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Consecutive Compendium of Culture – UK garage, Underground rap, upbeat pop, uplifting trance, urban folk, Uzbekistani ukulele songs (?) – unveil untold unstoppable ululations

by 118 Comments

I unguently urge u to unearth and upload –
anything cultural beginning with ‘u’
As ever, anything and everything will be gratefully received.

The Pyramid by Euan Uglow
I can’t do better than agree with this quote – the “surface of a Uglow painting is beautiful. The frankness with which it reveals its constructions resonates as you read the continuum of form and space’

Ultramarine – Discovery
This takes me back to hot summer days in the nineties. I learned recently that it quotes heavily from a Laurie Anderson song, which raises it even further in my estimation

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Comments

  1. Pop Will Eat Itself – U.B.L.U.D.

    Greboes wit a track from a very impressive album that was so much more than just Beaver Patrol
    Rock, Rock!
    Rock, Rock!
    Rock! Rock! Rock!

  3. One from my childhood, big hit in NZ, hits the instant nostalgia button for me, I’m back then wondering if I’ll ever get to kiss Anne H like what I saw Nicholas T doing that day at the beach and wondering how come I feel all sort of fuzzy at the thought…

    • You need some Ubangi full stop! The Swedish 80s pop band that is, here’s “The Little Cat and the Dirty Dog”:

      And from their reunion gig last year: “I Do Voodoo”:

      Cia Berg (now Cia Soro) has certainly aged well!

        • Yup, a personal favourite of mine, and I bought the single (and another one, “Messin’ With My Guy”).
          Cia Berg went on to singing with the band Whale who had that one hit: “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe”, and the guitarist (and songwriter) Thomas “Orup” Eriksson went on to become one of Sweden’s most popular solo artists for a while (though not quite my cup of tea).

  14. Iñigo Ugarteburu

    Here’s a tricky question for you.

    What was the last album ever reviewed in the Nights in Readers Reviews section of the last ever Word magazine?

    Give up? Well, I’ll tell you. It was my review of the album “Back and Forth” by the Spanish multi-instrumentalist Iñigo Ugarteburu. Lovely record.

    Here’s the only track on the album that had any vocals on it:

  22. Utah Saints! Utah Saints! etc

    There are some other corking tracks on their often-overlooked debut album, but this is the one most of you will be familiar with – and possibly appalled by – thanks to the Kate Bush sample.

    (“Something Good” – Utah Saints)

  23. WRT the OP. Clever shape and (what looks like) interesting texture in that painting, but might it be considered to be a tad depersonalising to depict a naked lady’s breast and bum with head truncated?
    Here’s the Universal Togetherness Band:

    (Real Thrill)

    • Hi, @sewer-robot.

      Depersonalising? Yes, I think that is probably a fair comment and the picture can be seen in that way. When I posted it, it was because I liked the abstraction, the sense of space and the sensual approach to the surfaces of model and room. Apparently, he wasn’t popular with some of his female models. Maybe I was wrong to have used it?

      Mind you, the model for the painting in the OP is recorded here (http://www.modelreg.co.uk/st_Articles2.php) as having had a more rewarding experience in modelling for ‘Pyramid’.

      Nice track you’ve chosen, by the way!

      • Don’t mind me @salwarpe, I know nothing about art and was just thinking out loud. It’s just that I’ve seen abstract sculptures which suggest the female body but I’d never seen it done the other way around. All part of my cultural education, which is why I enjoy these threads so much..

  30. UB40
    The band responsible for introducing Reggae to white middle class kids from the Home Counties.
    The first 3 albums are the best, after that it was all much of a muchness to my ears.

  38. Phil Upchurch – Darkness, Darkness

    This is an absolutely ACE soul/jazz guitar album from 1972. If you’re into that sort of genre, you must hear it. I believe that it’s a favourite of H.P. Saucecraft. Am I right, Saucey?

  45. Remember the hoo-hah about how it was delivered to every iTunes account whether they wanted it or not ?(most didn’t want it)
    Top opening track though

    U2 – Miracle Of Joey Ramone

  51. Magnus Uggla.
    The soundtrack of my youth…this is the song we played while getting suitably drunk before going out on the weekend, or while getting unsuitably drunk partying at home – “Varning På Stan”:

  52. “Underbara Uppblåsbara Barbara” (“Wonderful Inflatable Barbara”) by Robert Broberg was a big hit, my brother got the single for his 10th birthday in 1970 and I actually remember that day (I was 2 ½) and hearing it for the first time.
    I thought it was very funny, but if I understood the concept of an inflatable sex doll is debatable, I probably just thought he sang it in a funny way (in a cod German accent), at least for the first couple of years.

