The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

ATM Survey: Time for another CD swapfest?

by 40 Comments

Dunno about you, but I love the stuff I’ve been introduced to via the Afterword CD Swaps over the last few years. And it’s not just the music that’s been great (well, mostly) it’s also been the packaging. In fact, the best CD cover I own is the one that came on a swap CD. It’s hand knitted!

So the question is, are our Swap overseers sufficiently recovered from the last outing to launch us into another three-way musical adventure? And are there sufficient participants eager to join in and make it a worthwhile exercise?

Whaddya think?

Public Service announcement: Gideon Plays is now available

by 2 Comments

This just in by email: “Matsuli Music is proud to be releasing Gideon Plays by Gideon Nxumalo. This 1968 album might just be the most mythologised and sought-after LP in the whole South African canon. A sophisticated bop excursion with a distinctive African edge, it was Nxumalo’s second LP as leader.”

Album link: matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/gideon-plays

/PSA

Get your coat and umbrella company!

by 14 Comments

This is an ATM really, and it’s a bit UK specific. Can anyone offer any insight or advice as regards selecting an umbrella company to sign up with for the duration of a contract of work?

I’m about to embark upon a short contract that’s ‘inside IR35’ (i.e. I have to be an employee, and pay tax via PAYE rather than pay various taxes via my Ltd. Company).

I’ve been sent a list of ‘approved’ umbrella companies’ by the agency, but they all look like a bunch of parasites and sharks, from what I can glean online (at Companies House and suchlike).

Can anyone suggest a decent, honest lot that they’ve used themselves?

How marvellous it is…

by 10 Comments

…when you stumble upon a band whose name you remember from yonks back, but whose music you’ve never heard before, and then you do hear them play and they turn out to be stonkingly, astonishingly brilliant?

Ladeesungennlmun, I give you The Sadistic Mika Band on the Old Gley (yes) Whistle Test:

https://youtu.be/z8f_t6NY7mo

Try buying their albums and they are staggeringly hard to find at sensible prices. Re-issues please! Are you listening Cherry Red?

Who whacked me in the arm with a hammer overnight? A Covid first jab survey.

by 85 Comments

The Foxes both got stabbed in the arm yesterday afternoon by a very nice NHS nurse wielding a vaccination in a syringe. We got our first doses of the Oxford/AstraZenica version.

The whole process was incredibly well orchestrated – easy parking, easy progress through varying levels of interrogation, four separate hand-sanitising moments as you wander through and then a swift chat with a nurse about underlying medical things, any unexplained recent symptoms and so on – just what you’d expect before getting the needle. Finally, the jab stage where you get given a neat little card with the batch number and the type of vaccine recorded, so that you can be sure to get the right stage two jab in a few weeks’ time. Another nurse rolls your sleeve up and administers the vaccine in your arm of choice and it’s all over. The procession through the process reminded me in some way of going to Santa’s Grotto in Dingles at Christmas when I was five.

Despite fairly sober warnings from the nurses that ‘a lot’ of people have reported feeling distinctly fluish for a couple of days, all I’ve experienced – so far – is a bruised ache » Continue Reading.

Can you send me some food parcels?

by 43 Comments

Blaady heck. I just got home from a few months working away. The cruise ship we were all isolated on was tied up in Menorca, so I got to go home at last. But by mistake, when I got here I put ‘Mallorca’ on the bleedin’ form, probably ‘cos I was a bit hung over and confused. Now I’m doing a ten stretch! Help!

Splendid Heppo appreciation of Carole King’s Tapestry in this week’s New Statesman

by 43 Comments

Fifty years since the earth moved for thousands of us who discovered the glories of the album Tapestry. All those decades, and few records since have approached anywhere near it for personal warmth and sympathetic humanity. Hepworth obviously appreciates its particular genius, as do I.

For any other lovers of that place and time, seek out the article and have a wallow with David; it’s a timely reminder of when music was both more important to young people in general, and less starkly manipulative, less part of a cynical dedication to consumptive behaviour for the sake of it. What is more, it’s a reminder of how a great artist can fashion something worthwhile and lasting, something that speaks to human ears even a half century later, and beyond.

Priti says we can have a knees-up as long as there’s no more than 15 of us.

by 49 Comments

Well, that’s progress! Yay! Blinding logic from HM Gov. Up to 15 of us can swap viral loads without fear of fines – it’s an £800 wallop for everyone if a 16th person gets past the front door, so we’ll need someone scary to stay in the hallway and look mean. I’ve got some lights for the front room, and a load of mixtapes that will keep us hyperventilating till dawn. Bangin’ choons, breathin’ germs, sharin’ the Covid load.

What planet is she from?

Del’s alert. New album in 2021, and the dodgers have signed copies on pre-order

by 3 Comments

I just blew what may well be my last Prime purchase – I’m binning the service from tomorrow as I never use anything except the free delivery, and that’s no longer really worth the 80 sovs – by pre-ordering the hotly anticipated (by me anyway) new album from Del Amitri.

