Not Very Punk

So I figured I'd slip this in on a Saturday while no-one's looking.

It's 1982 - but never mind the 3 million unemployed: Shakatak have got Big Hair, a beardy synth bloke and a pianist inventing Jazz Funk Lite.

Is it me or does the woman on the left look a bit like Ruby Wax?

Barking

This lot have come up twice in Comments now, so I have taken it as a Sign. You may consider it your Friday bonus.

I still want to hear about the albums you bought only on cassette, and how long the pesky things lasted (see Gazza Numoid below). Any thoughts on coloured lightbulbs in teenage bedrooms also welcome. I tried a blue one once - created a rather morgue-like ambiance.

Bow Wow Wow - 'C30, C60, C90 Go!' (1980)

Praying To The Alien

We were talking in the last post's Comments about The Lost Albums we bought on pre-recorded cassettes; shoddily assembled from pisspoor quality raw materials these never lasted - but sometimes you wanted an album so badly in a place you had no record player or sometimes your smalltown record shop's tape selection was so superior to its LP selection you bought one anyway, and of course later had to face the grim but inevitable consequences (wonky playback, stuttering rewind and 8 metres of untangleable spaghetti in your tape heads).

I bought this album on tape and spent many a late night listening to it in bed with my headphones on and a red lightbulb screwed in my bedsite lamp for that louche after hours ambiance (it's hard to buy red lightbulbs now; in the Seventies I think they used to sell them to go in 'coal effect' electric fires).

I loved it. But the tape died.

I missed the strange, dark, post-apocalyptic Philip K. Dick world carved out in those paranoid android lyrics and grim guitar-spattered synth riffs for a bit. But hey, there was The Big Wheels Of Motown to listen to; I moved on.

But here's the deal. Last year I downloaded the lot again from emusic; and thirty years later it still sounds great.

I know he ripped off Blade Runner and Low-era Bowie/Eno and I know he became a Cessna-flying Dave Lee Travis type country estate owning Tory-voting old bore in later years but seriously, listen to these again loud and thrill to the cold, sneery, on-the-cusp-of-post-punk-and-synthpop edginess that 78/9 era Numan/Army had.

Tubeway Army - 'Machman' (1979)

Tubeway Army - 'It Must Have Been Years' (1979)

Tubeway Army - 'Down In The Park' (1979)

Old Tapes

Aren't old tapes great? I spent a very happy hour or two last night rummaging through boxes of the buggers I'd shoved ages ago in corners of my wardrobe and it's as lovely and addictive a thing to do as flicking through old photographs; lovelier than browsing old vinyl really because tapes are mostly things you made and in my case most of the music on them is stuff I do not otherwise have, lifted 15, 20 or 25 (!) years ago from the kindly-loaned records of friends and girlfriends and public libraries, or off of the radio; or they are my own compilation tapes, or compilation tapes made for me by mates, all quite splendid, aural snapshots of past times.

My proper hi-fi tape deck died in a squall of bad noise a year ago but I pinched the cheap cassette player we bought for the girls to listen to bedtime stories on last night and played away and was a happy, happy soul.

A little frustratingly, but almost by definition, I can't upload the stuff that's on them here (I know it's easy to do with the right kit - I just haven't got the right kit): it's a shame, because I really would like to post some songs from The Bible, The Railway Children, The Mighty Lemon Drops, Pale Saints, Kingmaker, Manchester North Of England, Bob Mould's 'Black Sheets Of Rain' and the toasting duo Laurel & Hardy's 1982 Peel session. Not to mention a couple of gems from Small Welsh Stevie's Bob Dylan bootleg collection which he generously allowed me to copy and which despite the endless record company rummaging through Bob's trash cans (the Zimmerbins?) remain unreleased.

I'd spare you the endless recordings of me 'DJing' on Hospital Radio Nine, I promise.

*sigh* Never mind.

Here's one that leapt gorgeously out at me from a mix tape, that I do have on the computer.

