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Hit songs with incorrect information

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Shamelessly piggy-backing on @Mousey ‘s pronunciation thread, what are the lines that always make you think, ‘Excuse me? Is that really what you meant to say?’

For me it’s always AC/DC’s Let there be Rock (video link in comments), where Bon declares:

‘One night in a club called the Shakin’ Hand There was a 42 decibel rockin’ band’

Google 40 decibels and you will find it described as the sound of a quiet office, or the hum of a fridge. Certainly nothing that would make you have to shout to be heard above it, ‘And the music was good and the music was loud’.

Geoff Capes no more

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Obituary

You may not have thought of him for many years, but for anyone of my age the name will instantly conjure up a whole list of memories.

World’s Strongest Man! Policeman! Highland Games! Shot put! Budgerigars (never ‘budgies’)!

That’s a decent cultural footprint for the big man to leave, and from his Wiki page I have learned that he still holds the British shot put record he set in 1980.

Peat and Diesel Klaxon

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The best night out we had in 2023 was Peat and Diesel at a small club in Southend. It seems their music doesn’t travel too well, which is why they’re 2025 dates kick off with an 8000 capacity hall in Glasgow (as part of Celtic Connections) but by the time they reach London the venue is the 100 Club on Oxford Street. I’ll put a link to one of the songs from Southend in the comments.

If you didn’t sign up for a pre-sale link by yesterday you’ll have to wait until tomorrow before you fight over whatever tickets are left, but I promise you it will be worth the bruises.

https://www.peatanddiesel.band/listings

I Am Furious

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I am hopping mad, farting sparks, blowing steam and absolutely scunnered. In a couple of recent blogs I have mentioned that I am moving house very soon. Well, I was (and hopefully still am).

At the start of last week I received phone calls from both the agent I am selling through and the one I am buying from making hopeful noises about the sale of my flat nearing completion, to the point where the buyer’s solicitor was preparing his final report so contracts could be exchanged. I didn’t hear any more by the end of the week so I contacted my solicitor, and she forwarded me an email from the buyer’s stating that he had just had an ‘interesting’ (the last word you want see a lawyer use) conversation with my buyer and asking for some further details from me.

The exact nature of the details is unimportant, but today it has resulted in the buyer withdrawing from the sale. He blames his solicitor for not raising concerns he had months ago, his solicitor blames him for not making him aware. Or so I’ve heard, I haven’t spoken to either directly which is probably just as well for all » Continue Reading.

Your date-specific tracks

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It was the 3rd of September That day I’ll always remember

A good enough excuse to ask for songs which mention a specific date. I suppose memorial dates, say Billy Bragg’s St Swithin’s Day, will do as well (but not Christmas Day because that’s just lazy).

YouTube link in the comments, because I’m considerate like that.

Joe Egan RIP

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Obituary

Joe Egan, half of Stealers Wheel and co-writer of Stuck in the Middle with You, has died at the age of 77. I hope Gerry Rafferty is bearing up OK.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a #@!$ of a week (in a good way)

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None of this is of interest to anyone but me, but I feel the need to set it down somewhere.

The diary highlights of Gatz, aged 57 1/4:

Saturday – A day out at Kensington Gardens and the V&A, a nice pasta and red wine dinner, then a jolly night at Richard Thompson’s 75th birthday shindig at the Royal Albert Hall (written about at length elsewhere).

Sunday – In 1975 every school child in Glasgow was issued with a mug commemorating the 800th anniversary of Glasgow’s borough charter. Mine got broken at a student party a decade later and I’ve been looking for one for 40 or so years, without wanting to pay twenty quid or so on eBay. I found two (that’s 2, twice as many as I had ever owned in my life) in, of all places, Oxfam in Brentwood #reem Had lunch in Rossi’s cafe too.

Monday – My flat has been on the market for a couple of weeks. I have had maybe 10 viewings and today I accepted an offer. It was a little under the asking price, but it’s a first time buyer which should move things along quickly. He seemed a nice chap » Continue Reading.

Richard Thompson’s 75th Birthday Bash

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Venue:

The Royal Albert Hall, London

Date: 08/06/2024

When Richard Thompson’s 70th birthday show was held at the Royal Albert Hall 5 years ago it was a sellout. His 75th, coming at the end of a 2 week UK tour, had less pent-up demand, and whereas as David Gilmour made his first UK stage appearance in years in 2019 the likes of Squeeze and Crowded House, of whom more later, among the special guests this time round proved less of a draw. All this meant our tickets at the very back and centre of the Rausing Circle were upgraded free of charge to box seats, two floors down but just as central.

It was a show of two halves, or rather one third then the other two thirds. The opening section was a truncated version of touring set, 7 songs over 50 minutes or so. I’ll post the set list in the comments. Those 7 songs managed to cram in 3 from the new album, a couple I haven’t heard him play for years (Guns are the Tongues and Sandy Denny’s John the Gun) and some special guests. Hard On Me, with Richard’s grandson Zak Hobbes taking the first » Continue Reading.

