The Afterword

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Fonda 500

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Venue:

Portland Arms, Cambridge

Date: 14/06/2019

Fonda 500 had a few years off recording before last year’s ‘I Heart Fonda 500’ album and hadn’t visited Cambridge for ten years. Anyhow, here we were on a Friday night for a run through their 20 years of metronomic hits. Lead keyboard mangler Simon still wears his woolly hat (“it smells like a horse”) pulled down to his eyes to attack his Casiotone MT-65, ladybassist Bod still makes grown men swoon, guitarist Nicholas and Jonee flank either side of the stage, and drummer Ian hides behind his kit except for his brief lead vocal during ‘I.a.m.a.d.r.u.m.m.e.r.’ A set drawn mostly from the last two albums kicked off with I Love Stereo ‘Cos Stereo’s Good For Me, The Sounds Sound Warmer when the Sound is Shared With You, Je m’appelle Stereo got the audience dancing, Jenny #1, both Golden Digits of Devilry and Mathematiques from last year’s album, early single Computer Freaks of the Galaxy, and we all threw caution to the wind during set finisher Electronique Bee 101. Between songs, Simon cracked jokes, threw sequins into the crowd, blew up and let off balloons, and sent up the serious muso stereotype.

The » Continue Reading.

D-Day 75

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I work 10 miles from Duxford IWM. On Monday, as I left the office, a squadron of C-47 Dakotas in formation flew overhead at 500 feet. It was awe-inspiring.

They were practising for yesterday’s flight to Normandy when two veterans – Harry Read, 95, and John Hutton, 94, – parachuted back into Normandy, 75 years after their first landing.

My father-in-law and brother-in-law both spent their careers with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. B-I-L is involved in building the new memorial at Gold Beach where the names of the 22,442 members of the British armed forces who died will be listed.

Be thankful we can sit in safety and type rubbish at strangers.

I appear to have something in my eye.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48536906

Re-Play Papworth – Queen

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30/06/2019

Queen’s Greatest Hits (the UK’s best-selling album) played from half-speed mastered vinyl on a top-flight hi-fi in the Courtyard Café, Papworth Everard.

Home-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea, locally-sourced cakes, full bar including microbrewery ales.

2:30-4:30pm, free entry. Well-behaved kids and dogs welcome.

ATM: BlueTooth earphones

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I know we’ve had similar threads, but not for a while and technology moves quickly.

Daughter has a birthday in a couple of weeks. She listens to music on a Sandisk sports player, her Moto phone, an Android tablet, a Windows laptop, probably soon a Fiio X1. She has an ability to trash wired earbuds, we’re lucky if a pair lasts more than 3 or 4 weeks.

What’s the verdict on Bluetooth in-ears, and what do you suggest? Budget up to about £100.

new(ish) New Order

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SDE reports a 2CD or 3LP live album taken from the 2017 Manchester International Festival, snappily entitled ∑(No,12k,Lg,17Mif) New Order + Liam Gillick: So it goes…

In the absence of Hooky, I wouldn’t normally be interested, but this was great on the idiot latern with tuness majorily reworked for 12 keyboard players.

Out 12th July.

7digital news

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This in my inbox. So they’re not going bust! Yet…

Dear customers of the 7digital download store,

We are getting in touch to inform you that the store at www.7digital.com is moving to uk.7digital.com on Friday May 17th. Please update any bookmarks you may have saved.

7digital would like to thank you for your custom and look forward to welcoming you to the store’s new location.

Your 7digital account will remain active and you will continue to be able to access our services. Should you have any further questions please contact our Customer Services team.

https://uk.7digital.com/

Re-Play Papworth – 1981 Pop

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26/05/2019

OMD’s Architecture & Morality, The Human League’s Dare, Soft Cell’s Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go 12″ and a handful of other 1981 pop singles played from vinyl on a top-flight hi-fi in the Courtyard Café, Papworth Everard.

Home-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea, locally-sourced cakes, full bar including microbrewery ales.

2:30-4:30pm, free entry. Well-behaved kids and dogs welcome.

ATM: record shops in or near Wolverhampton

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I find myself travelling from Cambridge to Wolverhampton tomorrow for A Certain Ratio’s gig at the Newhampton Arts Centre. I should be arriving mid-afternoon, subject to the A14 & M6, which will give me a couple of hours to kill. What’s a music fan to do?

Google suggests Vinyl & Vintage and Oldies Unlimited. Does the Massive have any better advice?

A Certain Ratio – ACR:Box

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What does it sound like?:

Any overview of ACR’s 4-year career has to cover several phases and, potentially, hundreds of tracks.

This 4-CD box set collects up the singles left off last year’s single-CD “best of”, ACR:Set, and their reissued albums, along with selected b-sides, and demo recordings. There are enough previously-released tracks and mixes in the can for another four CDs.

The majority of the tracks on the first two CDs have been previously released on CD reissues from the LTM and Soul Jazz labels, but all here have been freshly remastered by the band from master tapes at Abbey Road for enhanced sound. Given Factory’s financial problems and closure, possibly not from original master tapes.

Their most famous releases were on Manchester’s Factory Records, the label run by their manager Tony Wilson. Their first single was Factory’s first single-artist release, after the Factory Sample split 7″, and before labelmates Joy Division’s more famous debut album.

The tracklisting is chronological, so begins with debut single All Night Party b/w The Thin Boys – droney dirges which do sound like Joy Division out-takes. Within months, funky drummer Donald Johnson had joined and things really took off.

Both tracks from next » Continue Reading.

Re-Play Papworth – the Jimi Hendrix Experience

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28/04/2019

Are You Experienced, Electric Ladyland and Jimi Plays Monterey played from vinyl on a top-flight hi-fi in the Courtyard Café, Papworth Everard. Guest speaker (and Hendrix expert) Chris the Brewer.

Home-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea, locally-sourced cakes, full bar including microbrewery ales.

2:30-4:30pm, free entry. Well-behaved kids and dogs welcome.

Re-Play Papworth – David Bowie

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31/03/2019

Two hours of 1972-era David Bowie and related – Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Lou Reed’s Transformer, Mott The Hoople’ All The Young Dudes, Lulu, possibly the Stooges’ Raw Power if there’s time. Played from vinyl on a top-flight hi-fi in the Courtyard Café, Papworth Everard.

Home-roasted coffee, loose-leaf tea, locally-sourced cakes, full bar including microbrewery ales.

2:30-4:30pm, free entry. Well-behaved kids and dogs welcome.

Another Planet

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Author:Tracey Thorn

Subtitled “A Teenager in Suburbia”, this latest memoir covers the years from her birth to when she left home at the age of 18 for university in Hull (and a life spent with her EBTG bandmate Ben Watt).

In it Tracey describes the stupifying boredom of being raised during the 1970s in an insular green-belt suburben village, where everything of interest is a commute away, and the artistic itch she began to scratch as a schoolgirl.

Extracts from her diaries reveal lists of things she didn’t do, didn’t buy, parties she didn’t attend, and an absence of events which did happen and caused lasting anxiety (she was convinced her mum was reading her journals). And lists of music she heard, which will appeal to the AW.

Along with thoughts on aging, creativity, and reflections on being menopausal with teenage daughters. All told in her own voice.

At just about 200 pages, I ripped through it in a long afternoon.

Length of Read:Medium

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…

Bedsit Disco Queen, musicians memoirs, parenting guides, reflections on middle age.

One thing you’ve learned

You can’t change where you’re from, but you can change where you go. Having » Continue Reading.