  57. “Solstollarna” was a bizarre Swedish TV series for kids mixing strange humour, teenage bikini babes and 80s pop stars, and the most popular recurring character was Ulla-Bella…the director of the beach resort where everything took place would suddenly put on a pair of glasses and a ladies hat and speak in a strange way, introducing himself as “I’m Ulla-Bella my secretary”…!
    She was such a hit that they recorded a rap (!), introduced with a short sketch here:

  62. The Swedish Vera Lynn was called Ulla Billquist and she had the big wartime hit with “Min Soldat” (“My Soldier”), also known as “Någonstans i Sverige” (“Somewhere In Sweden”).

  63. This is quite horrendous, and gives me flashbacks to childhood TV variety shows…
    Up Up and Away – The Fifth Dimension (listen at your own risk…it’s an earworm!)

  65. Not wishing to overreprazent on the thread, I held off posting the obvious entry for “T” (The Temptations) and, in the end, I’m not sure anybody did.
    So – f**k it, here’s the obvious “U”. Just in case..

    (Althea & Donna – Uptown Top Ranking)

  66. “Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”

    Ulysses – James Joyce.

    • I remember this one from The Uglys – another of those songs from the era that somehow made it on to the radio in New Zealand. I had remembered it being in 3/4 but when I played it just now, hearing it for the first time in 50 years, it started in 4/4 and thought maybe it was the wrong song. But no it slips deftly into 3/4 for the chorus, a kind of slightly awkward songwriting trick that you don’t hear very often these days.

      The lyrics are kind of Eve Of Destruction meets Nowhere Man, a sort of “popular protest” song that again you don’t hear these days (well I don’t)

      • This seems to have been a reasonable hit down under despite being a flop in UK. It’s on many 60s compilations in Australia with the band name spelled variously Uglys, Uglies, Ugly’s and Uglie’s.
        I’m not sure if he appeared on the record but Dave Pegg later of Fairport was an Uglys member

  71. In Swedish, when we suspect some foul play we use the expression “jag anar ugglor i mossen” – “I sense there are owls in the peat-moss” (yes, very odd, but originally it was “ulvar” – wolves – but somewhere someone misheard the expression or misquoted it, and the wrong version stuck and is the one that survived).
    From the very funny play “Fröken Fleggmans Mustasch” (“Miss Fleggman’s Moustache”) by comedy legends Hasse & Tage, here’s a song that uses that expression, sung by Hasse and Gösta Ekman:

    I saw that show at Göta Lejon in the early 80s, and I still have the handkerchief to prove it! (The program was printed on a cotton hanky)

  74. Ullo John Gotta New Motor

    Pats 1 and 2 spliced together (the original A & B Sides of the 7″).
    Part III is the same again, but Part IV is the full on Mr Sweary version – the title gets no more than a couple of mentions, and the rest is just a tirade of effin’ & jeffin’ (it’s not big, it’s not clever, and playing it at full volume in the Youth Club get’s you chucked out)

    • Hmmm I’m sure I’ve got that U Srinivas album somewhere, lurking long-neglected in a back cupboard.
      I must dig it out and play it.
      Quite a few of those early albums on Real World Records were great.

  77. Undo – Sanna Nielsen

    Crikes! I’ve become so Swedified that I’m posting Eurovision songs, Call Dr Locust at once.

    Sanna certainly knows how to give it some welly and was an extremely graceful loser when Conchita Wurst pipped her at the post. I’ve developed quite a soft spot for her.

  78. Just in case you had any doubts about the AW being the last Fiefdom of Fogeyness, it has taken us all weekend to post Uptown Funk. Saw this Glasto performance on telly and thought it was fab. Flash, Blige, Ronson and Clinton are all having so much fun.

    The Afterword is pure Alice in Wonderland.Out there in the real world, Kendrick- Lamar-fan @tiggerlion‘s taste in music would not raise an eyebrow. Here we treat him as a charming eccentric who likes artists none of us have ever heard of.

    I’m late! I’m late!! Must dash!

    Just had a call from a hookah-smoking caterpillar who wants to talk about new Aussie psychedalia.

  93. Lee Underwood

    I’m sure I’m not the only Afterworder who loves the exquisite lead guitar contributions of Lee Underwood to the music of Tim Buckley.

    Here are Lee and Tim, from the stellar “Live at the Troubadour 1969” set. Listen particularly for the solo that starts at around 3:03.

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