Coctoberfrucht!

Hei, meatball fans!

Just sitting here, watching "Crocodile Dundee 2", considering how little I've managed to stockpile of my ambitions and sketches over the last twenty years.

In the meantime, have some tracklisting.

Insidious Junkbox 27: Coctoberfest

Josef K - Chance Meeting
Deerhunter - Revival
Sole - Where They Put My Flag On? (Leif Kolt Pizza & Terror remix)
Klaxons - Venusia
Alan Moore - Vega
Smoking Popes - Brand New Hairstyle
Dinosaur Jr - Sludgefeast
Roots Manuva/Wrongtom - Son of Boddha
Smog - No Dancing
Salem - King Night
New Flesh - Wherever We Go
Gruff Rhys - Shark-Ridden Waters
KMD - Soulflexin'
Sweet Baboo - If I Died Would You Remember That You Loved Me

Nothing more to share with you this evening. Until the rainbow rolls around again.

Your pal, Coc x

Titles Are For Chumps, Swap Trainers For Pumps

Ey up, me ducks!

So the grey slides down the slated roofs and muddles around our feet, so what? So it soaks the fringes of our velvet bellbottoms, so it seeps into the backs of our hearts and asks us uncomfortable questions in a chilling, wet voice about how far we think we've come and in what direction - so what about any of that?

One September has born a monster - a thrice-cephalopodded beast of Junkbox. Junkbox 26 (para-titled Wet September Fruits) has clustered itself against that which went before. This is the news on which we must focus. This is the story the kids want to hear.

It readies itself on my computer now, it gestates - and once that pregnancy reaches it partition, it will be available here. But what does it comprise, grammar fans? Well...

Insidious Junkbox XXVEye - West September Fruits

Frank Black - Los Angeles (nearly typed Los Angleseys - how cool would that've been, eh?)
The Breeders - Metal Man
Secret Colours - Bad Vibrations
Women - Venice Lockjaw (LP- Public Strain is very good!)
Public Image - Fodderstompf (anti-disco dub disco!!!!)
Neon Indian - Mind, Drips (Bibio remix)
Sole - Sebago
Edgar Wappenhalter - "Michel Brun Omber" (Cauliflower Dreams cassettes)
Flying Lotus - Zodiac Shit
Devon Irons - Vampire
Duran Duran Duran - Hard Girls
Grass Widow - Submarine (LP - Past Time is also very good!)
Baby Monster - Ultra Violence And Beethoven
Neil Michael Hegarty - Repeat The Sound of Joy (very, very finally)

So until we crush the next pub quiz at Jam St cafe in der Range, I'll leave you with the sound of your life blood rushing through your pearl-like shell-likes.

Your pal, Coc x

World Edging Closer To Equidistance

Howdy, flakes!

The hibernation of fun has been staved off for another minute or so: another Junkbox has slopped out the traps and is limping its way out into the Universe from this point in space and time. A more fluent understanding of physics and the nature of essence would enable me to stretch the point out infinitely, wrap around the ears of millions, warp it around the thoughts of thousands; but then a more fluent grasp of my potential as dictator, demagogue and potentate would've steered me to a position of massive and distortive cultural influence, through which MY loves would become THEIR loves (but not YOUR loves) and my heart would boil with the bloody gratitude of a hundred starving artists.

Now the paranoid, meta-fantasy fades away and I find myself sat before another ODI, I'm left only with the hollow victory of another Insidious Junkbox - the TWENTY-FIFTH!! I think I'm roughly on course for a Junkbox per month since I started in July 2008, and that fills me with an enormous sense of under-being. (Parklife!)

Lend an ear and let the wax pour forth!

Insidious Junkbox XXV: Robert Maxwell's Silver Junkbox

Menomena! - Ghost Ship
MC Mabon - Canna Lembo
No Age - Boy Void
Scritti Politti- P.A.s
Cut Copy - Hearts On Fire
Boards of Canada - Skyliner
Liquid Liquid - Scraper
The Fall - Who Makes The Nazis?
De La Soul - Freedom To Speak
Depth Charge - I ... Always Do
Ayalew Mesfin & Black Lion Band - Gedawo
Gorffenwyd - Y Cynllwyn (The Conspiracy)
Datblygu - Hymne Europa 1992 (plus rare bit of DRE speaking English!)
Jeffrey Lewis - Punk Is Dead (Crass cover)
Beck - Sexxx Laws (this will be played at the Coc/Lw wedding disco!)

