I read an old Smash Hits singles review page today, from 1984. It was curated by one Roy Hay, one of the people that isn’t Boy George in Culture Club. However, it is notable that he shares in the writing credits for all of their biggest songs and Wikipedia tells me the band have sold 50 million records – so he’s done all right.

In this singles review, he ridicules Depeche Modes’s People Are People for having terrible lyrics about war (“People are People so why should it be…you and I should get along so awfully?”). He’s absolutely right on this, by the way. But then, a year or so later – he co-pens “The War Song” with the chorus “War is stupid and people are stupid…”.

That’s not the Sliding Doors moment, though. In that review he mentions that when Vince Clarke left, he seriously considered joining Depeche Mode because he knew them because he was a regular at the venues like Crocs and the Pink Toothbrush, where Depeche Mode performed, pre-fame.

Depeche Mode advertised for Vince’s replacement in the music press and found Alan Wilder. The ad said applicants must be no older than 21. Alan was » Continue Reading.

I was listening to Richard Osman talk about this on his podcast recently. I don’t recall the actual stats but a surprisingly small amount of “bands” currently exist – with the last one having a number one single aaages ago.

The pop charts are solo performers and/or DJs collaborating with people. You won’t see Bruno Mars forming his own Tin Machine any time soon.

A confident, stage-schooled solo performer is a lot easier to handle and promote. Also, the reality shows that gave us One Direction and HearSay are gone.

The trouble is that some of the most talented and successful artists have started in bands – shy, awkward, nervous in themselves but a group of mates creating a noise behind them gave them the necessary confidence to get onstage. Top-of-head examples, George Michael, Thom Yorke, David Byrne, Gwen Stefani. Without their respective bands/friends it is highly unlikely we’d have seen them at all.

Solo performers seem to be more troubled than singers in a band. Sweeping generalisation I know. I get the feeling that Bono for example really, really needs the band to save him from himself. God knows what he’d have ended up doing if he’d gone » Continue Reading.

Do you know what? I’m getting older and maturerer and this means that my original title of this post “Happy Endings” was dumped in favour of a more prosaic choice of words.

The other day I took a break from my never-ending quest for fresh and exciting new music from around and the world and decided to revert briefly to some of my favourite songs, namely:

Going Underground, The Jam Isolation, Joy Division She Loves You, The Beatles Woke Up This Morning, Alabama 3 Never Let Me Down Again, Depeche Mode

What do they have in common? They don’t fade out, they don’t lose their way, they are not too long and they are not too short. They are not too quick, not too slow – telling the time for Trumpton. A major factor here is how the song ends. Each one could, in theory, fade out and would have been just fine if they did. Yet the ending in each one is perfect.

From the nice little double stitch of Going Underground’s 3 second bass guitar line to the false ending in Isolation, to the denouement of Woke up the Morning, where a moody maelstrom of misery » Continue Reading.

I joined Twitter in 2010 and today I have deleted it. The final straw has been recent rioting and how the platform was used so easily to distribute lies and provoke violence. Pay Elon Musk for a blue tick to have your shite promoted aggressively. Every post that has a world view different to Musk’s has prominent responses that are generally lazy insults. Musk is helping to fund Trump’s campaign. News feeds have a suspiciously large amounts of nastiness and/or irrelevant confrontational tosh along with sprinklings of graphic pornography that never featured before.

About two months ago I reported a cartoon depicting a young woman being gang-raped by a group of evil-looking dark-skinned men, one brandishing a copy of the Qur’an. A man to their right is shouting “that’s my daughter!” to a policeman who cautions him that he mustn’t complain because that would be racist. In the foreground Nigel Farage is saying ‘what’s going on here?’ And two men in suits marked “Labour” and “Conservative” are in the background of this delightful tableau, graphically buggering members of the British public.

A few days later, I received a reply that this did not meet the threshold for promoting hatred.

I » Continue Reading.

Found this wonderful and touching clip of a recent Kraftwerk show. See comments.

