I’m on Twitter, obviously, and that scratches a similar itch to the one blogging used to. Plus I’ve been doing this for 13 years now, since before the word “blog” existed, and I think it may just be time to hang up the WordPress. The band site has a blog and I’ll post crap on there every now and then, but I think this site is pretty much done.

Cheers for coming, turn the light out when you go.

–c.

(I’ve said this a few times before, so I’ll probably be back in a few months once something gets under my skin again…)

Anton Rodgers

1938:

Donald Knuth

1945:

Gunther von Hagens

and

Rod Stewart

1949:

Linda Lovelace

1953:

Pat Benetar

1955:

Michael Schenker

1964:

Brad Roberts (singer, Crash Test Dummies)

1974:

Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords)

and

Some Bloke

1978:

Brent Smith (singer, Shinedown)

1980:

Petri Lindoos (singer & guitarist, Ensiferum)

–c.

As I mentioned back in April, I decided to fire O2 when my contract was up since they offered literally no incentive to stay with them despite having been a perfect loyal customer for 18 months. Oh, how I wish I could undo what I did.

When I got my first mobile phone in the late 90s, I went with Orange, and found them to be fine. I had literally no complaints, until I moved to London, where I suddenly found that approaching half the time I would be unable to make a call because their network was busy. So I chucked them and moved to T-Mobile, which had no such problems and also had the advantage of offering me half-price line rental since I had a mate who worked there and he put me on their Friends & Family scheme. This was nifty for a good few years, and the only gripe I ever had with T-Mobile was their laughable range of handsets. Whenever the adverts and magazines trumpeted a new phone or range of features, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing it any time soon since the range of phones available was always a good year behind that of the competitors. Still, no worries really. I had a Sony Ericsson walkman phone something-or-other that did the job and let me listen to music without a separate MP3 player, and that was all good.

Then the iPhone came along. Not being a bleeding-edge-early-adopter (read “credulous git with too much cash”) I did some waiting and seeing, and when the price came down and the handset got good (the 3G), I took the plunge – which at the time (Autumn 2008) meant switching to O2. This I did, and right up until April this year I had not one complaint about them or their service, but so piqued was I that my custom meant so little that I took proper umbrage and left, plumping for Vodafone instead.

Now, instead of getting a bit of a weak signal in the building where I work, I get zero signal pretty much all of the time. If by chance a call does come through, I have to quickly answer it and dash for one of the kitchens, where signal is mysteriously much better. The 3G coverage is laughable (I’ve heard people say this about O2 – trust me, you are in signal heaven compared to being on Vodafone), and I live in fucking London. We’re not talking about the bloody Shetland Isles here. Best of all, when using the maps feature as a route planner while driving (yes, using a cradle attached to the windscreen, not holding it in my hand) it routinely loses connection to the maps service and the Little Blue Line of Ultimate Hope – i.e. the line you must follow to get to your destination – just disappears while driving, usually in the middle of a series of complicated junctions.

I got married in June. Thanks, it was awesome. Previous to that I had my stag do in May. Two of the organisers of this splendid event were coming from overseas, including my best man. When I tried to call him THE DAY BEFORE THE STAG DAY, I was unable to do so, since there was an international calling bar on my new Voda phone. Moderately outraged, I called customer services and asked them WTF, and they said that it would be lifted once I had made three payments. So… no international calls for the first three months of my contract? And you didn’t bother to even fucking tell me this? A month or so later I had occasion to look up some actress or other on google images while I was out and about. I tapped a likely looking result, fully aware that the website I was about to arrive at was very likely what is referred to as NSFW, to arrive at a Vodafone webpage informing me that I wasn’t allowed to look at material of this nature. Vodafone had decided – by default – to shield me from not only the danger of speaking to foreigners but also of seeing ladies with no clothes on. Without telling me.

I have been with all four of the big UK networks now (I don’t really count Three) and never had any of these problems before. Really, none of them. Without a shadow of a doubt, Vodafone are the worst I have encountered. My wife says I should complain – but to what end? I’m under contract until October 2011. Yes, another 13 months of this bollocks. But I have signed a contract, and unless I can prove that they are failing to deliver their end of the bargain, I’m fucked. She says “But they’re not providing the service you signed on for,” and while I agree with her, how would I prove this?

