Cocktails and Records

It’s that time of the year when everyone does their end of year list/retrospective thing looking at the best and worse of the year. I suspect that these lists are often intended to make the lister look really cool and on the case. I’m nowhere near cool or on the case but that’s not going to stop me…

THE CRUCIAL STUFF

Cocktails

The cocktail of choice this year, apart from the superlative martini, is the bitter (yet sweet) Negroni. That’s equal parts:

• Campari
• gin
• sweet vermouth

Ice. Stir. Bitter. Pink. Nice.

Records

Midlake have probably been my band of the year. The Trials of Von Occupanther was a fantastic album which although released in 2006, I only really got into this year.

I seemed to have missed the boat in 2007 in terms of live music. Last year was superb (Steve Reich, Konono No. 1, Amadou & Mariam, Nicole Willis, Teenage Fanclub doing Bandwagonesque) but little has cut it this year other than well, Midlake, Orchestra Baobob (at the Jazz Cafe last month) and The Bad Plus (at the ICA in July).

Staying on the stereo from this year:

• Japan’s super kick ass jazz group, Soil and Pimp Sessions (which was probably was the gig of the year, but I sadly missed it)
• Laura Nyro’s Eli and the Thirteenth Confession
• CSS’s Lets make love and listen to death from above 7″
• Art Blakey’s Mosaic
• East Kilbride’s finest, The Pearlfishers’ Up with the Larks
• The very best of ethiopiques - excellent compilation of 70s Ethiopian soul and jazz
• the Carousel soundtrack. Obviously.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Good things

• The excellent dream I had where I went drag car racing with Bill Wyman. We ran into Morrissey at the track and he bought me an icecream. A nice time was had by all.
• Getting sunburnt in Scotland.
• John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia, losing his seat to Maxine McKew, pinko former ABC journalist. Poetic justice.
• The rise and rise of Charlie Brooker.
• Leo Hickman’s The Final Call: In Search of the True Cost of our Holidays - a really well researched and well written book about how tourism is destroying the world. Sadly, I read this whilst on holiday in France.
• The fact that I managed to start writing this blog after many years of procrastination.

Bad things

• 99.9% of all primetime TV output. Will we ever be free from reality TV?
• Richard Dawkins managing to put even me off aethism.
• BBC Radio London shunting Norman Jay’s excellent music programme to digital, only to replace it with Heckle and Jeckle style presenters and lazy talkback radio; something that there’s not nearly enough of on BBC Radio London…
• The number of people I keep encountering who hate current London mayor Ken Livingston so much, that they would seriously consider voting for professional buffoon Boris Johnson instead.
• Having to pretend to care about Madeleine McCann.

Merry Christmas everyone - see you on the other side.

Tags: cocktails, mindless minutiae, music = opinions

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.