Shop Assistants - 'Safety Net' (1986)

.

It's the 90s CD singles rummage next - can I stand the excitement?

The Words Had All Been Spoken

"And, yes, of course it was prejudice that had stopped me from listening to Jackson Browne. He wasn't a punk. He had a funny pudding-bowl haircut that wasn't very rock 'n' roll. He wrote 'Take It Easy', at a time when I didn't want to take it easy. And suddenly, there I was, aged forty-plus, lapping it all up....the best songs are simply beautiful, and beauty is a rare commodity, especially in pop music, so after a while anything that stops you from embracing it comes to seem self-injurious" - Nick Hornby, 31 Songs

"I've always been a huge Jackson Browne fan; that's just something I can't really shake off" - Bobby Wratten, The Field Mice/Trembling Blue Stars.

From Late For The Sky (1974)

Jackson Browne - 'Late For The Sky'

Jackson Browne - 'The Late Show'

From Jackson Browne (aka Saturate Before Using) (1972)

Jackson Browne - 'From Silver Lake'

"Dear Robin...

...hope you don't mind me writing, it's just - you came up in Comments and...and...I'm still searchin' Robin, I'm still searchin'..."

A Million Miles Away

There was a time of Fridays when we were too old to attend the 2nd and 3rd years' school disco, too young to help run it and too small to successfully sneak into the pub, and this was the time of Fridays when me and my mate Marty went to each others' houses and played records.

We'd listen to music together with an intensity we only ever now listen with alone, lubricated only by the couple of cans of beer our Dads had left us cheerily as they exited with our mothers to do whatever parents did in small provincial towns on Friday nights.

These were the writing-lyrics-out-in-school-jotters and designing-band-logo years, when we looked into songwords for our truths, our manifestos and our epigrams. And if Paul Morley dismissed our heroes for writing 'sixth-form poetry' well that was fine - we'd be in the sixth form next year anyhow.

We dug Tamla Motown, sharp guitars and 'making a stand against the world' (for which read 'not much liking' the world of nice little bungalows, suburban cul-de-sacs, Conservative Clubs and the Daily Mail); a little synthpop was OK too.

A year or two later the pub jukebox would soundtrack our Fridays and the alcohol consumption would rise in pints as we sat in big groups in the lounge bar. Then College would scatter us and it'd never be quite the same again.

But for now there was just the two of us, the Courage Light Ale and the little room at the top of house filling with sound.

The place I love is a million miles away

It’s too far for the eye to see

Still it’s me at least, and you can't come there

No one is allowed at all

The Jam - 'The Place I Love' (1978)

Excuse me, I must now have a little cry.

Chained Melodies

I'm sure we're none of us fans of the corporate megastore on principle but I can't help but feel that the management buy out at Virgin has acted as a motivational fillip for the people behind the counters, who seem in some places at least to have been transformed into groovily genuine smiley types, perhaps at the promise of increased bonuses or profit share or maybe just because all the grumpy ones got fired. The young lady who serviced me in Oxford Street last week could not have been more accommodating and my needs, as I'm sure you can imagine, were far from pedestrian.

So hurrah for Snazzi, or whatever they're called. They've given me the thinnest of excuses I need to post these gems at last.

The Buzzcocks - 'Why She's A Girl From The Chainstore' (1980)

The Freshies - 'I'm In Love With A Girl On A Certain Manchester Megastore Check Out Desk' (1980)

Did you ever fall in love with an assistant in a record shop? And was your love requited?

You Can't Get The Parts

This morning our TV went pfft! in the middle of the always inciteful GMTV news hour and the screen went blank; the little 'start up' light flashed distressedly instead of 'starting up' and a nasty smell like your dodgy Scalextric transformer of old came out the back.

Probably a component worth 75p has fused.

But I know what this means. It means I will go to a TV repair shop, if I can find one, and they will come around and look at it and breath in sharply and ask me how long I've had it and say, well, it'll cost £90 plus VAT for the parts plus the £80 call out charge and then there's the labour and do you know what mate it's probably not worth your while repairing it because next month you'll find something else will blow and let's face it you can get one of them new flatscreen jobs for under £500 in Currys.

