Soft Cell’s best Album – The Art of Falling Apart – is getting the spruce up it richly deserves by being reissued in multiple formats including a diamanté toaster, a deformed cuddly toy and word has it that the platter will be added to the periodic table when they have the next round of PT voting in Svalbard in the new year.

The album has a self-effacing title but the songs are strong and confident. Still sleazy, but less of the slap and tickle with a wink to the postman (?). The title track, Baby Doll, Loving You Hating Me and Where the Heart is are all top-drawer Soft Cell songs.

However the gold in them thar hills is the material you found on the 12 inches (missus, ooh I say! And so on). Martin – a quite literally diabolical song in the sense that the Devil is lurking in there, messing with poor old Mart. It’s a Mugs Game is another wonderful nugget – a teenager having an extremely angry and amusingly inarticulate rant about his lot in life. As a broody teenager at the time I very much related to the, erm, energy. And also a very brilliant » Continue Reading.

I heard her interview regarding her tax issues. She hasn’t got a portfolio of properties and she doesn’t funnel assets into a company based in the Cayman Islands. She doesn’t run a funds management company on the side or have multiple enigmatic board roles or take lucrative consulting jobs overseas. It sounds like a messy divorce-related arrangement and the complexity of it has landed her where she is now.

She should have been vigilant over the tax status of the legal arrangement she entered into. She can’t claim that she was bewildered by the process or claim that the legal advice was followed without her realising that she was taking full responsibility for the decisions made. Lots of people have complex family arrangements – the Deputy PM is and should be held to a very high standard in terms of their own tax affairs.

So she was right to resign.

This is not, however, in the same league as the kind of activities mentioned above that Conservative Ministers have been doing for years and years. The venom directed to her sounds like the celebratory crowing of people that believe Angela Rayner had no business being a senior politician » Continue Reading.

@fentonsteve revealed on the Rocky thread that he and his other half dressed as Renee (her) and Yvette (him) from Allo Allo and then they attempted to hitchhike to Paris! The English side was fine, immediately picked up – but there was no success on the French side, amazingly.

About 20 years ago I was in my late thirties and we were invited to a themed party where we were encouraged to dress as movie stars. I’m usually quite half-hearted with these things – but I had a really dumb idea and we went with it. Basically, Mrs BC and I came as Austin Powers and Marilyn Monroe. And we told people that this was what we were going to do.

Given that Austin Powers was my nickname already due to my London-ish accent & Austin being my actual name – and my wife can certainly carry off a convincing Marilyn, everyone assumed that this was what was on the cards.

I can tell you’re ahead of me here. We did a switcheroo, where I was Marilyn and SHE was Mr Powers. As you can imagine, the make up challenge was immense, so we » Continue Reading.

When do you go to bed, then?

Recently I’ve started to be a little less of a night owl and started to be in me scratcher by 11pm. Since the age of 16ish I have been a post-midnight wooden hill climber but going to bed an hour earlier has made me feel a bit more perky the next morning.

I know adult people that are in bed asleep by 9pm and I know I wouldn’t be able to do that.

As we’re all rock n rollers from way back, I sense we are largely creatures of the night. Or are we?

Trump out-twats himself at the FIFA Club World Cup. How? Well…it went like this. Chelsea deservedly won the trophy and the players are excitedly gathered to receive the trophy. They can’t wait to celebrate.

Trump presents the trophy with the slaphead FIFA head honcho (it’s quite big). At this point, the trophy should be handed to the team Captain who lifts the thing aloft and the team go bananas. The protocol is that the winning team enjoys this moment with each other. No hangers on, no sponsors, just the team.

But no. Trump lingers and *hangs around* with them, among them, celebrating as if he was one of them. They’re not exactly going to tell him fuck off, but I bet each and every one of those players wanted to.

The Ladybirds were mentioned on the Wordle thread and this got me thinking about fhe pop performers who always seemed to be around very successful acts of the day, but never seemed to enjoy their own day in the sun.

My own research* revealed that The Ladybirds were present and providing vocals to many big stars in the 60s and 70s and had several lineup changes over many years. They released records under their own name and although these didn’t trouble the scorers, in every other sense they were a band – a going concern – for a very long time.

So when is a pop group not a pop group? There are countless examples of bona fide pop acts who only sing other people’s songs, so we needn’t cock too much of a snook at the fact that they had no original material. They were a group. Just for starters, can any of us imagine Benny Hill’s “Ernie” without the female voices? The answer is no, I don’t think we can. I bet there are other examples. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they pop up in very unexpected places. They could have easily provided the do-do-dos » Continue Reading.

I now have just about everything available to me via Spotify for a very reasonable price. If we cast our minds back to the 80s, if someone asked you how much you would be prepared to pay for instant access to every piece of music ever recorded I’m sure most of us would have happily stumped up at least 10 quid a month forty years ago. It’s great.

