Musings on the byways of popular culture
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In which ver Floyd’s lighting director has to deal with local follow spot operators and trying to find someone to turn out the house lights. Oh, and someone taped the crew comms. Apologies if you’ve seen this before but it popped up on a Facebook group and made me smile.
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Musing about my school days over on the 70’s thread, I realised that my adult life was pretty much defined by a couple of decisions I made fairly early on. The first was around the age of 11 when my parents asked me if I wanted to go to the local private secondary school. They didn’t do much beyond ask the question and I replied “no”, partly because money, while not really tight, wasn’t splashed around much, my parents having grown up between the wars in modest circumstances and I was aware it would be a considerable expense for them. I also had no idea what the school was like so declined the offer because of my fear of the unknown. What they should have done was taken me to the open day and let me make an informed decision. I might have liked what I saw and enjoyed my later school years rather than enduring the unambitious mediocrity of the school I actually went to. The second was the result of a casual conversation with a friend who had just started her first job after a government retraining scheme. I was in a dead end job, having given up » Continue Reading.
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Labelled With Love by Squeeze just came on the radio. I love the moments that happen occasionally where I hear something and am reminded of just how great a song is and this was just such a moment. Have a great day everyone.
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Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon is on the Robert Elms show on BBC Radio London today from about 10.30am if I heard correctly. Available later on iPlayer/Sounds or whatever they’re calling it this week.
Message ends
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We have two cats. Recently, we have sort of acquired another. He has a home a few doors down from us but seems to prefer our house, barging in whenever we open the door and making a bee line for our cat’s food bowls then hanging around as if he lives here. His name, of course, is Buddy.
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With artists increasingly becoming cottage industries, responsible for all the stuff that record labels used to do, such as fronting recording costs and organising tours, many have financed new albums by using fan funding site Pledge Music. Unfortunately it seems that, recently, Pledge haven’t been passing on the money they received on the artists behalf, making it difficult or impossible for projects to be completed. More info here https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8494827/pledgemusic-crowdfunding-owes-artists-thousands-late-payments?fbclid=IwAR2pRRFqx69gLT1lo7z-nAzbflZMnJEe1_65OFSgNqOIk_A0ipMe_RW4_ZA
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Soundtracking my time in the kitchen tonight is Cock a Hoop, The latest album by The Men They Couldn’t Hang. They’ve always used real people, places and events in their lyrics and this album is no different. If you feel so inclined, please post songs that mention real streets. First up King Street Serenade about the street in Hammersmith.
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My elderly Acoustic Research AR EB101 turntable needs a new stylus. It was quite an expensive deck in its day (about £400 in the late 80s) and the last time it had a replacement was years ago when I had the motor replaced. since then, it’s been in and out of storage and I’ve neglected the stylus. Your recommendations please along with any tips for fitting and setting the weight. Instructions are long gone I’m afraid. Thanks, you lovely people.
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For those of you who have the time to spare, the 4th series of The Corrupted is being broadcast on Radio 4 and is available on iPlayer Radio. Now into the 1980s, Toby Jones’ character, Joey Oldman, is sucking up to Thatcher while walking a tightrope by taking dirty money from Columbian drug barons and hoping he doesn’t get caught for arson and murder. This is a series as good as Our Friends In The North. The other 3 series are on You Tube if you need to catch up.
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Tigg’s Jesus Christ Superstar post set something weird going in my head. I had I Don’t Know How To Love Him as an ear worm but sung by Elmer Fudd. It went on for a couple of days and I began to wonder if I had actually heard it somewhere so off I went to Google. Elmer Fudd doing JCS isn’t actually a thing but I found a great New Yorker article about a conductor who has plays along to the great Loony Tunes cartoons that use classical pieces such as The Barber of Seville. If you can get past the New Yorker pay wall then the article is great. My favourite line was “I look at this serious, world-renowned orchestra and I see musicians singing, ‘Oh, Brunhilde, you’re so wuv-wy, yes I know it, I can’t help it.’
I wish someone would make great 5 minute shorts like these again.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/wuvwy-music
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I know there are few fans of They Might Be Giants here. You may be interested in their appearance on the latest WTF podcast. Incidentally, Marc Mason seems to have mellowed of late to the point where I no longer feel obliged to skip his opening preamble.
From the podcast site: “John Flansburgh and John Linnell tell Marc the unlikely story of how a couple high school friends became a two-man band at the height of the New Wave performance art era in crime-ridden New York City and somehow carved out four decades of mainstream success as They Might Be Giants. The Johns also talk with Marc about children’s music, selling out, the early days of MTV, Malcolm in the Middle, and more.”
http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-902-they-might-be-giants
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Chewing the fat and trading You Tube tracks with my daughter last night, one of the ones she played was SIAMÉS – “The Wolf”. I really liked both the song and the video, hope you do too.
