Friday. Oooft.
That video up there is probably the most mental song we’ve recorded in our house. It is the second of a couple of preview videos of the PAWS Toad Session, which will be going up tomorrow. Yes, Phil does play his guitar with one of our candles. Yes, and with the cymbals too.
It’s not often I get involved in a gin extravaganza and come off worse than anyone, but yesterday was one of those incapacitating hangovers whereby I could barely even look at the internet, much less write anything on it. Is something ‘on’ the internet? It is, isn’t it. I always think ‘in’ the internet is a bit more fitting, treating the thing more like a jungle than a nice orderly noticeboard.
While we are fannying about wasting our time with the Friday Fives I will be putting together the last video for that PAWS Session. The main video – the ten minute one which goes at the top of the page – always takes ages, and is always the hardest to get right. It’s amazing how brutal you have to be with cutting these things, too. I remember the first time I realised I could get the whole thing down to ten minutes, I was amazed at how much I left out, and yet still ended up with a pretty coherent, entertaining video.
Anyhow, yes, after pretty much losing Thursday altogether, I kind of feel like I have to be productive today, but for the rest of you, honestly, it’s Friday afternoon, even your boss doesn’t really think you’re doing any work.
1. Favourite subject at school.
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
Lotus Eaters – The First Picture of You
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The Psychedelic Furs – Pretty in Pink
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The Icicle Works – Love is a Wonderful Colour
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1. Could have been anything really, from art to maths to physics to chemistry to English. My interests were pretty broad as a kid.
2. I don’t know – could have been a lot of things. On a banal level, I ended up doing industrial design, but could just as easily have ended up doing graphics or architecture I suppose. More radically, I suppose I had the grades – just – that going to somewhere like Cambridge and studying maths or physics wouldn’t have been out of the question. I never considered it because I wanted to do something creative, but at the time I never really realised that science works very much the same as most creative subjects.
3. Gumption: get a big, fuck-off tattoo. At thirty-five, though, I think that ship might have sailed. Money, maybe just buy an old fishing boat and fuck off to the Med forever.
4. Quite a lot. After studying the likes of James Joyce and Joseph Conrad I never got to the stage where I enjoyed the writing, but I definitely enjoyed actually studying them. I actually found Homer a much more entertaining read than I ever expected to.
5. Exercise. Moderation. Intellectual curiosity. Manners. Pretty much anything which made me tolerable to other people.
1. History. Had excellent/alcoholic teachers. Ended up doing it at uni because of them.
2. A lawyer. Blah. Still the back-up plan.
3. Start a record label as I’ve been saying for years…
4. Lord Of The Flies and Brighton Rock were both very enjoyable however much I grumbled at the time.
5. Politeness.
PS – it looks amazingly bizarre seeing PAWS thrash it out in your well-lit front room.
1. Music
2. See question one.
3. See question two.
4. Twelfth Night and Macbeth, got me into Shakespeare, which I’ve since read for pleasure. We studied 1984 too, and while I might hesitate to say I “liked” it, as in derived much pleasure from reading it, it certainly made me think..
5. Running around.
1. Favourite subject at school.
English. Though at one point a teacher accused me of plagiarism because she didn’t think that I was capable of writing ‘such an excellent story’. Bitch.
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
Something 9-5 in an office. Shudder.
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
Travel overseas for a year. Need $$$$!
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking
Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
.
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
Can only think of bad ones, like biting my nails.
I generally enjoyed English too.
I always found physics and biology a lot of fun at school too actually. Less so chemistry – but still… Thought about doing physics at uni.
1. Favourite subject at school.
I honestly don’t know! Prob geography maths or tech.
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
I’d love to have done engineering, or architecture but fell out with physics teacher in 1st year and never put the effort in to sorting that.
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
Buy the Raeburn in stockbridge.
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
1984
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
Does confidence in public speaking count? Cause used to have no problem.
Didn’t even look at the songs – Brilliant Mind by Furniture!
What a fucking tune!