And yet…there are things I used to do that I don’t do now and I miss it. As I’m driving or walking the dog I can’t fast forward within tracks of music to get to the bits I particularly like within a song. For example I like the last 90 seconds or so of U2’s Unforgettable Fire and I don’t need to hear the whole thing. In the days of cassettes and CDs I could FFWD to those bits.

Is it a settings thing? You can go forwards and back 15 seconds on podcasts – that would be fine.

Black Type’s excellent Kylie review made me think of the songs that I hear about from her that are not widely known but are fan favourites. BT mentions Padam Padam and I am also aware of one by hers called Your Disco Needs You! I’m sold by the title already.

In my sphere of popular music, I know that OMD have performed The Romance of the Telescope and flop single Telegraph due to fan demand. Also. Depeche Mode tend to close their shows with Never Let Me Down Again, which was not a big hit single for them – but it has become something that they must play every time. Its inclusion in The Last of Us series 1 gave it a boost too.

Pet Shop Boys concerts must feature Being Boring even though, by their standards at the time the single flopped.

It helps that these are all wonderful songs but I’m interested to learn of other under-the-radar flop singles and album tracks that the fans love but might have escaped wider attention.

According to this BBC article, bitcoin mining is something that requires a big building full of computers to do and fans to cool these machines down are really noisy.

I always thought bitcoin mining was an environmentally benign cyber-type thing but no, there are hundreds of actual mines and they are large, ugly and noisy.

Has anyone had their head turned by cryptocurrency? My strong instinct is to run away – fast. However, I was wondering if someone here could explain, as if to a toddler, why this requires such a large server resource in order to do it. I did a bit of reading and, I shit you not, it’s all about finding a “cryptographic nonce” – or ideally a “golden nonce”. This is Brass Eye territory.

It seems to be about finding a unique number/code and if you do that you release more bitcoin – and that somehow has monetary value.

I am given to understand that there are people getting rich on the back of this but my direct experience in the field of financial literacy, most people don’t understand interest rates and “normal” currency price fluctuations. I am talking about everyone here, including solicitors, high » Continue Reading.

The show has started. If you’re watching, why not post your comments and predictions below.

I have been in England for the last few weeks and loved it. Our travels took us to London, Liverpool, Bradford and Woking. A bit of a family history odyssey, if you will, as my NZ-born younger children had never had the pleasure of visiting Old Blighty. These are places I have lived in or, in the case of Bradford, been to a great deal because my parents came from there.

Can I shock you? It all went without a hitch. We organised everything online months ago from NZ and we used the rail network, buses and coaches to get to and from various places. All of these services were clean, on time, easy to use and cheerful efficiency was very much the order of the day. When my son left his phone on the National Express coach – only realising as the coach left Bradford – we followed the process and a man from their office in Runcorn couldn’t have been more helpful – making sure that it was waiting for us when we checked into the Premier Inn at Gatwick just before we came home again.

We rented flats and apartments in some places and stayed at several » Continue Reading.

For embarrassing reasons I don’t wish to discuss, I am hosting a guest who is quite the spoonophile. When he’s not talking about spoons, he’s on about other forms of cutlery and utensils. It’s going to be a long month!

So here’s a playlist of spoon and cutlery related music to keep him occupied. Surprisingly eclectic, don’t ya think?

Do you have any suggestions over what to add? Yes, yes, you SAY you have better things to do but I don’t believe you.

Paul Weller’s words in tribute to Rick Buckler, mentioned the early days in Woking and made me think of the old place. That’s where I grew up, y’know.

I was at a gathering a few months ago here in Auckland NZ and a young chap (by which I mean under 40) asked where I was from in England? I replied “Woking – it’s just outside London”. I always say that. His eyes widened and confirmed with some gusto that he knew exactly where Woking was and started to talk excitedly about Paul Weller and The Jam. He’s a big fan and one day he’d really like to go to Woking. It’s on his bucket list! I counselled him not to get too excited because there’s not a lot to it – but I was inwardly quite pleased that this person from the other side of the world views Woking as such a special place.

One of the many reasons I fell for Depeche Mode was the fact that they grew up in Basildon, a similarly unremarkable commuter town so I could identify with them. The Mode’s very good friends from The Cure hailed from another similar town again – » Continue Reading.

Recent postings about Kid Creole has prompted me to revisit this subject and I wake up today keen to put on record my “take” on Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy.

Firstly, it’s a very funny but cruel lyric. Essentially he doesn’t care much for the child and wants to move on with his life without her – and her mother, for that matter. He is telling the young girl (who believes him to be his father), that this cannot be the case.