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This popped into my head this morning. James passed me by a bit at the time but this is a corker. Have a good Friday.
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I just saw this on a friend’s Facebook page. Considering he spends most of his working life on corporate nonsense, this must have made his day.
Well it was a little job at the V&A, a couple of mics on a stage (with me just as a tech). Well Donovan turns up with his son and a band consisting of Danny Thomson and John Paul Jones (yes that John Paul Jones). During the rather talented solo guitarist that followed John Paul wonders over and has a chat (with me!) moments latter we are joined by Mr Thomson, a Mr R Daltry, Carl Palmer and Paul Weller… Truly we are not worthy!
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On the Robert Elms show
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Venue:
The Gibson Rooms
Date: 13/07/2017
Not quite a Nights In and not quite a Nights out…..
At The Gibson Rooms in Soho, I was part of a small group gathered together to listen, not only to part of the Master Quality Audio of Black Sabbath’s Ten Year War box set but also a Q&A hosted by Alex Milas who was talking to mastering engineer Andy Pearce, Tom Allom, who engineered the first three Sabbath albums and MQA’s Spencer Chrislu. Before the event started, we had an opportunity to use some Android based portable MQA players provided by Pioneer Onkyo which are quite chunky compared to carrying a phone. Preloaded with the box set, the players sounded pretty good, given that the basement room was quite noisy. The audio files appear on the player as FLAC but MQA retain as much of the audio data in as small a file as possible so that If MQA files are played back on non MQA equipment then they should play at better than CD quality. Also on display were a selection of the vinyl discs (pressed in “splatter” vinyl) along with the covers. The box set contains the eight albums with » Continue Reading.
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Brummies who use the city’s trams will have a new announcer to warn them of the stops. It’s only Ozzy bloomin’ Osbourne! I wonder if Transport For London can get Billy Bragg to do “Mind the Gap?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/5442f39b-c4bf-42eb-a42a-e75d40b9a63e
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From a new album How The West Was Won, coming at the end of June, I’ve heard this on the radio a few times and I’m hoping the rest of the album will be as good as this.
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Continuing a very occasional theme where I post songs that randomly catch my attention, usually because I haven’t heard them for ages, here’s Mink De Ville: Spanish Stroll. I heard it on the radio yesterday when it brightened my day. Have a good weekend.
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Iron Maiden engage the audience in the traditional “He’s behind you!” routine.
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I’m surprised that the news of Bananarama’s reunion tour hasn’t been deemed worthy of mention here. From shambolic chancers to the biggest selling girl “band” ever. Love them or loathe them (I’m expecting a majority of negative comments), they achieved something and are obviously held in some affection. Anyone got tickets? Anyone got a secret copy of Deep Sea Skiving hiding behind their Smiths LPs?
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I just heard this on the radio and boy, did it take me back. My brother was a big fan of The Strawbs and made me listen to a lot of their stuff but this was the only one that really grabbed me. It still makes me think of him. Any of you have tracks that instantly remind you of siblings?
https://youtu.be/PIMSo2eLLP0
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The film thread is bubbling away nicely which and I was going to post, saying I was surprised that The Lego Movie hadn’t been nominated but that I hadn’t been able to make out a lot of the dialog so missed a lot of the humour, to the point where I pretty much switched off. This leads me to ask, why is so much movie dialog so difficult to hear? It’s pretty bad at a theatre but even worse at home where we usually have to play films through external speakers in order to follow the plot. I realIse that modern thin screens have poor speakers but we don’t have the same level of problems with TV shows that we have with the mumbled, incoherent dialog in expensive to make cinema films. Is there an argument for a “home” soundtrack, mixed to get the best out of a domestic TV or am I (and more often, my wife) alone in finding this a problem?
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Bullets and Blood Part 3, the latest Secret History of Hollywood podcast is available now. Well worth a few hours of your time, it kept me company for a 5 hour round trip into London yesterday. Thoroughly recommended.
http://www.attaboyclarence.com/the-secret-history-of-hollywood/
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A quick shout out for the third series of The Corrupted, currently on iPlayer Radio and well worth a few hours of your time. The story of a London crime family has reached the 70s and Joseph Oldman, played by Toby Jones, is still avoiding the law while engratiating himself with rising politician, one Margaret Thatcher as well as trying to get the better of a paedophile nobleman. Five brilliant episodes that would grip you on you daily commute.
