Magpie

Have you seen that website where they offer money for your old cd's, dvd's and pc games? It's called http://www.musicmagpie.co.uk/index.asp. You tap in the barcode of whatever it is you want to flog, they tell you how much they'll give you, and then if you agree to their price they send you some freepost packet and you send off your unloved copy of that Sting album your Nan gave you in '94. Lord knows how they calculate how much things are worth. As a bit of an experiment I found out they would only give me 66p for The Black Crowes Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, which is very hard on the Crowes with what is surely their finest most complete offering.

The barcode Fagin calc told me my copy of Andy White's Rave On didn't really exist (Reality Row, track 3, super) but would give me 1.79 English pounds for The Who's 2006 Endless Wire. Even with the bonus DVD I'd say that was 1.78 too generous. So far, the most generous offer has been a whopping 2.06 for Elvis's Sun Sessions. I'm sure he'd be proud. Irish folkie Sean Tyrell's The Orchard far outweighs The Crowes paltry 66p with a bemusing 1.49 (now really, have you heard of him?) but The Umo Jazz Orchestra's Sauna Palaa!, given to me by a very nice lady in The Finnish Embassy here in Chile, does not get recognised. They should team up with Andy White for a protest song.

The winners and the losers .......................... kicked off by some 80's Finn swing. Hmmmmm.

Andy White, Reality Row


Sean Tyrell

Last Train to Memphis

And lo, it came to pass that 11 months did set like the sun, and verily it was decreed that Peter would finally turn the last page on the biggest chore of a book that he had ever read. I finished it, I finally finished Last Train To Memphis by Peter Guralnick.
This was such a slog, not due to the quality of the writing or the facts presented in it, I am sure that Peter Guralnick is an excellent writer and it is Elvis Presley after all. The issue lies unfortunately in the fact that between his birth and 1958, outside of his music, Elvis was just plain dull.
I didn’t expect thrills of Gun’s N’ Roses proportions, but across 578 pages I wanted a little more than Elvis bought his momma a Cadillac, Elvis travelled by train to Texas, Elvis recorded Teddy Bear. Even the recording process isn’t detailed that much, I mean even the million dollar quartet gets only a few pages, the single greatest recording session ever committed to tape is dealt with in less than 20 pages, maybe even less than 10.
The book just never held my attention unfortunately, and that is why I couldn’t read more than 3 or 4 pages at a time, and without being too graphic, if I hadn’t eaten too much bread this weekend it may have been another few weeks before it was finished. Thank heavens for mild wheat intolerances eh!
It does deliver facts though, exhaustively it delivers facts, if you need to know who Elvis had as a companion on any particular day it gives you those facts, you want to know anything else, you are screwed.
I was going to read the second volume, Careless Love after this, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. Not if I want to lose another 11 months of my life.