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An Exclusive CD was offered by one of the weekend papers a while back, featuring Noel Gallaghers performance at The Albert Hall, which was done in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. It featured songs like Half A World Away & Wonderwall, plus some cover versions, & being a big fan of Oasis I thought It was really great There were also guest artists such as Paul Weller performing aswell. Tracks on the album are

Fade Away
Listen Up
Half a World Away
The Butterfly Collector
All You Need is Love
Don’tGo Away
Sad Song
Wonderwall
Slide Away
There is a Light That Never Goes Out
Married With Children

Around the same time I was listening to Mongrel-Better than Heavy another paper offered a free CD of the Pet Shop Boys & being a big fan I couldn’t resist getting it. It was released to celebrate 25 Years in the Business aswell as their recent Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. I would also like to get their latest album “Yes” aswell at some time, anywayThis album features 11 of their favourite songs:

West End Girls
Paninaro
It’s a Sin
What Have Done to Deserve This
Jealousy
Being Boring
Go West
Before
Home & Dry
Flamboyant
Did You See me Coming

This free CD by Mongrel was offered by the Independent Newspaper before it went out on general release. The Group features songs by Matt Helders from the Arctic Monkeys, John McClure from Reverend and the Makers, Drew McConnell from Babyshambles and many more people including Kareem Dennis, Andy Nicholson & Joe Moskow. Songs on the album are:
Barcode
Lies
Hit From the Morning sun
Off the Leash
The Menace
Act Like That
Julian
Better Than Heavy
Better Them Than Us
Alphabet Assassins
All Your Ever Afters

To coincide with the recent Channel 4 television series “Red Riding” the Independent Newspaper offered the novel 1974 by David Peace. They also offered some of David’s other novels, these were 1977, 1980, 1983 & A Firing Offence.

The novels follow a dissillussioned chap named Edward Dunford who works for the Yorkshire Post newspaper and is assigned to a story of a young girl who is found brutally murdered face-down in a ditch with a pair of wings sown onto her back.

I’d like to read this Man Booker prize winning book at some point. It features a diminutive & overweight chap named Balram Hailwai, who is hungry for success. This ambitiousness causes him to make some really dodgy deals with some decidedly unpleasant characters. Eventually he finds himself doing more & more illegal stuff in the pursuit of his goals until he asks himself how far he is willing to go to achieve success & can he actually escape his shady past & enjoy his success.

So far I have been unable to see the film version of Angels & Demons starring Tom Hanks, but I have read Digital Fortress. This is a fast paced thriller which features a cryptologist named Susan Fletcher, who spends all day cracking codes sent by criminals & spy networks which are considered a threat to national security, by means of a super computer called TRANSLTR, One day she chances upon a coded message which is undecipherable which may have been sent by someone with a grievance against her organisation.

Susan & her team then face a race against time to stop this undecipherable code from being distributed on the internet & causing all sorts of Mayhem, and catching the perpetrators before they do any irreversible damage by distributing the pass key which makes the contents operationals ands allow any old hacker or criminal to access to the code. The only problem is that the codes author is found dead…

This is book one of May’s “saga of the Exiles” and features two races of aliens who lived on earth millions of years ago during the Pliocene Era-The advanced Tanu & the more primative Firvalug. The Tanu possess mind altering necklets called “Torcs” which they use to control the wearer or give the wearer great powers.

Six people from the far future find themselves thrust into this strange land through a time-portal because they are considered a threat in their own world. They then undertake a dangerous journey to find any other humans in the land who have escaped from the Tanu & persuade them to join forces with the Firvalug in order to liberate all the people who have been enslaved the the Tanu end their controlling ways & live in peace in the land

This is another hilarious book by Terry Pratchett which I have recently read. It concerns one of Discworlds most powerful empires which lives in peace until a revolutionary Treatise brings turmoil to the land. A message is then sent to Ankh Morpork asking for help from “the Great Wizzard” – surely they can’t be referring to discworlds most inept & cowardly wizard “Rincewind”, who can’t even spell wizard correctly?

Rincewind is duly dispatched & with a little help from Cohen & his Barbarian Horde manages to restor peace to the land, which is something of a novelty to the Barbarians who are more used to shouting “We’re going to cut your tonkers off!” before laying waste to whole villages & stealing anything of value.

Whilst I was in hospital recently I also read this hilarious book by Terry Pratchett, which centres on a young lad named Keith & his cat named Maurice who gang-up with a group of talking rats, whose members include Hamnpork, Darktan, Dangerous Beans & Sardines, in order to convince the populatiion of a town called Bad Blintz that they have a major rat infestation & that Keith is the person to get rid of them and in so doing, get paid handsomely. However things don’t turn out quite the way they expected when they meet two genuine rat-catchers…

A while back the Daily Mail newspaper included a CD of the West Side Story soundtrack, which included all these classic tracks:

Prologue
Jetsong
Something’s Coming
Dance at the Gym
Maria
America
Tonight
Gee, Officer Krupke
I feel Pretty
One Hand, One Heart
Quintet
The Rumble
Cool
A Boy Like that & I Have a Love
Somewhere (Fiinale)