Tugay has definitely had 5 in the past, and maybe 8 as well?

He's had 3 ('cause it looks like 8), 8 and 16 in the past.

If there are any Idlewild fans out there, then I strongly suggest you listen to the Idlewild front man, Roddy Woomble's, new solo album My Secret Is My Silence. The track of the same title is a real achievement. All in all, it's a magnificent album.

I also suggest that anybody that can get their hands on 100 Broken Windows or The Remote Part, again by Idlewild, do so. Two of the finest albums I have ever heard.

On the same subject, has anybody had a chance to listen to their latest album Warnings / Promises?

I wasn't too impressed with Warnings/Promises. Apparently the next one will be a bit more noisey, which is good. The first album was definitely the best. Everyone Says You're Fragile and I'm Happy to Be Here Tonight are two real highlights.

Scotland tends to be a bit crap for bands, but c'mon cletus and tcj - Teenage Fanclub? Brilliant - and a big influence on Idlewild.

Drum solo. Oh JFHCA!

Was 1978 all in vain?

Does the sound of Rat Scabies playing a drum solo while the rest of The Damned chant "God, this is boring" not mean anything to you young people?

We're all just irony-seeking hipsters. :ph34r:

I agree with Kermode's opinion of The Thin Red Line-absolutely astonishing film-making. Malik is a crackpot but he's a brilliant director. However The New World was utterly bizarre.

Couldn't get my head around it at all (New World). Plus I thought I was going to drown in music at one point. Lots of good and decent actors standing around doing and saying nothing. How many lines did David Thewlis have? Five?

Just noted, Ian Black, former Rovers player, scored for Inverness today.

And is doing very well, by all accounts. But still can't get in our under-21 squad. Go figure.

I used to have a particularly distressing recurring one about big monolithic one-armed robot/lorry things that were some how going to bring about the end of the world with me watching. The details were always sketchy, but if I didn't wake up on the point of tears every sodding time.

As a wee boy I used to marvel at the those naughty Motorhead chaps, in particular Phil(thy) Animal Taylor, and how he could hammer two base drums all the way through 'Overkill', even with medical assistance.

Now I've found this. Mr Fleming, kick off your shoes and turn up the volume.

You do realise that's Mikkey Dee playing the solo though, yeah? He's such a good drummer.

is George Kollias of Nile in the studio. The scary part is, this isn't a solo, but part of a 'standard' Nile drum beat. Practice really does make perfect I suppose.

The new Mastodon album's leaked....sounds pretty good on the basis of the first two songs. A band I get the feeling prog rock fans would maybe enjoy if they can get past the vocals (which is a bit of a big ask, they're pretty damn ugly sounding). The drumming really is something to behold.

What on earth does Hughes see in players like Mcevely and Emerton, offering berty a new contract even though hes 3rd choice RW is madness.

And not offering Agathe a contract, even though he looked the best player in the games he played.

There's nothing to Agathe's game at all other than being able to run like a deer (or at least he could). A winger that can't cross the ball is like an arse without a hole. He would maybe have made decent cover at right back, but I'm not losing any sleep over it.

That's pretty classy.

The theme tune to Rhubarb and Custard.

Best suggestion so far.

Talking of abandoning novels early on - aren't Louise Welsh's stories meant to be pretty highly regarded? 20-30 pages of painfully stilted dialogue and smug oh-so-clever narration into The Cutting Room and I had to bail out for the sake of my sanity.

Can anyone recommend a fairly short read (say 100-200 pages long) i'm going to France in a few weeks and its only for 4 days. So i'm looking for something like a modern classic. Any recommendations?

Animal Farm?

Not too modern, but a quick read.

Henning Berg's would make for interesting reading - not just for his relationship with Souey, but a player to have won the league, gone on to 'better' things and then came back to see us rise from First Division to sixth in the Prem would surely have a thing or two to say.

I'm in utter shock over how good Deicide's new album is. After being past their best for years, and then losing 50% of thier line-up (both guitarists!) in 2004 they've gone and churned out one of the best albums I've heard so far this year. The two new axemen, Ralph Santolla and Jack Owen, have big reputations - relatively speaking - and have really turned the band around with the most inspired playing Deicide have ever had. Hoorah for comically faux-Satanism!

Other news - the mighty WASP are touring soon! I take it Abbey will be getting to one of the shows?

I'm very sad to have learned of the death of David Gemmell yesterday. He wasn't without criticism as a storyteller, but I found his stories to be compelling and often very moving. His novel Dark Moon is effectively what started me actually reading books again when I sort of accidentally read the first chapter in a friend's house a couple of years ago. Very sad.

great signing!

now whats the point of Jeffers anymore?

Well, if he proves any use I'd imagine Shefki will be the one in trouble.

Fantastic, here's hoping he settles in quickly. The striking options look a lot rosier now.

I don't so think but he's dead the next minute. What happened to him?

Wasn't he shot? Although for that to be the case the redneck would have to be some marksman. Its been a couple of years since I've watched it but I remmeber the scene being pretty confusing. Even more bewildering was when I found out a long while after seeing the film was that the guy in question was a young-ish Ronny Cox!

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Superman? Bleh. Maybe superhero films just aren't for me. Did no one else think Mr Spacey's plot was just too stupid to be taken seriously, even in a 'free your imagination' sort of film?

I still haven't finished the sodding Dark Tower because they refuse to release the last volume in paperback until the end of the month. I'm quite disappointed with the way its turning out anyway - after the fantastic first three volumes and the enjoyable-but-frustrating fourth, the fifth and sixth steer off in a completely different, unsatisfying (for me at least) direction. I think it was halfway through Wolves of the Calla that I realised it was just going to keep going the same way and that King had totally lost sight of the shore. His little valentine to himself in the sixth book is just preposterous. Here's hoping it ends well, anyway.

After that I'm not sure what to read next - possibilties include returning to Card's Seventh Son series, George RR Martin's Game of Thrones or maybe seeing what all the fuss is about with these so-called Dark Materials...

I'll go with 'Seasons in the Abyss'. Slayer.

Now that's a fine intro. Still prefer Angel of Death, though.

Other fine intros:

Holy Wars by Megadeth

Black Sabbath by, erm, Black Sabbath

The Final Countdown (shut up!)

All Guns Blazing by Judas Priest

Gene Clark by Teenage Fanclub (if you can count the first half of a song as an intro)

Obviously the punishment was made very severe with the intent to reduce it on appeal being there from the very start. What a joke.

Am I seeing things or have you actually agreed, for once, on something with me?

Don't worry, I still think you're a girl for sitting at gigs.

I read this article on Sunday in the Observer and understood it to be a list of the 50 albums that most changed music, rather than the best 50 albums. I spend much of Sunday muttering about how cross I was that the Kinks weren’t in the list. I think they have had loads of influence on modern English pop music and you can trace their influence through the Jam, the Smiths, Billy Bragg, Pulp, Blur, Oasis and the Arctic Monkeys.

I’ve got 16 of the 50.

Absolutley. Pop bands like The Who and The Kinks who started adding aggression to their rhythm instruments (and stopped using just to hold everything in place) went a long way to influencing the sort of bands I listen to.

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Plug in Baby - yeah, its a very good intro (and song).

What the hell was that all about

Well, let us hear your favourite song intro.

Baba O'Reilly is up there for me as well, Flop.