*sigh* And my already bloated credit card will be asked to ingest still more debt.

Why does nothing get repaired anymore whilst at the same time we are hectored incessantly by those in power about the need to re-use and recycle and told that our complacent days as a throwaway society must surely end if we care at all about this beautiful planet on which we live?

It'll be me next.

"Thing is love, the brain's started to go and the physical dexterity's not what it was - I could patch him up for you and he might last a bit longer but to be honest you'd be better off with one of them new flatstomached models down at the gym. Shall I see if I can order you one...?"

Delgados - 'Pull The Wires From The Wall' (1998)

On Cold Winter Mornings

I have no specific reason for posting this, perhaps thankfully given its subject matter, but it got played when I was spending my Christmas vouchers in a record shop last week and I was reminded of what a tremendous, tremendous song it is.

Someone out there reading this might not yet have heard it - so it's for you.

Your Monday heartstarter.

-----

It's 1 o'clock on a Friday morning

I'm trying to keep my back from the wall

The prophets and their bombs have had another success

And I'm wondering why we bother at all

And I think of you on cold winter mornings

Darling, they remind me of when we were at school

Nothing really mattered when you called out my name

In fact, nothing really mattered at all

And I think about how long it will take them to blow us away

But I won't get me down,

I'm just thankful to be facing the day

'Cos days don't get you far when you're gone

It's five o clock on a Friday morning

One hundred telephones shake and ring

And one of them's from someone who knew you.......

And I still think of you on cold winter mornings

Darling they'll still remind me of when we were at school

When they could never have persuaded me that lives like yours

Were in the hands of these erroneous fools

And to those of you who moan your lives through one day to the next

Well let them take you next.

Cos you live and be thankful you're here

See it could be you tomorrow or next year.

Guillemots - 'Trains To Brazil' (2006)

.

[from this]

Get The Funk 'n' 201st Post In Here!

Hey! I can't let the post double-century go by without a celebration of your staying power as much as mine. Older readers may remember we once had a regular 'Get The Funk In Here' feature hereabouts of a Friday, and with Saturday arguably an even funkier night of the week I thought I'd dust the old concept down for another spin as a way of thanking you all for the good times we've shared. *weep*.

I was going to do this as a zip but when I tested it, it looked like it'd take about an hour to download, so mindful that you'd probably rather be getting yourself outside of a large glass of Saturday night Chardonnay and unzipping your Significant Other instead of a bunch of mp3 files, I've gone for the usual track by track approach.

The recommended running order is as listed.

Make lurve not war. And play loud.

Curtis Mayfield - 'Back To The World' (1973)
Shuggie Otis - 'Sweet Thang' (1974)
Ramp - 'Daylight' (1977)
Terry Callier - 'What Color Is Love?' (1972)
Curtis Mayfield - 'Can't Say Nothing' (1973)

Peace, out.

Dx

PS: We Are Borg

For reasons best known (and perhaps kept) to themselves, Colin and the lovely people over at Fun & Heartbreak have arksed me to be a part of their Collective, and since all the sci-fi I have ever seen tells me that Resistance Is Futile I have smilingly consented. Heaven knows where it's all heading, to hell in a handcart I shouldn't wonder, but - still - there's already a nice pile of good music building...(and some people have a few things to say...).

Oh blast! This was my 200th post!! What a waste!!!

Six Satsumas And Some Disco

Did you buy LPs when you were a young teenager? I didn't; they were too expensive and for grown-ups. I bought singles, and sometimes when I couldn't even afford to buy them new, I bought them secondhand - at Ronnie's in Torquay Market, just across from the shoe repair bar and along from the fruit and veg. To this day I associate the indoor market smell of cabbage-leaf rubbish and fresh-produce cardboard boxes with groovy new wave, pop and disco singles; at Ronnie's you even came away with them in brown paper bags, like apples and pears.

