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Good vibes from the Vaskivuori Upper Secondary School (Virtual) Chamber Choir!

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Upper-secondary kids all over Scandinavia and the rest of Europe are currently carrying out their courses as distance learning from home.

I take my hats off to all the teachers who, almost overnight, have had to make the transition from classroom teaching to on-line learning. Our own @Declan in Germany is one of them. And let’s not forget all the kids whose school life has been so violently disrupted and who have had to struggle to adapt to the new situation. Studying from home when the whole family are locked in together is not optimal.

Mercifully, it is not all doom and gloom. I rang a friend during the week and could hear his daughter, who is studying music, singing away as she did choir practice on line. And my pal in Turku, just sent me this uplifting clip of the Vaskivuori Upper Secondary School (Virtual) Chamber Choir!

More power to these Finnish choristers and all the singers and other musicians who are still making music. It is possible to live la vida lockdown without going loco!

Is there ny other on-line music making we should know about?

» Continue Reading.

Viva los perros! Viva los walkies!

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How much are those walkies in the window? The dog with the waggly tail

I was chatting yesterday with my pal on Ibiza about the quarantine in Spain. It is really draconian and you can get big fines if you are outdoors without a very legitimate reason. It must be ghastly for families with small children who want to go out to the playground.

However if you have a dog, you are allowed to take it for walkies. Some people are lending or even renting their pooches to others so that they can get some fresh air.

Some of those Iberian hounds have never had so much exercise in their lives.

Any other examples of necessity being the mother of invention in these troubled times?

Ma Baker, our local Boney M-themed bakery here in Kärrtorp, are now offering cycle deliveries for all those currently working or studying at home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHq2qrFUlGY

Enjoying Monopoly in Apulia; playing Solitaire in Monopoli

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Lockdown is lurching ever nearer.

Yesterday the Swedish government prohibited all cultural and sporting events for more than 50 people. (Shit! That means I’ll have to cancel that AW Mingle I was planning).

When I took my daughter to school, this morning, I heard that all schools have now been closed in Denmark. The streets, Metro and shops here are a little emptier than usual. I passed my beekeeper neighbour who was off to the forest for the day. He told me that the chaffinches had arrived. Nature is magnificently indifferent to all our human troubles, . Yesterday I read Gary’s account of being stuck in Lockdown Monopoli:

“I’m in lockdown. Dullsville and then some! Can’t leave the neighbourhood without filling in forms officially declaring the reason (to score some spliff apparently not a valid reason); all schools, universities, cinemas, churches, gyms, etc etc closed; bars and restaurants closed at 6pm; all public gatherings banned; all sporting events, concerts, weddings etc. cancelled. Food shops are open with a maximum of 4 people allowed inside at a time; supermarkets have limited opening times (with face masks and gloves obligatory and everyone looking understandably miserable). Everyone strongly encouraged to just stay » Continue Reading.

From brawling boomers and incestuous Italians to sapphic sirens and secretive Victoria – a brief history of the duet

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That Salwarpe is a scallywag!

Yesterday his Dua Lipa thread morphed into a reboot of the final scene of John Carpenter’s The Thing. He and I were the only two contributors left. And as we stared at each other by the light of the fire, the icy winds began to kick in.

To pass the time, he asked me to watch two clips of modern duets performed by two female artists and then tell him which I preferred and why. So what did I get? Masseduction/One Kiss by Dua Lipa and St Vincent and then Gone by Christine (of Christine and the Queens) and Charlie XCX.

I enjoyed both tracks. All four ladies are both very talented and rather charismatic and good looking. They are having a lot of fun and flirting with the audience and each other like mad. Being very diligent, I had to Tigger Test both tracks and watch them six times. Scooorchio!! It was rather like watching a series of sultry underwear ads by that secretive lass, Victoria. (I of course have never watched any of these ads. I am just imagining what they might be like.) This was all followed by a long dip in » Continue Reading.

The Rolicking World of Rock and Roll Real Estate

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Estate Agents are an imaginative bunch ready to use all kinds of devious tricks and dodgy descriptions to sell their properties.

Over on the AW Facebook page, Mousey posted a piece about a Topanga Canyon home that is asking $1.45 million. A pretty des res but the punchline is that Neil Young recorded After the Goldrush in the cellar.

Over to you. Are there any other properties whose value would be enhanced by their cultural associations?

Reg Dwight’s council flat in Pinner Green?

Björk’s birthplace?

Captain Beefhearts’s condo?