Do any of you have advice or similar stories/experience? Do you know of any other ways out of my contract (I’ll happily give the phone back and go back to O2, cap in hand) other than paying the line rental for the next 13 months?

UK mobile networks in order of preference:

1. O2
2. T-Mobile
3. Orange
4. …dunno, maybe try Three
5. Carrier Pigeon
6. Two cans and a really long string
7. Don’t use one, just become a hermit
8. …
9. Vodafone

–c.

[14:14]  <earthman> my guitar teacher added me on facebook
[14:15]  <nick> you have a teacher?
[14:15]  <earthman> nick: I did when I was 15
[14:15]  <nick> I thought you just burst out of a granite cocoon, guitar in hand?
[14:15]  <earthman> LOLZ

–c.
PS. The guitar teacher in question is Mick Hutchinson, who is still awesome. He taught me for 18 months when I first started in December 1988, and without him I would not be the player I am now.

Are you married? Do you know how much preparation goes into a church wedding with full reception afterwards? It’s a lot. And following that there was the honeymoon, and now of course I am back at work and life is returning gradually to normal, and I suddenly don’t have to spend every waking second thinking about the wedding.

So I’m using it to work on music for my second album. Yes, that’s right, a second Clive Murray album is slowly forming in the 1s and 0s of my hard drive. I don’t know exactly when it will be complete, or exactly how I am going to go about turning it into a real object for people to enjoy, but it will definitely happen at some stage, so stay (loosely) tuned.

I am aware that I only got halfway through my countdown of my top 100 albums of 2000-2009, and this will be resumed shortly.

And finally, through a chance occurrence on Twitter, this afternoon I played Dave Gorman at table-tennis. I won 21-17, and he is a thoroughly nice chap, as you might expect if you know his work or listen to his radio show. Thanks for that Dave, if you fancy a rematch at darts, I’m happy to accept that challenge, though I appreciate you’re busy and I won’t hold my breath.

Cheers all, and thanks for waiting,
–c.

I’m a bit busy what with getting married and all that.

Yes, married. 36 hours from now, in fact.

Yes. Really.

–c.

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.

[10:32] <earthman> I love my mondeo
[10:32] <earthman> mind you, it’s the V6
[10:32] <nick> you have a car?
[10:32] <earthman> aye
[10:32] <nick> I thought you went everywhere in a huge black chariot, pulled by dragons?

I wish!
–c.

I don’t claim to have a wide musical taste. No, really. It’s about 60% hard rock, 25% metal (folk and otherwise), 5% acoustic, 5% ambient/chillout, and 5% classical, according to a recent poll I just took of myself.

So I have spent the last 6 weeks or so compiling my own list. And you know what? I’m going to post it, 10 at a time, with very tiny reviews. Why? It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to.

Only 6 albums appear on both my list and NME’s, and those are:

• Muse – Black Holes and Revelations
• Green Day – American Idiot
• Muse – Absolution
• The Coral – The Coral
• Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
• Radiohead – In Rainbows

But where do they appear? And what do I think of them? And what will be in the top 10? Well the answers to all these questions and less are on their way soon for whoever gives a monkey’s.

–c.

I’ve been doing this since 1997 or so. Since before the word “blog” was coined – it was an “online journal” then. But now I have less free time, more to do offline, and more forms of entertainment jostling for my attention. Also Twitter has moved in and taken up at least a small part of that need to self-publish, even if it is just announcing what I had for lunch or what so-and-so said in the pub.

I’ve been compiling my top 100 albums of the 2000s ready for another post, or series of posts, and have come to the conclusion that there’s really very little point. I’ll probably still post it – I bothered to compile it after all – but after that I may well wrap this whole thing up. My archive goes back to 2003 here at cm.com, purely because before that I was doing it manually, and from that point on I was using a blog engine which let me move my archive from place to place. I hope it’s been enjoyable to some, perhaps even occasionally informative or amusing.

But I think it may be time to hang up the keyboard officially.

Yell if this displeases you – I do still read the comments – but unless life changes wildly in the coming months I can’t see me feeling like updating this thing very much more.

One thing I can say – my top 100 albums of the 00s will feature a lot less Jack White than NME’s chart.

–c.