Addy regales: June saw me very impressed with Travis when I first heard "All I Want to
Do is Rock." I'd heard "U16 Girls" previously on Shine 6, I think, and
it didn't leave that much of an impression. What did leave an impression,
however, was the NME's remark that it was a song about underaged shagging. So,
hmm... I read many rave reviews about "All I Want to Do Is Rock" and
apparently, there was even a write up on them in Time Out, so well... So I
bought it and I thought, "This is good", on second listen. I spent the
next month trying to acquire all Travis press accessible and I've been somewhat
successful with the internationally available publications (Select/ NME/ Vox,
etc.).
July saw me back in sunny Singapore, away from (cold and rainy) London. ("City
in the Rain"...hehe.) I got wound of news about Travis' next single and
gently persuaded my sister to buy "Tied to the 90's" when it was released
on August 11th.
End August found me playing my next Travis acquisition (and new Suede
b-sides) very excitedly and to be entirely honest, it wasn't very good. I didn't
like the way people were shouting "HEY!" It seemed to rob the very
essence of credibility from them.
In October, a friend casually asked, "Do you know when the Travis
album's going to be released?" and that shocked me, because I didn't hear
anything about it. Well, actually, I was pretty busy at the time and so I didn't
really bother with anything. I went out and bought my Travis album as early as
possible. The Saturday after it was released, to be precise, and it is ace.
Obviously it is, or I wouldn't be spending time creating this homepage now,
would I? I thought the arrangement of the songs was very good, and the album
closes very nicely with "Funny Thing." Their third single also does not
sound so dubious when played in context.
End October and I'm trying to relieve myself of the built up stress from the
past few weeks. I heard Travis released "Happy" but I haven't been down to
HMV as of yet. For the time being, my favourite b-side is "Blue on a Black
Weekend." Nope, I'm not giggling over the title any longer, as I first was
when I read the tracklisting. ("'Combing My Hair'? Hmm, how...deep.")