This was a Ronnie's purchase (25p I think) and I have always loved it - it's very Friday night to me, conjuring up a glamorous urban landscape of all-night dancing and neon lights reflecting off shiny car roofs. And it's got those electronic percussion things that go 'boo!' on it too (they were all over records by 1982 but not so common in 1978).

I can't for the life of me see why this track's on the first of Sean Rowley's Guilty Pleasures compilations. As I've written here before, I think the guilty pleasure is a dubious concept anyhow, but even if you accept the premise that some records are too 'uncool' to admit liking but addictive anyhow, I hardly think this belongs in the category with 'The Pina Colada Song'. And I bet you didn't know Julian Marshall (keyboards) went on to be in The Flying 'Money (That's What I Want)' Lizards?

Anyway, this song was everywhere in the summer of 1978, a big hit in the UK and US, and perhaps it'll transport you back to those heady days if you play it tonight. Those electro crashes and 'boos!' work beautifully with sound-responsive disco lights, and may I suggest a bit of 'Oliver's Army' to follow, by contrast? 1978-9 was all about contrasts.

Marshall Hain - 'Dancing In The City' (1978)

[According to the interweb, Ronnie's is still going in Torquay market - they sell CDs now, of course]

For The Time Being

"Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes -

Some have got broken - and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school. There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week -

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted - quite unsuccessfully -

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,

And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware

Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought

Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now

Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the moderate Aristotelian city

Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry

And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen

The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,

The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all"

- W.H Auden 'For The Time Being - A Christmas Oratorio' (1944)

[And will there be music again? Tomorrow, for the first Friday in 2008? I should think so...]

Hootenanny Malarkey

So what are you doing New Year's Eve?

After too many years of high-expectation evenings that ended in disappointment, rows, vomit, physical violence (once) and excessively-priced cab journeys home (always), me and Mrs H decided quite some time ago that Staying In might be the New Going Out for this night. So we loaded up on the champers and the Guinness and the logs and the coal for the fire and shoved on a bit of Jools and - it was lovely. Then we had the babies and staying in seemed kind of necessary anyhow. Then the babies got bigger and we went out in the pre-mad early part of the evening to a local restaurant we could walk to, and then home and put them to bed and champers and Guinness and Jools and...and so it stayed.

I would quite like to go out - but only if it could be to one of those New Year parties they have in old movies where it's New York City in 1961 and everyone's dressed for dinner and wearing pointy hats and there's a big clock on the wall that rings the chimes and ticker tape comes down at 12 and a swing band plays 'Auld Lang Syne' and we dance through the night (before getting an excessively-priced cab home, probably).

It's a funny old night.

From experience I'd say if it makes you sad, have a bath, go to bed early, wake up without a hangover, go for a walk and be glad you're alive. If it makes you happy, make someone else happy and know that I envy you.

This is my favourite version of my favourite New Year's Eve song ever, no contest - Frank Loesser, whaddaguy.

Nancy Wilson - 'What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?' (1963)

Happy 2008 lovely people x

(Old) Song For The Departing Year

God I loved this band; and I changed my life when this record came out you know...

I vow that it's goodbye
To the old ways



See you tomorra for a NYE postie...

It Is Christmas Eve Babe

And so...we tell stories.

And in the stories are all our hopes and fears - all the things we want to be and all the things we try to flee.

But at this time our hopes most of all; that there can be a place where we default to goodwill, that everyone is loved, that the lowly are as important as the rich - and that there shall be peace, for ever and ever amen.

And we bring our gifts, which are nothing special, but are all we can afford.

And we want it so hard to be true, this time..

---

'My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?'

- Bob Hope

---

Merry Christmas everyone and thanks so much for being here throughout the year.

This blog is now closed for the season.

Dx

Jeff Buckley - 'Corpus Christi Carol' (1994)

John Lennon - 'Imagine (Take 1)' (1971)

Let Me Feel Happy Just One More Time

It's the last Friday before Christmas and I think we deserve a little dance tonight don't you? And here's the weirdest thing; something made me want to post Kim Weston and I went to look her up and I found it was her birthday yesterday too. Shpooky.

