I'm not a massive Rolling Stones fan, but there's something undeniably cool about covering 'Exile on Main St' in its entirety and releasing it on cassette isn't there?

Pussy Galore recorded their version of the Stones' finest hour in 1986 when band members John Spencer (yeah, that John Spencer) and Neil Hagerty (yeah, the Neil Hagerty from Royal Trux) were just young dudes who liked nothing better than jamming, taking drugs, tape hiss and slagging off Ian Mackaye.

Anyone who slags off Ian Mackaye is alright in my book. That guy is such a prick.

Anyway below is a link to download the album. If you want an original copy, good luck with that. They were going for over a hundred bucks on E-Bay last time I looked (which was this morning).

'Exile on Main St.' - Pussy Galore

OH MY FUCKING GOD.

Lemme me give you a bit of a back-story here…about 5 years ago, I used to work in HMV in Harrow. Over my time there, I ran the rock & pop section, the hip-hop section and the singles section. I generally turned up to work on time and on one particularly cool day, some dude was caught stealing from the rap section and claimed that Tupac made him do it.

Anyway, after a hard day of making sure there were no gaps on the chart wall, there was nothing that my buddy Ross and I liked doing than winding down by drinking ourselves unconscious every single night without fail. Obviously this meant we occasionally turned up for work in the morning feeling a bit peaky which was a shame because in order to get into our work we had to walk past this hot dog place called Rollover in the food court, which despite claiming to be “The Best Hot Dog in the World”, was actually the rankest shit imaginable. On more than one occasion, the smell of their hot dogs being cooked at 8am made me puke. Also, just the thought of their chicken sausage hot dog in nearly making me puke now.

Basically, the point to this pretty uninteresting back-story is that I hate the shit out of Rollover. I mean why would anyone in their right mind choose to eat there when they have the option of visiting Burger King, KFC, Subway, Pizza Hut or the place that sells jacket potatoes all present in the same food court?

Yesterday I was back in Harrow saying hi to my Nan. I dropped into HMV to pick up the new Slipknot and The Game albums and say word up to Natricia Roberts who is still working there part time at the weekends, despite the fact she must be about 35 by now and probably should have a full-time job. Trish is cool though. All this obviously left me pretty damn hungry so I made a visit to the food court and grabbed a 6” chicken teriyaki Subway. When I sat down to eat it, I literally couldn’t believe the shit I saw in front of my eyes. I blinked and looked again, but there it was. The Holy Grail.

The fucking pizza cone. In Harrow. Being sold by Rollover. I had a momentary dilemma, all this time, I have being going on about the lack of pizza cones in the UK and now here I was sitting opposite a massive sign advertising the things, I’m not sure how much they were charging for them, but I was pretty confident the £7 in my pocket would cover it easily. I weighed up my options. Should I ditch my Subway and go and buy this pizza cone meal deal or I should allow it? Also, was it entirely necessary for them to serve it with chips?

I pussied out and I’m sorry. In the end I had to give it a miss for the main reason that it was being served by Rollover. Literally, had any other food outlet been serving them, I would’ve thrown by sub in the bin and be sitting here feeling like King of the Universe, but I’m not. I’m still that same-old guy who has never eaten a pizza cone.

P.S. Trust shitty Rollover to be the first people in the UK to serve the pizza cone and to offer margherita, ham or ham & mushroom flavours? Is it really necessary to have both ‘ham’ and ‘ham & mushroom’ flavours? Couldn’t they just have one or the other, file them under one ham umbrella and offer up a pepperoni pizza cone which would clearly be the most popular?

...AND THE FUCK UP OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO...

I did something that I’ve never done before today and bought an album off i-Tunes. I will still be the first person in line to buy the CD of ‘Microcastle’ by Deerhunter from the piece of shit record shop that is High Street Kensington Zavvi on the day of its physical release, but I had to hear this record right now.

A couple of days ago Bradford Cox posted a link to a virtual 7” by his solo project Atlas Sound on the band’s excellent blog. It turns out that anyone who clicked the link was directed to an unguarded folder containing demos and finished tracks for ‘Microcastle’ and a surprise amendment album due to be packed with its physical release named ‘Weird Era’ and as if that wasn’t enough of a fuck-up, there were also demos for the new Atlas Sound album ‘Logos’ there for anyone to download.

With the album flying round the internet the band’s labels (Kranky in the U.S.A. and 4AD over here) have made the pretty smart decision to put ‘Microcastle’ for sale on i-Tunes as of now. I’ve always been the guy who waits for physical release dates, but with the physical release over two months away (unless it’s brought forward in light of the leak) I decided that I was going to buy this album twice – once digitally, and once on physical format.

It’s a shame that this has happened, as Bradford Cox has always been keen to share his demos for free and tracks on his blog, and also Kranky and 4AD, two labels I respect the shit out of will be losing out as a result of his mistake. Not to be Mr Judgmental, but part with your money for this music. I’ve just finished listening to ‘Microcastle’ for the first time and it’s worth it.

