Musings on the byways of popular culture
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Mrs thep’s ecstatic response to my roasted pumpkin soup, which started out as an attempt to make pumpkin taste of something, made me think we haven’t had a cooking thread for a while.
So what are the dishes that get you basking in the approval of your nearest and dearest, or indeed yourselves? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Couple of winterish recipes below.
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In some kind of weird latter-day Jimmie Nicol deal, I got co-opted into the Beatles. McCartney was absent for some reason, so I was to play bass at the evening’s gig. Lennon was the only HJH around, no sign of the other two. The set list seemed to include a lot of latter-day Lennon – I said I didn’t know that stuff too well, plus playing bass would be a problem since I wasn’t left-handed and didn’t seem to have a bass of my own. Lennon just brushed this aside – it’ll be fine, he said.
It wasn’t going to be a huge gig – just a couple of amps and a drum kit set up on what looked like a bomb site. I didn’t seem to have an amp either, but Lennon said I could share his (possibly a reference to my time in unpopular beat combo Paul and the Dynamics, when I and the rhythm guitarist shared a Vox AC30).
Next problem: the Beatle Bass didn’t have a strap. Cue a dream subplot, where I eventually got one from Ali, the brother of my stepson’s partner. He’s an actual pro musician. The strap was made entirely of brass, » Continue Reading.
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I’m listening, with considerable please, to the audio book of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories as read by Stephen Fry. His fruity tones and his knack for accents and voices (which only occasionally lets him down) make a terrific accompaniment to my morning walk or cooking sessions. However, today it struck me, not for the first time, that a fair few of his characters could equally be obscure psych acts from the 60s and 70s. So, chums, which is which? You decide…
Wilson McKinley The Duke of Burlington Adelbert Gruner Erica Pomerance Warren S Richardson Jr Thaddeus Sholto John Scott Eccles Lobby Loyde Helen Stoner Pugh Rogefelt Jefferson Hope Alrune Rod Prince of Colonna Samuel Prody Grimesby Roylott Jasper Wrath Langdale Pike Ettie Shafter
No prizes, just for fun etc. Hardcore Sherlock heads will have no trouble, I imagine. To help the rest of you along, here’s some Sherlock music played by the Symphony Orchestra of the Moscow Aviation Institute. Obviously…
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Here’s something different – Blackbird sung in in the Mi’kmaq language which is spoken by a mere 11,000 people in North America.
I bet nobody can come up with any Beatles songs sung in other unusual languages, eh readers?
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Although I have been through a rapprochement with a lot of the artists I despised in my youth, Tony Bennett has never quite made it back. In fact I struggled to find a vid I could bear to listen to. Possibly it’s the Bonzos’ fault.
But I was fascinated by this PBS interview, much of which was completely new to me. He hasn’t spent all of his long life in the lounge.
He did have his musical moments too though…
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Back at the end of 2019 the ever-essential CrimeReads blog published this list, which passed me by at the time. I’ve only just come across it, and on the assumption that others who might be interested missed it too, here it is. I’ve heard of perhaps two of them.
A lot are on Netflix or other streaming services, in Oz at any rate, and the rest are rentable. Only 3 are completely unavailable here.
Fill yer boots. You’re welcome.
https://crimereads.com/the-most-underrated-crime-films-of-the-decade/
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I was bored, ok? So here’s a Spotify playlist of death disks, some famous, eg Leader of the Pack, Terry, Ode to Billie Joe, some not, eg (All I Have Left is) My Johhny’s Hubcap…some are more serious than others.
This all kicked off because this week’s Spotify Discover playlist included The Girl on Death Row by Duane Eddy and that scamp Lee Hazlewood. I’d never heard it before, and it got me thinking back to a time when records featuring teenage carnage were a thing. Hard to imagine now…
Feel free to come up with more – I got bored all over again around 1970. Deram will probably say that nobody made proper death discs after that anyway.
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I think we’ve all flirted with dullness from time to time, haven’t we friends? Perhaps the Mods could negotiate a corporate mention of the Dull Men’s Club for us? Roundabouts! Bricks! Mail boxes! Milk bottles! Park benches! Drain covers! It’s all here…
Why, only the other day I noticed that our wheelie bin was made in 1987, it says so on the lid. I bet there are wheelie bin collectors in the Dull Men’s Club, and I bet they’d be interested in my vintage wheelie bin.
Any dull interests you’d like to share?
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Another of my boyhood heroes has left us at 97. He had the Right Stuff.
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I was having a Dire Straits moment yesterday when the thought popped into my head: it should be Consultants of Swing.
This got me thinking, what else? I Want to Hold Your Gland is disqualified on grounds of being about 57 years old.
I was quite please with Please Police Me until Spotify told me that at least two people got there before me.
Don’t Look Back in Bangor?
(I Can’t Get No) Fascist Action?
Don’t Let the Son Go Down on Me?
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“FAKE BLUES!!!” – D Trump
https://twitter.com/springsteen/status/1321507795150106624?s=20
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Quite a lot of love for short stories round here, so I’m happy to tell you that the New York Times in their infinite wisdom, have put 30 free short sotries online by authors such as Margaret Atwood, Afterword fave David Mitchell, Colm Toibin, Leila Slimani, Edwige Danticat and others.
You don’t have to create an account, you can log in with Google.
You’re welcome.
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This is a thing. I’ve spent an hour or so down this YouTube rabbit hole, and it’s a bit fascinating. What on earth would Jamal AKA Jamal get out of Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz? Quite a lot, it turns out, and, to his great credit, he doesn’t say you guys twice every sentence like some of them do. You’re welcome to join me down the rabbit hole.