Vice President nominee JD Vance has just said in a speech that people without children have not invested in the future and therefore should have less of an influence in participating in a democracy. This is not an interpretation, it’s completely what he thinks should happen.

Meanwhile, Trump urges a group of Christians to vote “I LOVE Christians!” he shouted. That’s not the worrying thing. He then says that he’s asking them to get out there and vote “one last time” – he said will fix things so that they won’t have to vote ever again.

Even if neither of these measures can possibly be taken – isn’t it just a little concerning that they even think these things, let alone say them out loud?

The PM’s closest aide, Craig Williams, put a bet on at the bookies on the likely election date three days before the announcement.

It doesn’t matter if this is was a fiver or fifty thousand pounds. It’s another self-inflicted wound and makes me think that the Conservative Party, as an entity, is killing itself.

If he is close to Sunak, he will know that insider trading is a serious offence. I know people will try the “harmless bit of fun” defence but it won’t wash. These people are idiots.

There’s something wrong with my clothes dryer. I need to pull it out and see what’s occurrin’ round the back.

Trouble is that it’s very snugly in its hole and under normal circumstances I’d pull it out. However, we cleverly slotted a stray square bit of flat MDF wood on the top of it. This means there is liderally no wriggle room now. It’s stuck fast. I can only get a grip of one edge of the MDF and even if I do, it only moves a little bit.

If I can get the MDF out, I think it’ll be all smiles. But…what should I do? Do I drill holes into the edge of the MDF and hammer nails in it, so I have something more to hold on to?

Or … do I staple gun some cable ties to it and then pull it out? I like this idea because it means I get to use the staple gun. But it sounds dangerous.

I can’t help thinking that the more practical-minded members of the Massive might have a simpler solution. So do you?

I have just seen some footage of Blur at the Coachella festival in the States. They are performing Boys and Girls and we can see that Damon is looking stroppy and fed up. No one is singing along or dancing. He points the microphone to the crowd at the chorus – silence. He says from the stage “we are never coming here again, so you might as well enjoy it!”. He stares and shakes his head rather than sing, while the band chugs along. It’s a difficult watch.

It brought to my mind an experience in Woking back in the mid-80s. It was a “Search for a Star!” local talent show at the Council hall. It was actually more entertaining than it sounds. It takes guts to perform live and no-one gave the performers a hard time. Until this one act came on. The single most ridiculous performer I think I have ever seen. He was a small, rat-like young man of about 20 with a porcelain-white, hairless torso framed by an unbuttoned ruffled pink shirt. His shiny red satin trousers sported a golden belt buckle that was the size of a child’s head. He came on to “It’s not » Continue Reading.

When you accept that, everything else makes sense.

The Conservative and Unionist Party was founded in 1834 and is, by some distance, the most successful political party in the history of the United Kingdom. They are the people that run the UK. The party only fails to take power when they stuff things up. If they keep things boring, steady and (small c) conservative, they remain in power.

The Tories have decided that they don’t want power at the next General Election. They want to flush out the troublesome right by democratic process rather than continually removing whips and trying to keep the oiks on message. I think they welcome the emergence of the Reform Party to gather them in, knowing that Farage and Co will only get one seat in Clacton-on-Sea.

They consider this Opposition to be palatable and will allow them to take the reins and keep things toddling along until the Tories can regroup and take over again.

We can tell that Sunak will not be brokenhearted to leave No. 10. I do not expect to hear anything from him that might sound like political vision for the country. After Johnson and Truss, he has been » Continue Reading.

Here in NZ we have a seemingly indestructible right wing politician called Winston Peters. For decades, he has been often able to hold the balance of power with his party which polls at about 6% which secures him an adorable 6 MPs out of a tiny parliament of 120 MPs. He’s Deputy PM at the moment.

At a recent gathering he had Tubthumping blaring out and has claimed the song as his anthem.

Amazingly, the Chumbas have got wind of this and have given him a right good telling off (see the link).

