A list of my emusic purchases

Live in Manchester and Dublin - Rodrigo y Gabriela
Violin Concerto/Company - Philip Glass - Adele Anthony
Select Classical Chinese Music - Various
Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians - Grand Valley State University
Shostakovich Symphony No 5 - LSO
Best of John Lee Hooker -
Soul Men - Sam and Dave
Chinese Dub - Jah Wobble
Bad Medicine EP - Liz Green
Joys of Spring - John Fairhurst
Steve Reich: Different Trains - David Robertson
Howls, Raps and Roars - Allen Ginsberg
Sound unbound - DJ Spooky
Beethoven Violin Concerto - Isabelle Faust

Went to see Gogol Bordello last weekend in Leeds. They were fantastic, had a great time bouncing in the middle of a fun crowd. Aching a bit today. Now, I wonder if they do weddings...

I don't really believe in piracy. That's why I use Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows - I know that all the applications I need are available to me for free. Recently I've been downloading a lot of free music - and it's really good stuff. The biggest help in finding it is this blog:
http://freealbums.blogsome.com/
It covers everything from the latest Nine Inch Nails release, through jazz and all the way out to classical. Definitely worth a look.

While at Stell's birthday do a couple of weeks ago Ant and I found out that Damo Suzuki, ex-lead singer with Can, was playing at a pub in Huddersfield over the Easter weekend. So, after helping my dad with various bits of DIY, drove over there to see it on Saturday night. First up was a psychedelic band which was pretty nice. Next came a band who produced a sound very similar to white noise for half an hour. Damo looked like he was sleeping through it all sat at the cd table until he bounced up to the stage to create an hour and a half of inspired audio lunacy. At one point I thought my brain was melting.
Went back to Anthony's after that and had a beer to relax. Sunday had a roast dinner at my aunt's, which was cool because we do not have an oven at the moment and roasting or baking anything is impossible.
Monday finished off installing the window sill my dad (with a bit of help from me) had put together for the front room and headed back to Huddersfield to meet up with David and Ant for a 9 mile walk in the rain and mist over some good Yorkshire moorland. Fantastic stuff.
All of which set me up quite nicely for today when I started my new job. Walked from the station to the mill where the office is, with my legs slightly aching from yesterday, for a gentle day of introductions and a look at the project I'll be working on. So far it all seems ok although there are a couple of things that need sorting, like access to Subversion, but the work itself looks like it's going to be interesting. It will be pretty challenging and the hours are quite long too, especially with the journey from my parents' house, but that should all be easier when we (hopefully) get an apartment in Manchester centre.
The journey home was a bit of a nightmare tonight. Got on the Metro with a lot of United fans going to tonight's match against Roma only to have it stop after one station because of a failed tram ahead. This meant waiting to be told to get off for twenty minutes and then getting the bus home making the total travel time back about 2 hours. Hopefully the next few days will go a little easier.

Got the new Jah Wobble album last week. His first commercial release for a number of years (although he has been busy releasing stuff for the past few years on his own 30 Hertz label) it's not likely to be a huge hit but it is a nice continuation of the great music he's been creating. A couple of the tracks were a bit too "world dance" for me on a first listen but everything else leapt out. It's been a while since I heard an album that seems to just fill your head with music which may be something to do with the way it was mixed (see the website for more on that). But as with every release I only have to listen to it to five minutes to feel cheered up and like everything is good in the world - there can't be any higher praise for music than that. And I've even grown to like the subtleties of the tracks I didn't really like at first. See more details at the Trojan website including a download of a cheesy but funny video.