All these tracks were selected by my iPod on shuffle, as an attempt to do something a bit different to mark the silver number achievement. I skipped a couple by the same bands, and to be honest, I did also set Otis Reddings's "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay" aside. Punch me in the kidneys and call me an organ rapist, if it makes me feel any better.

So until I manage to work out how I can translate my skull doodles into some kind of Insidious Junkbox emblem, I shall leave you to your stinking thinking.

Your pal, Coc x

There's Always Room On The Womb

Junkbox Heil!

It used to be so easy. I'd just sit at the computer and nine times out of ten a torrent of bird-shaped imagery and liquid-based metaphor (or was it a flock?) would spunk out of my thinkhole (or was it swoop?) and I'd write them down using a computer (or was it a bird-table?) and sit back all pleased with myself at the corrosive power of my wobbly intellect.

Now I make a list of the songs. Dry is my thought and withered my writing stick.

Insidious Junkbox 24: 24 Hairy Portly People

Ministry - Jesus Built My Hotrod
Minks - Drunk Punks
The Chap - Few Horoscope
Chops - Giant Whale Is A Krill Eater
*Aspects - Psychoboogie
Cloud Nothings - Didn't You
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Fright Night (Nevermore)
Woods - Death Rattle
The Sharks - Music Answer (Vocal Mix)
Gold Panda - You
Acen - Trip II The Moon (Part 2: The Darkside)
Black Carrot - Magnets
Ween - Buenas Tardes Amigo

It can be downloaded, this hour-long stream of golden spew, by clicking on the Insidious Junkbox bit above - but you know this, you aren't children.

There's some classic hardcore Bond-sampling genius, which sounds a bit like the music I imagine I'll hear when my life flashes in front of my eyes. There's some woozy FM radio Ziggy Stardust impressions. There's some Bristolian twisted hip-hop from about ten years ago. A bit of mid-seventies funky reggae. Some Tom Waits business from Market Harborough. And the immensity of the immense Ween and their immense Mexican revenge song.

I've neverelse to say. Like a reluctant Best Woman at a wedding.

Your pal, Coc xx

Pope Pisses On Church - Man With Face Gapes

Lightning strike!

Before the tedium of this Tuesday evening drives me to plunge my steaming fingers into the back of my eye-sacs, I've decided its time to pull out the necessary apostrophes and reveal unto the world my latest Siwncbocs shenanigans. These words woven from my Hiberno-Cymric heritage, y'unnerstan'?

Back in the day, when I was bored, I would take a pencil in my hand and write about the chicks I was busy digging, or watch an auld film on the VHS, or try and get a bubble into my vein in order to turn all the switches to Nope. None of this has the lusty allure for which I have to petition so strongly these days.

I open up the big box marked "Think, You Squib, Think!" and next to nothing tumbles out, the scaly few cells left behind by thoughts long dessicated, the dead, dry earwigs that starved waiting for Walter Koening to return, the scorched remains of things that were never really there. And cetera.

So in place of original thought and an artfully-turned phraselet, I give you another Junkbxxxxxx tracklisting...

Insidious Junkbocs 23: Revenge of the Skidoo

Frank Sidebottom - Guess Who's Been On Match of the Day (rest in papier mache)
Daniel Johnston - The Beatles (and not the other way around...)
School of Seven Bells - Heart Is Strange
Daedalus - An Armada Approaches
Human Resource - Dominator
D.O. Misani - Giko Piny
PJ Harvey - Man Size
Circulatory System - Overjoyed
Brian Dewan - 99 Chops (not Bryan Fury the zombie dude in Tekken)
MGMT - Flash Delirium
Psychobuildings - No Man's Land
M.I.A. - Tell Me Why
The KLF - What Time Is Love? (Original Version)

Don't let the cotton wool cuteness fool you - I am the one and only Dominator. I'm bigger and badder and almost certainly rougher and tougher. In other words, sucker, there is no other. So make way there or something. And listen to the new Ariel Pink album while you're at it. It'll feature in Junkbox soon (ie Coctober).

Great smears of luck, friends, daubed all over your lolling faces.

Your pal, Coc x

Orange vs Red Fury vs Insidious Junkbox 22

Evening, chums!

In this new atmosphere of amnesiac interpretation of global sporting events, I present a tardy entry into the sloppily-recording school of podcasting, Insidious Junkbox 22: 22 Dragons On My Shirt.

