Birthday Bass Boy

Duncan's 13th birthday today and his big box of music arrived as planned. Brilliant fun! We went to Edinburgh a few weeks ago and settled on this lovely Hofner Violin Bass and it's caused a lot of excitement in the house. So today was the day and when the van rocked up in the afternoon the whole street's children came in to see what was in the box. I had chucked a multi-effects pedal in as well and that made it - bong bong became bzzt bzzt and waah waah! Excellent :)

Big Bass Notes.

2 barbecues today - a planned one for lunch and a by-public-demand dinner as well. Sausages and burgers, fizzy wine and fizzy grape juice, marshmallows toasted on skewers. Even more brilliant :)

I've become kind of addicted to Spotify as well. I do get the Billy Bragg point that you'll never hear anything new if you let Spotify choose your choices, but that's not what I do. And anyway, what's limited about Spotify Radio based on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?

If you've not heard it, pour yourself a very large one and soak up James Blake's Retrograde. Good grief. Yes, it's just the pentatonic scale hummed repetitively but by hell it's brilliant. Proper genius and use of modern facilities. Hum, record, loop, overdub - live. Oh yes. Oh, YES!