The most Afterword album in the World.

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Linda Thompson has New album in out June. Normally that would be welcome if niche news, but the list of collaborators puts this right in the sweet spot of a significant section of Afterworders.

As well as Richard Thompson on several tracks it features Kami Thompson, Martha Wainwright, The Proclimers, Rufus Wainwright, Ren Harvieu, John Grant, The Rails, Dori Freeman, Eliza Carthy, The Unthanks and Teddy Thompson. And check out that cover.

https://propermusic.com/products/lindathompson-proxymusic?fbclid=IwAR23-47R9jR007THJWuwFO8DFxOiartiAQi05tosxv048Z01Qa7GkMz1WjM_aem_AaHj38BYMUSRG-JRxn9GSg0qQnPa2jHkYZZtLVeriZvOD5wOCHUSMEnIhSYo6OYmBD0

When did standing ovations become the norm?

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A slightly grumpy middle aged man (here? surely not. I’m afraid so) writes …

I’ve been to two very different performances in the last week, Show of Hands on their farewell tour at Colchester Arts Centre on Monday and Wilko, a new play about Wilko Johnson, at the Queens Theatre in Hornchurch yesterday. They were both pretty good. I was entertained, thought I got my money’s worth and so on. But I didn’t think either was an outstanding show which will make my end of year list of the best things I saw in 2024.

What the shows had in common was that the final bows of both received standing ovations from about half the audience (a sell out at Colchester but a sparse matinee attendance at Hornchurch, which didn’t look more than a quarter full). And I’ve noticed over the last couple of years that this sort of reception has become much more common, an appreciation of appreciation if you will.

I’ve been know to leap to my feet to applaud if I have been so transported that no other reaction in the moment seems appropriate, but it’s not the default that it seems to have become for » Continue Reading.

Christopher Priest RIP

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Obituary

Novelist Christopher Priest has died. His books could be maddening, dizzying, confusing, but regardless of how far into science fiction they strayed were firmly rooted in explorations of what it felt like to be human. He will be best remembered as the author of The Prestige, later turned into a film by Christopher Nolan, but my favourite books of his were those which strayed into psychological thriller, The Glamour, A Dream of Wessex and especially The Affirmation.

I only met him once, at Essex Book Festival in 2017, but I’m glad I got to tell him how much his work meant to me. The tower of books in the picture accompanying this obit is my Priest library at the time from which I had to make a selection to have signed.

Happy birthday to The Day Today Today

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It’s 30 years to the day since The Day Today was first broadcast and producers ever since have taken what was meant to be a satirical warning and treated it as a style manual. It’s remarkable that a 30 year old programme about news coverage can still seem so fresh and topical.

I’m watching my DVDs right now and I’ll raise a glass to Collaterlie Sisters, Peter O’Hanraha-hanrahan, Ted Maul and all, but for now here are Harfynn Teuport and Sukie Bapswent bringing us RokTV.

Poor Things

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Year: 2023 Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Part 1 – What it is

It is a stunning visual trip where almost every frame would be worthy of saving to keep on your wall, whether it is set in Victorian London, the slums of Alexandria or a Parisian whorehouse.

It is an astonishing, committed, all-in central performance by Emma Stone as Bella Baxter.

It is the story of Bella Baxter, the brain of an unborn child transplanted into the skull of her suicide mother by the brilliant, if mad, surgeon Godwin ‘God’ Baxter.

It is the story of Bella’s accelerated sexual, linguistic and intellectual development from baby to adult woman.

It is film which some will dismiss based on sexual themes played out by a character with the mind of an infant. ‘What a pretty little retard!’, says God’s student assistant McCandless on first meeting Bella, before falling in love with her.

It is a film which will strongly split opinions. After seeing the film I saw a screen grab of Google Reviews where about 45% gave the film 5*, 40% gave it 1* and the small remainder were evenly split among the middling scores. Both The Guardian and the Daily Mail gave » Continue Reading.

Annie Nightingale RIP

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Obituary

A pioneer woman DJ, a Sunday evening companion to my school homework and one of the people who has just always been *there*. She was 83 and has just died at home following a short illness. What a sad way to head into the weekend.

You’re not from around here, are you?

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In a recent thread Dai mentioned living in 4 different countries, and I know from other posts that we have UK born members living in Sweden, Italy, Australia, Japan … and many, many more. If you’re one of them, or for that matter anyone else whose life has taken them to a country other than that of their birth, how did that come about? And how is it working out for you (or not if that’s the unfortunate case)?

I’ve moved around Britain from childhood in Glasgow, to teens in North Wales, to adult life in northwest, then southwest, then eastern England. Although that makes me a nomad among my friends I’m an amateur by the standards of many on here. Tell us your stories if you’d like to share them.

Who hasn’t had Covid?

