Musings on the byways of popular culture
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Heard this song on R2’s Sounds of the 80s the other day. Probably the first time I’d heard it since it was first released, and even then only rarely.
Douglas Trendle and his chums inevitably became a bit of a novelty act outside of the ska circuit but this is a gem of a tune. Fantastic dual saxophones.
Love the video too, a postcard from a long gone, less self-aware time.
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So I was working in Cardiff this week, had a day off and like I always do, went record n book shopping. Finding the city centre shops dull and overpriced and headed out into the more student areas and found D’vinyl (great pun) and it lived up to the title. It’s one of those shops you rarely find these days. Last time I did was a bookshop in Glasgow that was such a mess that you couldn’t find anything.
D’vinyl’s stock was packed in, you had to move boxes to get to stuff, there was a rough alphabetical system but if you just asked the helpful owner what sort of thing you were looking for you would be pointed to roughly the right place. Yet the joy is in stumbling over things that you wouldn’t have normally found. In these days when all shops seem to operate an Ebay level pricing guide it was good to see stuff reasonably priced. I’ll certainly be paying a visit anytime I am in the area. It’d probably worth the 2 hour trip up the M4 on its own
Anyone else got places like this that you can get lost in for hours?
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So as well as being an activist fighting for the education rights of children, winning a Nobel prize, addressing the UN and appearing on The Daily Show, Malala Yousafzai aced her GCSE’s this week.
That’s another point against the Taliban who tried to silence her.
“Let us remember that one book, one pen, one child and one teacher can change the world”
“The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born.”
…there seem to be more bands and artists than ever before.
But none of them really ‘matter’ any more.
The Goldfinch thread below got me thinking about books that you just can’t get on with for some reason. They’re often ones that come with a fanfare that you may buy yourself, or perhaps you just picked something up at Waterstone’s, dipped in and thought – yep, this one will be a good read. Or perhaps even more likely you received it as a gift from a loved one.
I got two on my last birthday from someone who knows me well and who had read and enjoyed both of them, admittedly some years back.
Both landed very flat with me though. The first ‘Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories’ by MR James is on paper brilliant, right up my street. It’s a penguin classics with brilliantly written short ghost stories. Brilliantly written they certainly are (James was a late 19th C Cambridge don), scary (with the exception of one) they are not.
After reading the first I could then see the trajectory of all the others which kind of takes away the tension.
The other ‘Hawksmoor’ by Peter Ackroyd was really hard work for me. Just not my style, and dull as ditch water. I’d have » Continue Reading.
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That’s just made my day! Blissful memories of countless fly-bys at air shows. It will be sad when she’s no longer airworthy; the fruits of the white heat of technology have mostly been cloned or improved upon and moved to the far east, but there was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago.
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Are you sure this is 1974?
Bit short notice as I only got back from holiday yesterday but if anybodys in York today I shall be spinning a few sounds at The Inkwell shop at 10 Gillygate from 2 until 4. No agenda really but a varied mix of funk, jazz,rock and anything thats good really! Might see you there.
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Because you’re mine.
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Click the wait, what? link for explanation.
(With thanks to Archie Valparaiso, who is too modest and too shy, and too busy whittling a gun out of a bar of soap, to make this post himself)
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Monsieur Ivylander and I were cruising down the Seine in his bateau-mouche last weekend, and, as we listened to Liz Brady’s 1966 classic Partie de Dames, he commented that there was “not a whiff of kittenishness” about it. How easy it was for that quality to become a singer’s default position.
I confessed that I found it all too easy to succumb to the lure of kittenishness and to prove that, here is a thread in its honour. Your favourite slinky, sensual, kittenish tracks please.
Along with all those petite, chic, jazz chanteuses from La Rive Gauche, I’d be very interested to hear tracks from countries and genres where kittenishness is less expected. Can one be Icelandic or Bulgarian and be fabulously feline? Are there cat-like crooners in reggae or folk music?
To kick off here is Quadron from Denmark, featuring the Lovely Coco O. A beguiling lass who should ensure that all the toms here stop their cat-nap and sit up and take notice.
were a great little covers band …
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I don’t know how many, if any, Afterworders also use Last.fm. I was not present from the creation, but I have been a fairly loyal user for about 5 years. Keeping a kind of record of statistics and changing musical preferences was sort of fun. Now I suspect the owners, CBS Interactive, have killed the exercise. If the statistics generated to this point are now compromised then the whole thing is a bit of a waste of time.
Here is the entry on Wikipedia, which I think captures current sentiment pretty accurately:
On 15 April 2015, Last.fm released a subscriber-exclusive beta of a new website redesign. The new website was unexpectedly launched on August 17 while still in a beta stage, receiving almost universally negative criticism from its users, who cited broken and missing features. Multiple petitions aimed at reversing the changes appeared online the same day. Upon launch, users reported missing tracks, trouble logging into the site, a lack of control over sections of the website which were previously user-curated, and problems with authentication for third-party applications. In protest of the changes and lack of staff response, a fake act under the name “Remove the Last.fm Beta Website » Continue Reading.
