Hello chat! I have arrived in the UK. Or, more accurately, I arrived a week ago and have been too busy doing that thing called "living life" and "having fun" to update the journal. I'm sure you'll forgive me. That said! With there being so much having happened since I last updated, there will be a couple posts on the journal, some trip-related, some not, for you to enjoy.
If you're wondering, it's been lovely so far. It's incredible going from all the awkwardness of a text chat to stepping out of arrivals in Heathrow and suddenly there being zero inhibitions from me or Caby. Seriously, living online sucks, but it's nice to get that reminder that it is entirely the medium that tends to put me at odds with people (maturing also helps). I think you'd all like me more if you found me playing Point Blank in an NQ64 in Soho. (That post is for the group blog though!)
Let's start with something simple and timely. Caby and I went into Kellys yesterday! Kellys is a record store I have written about with adoration before, effectively blending the quality assurance and stock of a really good record store with the ragtag prices and organization of a flea market. Quite literally, it's one guy who owns the entire balcony in Cardiff Market and uses it for vintage records and clothing, and it is well worth the pilgrimage to grab some CDs and watch him just decide on a price on the spot.
The picture shows what Caby and I got in all. From top left:
- Warpaint's self-titled (which we were listening to earlier, absolutely gorgeous slow burner 2010s dream pop that gets better as the album goes on)
- Ben Folds Five's self-titled (which if I don't like, I can just pass onto dcb, though "Underground" is already a killer tune)
- Wilco's Being There (need to expand my Wilco knowledge—dcb, they also had Wilco (The Album) if you're curious)
- Counting Crows' Across a Wire (gotta dip back into my old-time love of the Crows, and this one came right after Recovering the Satellites came out)
- Cracker's Kerosene Hat (get off this! Get on with it!)
- My Vitriol's Finelines (which I picked up because I'm pretty sure it's the original UK mix of the album and not the US reissue mix with Between the Lines, though we don't have a working CD drive to check)
- Moby's 18 (or as Caby calls it, Happy Moby/Sad Moby)
- Feeder's The Singles (don't normally go for comps, but I love "High" and they didn't have any Feeder albums there and Feeder is Welsh and I always wanna pick up Welsh music while I'm here)
Caby also got a Specials best-of, because UK ska is very very different to American ska, an Elvis Costello best-of, which we were enjoying while I was writing this post, plus her own copy of OK Go's debut! It's so cool to see her expanding her music collection and getting braver about it. She has a really fun taste in music. What other girl will give you Flipnote music and Elton John's "I've Seen the Saucers" next to each other?
