iPod Random Generator August 2008
Category: Music

iPod top 10 for August...

All You Need Is Love - The Beatles
Simon Diamond - The Coral
The Ballad Of Tom Jones - Space With Cerys Of Catatonia
Country Girl: Whiskey Boot Hill/Down, Down, Down/Country Girl (I Think You're Pretty) - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
I Love You Like I Love Myself - Herman Brood & His Wild Romance
Barnyard - Brian Wilson
Watching The Detectives - Elvis Costello
Mrs. O'Leary's Cow - Brian Wilson
Perpetual Dawn (Ultrabass II) - The Orb
Five Miles Out - Mike Oldfield

As usual the nifty graph can be found at Felix Atagong's Unfinished Projects...

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Bad Kompany
Category: News and Politics

Original and unedited post at http://atagong.com.

1

Belgium is known for its mediocrity. Maybe this has been glued inside in our   genes because for the past couple of thousands years we have been invaded, occupied, violated, liberated and then invaded all over again. After a while if a soldier knocked on the door of a little cottage all he could hear from the inside was a deep sigh and "Who is it this time? Romans, Germans, Austrians, Spanish, French or Dutch?"

This is probably how the Belgian disease (as it is called in our country) originated. Belgians, regardless if they are Flemings or Walloons (and one always tends to forget the German speaking community of our land), have a built-in suspicion against any form of power: legislative, judicial or executive.

Well, if you wanna read what is printed between points 1 and 8, you'd better go to http://atagong.com.

8 Post Scriptum (at 5 PM)

Tia Hellebaut just won a gold medal on the Olympics and when I went to the baker's to order me some croissants for tomorrow morning the music on my iPod randomizer was the magnificent Into The Fourth Dimension by The Orb. Life can be so beautiful...

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Stardust
Category: Music

Original and unedited post at http://atagong.com.  

Another thing that has bothered me lately is the who, what and where of the mystery person whose (splendidly shaped) buttocks can be found on the back sleeve of the Syd Barrett album The Madcap Laughs. All we seem to know is that the beautiful people of the Underground used to nickname her Iggy the Eskimo. There is a bit of an Iggy revival going on, not only on the Late Night discussion forum, but also on The City Wakes that gives us a preview of a previously unreleased Iggy Eskimo Girl (home) movie, directed by Anthony Stern. (...)

Why am I writing this, you might think, if thinking is one of your stronger points, well, I am making this little web-thingy that listens to the name The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit where I will try to publish some facts and rumours about her. It's time somebody asks some questions before it is too late… (Complete blogpost at: http://atagong.com...)

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The Orb Lives On
Category: Music

Original and unedited post at http://atagong.com.

Recently The Orb has been re-issuing some of their classic albums, richly enlarged with extra tracks and remixes. The first two records had   lifted The Orb from an obscure DJ-set in the backroom of a techno temple to ambient house superstars, but their superstar status soon melted away with their following darker albums, dark because the modal fan couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel anymore. Weird, experimental and monotonous, it seemed that the members of The Orb had lost all musical direction. Enough, said record company Island, who had invested a lot in The Orb, it is about time to make a second U.F.Orb! All right, said LX, time to get out of oblivion, here is Orblivion! The full review can be readt at http://atagong.com.

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Holy Cow
Category: Writing and Poetry

There was a time that I read at least a book a week, even more. I guess  

I read 8 to 10 novels a month. Besides that I had quite an impressive collection of comics or graphic novels as we connoisseurs used to call them. Donald Duck was what we called a comic although we silently revered the originals by Carl Barks. Then came a sudden change of pace. No more comics, no time to read a book. Wife. House. Career. Television and a beer.

But I still read the book reviews in the newspaper. About 6 months ago I   read this thunderous review about a hardboiled murder mystery set in an alternative timeline where the people of Israel have a fictional Yiddish   homeland in Alaska. The book, so it said, was extremely funny, witty and   ingenious and if you only read one thriller a year, this was the thriller to read. My mind reserved some space to contain this information.

Summer Holidays. I've got my annual sea and sun crime story to read. I'm entering the bookshop. What do you think I'd pick?

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. Continued at Felix Atagong's Unfinished Projects.

