Space Princess

I love this track in ways I cannot quite fathom - but it is very Friday night and very late August for me, probably because I first heard it courtesy of a characteristically cruel K-Tel edit on 'Cool Heat' ('The hottest. jazziest. coolest. funkiest hits' - sic) which I bought in my last summer in Devon before college. (I have made an mp3 of the entire album if you fancy it - no, really! - here).

Lonnie Liston Smith was a jazzer turned 'cosmic visionary' and is still a much-sampled funkmeister, but this is unashamedly (very classy) disco, LLS's long-standing penchant for all things extraterrestrial suddenly I guess looking marketable at a time when 'space princesses' were rather.......in vogue.

Still, this is a damn sight better than that bloody disco version of the Star Wars Theme (ahem, I'd bought that too).

Full length version here. Funky are you now.

Lonnie Liston Smith - 'Space Princess' (1978)

Fun Under The Covers

This week I've been very much enjoying a couple of old Peel Shows posted at the marvellous Perfumed Garden, which is back after a break so long I thought it had gone forever (hello and thanks to proprietor Kris).

I've listened on headphones late at night with the iPod under the bedcovers, sort of replicating the way I listened Back Then - in the dark on the clock radio in my teenage bedroom - and quite splendid has the experience been, for the shows are just as I remembered from that time (1980-83); as rich in reggae and lost soul and rock and roll and Ivor Cutler as they were in clanging art-punk or pub-pop or emerging 'indie', and Peel as warm and as funny and as relaxed as the music was thrilling. How often do you listen to the radio these days and quite literally not know what to expect at all next? DAMN I miss that.

Anyway, since the nice people at emusic recently made me an offer I couldn't refuse and successfully bribed me back with 75 free downloads in addition to their statutory 30 per month for a mere £10.99 and since I still even have a few quid left on the birthday vouchers after buying this and this, (why are The Flatmates not more widely lauded??) I am hoping to make a few happy forays into musically eclectic waters myself in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile this is a tip-top JP tribute which you must have...x

Jason Forrest with Laura Cantrell - 'Nightclothes And Headphones' (2005)

Still Miss Harriet

I don't mean this to be funny or clever or original or anything - I know you've all heard this song before but....I've been thinking of it today....

As summer ends before it has begun....possibly.

Happy birthday Marty x

Calling All Cars

 

Curses! I've been uptown today trying to look important so sadly haven't had time to upload anything from K-Tel Soul Motion - 20 Original Hits, 20 Original Stars ("As Advertised On TV & Radio") despite Kippers inspiring me this week with his talk of Rock And Roller Disco and Radio Active Hits and the like.

But here is one 'choice cut' from that compo I have previously MP3pld I hope will serve as a petit amuse-bouche whilst you get yourself outside of a few Friday-of-Bank-Holiday-weekend* cocktails. I was reminded of it today whilst rummaging in the soul section of HMV Oxford Street with a birthday 'gift card' from the mother-in-law burning a hole in my pocket (I bought this).

I don't know anything about First Choice, but this song always gets the missus making good 70s disco moves, so is surely worth posting on that basis alone.

Hmmm. Must get her to work on the 'flicks' and pop a pair of these on again....

First Choice - 'Armed And Extremely Dangerous' (1973)

*UK readers only

Moz & Me

Ach, we've been through our ups and downs, Moz and me.

We wore cardigans together in the student years and I hung on his every line - The Smiths, Meat, Queen, Hollow especially (student weekends away in cold, borrowed houses watching hastily assembled fires die down late at night)...truly this was the Music Of My Life. And after Johnny left us, I still loved Hate (Vini Reilly!), and I had my own Last Nights On Maudlin Street in the moves from the houses with the lads to the houses with the girlfriends, all that....

But we did grow apart. To be honest he seemed more often than not to be in lack of a tune, and since I like a tune, this became a problem for me. Old friends pressed 'Our Frank' and such on me, but I politely declined.... A successful reunion with the wonderful Vauxhall notwithstanding, it just wasn't like the old days anymore. Though I never swallowed all those NME lies about him.

But just lately, as you'll see from my Last FM thingy, I have been enjoying his company again - a great deal; though the family looked strangely at my holiday reading in France, I had been re-inspired. The over-all quality of this a year or two back and a splendid Greatest Hits have helped, to be sure. But it's good to have him back in my life, for I have missed him.

And there's a new one out next year. It could be genius, it could be rubbish, it could be half of both. That's always been the deal. Tell you what though, there's no-one else out there remotely like him.