Is she the best least-famous Motown diva ever and is 'Take Me In Your Arms' the greatest Motown single Joe Public has never heard?

Yes, very possibly! Now turn these up loud, get off your harris and get out on that floor!

Kim Weston - 'Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While)' (1965)

Kim Weston - 'Helpless' (1966)

Old Bragg Fan's Fight Song

Stone me but the Bard Of Barking is 50 of your English years old today.

He's the artist I've seen 'live' most over the past 20-odd years, through all the benefits and the protests and the campaigns and the celebrations and yes, through all those Prime Ministers too: the last time was on the England, Half English tour where we soberly had to conclude that the new songs were not exactly brilliant; the best times probably the nights at the Town & Country Club Camden, The Thatch on the Holloway Road and the back room at The Half Moon Putney where we said hello to him at the bar before he went on.

He was always funny and modest and righteously angry and true, and he often made us cry.

So Happy Birthday Stephen William Bragg, electric busker, one-man Clash, songwriter, author, pundit, protester and Dad.

You don't need our Christmas Cards, you already have our hearts...

Billy Bragg - 'Days Like These' (1985)
Billy Bragg - 'Ontario, Quebec And Me' (1991)
Billy Bragg - 'Brickbat' (1996)

Happy Christmas Yer Arse

I work alone dahlink, so I do not get an 'office party'. Instead I usually get together with a couple of old muckers who also now work for themselves for 'the office Christmas party for people without offices'. This is much better than those 'team' lunches used to be, mostly because the jollity is genuine rather than forced, no-one makes you go back to work afterwards and you don't have to spend two hours in the not-so-thrilling company of Philip from Bought Ledger (bless him).

I'm off to this 'event' today: it'll start in a swanky West End restaurant and end up in a boozer and that's just how it should be. Then tonight I'm trolling down to Brixton to see The Pogues. Ha! Sweet sherries all round then - and Nurofen and Lemsip tomorrow I shouldn't wonder.

So the obvious thing to post at this point would be that song, but I'm not going to because I figure a) most of you will already have it b) those of you who haven't but want it should go buy it because apparently it may prevent the thoroughly rubbish Leon Jackson (who unlike some previous winners of the X Factor cannot even sing in tune) from becoming the UK Christmas Number One. It was riding high on downloads alone, has just been reissued and is probably more likely to do the 'block' job than Malcolm Middleton; and at least it's a proper Christmas record.

So, for the craic instead..

The Pogues - 'Sally MacLennane' (1985)

Sigh. Wish me luck companeros and I'll (hopefully) meet you here tomorrow, but please, nothing too loud then.

Genius

They really don't make 'em like this anymore...

A Ronco Christmas

'From Ronco....the Perfect Christmas Gift....' - ah, how that phrase brings back the memories.

You know, for a small-town English household I think we had quite a lot of Ronco stuff - the Veg-O-Matic, the Buttoneer ('leave the sewing to grandma!') the thing you could brush the sofa with then flip round and the dust would come off again (what was that called?) and of course, the Christmas LPs - most notably 'Ronco Presents - A Christmas Present' (co-ordinates 9, 3 on the grid display above - blue snowscene cover just level with that bloke's shoulder).

Johnny Cash singing 'Peace On Earth', Tony Bennett doing 'Chestnuts Roasting', Doris Day's lip quivering take on 'Toyland' and a tremendously euphoric orchestral 'Carol Of The Bells' - they were all here. Big stars, yes, but there must have been contractual tussles a-plenty because no-one was singing the Christmas songs they actually made famous (Johnny Mathis did 'White Christmas' if I recall...not right that is it?).

Anyway easily the best thing about the record was the gatefold sleeve that opened into an ingeniously crafted cardboard pop-up of Santa's workshop at the North Pole; we used to put this proudly on top of the telly every year it was so good! Yes! You can keep your Radiohead box sets!

