Odds And Sods

The weekend was spent in suburban Detroit, where were pleased enough to rock both the Somerset Collection and the rock Mecca that is the Village Club. We totally closed out the latter of them, although I should note that while normally that means hanging out with the bar staff till the wee small hours, in this instance it meant that the valet parking guys had to wait to go home. Sorry.

The exciting things today we picked up on the internet include this rendering of the Atlantic Yards project as a series of views from around the area. Very ginormous the project is, too. I have to say, any series of skyscrapers that can make Atlantic Avenue seem claustrophobic is way too large. As I've already stressed, the project, for me, is more about trashing the neighbourhood than any deep-held aesthetic objection to skyscrapers. But I have to say the rendering gave me the creeps.

And I have a wee rant about Apple, who provided me with an update to iTunes that has removed my lovingly assembled collection of Graham Linehan sitcoms from my iPod. After a little sniff around the website, we found out that they did it on purpose. Apparently TV shows not bought from the iTunes store are not TV shows but disgusting impostors!

Either way I'm going to have to do a restore on the stupid thing.

I also suggest a quick look at this Slate discussion between Simon Reynolds, who just wrote "Rip It Up and Start Again", and Stephen Metcalf. I think the man is not detached enough from the post punkers, but he seems to love the source material. Reminded me of Michael Azerad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, which posited that post punk, and particularly new wave, was just a big scam to corporatise punk. Boo, capitalist pigs.

What was also amusing from the Azerad book was that most of the bands that toured with Public Image Limited hated the experience. I mean, you knew John Lydon was evil, but he was apparently very dismissive of the other bands. Hasn't appeared to have harmed his career any, mind.

Good segue opportunity. Here's a Chemical Brothers remix of John collaborating with his old touring drummer in Leftfield. Thing is, the compilation is utterly unauthorised. So with luck, Lydon entirely gets not real paid.

Leftfield - "Open Up (Chemical Brothers Mix)"
Buy Chemical Reaction here, even though the compilers are bad