1. Weirdly enough, Maths (I was good at it), but laterly, English. However that love came too late to stop my headlong rush into an Engineering degree
2. Probably working in a lab, if I hadn’t decided to take a year out working in a drugs rehab
3. Buy a pair of REALLY expensive headphones
4. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
5. Being able to get out of the house before 8am
1. Math. Like the logical.
2. Working in a candy factory.
3. I’d travel around to see all of my favorite bands in concert.
4. David Copperfield.
5. Not swearing.
Love that crazy video. Woke me right up.
Also, The Icicle Works is just what I needed to hear. This song and Out Of Season are so fantastic.
1. History.
2. Teaching. Still want to.
3. See # 2.
4. To Kill A Mockingbird.
5. Riding my bike about 10 miles per day.
1) Chemistry …we go t to play with fire, mercury and gunpowder. nothing competes with that
2) A chemist except I couldn’t cook
3) I’d be really healthy for a year and do some alps climbing
4) Watership Down – ……we were 10.
5) Nope I was a shit kid
Graham Greene in general is an ace writer, from what little I know about him. The Quiet American and Brighton Rock were both amazing reads.
Hello again both Tims – long time no see!
Yeah, the nice flowers in the background are a bit surreal, when Phil starts using the mantlepiece above them to play his guitar.
Just watched the video.
It was certainly a good thing you had the pop shield on the mic in case there was any clipping from the plosive consonants in the vocals.
Re: Greene
I’ve read Our Man In Havana and Monsignor Quixote and loved them both.
Should investigate further really.
You have to at least look professional Dylan, even if you aren’t.
I think I’ll spare the office the video this week….I’ve filed it with my death metal and shouty rap until I get home.
playing the guitar with the mantlepiece has to be a winning move
Yeah, not exactly ‘not safe for work’ but perhaps ‘not entirely sociable for work’.
1. Favourite subject at school: History or English, definitely not maths and economics like I studied
2. Dear god, I’ve got no clue. I’m still trying to figure out what I am doing next year.
3. Travel around. In Madrid for the year, but right now I’m just making sure I’ve got enough to get through to the end of the month.
4. Most of them! I was a bit of a bookworm, and honestly its only the few I disliked that stuck out.
5. Learning things. I just used to strike out and teach myself things because I wanted to. Still working on French….
1. English and History
2. fellow a prestigious think thank
3. write a lot more than I currently do
4. Where The Red Fern Grows (which I wil never read again because… sob!), The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Wuthering Heights.
5. not swearing.
1. Favourite subject at school.
English, no question about that.
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
Believe it or not, I nearly ended up to be a secret agent! When I was 17 or 18, I had to learn something after business school, so I sent in an application for employment to the German Federal Intelligence Service. Had to go to Munich in order to do several tests and talks there, but finally I didn’t fully pass their exams … it was just a question of a few points in grading though ….
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
Quit my stupid job and go back to Port Antonio, Jamaica for at least half a year on the very next flight!
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
F.J. Dürrenmatt, ‘Der Richter Und Sein Henker’ (‘The Judge + His Hangman).
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
Being able to drink loads and loads of beer without getting tired and/or grumpy. These days I have to switch to Schnapps with Coke after having had a few beers otherwise I won’t be survive very long!
Cristina, you’re in Madrid for the year? Nice one, I’ve not been to Spain since I was too young to really remember anything, and I’d love to go.
Ducky, come on, swearing is splendid!
Dirk, I remember reading Dürrenmatt at school actually. Did he write Die Physiker by any chance? I think that was the one.
“Believe it or not, I nearly ended up to be a secret agent! When I was 17 or 18, I had to learn something after business school, so I sent in an application for employment to the German Federal Intelligence Service. Had to go to Munich in order to do several tests and talks there, but finally I didn’t fully pass their exams … it was just a question of a few points in grading though ….” – This officially makes you the coolest person who reads this blog.
Unless Dylan did pass the exam and hasn’t told anyone yet.
“Agent Matthews, your first assignment will be to go undercover as a jovial alcoholic fuckwit… think you can manage that, son?”
