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From the duckpond
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Beer Review: Rocket
*Karen’s mum got me 6 bottles of beer for Christmas. I’m going to review them all. If I remember.*
**Beer:** Rocket
**Brewery:** Wylam
**Strength:** 5%
Rejoice! It’s not unlike the Pickled Partridge, but without the unpleasant aftertaste. Really went down easy, especially for such a (relatively) strong bitter. A fantabulously delishious one.
Rocket gets: 
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Stunt 2009: Week 3 – Memphis
*This is a companion piece to a similarly-themed article on Karen’s site which, all things being equal, should be published at roughly the same time.*
1. **John Henry** Furry Lewis – historically significant it may be, but the song bores me. It’s one of those blues songs that chunders round in a circle for six minutes.
2. **When The Levee Breaks** Memphis Minnie – see above. I can appreciate that this song may have been great in 1929, but I just don’t find it very interesting to listen to.
3. **No More Doggin’** Rosco Gordon – okay, it’s just another blues song, but there’s something about this song that I find a bit more bearable. The pace, the vocal melody, the syncopated piano – it’s got a bit more going for it.
4. **Mystery Train** Junior Parker – yawn blues.
5. **Rocket 88** Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats – yet another blues song, indistinguishable from the rest. Apparently this song is notable for containing one of the first recorded instances of a distorted guitar, and is considered by some to be the first true rock’n’roll song. I’ve been Wikipeding, can you tell? It has to be said, I have an anti-soft spot for songs about cars. I’ve never understood why people feel this need to glorify driving. “Hey look, I’ve got a car.” Wow, aren’t you a big boy? What’s more, they are always inevitably full of a very dull shopping list of things that you do with your car, and then padded out with some nonsense in order to make the whole thing rhyme. Let’s see if I can write one right now. Ahem. “Hey look, here’s my Astra, it’s got seats in the back // I drive it to the movies, I drive it to the track // I put my bass guitar in the boot or the footwell // Gee my Vauxhall Astra is so incredibly swell //// They see me driving past, they say who’s that sexy guy? // I like his Vauxhall Astra, indeed it is so fly // I stop at the garage, to put some petrol in // I like driving my Vauxhall Astra, it might be my favourite thing.” I think I’ve made my point.
6. **Green Onions** Booker T and the MGs – needs no introduction. It’s a memorable song, but I don’t think I have ever thought to myself “ooh, I’d really like to listen to Green Onions right now.”
7. **Wooly Bully** Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs – dumb song.
8. **Suspicious Minds** Elvis Presley – I think that the first time I heard this song was in the 1983 film Breathless so I think it will always remind me of that film, specifically one particular scene. Ahem. The song also reminds me of days of adolescence, when this used to be my karaoke song. Ah, memories.
9. **I Can’t Get Next To You** Al Green – I’ve quite enjoyed having this song on the playlist, as it’s pretty groovy, but it’s a temporary kind of pleasure. I don’t think it’s a song that has an awful lot to offer me.
10. **It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp** Three 6 Mafia – ah yes, those poor pimps. I don’t understand why society views them so dimly. They have my every sympathy. We should throw a charity concert or something, so we can raise awareness of their plight. We can call it Pimp Aid.
So, in conclusion: I’m starting to wonder if this blog stunt was a good idea. Actually, I’m coming to the conclusion that a healthy musical diet consists of taking each genre in moderation, and grumpy old folk who say “all the music that the kids these days are making sounds the same” are forgetting that the same has been true since they were kids too.
The next week’s playlist
Random number: 286
Two playlists, random selection is the first one – Elvis Presley. The book says:
> Rock’s one essential star, without whom so much else, such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Cliff Richard, might never have come to pass. Uh huh huh.
Well well, there’s a little segue for you. Suspicious Minds isn’t on the playlist, but Elvis’ version of Mystery Train is. Let’s see how they weigh up.
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Beer Review: Pickled Partridge
*Karen’s mum got me 6 bottles of beer for Christmas. I’m going to review them all. If I remember.*
**Beer:** Pickled Partridge
**Brewery:** Badger (Hall and Woodhouse)
**Strength:** 4.5%
As the first drops of this hit my tongue, it showed great malty promise. But sadly it was plagued with a very strong aftertaste which I found quite unpleasant. I’d describe this aftertaste as fizzy and acidic.
Further research (reading the label on the bottle and the website blurb) suggests that this beer is intended as an accompaniment to strong cheese or Christmas Pudding. So basically, the reason why I didn’t enjoy it is that I’m drinking it wrong. I’m not convinced.
Pickled Partridge gets: 
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Beer Review: Farmers Harvest
*Karen’s mum got me 6 bottles of beer for Christmas. I’m going to review them all. If I remember.*
**Beer:** Farmers Harvest
**Brewery:** Purity
**Strength:** 4.8%
Not a bad drink, not bad at all. A fairly dark ale, and very malty, if you like that sort of thing. The end of the glass came too soon – I felt that if I had another bottle, I’d be able to review it with a bit more certainty. Flavour-wise, I felt that it wasn’t entirely my cup of tea, but the most important thing about this beer is the ideology.
Farmers Harvest gets: 
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Beer Review: Black Sheep
*Karen’s mum got me 6 bottles of beer for Christmas. I’m going to review them all. If I remember.*
Now that my sense of smell has returned, I am going to resume this little project. I had a bottle of Black Sheep last week but realised halfway through my first mouthful that I couldn’t taste it, so I’ve bought another.
