Swingin' Ryan

NME/Amazon are doing a pretty good little promotional thing right now, giving downloads of certain albums for a quid. There's not a huge choice but some pretty good stuff for a quid; The Strokes, The Cribs, Foals, Weezer etc so may be some people interested.

I just got the new Arcade Fire album for a pound so that was rather tasty.

If you go here Amazon.co.uk: NME Top Festival Acts 2010, pick the album you want and type in NMEPROMO in the promo code section then you'll get the download for a pound (there's a limit of 1 album per customer and it runs out on the 18th).

Twitter.

'Oooh here's a link to a Guardian article, Oooh I'm talking to a celebrity about ironic reality television, Oooh here's a picture of me with a comically named foreign sweet, Ooooh Stephen Fry's made a joke about chips'.

Christ, give yourselves peace.

Hugely enjoyed it. Everything prime-time BBC drama should be, witty, intelligent and well-acted.

I'm interested to see how they'll deal with the ending of the last episode, it's guaranteed to annoy some Holmes purists but it's clearly more an 'inspired by' than a literal retelling of the original Conan Doyle books, some lovely little nods though. Benedict Cumberbatch is fantastic and I love Martin Freeman so I'm glad he's managed to find a role in something this good.

Even Honda managed to do a better job of taking the piss out of Hipsters than any of you fucking Hipsters.

He was a big Camera Obscura fan. They even played a few songs at his house on Burns Night in 2004 if memory serves me right and set some Burns poetry to their own music. Lovely stuff.

This is batshit mental. Fucking yaaas

That guy in town who potters about every day asking if there's anywhere the homeless can get a meal, then asking for change. I get him at least twice a week. The cunt needs to remember my face. He still keeps trying even though the past few times, I've just walked right past him and said 'No'.

That boys a nightmare, I'm a fairly generous contributor to the homeless but he does my nut in. I normally namke him about 6/7 places he can go pointing out that I spent 4 years studying social care etc and have a pretty good knowledge of where he can get a meal but thats never enough because they are inevitably 'closed on a monday/tuesday/wednesday/whatever day he asks for it'.

I prefer the guy who says 'I'm a chronic alcoholic and I need money for beer'. Straight to the point, he always gets a quid or so. I dont want a fucking 20 minute story, just truth.

The old Poison The Well guitar player is in this lot. Had a brief listen on Spotify and wasn't sure what to make of it. Apparently they drew large crowds at Primavera.

Great band (Sleigh Bells not PTW), wish I'd seen them at Primavera but they were stupidly on at the same time as Pavement.

Today I bought -

The Beautiful South - Painting It Red

The Beautiful South - Blue Is the Colour

Orange Juice - Felicity (Vinyl single)

I love Paul Heaton and have been listening to a lot of Housemartins and decided to revisit the genius of the Beautiful South and found both those albums in Oxfam plus some tasty Orange Juice vinyl which was a fantastic 1.99. Oxfam on Back Wynd is amazing for music, some absolute gems to be found in the vinyl section.

Beach House ~ Teen Dream

Did see this band at Primavera and they were absolutely magical.

Militant vegetarians. Listen fucknut, you choose not to eat meat and I respect that, just the same way as I choose to enjoy eating smooshed up bits of dead animal between two bits of bread, and I would appreciate being able to do so without having propaganda and Smiths album titles thrown around. Take your iron-deficient blood and fuck off. Also your farts smell really bad from all the vegetables. So stick that in your courgette and smoke it, hippy.

Interestingly enough, during the entire 21 years I ate meat I don't think I ever had any vegetarian lecture me on eating meat and I went out with one for a couple of years. Once I stopped eating meat a few years ago though I am regularly subjected to rants about how 'eating meat is natural' and 'animals will still die so I might as well have a steak'.

i been writing a world cup preview and concluded it will be a brazil v argentina final with mexico and denmark suprise packages and both making the quarters, france to squeeze through their group and get dumped in the second round and england to make the semis only to be shat on by brazil...

so now you know not what to put your money on betting wise!

I concur fully.

Particularly with Denmark, been planning a putting a bit of cash on the getting to the quarters. I think they're going to be one of the biggest surprises; strong team and great qualifying campaign. They are also the team who will be blessed with my support in the competition which will undoubtedly give them a boost.

Much like Kerry Katona and that stupid bitch that got what was coming to her ... Jade Goody!!

At least it will be a comfort to her two young, motherless children to know that despite the fact their mum died of cervical cancer before she even reached 30, she 'got what was coming to her'.

Christ, it's only a gameshow.

Some views.....

- Although it's a rather good sitcom, The American Office is in no way comparable in terms of quality to the original British version which is one of the most sublimely written, directed and acted pieces of television ever.

- Lost is one of the few big-budget American dramas worth bothering about. Yes it's confusing, yes it's long but anyone who has persevered with it over the last 6 years and really gotten into it has to see that as 00's American populist-drama goes, it's pretty much unbeaten in terms of scope and sheer balls.