The tracklisiting is something like this:

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Reverence
LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls
Ganglians - Candy Girl
Meat Beat Manifesto - She's Unreal
White Hinterland - Huron
Ulrich Schnauss - On My Own
Comet Gain - Thee eager Younger Fraternity Bomp
Love Is All - Kungen
Young Marble Giants - Choci Loni
Crysal Castles - Birds
Filthy Pedro & The Carthiginians - Gilgamesh/Dolphins of Rotherham
King Tubby - Hijack The Barber
The Scientist - The Fly (classic hardcore from Kickin' Records, c 1991)
Tamikrest - Tamiditine

So many of my tiny little crackly brain cells have been absorbed in the World Cup. in wedding plans and in my attempts to scratch out a living in a customer care call centre that it's been almost three months since my last podcast. Were I less honest and more delusional than I am, I would solemnly swear that it shall not be so long before "Junkbox 23: Revenge of the Skidoo" opens a can of Whup-Ear. But who would be fooled?

May the road rise up to meet you, and your gorge swell as best required.

Yours in Christ

Your pal, Coc x

I think that perhaps...

... the French read my last blog and decided to draw on one of their most durable skills - going on strike.

Obviously, they'll now go on to reach the final again - before Riberry gets sent off for biting Robinho's face off or something.

Your pal, Coc x

My World Cup theory

Morning, chums!

I've been developing a theory the last few days. In a rather limited way.

It's about the World Cup, and why I love it quite so much. It's about England, and the way they play - and the way other nations play. It's about why some nations are more successful than others. And above all, it's about sticking my head into some pretentious idea, which I enjoy doing lots and lots.

The World Cup isn't about football. It's about countries' standings in the world. It's an obvious thing to express - but it's a form of cultural warfare with all the despair and triumphalism you might expect. This is why totalitarian governments, especially in Latin America, but not confined there, really enjoy throwing their weight behind their national sides, or their pet club sides, as in the Soviet Bloc.

My thoughts were sparked by an article in The Observer's World Cup special last week about the performance of Algeria in the group stages in 1982, when they shocked the West Germans 2-1 in the first game before being cynically squeezed out by "el Anschluss" between the Deutsch and their Austrian neighbours. The article was full of how the Algerians felt they had the opportunity to express their country to the World, and how their football seemed very suucesful as a result.

Those countries with the best World Cup pedigree are maybe those with the surest idea of what they can contribute to the world. In the case of Brazil and Argentina, football is perhaps held up as their greatest contribution, but nonetheless self-confidence of nation and national side seem intermingled. Is it any coincidence that England's most lasting success came at the height of its Swinging London mid-sixties confidence, when the "white heat of technology" and its explosive British Invasion of pop charts, art and design circles propelled Britain back to the forefront of the West's imagination?

So far, so familiar - but it got my slowly-grinding mind to thinking about what it IS that these countries feel they are expressing?

Brazil is all about dance, I think. They are the Samba Kings, and individual flair (maybe not best illustrated by the "gaucho" Dunga's relatively pedestrian outfit in this World Cup) is very highly valued together with the ability to improvise. This approach (and their supreme self-confidence in it) has produced a team with the necessary belief to lift the trophy five times and to win a lot of friends doing it.

Argentina is more urban, shiftier, and this is perhaps in many ways why they represent the eternal enemy of English football - the spectre of the thief, the hustler. This is best represented by Maradona, of course, who's celebrated in other countries for exactly those qualities that turn the stomachs of so many English football fans. Argentinian confidence is perhaps a little more fragile than sunny Brazil's, and they've only won the competition twice; but nonetheless, we can tell what it is they are looking to express and how it might reflect Argentina's collective opinion of itself. Should such a dream exist.

Germany's expression of itself seemed to begin properly in 1954 with the Miracle of Bern and their first World title. The nation entered the competition still guilty, broken and starving from the fallout of a war-scarred half century but after winning the factories of myth now had it poised on the brink of another economic miracle and the acceptance back at the international table. They've since qualified for every World Cup, surviving the group stage each time, featuring in seemingly countless finals and won the trophy another two times in '74 and at Italia 90. Self-belief and industry seem to be their chief tools both in terms of football and nation-building.