Beethoven’s bungalow?

The cottage that Traffic decamped to in Berkshire?

If you don’t know the actual adress, you can always be a little creative with the truth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZtJWJe_K_w

The soundtrack of our scribes: Attica Locke and the Texas blues

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Our book circle are currently reading Bluebird Bluebird, the award-winning crime novel by Texan, Afro-American writer Attica Locke. She now lives in California but the book is set in the part of East Texas where she grew up. Despite relocation, Texas still has a powerful hold over her. Particularly Route 59, which runs up through the state from the Mexican border and continues to the Canadian border. Two of the focal points of the book are located on that highway: Geneva’s diner where the black folks eat and Jeff’s Juice House, the ice house (aka honky tonk) just down the road which is the hangout for the Texas Aryan Brotherhood.

The novel is named after Bluebird, a John Lee Hooker track mentioned in the book. It is actually a cover version of Bluebird Blues by John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson (1914-48) from 1937. Not to be confused with the other blues artist with a similar name Alex Ford, a.k.a. “Sonny Boy Williamson” (1912-65). Thanks DuCool for pointing that out.)

Blues music is a constant presence in the novel and Attica Locke has commented that she often listens to music when she is writing. “I’ve had a playlist with every one » Continue Reading.

The magnificent Joy Crookes …. and other artists we have criminally neglected

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Incroyable!! The wonderfully talented Ms Crookes from South London has been mentioned only once on this website.

Feedback File praised her warmly in his review of the Later show but then the poor girl was then swept away in a series of comments about Bungle Bear, Victor Borge, bagels, Eric Bogle, bugles, beige carpets, Mary J Blige and Plastic Bertrand. Unbelievable!

Here is a thread to put that right and praise any other artists you have discovered recently or that you feel deserve a little more attention from us. For example, I’m off to an Ian Noe gig on Thursday thanks to DuCool. Who else deserves a mention?

I discovered Joy while listening to the Guardian’s mammoth Best Songs of 2019 Spotify Playlist. Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuTDKlyXbQg

A vampy, jet-set hologram scoffing Tex Mex nosh

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This week I was wondering about when the word “teenager” first came into use. I was rather surprised to discover that as early as 1944, a magazine, Seventeen, was started in the US, with teenage girls as the target readers-

Anyway, while doing so, I stumbled across the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s Time Traveller feature. Just enter a year and you can see which new words entered the printed language in the USA that year

A magnificently entertaining and educational time-waster if you are interested in words.

1949, for example, saw the arrival of LP, Modern Hebrew, overnighter, B movie, vampy, hologram, jet-set, drive-through, clock radio, writer’s block, sixpack and Tex Mex.

If you have a dabble, do share your discoveries with us.

I am sure that other on-line dictionaries have similar features. Anyone got any favourites?

It’s time for a fanclub, wasteland, mutant ninja turtle, dirtbag and kicks thread!

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In this morning’s Guardian there was an article about Big Mouth and Sex Education two Netflix shows about the trials and tribulations of being a modern teenager. I knew about Big Mouth as our teenage son has binge-watched all the episodes and praised it warmly for its no-holds-barred approach to the facts of life. What did I have at his age? Oz magazine and the Maclean’s Biology Coursebook. Reading about frogspawn and tadpoles was an enormous help to me.

Anyway, here’s a thread to hear about your impressions of life as lived by teenagers in 2020. I sometimes reflect on what similarities, if any, there are between his teen years and mine. Not many! Rock and Roll is certainly completely out of the picture. Guitar music is something for oldies. Grime, trap and hip hop are the thing. There are very few points where our musical tastes overlap. We did go to a Kendrick Lamar concert together and both enjoyed it but that’s about it.

Teenagers are a fickle bunch. Biograf Reflexen, the cinema I do vollie work, was recently offered the chance to be the venue for a new film club for teenagers and I was appointed contact person. » Continue Reading.

Lontoolainen Tate Modern hankki Britanniassa asuvan Konttisen lähiökuvat kokoelmiinsa.

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This morning, my pal Juha in Turku sent me a link to a short BBC archive film from 1974 about Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, a young photographer from Helsinki who had relocated to the town of Ryker, up there in Geordieland. Gradually she got to know the local people and to take photos of them.

Her pictures of the community are rather wonderful, as is the way she describes the locals. “So gentle and caring.” It was a community which was about to change with the demolition of the terraces and the building of new housing.

A quick Google revealed that she is still living up there and still taking warm, very personal photos. Has anyone heard of her?

