Musings on the byways of popular culture
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I though that the Burning Spear set was bound to turn up on iPlayer, but no. Obviously roots reggae doesn’t warrant streaming, not when you can fill the internet with some of the other sh.. they chose instead.
Harrumph.
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I sold off my Humax, and the Toppy that preceded it got given away a few years ago. I reckoned I’d only very rarely want to record anything off-air in the future.
Neil’s set was the first rare occasion since then.
Asking for a friend.
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Here’s some good news at last: Katie Spencer has a new album ready for release in October this year.
I knew this was due soon, and hoped a release date would be announced soon, so I was delighted to get a link by email this morning to let me pre-order the album. I’ll put the link in the first comment.
If you want to know what Katie’s playing and singing are like, check out my earlier review for a gig my brother and I attended last year. I’ll put a link to that review in the comments too. My brother and I already have tickets for her gig in Calstock, Cornwall, in September, and we’ll be looking forward to hearing more from her new LP when we get there.
If you need more convincing that you should investigate further, ask @Colin-h of this parish, as he’s a big fan too. And if the names John Martyn or Michael Chapman mean anything to you, please do check her out, she’s the real deal.
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Not sure if we’ve had this lot on the Afterword before, but I stumbled upon them and thought they sounded pretty groovy, in a J. J. Cale sort of fashion. Plus I’m fond of a Vettriano painting or two, they are a pretty good visual counterpart to the song, and it’s a neat way to salute his recent passing.
See in the comments.
Add your own favourite blues from an unexpected place if it pleases you.
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Go on, arrest me.
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Just post your favourite nuts 60s wig-out track. Simple concept. Mind blown.
My frazzled neurons in first comment.
Tuning in to Auntie’s premier news cast this morning, during a trail for a puff piece on Thomas the Tank Engine, Anna Foster refers to ‘ex Beatle Ringo Starr’. Ex Beatle?!? Do the others know about this? Is Zak available? Are the R4 Today programme’s editors just too young?
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Awesome collection that I’m really looking forward to – taking me back to seeing them tear the place up at Exeter University in the 1970s. I’d baulked at paying for yet another mega-box thingamajig, but for this lot, I’ll make a happy exception.
Don’t go to Super Deluxe and stump up sixty three quids when those lovely folk at Burning Shed have got the set for a round £50 plus a fiver for postage. They always package their stuff really well, too, rather than the cheapo-cheapo thin little card envelopes some other retailers use…
The Shed’s a much better option than the Trump’s-arse-licking Bozos over at the tax-dodgers.
Live versions of The Tain and Book Of Invasions with orchestral augmentation from the Ulster Orchestra?
Yes please! Bring it on!
Out at the end of May.
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Found this on a random YouTube scroll – it’s a bit of fun. How many have you got?
Vid link in the comments.
I mean, Rog can be a wretched old Tory but Bongo’s kid has been with them since ’96. I wasn’t aware of the goings on mentioned in the Metro article. So, Who replaces Zak?
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Orange Donald has now demonstrated what we all knew all along – economics is a pretend science; no one knows what’s going to happen next.
The so-called economists all tell us it’s too early to predict, while keeping a straight face. What they’re not saying is that economics is just the 21st century equivalent of consulting the entrails of a newly slaughtered goat.
Charlatans, the lot of them.
Saturday 15 March 2025 7.45pm Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra
Maria Włoszczowska – Brahms Violin Concerto
website: https://www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk/whats-on/brandon-hill-chamber-orchestra-12/
I have two tickets that I cannot use – if you’d like to hear this performance (my favourite violin concerto of all time) I can email them to you, just drop me a PM line on here.
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FIP this evening are playing a magnificent selection of music.
If you haven’t tuned in to them yet, you really should.
That’s all.
Your favourite internet radio station du jour?
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Cracking little track (link in the first comment).
Can’t see it getting any airplay at the moment. Far too wickedly seditious.
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There I was, in the sixth form, having the time of my life. Living in a nice house in a pleasant city, gorgeous girlfriend, lovely parents, cracking bunch of mates. But constantly brassic. Browsing in record shops every weekend and sometimes at lunchtimes. Rarely buying anything, always wanting to.
I had a dog-eared copy of that little ‘Island Book Of Records’ thing you could pick up in decent record shops (remember them?) with personal notes recording which ones I desperately wanted to buy, eventually. They included albums by Nick Drake, Traffic, Stomu Yamashta, Amazing Blondel, Quiet Sun and many others. All ephemeral hopeless hopes. All acquired many years later in CD form, but unavailable to me at that time.
Anyway, there I was, still skint, wandering once more into the Virgin Records emporium by the entrance to the covered market at the bottom end of the city centre shops. At the time, Virgin were doing a roaring trade in cheap imports from the states and cut-out remainders from God knows where. And right there, on the counter, was a scruffy brown cardboard box stuffed with LPs. Scrawled on the side of the box in blue wax crayon it said, » Continue Reading.