Italy is something of a more complex beast. Four World Cup wins places them firmly in second place ahead of the Germans, Argentina and the dimly-remembered Uruguayans, although the first two Italian victories bear the dark, stubborn stain of Mussolini's fascists. The later two victories are a little more difficult to fathom as Italy entered both the competitons in '82 and 2006 as unfancied and couldn't be described as amongst the most attractive teams in either. Their national game can be characterised by paranoia and cynicism, which has helped to build the catenaccio defensive system of man-marking and a sweeper to pick up the pieces and launch counter-attacks. Images of stilettos and Renaissance city states. This analogy is weakening even as I try to open it out, so for the sake of finishing my point, I'll move on.

France won their own country over to the idea of supporting the team in 1998, and almost validated Pele's view that an African team would win the World Cup by the end of the twentieth century, fielding an ethnically diverse mix studded with African-born talents like Zidane, Desailly and Vieira. Their desire to express this idea saw them pick up the WC and European titles in quick succession, but they've since collapsed back into imperious disdain and in-fighting, and without the influence of Zidane are expected to slump out of this year's competition in the first round.

So much cheap pop cultural theory, now on to the escapist fantasy - England. A rather dour team it was that won in 1966, perhaps the last hurrah of the old Victorian values - an emotionally constipated coach reflected in a rather constipated performance that finally exploded into relief and joy come extra time. But that model simply doesn't work for England any more. Just as the spread of the game around the world at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries indicated the stretch of England's influence around the world, so England's performances post-war (once they'd deigned to get involved in international competition) have mirrored its anxious slip down the political world league table.

The pressure of maintaining a pre-eminent position in the world has become crippling. Thirty years of hurt has spread to forty-four, a half-century is knocking. The same emotionally-constipated ideas about what England means give no escape. Only Gazza was able to weep out a bit of relief, and maybe he is the key to the re-invention that England requires. Despite all the attempts to re-cast England in the form of the Premiership as skillful, sophisticated and successful, the pressure of maintaining some Victorian image of quiet, manly supremacy is proving too much for our modern adolescent players.

Bearing in mind that the most successful football models could be said to be based on assured national skills and characteristics, it might help to look at what English people are so skilled in and so heavily-trained in it is as second nature. What is the English equivalent of the Argentinian wiles of the tango, or the German belief in industry or the Brazilian spirit of carnival? I'd say, humour. The famous English/British sense of humour that pervades our society as thoroughly as paranoia does that of Italy.

The most successful player at the World Cup for England post-66 was Gazza, the joker. Although his talents seem to have been borne of huge emotional and psychological problems, nonetheless it would be difficult to separate his inventive play from his joking nature. A relaxed and jokey approach would help our players to deal with the huge pressures heaped upon them and it would certainly serve as a better coping mechanism for the English fans and press than the current tactic of sour-faced whingeing, and more importantly it would be an expression of something quintessentially English. That seems to be the key - playing to national strengths.

So, that's my grand plan for how England can come closer to taking their game forward on the global stage. The only difficulty now is to figure out how this idea can be applied to the actual playing of the game, but, you know, I just do the blue sky thinking. I'll leave it to the techno-crats and clever types to figure out the rest.

Now I have to work out how the lingering sense of Hiraeth and propensity for bilingualism can propel Wales to the European Championships in 2012.

Your pal, Coc x

Insidious Junkbox XXI - Whither the Digital Economy?

Greetings, mud-watchers.

As usual, I'm writing this while trying to think about two other things: Charlie Brooker's new TV programme and simultaneous haircut, and the inevitable dawning of another day at work. I've had a day off today, which I've typically not made anything like the most of. Whinge, whinge. But I HAVE done another Junkbox. One strangely rutted in the year 2008. I'm nostalgic to the sinew and no mistake.

So, Junkbox XXI, which inspired by Dave C's TV appearance on ITV this evening, I seem to have called "I Hate Tories". Normally I try to keep the air-bubbles of hatred out of my bloodstream in order to avoid juddering death, but I was under pressure to name the MP3 and it just blurted out. Unless I'm discussing the party arrangements for the day Thatcher finally fucks off from the face of the earth on her way under it, then I really annoy Lw and feel like a blackened stump of a human figurine.

INSIDIOUS JUNKBOX XXI

1. Primal Scream - Higher Than The Sun (Higher Than The Orb Mix)
2. Rusko - Cockney Thug (Caspa Mix)
3. Crocodiles - Neon Jesus
4. Clor - Love + Pain
5. Archie Bronson Outfit - Shark's Tooth
6. Asiko - Lagos City
7. Gil Scott Heron - New York Is Killing Me
8. Talking Heads - Pulled Up
9. High Wolf - Tropical Rain Washed My Brain
10. Wolf People - October Fires
11. Cults - Go Outside
12. Shitmat - Clash And Carry (Old Socks Mix)

Download it from the titley bit that should be a different colour. Next time, fewer tunes from 2008 that I hadn't heard until very recently. Maybe some LCD Soundsystem.

