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We Want The Funk – another superb BBC Music Doc

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Lurking on the iplayer is the soul brother to the super disco series of documentaries: We Want The Funk. We finally got round to watching this on Friday and it’s a treat. Actually the first 15 minutes are skippable, as we get the background funk grew from in the early sixties music such as Motown that was about fitting in. By the end of the sixties with the rise of black power people were less interested in fitting in. Enter James Brown, rightly put front and centre as funk ground zero, with Say It Loud. From here we get some awesome clips of JB sweating and hollering, the psychedelia of Sly Stone – and the still bonkers sound and sight of George Clinton and Funkadelic. Someone watching the Parliaments in the late sixties recounts how the first three nights were normal soul music. Night four George went to the bathroom and came out with his hair frizzed out and wearing a nappy. There’s Bowie’s Thin Ginger Haired Duke appearance on Soultrain and the descent of the mothership at a Funkadelic gig. David Byrne of course crops up with his take on the skew wiff funking of Talking Heads. Burning Down » Continue Reading.

Fabulous Fiddly Floorfillers that will get the kids wiggling and jiggling from Murmansk to Mumbai.

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This week Salwarpe’s FANTASTIC FIDDLING thread has been a remarkable success. But right now it’s Saturday evening and I’m suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I am longing for some more string-driven things.

Stringy sizzlers that will animate terpsichoreans from the Faroe Islands to San Francisco.

I want more Strads in my space-age Scandinavian pad.

Please, let’s have more bowing before it’s starts snowing.

Rub in the resin before Hubert tosses his fez in.

Western swing, Gipsy jazz. Mournful Highland ballads. Innovative String quartets, Breton all-nighters. Loch-side ceilidhs… See comments for a few of my favourites …..

Talk Talk Update

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I’m sure many of you are aware of Held By Trees who openly wear their Talk Talk influences (if you are not – go and listen – they are fabulous).

Anyway in their Bandcamp Friday update yesterday, there was the following comment….

“Some other news, but from the camp of one of our ‘parent’ influences. Charlie Hollis confirmed on the phone that he and Lee Harris have remastered Talk Talk’s seminal 1988 masterpiece, Spirit of Eden as a half-speed master at Metropolis mastering a few months ago. According to Charlie, the new master of the album is ‘the best thing’ he’s ‘ever heard’. At the moment, the record label, Warner, are banking the remaster for release at an undetermined time, but presumably around it’s 40th anniversary in 2028, like their half-speed remaster of It’s My Life which was done last year.”

Sounds promising

Chris Dreja 79

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Just heard he died a couple of days ago. Mainly will be remembered as one of the Yardbirds as guitarist and then bass player. I always thought of him as the quiet one. He got involved in potography for a while too. Got involved with a later version of the Yardbirds but had to quit about 12 years ago for health reasons. Apparently, Jimmy Page offered him membership of his new band as bass player back in the day.

ATM – some advice on selling records please!

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I have never sold records of any real value on eBay or wherever, only the odd CD worth a few quid where I have duplicates or have replaced a version, so I am a bit wary of anything with serious worth.

My sister recently moved nearby and has had boxes of LPs in storage or under the stairs for donkey’s years. The move has prompted her to have a look through them and, of course, I joined in the crate digging. First one I see is Pink Moon by Nick Drake – first pressing, excellent near mint condition – and other treasures followed (including his first two LPs). Now, these and some others are apparently worth serious dosh, and she has decided to sell some that have no sentimental value (she doesn’t even remember owning the Nick Drakes), but I would really like some advice on where and how to sell. What if, for instance, the buyer substitutes a crappy copy for ours and claims we sent it? Is there anything else I need to be careful about?

Any advice greatfully received!

Resurrection Shuffle

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The other day, I found my Creative Zen Touch MP3 player in a drawer. It must have been sitting there unused for at least 5 years, so I thought I’d spark it up to see if it still worked. Luckily, I still had the mains power cable.

I plugged it in and it whirred and clicked, whirred and clicked, whirred and clicked. I thought that it had given up the ghost. A Google search warned me of a failing hard drive. It also suggested poking a paperclip into a small hole to reboot it. Hey presto, after a few reboots, it started working after a fashion.

