Best thing I’ve seen all week…

The World All At Once (1)

I figured that I had better get my act together and start writing some long pieces for my blog here and spent some time last night racking the grey matter as to how to do it properly. The World All At Once will, more or less, crush my week of pop-culture consumption into a slick view on the week that just went by. I’ll aim for Saturday or Sunday for posting it, but let’s see how it settles in…

Yesterday, I got the word that Black Dye, White Noise and The Language of Thieves and Vagabonds had both been release on itunes/ibooks and at Barnes & Noble for the nook. Thus began an afternoon of downloading and checking – and as a bi-product of this cocking about, came across a couple of really good books for ibooks (and probably the kindle too but I couldn’t be bothered looking). They’re both by the same person, both self-published and both really freaking good. Honest. Take it from somebody who throws books out of the car window if they suck before the end of the second chapter.

The author in question is Saffina Desforges - the books are called Snow White and Sugar & Spice - and if I’m not very much mistaken, she lives somewhere not so far away from me either. I thought I might get in touch, but then I read her blog and was put off by the fact that she seems angry and self-righteous about everything. All the time. Been there, done that and it will come and bite you on the ass no matter how good your book is. Then again, like one of my old bosses said to me: ‘you’re not here to be liked – you’re here to get the job done.’ Maybe I’ll just read her books and leave it at that – though it’s worth pointing you also to a page on her site where she details nefarious tactics by agents who really should know better.

Nice cover for Snow White – I really like both that and the forthcoming Rapunzel.

There’s some other interesting books on there too that look like they might be worth the time of day – one thing at a time though. I already have a stack of books that I’m not getting through very quickly at all. That means Skin Deep is being shipped to print in the middle of the week so there’s not going to be much going on except burying my head in that – on which subject, I interviewed Jovanka Vuckovic last night. What a fantastic lady – one I am now pleased to call a friend. We have much in common. More on that some other time. I might publish the full interview here later in the month as we spoke of many, many things – not all of it relevant to the mag.

Not strictly something from this week, but rather from last month. I picked up a copy of Vanity Fair magazine a few weeks back. I always thought it was a ‘mag for women’ but as it turns out – if you can see past the top-end advertising and the lure of celebrity for its own sake – it’s a great read. The writing is top-notch and the variety of material in there is quite inspiring. Their ipad app is beautiful as well – better than the print copy I think. It didn’t take long to win me over on it either, so we’ll drop that name in the ‘win’ column for the foreseeable future. Nice work.

The new Marilyn Manson album is kind of strange. I wanted to love it like I loved Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals. Love it for all of its wanton destruction and no small amount of effort put into the minutiae of the project. What I got however was an album of songs that sound like Marilyn Manson might sound when everything had got a little grey around the edges. An album he might make when he knows he’s on the rocks. Maybe one in which the headlines are slipping away but he needs to put a product out all the same so that it doesn’t appear to be too long between albums when you look in the history books.

He can do better than this. You know what he should have done? He should have sat on a beach for a couple of weeks (or perhaps a dank cave – either will do) and fleshed himself out a plan like Amanda Palmer did. A plan that would redefine Manson to the world forever. If anybody could have pulled this off, he could. I don’t know anymore. Maybe it’s just too much work once you don’t have to worry if there will be breakfast on the table tomorrow. There’s a lot to be said for staying hungry.

Thus, disappointed with the thing that should have been a supernova this week, I reverted to type and dug into itunes to find something of value, only the truth is that I couldn’t be bothered looking that hard, so I let it ramble on shuffle like I do most days – then I remembered that earlier in the week, I’d found a nugget of vinyl on ebay that I’d bought but not paid for – which would explain why it hadn’t arrived yet. I must have been through at least half a dozen copies of In The Dynamite Jet Saloon (Dogs D’Amour) over the years – this should be the last time I ever buy it again. It’s getting hard to find great vinyl on ebay – everybody thinks their shit is worth a lot more than it is – or at least to somebody who wants to listen to it rather than collect the damn stuff. There’s a record fair on next Saturday so we’ll see what gives out there. The last one I went to, I picked up about seven albums for under £20, which is really how it should be…

The Devil Inside.

For those of you perhaps who are not so eagle-eyed, I’ve posted a couple of new stories up in the last week. You’ll find a tab in the navigation bar titled Pulp Fiction which has a drop down menu where you’ll find Swarm and The Angel Who Overslept. Now that they’re alive in the world and I can see them from the outside in, there are perhaps a couple of little changes I might make, but for all intents and purposes, knock yourselves out…

The odds on you chancing by here as opposed to Neil Gaiman’s pages (which is the only thing on the entire web that I check on every single day) are slim. Slim still means an opportunity in my mind, thus, today, I relink to his story about Maurice Sendak, Art Spiegelman and the New Yorker – simply because everybody who is interested in life, being a parent and being a human, should read it and soak up its knowledge.

