Umma

That's horrible... sick world we live in

I like them all.... do I really have to choose just one?? that bloke has a great voice :)

yay !! good job..... nicely wrapped :)

Well... you either want cheap fares or you don't.... If you want to travel business class then pay for business class. I think the economy airlines are doing a splendid job of keeping costs down and keeping flights full. On a short haul.... who cares if you have a free magazine and a reclining seat. Bah!

Well you can always uncheck the box at the bottom of the posting to obliterate smilies but that seems a bit extreme to me ... and chances are, if you do that too much, before long you'd have the smiley protagonists on your case, claiming smiley rights be upheld and written into the constitution...

Oh whoopdedoo Yet another money grabbing compilation/box set. Shame they feel it's enough effort to re-release old stuff with collectible new shiney packaging and not actually do anything new... and no touring either. Pink Floyd has all but died if all they can churn out are resurrected remasters.

When I received a copy of the debut album a few years ago... it stayed permanently in the player for weeks. It's been a favourite ever since. He's doing a few dates in LA at the Hotel Cafe in the next few days. If anybody goes along... a review would be nice :)

"For me, a song’s got to succeed in a way that no other art form can. It has to hit that transcendent moment. That’s what music is all about, getting that moment where you don’t know why you’re laughing or crying or dancing, but it’s nailed you and no-one knows how or what or why." Tom McRae’s self-titled debut album, released in 2000, announced the arrival of a rare and singular new talent. It’s subsequent Mercury Prize and Brit nominations merely confirmed the insight and vision of Scott Walker, who had invited McRae to take part in his Meltdown Festival – before he’d even released a record. The album, of course, went on to figure in the end-of-year Top 10 lists of The Observer, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, Independent, Time Out and Q. The follow-up, ‘Just Like Blood’ (release date: 3rd February 2003), has been neither rushed nor delayed – for which credit should go to McRae for not being impatient, and db Records for appreciating the wisdom in nurturing not hyping such a talent. "Sure, I think two and a half years is a long time between records," acknowledges McRae. "But the first album had a slow start before gradually snowballing, and then I spent the best part of two years playing all over Europe and America." Feeding off these experiences, just as London (‘the greatest city on earth’) inspired much of the first record, so the ‘small industrial towns of America and mad places in LA where it’s just insane’ were to prove a significant starting point for many of the new songs. "The idea of bands on the road who think it’s boring is ridiculous," says McRae. "It’s just not. It’s brilliant. But you’ve got to make it brilliant. That’s the challenge." The new album ‘Just Like Blood’ is worth the wait. It marks a huge step forward. In terms of sound, scope and style, it is a bigger, braver and possibly even darker work than its widely acclaimed predecessor. It feels contemporary, yet stands alone. "The themes of the album are again dislocation and dissatisfaction and desire for escape," he explains, "but this time the desire is for escape post the point you’ve actually escaped. You’re somewhere different, but still thinking, ‘Well, this still isn’t right. What now?!’ It’s about the idea of chasing stuff that is always out of reach, with the ground constantly shifting beneath your feet. It’s about being uncertain, whilst at the same time being certain that you’ve got to keep going." He laughs. "Y’know, the same old singer-songwriter bollocks. All gloom and doom and depression! It’s funny, the Mercury nomination raised my profile to the extent where my name appeared in The Mirror. They said I was sort of like ‘the record you would hear at the worst student party from hell.’ Which is one of my favourite quotes!" Sometimes, of course, the darkest songs can be the most uplifting. "Absolutely," he agrees. "It’s homeopathy. I think a little bit of what’s killing you is really important." The new album is produced by Ben Hillier (Blur and Elbow). "I think I’ve achieved what I set out to do," says McRae. "Which was essentially not to do what I’d done before. I really wanted someone who would prod me out of my comfort zone and Ben was that person. He’s got a great approach to making music, which is, you start off with the basic idea and then just throw chaos at it and see what happens." http://www.tommcrae.com

Great... it breaks up a bit over dial up connection unfortunately. I spied the link for Tom McRae http://kcrw.com/cgi-bin/ram_wrap.cgi?/mb/mb040225Tom_McRae on the front page so I'm now listening to that show... I was impressed by his first album, but hadnt heard anything since. :) http://www.tommcrae.com/

Disk clean up removes all the temporary crap (like temp files, internet cache, history, etc. etc.) from your hard drive. If you dont clear those out on a regular basis it can start to take up more space than is really necessary and XP pops up a helpful little bubble when your hard drive is too full asking if you want to run disk clean up. When you defrag.... if you haven't cleaned up first.... you are also defragging all those unnecessary files too... so it takes longer!! Norton back up files also take up a lot of space if you use Norton Protected Recycle bin that is. It backs up all the files you delete just in case you really didnt want to delete them even after you empty the bin. Disk Clean up wont empty these files. This facility is a bit over the top IMHO and you can turn the service off in Norton options if you dont need it. You can clear these back up files by right clicking on the recycle bin icon on your desktop, selecting 'Empty Norton Protected Files' and purging all.

aha..... so the sub conscious is just the mind in reverse. There was so much talk about reverse messages in the late 70's / early 80's that some bands even started to put reverse messages in as part of song. Not the same as a message coming out when something is played in reverse, like the Stairway to heaven one, (though that may well have been manufactured by some nutty sound engineer with too much time on his hands) but a recorded piece reversed and set into the tune the wrong way round. It became a fun thing to find the reverse messages. Pink Floyd did it with a few tunes. Wasn't there also something about subliminal messaging being banned in advertising?

thank ye kindly I have Knoppix too so maybe... just maybe I'll install one... Problem was... I had a dual boot on the hard drive XP/Mandrake..... and when I swapped the hard drive to a new puter with DDR.... Mandrake threw a wobbly... so of course I tried to reinstall.... but it wouldnt recognise DDR memory and I've had that part of my hard drive lie dormant ever since.... sad isnt it....

try using a different defrag program maybe

Never heard that one before... Defrag deprivation must be hard to cope with. What else would you do with the time spent watching all those little coloured boxes move around? Defrag it anyway... think of the pleasure.

sick sick sick sick sick no smilies

Yeah.... it's sad that so many people with talent get caught up in excesses. Maybe fame is largely to blame for that. It must be difficult to cope with the stress of all that goes with being elevated into the spotlight.

Gabriel Young - seven days :)

YOU BETTER BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES

I suppose you had to shout due to the high winds

That's a great word.... that should be word of the day

You gotta be crazy... (and learn to back up)

And Peter Green...

4) Never trust a smiling cat

1) Never trust a computer 2) Back up 3) Back up the back up I have 100 disks of back ups that I never listen to though so maybe it's no big loss :)