1. Definitely Art or Craft & Design, I’ll give to Art but only because it’s hamstrung in my memory by the incredibly poor teachers I had.
2. Architecture was my first choice right up till UCAS time. With hindsight just as well I didn’t go for it. Still gutted I never went for astronaut though.
3. Probably go back to uni and do something like animation. Something I really enjoy with very poor job outlook and would turn my future map nice and hazy.
4. I’d give it to the Shakespeares, even now I wouldn’t relish reading one but they really helped my understanding of story.
5. Probably regular reading. I used to fly through so many books, now it’s relegated to a holiday pastime. Of course in its stead I actually have some legitimate social skills so you know, swings and roundabouts.
1. Favourite subject at school.
English, because I was good at it, drama because I got to fuck about.
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
I’m still not making a living, so not sure whether I can make this decision. I might have been at law school, I guess.
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
Go and live in Melbourne like a louche, bohemian arsehole.
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
As something of an English nerd, I enjoyed most of them, but I really didn’t care about Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things” and ended up being fascinated by it.
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
Being proactive and ahead of the curve about, well, anything.
Muptup, I would have loved to have a go at animation. I did a lot of rendered animations for my last job, and did a shonky sto-motion three-minute one at school, but that’s about as far as I’ve ever taken in.
Joe, just get a damn job, you scrounging student. Stop using up the taxes I, er, don’t really pay anymore.
1. Geography. I was shit-hot at it.
2. Had I not not my law degree after 4 years and settling for a BA (Hons) I would probably be chasing ambulances. I’m not sure that’s more scrupulous way of making a living that what I do now though.
3. Buy my studio apartment in Montmartre. One day…
4. Not exactly a book per se but I loved Macbeth which got me into Shakespeare in a big way.
5. Not being complete bastard.
1. Maths, Physics or Music
2. I was accepted to study Astronomy at uni but decided against it, I could be sitting here now with a monocle giving cheat tips for computer games.
3. Leave my job and start travelling with my band and recording music when we like.
4. To Kill A Mockingbird, and Macbeth
5. Exercise in some way everyday, I used to play football 4 times a week and go to the gym, now I’m lucky if I play once every 6 months.
1. Favourite subject at school.
probably geography but also liked maths
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
Continued to work in the parts department of a garage but thank god I got off my arse
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
Definately travel a lot more
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
A kestral for a knave/kes
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
Surely kids don’t have good habits ? I certainly didn’t
I had a lot better habits as a kid than I do now.
Dave, astronomy sounds amazing, but like most science subjects, when we read about it we get the edited highlights, and I suppose it can be all too easy to forget that the actual day-to-day stuff can be pretty mind-numbingly tedious.
A bit like running a record label, I suppose.
A bit like running a record label, I suppose.
Me, aged thirty-seven.
After violin lessons of course.
True Matthew. I ended up studying Electronics and now work as an engineer, which seemed like an exciting career………..but is actually mind-numbingly tedious
Well this job, in a day to day sense, is far more tedious than the one I gave up in order to do it. It’s having your own thing and having such passion for the overall project which makes the difference.
1. I was always quite rubbish at English, but generally enjoyed it lots anyway. Especially the year I had a really hot teacher.
2. If I’d actually paid attention and studied uni instead of drinking lots and dropping out I’d be some sort of electrical engineer.
3. Bugger off somewhere for about a month.
4. Lord of the Flies was good. Walkabout was ok, but watching the film prompted a life long crush on Jenny Agutter.
5. Not swearing.
5.
1. Favourite subject at school.
English and Maths.
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
Who knows… I don’t make plans, so can’t say what I’d be if I’d done English at Uni instead of Maths.
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
Travel the world (with as few planes as possible) for a year. Or more. It’s the old wandering hobo thing…
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
I liked every book we did at school. I had teachers I trusted.
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
Who knows, who knows…? I think I’m just as polite. I still use a knife and fork. I’m still nice to people I don’t have to be nice to… All in all, I’m still Good Two Shoes. Ahem.
