PRE-SEASON EXCITEMENT

Today is the first game for the Montreal Canadiens in their 100th year of NHL hockey playing. Not the first real game so to speak, but the first of their Pre-Season series, 9 games to warm them up starting with a Boston Bruins match up at home..

This year, all fans are hoping for their name on the Stanley Cup. It's been a while and it's a special year! Polko is aiming to attend a few games early in 2009.

The first game of the season proper is October 10th with their first test against ultra-rivals Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday October 11th.. Of one thing I am sure. You'll be hearing more about their progress from time to time during the year among my blog posts.


And onto something else...

I run two installs of Media Monkey and from time to time like to take a look at what I've been sub-consciously focusing on in my listening habits. This is my current top ten albums list from my work computer, which is always very different to my home PC given that I don't have access to my full mp3 drive at work and the fact that several other people have access to, and therefore mess with, my home PC mp3/Media Monkey playlist. It helps to juggle things up a bit and I get to listen to things I probably wouldn't otherwise.


No surprise to see a fair bit of hip hop (real hip hop that is, not shit-hop) in my daytime/work playlist. Rhythm based tracks tend to get me typing faster! Braintax is always lurking around there in the top three or four as are the Pet Shop Boys - their particular brand of gay-disco-pop works well when you are concentrating not on the music but on something else (sorry boys!).

One surprise though is the rapid ascent of Dub Pistols on my playlists of late. They are a brilliant example of how the best UK music takes a range of multi-cultural/multi-national influences and re-creates that form of music to a higher level. If you've not listened to any of their tracks take a peek at The Hype Machine or similar. Apart from 6 Million Ways To Live which is my personal favourite, they also produced some good cover tracks recently (2007?) including The Stranglers' Peaches (with Rodney P - one of the UK's finest rappers and Terry Hall of The Specials aka etc etc), Gangsters (again with help from Terry Hall) and even Blondie's groundbreaking white-rap Rapture.

They rent MySpace space at http://www.myspace.com/thedubpistols.

Soul shaking.

Oh yes.