To my delight I noticed that if you pre-order it there are a limited number of signed copies on offer. I expect that @Dave-amitri already has his order in, but if you don’t, now is the time to place one.

This blorum does not display correctly in my Netscape Navigator!

by 15 Comments

What is wrong with this place? Nescape Navigator just can’t make head or tail of it. I’ll have to complain to the European Commission unless something can be done about it.

What’s the going rate for sub-editing contracts at Number 10? They must be paying peanuts if they are getting out-of-date monkeys.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55475433

Chooooooooooooooooooooooon! Comin’ over ‘ere?

by 4 Comments

Those bloody elves, hoppin’ around on the rooftops, comin’ over ‘ere thinking they can deliver presents down the bloody chimney. They should bugger off back to the North Pole and read up on central heating technology before they come over ‘ere shovin’ parcel down my flue. And that bloody Santa Claus, wot is he, ruddy European geezer innit? Don’t get me started. Dressed up in a red coat, comin’ over ‘ere… (shut it, Nigel, back in your box. Ed.)

Tier 5 – the rest of the world hums quietly to itself and ignores us

by 22 Comments

The Channel is closed, as are all destination airports that would otherwise be receiving inbound flights from the UK. All flights inbound to the UK cease, from all originating countries, with no exceptions. Internet links to the UK are turned off, as everyone has heard enough bumbling, incoherent entitlement. The rest of the world gets on with recovering from the pandemic.

No-one else anywhere in the populated world gives a flying toss about the UK, and just carrys on as if we did not exist. The EU prospers, America ignores us, the Commonwealth shakes its head in disbelief and shrugs.

Back ‘ome, riots break out, HM Govt. opens ‘isolation camps’ dotted around the country, ringed with razor wire and a few desultory squadies who have to do what they are told. The camps are filled with ‘infection risks’ (Trade Unionists, Do-Gooders, Lefty Lawyers; that sort of scum).

Early in 2022, a drone crosses from France taking low-level high-res photos of the streets and fields to see if anyone is still alive over here…

Public Service Announcement

by 14 Comments

Laphroaig 10 Year Old Malt Whisky 70cl bottle – on offer at £26 quid (£12 off) at Sainsbury at the mo’.

Sorry if you’re not in the UK or if you can only bring yourself to shop at Waitrose. When Harrods and Harvey Nicks are both shut.

Add your own Crimble bargains in the comments.

/please resume normal service

Time Thief Alert! Amazing archive of TV graphics. Much better than shopping!

by 2 Comments

Jonny Trunk’s mailout today shares the link below, which will lead you into a fabulous and massive black hole of lost time as you peruse the TV graphics in Auntie’s Archive from the 1950s onwards. I’ve already let one cup of coffee go stone cold while gazing at the opening titles for Fred Hoyle’s superb ‘A For Andromeda’ and countless other marvels of ancient broadcasting.

Cast your eyes and ears across these little gems of creativity before HM Gov flog them all off. Or something. Relect upon the outstanding value your TV Licence delivers. You don’t even need to pay for a subscription to explore this treasure trove, which is complete with creator’s notes and comments in many cases.

I started with the diggidee bum diggidee bum Doctor Who sequence, which is accompanied by an explanation of its genesis from Bernard Lodge, who was the genius behind the title sequence…. but there’s so much more in here. So much more. Dive in!

Where’s that coffee? Damn, gone cold again.

https://www.ravensbourne.ac.uk/bbc-motion-graphics-archive

What does Priti Patel have on Boris Johnson – any suggestions?

by 124 Comments

A bullying minister, who broke the rules designed to ensure that civil servants are not harangued and bullied by jumped up here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians. Expected by an unwritten code of honour to resign when found guilty.

But lo! From Number 10 here is a personal Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card, signed “Love, your chum Boris”.

How much more of this Leave campaign pay-back will the British Public tolerate? Everyone bar the nutters seems to hate her guts so why is he prepared to carry on with this mockery of due process? Does she know where (some of) the bodies are buried, or what?

Lockdown? Mockdown more like.

by 51 Comments

Back in March, when the brown stuff reached the aircon, the M4 motorway, which is just visible on the horizon from Foxy Towers, relaxed from its normal frenzy to a bare trickle of traffic. So little was it used that it attracted viewers, fascinated by the sight of kilometre distances between vehicles, almost all of which were commercial traffic. This manifestation of mellowness was miraculously accompanied by skys clear of contrails, by birdsong audible for the first time in living memory within half a mile of the baleful tarmac, and a general relaxation of the otherwise palpable manically driven southern English madness.

This time? The skies remain calmer than they had been, but as for carbon spewing motorised transport, there’s no such effect. The motorway has remained at its normal levels of activity, and the roar can be heard from a field or two away, yea unto sunset and beyond. Why is this?

Are folks just ignoring the reality of what’s supposed to be happening? Certainly, our neighbours seem to be paying little attention to their obligations as pedestrians. The Chelsea Tractor drivers are still meeting for a lengthy undistanced chin-wag twice a day outside the Primary School opposite the » Continue Reading.