The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

Lamont Dozier skips gig commitments, the rascal.

by 5 Comments

One of the gigs I pre-booked aeons ago, pre-pandemic, was to see Lamont Dozier perform solo at St. Georges in Bristol. Sadly, due to reported ill-health, he had to cancel, and the tickets were put into limbo, hopefully anticipating a re-schedule at some later date. But now he’s cancelled, permanently, and I won’t ever get to experience his particular genius in person. What a giant of popular music, alongside his Holland buddies, I’ve missed. Nowhere to run to hear him now. RIP old chap, you soundtracked a huge part of my life. Thank you.

Dimash Kudaibergen has all the voices

by 12 Comments

That got your attention, didn’t it? Didn’t it? Here is young Dimash, from Kazakhstan, coming second in the Chinese version of The Voice. (First place was reserved in advance for a Chinese singer, obviously.) His first album went platinum in China in 37 seconds.

He’s no Ed Sheeran, obviously, but worth a listen if only to see what the (all right, a) human voice is capable of. Six octaves in this case.

For added entertainment value, the clip contains gobsmacked Chinese hipsters.

Guess the one in between?

by 179 Comments

Like a lot of folk with a decent number of LPs on the shelf, I’ve managed to keep them all arranged alphabetically, allowing me to find stuff easily* when the urge to spin descends.

I wondered if it might be fun to give you the names of two long players that sit to either side of another, unidentified LP on my shelves, and see if you can guess what the LP is that sits in between them.

While you’re guessing what the one in between on my shelves is, you can give us a pair of adjacent titles from your own shelves, and we’ll see if we can work that one out… over to you in the comments, folks.

* this is in contrast to my CDs, which remain stored in a random fashion that relies upon visual memory to know roughly where they are on the shelves.

“Oh yeah, that CD reissue of Horslips’ ‘Drive The Cold Winter Away’? Yeah, I have that one, hang on, I’ll put it on now”…….

….three hours later…..

“Here it is!”.

Socialists to be deported by UK to Rwanda

by 17 Comments

Priti Patel has announced that all those identified by the security services as ‘socialists’ are to be deported to Rwanda next year. RAF Brize Norton is to be re-purposed as the exit point, and the Government intends to begin the process by vetting all known members of the Labour Party before flying out any confirmed reds in redesignated Airbus A400M troop transporters.

A Labour Party spokesperson is quoted as saying, “There’s only a few socialists left in the Party, so that won’t take them very long. I doubt they’ll fill more than one transporter aircraft.”.

It is understood that, on arrival, each deportee will be given a copy of ‘Teach Yourself Kinyarwanda’ and RWF 100,000 (about 75 quid).

Classical Music on CD – fundraiser for Ukraine

by 1 Comment

If anyone is interested: this popped up in my inbox this morning, via one of the participant record labels. The labels (eg Chandos) are waiving the cost of the goods passed to Presto Music and Presto are absorbing the cost of post and packing, so that the total paid by the buyer is passed to the DEC fund without any subtraction.

If you’re unfamiliar with these Ukrainian composers, this seems like an opportunity to donate some cash at the same time.

Over and out.

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/articles/4585–announcement-humanitarian-fundraiser-for-ukraine

Music than Nobody Likes…

by 181 Comments

In the Music Snob post, there was a suggestion –

“It’s possible[*] there is a third category. Music that nobody likes. [*]As yet unproven.”

Humankind is probably a bit too large to demonstrate this proposal: but within the confines of the Afterword (a fairly broad church of musical tastes, by most measures), is it possible to find music – even a single tune – that NOBODY likes? I know we’ve done something like this before…

Yes – Symphonic Live

by 21 Comments

I’m just watching Yes – Symphonic Live on Sky Arts as I type. Three things occur:

– Tom Brislin was one of their better keyboard players, it’s a shame he wasn’t with them for longer.

– Magnification was one of their better latter-day albums, it deserves to be better known.

– Yes pulled off the “rock band with orchestra” thing better than most – presumably because they had a symphonic thing going on as part of their usual working method (I realise that’s part of the reason that the prog-haters particularly hate Yes – but I’m not writing this for them). I’m not left feeling that the orchestra is just an irrelevant add-on and everyone on stage seems to be having a good time.

As you were…

Budget brilliance bought when you were broke

by 81 Comments

The sad news that Gary Brooker has passed led me to recall that my first proper exposure to Procol Harum as an album band – having obviously heard the mighty ‘Whiter Shade’ and ‘Homburg’ etc. on Wunnerful Radio Wun over the breakfast table – was via this lovely little LP from the cheapo label ‘Music For Pleasure’ (mfp).

I’ve still got the LP, along with several other fine mfp releases (Animals, Monkees at al) and I’ve also got some Starline cheapies and various others from budget labels.

Do you have any, and which are your favourites?

Let’s exclude any of the cheap compilations – ‘Nice Enough’, ‘Picnic’ and so on, we’ve done those quite recently – what about the single artist ones you picked up for 50p or a quid on some dodgy looking budget label, but which led you on to greater and more expensive joys when you subsequently acquired the ‘proper’ albums by the same artist, having had your appetite whetted?

View post on imgur.com

Vlad’s mad – what can we do?

by 178 Comments

Anybody care to speculate what happens next? So far from him we’ve seen copious amounts of lying, shouty piss-contesting (so far at least he’s kept his shirt on) and most recently a complete denial and rewriting of the history of Ukraine. On the part of the west we’ve had plenty of disingenuous statements (a.k.a. lying) about how much damage sanctions will cause, seen a wilful avoidance of any effort to see things from the other side, and been subjected to a lot of posturing and spoken defiance.

It’s hard to see any happy path though this cluster of idiocy.

View post on imgur.com

A wistful anthem. A single track to evoke a sense of calm. Your suggestions?

by 97 Comments

Here’s my suggestion. With stylistic echoes of the marvelous ‘Sullivan Street’ from Counting Crows, it’s another strange, slightly melancholic immersion in a nostalgic dreamscape. It’s suffused with bohemian surrealism; it’s looking backwards to wilder days, and somehow also carries a quiet fond peace at the promise of the present and the days ahead.

It’s the title track from Flying Cowboys, the 1989 album from Rickie Lee Jones.

Down there by the river is a man Whose horn is twisted into shapes Unknown to the wicked and the wise And he bears the look of an animal Who’s seen things no animal should ever see He has been driven beyond all towns And all the systems until now though it is Long past too far he keeps going Because it’s a desert Because it’s a desert We come to the river We’ll walk away from all this now We come to the water We’ll walk away from all this now She first saw him he was standing in the doorway Illuminated from behind by a light Though imaginary posses chased them To these distant adobes Standing on the cliffs today I thought I saw you below Walking by the river » Continue Reading.

No apologies, this is political. Please watch this fillum.

by 53 Comments

I don’t know if this kind of thing will attract a dull chorus of ‘remoaner!’ from some quarters. Probably. But only from w*nkers. Something I do know is that this should have been expected all along, but the blond booster from the Bullingdon pulled the wool over a sufficient number of eyes to leave a large proportion of our fishing industry now crying into their own voting records.

£350 million frigates to deploy matelots with cork-screws in battle against over-loaded ribs.

by 3 Comments

This just in: the Home Secretary has rounded up all of the spare cork-screws from the various rooms within Number 10 and is to re-deploy them using Royal Navy frigates patrolling the channel in search of over-loaded rigid inflatable boats (‘rib’s).

Matelots will receive special training in puncturing the rubber vessels using short stabbing motions of the repurposed tools, in order to demonstrate the full return of border control to HM Govt. post-Brexit.