Catmachine

As somebody who has amassed a large number of CDs and records over the years, one of the minor problems I've come across is what to do about Hype Stickers. No, I didn't know that was what they were called until now. These are little – often very nicely printed and designed – sticky labels attached to the exterior of the CD or record. Sometimes (more often in the old days) they'd read something like: " Contains the hit single : Hitty McHitface!" but more often these days they give the name of the album and artist (and sometimes catalogue number) as the album cover design is a work of art in itself which doesn't want to be sullied by text. All well and good. However, the problem arises when said record or CD is sealed in cellophane and then the sticker is put over the top of that. You need to remove the cellophane to get at the album but that means disposing of the sticker. Which some people are fine with and all power to them. However as a collector there is d

Earlier this week I went to the launch of a book: Conform to Deform: The Weird and Wonderful World of Some Bizzare a history of the notorious indie record label that sprung out of the mind of the teenage Stephen Pearce at the beginning of the eighties. While there I realised that Some Bizzare had been a huge influence on my musical taste and personal aesthetic, ultimately contributing the mental DNA of whatever it is that makes me me. Quite fittingly this happened by stealth. It all started when I got into Soft Cell in 1981. For some reason (well I was on holiday – a school trip to the USSR) I completely missed out on the summer of Tainted Love and my introduction to them was their far more subversive follow up single Bedsitter . Before long I'd become an obsessive as was so often the way with me and the completist in me led me to seek out the Some Bizzare album , a compilation LP (which I seem to recall may have had a "Pay no more than £2.99" or similar sticker on it?)

There's a bus stop near the top of my road. Like many bus stops set near a junction I can't see when there's a bus coming until it appears around the corner, mere moments before I can get on. Before that and while I'm still standing there I'm left in a state of perpetual hope - my wait might be over at any second (this is one of the few stops in Brighton and Hove without a dot matrix arrivals indicator). I may have been standing there shivering in the cold or rain for what seems like forever but my delivery from that uncomfortable state is at hand and could be with me in an instant. It is after all something completely beyond my control so I'm not interested in second guessing it and am happy enough to just wait it out and let it happen. What I don't understand is those people who walk up to the corner and stare off down the main street where they can see for a least a kilometre that the bus isn't coming. They're basically dousing the fires of hope i

At this time of year there's less sun that usual in the northern hemisphere especially at such high latitudes as the UK. We're higher than you realise here - if you draw a line due west across from Land's End you don't hit New York as the sign there might have you believe. You hit the northern half of Newfoundland in Canada. New York is more in line with Madrid. But I digress. There are less sunlit hours here in December but sometimes the sun is more in evidence. Walking along the seafront as I do in the morning on the way to work, I often get to witness sunrise itself. Sunset is often too early for me – I'm usually still working. Maybe I'll try and catch it this weekend.  Of course I don't look directly at the sun, and that's not just because I'm being well behaved. This is one of those warnings that you don't actually need like "don't set fire to your hand" or "don't bang your head against a brick wall". Any attempt

Wernigerode, European Tour 1995 Wendi fought her way free of the dream. It had been one of those nightmares, the irrational ones that could upset her for hours after waking up. She'd had none since the band had spent a month in Devon the previous spring and she had been hoping that they'd been banished forever by her strange experiences back then. But no. As familiar as the face of a school bully after the summer holidays, the dark red despair froze her brainstem as she struggled to open her eyes, move her limbs or do anything to escape its grip. There was shape to one side of her and she fancied it was Peter. He was speaking to her but none of the words made any sense. He shook her by the shoulder. "Hey, wake up. We're here." She ripped her eyes open. The dream's logic hung about her head in a cloud and a whimpering sound emerged from the back of her throat. Where the fuck was she? None of this made any sense. Shapes moved in front of a blinding white darknes

The world around us largely consists of what we expect to see in it.When presented with something brand new, our brains first have to decode the signal that they get from the eyes. The picture passes through the first level filters where edges, shapes and colours are detected and assigned. After that the filters applied rely on our knowledge, memories and experience. It's only after that processing that an identity is assigned to the object. I am looking at a clock. When we're children a lot of what we see is still new to us so our sensitivity at detecting the unusual and never previously encountered is very high - a child walking into a familiar room where just one thing has been changed will spot that change almost immediately. However, as we get older we take a lot of the world as read. In particular we know our homes extremely well and it's unlikely we actually look at anything in them properly very often. This is where my glasses come into it. I wear glasses or contact