I don’t want to get too attached to Little Fish because I am sure that they will shortly leave my world of unsigned bands, self-produced CDs and wondrous small labels. Anyone in Oxford or London can catch them in a small intimate venue soon - but don’t hesitate because the secret is out and even Gary Barlow (yes, that one, the musical talent from Take That) has heard and recognised he is in the presence of something special.

Little Fish

Some of you may have noticed that my link to “Alternative Rock Review” has disappeared. This was a fine site written by Nick Collings devoted to his reviews of alt rock releases and featuring a lot of Promo reviews. Sadly, Nick has decided to close the site completely (he had stopped taking new submissions more than a year ago). The relentless nature of one man reviewing had taken its toll on him in much the same way as with me.

The good news is that Nick has allowed me to incorporate his Promo reviews into Cool Noise. I am adding a few every day and they can be found by searching for Nick Collings

I have spent the past week clearing out my old house. I came across three big boxes of records covering the 70s to the 90s. Now, the problem is that I really don’t have much space where I am living now (just one room) and I already have a lot of records there (and CDs and computers). I was planning to take the records anyway but suddenly this morning I decided to have a serious clear out and to only take the records I couldn’t live without.

Firstly, I chose to keep all of the 7″ singes + most of the 12″ - they were conveniently in one box anyway. Out of the two boxes (about 150 records) I only picked these out:

Lovers Of Today - The Only Ones
Crazy About Love - Wire
IV Songs - In Camera
Tristan et Iseult - Christian Vander
Peel Sessions - The Only Ones
I Suppose - Puressence
The Stooges - The Stooges
Fun House - The Stooges

I challenge anyone to find a connection between that lot.

I drove down the Tip struggling with my conscience. There were plenty of records that are just not available on CD and probably never will be. I had serious regrets about all of my Foetus records and also (surprisingly myself) my Sidi Bou Said.

I feel awful.

It was the late ’80s in Manchester. I was raining. Two blokes met in a pub in Manchester through mutual friends. If the leather jackets and penchant for black t-shirts didn’t give away similar interests then as soon as music came up a connection was made. At some point both revealed that they played a bit of music. Since one played guitar and sung (although never in public - and I mean not ever in front of anyone) and the other played bass, a jam session was born.

Over the previous year the singer had written a few songs and these were gradually introduced into the proceedings. The band (a drum machine joined as the third member) even got a name: Rooftop Sex Plunge (taken from a headline in one of the snippets in the Manchester Evening News about the number of people killed in Turkey falling to their death after sex on the roof).

We did two albums worth of material. After the unreleased first album we were about ready to play live but family commitments meant that never happened.

So any band who wants to get revenge on me can review my musical efforts. There are just two songs on our MySpace page but more will follow as we get a tape transcribed to MP3s. Be gentle…

Rooftop Sex Plunge

For my older sister’s Christmas present this year I made up a CD of some of my favourite tracks of the year. The reason I say ’some’ is that I have to take someone else’s taste into consideration and can’t indulge myself completely.

Here is the track list:

Phideaux-You And Me Against A World Of Pain
Scaramanga Six - Vesuvius
Modern American Science - Aim Steady Fire
Revolution74 - Send Home All The Rockstars
SUB-ROSA - I’m Right, You’re Dead
OMR - Clean And Tidy
Num - Feathers In My Bed
Lo Ego - Suffered A Loss
Revolution74 - Not That Kind
Seven Years On - Nails
The Distants - Falling Apart
The Ghosts - Hoodoo Voodoo
The Reverse - In A Cage, Under The Ground
The Studiofix - The Latter Years

There are loads of omissions e.g. Pitch Black Dream where I still can’t single out just one track from a wonderful album. I also have broken the rules because it is meant to be one track per band and yet I couldn’t resist putting two Revolution74 songs on - they have impressed me so much.

Lastly, you may see I haven’t mentioned Fell City Girl in this list. Did I really not like them that much? In fact, I included the two Fell City Girl promos (February Snow and Swim) in the parcel as part of the present.

I am being very quiet at the moment. I have some tax matters and Christmas presents and other stuff to sort out. I’m still listening and loving Mr G and Rich and Death In Public.

I did buy NME last week for the free cover CD with a view to reviewing it. Sadly, it was a great disappointment and not worth listening to. I realise again that the bands that have sent me CDs are not just good self promoters but are mostly really good bands.

I did an alternative review of The Great Leap by Phideaux over on Blogcritics. It was nice to get a bit of a conversation going on the comments section with some smart people. The review was also syndicated to some other websites so I feel I have done justice to Phideaux’s wonderful music. Even nicer is that I have done it for someone I regard as a friend without compromising my demand for musical and artistic integrity.

I think that is the last of my BlogCritics reviews and if you check my Submissions page you will see that A Cool Noise is going to stop reviewing soon. I intend to finish off my current review pile (plus the Revolution 74 CD in the post!) by the end of the year. I expect I will do some soppy posts around the new year looking back over the past four years. Beyond that, I don’t know. The website will continue but the future posts are likely to be just my ramblings.

I do have a few other projects in mind but also I want to be able to listen to all of the music I have been sent over the years like a normal human being and be able to say ‘brilliant’ or ’shite’ rather than analyse it further.