- Columbo was better than The Wire/24/The Sopranos/Any modern crime-drama you can name.

- Britain still makes the best television.

- Anyone who thinks television is an inferior medium to film is completely wrong (and I work in a cinema so I see a lot of them). I fucking love television.

I presume that this'll be showing at the Belmont, but does anyone know if it'll be in anywhere else as well?

According to our release schedule at Cineworld, we weren't showing it in any Cineworld in the country but I think they've realised that was a massive balls-up and decided to show it in some of the bigger ones. Neither Cineworld in Aberdeen has it as far as I know and I highly doubt Vue will.

Your best bet is definitely The Belmont.

If it's a first date, don't take her on a long dramatic walk. It's too over the top, you'll look like a mentalist.

I liked it better when this bit of the forum used to be called The Wasteland and it was all frothy stuff like 'what's your top five soups' or 'who would you invite to a dinner party'. Now you pop on here for a wee browse around when you're having a cup of tea and it's all soiled tampons and unplanned pregnancy.

You come on for a little bit of light relief and you're left reading about some fucking harrowing nightmare. It's like going to rent Toy Story from Blockbusters and getting in to find they've given you Angela's Ashes by mistake.

do you go to games much?

No, I live in Aberdeen and work weekends so cant really travel much.

Luckily some hero installed a decent camera at Somerset Park last season so all the games are filmed for the AUFC site, meaning I actually get the opportunity to watch them.

Ah well, that's us relegated

I thought getting thumped 4-1 at home by Airdrie was the season low, and then the absolute joke that was the 7-0 mauling by Caley took the fucking biscuit.

It's hard to know who/what to blame really. I know some Ayr fans are calling for Brian Reid's head but at the end of the day he did manage to get us promoted last season in a really tough second division group.

I think the most frustrating thing is we could have still stayed up despite getting completely outclassed by Airdrie and ICT in consecutive games and just threw it away. Nice to see a lot of goodwill towards Ayr from the Morton fans on the Pie and Bovril forums, a lot of them saying we were very unlucky and had the run of the match.

I genuinely hope Airdrie stay up after the play-offs, they deserve it. They've had a shocking season and managed to pull it back at the last minute, takes a lot of fight to do what they've done.

Went to see Cemetery Junction on Thursday and I thought it was brilliant. I'm a long-time Gervais/Merchant obsessive I expected great things and it totally lived up to expectations for me.

Anyone expecting an out-and-out Office/Extras style comedy will be surprised but for what is primarily a drama there are lots of incredibly funny scenes. It ticked all the boxes for a 'coming-of-age' type film and it had three of the best debut film appearances I've seen from the three main guys. Tom Hughes was particularly great, he's the new James Dean, ludicrously cool.

yes thank you, sorry for being an ungrateful bastard and not informing you of getting it, no manners!

Haha, no worries. Glad it worked

dont seem to have got it, if you would be kind enough to try again that would be ace, no rush of course! stevenmadman@hotmail.com

I assume you've got it now?

I'm being a pain but if anyone has an invite can I have one pretty please? gigglemunch@aol.com

Sorry only got your message the other day, did you get one sorted?

dont seem to have got it, if you would be kind enough to try again that would be ace, no rush of course! stevenmadman@hotmail.com

I'll try again. When I sent it, it did say your e-mail address was already registered to a Spotify account but I sent it anyway, might be something to do with that?

ill have one if theres one going!!!!!

I have winged one your way.

Absolute hero, thank you! PM in your inbox.

No worries, sent it last night so I assume it's worked ok?

I'm after a code or an invite or whatever it is that provides free access. Any help would be much appreciated.

What's your e-mail address? You can have one of mine cause i'm well generous. Like Mother Teresa or something.

Edit - I'm going out now but PM me an E-mail address and I'll send an invite thing tomorrow. I keep forgetting I have like 8 of the things left so if anybody else wants one then they can have one.

Having read NME a few times recently I'd say it has improved a bit. Some of the longer reviews are well written and there's greater breadth in their coverage now, although it feels a little like they're just playing catch-up with Pitchfork, DiS et al. It's certainly improved since Conor McNicholas left anyway, although you seriously wonder how anybody could write an article hailing Mumford and Sons as revolutionary and also think the fact that one member plays banjo is worthy of a "(!)".

Agreed, I'm delighted the horrible lad-rock regime of McNicholas has now been ended by the far superior Krissi Murison. It's such a breath of fresh air hearing an editor enthusing about genuinely fresh and exciting bands like Titus Andronicus and The Joy Formidable for example (as she was recently) instead of hearing McNicholas with his unbuttoned shirt and gold earring talking about the fucking Twang.

There's clearly some hangover of the whole 'naughty boys at the back of the class' vibe that's been at NME for years as I recently read an article about 'How Mephedrone and other legal highs could change the face of music'. I cringed so much I briefly time travelled.