still havent bought a new mp3 player. but thats okay. (jesus, this keyboard is filthy! really, seriously, disgusting. my kingdom for a wiggydigger. do you know what a wiggydigger is? its the rooney family term for a cotton bud. i would ask you for your obscure family terms for things in the comments field but it could turn out awfie, like seriously sub- home truths. and this is not the place for that sort of malarky! this is supposed to be a blog about music but written in a sort of tangential, vaguely chris nieratko type style of thing. thats what its supposed to be. hummmm.... is sub- chris nieratko better than sub- home truths? YOU DECIDE.)

anyway. so i might as well chatter aimlessly about what i have been queueing on spotify until i get another mp3 player. i can only do this once a week because i cant download spotify at the library because the library is SHIT. not really, the library is awesome: it mostly smells of books, only rarely smells of homeless- man's- anus, and if youre prepared to wait upwards of five weeks you can rent the whole first season box set of the wire for a whole week for TWO POUNDS. oh! johnathan from spotify is talking to me! he sounds nice.... GATHER, ALICE. GATHER.

the first tune i downloaded today on spotify was breathe and stop by q- tip (http://open.spotify.com/track/5tDKp4F8QcpmWxbV8rutvh), because miranda sawyer mentioned it in her article about said music streaming software in the omm this month and i was like, oh, bullseye that lady. but then i was listening to it it made me want to be dancing so badly that i actually thought i might do a little weep out of my eyes. so i stopped it and listened to something a bit more maudlin so that i could utilise the emotion produced by the not- having-danced- to- hip- hop- recently- enough. i chose The Dolphins by Fred Neill (http://open.spotify.com/track/6vheXD5oByaEuoxfNTXGP6) which reminds me of two things; number one, obviously, one of my favourite sequences in the whole of the sopranos- when christopher relapses on smack at the saint's day festival and and flails around on benches and crawls around in alleyways making friends with stray dogs and all the time in the background are the beautiful technicolour tracer lights of the fairground rides and this beautiful wooziness. its just televisual perfection.

but then also it reminds me of being in charleston south carolina in 1993. we had just been to the MOST SPECTACULAR THRIFT SHOP IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. it was this two story house, surrounded by trees covered in tree hair- i dont know what that stuff is called, its a sort of fungus and hangs off the branches of trees in the deep south- and surrounded by a huge wall. it had a PORCH, yo. and you walked up the stairs and onto the porch and into this shadowy old house full and full of racks of clothes. there were about three racks of 1920s tea dresses for like $40. there were four rooms downstairs, and that was the 1920's- 1950's section of the shop. oh christ. if i hadnt had the rest of my family with me at the time i could, sixteen years later, tell myself that i imagined the whole thing, or that it was perhaps a particularly fevered dream. and then you went upstairs and there was all the 60s and 70s stuff, which was slightly less awe- inspiring and also the rooms werent quite as over- shadowed by the trees and the whole atmos wasnt quite as dust- motes- floating- in- sunbeams- through- smudgy- windows- ish. it was just a glimpse into heaven. we went back two years later and theyd moved into a really boring shop in a mall and there were no motes floating in sunbeams and it was a complete disappointment. anyway, so after the most amazing thrift in the world we went down to the seafront, which wasnt particularly exciting until my sister noticed a school of dolphins jumping around merrily about half a mile out to sea. so we were shouting 'dolphins! dolphins!' and then the group of african- american ladies on the bench next to us were shouting 'dolphins! dolphins!' and the dolphins were jumping about with their dorsal fins and stuff and the sun was shining and i started singing 'dolphins' to myself very quietly as the sun shone on my head. and then we went to a little bar near a creek and i saw moe tucker from the velvet underground drinking herbal tea. all in all, it was a bit of a day.