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All good fun until somebody gets hurt… 🙂
https://twitter.com/ryleywalker/status/1275821530199609344?s=20
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Not according to Edith search function. I’d never heard of this lot until I stumbled on them, can’t remember how – it was last night and it was a different world then – and I’m in love. The two perfectly matched voices, the quiet, stripped-back instrumentation, the understated yet powerful songs – soothing balm for the soul. I’m in love.
They describe their music as secular gospel, which is as good a definition as any. They’ve been going for years, but I’d never come across them before. See what you think.
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I keep reading about how people in lockdown are learning foreign languages, writing novels, learning to play the trombone, building extensions and so on.
Not me…my achievements are more modest, but I’d still like to share them with you.
1. The magnetic soap holder kept falling off the bathroom wall because the sticky pad had lost its stickiness. It is now screwed to the wall. 2. I have trained myself to wash up after every meal, not every two days or so as previous. This is very good for morale. 3. I have cut my own hair. This was not good for morale, but at least it’s something I’ve never done before. 4. I listened to Dylan for an entire day. 5. I got ‘squinted’ for 221 points in Scrabble. 6. In some ways this is the most exciting…I have curated my bookmarks. Don’t know about you, but my bookmarks were an unholy mess, stretching back over years and several computers – bookmarks for road trips that never happened, long-dead DIY projects, ISPs and telcos that I left years ago, those bookmarks that Apple hands to you when you fire up Safari for the first time, several near-identical toolbar folders, » Continue Reading.
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This.
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I was looking through an American recipe website today, and found myself getting, yes, unreasonably irritated by the various ways in which US culinary language diverges from ours. For instance: broil = grill heavy cream = double cream broth = stock cilantro = coriander (and yes, I know cilantro is Spanish) Kosher salt = salt frosting = icing ground beef = mince minced garlic = crushed garlic There are more, no doubt.
As I say, totally unreasonable – I know what they all mean, and it’s by no means the only way US English has diverged, but it still nurdles my nadgers.
In these days of lockdown, what are you unreasonably irritated by? Do tell.
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This is an excellent read, and very persuasive. Not massively comforting, mind…
I was Ballard’s editor for a while in the 70s, including Crash and High Rise, and I’ve never quite got over the sense of unease.
https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/04/why-we-are-living-jg-ballard-s-world
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Was going to post this on the triple-hamper How are we all doing? thread, but it might get lost there, so…
I love having my savage breast soothed, and I love watching orchestras doing what they do close up. The Berlin Philharmonic have made all their concerts free to watch on their website. Perfect. You just need to register using the voucher.
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I doubt this’ll get me a hamper, but so be it. I suspect we can look forward to a series of increasingly demented posts from stir-crazy self-isolators confined to quarters…
I’ve spent all afternoon listening to a 4-hour Spotify playlist of the music of Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). In keeping with my congenital Francophilia, I’ve always loved French music, though there’s a certain sort of honking French tenor that sets my teeth on edge. (None of that here though.) But I really fell for Poulenc when the Brisbane choir I was in performed his Gloria, with a children’s orchestra, a teenage soprano and a 90-year-old conductor. It was one of the most intense musical experiences of my life.
Poulenc’s music is endlessly inventive; you sense he was a man of both bottomless sensitivity and puckish humour. He can be ethereally beautiful, he can be whimsically jaunty – sometimes he makes me laugh. He can be both in the same piece. I find his music immensely comforting, and I can use some of that right now. I have a memory of some love for FP round here at some point, so perhaps this will hit the spot.
Here’s ethereally beautiful.
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The last surviving member of the great John Coltrane Quartet, and a great pianist in his own right, has left us. Jase from Sales would probably have a view about them reforming in heaven, but in the meantime, feast your ears on this.
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Year: 2019 Director: Sam Mendes
“From the director of Skyfall” yells the poster and the trailer, which is true but not the point.
The story is simple enough, though I won’t go into much detail because it’s hard to avoid spoilers (steer clear of Wikipedia and the trailer, come to that). Two lance-corporals are given the job of slogging their way over nine miles of what may or may not be no man’s land to deliver a message to a Colonel who is due to lead his men over the top in the morning to chase what he thinks is the Germans in retreat. In fact, it’s a cunning German tactical withdrawal and he’s leading his men to certain death.
The much noted “one continuous take” is a bit of a misnomer. What it actually means is that there are no cutaways back to base, or back to Blighty – the story starts at A and continues uninterrupted to Z, where it ends. The action of the film takes, at a guess, 12 hours, so QED. No matter, it’s a brilliant, continually absorbing and gruelling two hours. There were times I just wanted it all to stop, thoroughly gruelled, not » Continue Reading.
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Those of us who are that way inclined can probably agree that Billy Strayhorn was a genius. He became Duke Ellington’s main muse at the age of 23 and collaborated with him for the rest of his life until his early death at the age of 52.
My favourite Strayhorn song, and in my top ten favourite songs altogether, is Lush Life. Top instrumental version is Coltrane’s, top vocal, Ella Fitzgerald or Blossom Dearie, can’t decide. Strayhorn wrote the song, music and lyrics, between 1933 and 1936. That’s 18 to 21…those chords! Those lyrics!
Now this has surfaced – the very first recording, Carnegie Hall on November 13, 1948. Strayhorn on piano, Kay Davis on vox. Another magnificent version to add to the collection. Do give it a listen. H/t to Richard Williams, who retweeted the tweet.
