On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

Morgan Page ft. Lissie West “The Longest Road” (Deadmau5 Remix)

This is the radio edit but this is probably one of my favourite songs of 2008. Fantastic surreal lyrics that i think I have made sense of! The full length version is fantastic.

Pure dead-beat Deadmau5 on this too.

“Giddy up and gold dust, all the cars turn to rust You’ve got no means for wanderlust.” — Stunning.

I’ve heard some fantastic music this year, not all of it from this year even (sometimes I catch up on things I missed a year or two ago) and Massive Attack’s “Live With Me” is one such track.

It has a depressing message but one though ‘repulsive’ is queerly compelling (at least to me) to watch, it’s a gritty message no one perhaps likes to acknowledge but it’s out there and it’s happening. I also love the video itself the way it is shot, low saturated colour. the angles of view. I love the through the bottle shot. Anyway, on that happy note I need to get ready for work:

I do have a strange fascination with all in life that isn’t well!

Jamie Principle was on to something way back in 1986, I was only 3 at the time and out came Your Love onto the Chicago House music scene when Frankie Knuckles was bringing the house down in the Warehouse… Stories of how people used to copy this rampantly from cassette to cassette are rife and it evokes a sense of something wonderful to me, something much more so than iTunes music sharing… Guess I’m of the cassette tape era, awful quality mind!

Thankfully I am glad to have been to Chicago a couple of times for extended periods and I have a feel for what it must have been like back then in the day. (And here’s me full of mirth when I hear things like Toca’s Miracle 2008… It was only 8/9 years ago it came out to start with!)

Jamie Principle – Your Love (1986)

And then in 1991, Candi Staton got together with The Source for the smash hit
You Got The Love. You couldn’t go nowhere for this song being played, and for that to remain etched on my mind when I was only eight years old at the time is saying something. Likewise as with Jamie Principle’s ‘original’ I love this.

Many people dispute that this was released in 1991 for some reason and rather jump to the New Voyager Remix from 1996 which was simarlarly massive. At a party last summer I was trying to persuade folks that not only was the track from 1991 (which they didn’t believe) but in fact it went as far back as 1986. (And for that I was off my rocker!)

Sorry folks, but I’m right on this one. (I have to be right on something once in a while after all )

The Source ft. Candi Staton ‘You’ve Got The Love’ (1991)

The original video I seem to recall had footage of the New York subway?

Then came that famous New Voyager Remix from 1996 that charted very well too:

The Source ft. Candi Staton ‘You’ve Got The Love’ (New Voyager Remix) (1996)

I have a feeling another re-release was done in and around 2003/04 but I’m not certain, either way, looks like that age old melody that tripped from the mind of Jamie Principle is living on, and in one of my favourite tunes of the moment, Sam Sparro ‘Black and Gold’ has an excellent remix… And yes, spot that melody. 23 years on and as good as it always was…

Sam Sparro ‘Black & Gold’ (Steve Pitron and Max Sanna Remix) (2008)

Well there’s my bit of public service and finally laid to rest that this song was definitely released in 1991, and arguably has roots as far back as 1986…

One month into 2008 and already it’s hotting up musically. A lot of very good music around at the moment, this one caught my attention from the trailer for Skins series 2. Now I’ve never watched Skins and maybe I should but I’m of the impression it’s aimed at roughly 17 year olds. It was the piano chrords that lured me as ever… It’s Blonde Redhead – 23 from the album of the same name.

It’s just absolutely brilliant. 23 is a number that I’d rather leave behind as 23 was the hardest of all my years but even so this is just great. Enjoy (I hope!)

Maybe once every year, probably once a decade there is a song that steals your mindset, that literally stops the world around you. I caught this on the radio this morning and well…I literally pulled over to listen. My heart was pounding and eyes misted by the time the three and a half minutes had come to a close. That song is Adele – Hometown Glory.

This is virtually the song that I couldn’t write and couldn’t sing but the one that runs through the whole of Memoirs of a Time which I am still writing. It sums it all up, the words, and the melody of that haunting marching piano carries you along…

This is so special. Blows everything else out of the water that I have heard certainly in the past five years if not since the turn of the decade:

Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

It has to be said that as the years have gone by I have moved further and further away from dance music and liking it as so much of it is complete shit or I’ve heard it before ten to fifteen years ago. That said once in a while I hear something that I think, “Yeah I like that and I cannot think for the life of me why?!”

This is Simian Mobile Disco “Hustler” — and it’s that bass line and drum beat that’s got me hooked. As the comments on YouTube note for this it does remind me also a lot of Aphex Twin “Window Licker” which is definitely one of my all time favourite videos if not tracks (I like it, just don’t adore it.) Simian Mobile Disco also have another good track in the form of “I Believe…” Here’s Hustler though:

I have very strange tastes sometimes!