I keep thinking that I'll do one that I just let my iPod pick the tunes. Could be disastrous.

And next time, a bit more of an effort with the descriptive words. Something about buttery udders or porcelain battleships or something.

Your pal, Coc x

Chocolate Fear Of The Big Booming Daddy

Howdo? and Howdo!

I'm watching me the end of the Tim Burton version of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. Very poor how it entwines the whole American obsession with the Patriarchal into the end. Everyone in the US seems so obsessed with the Daddy Within. Or at least it runs through American pop culture like an unravelling stitch on a poorly weft fabric.

I like the Gene Wilder one much more, even though it's maybe a bit more sappy. The point is that Wonka is the father figure, not some creepy over-toothed older brother at the dinner table. Or is that the point? Even if it isn't, we don't need a dentist and people following their destiny even if it's against the parental wishes and blah baby boomer blah... On the other hand, a bit of Christopher Lee is always a good thing.

An unfocused mind railing against the locusts, gumming up my mental air-con.

Peace and fucking! Believe!

Your pal, Coc x

Late Night Junkbox Seepage

Mawnin' mawnin'!

Time is tight and the night is short, friends, and work scratches at the clock like a hungry yellow dog in the streets. So I cut quick to the chase, yeah?

Insidious Junkbox 20 - Trouble HeliXX

1. NWA - Straight Outta Compton
2. Beach Fossils - Daydream
3. Gorillaz - Stylo (Chiddy Bang mix)
4. Race Horses - Cake
5. Club 8 - Western Hospitality
6. Shellac (of North America) - Wingwalker
7. Quasi - Repulsion
8. Massive Attack - Babel
9. Nightmares on Wax - Aftermath
10. Phantogram - As Far As I Can See
11. Son Lux - Weapons V
12. TV On The Radio - Staring At The Sun

A flinty dozen indeeeed, although I myself was not on the sparklingest of forms and the levels were weird and mossy indeed. I went off for a bender in a paintball course of my own mind. I did, I did.

I also tried to cut down on the number of times I said "kindof". Perhaps that was why I didn't feel so talkative....

So many questions!

Your pal, Coc x

Ingenious Punkcast - Grizzled Guts Undo Stern Intentions

Greetings, wobbly overlords of the illimitable chaos!

Were I able to get out of bed, were I able to refuse drinks and get to bed at a reasonable hour, were I not the CocOen that I am - then I'd be finishing off another Insidious Junkbox - Number Twenty - the XX, if you will. Although I won't be playing any XX because that's only just occured to me and I lack the wit to insert it. The running time is already looking as hairy as a gymnast's comb-over.

So, while we all wait for me to pull the collective finger from out my arse, here are some details of another past Junkbox - a Hallowe'en special no less. And quite a good list it was, even properly themed a little, which is rare for me.

Junkbox The 13th - Jason's Revenge

1. Butthole Surfers - Hurdy Gurdy Man
2. Julian Casablancas - River of Brakelights
3. Cypress Hill - We Ain't Going Out Like That
4. Weird Era - Ghost
5. Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms
6. Spizzenergi - Where's Captain Kirk?
7. Sufjan Stevens - Movement VII (Finale) - The Emperor of Centrifuge
8. Roxanne Shante - Independent Woman
9. T33TH!!! - If I Ever
10. The Human League - Empire State Human
11. Kelpe - Microscopic Contents
12. Relics - What To Feel
13. Pink Floyd - Julia Dream
14. Pavement - Range Life

Anyway,now I've realised that I say "kindof" a very much lot of the time when I extemporise - so I'm not in any fit state to record now and I don't have the time because I've been lying here in this bed instead. Only able to reach over and pick up the handy laptop.

Dr Lw has a new laptop too, which I hope she will use to rage hard in a blogular way, spitting the acid rain of her battery mind onto the mongoose media and there limping obsession with all that's not right right. Let's sign a huge, rainbow-based petition to make her do it.

Your pal, Coc x

Touched by the Hand of Dewi - Another Junkbox Raises Its Wrinkled Fingers

Hey, hey!

