Musings on the byways of popular culture
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Some terribly sad news. Long standing Afterworder and Word stalwart before that Phil Pirrip has passed away. His wife posted the following message on his Twitter feed ( @Phil_Pirrip ) :
This is Lucy (Pollewolledoodl) sad news I’m afraid my lovely husband passed away on 22 June (not) covid. He was 58, on the 19th he’d gone out for a walk and was found by a member of the public who started CPR helicoptered to hospital and unfortunately never regained consciousness.
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Mark Lewisohn has posted on Twitter that Astrid Kirchherr has died, shortly before her 82nd birthday. Her involvement with The Beatles came years before I was born, but even as a kid I realised they would never look as cool again as in those early shots in Hamburg. Anyone who has read Lewisohn’s Tune In will realise what an important introduction she was to European culture. Great haircuts too.
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Quick heads up – The Man Who Fell to Earth is on Talking Pictures TV at 9pm tonight, that’s Freeview Channel 81. I don’t think I’ve seen it for more than 30 years, and even then remember finding it ‘of it’s time’ but I’ll set the recorder for it.
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One minute it’s all dwarves with platters of cocaine strapped to their heads*, next you’re shredding your glutes ‘to shreds in a moment of over-enthusiastic gardening’. Yes, Brian May, shunner of barbers, doctor of stars and friend to the badger, is currently indisposed, and sadly in what sounds like considerable pain, following a bizarre gardening accident.
Bad Bottomed Girls, Another One Digs the Dust, etc etc … you know what to do to fill up a long weekend.
*Incidentally, I had never read the full details of *that* party before and I’ll put a link in the comments. It sounds like quite the social gathering, and certainly a lot more fun than gardening.
https://variety.com/2020/music/news/queen-brian-may-hospitalized-gardening-injury-glues-1234601520/
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That retched virus again. The Stranglers were a big band of my youth and Greenfield’s Doorsy keyboards were a huge part of the appeal. I’ll be sure to dig some out tonight.
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Morning all. If you’re struggling for a way to remember which particular Groundhog Day this is it might help to remember it as ‘the one that started with Beth Gibbons chilling my blood with her section of the Big Read’s Ancient Mariner project’.
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… it’s quite, ah, ‘forceful’, isn’t it?
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This might raise a smile if you have twelve minutes to spare.
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What does it sound like?:
I do love The Unthanks. I saw them on many occasions with the ten piece band, various times with smaller outfits, once with a full orchestra for backing and then, last spring at Union Chapel in Islington, I saw Rachel Unthank, Becky Unthank and Niopha Keegan still the very air around us and hold the lucky several hundred present with nothing but their unaccompanied voices and not even a clog dance to add percussion.
That Union Chapel show is one of several from the Unaccompanied As We Are tour which has contributed performances on this latest addition to the Unthanks’ Diversions albums series. Previous Diversions releases have gathered songs by theme or songwriter, but this collection is grouped by style, songs in the style in which Rachel Becky started performing in Northumberland folk clubs. It is utterly lovely.
In the years before this tour there was a danger that The Unthanks could turn into the Adrian McNally band. Adrian, musical arranger and former Mr Rachel Unthank, creates brilliant music culminating in Mount the Air, for me one of the very best albums so far this century, but his influence began to overshadow the pure » Continue Reading.
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The name may cause a few seconds of head scratching before I say, ‘the guy who drew Asterix’. How I loved those books when I was a kid. No trip to the library was complete without looking for one I hadn’t read at last ten times before. If there was not one the Tintin would do, but I found him too clean cut (though more likely the Herge books were too sophisticated for me), but my heart belonged to Asterix and the other Gauls.
Those who give us joy in childhood keep a special place in our hearts. Writer René Goscinny, along with the translators into English, deserves equal credit for the books’ success but it was the vivid colours and dynamic force of Uderzo’s illustrations which made the first and most lasting impression on me. As we have a little down time at the moment I shall see if I can dig some Asterix books out to revisits and raise a glass to him.
I’m still on leave this week bu will be WFH from Monday for the foreseeable. My usual attempts at fitness are the two mile walk to and from work each day (which will now be unnecessary) and a weekly boxercise class (understandably cancelled for the time being). I’ll still make sure I get a walk in as long as possible, but does anyone have recommendations for fitness videos, ideally free to steam on Youtube or similar?
My profile is that I’m early 50s, err on the side of heft, and am reasonably healthy aside from a tendency to knee trouble. I’m just getting over a ligament strain at the moment. I have limited space but could clear a couple of metres spare in the living room and have a few small hand weights, up to 5kg.
Don’t be limited by the above of course. If you follow anything that works for you please share it here with a brief description.
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I was 12 in February 1980, just making my first independent explorations in music. Highway to Hell was an early obsession, and even if there was little music on television and no internet I understood what a force of nature and fount of charisma Bon Scott was. He was my model of what a rock star should be then, and he still is now. Then he died in miserable circumstances, 40 years ago today.
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Actually, I don’t have any hatches in my flat, which is probably just as well because I have no idea where I left my battens. It’s going to be a blowy one though, so might as well stay in and share YouTube links.
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The wonderful Maria McKee rarely breaks cover these days so I’m delighted to see a solo show announced for the end of March at Earth in Hackney to promote her first album in a decade.