I say “amazingly” because a) the band still exists and b) they are aware and they care about this Farage-lite chancer. Well done them!

https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350219020/tova-podcast-chumbawamba-not-ruling-out-taking-legal-action-against-winston

Have a look and give it a bit of a sign if you agree. My daughters are seeing SZA (pronounced “scissor”) and are paying the equivalent of 200 quid each. They both have part time jobs, but it’s a fair whack for them. I’d want to see The Beatles inc John, George and Stu for that price.

https://chng.it/8XPzMxHCFx

We attach a great deal of importance to loyalty. To be loyal to the people you love is, I think, a Very Good Way to Be. Most of us are hard-wired to be like this and we collectively value this kind of loyalty very, very highly.

This natural human trait is exploited by countless other agencies and I am wondering what other loyalties, outside of personal relationships, you consider to be non-negotiable and lifelong? In my case, I think I have quite a few:

Depeche Mode (plus about a dozen other musical acts, who you can probably guess) The Afterword Ipswich Town FC The England football team and GB teams of any endeavour. The BBC Tea Gentle daytime quiz shows

These were established well before adulthood. Attaching myself to them has at times been a grim, resentful experience where the hope is that one day there will be the ultimate reward of being right all along. Or the thought of a short but very emotional evacuation of the spiritual bowels when your lot actually come good and win that trophy, league or become something that is undeniably positive and have achieved permanent greatness.

I have noticed that this trait is » Continue Reading.

When a high profile politician at an official inquiry is asked about WhatsApp messages and they say “oh sorry, the dog ate my phone” or “I think I probably must have deleted them or something” – why isn’t the next question “who did you have WhatsApp exchanges with?”. The great thing about WhatsApp is you can delete to your heart’s content – but the other people in the group still have it. Phew!

Then let’s say the high profile politician willingly recalls 10 names. Why don’t they then go and ask those 10 people to reveal THEIR messages from the high profile politician? At least some of them will not have set fire to their phone or dropped it accidentally from the top of the Burj Kalifa… surely?

Yes, of course they’re not going to do that. What are you, crazy?

But the Inquiry could! So why do they just leave it there and take it no further?

My brother has picked up, for 20 quid, a framed copy of the Yes album Relayer. It is coloured silver and is in recognition of “Outstanding sales in the United Kingdom”. Says it’s a limited edition, 28 of 50 and has a Union Jack top left.

The record itself has the Relayer centre sticker but it isn’t Relayer. The record used has about 8 tracks, which is not the Yes way.

So – does anyone know the story here? It isn’t a BPI disc with x number of sales and a silver/gold/platinum award noted. It’s suspiciously generic in its wording but, as my brother says, the record itself is a bit obscure to be bothering with producing a fake. He picked it up from a warehouse where they didn’t know who Yes is or where it came from.

My thought is that the label or publisher might have knocked these up to give to the band as a vanity thing, but I don’t know for sure. Any ideas? Does he have a genuine item of interest/value?

Back in the olden days, things like the London Weekend Show with Janet Street-Porter or even Nationwide often approached pop culture. Not to mention the live TV shows for kids and Pebble Mill at One. The item appeared on TV just the once and was never seen again. For the more bizarre memories, you begin to wonder if you made them up in your head.

I remember Gaz Top (chirpy kids TV presenter) doing some outside broadcast on a Saturday morning show. Mark Knopfler appears! And he’s having a go at riding a unicycle! He’s having a great time and laughing his head off. He was well established at this point, post Brothers in Arms, so no real need or pressure to do Saturday morning kids TV, I’d have thought. I remember being astonished. I thought he was a thoughtful, mumblin” kinda guy who was only happy in the studio. Yet there he is, the life and soul of the party.

I’m aware that the whole scene sounds like a Vic & Bob imagined scenario but I swear that this is not the case, I believe I saw this.

If you can confirm this, I will redirect my next hamper » Continue Reading.

Don’t look for ’em – they don’t exist. Just imagining a parallel universe of crapness. You can tell they’re crap by the name…

(glissando…wavy pictures)

Fakin’ Stevens

Robbie Walliams

Gimon & Sarfunkel

The Shamdows

The Pelmet Underground

Any more?