That’s the lassie from Logan’s Run isn’t it? A very worthwhile crush indeed, my good sir.
Matthew, as much as I wish I was a scrounging student, now I’m an unpaid intern. Sublime to the ridiculous. But yeah, here I come dole office (then you can complain)!
Don’t worry mate, I don’t pay tax anymore in any case. Well, not income tax anyway.
Ah yes, the joys of the unpaid internships. Keeping common people out of business since 1764.
Aye, she’s in Logan’s Run and An American Werewolf in London. Lovely woman.
Jenny Agutter does a backing vocal to the song Wild Horses by Prefab Sprout, which is – well – quite disarming to say the least.
Acting and singing? No good will come of this, you mark my words.
Well her part is kinda more spoken, but there’s a breathy little chuckle in there that makes you go all funny.
Tell you what, check it out for yourself…
Her nakedness in Walkabout is used as a lyric in an Arab Strap song too.
1. Drama. Then English.
2. I was thinking of giving bin dipper a shot. Could still happen. Or theatre critic.
3. I would do nothing.
4. Crime and Punishment. Bit of work to get through but it’s actually really really good.
5. Doing homework, not at the last minute. Being nice to people I work with.
1. Favourite subject at school.
Math, love logic and puzzles
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
Veterinarian? Book or music critic? I am still trying to figure out what to do with my life… For now, I work part-time at a kids club, which is actually suiting me fine.
I became an electrical Engineer/Software Developer. Software suited me, it’s like solving a puzzle. Elec Eng is mind-numbingly boring most of the time. At least to me.
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
Dangerous question for me, might affect my marital status.
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
I was/am a bookworm. I enjoyed the reading.
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
I’ll go with the not swearing, at least in front of children. I think most of my habits have improved, otherwise.
Oh that session track is good…been grinning for an hour now
Favourite subject at school.
I used to like Latin ( because of the stories from Homer, Cicero) not the grammar, alhtough if my Dad hadnt made me learn the grammar I supposed I wouldnt have enjoyed it. Biology , because I knew at some stage there was going to have to be a discussion about sex.
And English , despite the fact that I disliked Romeo and Juliet and the slavish attention to detail with which it was dissected for the higher. If Scott is reading this, no your Da didnt teach me.
2. What might you have ended up doing for a living had you made a different (plausible) choice at some key stage in your life.
At a very young age, I decided I was going to be a vet. Which after 2 years of hardcore study, a change of schools , and 5 years at university, I subsequently did.
It has taken me ten years of doing it, to sort of enjoy it. Namely because it provides me with a steady-ish income which I have self indulgently used for travel and recording.
If I could have done something else, what would it have beeen?
Hmm, I honestly have no fucking idea.
Im one of those egotistical ideological fuckwits who would rather have played for Celtic, or been a famous musician.
There are many of these types on the west coast, most are on the dole, some get lucky or have the talent or both.
I still have no answer to this question.
3. Name one thing you might do right now if you had the gumption/money/freedom to do so.
Buy a big house in the country, have an area for recording and generally staying up late having fun with friends, grow lost of food in the garden, have a few horses and sheep to keep the grass short, and occasionally, very occasionally do some very interesting work.
4. Book you were forced to read in school but actually ended up liking.
The Bible
5. Good habit you had as a kid but have long since lost.
Going to mass
To be fair TCB, going to mass is actually quite a filthy habit.
Ben – DO NOT ENRAGE TEH SKY-GOBLINZ!
1. English
2. I’d have taken art at school, if I’d known that it would have been of more use to me than all those half-arsed sciences.
3. If I had the gumption (great word) I’d stop fannying about and finish the damn thing and get a publisher for the “book”
4. Hamlet. Dreaded studying Shakespeare at the time, but find the ones we actually studied have stayed with me.
5. All my habits are bad, they’ve just got worse; I used to write a diary nearly every night and sometimes I wish I’d carried on with it.
2 -(cont) If I HAD taken art I might have gone to art school and I might have got further in the things I’ve done for a living already. I’d have written those books by now…