Yoss

My first post-covid gig was on Friday there, Anna Meredith at the Edinburgh Festival. My first live music since .. *checks notes* .. Anna Meredith at Oran Mor in February last year. And it was mostly the same set, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very much looking forward to Black Country, New Road at the same venue tomorrow. It's a big semi-open marquee thing they've got set up at Edinburgh Park for it. Strictly seated, and each ticketed group is socially distanced. Bit of a strange experience all round, but great to get back to some music nonetheless. End of the Road in a couple of weekends time, which will be at full capacity and will be a different vibe entirely. Which is also going to feel weird, but for different reasons.

Football is magical and beautiful and these things can happen. Well done, Hamilton. We'll be okay again this season.

Much as I like Black Midi and want them to keep doing what they're doing, I'm gonna say it was probably right to leave them off the nominations this time. Don't think the new album hangs together as well as the first one. Though yeah, anyone who's not seem them live yet should go and do so.

I have both heard and seen Sweaty Palms, yes, and I quite like them. (More my kind of thing than Lylo, there.) I'd not make any grand claims for them though, and I'd be surprised if they ever broke through in anything like the way Idles have. But then I guess I was surprised when that happened to Idles too, so who knows.

The BBC have, so far, failed to realise that this game has finished and are currently showing it entering its fourth hour of injury time. No goals scored in the last three hours though. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/scores-fixtures

I've heard about half of them - of which BC,NR would be a clear winner for me too. There's a couple of others I'll give a listen to as well.

Thank you, all. I'm not as regular as I once was, even at games or on here, but I do still lurk sometimes and will try and get back to Stark's again at some point soon. Though since my dad is now getting a bit unsteady on his feet we've just been toddling along to Warout to watch Glenrothes recently. Nice to see some old faces still around. Hope everyone is well.

I know you all want to get back to the football, but this stuff is important and I make no apologies for posting to explain why I'm shoulders with RATM on this. A large part of the problem with discussing anything to do with the r-word is that there's a wide misperception of what it involves, and a tendency to get very defensive because people think they're being accused of racism in its worst and most malicious sense, of deliberate and wilful discrimination against minority groups. This isn't, by and large, how racism works. (Except when it is, but no one was being accused of that here.) For the most part, it's about unconscious biases which makes us more likely to perceive or notice or associate certain characteristics with some 'races' than others. This is subtle and often difficult to pick up in individual instances because it's not necessarily untrue - it is possible to see some similarities of style between some of the players mentioned on the thread, it's just that we might have been less likely to have perceived it without the other, obvious, factor they have in common. This has been easy to observe in the language of commentators and pundits over a period of time, certain players are more likely to be associated with certain attributes than others. This is difficult because it's much harder to identify individual instances where the assessment is unfair than it is to observe the overall effect. So, black players are much more likely to be associated with concepts such as strength, pace and athleticism - and once again the issue is not that it might not be have some truth, in and of itself, in any instance where it's applied; but much less likely to be associated with intelligence, craft, or guile. And thus, a few years down the line, much less likely to be considered as potential managers. And again, even where the overall trend is easy to see, its much harder to say which specific assessments are unfair, which particular black ex-players should have been given a chance in which particular jobs. But if we're to have any hope of tackling and changing the generality, we need to be aware of at least the possibility of our own cognitive biases - to repeat, this is not a malicious thing but deeply ingrained and we all have it. I've been challenged on it on occasion too, and rightly, and likewise my first reaction was to get defensive and observe that I didn't mean it that way at all. Which I didn't, but that isn't the point. By and large, anytime you're confronted with any such suggestions of your own internal biases, the correct response is not to dismiss it immediately and out of hand but to at least stop and give pause for thought as to whether there's anything to it. And indeed, without and before being challenged on it, to give some thought to it any time you find yourself making such comparisons. It doesn't mean you're being accused of being a bad person, it doesn't mean you even need to agree, ultimately, that the accusation is fair. Maybe it isn't. But that, at the very least, needs some self-reflection. It's been my general experience that those who react angriest and are quickest to dismiss any such possibility are the ones least likely to have understood the nature of the problem.