And has anyone else been browsing through the Beeb’s archives?

I just found an interview John Carpenter from 1979.

And Miss World putting an ad in a newsagent’s window for a husband

Please share your discoveries with us!

Fleabag at your local fleapit

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About once a month, Reflexen, the local cinema where I am a volunteer, screens live opera direct from the Met in New York. I’ve not been to one of these screenings yet, but they are very popular. Next up is Porgy and Bess, which is very tempting.

Yesterday evening, I joined Mr and Mrs DuCool at the Bio Rio to see the National Theatre production of Fleabag, Phoebe Waller- Bridge’s one-woman which she very brilliantly transformed into the TV series of the same name.

It is the second time I’ve seen “live” theatre at the cinema, the first being One man, Two Guvnors starring James Corden. I was a bit dubious about whether it would work. Both turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable evenings. Yesterday’s performance was not transmitted live but was a recording. To my surprise, it made no difference.

Thanks to modern cinema technology, people from Kiruna to Katmandu, can now enjoy the latest productions from the stages of London, Paris, New York and Grimsby. What’s not to like?

Has anybody else seen theatre or opera at their local cinema?.

I was telling my local greengrocer geezer about it this morning and he was not convinced that it » Continue Reading.

Sewer Robot’s Treasure Map from Lord Lodestone and Little Gary’s Awesome Adventure!

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If I post anything more on Lodestone’s magnum opus, the 2019 Album Poll thread, I fear it will break the internet. So instead I have created this bastard offspring fan thread.

For the last few days I have been foraging slowly and playfully through all the comments and discovering all kinds of treats. Not only from artists I know well (The Delines,Divine Comedy, Unthanks, Waterboys, Joe Jackson, Sigird. Tove Lo, Bassekou Kouyate, Sarah Klang, Robert Forster, Underworld, Tinariwen, etc), but also from many I have never heard of.

Lorelle meets the Obsolete, for example, was not a promising band name. Got that wrong! A Mexican techno duo whose atmospheric pop I fell for at once.

By contrast International Teachers of Pop was my favourite band name of the week, And their tunes did not disappoint. If the bottom falls out of TEFL and Swedes lose interest in modal verbs, prepositions, the subjunctive voice and cockney rhyming slang, I may send them my CV.

All sorts of interesting titbits emerged on the thread. For instance, I have realised that every music lover in the UK should at some point visit the Northwich Folk Club. The Cheshire Cat has a very lively » Continue Reading.

Welcome to the new Twenties!

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Those magnificent musicians from the Postmodern Jukebox have been expressing their delight at the arrival of the New Twenties. And if the new decade inspires them to even more wonderful cover versions, I am not complaining.

I’d be inclined to suggest that Scott Bradlee and his colleagues never left the 1920s. They are the perfect houseband from one of Jay Gatsby’s parties, and have just been waiting for the return of the flappers.

So what, if anything are the new 20s like to have in common with the 1920s?

Personally, I would be very happy to see a new Jazz Age and Weimar Republic.

A decade that started full of promise but later went very pear-shaped….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=408Uvz-nNpA&list=PLJZH8sevmMq4kBcfUJmmkXVJ0jX-bS8Nw&index=3&t=0s

All Our Yesteryules ….

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Xmas! What an orgy of nostalgia Yule tends to be.

And TV programming just encourages our wallowing in memories of Xmas Past.

Morecambe and Wise, Wallace and Gromit, Steptoe and Son, Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Xmas in Wales, The Great Escape, Thatcher and Scargill, the Black and White Minstrel Show, Xmas number ones on TOTP…

We can even get nostalgic about stuff that does not belong to our own personal past. Like this charming Xmas song by Frank Sidebottom.

Now I am a Swede I too can get nostalgic about Scando stuff like My summer with Monica, HasseoTage, Folkhemmet, Fem Myror and Vikings like Erik Bloodaxe.

We are binge watching cult tv kids show 5 Ants today.

Is anyone else indulging in a warm, soothing wallow in a waterhole down Memory Lane?

Or are you making plans for a bright, shiny, Nigelesque, high-tech future?

https://youtu.be/pdnsUIGZPIY

Gråt inte, Greta! Ät din gröt! Greetings from the glens. Your gritter’s going great guns!

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Forget being named Time Person of the Year. Sweden’s young eco-warrior has received a far greater honour.

Scottish school kids ave voted to name one of the Roads Department winter vehicles after her. Please welcome …… Gritter Thunberg.

