.

I don’t have anything on Noel Gallagher back in the Live Lounge in 2003, though I did get bruised ribs from being right at the front of an Oasis gig in front of Noel in 2003 if that counts! Sorry folks, can’t help you with the competition on Radio 1, but rest assured I’ll be entering anyways to get him to play in my living room :p

But, rather than leaving you to go home empty handed, check out this post I wrote about some live acoustic sets did for ‘The Interface’ podcast a couple of weeks back. And, of course, for more awesome rock music, check out TPN Rock - one of the biggest + best music podcasts out there (which I just happen to co-host!).

First up, got the police check back a couple of days ago which was all clean so have sent notification to the US embassy in London to request a final interview date. Got all the forms I need now, have heard nothing back about the medical which means I’ve got no problems there, so that gives 6 weeks for the embassy to arrange an interview and fly out. Fingers crossed - am hoping to hear back some time next week on an interview date, and so long as it’s before middle of December, shouldn’t be a problem with flight availability or costs to fly out before Christmas

Secondly, expect to see ‘Now Playing in iTunes’ on the right-hande side to show Damien Rice’s latest album, 9, a lot. I’m loving it - is a bit more powerful at times than ‘O’, and was a bit surprised to see the parental advisory sticker on the front of the album cover! Need a few more listens over the coming days, but not sure how many tracks I’ll pick up to play on the guitar myself, as there’s often strings and backing vocals, which work really well. Live sets are planned on Later with Jools Holland this Friday, and with Jo Wiley in the Live Lounge in a couple of weeks, so will see if any acoustic versions of the new tracks are played. Shame there’s no booklet containing some more artwork and lyrics, but the fold out sleeve is nice - I like the way it’s made from recycled paper + card rather than a plastic case which usually break anyways!

Following the excitement of live tracks from Noel Gallagher, the Q-Review podcast popped up in iTunes today kicking off with Damien Rice’s latest album, 9. I loved ‘O’ and ‘B-sides’ and play a lot of the tracks on the guitar, so had really been looking forward to the new album.

It’s out in Ireland today and the UK on Monday, so guess what I’ll be scraping the piggy-bank for?! Damien is also performing on Later with Jools Holland (yey, back on TV tonight!) on 10th November and with Jo Wiley in the live lounge on 24th November, so again, keeps me happy as his live tracks are usually excellent too! I’ve also got a copy of the Live Lounge CD on order too, which is very weird for me since I rarely purchase big-name CD’s with doing so much with unsigned bands, but when I really like a band or artist it’s time to grab the wallet!

And thanks for those that have been in touch supporting my move over to The Podcast Network. I’ve really enjoyed producing TPN Rock this week - reckon it’s pushed me on a bit and feel a lot more comfortable + natural on the mic. Never had problems before with the Unsigned Rock Podcast, but now what I’m doing is getting heard by a pretty big audience, it’s certainly spurred me on

Oasis still knock out some awesome tracks, and have long been one of my favourite bands. Noel Gallagher, especially, has been a major influence in my own guitar stuff. Live stuff from Noel is always top quality, and even though it’s hosted by AOL they’ve just brought out The Interface podcast with him doing three acoustic tracks and an interview - ‘It’s Good (To Be Free)’, ‘Whatever’ and ‘Slide Away’ in what they call a “Live and Un-Liamed” performance! Grab the enhanced version if you’re running iTunes to check out some of the photos as well. His interview is cool too and worth listening to.

Alongside Radiohead live in 2003, best gig I’ve been to was Oasis back in 2002 - plastered against the barriers right at the front of the arena in front of Noel and his stack of amps, regularly getting soaked by the hoses the arena staff + security kept rolling out since it was middle of the summer and just a tad warm! One of the loudest gigs I’ve been to, as it happens…

Am I a happy boy today or what?! Those that can dredge the memories will remember I met up with Ewan Spence in Edinburgh at the end of June at The Des Moines Riot’s gig, and finally we can reveal what’s been going on behind the scenes!