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Very sad to hear of his death. The last time I saw him alive he was corpsing. Not surprisingly it was because he was sharing a stage with the rump of the Bonzos, on a rusty boat harboured in the docks at Bristol. Such a gleefully talented boy. See you on the other side mate; look out for me, I won’t be that long you know, not in the greater scheme of things. I hope there’s a good pub up there. See you in the snug.
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Does anyone have an unwanted, music related Christmas present.
I have a new CD of Beth Gibbons 2024 album ‘Lives Outgrown’ to swap with any Afterworder.
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Just bumped into this on that Youtube thingamajig. Licensed from ITV apparently. Well worth a look.
See link in first comment.
@colin-h I’m sure you must be aware of this material? Apologies if you’ve posted this before!
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For me and my post-Weissmuller generation, anyone who was a jungle and bush adventure enthusiast saw the great Ron Ely as THE Tarzan of our youth.
The 1966–1968 NBC series was broadcast in the UK by the BBC, and was required viewing to take us all out of the dull grey UK and onto the sunny climes of Africa. We had no idea at the time that it was filmed in Brazil and Mexico, and frankly, we didn’t care anyway. Fab escapist fun for eleven year old boys and girls.
Thanks for all those brilliant episodes Ron. RIP
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I’m out on the western edge this morning, more or less at the closest point you can get to North America and still be in Europe. It’s blowing a hoolie outside, but I’m going for a walk nonetheless. Yesterday afternoon, when I got here, it looked like this:
No doubt, in an hour or two, the wind and rain will have blown over and the sands will shine again.
I hope you’re also in as beautiful a place.
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Hattie Whitehead, about whom I have raved before on these pages, has just put out her debut album, and it is an absolute peach.
What’s more, she’s just embarked upon on her first solo tour (having already been the front person for the mightily successful tour under the name of Hejira, Pete Oxley’s jazzer powerhouse band doing Joni’s music from ‘Shadows And Light’).
I had tickets for the second gig in Hattie’s tour at Bristol’s St. Georges, but was unable to attend due to an unfortunately timed monster lurgy attack, but if you live in that London, you still have a chance to see and hear her play tomorrow night in Islington.
As I write, there are still a few tickets left for her gig at The Grace, London N5, and possibly a few more on the door.
Don’t miss this opportunity to amaze your offspring by regaling them of the tale that you were there before she broke through and became a superstar.
https://dice.fm/event/7ddo86-hattie-whitehead-10th-oct-the-grace-london-tickets?lng=en
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Finding it hard to sleep? Nailing those tranqs to get some zeds? Whatever you do, don’t watch tonight’s re-broadcast of Threads, the BBC’s dramadoc from 1984 about what happens when the big one drops; if you do, you won’t sleep properly for months. Either that or you’ll overdo the meds in your desperation and slip off the coil ahead of any anticipated mushroom clouds.
If, like me, you’re just curious to see what horrified folk when it first went out, it’s on BBC Four at 22:20.
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Nearly two glorious hours of Ms MacColl on the Beeb tonight (Sat 5th Oct) from 8:40pm until 10:30pm.
Stand by your VHS machines. Fire up the get_iplayer.
That is all.
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I’m laid up with a stinking cold, and not in a fit state to attend tomorrow’s gig by Mary Spender at St. Georges in central Bristol. It’s a bitter blow, as I’ve been looking forward to this gig for a long time – I bought the pair of tickets early last December. I bagged our favourite pair of row-end seats 4 rows from the front.
The gig’s nearly sold-out now, and I’d anticipate that it will be a great event, very early in her tour schedule. She has a lovely voice, great guitar chops, and a healthy non-conformist attitude to a lot of things.
The tickets are e-tickets, received via email, so I can pass them on to someone else easily. If you can use them, please drop me a line by a DM and I ‘ll send them across.
All I ask in return is that you promise to review the gig on here – no money needs to change hands. On that basis, the first to message me gets the pair of tickets gratis.
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We’re thinking we would like to sell up and move to the west of Ireland, and we are just starting to idly look at estate agents ads covering the areas to the west of Galway, with which we’re most familiar.
We haven’t really got a clue yet about what the practical obstacles or hindrances might turn out to be, but on the simple basis of the property prices we’ve seen quoted, it looks at least feasible.
Ideally, I’d probably want to look for a part-time job once over there, at least for a year or three, though that’s not a complete necessity, and to be honest, other than that the biggest hurdle might be moving all the CDs and vinyl.
Does anyone here have experience of making the move from the UK to the Irish republic, or can anyone point me at some reliable, sensible advice about how to go about it?