Morrissey - 'Trouble Loves Me' (1997)
Morrissey - 'I'd Love To' (1994)

Ah. Yes.

Lou Reed & John Cale - 'Work' (1990)

Welcome To The Working Week

Cilla Black - 'Work Is A Four Letter Word' (1968)

Transmission Start Up

I am ten years old. I live in South West England. Television broadcasts do not commence before 12pm in the summer holidays. When they 'switch the transmitter on' they always show us this.

I just came to tell you that I'm, er, back....

En Vacances

I just came to tell you that I'm going.

Despite le crunch du credit and that tax man shouting 'cos he wants his dough, lawdy we do need a holiday - even if it's for only a week in France from tomorrow via the dreaded Ryanair and it'll probably rain; but, you know, the cheese is nice there, the wine's cheaper too and we can look at lavendery fields for a bit. I think a person needs to look at lavendery fields for a bit, sometimes. French supermarkets are fun too. Hey, I know how to have a good time.

I will miss you.

In the manner of your Collins French-English, English-French dictionary...

Serge Gainsbourg - 'Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M'En Vais' (1975)
Jarvis Cocker & Kid Loco- 'I Just Came To Tell You That I'm Going' (2006)

Back August 18th.

Allez, salut maintenant x

Lost In An Angry Land?

I've been playing this a lot over the last few days, and I really don't know why, but I reckon 1) there is an entire world in this song 2) it is one of the best pop records ever made.

The Crystals - 'Uptown' (1962)

Meanwhile...

Down Deep Inside

Lovely, lovely nostalgia pieces and some gorgeous music over at Mondo's this week have set me off despite myself on memories of the summer of 77, 'glam girls with Farah flicks' and all.

I'm sure a person's Ideal Lust Object Type is firmly rooted in whoever s/he fancied from afar at the time of their First Sexual Awakening and given that Mr P.Uberty arrived chez Master H at this time I'm afraid it's the Barbara (Catherine!) Bach, Jaclyn Smith, 1978 Playgirl Of The Month sort of woman that still generates the strongest frisson hereabouts.

Heck, just five words'll do it....

Jacqueline. Bisset. In. The. Deep.

It's even my Best Ever Bad Film - Robert Shaw trowelling on his Salty Old Sea Dog schtick, some codswallopy plot about drug smuggling and buried treasure, lovely locations and underwater photography and That White T Shirt to gawk at and a John Barry soundtrack with Donna Summer disco tune to boot.

You can keep your bloody Ingmar Bergman.

A while back someone posted the whole of the opening sequence on YouTube but the lawyers must have been circling like so many hungry tiger sharks because it's gone now, so we'll have to make do with this instead.

At least it's the deliciously languid six minute long versh.

Donna Summer - 'Down Deep Inside (Theme From The Deep)' (1977)

Pet Sound Memories

The only album I think I have owned on tape, LP and CD, I first bought it in Paignton Woolworths when I was about 16 - it was on EMI's cheapie reissue Fame label, I assume because no-one much wanted it and, my, how the times have changed. Now you can buy it in Mono and Stereo versions and 4 disc box sets with unreleased outtakes and vocal samples and backing tracks and Brian Wilson's dog barking and his Mum shouting for him to come down from that studio, his tea's ready (not really, but, you know, almost).

Back in '81 I'd taken the cassette home, shoved it in the Tandy and thought it sounded odd - sad, slightly off-kilter, unorthodox and not at all, apart from 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' and 'Sloop John B', the Fun, Fun, Fun Beach Boys a person heard on the Radio One Roadshow Live From Torre Abbey Meadows, Torquay, With Your Host Mike Read (and Smiley Miley).

I was shacked up with the boys from college in a dodgy ex-council house in dodgy SE London by the time I bought the LP version - it reminds me of a sunny Sunday morning of big mugs of tea with an overnighted Dr Al and his girl, when we listened to this together for the first time too. It may have been paradise for Jack and Jacqueline.

And by the time the CD came I had heard the 'SMiLE' bootlegs and we knew that this was all done by Brian on his own, the Boys touring Japan - that they got back and he presented it to them all but finished, just asked them in for some vocals here and there, though he later wiped even some of them and re-did them solo.

It's the record I really had in mind the other day when I wrote that bit about great summer art containing the sadness of anticipated autumn, and you can definitely load the metaphoric autumn on this one; 'SMiLE' ("Brian's ego music" - Mike Love) would collapse around Brian and him around it - and summer? Never, never such innocence again...

The Beach Boys - 'Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)' (1966)

The Beach Boys - 'That's Not Me' (1966)