Music and Midnight

The first Thursday of February and I feel as if I am being incredibly productive. I now have a job working in a very nice little pub in town, I am a third the way through writing my novella which when I say it like that makes me sound very intelligent which I like, and I know where I am going with it which for me is an achievement as I usually hide from plots and cower away from structure. These two things are very good. I have a lot of reading to do, but I don’t think that will change at all and in fact will only get worse. I am currently desperately trying to finish ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie, reading a collection of Postmodern theorists such as Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard and I’m about to begin reading ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles and ‘Childhood’s End’ by Arthur C. Clarke. I’m sure these are all interesting and very good books, but I cannot seem to enjoy anything as much as I should when I have to read it for a class. ‘Midnight’s Children’ for example is a wonderful book, but as the class we’ll be studying it in draws nearer I begin to focus entirely on getting the thing finished and the enjoyment of it gets thrown out of the window. Despite this I go on. So as far as university and money goes I have managed to become organised and I am feeling pretty good about the whole thing. However, in terms of breaking out into the social scene I must admit I have become somewhat of a recluse and although I may know about a small collection of things to do so far I have failed to partake in anything. As far as films go I have been invited to see ‘Cloverfield’ which I know little about apart from that it was written by the same person who wrote ‘Lost’. As yet I haven’t seen it so mentioning it is not much use to anyone who will be reading this. However if you want to read a review of it by someone who has actually seen it I suggest visiting The List website, the Scottish equivalent of Time Out which I have always relied on and seeing as there is no Welsh equivalent of either as far as I know I rely on that for general reviews of films.
Someone who loved 'Cloverfield' was Lightspeed Champion who my friends are going to see in Cardiff at the Barfly tonight. He is the former member of Test Icicles; a band I absolutely detested as I, in general, prefer being able to understand what the singer is saying instead of listening to, what is as far as I can tell, just screaming. However, Lightspeed Champion is apparently quite different, although I have not heard him myself, and only know of him because of the massive press he has been getting recently. In other music news I am aiming to finally get organised and book my brother’s band to play at our union in April. His band is called Ruby and The Emeralds and they play a mixture of psychedelic funk, reggae, rock, soul and general madness. They are absolutely brilliant and despite my uncertainty of how popular there music will be with my sometimes backwards college, I am sure that their charm and wackiness will confuse and entertain all spectators. Much better than the Beatles tribute band we had playing at the college last Friday. Not to say they were terrible, they weren’t, they were surprisingly good, but I suppose they were playing excellent songs so they were already half way to being brilliant. Ruby and The Emeralds are better though and although I could be a tad biased it is the truth. When they’re playing in Carmarthen Union this blog will have an exclusive of the dates.

Watch this space.