As I write this, Team GB has just won a bronze medal in the noble sport of dressage. I don’t know much about dressage, it looks like dancing horses and doesn’t really seem like a sport, but, as has been the case for most Olympic games during my lifetime and certainly since, like many of…
The Anticlimactic Nature Of The Thousandth Post
It’s time to crack open the bubbly. No, not champagne. I can’t really justify the cost of champagne for an occasion such as this. To be honest even cava or prosecco would be overdoing it. I think I could stretch to a glass of sparkling Lambrini. And a cake. There must always be cake. For…
A Post About Bubbles
As I write this I am sitting in my garden enjoying what can only be described as a glorious Saturday morning. The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the general tranquillity is punctuated only by the delighted sounds of Little Proclaims who is running around the garden making bubbles with a cheap plastic…
A Post About Not Blogging With A Brief Interlude About Vaccines
As I write this, it has been just under a month since I last posted anything on this blog. By the time this actually hits the blogosphere, it will have been just over a month. I’m writing this on Friday but I intend for my ‘comeback’ to be on Monday. According to the Gods of…
On The Fifth Day Of The Fifth Month, Here Are Five Things I’m Not Afraid Of
I’m not afraid of a little hard work – I am terrified of a lot of hard work. I’m not afraid that I won’t live up to my potential – I’m worried that I already have. I’m not afraid to stand up for what I believe in – I’m just not entirely sure what it…
May The Fourth Be With You – Always
Happy Star Wars Day everyone! I’m not sure when people started celebrating ‘Star Wars Day’ on May the Fourth. I’m not even sure if people do celebrate it. And although I could just look up the answers to both of those things on the internet, I’m not going to. Because I don’t really care. I…
May The May Be With You
Long time readers will know that last May I spent the entire month blogging about nothing but Star Wars on the flimsy premise that people often regard the fourth of May as ‘Star Wars Day’ (because you can say ‘May the Fourth be with you’ on that day and only a few people will think…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 26: Who Killed…… The Zutons
And so another A-Z comes to an end. From tomorrow I will no longer be writing about music from the noughties. I may not be writing about anything at all. Or I may be writing about something. Only time will tell. In another 11 months I may well decide to complete my trilogy of A-Zs…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 25: Yours Truly Angry Mob
As ever, when we get to the penultimate day of an A-Z challenge, we must ask ourselves ‘Y’. It can be hard to come up with an answer, but today I have managed to do just that. Y is for Yours Truly Angry Mob In their early days, Kaiser Chiefs always struck me as a…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 24: X&Y
On last year’s A-Z I had to cheat a little bit for X by including XTRMNTR by Primal Scream. The main reason this was cheating was because last year’s retrospective was meant to be 90s music and that particular album was released in the year 2000. It was very much at the beginning of the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 23: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
And so to ‘W’ in this A-Z musical retrospective of the noughties. There were a few decent albums from the 2000s that began with ‘W’ but one from 2006 still managed to stand out from the crowd. W is for Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not In January 2006, I was entering…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 22: Vampire Weekend
Day 22 of this self-indulgent wander down a memory-lane of music from a decade that is inherently less nostalgic for me than the decade that preceded it, but which, nonetheless, does retain elements of nostalgia – nostalgia which is often evoked by listening to the albums of the day. V is for Version 2.0 Vampire…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 21: Up The Bracket
It’s always a shame that I have to write twenty other posts before I can finally make time for ‘U’. But that is the way of an A-Z challenge. As much as I would like to put ‘U’ first, it just wouldn’t be proper. U is for Up The Bracket By the time I got…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 20: Twelve Stops and Home
It’s finally time for ‘T’. But not necessarily time for tea as I’m more of a coffee drinker by trade. But do feel free to have a warm beverage of your choice. T is for Twelve Stops and Home I don’t know if I could describe myself as a fan of Horsham alumni The Feeling.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 19: The Seldom Seen Kid
When I get to ‘S’ in an A-Z challenge, I always feel like I’m on the home straight. Although there are still seven letters to go, psychologically I feel like I’ve done most of the hard work. Of course ‘psychologically’ does not begin with ‘S’, even though it sounds like it should. So I’m probably…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 18: Red
Day 18 of the 2021 A-Z challenge and time to reflect on where we are. And where we are is ‘R’. R is for Red For one reason or another I felt I was getting a little out of touch with popular music circa 2008. I suspect the fact that I was in the midst…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 17: The Good, the Bad and the Queen
