There’s about thirty new messages from Bandcamp in my inbox so I guess it must be another Bandcamp Friday.
The Sparks Brothers
Watched: The Sparks Brothers on Netflix. The nearly two and a half hour running time just flew by. Some elements had me harking back to the fanciful elements of Martin Scorcese’s Dylan documentary but I loved the whole thing.
Sparks is a band that has flitted in and out of my consciousness for years. The latest album, “A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip”, got me through that horrible 2020 summer lockdown.
Read: https://www.hmv.com/music/marillion-interview-2022-pete-trewavas-an-hour-before-its-dark
“It’s the stuff that’s underneath that takes a bit more work, that’s what makes people fall in love with music. When something slowly dawns on you, sometimes years after hearing it for the first time, what the song really means, or what a song can mean. There’s a strength in that quality to being able to have more than one layer in your music and your lyrics, and we use that, I guess.”
In some ways, it was "Gazpacho" that sold me on the album, since it sucked me in immediately: a cautionary tale about a celebrity caught up in his own legend who falls spectacularly from grace. A story we see replayed over and over every day.
I love that song. I went to see them for the first time in years (I’d drifted away at those earlier albums tbh) and they opened with Gazpacho. When Steve Rothery’s guitar riff started I had this sudden rush of emotion. Knew then I was “home” again 🙂
Making Noise
Bookmark: Alfred Cheatsheet
I switched to Alfred for my app launcher/file manipulator/system controller. Launchbar was always one of the first apps I installed on a new mac but some basic features started to throw up errors recently so I tried Alfred and loved it. This is a handy list of hotkeys and shortcuts for a new user.
I switched to Alfred for my app launcher/file manipulator/system controller. Launchbar was always one of the first apps I installed on a new mac but some basic features started to throw up errors recently so I tried Alfred and loved it. This is a handy list of hotkeys and shortcuts for a new user.