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On Boxing Day evening The Light and I headed to a local pub to meet with a group of old friends. There were about 10 of us, but a couple of others couldn’t make it as they were either suffering or just recovering from Covid.

I spent most of the evening chatting to Margaret as we hadn’t had a catch up for a while. For 90 minutes or so we sat haunch to haunch on a pub bench as we chatted, laughed and occasionally burst into song. Two days later Margaret messaged to warn me that having felt ropy on the 27th (she doesn’t drink alcohol so it wasn’t the after effects of the pub) she had tested positive for Covid on the 28th.

So far I’ve had no sign of the slightest cough or ache. I realise I’m possibly in the incubation stage, though from what I’ve read people with Omicron variants typically know about it within a few days. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge I’ve never had Covid. It’s possible I’ve been infected but asymptomatic and spreading disease like a mid-Essex Typhoid Mary but if so it’s entirely unknowingly.

I wore masks and so on when » Continue Reading.

Your Best Night Out of 2023

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We’ve had albums and TV, and I dare say books and films are to come, so what were your best nights out of the year? Thanks to my desktop calendar I know my list includes 34 nights out including the occasional afternoon matinee, with 2 more to come (The Unthanks winter tour at Earth in Hackney on Sunday and The Nutcracker at the Royal Opera House on the Saturday before Christmas).

The largest category is gigs with 14 and my highlights of the year were Peat and Diesel at Chinnery’s in Southend on Sea and The Unthanks reprising 3 early albums in an all-dayer at The Barbican in London. Apart from both fitting the broad category of folk music there is not much to link Peat and Diesel’s sweatbox-singalong-ceilidh and the dark Northumbrian broodings of the Unthanks but they were equally rewarding in their own way, and both sent me home transported by the power of live music.

Comedy is next with 9 entries, and the funniest thing I saw all year was Ross Noble being interviewed for Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast. Ross is the funniest man alive, and his improvisation technique meant that wherever it started the » Continue Reading.

John Byrne RIP

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Obituary

Another one to add to yesterday’s toll of the deceased, I read that playwright and artist John Byrne has died at the age of 83.

He will be best remembered as the writer of Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin’ Heart for television, but I also love his colourful artwork, You might know his 50′ tall Billy Connolly mural in Glasgow, or the album cover of the compilation Beatles Ballads. A decade or more ago I was thrilled to stumble on a sale exhibition of his more recent work in a gallery in Edinburgh and the life and joy of those paintings lives with me still.

Thea Gilmore

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Venue:

Union Chapel, Islington

Date: 12/10/2023

This was Thea Gilmore’s only band gig of the year and, she announced on social media and from the stage, her first since 2017. She was wrong about that. I saw her with a band in the same venue in 2019 on the Small World Turning tour. As we subsequently discovered that was the ‘divorce tour’. She and ex-husband Nigel Stonier shared a stage, although Thea had called time on a relationship which she had come to realise was abusive. It’s no wonder she has managed to let that one pass from memory.

She has played some completely solo gigs since, but it was still a brave choice to open the show by taking to the stage alone to perform This Girl is Taking Bets, possibly her best known song, in a radical new arrangement of loops and samples. The lyrics wrapped around the newer songs/spoken word pieces Niece Normal Woman and Friendly Little Heart Attack. In the ornate space of Union Chapel the effect was stunning and met with huge applause.

The rest of the show was heavily based around her latest, self-titled, and as yet unreleased, new album. Vinyl shortages are » Continue Reading.

Robbie Robertson RIP

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Obituary

Aw, man. I was too young for The Band (with or without Dylan), but caught up on them later of course. It was those none-more-CD-age solo albums and *that* voice rather than his guitar which first caught my ear.

All together now, ‘She said “Hang the rich …”’

YeahYeahYeah

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Not a rushed version of the chorus of an early Beatles number but the latest, seemingly universal, vocal tick to infuriate me.

I like to listen to podcasts as I work. I say ‘listen’ but really I just let them rumble away in the background most of the time, and wouldn’t be able to answer simple questions about the content immediately after. On the occasions I do actually listen rather than just hear I’ve recently noticed that every podcast host has adopted the habit of agreeing with a guest’s responses to questions by saying, ‘YeahYeahYeah’.

The first one I noticed was Dan Schreiber on his We Can be Weirdoes podcast, possibly because Dan in his enthusiasm sometimes stretches it into YeahYeahYeahYeahYeah. But he’s far from alone. Richard Herring on his Leicester Square show, Alastair Campbell on The Rest Is Politics …it’s everywhere, at least among men.

When did YeahYeahYeah become such a widespread interjection, and how can we make it stop?

Tony Bennett RIP

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Obituary

The last of the golden era of lounge singers has died at the great age of 96. It was a long life that always seemed to be well lived, and I’m sure many younger people will at least be familiar with his name as he kept up to date by recording duets with Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga and so on. He seemed like a good egg did Tony.