Futtocks

Twitter's 5th birthday, by the Daily Mash.

Greezy Wheels - Radio Radials The Fugs - refuse to be burnt out Gene Clark - Two Sides to every Story Fishbone - In your Face Green on Red - Best of Green on Red Joe Satriani - Flying in a blue Dream

Asleep at the Wheel - Served Live Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars - Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars. The 'All-Stars' was basically Dr John, plus Booker T.& the MGs. The Fugs - It crawled into my Hand, honest Timi Yuro - I'm yours

IIRC, there was a rumour, when their first album came out, that it actually was the Beatles incognito. There followed a completely unjustified backlash when they turned out to be just a very good band in their own right.

Shuffle play selected: Dr John - Goin' back to New Orleans Lamont Dozier - Breaking out all over The Triffids - The Seabirds Steve Morse - Southern Steel Robert Ward - Titty Britches Jonah Lewie - Stop the Cavalry Frank Zappa - Ruth is sleeping Maria Muldaur - Gringo en Mexico

I'm not getting rid of the vinyl, but the convenience of having a mouse-click away is useful. The resultand sound quality is actually pretty good. It's all down to making sure you get the basics right; those plastic USB turntables you see advertised will just give you a recording of an LP being played badly. My recording chain is as follows: It starts with a NAD 533 (essentially a re-badged Rega) with a Rega Elys 2 cartridge. Support is a multi-layer gel/granite/sandbag setup I cludged together, which gives good isolation from footfall. This is connected to a Terratec iVinyl USB phono stage, which converts from analogue to digital. Software for recording is either TotalRecorder or Audacity. I do fine editing and track splitting with the latter. Files are then encoded as lossless WMA, never in a lossy format. There is a website I know of where a guy with a serious rig is digitising vinyl and those are amazing - where I have a recording to compare in any format, his rips just blow my versions out of the water. I was listening to his rip of 'Bitches Brew' last night and it sounded scarily real.

I spent much of the weekend recording LPs and Singles to my Hard Drive. The latest batch of successful needle-drops are: Van der Graaf Generator - He to He who am the only one Van der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts The Staple Singers - Hammer and Nails Ram Jam - Black Betty Tangerine Dream - Force majeur Doug Sahm - Groovers' Paradise The Triffids - Calenture Lambchop - What another Man spils Keith LeBlanc - Major Malfunction Joe Jackson - Big World Joe Jackson - I'm the Man

I found some footage of Cold Chisel on the Dime website - Live at the Manly Vale Hotel, 1980. RIP Steve Prestwich.

The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional. By the way, all the Triffids' albums have been reissued at bargain prices, but with lots of extra tracks, remastered sound and very nice packaging. The album above had 9 extra songs and a 40-page booklet of photos and songwriting/recording notes.

John Phillips - many Mamas, many Papas. Superb; great songs, excellent recording.

Cassandra Wilson - Traveling Miles. Songs inspired by and/or based on the music of Miles Davis, delivered by a stunning voice. Get on Spotify/Grooveshark/Last.fm/whatever and just check out track 1 for an example - wow!

Corporate Gibberish Generator "We think we know that if you envisioneer virally then you may also generate perfectly."

Free download: Tina Turner & Phil Spector - River deep, Mountain high IN STEREO!. Seven outtakes - the full version is track eight. Phil Spector may have been strictly mono when it came to his releases, but this stereo version is huge. Sound quality's not really top-notch, but listenable, and you can get a sense of scale as the Wrecking Crew tear into this great song.

Shadows can make for deceptive first impressions.

Various downloads from the appositely-named Awesome tapes from Africa website.

Lou Reed - New York. Superb album, in the main.

Interactive fold-ins from 'Mad' magazine.

Damn you, autocorrect!

David Lindley - El Rayo X. A bit Ry Cooderish, but more upbeat.

There's a name I haven't heard in an age. I used have their 'Flibbidydibbidydob' EP.

Wait 'til Tony Blackburn and the Womble are finished blathering, and this is a favourite Mott Moment.

I gave 'em a listen when they first came along - by description, the sort of thing I'd like, but they just didn't hit the spot for me. For a purely personal opinion, worthy tryers with plenty of gumption, but lacked the spark. Better than Reef, mind. As is root canal work.

Nick Drake albums on shuffle last night, inspired by the lunar eclipse.

Proper snow in London, falling pretty quickly on Saturday and settling. Ice grips doing a fine job.