Some thought-provoking responses to my No Music Day blog yesterday; scroll down to the bottom of my waffle and have a look. I particularly like Nigel's idea of Total Music Day, where we concentrate utterly on records without any distractions. Though realistically - as he acknowledges - that'd be as tough to pull off as No Music Day.
Apologies there was no blog on Friday: I spent the day at home, mucking about with several thousand CDs and trying, successfully, to buy My Bloody Valentine tickets. Today has been another complicated one of meetings and Italian lessons and list-making, but it did come to a happy zenith about an hour ago when we saluted the undervalued excellence of U-God, footsoldier of the Wu-Tang Clan and one of the stars of their new "8 Diagrams" album, which miraculously arrived in the office this morning.
A couple of weeks ago or so, I used the online appearance of a new Wu-Tang Clan tune to complain – from a dilettante-ish position, I admit – that 2007 has been a thin year for hip-hop. It now looks like the Wu album may have been put on hold for a while, though apparently there is the substantial compensation of a new Ghostface Killah album instead.
A pretty tendentious post appeared on the blog last night from someone who styles themselves Sad Indeed. "After seeing the live performance download MSNBC Today show 10/24, not only is Robert Plant coming off as sad as hell - a lifetime of dedication to the mermaid has broke his heart - but Krauss and Plant had NO chemistry and were out of synchronicity," Sad Indeed spiels.
I'm taking a day off from obsessing over the Radiohead album, so instead here's a lengthy list of the records we've played in the Uncut office over the past couple of days. You'll note, though, that "In Rainbows" does crop up a mere three times.
After a week off, holed up in the Cotswolds since you ask, it's been a busy time for film screenings. I went to see The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford on Tuesday, this time on a proper 35mm print rather than the beta tape I saw a few months back, and tonight there's Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited that I'll hopefully blog about tomorrow.
Last night, though, our album reviews editor John Robinson and I went to see American Gangster, at close to three hours as epic as it gets, with Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington manfully chewing chunks out of the scenery in late Sixties/early Seventies' New York.
