Long Days, Long Months: 28 July

Watched The Shawshank Redemption and Armageddon -- both as "Hollywood" as one gets, the first the kind of film designed to win Academy Awards, bring in a decent amount of money in the slow winter months, the second the prototypical summer "blockbuster" - and as convoluted narratively as many of big-time action films have become in recent years (see: The Dark Knight).

Finished reading Metal Box: Stories from John Lydon's Public Image Limited by Phil Strongman. Quite a tragedy really, that a book named after such an extraordinary album is such a by-the-numbers Rock history.

Began reading Rough Trade by Rob Young, the second in the Records Unlimited series, after the first on Warp Records. A sort of coffee-table book; but unlike, say, Punk: The Definitive Story of a Revolution by Stephen Colegrave and Chris Sullivan [which, I guess they'd say is so damn punk because they really did make a coffee-table book about Punk... sure, dudes] the text has a lot to offer, and the pictures are fantastic: many covers of 7-inch records I'll probably otherwise never see in person, and great shots covering the varied facets of Rough Trade: shop, record label, recording studio. Fans of The Red Krayola need to read this book as soon as possible for the pictures and quotes from Mayo Thompson, who with Geoff Travis, founder of Rough Trade, recorded many of the seminal albums of the time.

Both the PiL and Rough Trade books I read to accompany, and perhaps assist, the essay I'm working on regarding Punk/post-Punk.

Meanwhile, I continue to listen to those two Stereolab albums, and the L A Free Music Society...