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iPod Random Generator July 2008
Category: Music

Strange month, this one. My iPod stats have gone a bit wild. here are the songs that my iPod preferred this month... 

Wee wee mademoiselle - Thomas Fehlmann (great track from a great album from Mr. KrautOrb)
Baby Lemonade - Syd Barrett (not that long gone...)
Teardrop - Massive Attack (still a killer track)
All You Need Is Love - The Beatles (I read today that Paul & Ringo want to prevent a re-release of Let It Be, All You Need Is Cash?)
Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes (the anthem of all anthems)
The Robots - Kraftwerk (ein, zwei, drei, Polizei!)
6060-842 - The B-52's (quite a boring track, actually)
The Lebanon - Human League (one of their best)
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll - Ian Dury & The Blockheads (too much love will kill you)
One Good Reason - Gary Moore (excellent track from an average album)

More info & the groovy graph at: Felix Atagong's Unfinished Projects

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Obscured by Fluffy Clouds
Category: Music

Original and unedited post at http://atagong.com

Recently The Orb has been re-issuing some of their classic albums,   richly enlarged with extra tracks and remixes. Past week   I reviewed Pomme Fritz, not exactly their best album (one of their   worst, I might add). Today I have a go at Orbus   Terrarum. The following text comes from an attempt to write an Orb   biography somewhere around the turn of the millennium and has not been   published before. 8-)))

FAST FORWARD, HE CRIED

1994. The world is not even partially recovered from Pomme Fritz   or another Orb-like project sees the day: FFWD. This stands for Fripp,   Fehlmann, Weston and Duncan Robert Alex Paterson. Robert   Fripp, in the early Seventies among the troglodytes of symphonic   rock with his band King   Crimson, and famous for his guitar and tape technique called frippertronics   or frippotronics (this was before the sampling age), puts endless   layers of guitar over monotonous krautrock   based ambient-trance style rhythms from The Orb. The album manages to   experiment a lot further than Pomme Fritz and is often described as   annoying, irritating or both. For the full review, please visit http://atagong.com...

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Apples and Oranges
Current mood: thirsty
Category: Music

Original and unedited post at http://atagong.com.

Pomme Fritz (aka The Orb's Little Album) (1994) was the second Orb cd I   bought and it nearly made me loose my appetite for LX Paterson and his goofy friends. Although it was rather short I could never bear to listen to it in its entirety. The jewel box lay next to the player and for weeks I tried to digest it with the only result that I ejected the disk, mostly somewhere during the quite abominable We're Pastie To Be Grill You track.

In the end a cat with good taste peed on it so I finally found it was   time to place the goddamn thing in between those other plastic do not open boxes that just gather dust in my cd collection. (If you really want to know it was in between Meatloaf's Bad Out Of Hell   and T'Pau's China In Your Hand.)

But on the twelfth night of the twelfth month of the year 1999 I finally   took a breath of fresh air, put the 'Little Album' in my cd player and listened to it in one go: http://atagong.com has the full report I wrote about that.

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iPod Random Generator June 2008
Category: Music

Octopus    Syd Barrett
Swallowed    Bush
Promised You A Miracle    Simple Minds
Beautiful Day (Quincy And Sonance Radio Edit)    U2
Step On My Old Size Nines    Stereophonics
Candy And A Currant Bun    Pink Floyd
All You Need Is Love    The Beatles
Seven Nation Army    The White Stripes
Electricity    OMD
The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg    Iron Maiden

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iPod Random Generator May 2008
Category: Music

My iPod stays on shuffle this year and I have to admit that its choices are not always bad. These are the top 10 songs that were chosen for me this month. There is no human interaction with the automatic playlists - apart from some fiddling with the ratings of the songs (low rated songs will have a lower chance to appear on a playlist - I'm not a pure masochist).  Here I go, at number one:

Here I Go (Syd Barrett)
Might As Well Be On Mars (Alice Cooper)
Strobe Light (The B-52's)
Another Rolling Stone (Kevin Ayers)
I Think I'm Paranoid (Garbage)
Our House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
Journeyman (Iron Maiden)
The Model (Kraftwerk)
Destiny Calling (James)
We're Not Alone (Dinosaur Jr)

More at Felix Atagong's Unfinished Projects

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