Yes, I cringed back in 2005 when I heard that Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos was going to have a column in The Guardian with the same name as my blog. Same idea too — Music and food. (Note to self: post occasionally about food.) And yes, mine was first, and I guess I could’ve had my army of lawyers something about it, but I figured the poor guy, as he is fond of singing, "needs the money."
His weekly reports from around the world while on tour were like little epicurean postcards, snapshots of where they were, what they were eating, and who they were eating with. And dammit, they were actually quite good. Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise as he logged time as cook, wine steward, waiter before starting Franz Ferdinand. Plus, his previous band had the word Yummy in their name.
As you may know, all those Guardian articles have been collected in a book, also called Sound Bites. It’s straight-to-paperback, quite a nice little read and, at $13 it’s cheaper than a Franz Ferdinand CD.
And those of you in NYC can pick up a signed copy — and hear Kapranos read from the book — tonight at the Barnes & Noble Union Square. There are a number of New York entries in the book, and I’m hoping he’ll read the article on Greenpoint’s Peter Pan Donut Shop. It all starts at 7pm.
Meanwhile in related news, Franz Ferdinand have posted a new song, "Hallam Foe, Dandelion Blow" to their MySpace page, and Alex drops a note about it too:
I’ve put a new song on this page. We wrote it a couple of months ago as
a theme for a Scottish film called Hallam Foe, directed by David
Mackenzie who directed Young Adam and Asylum. The title character is
played by Jamie Bell who was the lead in Billy Elliot.
Sexual
tension, voyeurism, dark humour, Scotland and death are themes of the
film – all of which seem good ingredients for a song by the Ferdinand.
Nick and I read the script and went to screenings of early edits in the
Glasgow Film Theatre which gave us the ideas for the melody and lyrics.
Other Domino artists appear on the soundtrack including Psapp, Unpoc
and Sons & Daughters.
And if you go… and if you buy a book… and if you get him to sign it… be sure to say "hey, you know there’s *another* Sound Bites, right?"
This may be a coincidence, I don’t think so that someone can do forcefully or even knowing about that someone is also using that specific name before. But don’t worry for us you are the only sound bites and we will be your custom writing services followers until the end.