Anyway, best album of recent weeks is from Bachelor. (A Jay Som / Palehound collaboration.)

It was obvious from some years back - well before they broke through - that they and / or their record company had some commercial ambition, from the effort being put into promotion and some big name remixers as well as production values. The new album is a continuation of it rather than any change in style. It's alright. I don't quite get the hyperbolic levels of love being shown for it by the critics but it's perfectly listenable. The Coldplay comparison feels well harsh.

Ever re-read the first few pages of the thread from the summer of 2009? Loads of folks were worrying about exactly that while we were waiting on a decision from Marvin Andrews. But McGlynn wasn't daft enough to put all his eggs in one basket and it turned out he was lining up both Murray and Hill.

I see your Ryan McCord and I raise you Dougie Hill and Robert Sloan (my lord).

Sammy as a tank was great, yeah. Think I'm right in saying it was only a few days after bullets had been sent in the post to a couple of the old firm, that was the tag on which those 'papers looking for a story tried to hang their claim about the irresponsibility of it. Their conclusion should, of course, have been quite the opposite one. What Sammy was demonstrating was that the problems of the old firm shouldn't be projected onto the rest of Scottish football - here in Fife you can take a fucking tank onto the pitch, pretend to blast f**k out of opposing fans and hardly anyone will care. And hardly anyone did, not really.

The Martin Hardie game wouldn't even make top ten, for me, I'd never expected to go up and of course I got hopeful but when it came apart it was more of an ah well than a kick in the guts. As I remember it, anyway. Two candidates that spring to mind: the 1-0 defeat at home to Airdrie towards the end of the 94-95 season, when we thought that bent ref might have cost us promotion. And this one - the game wasn't important but I remember going home fuming, which is not like me. The clip doesn't show them committing GBH on Alex Burns immediately prior to the winner.

Aha! Thank you very much indeed.

Anyone know how I would make a gif? I'd love to have the bit from just about 2:21 to 2:26 in this clip, just in case I ever want to say GIRFUY in gif form.

Meanwhile, I've never been much of a fan before, but I think I really like the new Lana Del Rey album. Sorry, everyone. I have no excuses.

It's certainly ... interesting. In principle I totally respect and applaud Black Midi for doing their thing, and I encourage them to carry on. I have even liked some of it. Whether that one is something I will actually want to listen to, in the future, it's too early to say.

Every now and then I get an email telling me that a gig I'd forgotten having a ticket for has bee rescheduled again from a date when I already didn't know it was due to take place to another date when it still isn't going to take place. There aren't that many of them but nonetheless I've given up trying to keep track.

I probably agree with this assessment. Delighted to hear there's new stuff on the way.

I'm hoping some of those that have been quiet during 2020 have been using the disrupted time to work on new material and we'll have a bumper year ahead. All I've listened to so far is the LICE album that came out last week. Which was okay. But this week there's a new Pom Poko album, which I'm looking forward to probably more than anything that came out all last year.

There's a broader range of music being made now than ever before. Most of which, of course, has little interest for me - that's the nature of things. But there is joyous, life-affirming and boundary-pushing stuff out there too, in a whole range of genres. It's a tremendously creative period. Edit: just noticed you have a whole thread on this, maybe I should have posted there. (I share your dislike of modern r&b and its ubiquity on charts and radio. But there's loads out there.)

Some of the KEXP sessions are excellent. Of the recent ones, I enjoyed this from Sylvan Esso.

Yeah, very much this - it hasn't felt like a vintage year, certainly in comparison to the past couple of years. But then thinking through my favourite records of those previous years, so many of them are bands I gained greater appreciation of by seeing them live, or in a couple of cases only discovered them that way. Thus year I'm struggling to think of anything that really deserves an album of the year accolade, but I'll probably say Helena Deland and Jerskin Fendrix as the pick of them. On the plus side, there's a Pom Poko album out in a couple of weeks.