Here’s an interactive map that allows you to follow the exploits of Gritty Gonzalez, The Plougher of Scotland, Grittalica and many more,

Previous winners of the Time Person the Year are a motley crew including Stalin, Hitler, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon and Middle Americans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDVqM4iueMg

Dreary or Derry? Killing Time or Killing Eve? Grateful Dead or Dead Grateful? And will Parasite turn out to be Marmite

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Gary was not enthusiastic about those Londonderry Lasses. Grown women playing teenagers did not work for him. I do enjoy the fact that we rarely reach consensus here.

Those of you who did enjoy Derry Girls may be interested in this podcast interview with its creator.

So what else was marmite in 2019? Based on the 2019 TV and film round up, little consensus could be reached on The Irishman, Once upon a time in Hollywood, Killing Eve, Years and Years….

What about music. books etc?

Slightly off piste, here in Sweden, Michael Handke receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature was extremely divisive.

https://player.fm/series/an-irishman-abroad-2361785/lisa-mcgee-episode-326

Farewell Marie Fredriksson

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Very sad news today to hear about the passing of the Swedish singer, Marie Fredriksson, only 61 years old.I was an enormous fan. I think she was the first artist singing in Swedish that I ever saw in concert here in Stockholm.

If you know of her, it will probably be as one half of per Gessle’s Dressed for Success Hitmakers, Roxette were a perfectly decent pop band, with some very catchy songs that were Big In Brazil and many other countries.

However,on her far more personal and introspective solo albums, and in general when she sung in Swedish, she was sublime and reached a very special level of intimacy and intensity.

One of the greats.

2019 – Best Films and TV programmes

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Here’s a chance to tell us about the best movies and TV shows you have watched in the last 12 months. Not a poll, just a chance to share your favourites: the more obscure and esoteric, the better!

You enjoyed a magnificent zombie-comedy-musical from Albania recently? We want to hear about it!

For example, this week I saw Another Day of Life (or Jeszcze dzień życia as you probably know it). A Spanish animated film based on Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuscinski’s, book of the same name: the powerful story of the three months he spent reporting on the war in Angola in 1975. Excellent!

Movies have different releases date globally, so don’t be too pernickety about that. For me, Cuaron’s magnificent Roma was a 2019 film because that was when I got a chance to see it at the cinema. For you, it was perhaps 2018.

We got Netflix recently and it is responsible for some of my favourites of the year.

Films – Roma and Marriage Story (I saw both at the cinema in fact) TV – the wonderful Derry Girls. And Mrs KFD binge watched The Crown which seemed to be rather good.

Old news for you but » Continue Reading.

Excellent Equestrians – Lorenzo the Flying Frenchman and Ms Jessica Springsteen

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The world is on tenterhooks about the Madrid Climate Conference. The UK is on the verge of a momentous general election that can have dramatic global consequences. That rough beast, Trump, his hour come round at last, has slouched into Watford to be boorish.

We live in dramatic times. December 2019 is a month when The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem to be lurking in the wings. But I’d like to take a moment or two to talk about showjumping and bareback riding.

Last weekend was the Stockholm International Horse Show and Mrs KFD’s happy place is watching such equestrian events on telly. It’s all exciting stuff but a few minutes goes a long way with me. However I was very impressed when she showed me a clip of “Lorenzo the Flying Frenchman.” He was in Stockholm to entertain not compete and he certainly did. Riding bareback with ten wild mountain stallions who obey his every whim. If I saw his display in a movie, I’d be convinced it was trick photography.

I was also fascinated to hear who had won the award for best rider at the event: Jessica Springsteen. All the Bossheads here probably already know that » Continue Reading.

“The Most Beautiful Sound Next to Silence.” Two Teutonic tonics!

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No snow has fallen yet here in Stockholm which means that November has been rather dark, glum and gloomy. But mercifully my week has been brightened up enormously by a stupendous film at our film club at Bio Reflexen and a really top notch gig at the Fasching jazz club. And by complete coincidence, both are from Germany. And well worth looking out for.

The film was Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck’s Never look away (Verk ohne autor). He won an Oscar for The Lives of Others and this is in the same class. It is the story of a boy growing up in Dresden during the 1930s and experiencing the horrors of Nazi intolerance at first hand and then becoming a successful artist in West Germany. That synopsis may not sound so original or exciting but I promise you the director is a marvellous story-teller. The film is three hours long with no pee break but I was spellbound. Deeply moving, thought-provoking and at moments very amusing. A masterpiece.