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Or “re-learn” to put it more accurately.
Chewing this over………basically on the basis that a friend recently purchased a lovely second hand Roland X6. The “I Want One” gene then kicked in…
I got to Grade 5 practical and Grade 6 theory (Piano) when I was 14 and then in a typical teenage flourish, jacked it in thinking I knew it all and Paul Simonon looked far cooler wielding a bass than I ever could with a keyboard. So I became a bass player – tabs and “ear” only though!
So the question here is, “Is 45 too old to re-program the brain after a hiatus of 30 years?” – I mean, I love the idea of learning the piano again (my old teacher was Mrs Slattery, a grouchy old Irish lady who used to crack my knuckles with a metal ruler if my wrists were slouching or I was going faster than the metronome) but its a significant investment, not just cost of lessons but in time, with the kids etc. and I wouldn’t want to waste that if I couldn’t get on the ball again!
Anyone else picked a new instrument up recently and ran with it?
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Lying in the sun in Jersey
Perfect chance for some sunny head music
First up the new Tame Impala- suits the mood, sounds great but fades into sameyness
Then the Todd Rundgren/lindstrom collaboration – now thats how to do psychedelic spacey electronic stuff. Crazy but still melodic.
Todds the winner – hands down 1
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Any others?
(with thanks to Black Type)
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Laibach have performed a show in North Korea. I love Laibach.
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Banksy’s latest, at Weston-super-Mare. Be there or be unbemused!
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The Primevals are bringing our venerable psychedelic jock and roll to Middlesbrough on 2nd October and Gateshead on 3rd October. If any of the Massive are in the area, it would be great to see you there.
http://backinthesaddle-elhombremalo.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/middlesbrough-newcastle-rocktober.html
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Care to share an extract from one of your favourite poems? The recent anniversary of VJ Day brought this one by Kipling back to Bargepole’s mind, and perhaps a tear to his old eyes….
BY THE old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea, There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me; For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: “Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay! “
I have somehow managed to lose all my Windows Media Player “ARTIST” pictures – which were in alphabetically order displayed in horizontal rows with pics – such as “A” – ac/dc – adrian – animals etc, “B” – beatles – bob – byrds etc. What I have now when I click on “ARTIST” is a written list of them only on the left hand side of the page. When I click on “ALBUMS” all I get is a full screen of all the pics in what appears random order & not categorised in alphabetical order “A” – “Z”. Somewhere along the way when trying to put the correct art work into a ripped cd – I have stuffed it up – I ripped a Prog. Mag Various Artist CD & WMP gave the info & pic of The Go-Betweens “Lovers Lane” which I tried to correct the art work -NOW I’m in deep S… with it – HELP – HELP, any/all assistance greatly received. Don’t I just love this “new” system AARGH
It’s been done before on a Mojo or Uncut freebie CD but this is a performance by Watkins Family Hour & Friends that includes all of Robbie Z’s classic album. Watkins Family Hour includes Sara & Sean Watkins (late of Nickel Creek), Fiona Apple and Benmont Tench. & Friends includes Al Kooper, Shawn Colvin and Aimee Mann. Thought it was worth a mention.
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Ok folks, you get to banish your pet hates into Room 101, based on the following categories:
People: who winds you up? Modern Life: what is it about living today that makes you angry? Wild card: your chance to lob in any random pet hate.
For me, it’s the following:
People: Fiona Bruce. Arrrggggh! She just winds me up. Jolly hockey sticks and Oxbridge effortlessness. Modern Life: people who are more interested in their phones than engaging with human beings. Wildcard: grown men who play computer games. Stop it! Computers ended with Sonic the Hedgehog!
Over to you…
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If you want to find the worse excesses of spite, ignorance and irrelevance, the comments on YouTube take some beating. But sometimes you can also stumble across some really interesting stuff.
Yesterday for example, I wanted to know what J’Ouvert Morning in a Trinidad Carnival song meant. I found this clip with a comment from the poster that was a whole history lesson.
Here’s an excerpt.
“J’ouvert morning” (from the French “Jour Ouvert”, meaning “day break”) is a lesser known part of the annual carnival that occurs in the city of Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago on the Monday morning before the daylight carnival parades begin. In the early hours of the morning, whilst it’s still dark, people daub themselves and others, in mud, grease and paint whilst they dance, drink and sing to “soca” music, “chipping” along the roads of the city until the sun rises.
J’Ouvert morning is a time when established identities become blurred. When differences of gender, sexuality, class and race can become anonymous beneath costumes, mud and paint.
Blimey! That sounds a bit different.
Anybody else found any quality comments on the Tube?
Another Tube phenomenon I would like to praise, is when » Continue Reading.
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The spirit of Easy Rider lives on.
The Night Wolves, a gang of pro-Putin bikers are retracing the route to Berlin of the Soviet army.
But things are not going so well.
“German and Austrian officials say gang undertaking 3,700-mile ‘second world war victory tour’ has been reduced to a handful of leather-clad men in a rental car.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/04/putin-motorbike-gang-night-wolves-germany-tour