THANK GOD FOR THAT.

'And We Parted Ways At Mt. Jade'

This is a new A Grave With No Name track I recorded over the weekend, called ‘And We Parted Ways at Mt. Jade’. The guitars were recorded on an old, broken 8-track in my bedroom and I added the vocals and mixed it at my parents’ house.

Download: 'And We Parted Ways at Mt. Jade' - A Grave With No Name

PIZZA IN A CONE

It's come to my attention that in America it is possible for an indivdual to stroll into an establishment and say something along the lines of "one pizza cone to go please buddy", hand over roughly $3-$5 and in turn be handed back a cone made out of pizza crust, filled to the fucking top with mozarella cheese and pepperoni.

I've researched these pretty thoroughly and the general consensus is "bland", "messy" and "not as good as I expected", but I want to live in the country where I can disappoint myself on a daily basis by eating a pizza in a cone which is not as good as I hoped it would be.

There are actually chains dedicated to selling these things. Crispy Cones in L.A. and Konopizza is already up and running, and doing well, not only in the USA, but they've just opened up stores this Summer in Indonesia, Kuwait, Spain, Greece, and New Zealand. So basically we're the only fucking retard country in the world where you can't buy a pizza in a cone.

To rub it in even more, I hear that the cone shaped concept is not limited to just pizzas. Both companies will be offering cones for stuff like salads, fruit, and chili.

And pasta.

GHOST IN THE GRAVEYARD - A SUNNY DAY IN GLASGOW (ULRICH SCHNAUSS REMIX)

I've been listening to 'Blue Bell Knoll' by Cocteau Twins alot recently. I bought it in Zavvi (I know, I know, I don't know why I was shopping in there either) the other day in a 2 for £10 deal along with 'Tusk' by Fleetwood Mac (I only owned it on vinyl and wanted it on my i-Pod before you start). Anyway, this remix of Philadelphia's A Sunny Day in Glasgow , by Ulrich Schnauss sounds like it could be taken off 'Blue Bell Knoll 2008' edition, or you know, alternatively, it just sounds like a dude who is really into shoegaze remixing some other dudes who are really into shoegaze (and since when has that been a bad thing?).

Download: 'Ghost in the Graveyard' - A Sunny Day In Glasgow (Ulrich Schnauss Remix)

GAS

Sometimes you have to just admit that you’ve missed something the first time round and aren’t as on the money as you’d like all of your friends to think. In this particular case, I just don’t care because I’m so digging this 4CD boxset I have of the entire back catalogue of studio albums from Gas that I bought on a complete whim over the weekend.

Gas was the project of Kompakt label-boss Wolfgang Voigt – he recorded 4 studio albums under the name between 1996-2000 before deciding it had run its course and retiring the moniker. The albums he left behind however, are among the best ambient-techno I’ve heard (pre-dating a mid-point between The Field and Stars of the Lid), and now they’ve been collected in a convenient and beautifully packaged box-set and re-released on Kompakt after being unavailable for years. It’s the best £22 I’ve spent this year.

I’m sure that you’ve all got these already from when they were out originally and you’re all laughing at me, but cut me a break OK. I was busy listening to blur in 1996.

'THE UNDERPASS' - A GRAVE WITH NO NAME (DEMO)

Hi this is a new demo of a song called ‘The Underpass’ I wrote a while back. It’s just me accompanied on guitar with just a touch of reverb on the backing voices. I’m sure it will end up sounding very different.

I don’t actually have the track with me right now – I’ll upload it to Z-Share when I do, but for now I think you can download it from my My Space player here.

BLACK LOVE - AFGHAN WHIGS

I thought about one of my favourite albums of all time today which is ‘Black Love’ by Afghan Whigs. I’ll totally admit that I bought this album as a 15 year-old because NME gave it 9/10. It was released around the same time as ‘Dust’ by Screaming Trees which they also gave 9/10, but I could never get into that record so much – ‘Black Love’ on the other hand, I still listen to regularly to this day.

It seems to be general consensus that ‘Gentlemen’ is Afghan Whigs’ masterpiece, but for me ‘Black Love' is not only their best album, but one of the best albums of all time. The very 90’s concept of a record-as-movie was played-out by the time this was released in 1995, but if one album in my collection deserves to be described as ‘cinematic’ it’s ‘Black Love’. I guess there’s a thematic arc throughout its 11 tracks that make it play like some sort of grunge-rock-noir version of ‘Chinatown’ in my head. I’m making it sound bad now (especially as I haven’t even seen ‘Chinatown’ all the way through), but ‘Black Love’ is also kind of important insofar as it taught me that there was other music to be investigated outside guitar bands from Seattle. it's drenched in soul and funk – genres it has to be said that my 15 year-old self wasn’t too big on.

The overriding memory I have of this album is being on a Spanish exchange in Madrid and taking my cassette copy of this album with me and sitting on my bed listening to ‘Honky’s Ladder’ over and over again on my walkman thinking of home and feeling a bit socially retarded - so I guess some things never change.