When the audience stands around outside the cinema talking about the movie they’ve just seen, you know that the screening has been a success. This was one of the most popular » Continue Reading.

современная жизнь

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Escalators, roller skates, hotline bling, skinheads, microwave ovens, polaroid cameras, FM Radio, whiggers, bikinis, gramophone records, flappers,….Here’s a thread for songs about the sundry inventions, trends, fads and fashions of modern life.

Last week I was in Flemingsberg south of Stockholm, It is the location of an enormous hospital and Södertörn University. The architecture is very brutalist. Concrete blocks everywhere. Very DDR. Anyway, to reach these one has to use an enormous escalator. To my delight, they have now added blue lights which give it a pleasantly jazzy feel. All that I lacked was some mellow background music.

And would you believe it? Respected Swedish jazzman Per “Texas” Johansson has named his latest album after that escalator: “De långa rulltrapporna I Flemingberg.” Rather good it is too.

The story behind it is that Per hung his sax up for a while and retrained as an anaesthetic nurse, I suspect he knows Flemingsberg rather well.

How many songs about escalators can you think of? Please post them and any other songs about Techno Trousers or other invaluable additions to our modern lifestyle.

One thing is for certain: the Flemingsberg Escalator is certainly not Over the Hill.

» Continue Reading.

となりのトトロ

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How many times have you left a cinema with a song or piece of music indelibly ingrained in your memory?

That certainly was the case when I saw John Carpenter’s Assault on Precint 13. That menacing, synthy theme tune he wrote is a killer. And I think it is also true for many people who see Miyazaki’s 1988 anime masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro. We had a school cinema screening yesterday morning at Bio Reflexen. 180 lively, bubbly six and seven year olds. And more than a few of them came out singing the insanely catchy theme tune.

Re-watching the movie yesterday made me realise how much the music contributed. I had to google to find out that the composer was Joe Hisaishi, who has had a long career writing music for Studio Ghibli. Now I want to know more about him.

Grease? The Sound of Music? Battleship Potemkin? Hair? The Producers? Amadeus? Cabaret? Which film soundtracks left made the greatest impression?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ4c8TQpDRg

Absolutely Ooky! A tribute to Vic Mizzy, Ian Stott and all the other household names whose names we don’t actually know.

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I was at the flicks this afternoon and there was a wonderful moment at the end of the Addams Family reboot. The original theme tune played and the whole audience (youngish kids and their parents) started finger snapping along. The most famous finger snap in popular music?

Another moment of musical magic occurred on Sunday afternoon. Biograf Reflexen, where I am a volunteer, was hosting a sneak preview of SVT’s Vår Tid är Nu (an enormously popular Swedish drama series). It is set in the 1960s and the audience were encouraged to dress up in period gear. To add to the he atmosphere we had booked local combo, the Flåset Brass Octet, to play outside the cinema. Really into the spirit of things, they turned up in uniforms that Sergeant Pepper’s band would have been proud of. And their repertoire was ace: Yellow Submarine, Putting on the Ritz and many more vintage faves.

What was especially pleasing was how much the children in the square were digging the band. Particularly memorable were two tiny tots dressed in bright yellow raingear who were really getting into the groove and moshing around joyfully.

To my delight, Flåset played the Wallace and Gromit » Continue Reading.

The people who get your record played on the radio in exchange for cocaine and sex. Or perhaps in this case haggis and a wee dram?

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Sometimes the most wonderful things crop up on YouTube as the result of me watching something else.

Recently, I was treated to a clip of an intimate 1983 gig by Randy Newman at the Odeon in NYC. To help him out on Rider in the Rain, he is joined by Ry Cooder and Linda Ronstadt. Three great musicians clearly having a lot of fun together. That put a big smile on my face too.

And there are many more unexpected things out there. Tom Jones singing with C.S.N & Y. Rhianna live with Calvin Harris at the Brit Awards. Beth Orton and Terry Callier singing Dolphins on Later. Not to mention Rammstein feat Ken Dodd and the Diddymen plus Jools Holland on boogie woogie piano.

Scorchio! The list just goes on and on.

Anyway, all this got me thinking of putting together a dream evening of music for my own pleasure. And for yours too of course! We are in Dreamland so artists being dead is no obstacle. The Taybridge Bar would do very nicely as a venue. And as I have been listening to a lot of Shetland and Scottish stuff recently, there will be a » Continue Reading.