Today was the 18th time I've moved flat/house since I left home in early 1998. It wasn't an overly stressful move, I've done it enough times now to know what I have to do, even if it means waking up on the day of the move knowing there's only three hours till the movers turn up, but still having a shiatload of stuff to sort out. It always works out, my instinct kicks in and knows exactly how much I can leave till the last minute, even if I don't even notice it :)

So we're now back in a place of our own, a tiny little flat but as long as we stick to the promises we made to ourselves to stay tidy and whatnot, it should be great. The property managers seem quite hands-off in a good way. I have a little, minuscule 'bedroom' to use as a music room for now, which should be cool once I have new gear to record with. I'm not going to do a luna spark album this year it would seem though, I was doing the re-recordings of an old one one track a month, but that's on hold now that the equivalent of the sheet music for the next song due was stolen (it was on a memory card stolen with the Playstation). I'll be working on the Raid Over Moscow album as soon as I have the gear, which is a not entirely different project, but one that's meant to have a band behind it (four or five practises down, we're making a hell of a racket, loose as hell but so much fun, perhaps the polar opposite of what the album will be!)

Musically, I've been lost in U2 for the past couple of weeks - I'm up to 1993 in reading U2 By U2, re-acquired their first couple of albums (Boy and October), and saw U23D last night. The book is farking awesome, like the Beatles Anthology or equivalent Monty Python book, chock full of detail and hilarious anecdotes - I know, it sounds boring when I put it that way, but really worth it. Despite the common perception of the band being a bunch of doucheheads, particularly Bono, it reveals a darker, funnier side that many people haven't heard about - particularly in their early days and the Achtung Baby/Zooropa period. They were definitely more punk in spirit than many give them credit for. And those first two albums, the production is pretty sweet, but everything they've ever done pales in comparison to Achtung Baby, sonically - surprising when you actually read about the recording/mastering of the record (dubbing over stereo mixdowns, last-minute guitar solos, wanting people to think their record player was broken when they put it on).

I remember reading once when I was younger in Rolling Stone the '90s in music truly began when Nirvana released Nevermind, which I understood, and when almost simultaneously U2 released Achtung Baby, which I didn't really understand. Now I do. For the (actual) biggest band in the world at the end of the 1980s to come back from a critical disaster (Rattle and Hum) with a completely new sound
and not only succeed, but create an album even better than their career-defining high point (The Joshua Tree), is pretty incredible. It's easy to scoff at them now, after two albums which basically refined their classic sound for a modern age, forgetting they once dabbled in hardcore techno, opera and country-dub-electro, but what they did with Achtung Baby would be like if the new Coldplay record was not only a cross between the Klaxons, Battles and Trans Am, but was actually better than A Rush Of Blood To The Head.

I didn't mean for this entry to rave on about U2, but they're on my brain. The best parts of U23D weren't what you'd expect - I really enjoyed Miss Sarajevo, and Bono totally pulled off the Pavarotti part without a hassle. It's not a song I really know that well, being one of the Passengers songs and all. There was a bit of awkward proselytising from Bono, but at least it wasn't too drawn out. The 3D, for me, was really good - at one point I felt a tinge of anger at the dick spraying his water everywhere, and thought for a second the Edge's guitar was going to bash the guy sitting in front of me in the head - but tariqa wasn't so impressed, as her eyes are differently tuned or something - she could see the outlines that are meant to be hidden through the glasses that cause the 3D for much of it, whilst it was pretty much crystal-clear for me, bar during With Or Without You (which only partly ruined perhaps my favourite song of theirs). As an experiment in new technology, it was understandably a little restrained in its composition, but still pretty fucking cool to look at - if only they'd been able to do it when they weren't all old men, haha. If anything it reinforced my view that Adam Clayton is the coolest guy in U2 - he's about 45, looks about 60 but in a good way, still holds his bass like he's in the Sex Pistols, and has this 'I can't believe how fucking cool this is!' grin on his face the whole time. Reading the book reinforces this, seeing as he apparently couldn't actually play to begin with, and had his first lessons in the mid 1990s.

Ryan Adams' blog takes up three or four pages of my friends list every time I look at it.

TOP 8 ALBUMS OF THE LAST FORTNIGHT...

1. Supergrass - Diamond Hoo-Ha
2. U2 - Achtung Baby
3. Duffy - Rockferry
4.  R.E.M - Accelerate
5. Andrew WK - I Get Wet
6. Morrissey - Greatest Hits
7. U2 - Boy
8. U2 - October

The new Weezer song sounds like their first album stuff, it's on their website streaming.