So what’s my beef with the lyrics as presented online now and in Smash Hits at the time? Well there are three examples:

He explains that her mother had one or two dalliances in Staint-Tropez. She was in search of love “but all she got was you”.

Lyric sheets say “all she got was used” rather than “you” – which spoils the joke because he is directly telling her “all she got was you” meaning that her birth was disappointing.

The Coconuts represent the voice of the child, reacting to the news. According to the printed lyric, they say “Mama’s baby, Papa’s baby”. This is not right – it must be “Mama’s baby’s Papa’s maybe”. My » Continue Reading.

In the excellent review of (the) Verve’s compilation LP, there was a small sidebar over whether Bittersweet Symphony could be regarded as the best song of that era. Someone suggested Common People, another put forward Live Forever. And then someone else suggested the Manics and Radiohead…but they weren’t Britpop per se. I’d add Massive Attack and Prodigy to that also.

So I thought this was interesting enough to devote a thread to it. The rules are as follows :

The song you suggest doesn’t have to be a single, or even something that you could describe as “Britpop” at all. Just something excellent you remember being around at the time.

You don’t have to post a video – it’s OK if you want to. Its just that I’m more likely to get a hamper if the video clips are kept to a sensible number. If there’s a thread that has more than 50 posts and videos a-gogo, it stops working for me.

So, starting with the obvious ones and working down:

Common People – Pulp Live Forever – Oasis Bittersweet Symphony Parklife – Blur A Design for Life – Manics Firestarter – Prodigy Animal Nitrate – Suede Yes – » Continue Reading.

I asked Chat GPT who is the best contributor to this forum. Here is the response:

Determining the “best contributor” on a forum like The Afterword is subjective and depends on the criteria you value most—whether it’s insightful posts, humor, depth of knowledge, engagement, or helpfulness to the community.

Key Factors to Consider: 1. Engagement:       •   Contributors who actively participate in discussions and keep threads alive are often seen as key members of the community. 2. Expertise:       •   Members who share deep knowledge about music, literature, or other shared interests (a hallmark of The Afterword) tend to be highly valued. 3. Supportiveness:       •   Those who provide emotional support, helpful advice, or thoughtful responses on topics like health or personal challenges are greatly appreciated. 4. Creativity:       •   Contributors who create collaborative projects, like playlists or compilations, or who write detailed reviews, add a lot to the community experience.

Examples of Notable Contributors:    •   mikethep: Known for discussions about classical music, health (like prostate cancer awareness), and engagement in word games like Wordle.    •   H.P. Saucecraft: Highly involved in collaborative music projects, with a keen sense of the community’s musical tastes.    •   Black Celebration: Likely focused on music, possibly with an emphasis on Depeche Mode or similar genres, though » Continue Reading.

We watched the Royal Variety Performance last night and, blow me down, it turned out to be quite an entertaining show. Quite literally for all the family. If you don’t particularly care for what’s on at that moment, it doesn’t matter – something else will be on soon enough. Reminded me of the old days.

Any road up, the final part of the night was the black and white portraits set to sensitive music of all those that have died in 2024, ending with One Direction’s Liam Payne. His was the last image shown and his relative youth compared to most of those that came before him added definite poignancy.

Now, in NZ, the end credits are rattled off in about 3 seconds in a small box, so Payne’s image ended the show from our perspective. The very next image we see is a man dramatically falling from a high building to his death. It’s the opening sequence of a trailer for David Mitchell’s Ludwig detective show.

I am 100% sure that this was a very unfortunate error by the NZ TV people – but my God it was funny. My son and I “got it” immediately and exchanged » Continue Reading.

Have a look at the video in the comments. It’s a pretty decent remix of Depeche Mode’s Everything Counts but all of the female models in the video have the face of early 2000’s Dave Gahan.

It’s very clever indeed but I think our ability to recognise true images is a highly advanced skill. You don’t need to know who Mr Gahan is to know that something is “up” here. Even though it may be perfectly done.

The trajectory for most pop acts of the past was to have several years of non-success and then make it big and enjoy some time in the sun being the latest cool new thing. This is when all the half-finished ideas stashed away from the years and years of notes come back to the fore and now you can use those to release your Nevermind, or your Lexicon of Love.

However once that rich seam of material ends, you have to come up with new stuff. And that can be pretty good too – after all, you now have Rick Spangle on your side and your latest video has Martin Scorsese behind the camera.

Now let’s go forward a year or so. We are now in the Jazz Odyssey years, the pop star is wearing a smock and lives with a yak. He distances himself from his successful pop music and embarks on a different journey. Nobody goes with him and debts force him to dust off the old gear and get the old band back together. This is the post-imperial phase and although the light isn’t shining as brightly as before – there are songs that are » Continue Reading.