I almost managed to include NO Welsh music in this episode of Insidious Junkbox, the nineteenth one at that. Other than that, it's a total daffodil-bursting vernal groundburst of musical delight.

Please don't call me arrogant, but I think I am the Special Oen. Ears here.

Insidious Junkbox 19: Dewi's Magic Hanky - List of track
1. The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist
2. Four Tet - She Just Likes To Fight
3. Ghetto Cross - Dog Years
4. Culture - Two Sevens Clash
5. Lali Puna - Remember
6. Slow Club - Wild Blue Milk
7. Le Corps Mince De Francoise - Something Golden
8. Hatcham Social - Crocodile
9. The Young Knives - Here Comes The Rumour Mill
10. Docfeistr - Endaf Presli/MC Mabon/Dr Trey
11. Orbital w/ Kirk Hammet - Satan
12. Debruit - It's Bigger Than Kmo-Pa
13. Gonjasufi - Ancestors

And as has become traditional these last couple of posts, here's an older, somewhat neglected Junkbox from the archives...

Junkbox 12 - The Hurty Dozen

1. Jeru the Damaja - Ya Playing Yaself
2. Phoenix - Love Like A Sunset (Shuttle Mix)
3. The Witch & the Robot - Giants' Graves
4. Les Loups Noirs d'Haiti - Jet Biguine
5. Vitalic - Station Mir 2099
6. Half Man Half Biscuit - Joy Division Ovengloves
7. Dalek - Gutter Tactics
8. Campfires - Portsmouth Daydream Supper
9. MV & EE - Feelin' Fine
10. Lazersonic & Zak Frost - Aquaplane
11. The Slits - Heard It Through The Grapevine
12. Gruff Rhys - Wild Robots Power Up
13. The Heptones - Mr President
14. Cassetteboy

I'm short on words, as I'm trying to do this quick, so i can go see my Mammy.

Yer pal,

Coc x

Under the Sofa, a Matchstick - Junkbox #18 up for listening

Dia duit!

Once again, Coc Oen swerves unsteadily towards you, the heady brown milk of the Insidious Junkbox oozing from his stubbly teats.

And as if further appetite-enhancement were required, check out this roll call of past & future greatness.

Insidious Junkbox #18 - The Low-Rent Majority

1. Polytechnic - Won't You Come Around? (I was wearing a Polytechnic t-shirt too - unwittingly as a fox!)
2. Les Denis - That Doesn't Help Us Now
3. Lupe Fiasco - The National Anthem
4. New Kingdom - Unicorns Were Horses (masterful 90s psychedelic hip-hop)
5. Caribou - Odessa
6. Lush - Sweetness & Light
7. These New Puritans - Attack Music
8. A Tribe Called Quest - I Left My Wallet In El Segundo
9. RJD2 - A Spaceship For Now
10. First Rate People - Girls' Night
11. M/A/R/R/S - Pump Up The Volume
12. Twin Tigers - Passive Idol
13. Stereolab - Golden Atoms (would've used the Nurse With Wound version, but it's 10 mins!)

While completing this opus to the dodecahedral swirls of the musical world, I also drew a picture of a freaky skeleton in heavy rimmed NHS specs and headphones. A Harry Palmer for the blogosphere, perhap! I quite want to make it the Junkbox mascot, but the idea will no doubt fall away like so many flaky condoms.

And if you enjoy this, why not swing by one of the relatively neglected Junkboxes of months past. Insidious Junkbox VII: One Sevens Clash is a lovely beast indeed, which rattled its squeaky sabre back in July last year and includes the genius of ...

1. Giorgio Moroder/Donna Summer - I Feel Love
2. Panda Riot - Like Flowers At Night
3. Sex In Dallas - Everybody Deserves To Be Fucked
4. The Nightjars - Recognition In A Crowd
5. St Vincent - The Strangers
6. Black Nerd - I Am Vince Fontaine
7. Troxum - Martian Suburbs
8. Micuchu - Just In Case
9. Mudhoney - Touch Me, I'm Sick
10. A Middle Sex - A Pang of Conscience
11. The Duckworth Lewis Method - Jiggery Pokery

I've a feeling there was another track snucked in towards the end, but I don't quite remember and I can't listen to the 'cast at the minute, as I'm taking in the majesty of Daedelus's Exquisite Corpse LP from that 2005.

May the tears you wipe away be shiny with jewels.