The battery is shot, so I have to keep it plugged in. It will not turn off unless I pull the power plug. The slide selection thing only works for a short while after a new reboot, so I cannot really choose what I listen to but random shuffle works fine.

So, as long as it’s plugged in, I hear a random selection of the 3,000-odd tracks that I must have loaded on it pre-2006 (I am pretty sure of this date). There are a lot of Word/Now Hear This CDs on it, » Continue Reading.

Where do you stand on braces?

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For many years, feedback from my better half has included phrases like’’pull your bloody trousers up” or “they are hanging down to your knees”. ‘Why don’t you wear braces?” She has often added. To be fair judging by the fact that I am constantly pulling my jeans up, no matter how tight my belt, it does suggest an issue.

I’ve fought against the very idea for some time. They look stupid don’t they? and yet here we are. Today I took delivery of a pair of Braces and I’m wearing them now. It took a while to fix and adjust but my trousers are indeed fitting much better and an “I told you so” look is being aimed in my direction. So now it’s jumper weather, I can wear them without detection. Quite how it works in the summer months I do not know.

So has anyone taken the plunge to cover middle aged spread with a set of braces? Any tips for a newbie? (I haven’t quite worked out the toilet arrangements for example.)

Fantastic fiddling

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It’s been quite a week of violin music for me. In short, I want to hear more – please post clips.

On Saturday I took my older daughter to the last concert of the annual Beethoven Festival in Bonn to hear Ludwig’s 7th symphony. The 2nd movement was as sonorous and rhythmic as peak Joy Division, elevated by 4 double basses perched vertiginously at the back, overlooking all the other players, and providing a steady rhythmic backing to the polyphonic melodies spilling out from the other strings and woodwind. But it was the 4th movement which was a wow. If you don’t know it, it’s the audible equivalent of the Return of the King – pretty much a rolling sequence of climactic endings, one after the other, building and building through multi-orgasmic bliss until the whole orchestra explodes. The different violin sections threw the main melody back and forth between them, faster and faster, like Neil and the Horse, or Quicksilver, or Television – fantastic!

Tomorrow evening, our family is golng to hear (and watch) the Philharmonie der Soloisten, a quartet/quintet/sextet of orchestral soloists playing the 4 Seasons and other Baroque favourites. So familiiar, so cheesy – right? Middle » Continue Reading.

And here’s Chris with yet another post about MONO

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It must be a few months since I’ve posted about the Japanese post rock band MONO, so I humbly seek your forgiveness. I know that many eagerly check every morning for an update from me about them….

Anyway, they have a new live album / blu ray out in October which is the Tokyo leg of their recent tour with an orchestra, I saw the Singapore show and art was superb. A new video of the track Oath has just been released – see comments.

Oh, and I see they are on tour in the UK at the end of Oct / early Nov.

https://www.monoofjapan.com/tour.php

Anyone tried Spotify Lossless yet?

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I’ve apparently got Spotify Lossless as a UK-based Premium subscriber – in that Lossless now appears as an option in my media quality settings – and I have to say I’m a bit perplexed. When I play a song on my phone it appears marked as Lossless. However, when I use Spotify Connect to play the same song on either my Sonos Play 5 speakers or my Bluesound Node streamer, the file quality is described as “Very High 320 kbps 0.14 GB/hr”. Again, the media quality settings show Lossless quality ticked when I just have my phone as the speaker but greyed out when using one of other devices via Connect. My internet speeds seem pretty good – 1137.95 mbps averaged over the last 3 months. So, it’s a bit of a mystery. Anyone else tried it yet?

Geese

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Geese are a band new to me but the latest album – Getting Killed – is a cracker. Sounding like an a list of Word friendly influences (I’m getting Spoon, Talking Heads, Rufus Wainwright, Guillemots, Car Seat Headrest & Radiohead) it still sounds new and interesting.

The poppiest song on the album , Cobra, is in the comments.

I recommend it to the house.

Re-Imagined, Re-recorded, Re-Emerging….