The Unsigned Rock Podcast has been going strong with 43 shows now, and TPN Rock, produced by Ewan, has long been a favourite podcast I listen to. Not only that, it’s one of the best rock podcasts out there! Realising that two heads are better than one, and twice the music can’t really go wrong, I’ve moved across to host TPN Rock alongside Ewan! My part stays pretty much the same - two shows a week of the best in new, independent and unsigned rock music, and Ewan continues producing a further two shows on a Tuesday + Friday. That’s 4 (count em!) shows a week of the best rock music on the Internet!

The Podcast Network deliver over 60 top-quality podcasts, quite a few of which I regularly listen to, and to be working on one of the major podcast networks out there is pretty cool! It also gives the bands + artists I get played on the podcast a lot more exposure than producing the show on my own, and that’s only going to benefit them more!

So, go check out TPN Rock: Rock the Week In and let me know what you think!

For those that follow the Unsigned Rock Podcast, you’ll know there might just be something new + exciting happening next week. I’m certainly pretty excited about it as has been a while coming, but is shaping up to be really good!

It’s getting a bit of attention elsewhere with Ewan Spence mentioning it, so you’ll have to check out the podcast on Monday (such as grabbing the shows via iTunes) to see what the all the fun is

SpotDJ was something that appeared in my GMail account for the Unsigned Rock Podcast a good few weeks ago, and seemed like a good idea. When you have your music playing via iTunes, SpotDJ kicks in before each track and plays a radio DJ-like bumper about the track to introduce it, maybe a bit of trivia about the song, how it did in the charts, etc. It was still in testing, but was invited in, and offered $1 for every spot I recorded. Recorded 20 spots, then heard nothing more about it, so wasn’t all that bothered. Could have recorded up to 100, but wasn’t going to spend the time doing it without getting anything in return. To be honest, I felt the spots being played just didn’t work - the quality was sometimes poor, didn’t add much I didn’t already know about my music collection, and on some albums, simply didn’t sound right where the tracks fade in to each other.

But, am sure there’s plenty of folk that will like it, and a few days ago I got $20 zipped through via PayPal, so can’t grumble too much I suppose! Only took a few minutes to record them in the first place, so wish I’d done more now! Haven’t used SpotDJ since as it just wasn’t for me, but if you’re into a bit of commentary alongside your tracks, give SpotDJ a go and load up some Oasis, Radiohead or Stereophonics tracks (can’t remember which tracks I did!).

I saw guitarist John Williams in concert a couple of years back, almost 2 years to the day actually (blog post from the last gig). This time round, John Williams was just as impressive, leaving me watching him play stuff I knew my ears couldn’t be hearing! A stunning guitarist, and always in complete control - never out of time, rhythm or mis-placing fingers.

This time round, he was accompanied by John Etheridge, an accomplished guitarist in his own right, mainly leaning towards jazz from some of his style. At the start of the second half, Etheridge did two solo tracks, followed by Williams with 3 solos. Here, you could tell just how incredible the two were, as individuals. Unfortunately, put together, I felt it just didn’t work. Too often, Etheridge would wander off seemingly improvising, and regularly coming across as out of time and even in a completely different key. Felt like just noise at times with the two guitars clashing - Etheridge’s steel-strung cut-away dreadnought just didn’t have the right tone to accompany Williams on the classical acoustic.

But, overal a nice evening, with the Gala Durham proving a really nice venue for this kind of thing - been there a few times now, and it’s quite cosy + intimate arena works well. I wouldn’t rush out and buy tickets to see these guys on their current tour, but if you’re already booked up, sure you’ll enjoy it

I picked up on this a few weeks ago, but since it’s getting closer to the date and I got e-mailed about it within the last couple of days, thought I’d post it up.

The Free Software Foundation, who I’ve been a supporter of for quite a while now, have been pushing for protests against DRM including clauses within the GPL v3 which has been causing plenty of debates for months now. But, they’ve picked my birthday (hint hint!) as a major focus point for protesting against DRM. Check out their announcement on “Day Against DRM” to find out more, including how to sign their petition and anything you can do help out.

No wise comments about how I own a MacBook and an iPod - you’ll find no iTunes-purchased music on the iPod as I abhor it, it’s all podsafe music on there or music I’ve imported from my own CD’s. I support the FSF on this one, especially since it’s clear the kind of problems DRM causes when you look at what will happen when Microsoft’s Zune played gets released - that doesn’t look it will even play it’s own Windows Media encrypted formats!