Anthem This, Wankers!

One of the first stores I hit when I arrived in London is my favorite music store, Fopp, near Seven Dials/Covent Garden. Fopp is a small UK chain and has a truly amazing selection of CDs, DVDs and books (that sadly almost went bankrupt earlier this year) and their Covent Garden location is tiny but filled with great shit.

They do a good job with their displays that make it easy to find and discover new music. When I was "living" in London a few years back I frequented the store a few times a week and pretty much any music I discovered when I was living there was thanks to Fopp. Also, most of the discs were between 3 and 6 pounds, which is cheaper than back in the States (discs from Fopp were about the only thing cheaper than back in the States, actually).

Anyway, this post isn't about Fopp as much as it is about the great compilation CDs you can buy in the UK, of which Fopp had a particularly good selection of. If the US sold compliation albums of the same quality, I have not seen them (but then again, I'm not in record stores much these days). Last week I picked up a few pretty solid ones - Radio 1, Soulwax's "2 Many DJs" and some others (I had to stop at 5 since I wouldn't be able to fit much more into my already full suitcase).

One gripe that I have about these and all the compilation CDs I've bought in the UK is the way they keep recycling some of the same music over and over. As much as I love Stereophonics (Kelly Jones - yum), I really don't need "Dakota" on Every. Single. Compliation CD I buy. Same with the La's "There She Goes" - the song is about 20 years old and it is time to give it a rest.

This gripe was exacerbated when I bought "The Anthems 07" thinking it would be a sort of "best of" the year double CD. I didn't lookcarefully enough at the song list until too late, but sure enough the album contains great songs from 2007 such as Pulp's "Common People", Cranberries' "Dreams", Travis' "Why Does It Always Rain on Me" and, yep, even "Dakota."

Makers of UK compilation CDs, I ask you: Is it too much to ask that a disc called "Anthems 07" actually has only songs that were released in 2007?

[This is a photo of the exterior of Fopp in London. So pretty, no?]

So You Can Get Caught Up

Could not be bothered to blog much lately, so let me get you up to speed on some of the highlights the last few weeks...

1. Woke up on Christmas morning around 3am just in time to run to john and begin vomiting into the toilet (a ritual I repeated hourly through the morning). Yes, Santa gave me a flu bug for Xmas this year.
2. Got beer from my parents for Xmas. Seriously. They bought me beer.
3. Went to a Bulls game. This is significant because my whole life I'd never been to a Bulls game. Plus, I won some bottled water.
4. Had to sign up for an unplanned Chemistry course, potentially knocking back my whole nursing school roadmap back a semester.
5. Went ice skating in Millenium Park with Niner and LP. Although not a skater, I think I did OK.
6. After all my bitching, I got an A in Bio.
7. Went to London for New Years (a blog entry in itself).
8. Celebrated part of New Year's Eve in a pub with that actress from Bridget Jones Diary and one of the Harry Potter movies. Also, I wore a pretty gold tiara. (Photos forthcoming.) It is OK to be jealous.
9. Actually reversed a trend by losing weight over the holidays instead of gained (some thanks to #1 above). So at least I got that going for me.

I Resolve...

I resolve to be a Man About Town singing all the lonely dirges of my youth.

[London at Night]