I have nothing but praise for Virgin Mobile. Certainly the best carrier I have been on as they are backed by T-Mobile’s rather good network. (Can’t remember when I was last without signal and I tend to go to remote places.) Anyway remember my post about Virgin Mobile’s recent offer if you take out an 18 month contract at £25 or more a month (new or existing customers) you could choose from an iPod nano, PSP Slim or £100 credit? Well they’ve turned up the goods before Christmas.

Even better is that they rang me on Wednesday to say that it was going to be dispatched and confirm it was the iPod I had chosen. Excellent service.

So yesterday I went over to Newhaven to get it. On the way I understood why Yahoo’s Weather had been telling me on Worthing.gov.uk that the weather was FOG. It seems the whole of Shoreham, much of Brighton & Hove and East Sussex beyond that was covered in some of the worst freezing fog we’ve had in a long time. Couldn’t see bloody 3ft in front of me in the car. Anyway got back safely and have unwrapped it. The packaging is a lot smaller than when I used to work selling Apple gear and iPods in ‘05. I remember iPods coming in big cube shaped boxes (mostly because Apple actually included the accessories you need.. another story) and I was there for the iPod nano’s first generation’s launch and those boxes were in themselves pretty tiny compared to the iPod 4g’s and Minis. Now it’s stupidly tiny!

Anyway I’m no fan on iTunes on Windows. The last time I used it was on Mac OS X 10.4.8 I would guess and iTunes 7 actually ran perfectly fine on a G4 1.4GHz but on Windows, I have yet to see a PC that bats it around like a little play thing. It’s a dog. Plus I don’t wish to be locked into DRM either. So iTunes is a no go.

Especially when my ThinkPad runs Ubuntu and to top it all; my Dell GX240 runs Windows 2000 now (another thing to write up) and the iPod Classic and Nano 3g require Windows XP SP2 or Vista.  Long and short of it is that to remain legal and to keep my Nikon Coolscan LS-30 working I have to stick with Windows 2000.

Easy ways to get iPod Nano 3g/Third Generation and Classics working without iTunes:

Windows:

• MediaMonkey 3 (Currently on RC-5) — very good. Works on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP and Vista. Much more lightweight but very full features. Supports iPod Nano 3g and Classic out of the box. Freeware with paid for version offering all features. Download Version 3 Release Candidate. (Version 2 does not support the new iPods)

Ubuntu / Debian Linux in general

THIS IS ONLY NEEDED FOR iPOD NANO 3rd GENERATION or iPOD CLASSIC MODELS (FALL 2007 MODELS)

1. Download from here: ftp://64.22.103.45/packages/ubuntu/gutsy/libgpod/ the following packages:

   libgpod-dev_0.5.3+actually0.6.0-0.1_i386.deb
   libgpod2_0.5.3+actually0.6.0-0.1_i386.deb

2. Install them in that order (double click their icons)
3. Plug in the new iPod with the supplied USB docking cable
4. Open up a shell/terminal
5. Enter the command df (press enter) and look for the line that has /media/IPOD/ at the end at the very start of the line should be something that reads /dev/sdb1 or similar. Make a note of this.
6. Enter as root user with: sudo bash and enter your password. (Ubuntu)
7. Run the following:

   /usr/bin/ipod-read-sysinfo-extended [/dev/xxxx] /media/IPOD

   Where [dev/xxxx] is the /dev path you made note of in step 5. E.g. my iPod registered on /dev/sdb1 so I would enter:

   /usr/bin/ipod-read-sysinfo-extended /dev/sdb1 /media/IPOD

8. Eject the iPod (right click on the iPod icon on the desktop and select Eject), close the terminal.
9. Plug in the iPod again, Rhythmbox should automatically run and now you should be able to manage your new iPod through Rhythmbox again.

Why and Final Words
You have to do this as Apple added a layer of encryption to lock you into using iTunes which I personally think is wrong. What is wrong Apple with me using a player that I like? Two faced-ness abounds from Apple on such matters considering their rhetoric on Microsoft and the Windows empire.

But the good thing is that both Windows and Linux users now have an alternative to iTunes and also for Linux a way of actually being able to use their new iPod.

Plus you don’t absolutely have to run Windows XP or Vista on the Windows side. I appreciate XP and Vista account for about ~85% of the Windows marketplace these days but Windows 2000 still takes a sizable 8% of that according to web statistics I collect, which is more than the Mac accounts for, so Windows 2000 isn’t too insignificant to ignore yet!