Liam's write-only LJ

My colleague Jiři Herrmann went to an impressive amount of effort to write me this wonderful list of vegetarian- and vegan-friendly places in the town, which I thought I'd share in lieu of a new post. (I've been busy. Well, quite busy. All right, I've been in the pub, but without a laptop.) It just goes to show that actually, this city (and the Czech Republic) really is quite good for we decadent Western non-meat-eaters...

So if any veg*n friends have been considering coming to visit me -- and are OK to use the spare bed in my room and my sleeping bag -- then come on over!

Vegetarian Restaurants in Brno

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In very approximately chronological order – that is, of when I discovered them, not when they came out. Ad-hoc rule: only one example of any given artist, just to add a bit of variety.

1. Age of Consent – Bronski Beat. (The first record I bought that I still love. Dangerously subversive stuff for the Isle of Man in the 1980s.)
2. Aliens Stole my Buick – Thomas Dolby. (Won on a quiz on Channel 4 and led to a life-long love of TMDR's work.)
3. Wish you were Here – Pink Floyd. (For me, *the* great Floyd album, beating Dark Side of the Moon into a cocked hat.)
4. Appetite for Destruction – Guns 'n' Roses. (The first rock'n'roll band that I really adored, and even now, every track is a winner.)
5. Get a Grip – Aerosmith. (Aerosmith later displaced GnR just for their sheer consistency. So many great records, but this stands proud as a whole, from intro to outro.)
6. Utah Saints. (Wales' finest musical hour, for me. Discovered via the Slimelight, of all things. Fair triggered my Kate Bush sensor into a floorgasm, it did.)
7. First and Last and Always – Sisters of Mercy. (The discovery of Goth. Hard to pick one Sisters album, but this was my first.)
8. Antenna – ZZ Top. (Not one of the obvious choices, but they've never made a duff record and this has one of their all-time great singles – and it isn't one of the big mid-80s ones with a video involving hot girls.)
9. The Same Sky – Horse. (Again, every track is pure gold, but “Careful” is still superbly moving.)
10. And now the legacy begins – Dream Warriors. (My first ever hip-hop album, really, and the words still shine. Deserved more fame.)
11. Garbage. (Again, they're all good, but this record blew me away in 1996.)
12. Upstairs at Eric's – Yazoo (Classic early 80s electronica and Vince Clarke at his finest, for me, but it was a tough call between this and Troublegum by Therapy?)
13. Blue Lines – Massive Attack (But I'd be equally happy to include Protection instead. And to think, when I met Nellee Hooper, I didn't know who he was...)
14. Leftism – Leftfield (Around the same time as Garbage but took longer to grow on me. Betraying a weakness for trip-hop here, aren't I?)
15. The Bends – Radiohead (Once again, tough to pick out just one, but still a towering work of staggering genius. An' that. Grew to truly value it when I realised the brilliance of Richard Cheese's cover of “Creep”.)

If this gives you any impression of my musical taste, it's probably a very skewed one. Sigur Rós is a bit too new to me to feature, for instance, and stuff like Apoptygma Berzerk and Royksopp were much-loved but relatively briefly - so far.

I'd welcome listening suggestions, though, old or new. Always looking for stuff that's new to me.