The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Bad News for Richard Ashcroft fans

by 34 Comments

…. you are wasting your life.

No seriously, he has withdrawn from a festival because it’s been turned into a government – approved covid test event. Given that the whole country is going to turn into a giant Covid test event in two weeks I’m not sure what he’s upset about – but then again I never have been.

Pitifully, it’s because it doesn’t go with his self-identifying “rebel” image.

Back in the real world, this ageing has-been thinks he’s the natural heir to Keith Richards when he is, at best, Jonny Borrell’s embarrassing uncle.

Other deluded musicians are always, always available.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57722072

Tintern Abbey Klaxon!!

by 10 Comments

As the Afterword is essentially a glorified Tintern Abbey fan forum, notwithstanding the pitched battles with the massed hordes of Dantalian’s Chariot fans, you will be pleased – and perhaps astonished – to learn they have a CD coming out: proof that they actually existed for longer than three minutes.

https://www.cherryred.co.uk/grapefruit-records-complete-collections-from-fire-and-tintern-abbey-announced-for-august/?fbclid=IwAR0k6mHOUfFueQmDRwVXDxsfPcSqL_bX9ug9ivAOCj9A0Z_GzeR2iMzJiOs

ATM: Overpayment of tax credits

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A friend of mine (really) is in a bit of a pickle. She’s had a demand to repay a cumulative overpayment of tax credits totalling over ten grand. She hasn’t got that, putting it very mildly, and hasn’t a clue how this came about.

I have no experience of this kind of thing so the best I could offer was the lame advice “Go to the CAB”, where she can wait for six months, only to return to find that the bailiffs have been through the house like a swarm of locusts.

Any ideas….?

Sliding Doors

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Sixty years ago tonight, Brian Epstein was in Hamburg as a guest of Deutsche Gramofon. On a tour of the town’s nightspots, he apparently popped his head around the door of the Top Ten Club where the Beatles were playing. In a movie there would have been a binding white light and a celestial choir at this point… in reality he went on to another club, probably mildly repelled by the TTC’s malodorous clientele.

Imagine if he hadn’t – it could have speeded up history by about eighteen months. That was a long time in them days thy knows.

Such a small thing but the whole of the sixties could have been very different if Our Brian had lingered longer. Any other What Ifs? that could have changed the course of rockaboogie dingdong music?

Your favourite hyperbole-ocks

by 36 Comments

One for @deramdaze I think…

This unintentionally funny bit of bloody nonsense came up on facebook today.

“On this day in 1977, the only band that matters Released their first album. It changed the political direction of a generation!”

It certainly did – four consecutive Conservative election victories and the total decimation of the union/Labour movement in the UK for ever. Is that what you meant?

I realise that “blokes make pop record” sounds less exciting but let’s get some perspective here.

What preposterous claims have you heard/seen for pop records?

View post on imgur.com

Kraftwerk Remixes Anyone?

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A two-hour dump of Kraftwerk remixes has recently appeared on various online platforms – it is official, very overdue and hugely satisfying. Fans know them very well but… any thoughts? Only a lunatic would want to listen to fifty minutes of Expo 2000 remixes, right….?

WIBBLEWIBBLEWIBBLE!!!

Times done changed

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The other morning I was listening to Thought For The Day.

Who am I kidding? It was on, of course I wasn’t listening. First thing in the morning I don’t want no jive-ass preacher talkin’ to me about heaven and hell, or alternatively a flyblown cleric wittering about sardine tins. No sir. However, what caught my dainty shell-like on this occasion was Rhydian Brook complaining that owing to The Current Unpleasantness he’d missed the opportunity to see Nick Cave in May.

…what? A TFTD contributor going to see the Mercy Seat Hitmaker? This ain’t The Epilogue, this is rock’n’roll! I look forward to Justin Welby’s New Year address, which may well include a disquisition on the twentieth anniversary of Rated R called Better Living Through Ministry.

Any other signs that Times Done Changed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMxasL9aCSw