clivemurray.com

This shit has gone on far too long enough by half.

Please can it be arranged that I spend the majority of my days playing guitar, writing music and drinking coffee? I mean… really?

Thanks, much appreciated,
Clive.

Anyone who works in IT in this country, and probably most of those who work in development, will know The Register even if they aren’t regular readers. It’s the premier UK-based tech news site, and it covers everything from new bleeding edge hardware to trends on the web, to whether Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have had a crap that day. It’s a well respected, often well written site, and I myself often post links to the Register when trying to prove or back up a point about some tech-related discussion.

But.

I absolutely fucking detest its tone of voice sometimes. Just as I can’t stand the idea in some agencies that the techies and the designers don’t mix, or that Mac users and PC users should stay out of each other’s way, or any of the other ridiculous stereotypical nonsense that can easily spring up in technical communities, I hate the sneering way that The Register looks down on certain things with a kind of knowing, pally ridicule which implies that everyone reading agrees with them.

Examples? It’s in the lexicon. Twitter is referred to as a “Web2.0rhea outfit“. Second Life is referred to as “Sadville“. The iPhone is the “Jesus Phone“. There are others. In one article the site TechCrunch was referred to as “the Special Olympics of Web2.0″.

It just winds me up – it’s lazy journalism. It’s not just giving me the news, it’s spinning it before it gets to me. As it happens, I have an iPhone and I use Twitter (though not Second Life) but it’s not just about feeling wounded – give me more credit than that.

I just like to make my own mind up, that’s all.
–c.

Funny how life can appear to go round in circles, innit?

I’m originally from Eastbourne, down there on the south coast, and it was there and in the neighbouring town of Bexhill that I grew up and got into my first band, aged 17. When that imploded I managed to tag onto a more metal band with the drummer from the previous one, and the bassist from that band on vocals. Damn good fun, that was. Anyway, the bassist for this new band was in fact the drummer’s postman – one Stuart Ranger. We rehearsed in Polegate and played a couple of gigs in Eastbourne, but that was more or less it.

Roughly 14 years later – this coming Sunday in fact – I will return to Eastbourne to rehearse for the first time with a newly-forming covers band that is yet to have a name, by the invite of Stuart’s brother, and long-time cm.com reader, Dan.

Personally, I can’t wait.
–c.

I’ve been down lately, due to my lack of a band. Little Monkeys/Crashstars has finally collapsed properly – the last gasp re-union Beach Concert was obviously not to be, and I’m fucking done with it now. The one thing I’ll say about that – and this is a direct appeal to Jon E. Crash himself – is that we still have a half finished amazing sounding album, and one day we need to finish that. Not this year or next, fair enough, but it must be done one day. That is all.

And the covers band has stalled before it even left the rehearsal room due to lack of being bothered from another quarter, and meh. Whatever. And I am getting fucking sick of this fucking attitude across the board.

So. What am I going to do about it? Bitch and moan? Nothing? Call everyone fuckers and complain about my lot?

Fuck that noise. I am going to take the positives from all this and do something new. Something on my fucking own, that no-one can fuck up for me.

The one positive thing that came out of the JackBarrel covers attempt was that I discovered I can sing lead vocals. Not amazingly, and I’m totally inexperienced at it, but I can do it. So I hereby announce that my next recording project is going to be an album or EP of original vocal rock songs written, played and sung by me.

It will be called “If You Want It Done Right” (or similar) because ultimately I have come to realise that this is the only way anything will get done: I have to fucking do it myself.

So. Bollocks to everyone else (Jon, you’re mainly excused from that as the recent collapses weren’t your fault), I’m going solo. It will probably be under my glam stagename Tommi Starr, and it certainly won’t see light of day until at the very earliest middle of next year, but there it is.

So what do you think about that?
–TS

I simply DO NOT HAVE A NEW POST FOR YOU TODAY.Nothing! Nada! Zero!

Would you like some Bill Murray while you wait?

I love you all. Never forget that.
–c.

…but Billie Piper’s face is just weird.

There’s just no getting around that.

–c.

I reckon the only safe way to drive down the A666 would be backwards, thus reversing any inherent Satanic energies you may be channelling.

That’s a point actually… people used to go on about secret messages hidden backwards in heavy metal. Well there’s quite a lot of pretty fucking overt Satany going on forwards in some of the deeper darker stuff. What happens if you play that backwards? Does the world implode?

Or does it become a message of peace from the heart of the cosmos?

Mind you… it could potentially be something much much worse… Cliff Richard, the Anti-rock.

DON’T DO IT.
–c.

Apparently some Sport happened last night, but it didn’t happen the way it was supposed to.

It seems this is somehow going to cause more misery and woe in this country than any event since the Second World War, according to all the papers this morning.  Well, at the very least, it appears to be the most newsworthy thing to have happened in the last 24 hours.

And that makes me sad.

–c.