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A quick question before I briefly and belatedly head off to WUS:

Why does Leonard Cohen have such a reputation for being gloomy? He’s just about the most inspring, feel-good songwriter I’ve ever come across. What about this, which got (I think) somewhat bizarrely used as a republican campaign song for the first Bush:

But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags

that time cannot decay,

I’m junk but I’m still holding up

this little wild bouquet:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Or this, which apart from having become a kind of anthem for my family, almost makes you want to become a Jewish terrorist:

I’m guided by a signal in the heavens

I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin

I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

or this fantastic bit of art-over-religion:

You say I took the name in vain

I don’t even know the name

But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?

There’s a blaze of light

In every word

It doesn’t matter which you heard

The holy or the broken Hallelujah

And there’s so much more to him, and every verse has something special, and he is So Much Better than anybody else out there.

Now, off to the Kambar to dance to things that are loud and inane….

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Still alive. Spent a fun weekend at the

rhythm festival

in Bedford, serving burgers for whotheheckami. The smell of onions will vanish soon, really it will.

The weekend before that was a pleasant friday evening celebrating robert_jones‘ call to the bar, followed by an equally pleasant Saturday wandering around London. There isn’t much that beats waking up in a strange and beautiful building, strolling down to a park, spending the morning and afternoon in museums, then the evening sitting in a Samuel Smith pub in Soho, reading an exceptional book, and being almost totally undisturbed as I sat with a lot of wheat beer. After that I went along to Feeling Gloomy, which was pleasant but not as outstanding as I’d expected, in a fairly grotty venue, and too small to drift anonymously in. Between the weekends was a lot of time spent happily by myself, which is a big improvement over the socialising-to-not-be-alone that I’ve been doing so much of in recent months.

And generally? Life is good, my head is in a remarkably sorted-out state, and things are progressing. LJ is falling by the wayside a little, which is probably a Good Thing. With any luck I’ll be spending a bit more time by myself now; see you in a while.

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Thanks to smcv for transcribing my setlist from Tuesday.

It may not have been all that idealistic, but it could have gone a lot worse…

I appear to have survived WUS. Fuller post-mortem tomorrow, perhaps. For now: I didn’t run out of music, at least a couple of tracks were idealistic, and I only screwed up once obviously and once (with any luck) unnoticed by anyone other than me.

Got positive feedback on three tracks, none of which had been played at WUS before. That’s probably a good sign. OTOH, it’s not great that everything sounds so much better from the DJ both than from the dance floor. And remembering to hit the lights every 45 seconds is clearly an acquired skill.

Setlist will be on the rocksoc website eventually – unlike the impressively-organised naranek. I don’t have an independent copy of it.

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