Since moving back to the UK, I have been pining to improve the listening experience in our living room. Due to the special limitations that the best girlfriend ever decided upon when it came to interior design, the choice of speakers and an amp to go with the Revo iblik radiostation was quite difficult.  After some searching, I finally found the right mix between sound and looks:

Yep, you’re right, that’s a very attractive piece of kit. And no, unfortunately it didn’t receive the acceptance level I hoped from the best girlfriend ever, but as I bought them while she was on a week long business trip and they were already there when she returned there was nothing much for her to do but yell.

They are Klipsch RF-52s, and they are just magnificent. At about a meter’s height, they are not the smallest, but what they admittedly don’t have in sublety in size, they certainly have in sound.

“Behind the horn lies a 1-inch titanium tweeter with a powerful neodymium motor structure to provide a unique combination of precision, clarity and effortless dynamics. The RF-52 employs dual 5.25-inch woofers for a solid bass foundation. These Cerametallic™ woofers with inverted copper dust caps exhibit a very high stiffness-to-mass ratio and superb damping characteristics.

I don’t really know what that means, but I know that I always wanted a Klipsch Horn since I was a pubescent git, dreaming of speakers beyond my pocket money’s reach. So when the moment came to make the dreams come true there was no question what to buy. The Infinities, Cabasses, Linns and Quadrals might be posher, but I always wanted the direct, powerful sound of a Klipsch tweeter and I haven’t been let down. Hooked up to my vintage NAD 3020i and the new NAD c525BEE they have turned the living room into a (admittedly small) concert hall.

Audiophile classics like Oscar Peterson’s ‘We get requests’, or Joao Gilberto/Stan Getz’s first Bossa Nova album suddenly sound fresher than ever and especially three dimensional. Those tweeters are amazing: each song I thought I knew by heart suddenly reveals little percussion effects here and there. Listening to ABC’s remastered ‘Lexicon of Love’, the best girlfriend ever suddenly said, in a very non-chalant way:’ I never knew that “Show me” had a bass solo’.

I’d say that’s worth the little interior design sins.

This morning I was lying in bed, in that wonderful state between sleep and full awakeness and had Radio 4’s ‘Today programme’ yelling at me gently in the background. Then, suddenly:

Evan Davis interviews Shakira.

Pardon me? On the today programme? At 7:23 am?

What followed were the most cringeworthy 3 minutes in recent BBC history. I have no idea whether the chap actually did any preparation for the interview at all (or what a pop starlet has to do in the most important News programme of the nation) but after 3 minutes I was wide awake and seriously thinking of switching to Wogan.

But the Wog won’t be there much longer either, so maybe I’d rather listen to a recorded version of Radio New Zealands Morning Report.

Dear Radio 4.

I really, really like you. You are one of the few reasons I am living in this country.

But if you ever let Evan Davis with a microphone near a pop star, I’ll leave.

Sincerely, FB

Last night I watched Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H for probably the 50th time (well, it did happen to be on, so why not watch it?). I still find it inherently funny and I’m still discovering new lines that I haven’t picked up before (thanks to Robert Altman’s habit of having 5 conversations within one scene going on at the same time) and as usual I had a wonderful time. It’s probably like seeing one of your favourite grandparents: they will always tell you the same stories, but you enjoy yourself anyway, even if you heard them fifty times before. It’s not the actual stories, it’s how they are told.

borrowed from flattland.com

Anyway, while watching M*A*S*H (btw, no comparison to the dreary sitcom that came later), I suddenly had an epiphany:  John Schuck, a.k.a. Capt. ‘Painless’ Waldowski (he who is significantly endowed) played the lead in one of my favourite seventies cop shows. I was certain about that, I just had no idea what it was called. All I knew that it was all about a grumpy policeman and his polite sidekick, an android who looked remarkably like Capt. Painless. A quick hop to IMDB confirmed my suspicions: John Schuck was indeed Gregory ‘Yoyo’ Yovonovich and the show was called ‘Holmes and Yoyo‘.

Pic from Timstvshowcase.com

According to the reviews, it was one of the worst shows ever and was cancelled after one season. My nine year old self certainly would disagree.

But John Schuck popped up again and again in my personal panthenon of risibly rubbish TV and movies: There was ‘Misfits of Science’, then a role as the Klingon ambassador in Star Trek IV AND VI, and even in Babylon 5. One might say that he appears as much as William Shatner in my DVD collection.

Which is maybe the worst thing I have ever disclosed on this blog

Today’s ‘Observer Music Magazine’ sent me soul-searching by reviewing the best music of the decade. I wasn’t actually aware that the decade was already over, but these things happen when you’re getting older. There were some excellent reviews and interviews with artists I generally ignore or despise and for some reason none of the stuff that I discovered over the last ten years.

Now, as my friend C. regularly tells me, I have the worst taste in music ever. In the whole universe. Which would make my selection of favourite new artists from this decade probably rather unrepresentative. But what’s ‘new’ music, anyway? Does music count that I heard for the first time over the last ten years but was made forty years ago? Probably not. It has to be music by artists who released new material for the first time in this decade. Ever. But I can always open up a new category. So, let’s scour the ipod:

Fordiebianco’s favourite artists releasing their first material ever in the Noughties (in no particular order)

• Goldenhorse
• Old Crow Medicine Show
• The Klaxons
• Hot Chip
• Jazzanova
• Hollie Smith
• Anika Moa
• Steriogram
• Che Fu

…and next week we might compile the even more compelling list of artists who have been around for yonkers but who released some really cool stuff in the last ten years.

Atmosphere Aplenty

I work in the East End, and all around me, pubs are dying. That means that these days I have to venture ever further to have my once a week post work pint. So today I walked for 30 minutes before finding it. I ended up at ‘INDO‘, and I don’t think I’ll ever leave. The punters might be a bit different, the music might be on the rubbish side of ‘ecclectic’, but the beers are heavenly, it’s quiet on an weekday night and it’s better than everything else around.

Praise indeed.

Charlie Porter is a fashion features editor for i-D and writes for the Guardian. He was recently given a new manbag for his birthday and when airing it proudly in Canary Wharf was promptly accused of nicking ladies’ handbags. That’s not nice. At all. But he is obviously oblivious to the impact a manbag has on other men.

It was a disquieting and humiliating experience, this apparent fashion crime. Humiliating because first he thought I was a petty thief, and then he judged me as effeminate.

Pic borrowed from the Guardian

Well, Duh.

Rubbish game and Bahrain deserved to win, but on the other hand, if you cannae convert a penalty you have a significant problem (memo to the Bahraini team: it is not helpful to go up to the penalty taker seconds before the shoot and whisper something in his ear).

So, well done Kiwis. You have a great goalie, but the rest of you still needs a bit of work.

Up at the crack of dawn (no office jokes please) to watch 2 rubbish teams playing for the last place in the World Cup. Sorry to say, after 20 minutes the Kiwis are rubbish, and it’s looking rather ominous. The Bahrainies on the other hand are already falling over, clutching their calfs, if they think a New Zealander might have looked at them in a cross manner.

It’s going to be a long morning.

Once a week I spend a whole day working from home, doing academic bits and bobs. This can be exceedingly tedious if you don’t have something that keeps you going. Being the old person that I am and having a rather peculiar taste in music, the Revo is playing 100% Generation DiscoFunk all day. Well, the station is French, so they rather pronounce it ‘foenk’, but you get the gist.

Note the kitchen stains. Tss Tss...

Even the driest meta-analyses can be fun if you have a bit of S.O.S. band in the background. And with the Revo it’s not a problem getting the station everywhere in the house (Internet Radio in the bathtub. The ultimate luxury).