I've been after this track in particular from 'A Christmas Present' for years and finally tracked down a digital version last week from what I suspect is the internet equivalent of a dodgy bloke in the pub car park.

So here it is in all its glory for your Yuletide delectation. It'll make you happy! It'll make you want to sip 70s cocktails! It'll make you wish you kept your Record-o-Vac-o-Matic to give that vinyl a right good hoovering!

Aretha Franklin - 'Kissin' By The Mistletoe' (date unknown - timeless)

These Moments Given

This isn't 'a Christmas song' in the usual sense but I associate it with the time of year because of the lyrics (of which more in a bit) and because I got the album it is from for Christmas the year it came out.

It most certainly falls into the category of Songs That Frequently Make Me Cry (Especially After A Few Mulled Wines); a moment when an artist's vision seems to crystallise into a single piece. It's about nothing less than the fragility of this life *gulp*- and it's all the more poignant when you learn that Kate Bush lost her mother while working on the record.

The song is full of images of precarious beauty

On a balcony in New York
It's just started to snow
He meets us at the lift
Like Douglas Fairbanks waving his walking stick.

But he isn't well at all...

I seem not to be alone in loving this track. It's nominated by a reader in The Word's website thread on The Greatest Bits Ever in songs ....'the last 2 minutes are all gorgeous, but when she sings 'Hey there Michael, d'you really love me?' in THAT voice. Michael's not about to say no'

Indeed.

I have to say I find Kate's 'official' Christmas song (from the Lionheart/Never For Ever era) a tad over-trilling - but this one does it for me every time.

Kate Bush - 'Moments Of Pleasure' (1993)

Hey! Some party music tomorrow. Maybe.

Nadolig Llawen

You can read on the internet that this song 'is based on the short story by Dylan Thomas' but I can't see a connection beyond the use of the title, and perhaps a similar stream-of-seasonal-consciousness in the rhythm of its words; in fact, the Cale song doesn't mention Christmas at all, but does Halloween - which with the mistletoe and 'candle green' and 'murdered oranges' seems to evoke a kind of impressionistic paganism, if anything. Anyway, I've absolutely loved it ever since Stevie my small Welsh friend slapped in on a tape for me twentysomething years ago, and I hope you will too.

John Cale - 'A Child's Christmas In Wales' (1973)

Cale's work outside of the VU is always interesting, sometimes very strange and frequently glorious and I'd heartily recommend more to you; this song's album is a good place to start.

These Northern hemisphere dark nights and short days, these firelit evenings, make me long for a good bedtime story. Perhaps like me you'll tuck up with this tonight. As my (honorary) Auntie Haulwen would have said - 'Nos da'.

'A Child's Christmas In Wales' (part 1) - read by Dylan Thomas (1952)

'A Child's Christmas In Wales' (part 2) - read by Dylan Thomas (1952)

A Post For Blue Saturday

The rain falls, the whisky pours...bring on the Amy.

You take care now Ms W x

We Are The Mods

I wish this was a picture of my copy of this issue of Smash Hits but I'm afraid the whole ring-bound lot of them got shoved in the Aged Ps recycling sometime last year. Yes! That recently! Until then they'd been preserved in the bedside table of my childhood room, the table on top of which the red digital Bush clock-radio sat, radio dial lit up tungsten yellow at night as I listened to the Radio Luxembourg chart rundown till eleven, then the news and the 'powerplay', with the volume down low so's not to wake them in the room next door.

I can't be objective about this record because every time I hear it, I hear it that first time - it felt like ours, a statement from the side of the school disco who'd take a Tamla Motown tune over any other and had started turning up at proper grown up night clubs wearing our Dads' discarded thin, navy, 60s ties and v-neck pullovers and pointy shoes and officially not giving a shit.

The Jam were our Beatles and Secret Affair looked for a glorious, brief moment like they might be our Small Faces - tight and soul-flecked and sharp and purple-hearted up - and Ian Page was young, so young and cool.