A chance sequence of events last night, forced my hand to be curious about a writer who goes by the name of Donald Ray Pollock (probably because that really is his name). I predict rather great things ahead for Mister Donald – and am more than impressed/encouraged that he appears to have started writing a little later in life than most. Not that he should give a damn what I actually think though – he’s doing just fine by himself.

The world is full of PR and marketing people who like to bandy about phrases such as “…great book and he is only 24″. I had absolutely nothing of interest to say to the world at 24. 34 too if I’m really honest with myself, but a few years on, I’d like to think it’s finally coming together.

With my curiosity piqued by reviews, respected comments and a great looking cover for The Devil All The Time, I bought in. For the first time ever, I bought the ebooks for my pad/kindle and also ordered hard copies too. The first bit because I couldn’t wait and the second because er… I’m not entirely sure why I did that but it feels right and the sort of thing I would pick up in a bookstore off the cuff. Anyway, this is good stuff if you like that American ‘road’ style. There’s an excerpt here at Scribd that will tell you at least what you’re getting yourself into.

Whenever I find a good published author with the weight of a big company behind them, it’s always great to see them do a nice job on the guys site. Donald’s is certainly one of the much better ones out there – which pretty annoyingly makes me look at this one all over again. One day, I’ll be happy with it for more than a few weeks at a time.

It’s kind of heart-warming to see an author who you can point at and say “they do this sort of thing.”

I tried and I failed. I simply don’t just do “one sort of thing”.

Is that so wrong?

 

Hulk Smash Loki: Job Done.

If you’ve not seen Avengers Assemble yet, don’t go anywhere near the play button.

On the other hand – if you have, you might well appreciate this little ‘reworked’ set piece. If the clip disappears, don’t blame me – I can’t believe it’s even still up there.

Soundgarden: Avengers Assemble Video Pimp

After the little preview post from a few days back, here’s the beast in all its glory…

My work here is done. Go see it.

 

Pictures for Pleasure.

This morning, the postman arrived with no bills – I repeat – no bills, and a copy of Charlie Sexton‘s Pictures for Pleasure. I had actually ordered it – he didn’t just drop it off out of the goodness of his heart, but wouldn’t the world be a totally brilliant place if that sort of thing happened.

I love this album. Always have and I hope I always will (no reason why I shouldn’t). Check out the video clip at the bottom of the post if you’re curious. I often wondered why he didn’t explode in the sky off the back of this (and I can’t quite accept the fact that it goes all the way back to 1985) but he seems to have followed a path that worked for him at heart. That’s always more important than doing what the record company tell you to do – which I think was much the case here.

This buying vinyl lark has had much scorn poured on it by my friends (I use the plural loosely), but seriously, if you have even the slightest motivation to go down that road, the experience is so totally different from clicking a few buttons in itunes, particularly if you’re old enough to remember what it was like originally. For the rest of you, maybe not so much. My kids think I have lost the plot totally, but they will learn…

Here’s this weeks reading list – and next week as well probably. A little bit different from normal. Not sure I’ll get through it all but the heart is willing. Whenever I talk about books with people, I normally get met with lame ass responses like “I don’t have time to read anymore”. Which rather begs the question, “What do you do?” I have two kids, a full on day-job, an awful TV addiction and a ton of other stuff that needs constant attention. I rather think that right here, right now, in 2012, people sleep far too much for their own good.

Rubbish in, rubbish out. Nothing in, nothing out. There’s an equation for the rest of your life.

I sort of got invited to the Train show in London tomorrow night via an interview I was going to do with their support act Matt Nathanson (previously mentioned here) who is supporting. Turns out Matt got sick today – which is a big pain in the ass but if he hadn’t caught it today, I would have given it to him tomorrow – I feel freaking awful. I don’t think cancelling the show is on the cards (Matt not me), so don’t go around saying that’s what you read here. I will however say this out loud in case anybody important is listening. Despite my best attempts to get ‘a somebody’ to agree to Matt and myself doing a decent interview over a coffee during the day, until about three hours ago, they were still angling for me to do it in the dressing room of the Hammersmith Apollo sometime in the evening. Frankly, that’s a shitty idea and a crappy way to treat somebody who actually wants to help promote your artist long term and will get behind him in every way possible. Besides which, I’ve been in that dressing room before to do important stuff. It’s not big and it’s not clever in there…

Towards the end of the Fin Costello interview in Black Dye, White Noise, there’s a passage where Fin talks about exactly the same thing when he was on assignment to shoot Train back when Drops of Jupiter came out. Maybe it comes with the territory. Is nobody wanting to take a stand in the music business out there and take things back to being done the right way for all concerned? It’s no wonder everybody is running scared.

