Harry Caul on the saxophone

There's a scene in Francis Ford Coppola's excellent 1974 film The Conversation where the surveillance expert Harry Caul (played by Gene Hackman) searches for listening devices he thinks are planted in his apartment. Increasingly frantic and obsessed, he goes from looking behind furniture to tearing the whole flat apart - ripping up the floorboards, virtually destroying the place. He doesn't find anything and ends up utterly defeated. In the desolate finale, he sits there in his ruined flat playing a forlorn ballad on his saxophone: a picture of resigned misery. I can identify. Because I've been having my own Harry Caul moment on this very blog. The other day I realised that nearly all the hundreds of photos I've uploaded to Niluccio on noise were ... too small. Or rather, in nearly every case I'd used the default "medium" size ...

... instead of varying it with the "large" size ...

... or the "X-large" size (which I've belatedly decided is nearly always the best one):

Silly me. How else were you going to see that The Fall's Lie Dream Of Casino Soul was written by Smith, Riley, Scanlan and P. Hanley? Anyway, a Harry Caul-like scene ensued. Because of course I had to start going back through all 461 posts (gulp) to see if I should alter the size of the photos. Yes, I had to. Because ... well, that's how obsession works. And in the process I began to notice all sorts of other things. Like: text that wasn't in the right font. Text that was too big, too small, centred when it shouldn't be. Inconsistent captioning for photos. Oh dear ...

Meanwhile, as I picked apart/patched up years of blog posts I couldn't help noticing that Niluccio on noise is itself nothing if not truly obsessive. Themes keep coming up. Over and over. To name just a few: the hatefulness of commerce in music (here, here and here); punk as heritage music (here, here and here); the inanity of music biz hype (here and here); the unfashionability of reggae; a strong preference for very small music venues; mini-reviews of music books (Simon Ford, Lavinia Greenlaw, Joan Didion, Cole Lesley, Holly George-Warren, Jon Savage, Nik Cohn, Dave Haslam, Anthony Storr etc); the enduring power of the Sex Pistols and Crass; sneaking respect for goth music/culture (here, here, here and here); a love-hate relationship with John Peel (here and here); music and human rights; the irritating behaviour of audiences/musicians at gigs (every other post!); a dislike of fame/rock royalty/hero worship (here, here and here); an interest in cataloguing and arranging; and an overall obsessive need to keep churning stuff out (monthly podcasts, lists, photos, opinions ...). Yes, we're all Harry Caul in the music blogging world. It's what keeps us going. Or me, at least. Having read this little update I have a request: would you now kindly check back through all the preceding 461 posts and tell me if you spot any typos? Thanks.