Watching ‘A Spy Among Friends’ last night Kim Philby excuses himself and says “must point Percy at the porcelain ” I thought that was not quite right. Of course it was a phrased coined in the seventies by Barry Humphries and used in the Barry Mackenzie strip in Private Eye (I did a check to make sure). It jarred in an otherwise excellent series, although the filming is set to colour washout and gloom. Do any of our Antipodean allies know if it was in use in the sixties and would Philby have known of its use?
Greta Van Sant
I came across Greta Van Fleet as they played on Jonesy’s Jukebox (video below, performance starts at 6.10). I’ve never been much interested in acts I’ve never heard of on Steve Jones’ show before. (Except I did once really like a performance by a chap called Cobi who played a great solo acoustic song but then I investigated further and his official studio recordings didn’t interest me at all.) Greta Van Fleet grabbed my attention by performing on the show with the full band, which doesn’t happen usually. Then I was really surprised and intrigued by the singer’s voice. Robert Plant meets Geddy Lee. And the music was a surprise too. Retro rock in a Led Zep stylee. There’s certainly an “ooh, that’s an interesting area for a new band to revisit” element to appreciating them, rather like Green Day, The Darkness, The Feeling, and Leon Bridges all had in their time. So, whaddawe think? I’d say “interesting”.
Zeppelin through the looking glass….
Here’s a conundrum: what would the mighty Zeppelin have sounded like if Page had managed to obtain the services of – BJ Wilson on the drums; and Terry Reid on the singing?
Better? Worse? Jazzier? Funkier?
If anyone is going to have a view, I’m guessing it’s the Zep-heads on the Afterword…..
