Blogs Campesinos!

Day five of severe intestinal pains and blood in my stools mean that yet again, you’re not going to be getting any original content of actual importance, but as a fan-friendly measure we thought we may as well use this post to highlight the fact that Los Campesinos! now have a blog. Yes I’m stunned they didn’t already as well.

It’s “Songs Tom Russell has written about boxers” Sunday on IchLugeBullets.com!

Tom Russell is a 58-year-old man who wrote songs for Johnny Cash, taught English in Southern Nigeria during the middle of the Biafran War, and kept Charles Bukowski as a penfriend. He then went on to record an album about his friendship with Bukowski from the viewpoint of a fictitious circus midget. He’s written detective novels, produced in-house music for circuses and strip bars, and has to me what a ravaged voice is meant to sound like, not some fucking Tom Waits “If Alex Higgins was American” shit. Proper grit 40 sandpaper vocals. You don’t listen to enough Tom Russell, for reasons that are beyond me. His back catalogue tends to deal with three things: ballads for lost Cowboy America, Mexican criminals, and boxers being hella fucked up. Here’s a Sunday tribute to the four best songs he wrote about the final of those three.

Congratulations to America and all their fans on a tremendous achievement

I mean, effectively, this post here is the one that we would have posted in April if a) Veltroni had beaten Berlusconi and b) this blog was actually, y’know, active in April. Only without seminal Italian acts Pooh and that one dude that did that “somebody answer the phone” techno tune. But never let it be said that ILB doesn’t mark the major occasions. Free MP3s after the jump