Seasons Greetings! (aka My Favourite Present)

Hello, everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and got whatever you wanted most from Father Christmas. I had a pretty good day, got lots of lovely presents, but I think my favourite has to be the first volume of The Complete Peanuts (1950-1952), given to me by my wonderful wife!

For those of you that haven't got a scooby (and I know there are some of you out there...), "Peanuts" was the daily comic strip created and drawn by Charles M. Schultz for over 50 years, which gave the world, Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Linus and Lucy. I've always been a huge fan of these strips, and have a collection of the old paperbacks (with huge gaps), but these books are truly wonderful. Every single strip is reproduced in this gorgeous hardback book with an introduction by Garrison Keillor, an in-depth essay on Schulz's career and an interview with the (late) creator. Also included is an index to each strip, so you can find out the first time that Charlie Brown wore his famous zig-zag shirt, or the first time Snoopy had a thought-bubble.

This is a fantastic book, but one that poses a bit of a problem... How the jig am I gonna afford the rest of the collection? Hmm, I may have to publish an Amozon wishlist here!

Kylie and the Daleks!

Not long to go now until the Christmas Doctor Who special, starring Kylie Minogue as a maid on the Titanic (last seen crashing into the TARDIS...), and to celebrate, the cover of the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine features our favourite pop princess posing in a slinky gold dress with one of Skaro's finest.

Apparently the issue (out 13th December) features a giant poster of Kylie anda Dalek too! Find out more here!

Oxygene hits 30!

Yes, Jean Michel Jarre's groundbreaking album has reached the grand old age of thirty! One of the original hippy-trippy electronic albums hads now been kicking around for three decades, and to celebrate, Jean Michel Jarre has, um, released it again.

OK, so the new version is a totally new "master recording" recreated using the original score and original analogue synths, to create a new version. The reocrding sounds, well, exactly the same. I'm sure some of the hardcore Jarre-nerds have spotted some diferences, but to me it just sounds nice and clean (although there are a few noisy sections (original samples?))

OXYGENE Jean Michel Jarre

Phase Two Complete

Well, that took less time than I thought! All the old DirtyPopSlut blog posts are now here, all gathered together with Music label. Other labels, such as TV and Film are available, too, and when I get a chance I'll set up an image map for the site header so you'll be able to jump straight to those sections from any page.

It's funny looking back at all the old posts how some things have changed (eg. when Britney Spear's footwear was all she had to worry about), and my, ahem, predictions for new bands all went a bit pear-shaped (Oversol split up, The Modern have kind of stalled - only The Chalets show some signs of surviving - new album out in 2008 hopefully!), and the Adam and the Ants reunion didn't really happen. Oh well.

Now I've got to decide if I'm going to bring the Craig's Place posts back into the fold.

Go back... Way back... Back into time!

For those of you that have bothered to have a trawl through this new version of the kinkyMachine, you may come across some stuff which predates Blogger (and my iBook!) Yes, I've found the Wayback Machine at archive.org!

Rather scarily, most of my musings over the years have been collected by all the little web spiders and have been kept for posterity (if that's the right word!) I've skimmed off the choicest items and put them into blog posts as near to the correct date as possible, but feel free to have a poke around the archive. A lot of the pictures have gone, but there are still some bits and pieces floating around.

I may even get around to writing up some of the journals that i kept while i was in uni, so that'd be a bit scary to read now!

Phase One Complete

Well, that's all the old ScreenDump posts re-integrated into the new kinkyMachine, just got to free up a week or so to get all the DirtyPopSlut ones back into the fold. And it's not easy to do when your iBook's got a broken logic board, and the only way you can see the screen is by squeezing the case to the left of the trackpad (which kills your hand after a minute), or by hooking it up to a TV, which makes type quite tricky to read.

If only Blogger would come up with a merge blogs facility...

Oh well, time for bed!

Equinoxe on the Rocks

This fantastic track has been flagged up on the Jean Michel Jarre Yahoo! group recently. It's a cover version of Jean Michel's 1978 track Equinoxe 7 by a Norwegian musician called Per Kristian Risvik, and as the name implies, it rocks. The original track is a lot quieter, but still quite driven and exciting. Per Kristian's version just layers in a heavier, pounding bassline and some truly thunderous drums, giving it a more powerful, almost live feel (similar to the version found on Jarre's Houston/Lyon live CDs).

It's well worth a listen, and if you like it, check out some of Per Kristian's other work, which includes some original pieces as well as covers of the Doctor Who theme and the Super Mario jingles!

Click here to listen to Equinoxe on the Rocks

All together again

So here we are, back with the new look kinkyMachine. The best posts from all my other blogs, and going forward, a whole new bunch of stuff. Basically, I just wanted a place to talk about all the good stuff in life; the best films, the best music, good food, great books, anything that tickles the taste-buds (or whatever sensory organ is appropriate...)

Stick around, it might be fun.