‘Q’ is always one of the most challenging letters in an A-Z challenge. Most years I’ve had to expand the parameters a little in order to crowbar something in and this year I’ve had to outright cheat. But it was all in a good cause, because the album in question is definitely worth revisiting. Q…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 16: Permission to Land
Long time and particularly dedicated readers who definitely do exist outside of my unrealistic aspirations will be familiar with me persistently referencing 1980s quiz show Blockbusters whenever I get to the letter ‘P’ in an A-Z challenge. Because it is impossible to do the letter ‘P’ without channelling the immortal joke associated with that show.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 15: Origins of Symmetry
And so we get around to ‘O’. Which is OK. Well part of OK. Did I make that joke for ‘K’? Yes. Yes I did. Do I apologise for making it a second time. No. No I don’t. O is for Origins of Symmetry I went to the Glastonbury festival in the year 2000. I…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 14: Neon Bible
Welcome to the beginning of the second half of the 2021 A-Z Blogging Challenge, in which I attempt to catalogue an alphabetised list of albums I liked in the noughties for no particular reason. N is for Neon Bible Arcade Fire’s debut album Funeral is a regular participant in futile lists attempting to identify the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 13: Make Believe
It’s always a grim realisation when I get to ‘M’ in any A-Z challenge that I’m actually only half way there. But after today we are closer to the end than the beginning, which may be of some consolation as I complete this arbitrary and entirely unnecessary retrospective of albums that I listened to in…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 12: Love Kraft
Day 12 of my A-Z of noughties music and today we’re all going to ‘L’. L is for Love Kraft Super Furry Animals were one of my favourite bands of the 90s, but I lost track of them for the early part of the noughties. Which is a shame, because they continued to produce some…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 11: Kasabian
Today is the turn of the letter ‘K’ in my A-Z retrospective of albums from the noughties. And that’s OK. Well part of OK anyway. And, like so many debut albums of the noughties, it’s another eponymous one. K is for Kasabian When Kasabian released their debut album in 2004, they were often touted as…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 10: Jarvis
It’s time for ‘J’ in my A-Z of albums I liked from the noughties. I struggled with this letter for last year’s 90s retrospective but there were no such problems this year. Indeed I had a couple of potential choices but one album from 2006 had selected itself before I even started compiling my list.…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 9: Is This It
It is time for ‘I’ in the 2021 A-Z Challenge. The letter ‘I’ often tends to lead to an intro full of pronoun fun when I do an A-Z Challenge. But I will not do that today. And neither will ‘I’. I is for Is This It The debut release from The Strokes was the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 8: Hot Fuss
Day 8 of the 2021 A-Z Challenge and it already feels like this has been going on for far too long. I’m very much enjoying the ‘listening to music’ bit of the challenge, but the writing about it has become a tad repetitive and frankly I get better blogging stats for my stupid haikus. But…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 7: The Great Western
I have often wondered where we would be without the seventh letter of the alphabet. It wouldn’t be a good state of affairs. It might well be an ood state of affairs though. Who can say? But now it’s time to find out which album from the noughties made the cut for ‘G’. G is…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 6: Franz Ferdinand
It’s time for ‘F’ in the James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger. And there is no time to ‘F’ around, so let’s get on with it. F is for Franz Ferdinand The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Carl Ludwig Joseph Maria of Austria triggered a…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 5: Elephant
It’s day 5 of ‘James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger’ and it’s time to address the elephant in the room. Which is that in last year’s A-Z I had a distinctly British bias and managed to overlook most of the great US bands of the…
James’ Shamelessly Nostalgic A-Z Of Albums That He Liked To Listen To When He Was Younger – Part 4: Dig Out Your Soul
Due to the traditional omission of Sundays from the April A-Z Blogging challenge, we’re now out of synch between the date and the numerical position of the letter du jour. Today is, of course, the 5th day of April but we are only on the fourth letter of the alphabet. I’m sure we’ll all cope.…
A Post Designed To Encourage You To Wish Me Happy Birthday
Happy Easter everyone! Also Happy Birthday, if it is also your birthday. It is my birthday. So Happy Birthday to me! Having a birthday which falls on Easter Sunday is not like having a birthday which falls on Christmas. Mainly because it doesn’t happen every year, but also because people don’t conflate Easter eggs and…