**Beer:** Black Sheep
**Brewery:** Black Sheep
**Strength:** 4.4%
Ah, this takes me back. I remember when I first discovered Black Sheep, when I was at University. My flatmate Matt and I consumed gallons of this stuff. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that this is what got me into real ale, my previous preference of beer generally being “Creamflow” type bollocks. Black Sheep made me realise how misguided I was.
It’s a very drinkable ale – fruity, but not too fruity; flavoursome, but not pungent – and just all-round solid, dependable stuff. For me, the label has always stood out on the shelf and filled me with good memories. It does not taste like sheep.
Black Sheep gets:
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Stunt 2009: Week 2 – The Replacements
*This is a companion piece to a similarly-themed article on Karen’s site which, all things being equal, should be published at roughly the same time.*
1. **Left Of The Dial** from Tim (1985) – a fairly decent rock song with a slightly Springsteen feel about it, but the lyrics are largely incomprehensible. It sounds like it has been recorded by a bunch of talentless teenagers in a garage.
2. **We’re Coming Out** from Let It Be (1984) – I understand the whole ethos behind punk music, but I still can’t get my head around the fact that some people enjoy listening to it.
3. **Johnny’s Gonna Die** from Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (1981) – this is taken from their first album, which is supposedly when they were at their most punk. However, this is surprisingly melodic. And it’s three and a half minutes long, which is way too long to be considered punk.
4. **Go** from Stink! (1982) – very bland rock song. Sounds like it was written in about 5 minutes.
5. **Color Me Impressed** from Hootenanny (1983) – this one has got a few more ideas in it, but I wouldn’t say that I’m in any way impressed.
6. **Little Mascara** from Tim (1985) – I suppose I quite like the song, but I just don’t dig the way that they play. This was their fifth album – by now they should have acquired some basic talent on their instruments, surely?
7. **Unsatisfied** from Let It Be (1984) – the chorus is incredibly catchy but annoyingly repetitive, and the verses are completely nothing. That might be enough for many people, but I’m afraid that it’s not doing much for me.
8. **Within Your Reach** from Hootenanny (1983) – this song nails it. The synth drums are a little cheesy, but bearable. It’s hard to describe – it’s low-key electronic music, quite a spacey sound, phaser effect on the guitar, maybe you get the picture.
9. **Sixteen Blue** from Let It Be (1984) – nice pop song, with pretty chord changes and jangly guitar arpeggios. The whole thing bears a striking resemblance to Deacon Blue.
10. **Can’t Hardly Wait** from Pleased To Meet Me (1987) – another decent pop song. But with horns. I’m not talking figuratively – there’s actually a brass section on it.
So, in conclusion: they are a band that have had an awful lot of sounds. It improved a bit towards the end, but I’m not overflowing with enthusiasm. I’ve listed the years that the albums were produced to demonstrate how they were running in all these different genres concurrently. Maybe I would have enjoyed this playlist more, were I not generally listening to it whilst simultaneously reading The Shadow Of The Wind, which was damn good by comparison.
The next week’s playlist
Random number: 232
There were two playlists on this page, and the randomly chosen winner is – Memphis.
> Named after ancient Egypt’s city of kings, Memphis, Tennessee, turned out to be a 20th century city of musical royalty. Until Dr Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968 musical magic flowed from the Delta’s capital. The city crashed during the 1970s but today musical tourism and gangsta rap are revitalising the Memphis scene.
The other playlist on the page was Meatloaf, so I think we dodged a bullet there.
Last night I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 (yes, I know it’s been available for months) as I was getting sick of the X server constantly crashing in 8.04 (I think this was due to an instability in the via display driver). As ever, I faced a couple of hurdles during the reinstall.
Firstly, the X server in 8.10 wouldn’t load at all – soon after the mouse cursor appeared, it would freeze. I tried loading the installer in safe graphics mode, which worked, so I went ahead with the installation, hoping that the problem would be confined to the live CD. How optimistic of me. I eventually deduced that the problem was in the openchrome driver (which replaces the via driver in 8.04) and the workaround was to add Option "XaaNoImageWriteRect" to xorg.conf. This bug was fixed 2 weeks ago so hopefully Ubuntu 9.04 won’t have this problem.
The second major problem I had was that Network Manager would forget my static IP settings each time I restarted. I dunno, maybe “major” is a strong word, but it is enough to stop me being able to SSH in. The solution is to remove Network Manager and edit the configuration files directly.
Now that I’ve got those two problems fixed, the system seems to be behaving pretty well, and whatever was causing the X server to restart under 8.04 has been fixed. That’s my only reason for upgrading, really.
Experts will today present a proposal to the Government that road laws should be relaxed in the interests of increasing employment and stimulating the economy.
Professor Bob Falconfucker bellowed “My colleagues and I have spent the last three months running simulations in The Raccoon And Firebucket, and our findings have been quite surprising. We found that if we relaxed various aspects of our current road laws, such as increasing the legal alcohol limit from 80mg/100ml to 8000mg/100ml, and increasing the maximum speed in built-up areas from 30mph to 250mph, then this would create millions of new jobs in the fields of automobile repair and manufacture, morticianary, bereavement counselling, tarmac-mopping, motorcycle helmet manufacture and wall reinforcement. We’d also be able to get rid of those pesky speed cameras once and for all, and the police could spend more time going after real criminals, amIright?”
Prof. Falconfucker would have said more, but at that point an envoy from ITPOSTIA ((the *Institute for the Thumping of People who are apparently Oblivious to how Stupid Their Ideas Are*)) arrived and the interview was unfortunately cut short.