Musings on the byways of popular culture
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I dreamed about Liz Truss last night. We were collaborating on a scheme for the illegal downloading of copyright materials and drifting into a situation of redundant intimacy, as Alan Bennett put it. In my defence, it’s no more bonkers than some of her other schemes.
Anybody else? Just me? Any other nocturnal weirdness or cheesy dreams?
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Stumbled on this tonight – a 2-hour interview with the great Albert Lee, going through his entire life from his first band in 1959. The names keep coming in astonishing progression, from Dickie Pride via the Everly Brothers, Clapton, Chris Farlowe, Emmylou, the Crickets…the list goes on. He loses the thread and drifts off a bit from time to time – he’s even older than I am, after all – and the interviewer is often out of his depth, being a mere child. But definitely worth a watch if Albert has ever struck a chord. Lots of guitar chat if that helps, and lots of great stories. The guy should write a book.
‘Albert, would you like to come and play with us for a few days, because James [Burton] has got to go and play with Elvis.’ – Emmylou Harris.
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Apple have just released a playlist of the 100 most Shazamed songs of the 20 years since Shazam first appeared in our lives. As a some sort of twisted public service I’ve made a playlist – I couldn’t be arsed to do all 100, but here’s the top 25. I think Somebody That I Used to Know is the only one I actually knew. Some of it’s quite nice, most of it’s terrible. No doubt Dance Monkey is no.1 because of millions of people saying what the fuck was that? NB: 3 Ed Sheerans.
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That got your attention, didn’t it? Didn’t it? Here is young Dimash, from Kazakhstan, coming second in the Chinese version of The Voice. (First place was reserved in advance for a Chinese singer, obviously.) His first album went platinum in China in 37 seconds.
He’s no Ed Sheeran, obviously, but worth a listen if only to see what the (all right, a) human voice is capable of. Six octaves in this case.
For added entertainment value, the clip contains gobsmacked Chinese hipsters.
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I’ve been trying to wallop a stinking cold into submission with whisky for a couple of hours so I may regret this, but here goes…
Having watched a lot of people completely losing their shit in video reactions to Queen’s Somebody to Love (Live in Montreal, 1981), I have to say that this is the one. Perhaps even people who claim not to like Queen might be impressed by this. Why?
1. This is a tight band absolutely on top of its game, no help from backline vocals or mysterious backing tapes, just piano, guitar, bass and drums topped off by Freddie Mercury’s absolutely on-top-of-it vocals. Not a note out of place, massive (but loose) stage presence. Check out the way he slides back in in the last bars of Brian May’s guitar solo, and the way he plays the audience. 2. Brian May’s guitar solo. 3. Backing vocals. I always assumed, having watched lots of official videos back in the day, that the backing vocals weren’t reproducible on stage, but it turns out that they are. 4. Roger Taylor – thunderous drums, which add so much depth to the overall sound (and I’m a sucker for a drummer who » Continue Reading.
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When late in life John Betjeman was asked if he had any regrets, his answer was that he wished he’d had more sex. With more people, presumably. Many people will sympathise with this.
Lying awake in the small hours I found myself wondering what my regrets are – not the best way of getting back to sleep, but at least it headed off the dreaded Spotify sleep playlist for a while. After some thought, I came up with three: 1. I never flew on Concorde 2. I never saw The Band live – apart from behind Dylan in 1966, but that doesn’t count. 3. Life and circumstances got in the way of buying that bijou little place in France.
Anybody else? I’m not looking for dark secrets or deep dives into the psyche, just stuff that might strike a chord with others and is now impossible to pull off for one reason or another. If you always wanted to climb Everest and still have the mental and physical capacity to do so, that probably doesn’t count.
Over to you…
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Perhaps like many people, I’ve never been much of a Laurie Anderson person – O Superman and being married to Lou Reed was about the extent of my familiarity with her. But I’m enjoying these Zoom lectures – characteristically wacky and wide-ranging, and amusingly subversive of the whole Zoom malarkey.
No idea if I’ll last the whole nine hours – it’s her Get Back, if you will – but here they are, for anybody as is interested…
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Sad news – the great Aboriginal actor, dancer, artist and raconteur gone. He inhabited the screen like nobody else. He was in Walkabout, Crocodile Dundee, The Last Wave, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Tracker – and the great Charlie’s Country. The vid gives a flavour of this extraordinary man.
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I love a close harmony group, me…I’ve spent the evening, as you do, down the reaction video rabbit hole, and I ended up at Home Free. They’re an a cappella group – no instruments, but including a beatboxer. Something I’ve learned this evening is that the laydees love a deep bass voice, and boy, do these guys have a deep bass voice. And they have a guy who can play the harmonica without the aid of a harmonica. In this video, the bass voice is not who you think it’s going to be.
Sometimes they veer into the cheesy – steer clear of Take Me Home Country Roads – but when they’re on song, they’re amazing. Even when they’re cheesy they’re still worth listening to. Dig in.
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I’m sure we can come up with some repurposed blues lyrics to top these, eh chums?
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This is all a bit long and complicated for the guilty pleasures thread, but it encourages me to fess up: I love British light music. It was the soundtrack of my childhood. Does anybody else love it, I wonder?
So-called because it’s British and light, with irresistibly perky tunes and arrangements (particularly pizzicato strings), British light music is a distinctive sub-genre that flourished mostly in the 40s, 50s and 60s and was always on the radio in one form or another. Its roots probably lie in the rockin’ choons of Arthur Sullivan, and some of Elgar’s less grandiloquent moments.
Even if you don’t think you’ve heard any, you have, because it’s been used in more radio and TV theme tunes than you can shake a stick at. Even if it hasn’t, you’ll probably have heard it somewhere if you’re of a certain age or heading that way. For instance:
Ronald Binge: Sailing By (Shipping Forecast); Elizabethan Serenade (later to become Elizabethan Reggae). Eric Coates: By the Sleepy Lagoon (Desert Island Discs); Knightsbridge March (In Town Tonight); Calling All Workers (Music While You Work); The Dam Busters March. Trevor Duncan: Little Suite – March (Dr Finlay’s Casebook). Frederic Curzon: March » Continue Reading.
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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.