They weren't our Faces. We bought or taped and danced to their singles but we didn't invest in their albums. The Jam kept movin' on up and even they were gone in a few years. We hit the Upper Sixth and a few of us started bringing jazz records in. Noodly huh? End of an era.

Secret Affair - 'Time For Action' (1979)

Winterlude

It's raining like bejasus here this morning and doesn't look like stopping anytime soon. I really can't get my head round the Christmas thing just yet (too early), but I have been enjoying some winter-themed songs instead.

This lovely little thing from Bob Dylan's rather neglected New Morning album, which he sings in his warm ol' Nashville Skyline voice, has cheered me very much, and against all odds, on this dull December day.

Bob Dylan - 'Winterlude' (1970)

Lost In The Nineties

Why do some great records go unsung? Lots of reasons I suppose [insert yours here], but sometimes I reckon bands are just unlucky - they get signed - fine; they get the album done - lovely; it's released to good reviews in serious papers - excellent; and then....then nothing much.

They fail to capture the zeitgeist, whatever that is, don't get played much on the radio, don't build that groundswell of support through gigging we all hear so much about, get drowned out by noisier others - maybe just aren't brassy enough to tart their wares as required. And, let's face it, a fair bit of tarting is required. What's more, ten years ago there weren't even bloggers to come on to...

And so, this. A good record! That's been around for 11 years! But I am the only person I know that owns it and I've never seen it in one of those 'critical lists' - not even one of the smarter ones.

It's witty, melodic, original, urban - and charts in down-at-heel poetry a (Jarvis) Cockeresque world of garden sheds, laundrettes, corner shops, KitKats, Giros and getting drunk on cheap sherry. With trumpet bits!

The magnificent 'Faded Glamour' (the single) is very easily the best thing on it - so if you play that first, do please take care that your expectations are not impossibly highly-raised - yet rest assured, many delights follow.

I'll spare you the biographical mallarkey because you can work the Wiki as well as I can, although you may find there is more grit in the oyster, and love for your traffic, here.

Animals That Swim - 'Faded Glamour' (1996)
Animals That Swim - 'A Good Xmas' * (1996)
Animals That Swim - 'The Longest Road' (1996)
Animals That Swim - 'Despatches From Lula' (1996)

[* See how I smuggled this blog's first Christmas song post in there? I know. I impress myself sometimes, I really do]

Cunning Stunts

I can't let the passing of an icon of our 70s childhoods go uncommemorated. It was because of Evel Knievel and his increasingly daring (aka 'cracked') vehicle and canyon leaping motorcycle stunts that we tried to pull wheelies on our Raleigh Choppers and Tomahawks and assembled odd bits of plank and plywood in the back lane into perilous 'jumps' (the plywood always snapped).

My best friend Steve had the Evel Knievel action figure and stunt bike that you charged by winding a big plastic wheel then released at speed to careen across the living room carpet and crash spectacularly into stunt props or, possibly, the horribly exposed ankle of a passing sibling. You could even get a toy version of the rocket he used to not-quite-cross Snake River Canyon in Twin Falls, Idaho.

It was Evel Knievel this, Evel Knievel that. For a while only Starsky & Hutch loomed larger in our canon of boyhood saints. There were even Evel Knievel jokes, as Mrs H reminded me the other night, viz:

Q: 'Why was Evel Knievel late home?'

A: 'Because he missed the last bus'

(This very British joke must date from 1975 and Knievel's Wembley Stadium attempt to jump 13 single-decker buses. He crashed - and announced his retirement - but was back jumping five months later).

Knievel died on Friday having suffered from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis for many years, the climactic ailments in a long chain that began with blood transfusion-contracted Hepatitis C.

I suppose we really should be playing something contemporaneous in tribute, like Chris Spedding's 'Motorbiking' from 1975 - which I don't have; this, however, seems equally apt...

Aztec Camera - 'Jump' (1984)

RIP EK.