This morning, the postman arrived with no bills - I repeat - no bills, and a copy of Charlie Sexton's Pictures for Pleasure. I had actually ordered it - he didn't just drop it off out of the goodness of his heart, but wouldn't the world be a totally brilliant place if that sort of thing happened. I love this album. Always have and I hope I always will (no reason why I shouldn't). Check out the video clip at the bottom of the post if you're curious. I often wondered why he didn't explode in the sky off the back of this (and I can't quite accept the fact that it goes all the way back to 1985) but he seems to have followed a path that worked for him at heart. That's always more important than doing what the record company tell you to do - which I think was much the case here.

This buying vinyl lark has had much scorn poured on it by my friends (I use the plural loosely), but seriously, if you have even the slightest motivation to go down that road, the experience is so totally different from clicking a few buttons in itunes, particularly if you're old enough to remember what it was like originally. For the rest of you, maybe not so much. My kids think I have lost the plot totally, but they will learn...

Here's this weeks reading list - and next week as well probably. A little bit different from normal. Not sure I'll get through it all but the heart is willing. Whenever I talk about books with people, I normally get met with lame ass responses like "I don't have time to read anymore". Which rather begs the question, "What do you do?" I have two kids, a full on day-job, an awful TV addiction and a ton of other stuff that needs constant attention. I rather think that right here, right now, in 2012, people sleep far too much for their own good.

Rubbish in, rubbish out. Nothing in, nothing out. There's an equation for the rest of your life.

I sort of got invited to the Train show in London tomorrow night via an interview I was going to do with their support act Matt Nathanson (previously mentioned here) who is supporting. Turns out Matt got sick today - which is a big pain in the ass but if he hadn't caught it today, I would have given it to him tomorrow - I feel freaking awful. I don't think cancelling the show is on the cards (Matt not me), so don't go around saying that's what you read here. I will however say this out loud in case anybody important is listening. Despite my best attempts to get 'a somebody' to agree to Matt and myself doing a decent interview over a coffee during the day, until about three hours ago, they were still angling for me to do it in the dressing room of the Hammersmith Apollo sometime in the evening. Frankly, that's a shitty idea and a crappy way to treat somebody who actually wants to help promote your artist long term and will get behind him in every way possible. Besides which, I've been in that dressing room before to do important stuff. It's not big and it's not clever in there...

Towards the end of the Fin Costello interview in Black Dye, White Noise, there's a passage where Fin talks about exactly the same thing when he was on assignment to shoot Train back when Drops of Jupiter came out. Maybe it comes with the territory. Is nobody wanting to take a stand in the music business out there and take things back to being done the right way for all concerned? It's no wonder everybody is running scared.

The new Train album - California 37 - is excellent by the way. To wrap up, here's that Charlie Sexton video I was talking about which sums up pretty much everything I'm thinking and feeling today:

It's the call from upstairs everybody dreads. You never think it can happen to you but it can strike at any time. "Dad.. can you come upstairs now please!"

Figuring the worst - a smoking plug socket maybe or a flooded bathroom - I tore up the stairs (after ignoring the first cry for help just to make sure it really was important) to find Rhiannon sitting on her bed crying her eyes out.

"What's happened, honey?"

"I'm sorry! I've accidentally shaved my eyebrows off. I didn't mean to - I didn't know that your razor was turned on all the time..."

Do you know how hard it is to keep a straight face while trying to explain that a razor isn't actually turned on, it's just sharp all the time? She made me promise not to tell anybody but then went and told all her friends one by one anyway, so I don't feel bad about doing the same. Every time I think about how you can possibly shave your eyebrows off by accident, it makes me properly laugh out loud. Not in the text way... Laurel & Hardy laugh out loud. Was it wrong to tell her they will probably grow back in a few days?

•••

I don’t know why they do it. It’s probably to keep jobs when there is no need to keep jobs but when an artist is marketed in his home country when, given half the chance, the rest of the world would be interested as well, well it’s a waste. No, not a waste - it’s a crying shame.

In this instance, I’m talking about Matt Nathanson and wondering why I’ve only this weekend discovered him. For the record, it wasn’t a spoon-fed link, that’s for sure. I’ve stopped looking at all that data driven garbage. It was something I read. If I can remember where I saw it, I’ll add it later.

Anyway, here’s this guy - largely undiscovered by me and I assume many others - who has seven albums of the most glorious acoustic based material under his belt and I’m totally knocked out by him. You can find his back catalogue and anything you might need to know at his site if you find yourself in a similar boat (new album out now and a tour with Kelly Clarkson currently ongoing) but what I’m thinking as I look harder is how long it took him to do it his own way. The first album is almost twenty years old now but I adore the journey he has been on. It probably hasn’t been easy - if I know songwriters at all, he’s probably thought of throwing in the towel more than once but from a listening perspective, I’d like to let him know, I’m stoked that he didn’t.

This weekend has been a genuine pleasure to work my way through with Matt hanging around in the kitchen - figuratively speaking of course, although he's quite welcome to come and write here any time he wants. It’s not very often I find new material that I know will last. If you like acoustic based material, Matt’s the very guy to call on.

Still on the subject of not knowing ‘why they do it’, I was going to take the kids to check out John Carter this evening but I couldn’t find one single screening of it in a 40 mile radius that wasn’t still flogging the dead horse of 3D. Can’t we just go and see a movie because it’s great and not because things might appear to be ‘coming towards us’? All that’s happened in this scenario is that four people who would have gone to see it, didn’t - and for all the batterings it’s gotten in the press, I still think it looked pretty hot, so by my calculations, they really needed some people on their side.

Meantime, I leave you with a video clip of a song that I can't quite believe came out as long ago as it appears. 1990 I believe. Where on earth did all the time go?

Currently reading: Denise Mina, The Last Breath