Reading her words in the link and on Twitter it sounds like she’s been through a bit of a journey and has spilled it all out into the songs. Much as I hope she’s OK this is good news, as for my money angsty, howling, Life is Sweet Maria is the best Maria.
(Her Twitter feed originally announced e date as 30 March, but now confirms the venue’s date of 31 March.)
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If my Facebook and Twitter timelines are anything to go by most people plan to go to bed early and ignore it, but not before making sure that everyone else knows. I don’t really understand this antipathy to NYE (or Hogmanay if I’m being true to my birthplace). I like the idea of rounding off the festive season with a booze spent with friends rather than family which, and this is the other crucial distinction from Christmas, is all over and done with in one night.
This year however I’ll be with the curmudgeons, not through lack of willing or lack of a party to go to but because I will be at home nursing a stinker of a cold. I should be at work right now, but instead I’m catching up on some excellent films on iPlayer (The Apartment earlier, and I’ll go back to bed with a paracetamol when The Ipcress File has finished). I’m ill as often as not at New Year, something I put down to years retail when I would almost always fall sick at Christmas because I had been too busy to get ill before.
Happily my other half isn’t too bothered about going » Continue Reading.
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The incredibly sad news is spreading that Neil Innes has left us. I was a little too young for the heyday of the Bonzo Dog Band and Rutland Weekend Television, but made up for it since. The Rutles at Colchester Arts Centre was one of the best gigs I went saw all 2019, and he was in such good shape that I had high hopes of seeing him next time round.
https://www.beyondthejoke.co.uk/content/8160/neil-innes-dies
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Tom Waits is 70 today, a fact which would probably have surprised everyone including him a few decades ago.
I bloody love Tom Waits, whether he playing the lovelorn gin soaked hobo, crooning to his piano in the small hours, or sounding like Captain Birdseye has been at the cough syrup again, to the accompaniment percussion which sounds like a Victorian wardrobe being dropped down a lift shaft.
Rain Dogs is probably my favourite album of all time, so here’s a track from that magnificent record.
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Yes, It’s the Jethro Cell / Soft Tull collaboration the world has been crying out for, as Ian Anderson and Marc Almond combine on Lord of Misrule. It does sound rather like they recorded it in different rooms, possibly without reference to what the other one was bringing to the party, but YouTube also boasts a video of Almond joining Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull onstage at the Royal Albert Hall in 2013 for a rattle through Locomotive Breath, so it could well be that they’re old pals.
You’re unlikely recording partners are of course more than welcome in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTVrBN7JvPQ&feature=push-fr&attr_tag=hBTtFVl3ye3devUl%3A6
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What a sad day. In ascending order of how much they meant to me today has seen the loss of Gary Rhodes, Jonathan Miller and Clive James.
James’ Observer TV reviews and memoirs were a key part of my first forays into adult literature, and the earlier memoirs are still hilarious now. His Philip Larkin book is on my Christmas list. Here’s a lyric he wrote for Pete Atkin.
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… who has a quick look at the bottom of the page every time I log on to see if the site motto has been changed to ‘OK boomer’ yet?
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Venue:
The Royal Albert Hall, Kensington
Date: 30/09/2019
What a night. What a phenomenal night! How to celebrate this extraordinary man who has spent more than 50 of his 70 years writing extraordinary songs of apolalypse and redemption, and coupling them with unmistakable guitar playing to the acclaim and adulation of far too few? Stick on a big gig at a prestigious venue and bring along a bunch of family, friends and acolytes to help out, that’s how.
From the get go we were promised an evening of song, friendship and nepotism by our MC Jack Thompson (Richard’s youngest, you see what he means?) and that’s what we got in spades. It is in the nature of a guest list show, with every performer getting one or two songs before making way for the next, that you hope for a collection of highlights rather than a consistent narrative, so I’m going to lean heavily on the setlist which someone stuck up on Setlist.fm with admirable speed and comment on each one, rattling through the songs and guests off the top of my head rather than tackle the evening in themes. The result is far too long and barely edited » Continue Reading.
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Van Morrison has just announced a short series of dates at the London Palladium in spring, and from the blurb on the Palladium website I strongly suspect that whoever was given the job of writing the advance notice said ‘Who?’ before gathering the barest information they could from Wikipedia to paste onto the page. Wouldn’t his management have provided a press release with prose less desperate than this?
The legendary Van Morrison, one of the finest singer-songwriters and hardest working live performers of his era, is coming to The London Palladium for five very special shows next year.
Fans may know him from some of his biggest hits, including Brown Eyed Girl, Have I Told You Lately, Moondance and Into the Mystic.
To date, Van Morrison has released a whopping 40 albums and with new material and projects in the pipeline, he’s showing no signs of slowing down.
https://lwtheatres.co.uk/van-morrison-to-play-a-run-of-shows-at-the-london-palladium/
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And it’s so long then to fRoots, which is to cease publication. Probably no great surprise to anyone even though it obviously a shame. Even a someone who’s musical taste puts me in the target demographic I rarely picked up a copy, and it may be that such specialist music is better served by online communities.
https://frootsmag.com/froots-magazine-statement-2nd-july-2019
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I’ve just bought tickets for Ross Noble’s next tour. The London Palladium show to be precise. That’s the London Palladium show on 3 May 2020, 11 months away.
Is this a record?
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Ealing Blues Festval,Sunday 21st July, with Nick Lowe headlining.