The new Train album – California 37 – is excellent by the way. To wrap up, here’s that Charlie Sexton video I was talking about which sums up pretty much everything I’m thinking and feeling today:

 

Published and Damned.

What a crazy week. This past weekend we hosted the Great British Tattoo Show at the Kensington Olympia where lots of people got tattooed (self included), lots of people got their photo taken with other people and a good time was had by all. There’ll be a ton of material kicking about from that over the next few days – we’re just collecting all the photo shoots together, but some bright spark forgot we were moving offices this week as well, so that kind of threw a bit of a spanner in the works. File under pending for a little while longer.

The good news on that front was that earlier this week I had the opportunity to get on top of some of my own things. I took delivery of a big stack of limited edition hardback and softcover editions of Black Dye, White Noise which look brilliant. I’m pretty damn pleased with that all round – so much so that I even stayed up all of Tuesday night figuring out how to format correctly load up for the kindle, ibooks and Barnes & Noble. The kindle version went live this morning – the other two will apparently take a little longer. How much longer I’m not sure but I’ve heard it can be a few weeks. Once I know, I’ll rustle up a post because it’s pretty stupid for one route to take about 10 hours and the other to take hundreds of hours.

That leaves me free to get on with Raised On Radio next and figure out what the rest of the year has in store. I’m also working on two freaking huge monster book projects. If I can pull it off, they will be quite something to have in the arsenal. One of them has a publisher attached already, the other is a personal project that’s going to take some real hard work to pull together but it will be more than worth it.

Sometimes I think that sleeping might be a good idea but that never got anybody anywhere in the twenty first century.

Anyway, while I was running up e-reader docs for Black Dye, I remembered that the red-headed step-child that is The Language of Thieves & Vagabonds had never really been pushed, so I did that too. Here’s the link for it on the kindle – same thing applies for ibooks and the nook as above. I’ll let you know. If anybody out there is clued in the ebook front, perhaps you could drop me a line over whether it’s even worth bothering with the kobo thing?

I’ve said my piece on smashwords already. Using that as a shop front for your material is a joke. It might be easy and it might be free, but taking something I’ve worked my ass off on for months on end and handing it over to a store that’s happy looking like a junk shop is not for me.

Oddly, I’ve just realised that nobody on the face of the planet is talking about the Sony Reader anymore. I think we need to consider that product dead and buried.

 

SOUNDGARDEN – ASSEMBLE!

HOT GIRLS HAVE PROBLEMS TOO – APPARENTLY

May the Goddess help me. May the Gods help us all. I have no idea if this is real or the greatest joke of all time – I’m not sure I care either way, it’s the best thing I’ve seen all day and with it being nearly 11.30 pm, that’s pretty good going.

So, people of earth, I hope you enjoy what you have created. This one is going to virally ballistic so fast, you will be sick of it by Thursday.

Enjoy.

BANG BANG

I kind of missed having a tumblr account since I shut it down a few months back. Of all the blogging platforms, they’re the ones that got it right. Not only for being easy to use but also for how interactive it is with others of the same mindset. So earlier this week, I resurrected in and played around with exporting blog posts from here and also importing things I posted there to here. It kind of works but right now, the export widget thing is busy reposting every single post I ever made here to tumblr and using up my daily allowance while I sleep. There can’t be that much left as it’s already gone back at least three years… it’s looking pretty good even though it has killed any images that were attached – so if a post doesn’t make sense, that’s probably why.

Meanwhile, this week has mostly consisted of putting the latest edition of the magazine to bed and finishing Tattoo Dynamite 2. This is only a mock version of the cover – the final version will be decided on sometime in the morning but for all intents and purposes, this is what it will look like when it’s unleashed next week. I love doing these books but man, it’s tough towards the end trying to make sure that you didn’t forget anything. I especially dislike proofing my own work. There’s nothing worse than looking for mistakes in a piece of work you’ve seen at least twenty times, but we’re nearly there now. If anybody in it happens to be passing by here, thanks! That’s all – thanks. Couldn’t have done it without you.

And now that one is complete, it’s back to normal with a regular run of magazines for a few months which should leave me with enough time to wrap up Raised on Radio before it starts getting hyper busy again. If you’ve been following the train of thought on here over the years, I’d also like to state for the record that Almost Human is now officially a work in progress as is a special edition of the Black Dye, White Noise project. Wait until you see it… it’s an out and out peach.

So today, being as there’s still work to do, I shall leave you with this: