You know how Google, for example, keep records of all the searches anyone makes online using their service; to counteract this I not only use lots of different computers and search engines, I also periodically makes searches for things that don’t really interest me that much – you know stuff like “flower arranging” (not something I care about), “love and romance” (which seems to turn up a lot of dating services, not something I need) or “chemical composition of DNA” (which actually pulls up links to loads of really interesting info, although a bit off track from my more usual concerns) – and what I’d really like to see posted in the comments here are other examples of things people think it would be good to search for (or already search for), just to leave false trails for the data miners….

It’s been interesting to watch CDs piling up in bargain bins this year. Right now the compact disk feels as obsolete as VHS tapes did a few years back. Throw in a major recession and there’s a lot of great music out there being flogged off ‘for a song’. While three quid albums by the likes of Can and Augustus Pablo more than pique my interest (and there are plenty of them around), what really amused me last time I was in FOPP were the bargain bin copies of Keep Reachin’ Up by Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators. As far as I can recall, I first heard tracks from Keep Reachin’ Up while listening to The Robert Elms Show on Radio London.

I imagine there must be many autobiographical accounts of working as a film extra in London in the sixties, although I can’t recall reading any. Looking at the film industry from the bottom up strikes me as considerably more interesting than the recent obsession with celebrity focused accounts of the movie world. My mother, Julia Callan -Thompson, briefly took up extra chores in the mid-sixties and she ran them in tandem with attempts to establish a modelling career. She found her way onto the fringes of the London film world through a friend called Annette Monaghan. Annette had grown up two streets away from my mother in Newport and relocated from south Wales to London to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

On Sunday afternoon I went to the opening of a show entitled Vicky Gold Brand New Art Superstar at Guy Hilton Gallery in Fournier Street, London E1. It was actually a group show but Vicky Gould got the star billing under her new moniker of Gold, and was the main selling point. Allegedly Gould’s work was produced for her final year fine art BA show this summer, but was censored by Goldsmiths College because it focused on her sexual obsession with a lecturer called Paul Davis. When I arrived for the opening the exhibition was still being installed. I was introduced to Vicky who was sitting on the floor making chocolate icing, presumably so that she could smear it over her body during her advertised performance.

Last week I took control of my tunes and spoken word pieces on LastFM. I’d noticed that various parties had been uploading my tracks there and figured it was about time I did something about it. I don’t have a problem with people file exchanging my tunes, but drum and bass label Moving Shadow had uploaded my spoken word album Cyber-Sadism Live! and totally destroyed the flow of that album by re-ordering the tracks. Of course, anyone can listen to the tracks from Cyber-Sadism Live! any which way they want, but with the original running order restored you can listen to the live sets collected there as they were performed, if that’s what you wanna do!