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One of those tracks that I have always adored is “As I Lay Me Down” by Sophie B Hawkins. She’s not necessarily one of my “favourite artists” (although I have a couple of albums), but there is something about this particular track that strikes a chord. It always gets put on any playlist, is on all my portable devices etc etc

Anyway, Ms Hawkins has just released “Whaler Re-emerging” which as you may have guessed is a re recording of some of the 1994 album Whaler, and I’m really liking the new version of “As I Lay Me Down” – compare and contrast in the comments…..

This re imagining of old albums seems to be becoming more popular these days. I know sometimes its the artist re gaining control of the music, but maybe it’s that they have run dry of creative juices and need to put something out?

So which ones have worked ? Which improve (or at least give a fresh take on) the original ? Should they just be left alone ?

Suets you, Sir. One man’s perfect pudding is another girl’s bird-table favourite

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Here’s a thread about how certain dishes and ingredients can become a national favourite in one country, while the rest of the world looks on aghast. How can they eat that??

Swedish surströmming, French snails, Finnish Mammi, Icelandic Slátur and Robbie Burns’s favourite, the haggis, all spring to mind.

During our recent discussions about the delights of the Great British Pudding, one thing that struck me was that suet is a major ingredient in many of these glorious puds. I’ve never bought any and didn’t even know the Swedish word for it. The dictionary soon put that straight – TALG. My next question was- can you buy it in a modern Swedish supermarket. Who better to ask than @locust?

I received this very amusing reply.

Sure, Kaisfatdad, during the winter months you can buy as much talg as you need – for feeding the birds! That’s the only use of it here, balls of it being hung outdoors for the birds to stay alive during the cold winters. I doubt that it’s available for human consumption!

Yes indeed, there they were in the Konsum supermarket yesterday, Talgbollar – suet balls. Next to the wooden birdhouses. » Continue Reading.

ATM : TOC error – a few questions

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My Marantz CD5003 player has got a bit cantankerous. It has started to display the TOC error message. Curiously pristine ECM CDs seem to piss it off most. I read that a dirty lens is first point of call. Plausible as I rarely clean it. Q1. I have a cd lens cleaner but not the fluid I am supposed to apply to the little brushes. Can I use a substitute? Q2 Any other options to the CD lens cleaner? Q3 if that doesn’t fix it – what next? Q4 we have some denon cd players at the radio station I frequent. They were formerly at another radio station. Some will play SACDs but some won’t. Why?

EVRi disgracefully delinquent delivery disaster

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Which is the worst possible courier by which you might be horrified to discover that your latest LP purchase is to be delivered to your door?

It used to be DPD, until they seemed to up their game a year or two back, but now it must be EVRi, the bargain-basement, careless, cack-handed pillocks who seem to gleefully lob everything, irrespective of contents, value or ‘FRAGILE’ markings, into the back of a half knackered white van driven by a gormless idiot primate with a mobile for a sat nav, a soggy old sock for a brain and a carefree attitude to private property that has been entrusted into their ‘professional’ care.

See my latest delivery in the comments.

Any more tales of EVRi hopelessness, or the depressing failures of your own courier-related shoddy experience?

Compulsory ID cards. What say we?

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I’m instinctively against the idea on non-specific libertarian grounds. The inclusion of a proposal for ID cards in the manifesto was the reason I didn’t vote for Labour in the 2010 General Election (if might not have swayed me if it wasn’t, at least then, a seat with a blue rosette nailed to it). Smartphones and the huge amount of data which I glibly give away these days mean that I can hardly complain about access to my information now.

I suppose my concern is mission creep. I’m sure we’ve all noticed how young adults are routinely challenged for ID when buying alcohol, and hence have been made to get used to the idea, but the only times I ever have to prove my identity is when using an airport or, more recently, to vote in person. What other reasons might I have to carry ID for which I currently don’t? Or is that paranoia?

It is being sold as a measure against illegal immigration and hence, I assume, a way of striking back against the Farage. I can’t see it doing that though. The whole point of the shadow economy is that it operates in an unregulated way and » Continue Reading.