Alex

The usual habitat.
Unusually I'm seeing a band that aren't quite old enough to be my parents this time.

Went to see The Primitives in London today, 40 years (almost to the day) since their first gig.
There's worse ways of spending an evening.
(Also, the Bush Hall is a really lovely venue. Probably a bit wasted on us in the dark)

[November 14th, 1985] The Primitives performed their first concert with lead singer Tracy Tracy. The show took place at The Hope & Anchor pub in Coventry, England.

Tonight's listening
I'm not sure I quite get the transitions between the songs, but the songs themselves are great.
You can guess some of the inspirations for this band by the title, which fits quite well with what I like.

Today's orange arrival.
REM's newish release, containing quite a few new versions of Radio Free Europe on a rather orange 10 inch record.

Great song, and some nice new mixes on here. (I do now need to get some 10” inner sleeves though - I've only got one other 10")

Tonight's listening, some lovely Swedish indiepop in the form of Hari & Aino's A Considerate Kind Of Home.

I do like the insert - a few things about the industry might have changed since then

In a similar vein, this arrived today from Japan (the country not the new wave group).
Nous ne sommes pas des anges, released 1965. I think this is actually my first French record.

Their cover is one of my favourite Heavenly songs, so nice to have the original.

Today's arrivals - the internet is a dangerous place where it is very easy to spend all your money. I've got four great songs out of it though.
Talulah Gosh / Don't Go Away by Talulah Gosh, and Sad / E102 by the BMX Bandits

Been having fun with the KiwiSDRs recently.

I do quite like that there's still a broadcast of the news via HF Fax. Weatherfax is mostly used for meteorological charts, & I think this is the only news station left.
I do hope there ships out there still using these.

(16971 kHz, English at 1200z 1-5)

Heavenly are going on tour next year!

adding a photo? read this first. we know you love your cat. so do we, but that doesn't mean a photo of your cat is a good choice for the article

huge notice that pops up if you try to edit the cat article

Oh no, I appear to have fallen down a Twitter rabbit hole again, and now I've found another way to spend all my money on postage.

Shonen B's Totteoki No Ichinichi. Quite like this - really good indie pop / rock - the first and last tracks especially are great.

Tonight's listening - La-Di-Da's 1990 Borobudur comp. I admittedly bought this for the Heavenly song, but some great indiepop on here (almost all of which is by decent people)

Don't think I've ever seen overhead lines this shiny before, although I don't know why I'm surprised by copper wire displaying the properties of copper.

(This is the new railway station at Praha-Bubny - I think it's only been open for a week so no time for it to get grubby yet)

Some trains from my week in Prague.
The Czech railways are definitely modernising, and there's plenty of change every time I come over, but there's still proper trains with spoked wheels around (just a lot more Vectrons around)

Net MD on a phone. Not sure why I'm so amused by this, it just seems slightly wrong. It logically should work, web.minidisc.wiki just runs in chrome, but I wasn't expecting it to.

(I'm amazed there's any demand for USB C to Micro B cables)

New(ish) record today. Kiwi Jr's Chopper, quite a good indie rock album.
When I did student radio a few years ago I basically only played about 4 songs, one of which was Cooler Returns from their previous album.

Downtown Area Blues probably my favourite song on this one.

This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

Forgot I had these - the minidisc wiki got some discs printed for the 30th anniversary a few years back, and I've now finally put some audio on them.

(All the cool kids have a MZ-E610, truly the coolest of whatever the plural form of MD Walkman is)

A fun evening, and nice to pick up some of the rereleases.

Quite surprised it wasn't just anorak types there - seems they must be more popular than I expected, which is nice to see.

At the Heavenly gig tonight - my quest to be the least cool person imaginable continues.

Lovely building, haven't been here before

I've been seeing more and more of these Stadler Euroduals around Germany. Impressive locos, and at least for me they haven't yet become ubiquitous enough to lose interest.

A trip down to Blankenese to see the semaphore signals.

I've stayed at hotels with worse views, or maybe I've got a really good model railway.

phnx Harburg, which backs onto Hamburg Harburg Railway Station, which has a few trains

I thought I'd take a different route to Germany this time.

Three trains a day run directly from Liverpool Street to Harwich, with the evening trains connecting onto the ferry to the Hoek van Holland. It's not exactly the Golden Arrow, but it's nice to see a boat train left.

The Mirrlees engined 37901 at Milton Keynes just now. Running as 1Z99, so should be assisting with cleaning up the derailed 350.

The infectiously joyful Shonen Knife tonight.

There's worse ways to spend an evening.

Offer day for the December 2025 timetable today.

83,000 trains, of which a few hundred or so are new or amended freight paths that I've been working on for the past few months.

My battery and adhesiveless package this time is one of the Old Narita Express 253 units, possibly harming my substantial communist credentials.

I also appear to have managed to create the inverse shelf layout, by putting the contents of a shelf on a (sort of) T trak module.

One day, I might have to import some batteries and glue - I presume a customs office somewhere would spontaneously combust