Your pal, Coc x

Insidious Junkbox XVII - Fifteen Plus Two

Guten abend.

I'm working against the temptation to write all the numbers in Roman style as I'm watching a programme about the 2007/8 Pittsburgh Steelers as a warm-up for Superbowl Howevermany tomorrow night.

I have produced another shoddy 60 minutes of your time with Insidious Junkbox, and it's including these treats...

Insidious Junkbox XVII - Fifteen Plus Two

Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster - The Rise Of The Eagles
Dan Deacon - Paddling Ghost
Debruit - Nigeria What?
Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo de Cotonou - Ma Tafou Gnin O
Add n to (x) - Metal Fingers In My Body
Solar Bears - Alpha People
Slowdive - Catch The Breeze
Shlohmo - 7am
The Bloody Beetroots - Mystery Meat
Les Maledictus Sound - Jim Clark Was Driving Recklessly
Happy Mondays - Little Matchstick Owen's Rap
Mos Def w Slick Rick - Auditorium
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Starmoonsun
Hot Chip - I Feel Better

Quite a varied one this time, although I'm still not playing another reggae/dub stuff. Any suggestions, let me the Hell know.

Your pal, Coc x

Another Bleat In The Face of The Big Whatever

Howdy, pop late-late-adolescents!

Found out yesterday that Observer Music Monthly #76 is the last of them.

This has evoked mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was a rather silly magazine, stretched between ageing NME types at one end, globe-sniffing multi-cultural fashionistas at the other and tossers who just want to read yer Rock'n'Roll Messiah types wandering about the middle. You know, the Springsteens, the Dylans, the myth of the seismically redemptive hero that probably stepped back into the background of our minds a couple of decades ago.

But the hairier, more sentimental hand, he tells a different story. However thick-headed its editorial direction might've been at times, at least OMM was a collection of pages stapled together with words and pictures about music on them. There seems to be less and less of that about - Plan B, gone; Bearded, gone. The greying of my once-again-bushy beard has meant I pick up a great many copies of MOJO at the newsagent than I would've been comfortable with ten years ago, and Artrocker seems to be hanging on at the moment; but it's not enough.

To the blogs, my friends! Well, not quite. There'll be no bundle of Hype Machines tied together with string behind the chest of drawers in a few years' time. I suppose that's the point. But I think I need the comfort of printed paper. I'm a sentimental auld cunt, and ageing Java just won't cut it with me.

And I bet they keep that bastard "Woman" monthly intact, despite it's irritating irrelevance (see Dr Lw's thoughts on that from October). And don't even get me started on the Food one!

Your pal, Coc x

The Insidious Junkbox

Howdy, all!

A suggestion from Ollie Nightjar, the cricketing Behemoth of the Flat Above, has led to me posting my latest podcast here on the ol' Cocaphrenic blogspot.

I've been toiling out these hour-long podcasts on an irregular basis since August 2008, although it's difficult to work out why. It's a naughty and piratical business, although I have paid for all the tracks themselves, and there's somewhere in my mind the dim idea that I'd like to pretend to do this for a living. I believe that I've a pleasant, hesitant burble; but I'm in no way as eclectic as I'd like to be, always falling back on the same boys with guitars and circuit-boards that haunt my imagination.

It's a kind of mixtape though, really. The kind of thing I used to do for friends, back in the days when music had a petro-chemical physical host, CDs, audio-cassettes, wax cylinders. Now that those soundwaves are made of tiny fragments of pixellated thought, a podcast seems the most sensible option. And I guess it spreads furtherer too. The illusory physical thrill has gone, but such is our digital margarine life. We mutter on with our hands in our pockets...

Insidious Junkbox #16: Suck Scene is fresh from the mouths of babes and monsters this morning, and contains these treats...

Associates - Party Fears Two
The xx - Islands
Method Man - Release Yo' Delf (Prodigy Mix)
John Cooper Clarke - The Day My Pad Went Mad
The Phantom Band - Throwing Bones
Teengirl Fantasy - New Image Every Day
Bear In Heaven - Lovesick Teenagers
Parliament - Little Old Country Boy
De La Soul - Brainwashed Follower
Japandroids - Sovereignty
Meat Puppets - Lake of Fire
Deee-Lite - What Is Love?
Fashawn - Samsonite Man
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Spellbound

It's all about the Janus face, people, a bit of old stuff and a bit of new, nailed to the mast of the flag of convenience. Insidious Junkbox rules!

Your pal, Coc x