43

I am 43 today. Bit of an indeterminate age, isn't it? Neither micklin' nor mucklin' I'd say. Still, at least I STILL GOT ME ELF *cough*.

Speaking of elfs, did you know that I am the exact same age as bestselling Harry Potter author Joanne 'J.K' Rowling?

I wonder if she's off out for a curry and a few beers tonight too?

This was the UK number one when I was born. I believe pop stars had begun to smoke 'pot'...

The Byrds - 'Mr Tambourine Man' (1965)

A Cynic Is A Disappointed Romantic

I was going to wax lyrical about summer's lease hath all too short a date and the heat peaks before the thunderstorm breaks and how all great summer art celebrates the ripening even as it anticipates the coming decay, those dog days, but I figured I'd just post some Dan instead.

I know I'm on a hiding to nothing here with some of you tight-trousered boys and girls but I really do think Becker and Fagen are up there with the best of Elmore Leonard and Robert Altman's Long Goodbye as sassy, laconic chroniclers of 70s LA/USA and what great music, really.

Gaucho doesn't get nearly enough plaudits either.

'Here come those Santa Ana winds again...'

Steely Dan - 'Babylon Sisters' (1980)

Steely Dan - 'Gaucho' (1980)

Meanwhile...

Terry even looks cool in glasses, Feargal.

Posting Percy

 Yes, my six week search is at an end, and did this track get emailed from Arkansas, downloaded from DivShare or lifted from Lime Wire? Friends, it did not. Ally bought it in a record shop and posted it to me to rip.

Does Feargal Sharkey approve of this sort of thing? Will Mortlake Sorting Office soon be writing me a stern letter to warn me about 'single sharing'?

This is a Dusty Seven; expect crackles and heartache.

Thank you Mistress Ally and bona, bona lavs x

Percy Sledge - 'Any Day Now (My Wild Beautiful Bird)' (1969)

Running On Empty

Coming back from that wedding a while ago on the straight, flat, through-little-villages A38 North East of Bristol in the wake of the Great British Fuel Blockade, my fuel gauge pinged to tell me I was running low on petrol, and dammit but every garage I passed for the next ten miles or so was closed.

After twenty, the gauge hit zero - "DH there is no petrol left, stop now" - and I was nowhere in site of a town or a filling station or a layby or a duck and, no choice, no option, I just kept on driving, convinced any moment it'd just run dry, judder to a halt, stop Unsafely, strand me here in Chipping Cum Bloody Bog Nowhere Gloucestershire, 3 hours from Home and Bed and Loved Ones and Everything and DAMN, DAMN!! BLOODY DAMN!!! but, no choice, no option, TWENTY FIVE I just kept on driving, kept on driving and........that's what this past fortnight's been like.

No liquid left. I've been running on the vapours in the tank. I've been hearing my own voice talking and I'm listening to it from two metres away across the room and it sounds like someone else's voice (have you ever had that?) and it's been, you know, hard work.

Breathing in those vapours...

But, hallelujah, now I've STOPPED.
Not in a grass ditch or on a dangerous corner, as far as I can tell, but at a point at last (and that is what happened against all odds in Chafing Slightly, Gloucs) where I may perchance Refuel, at a price. And that is good. And now I really need to swap this View for Another, for a week at least, and on a budget, and all things shall be fine. Most likely.

But where on earth shall I go? Eh?

Not camping, noooooohhhhhh!!!!

Trembling Blue Stars - 'Outside Looking Elsewhere' (2007)

Alright Colin ?

Actual fuel gauge not pictured. Mine's a nice digital one. Counts down mile by mile. Stressing you up nicely.

Let The Music Have Its Way

This feels like the first weekend in ages we haven't had Things To Do. This is a good thing; for surely a person every now and then needs space - to quaff of the vino, chop the tomatoes, sniff the fresh basil* and cuddle the persons close to him while the groovy music plays...

I've had this in my head all day and you know by now that means I'll have to share it with you...

Dave Edmunds - 'Almost Saturday Night' (1981)

* cooking veg lasagne. Thanks for the music Dr Al and sorry about the BBQ x

The Best Part Of Breaking Up

The most famous record by The Biggest Australian Beat Group Of The 60s! True! And no, I didn't know that either until I Wiki'd them just now. But I love this record. It's on that 60s summer pop compilation CD I mentioned in comments. It has to be one of the best Friday songs ever doesn't it?

Gonna have fun in the city
Be with my girl she's so pretty...

Our two break up for the school summer holidays today - hugs for the teachers that are leaving, emotional moments in the playground, carrier bags full of a year's paintings, poems and plastic milk bottle elephants all coming home; six weeks of holiday ahead of them. Six weeks. *gulp*

I always wanted an American Graffiti/Big Wednesday type summer of hot rods and colas and days at the beach and I wish they all could be California girls but it never quite worked out like that.

It was more Why Don't You Turn Off Your Television Set And Do Something Less Boring Instead.

When's the Whizzer And Chips Summer Special out?

The Easybeats - 'Friday On My Mind' (1966)

Bless The Weather

This week I am forecasting sunny spells and shedloads of away-from-the-desk work - so my appearances here may once again be erratic, perhaps even rare, but I'll be enjoying the lunchtimes in London parks and the comforting warmth of the streets. I'll have the title track of 'Bless The Weather' in my head because I'm slightly obsessed with it currently (thanks again Beth) and do you know, I might even make some room in there for Donovan.

Poor old Donovan; I never felt the same about him after that 'compare and contrast' scene in Don't Look Back where he noodled away at his latest sweet little tune just before Dylan let rip with 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' but like a lot of sugar-based substances he's OK in small doses I suppose. Although spare me 'Mellow Yellow'. Obviously.

This is famously good though - all the better for the Danny Thompson-esque bass and restrained little chamber-jazz arrangement.

I know, never trust a hippy.

Donovan - 'Sunny Goodge Street' (1965)

[That stunning photo is by Bob Hyde - on show here]

Meanwhile...Saturday Night Filler

Obviously I also dance like this. Especially at weddings. And just as they do for John, people clear the floor for me. What can I say? It's a gift.

Friday Reggae # 6

Well, it's been a while.

I might bring back the prawn curry with coconut milk tonight too.

Hey. I know how to live.

The Melodians - 'Sweet Sensation' (1970)

Builders, Bugs and Ballyhoo

So I seem to have done a Vicar-style 'blogger disappears without notice or trace' thing this week, and I'm sorry - it's been Buggeration Factor central round here since Tuesday when I picked up a nasty, intrusive and bastard-hard to remove adware 'trojan' that hijacked my browser and pumped endless online casino ad sites and pop-ups my way whenever I tried to go about my innocent, everyday internetty business. I tried loads of that free spyclean software in attempts to remove it but a) none of it worked and b) some of it helpfully contained spyware of its own. Oh, deep joy.

In the end I had to buy this which, fingers crossed, seems to have done the trick.

All of this frantic and time-swallowingly stressful malarkey was happily also accompanied by the hammer, bang, saw, drill, thud and occasional deeply off-tune whistle of a bunch of builders who appear to be actually demolishing the house next door and our very own counterpoint in Terry the nice Irishman who had a good noisy go at sorting our bathroom floor midweek.

And it rained most of the week. And I drank too much wine on Wednesday night (can you blame me?). And somewhere in the midst of all this I also had to earn a few honest quid.

Bloody Nora, get life back to normal.

Anyway - how are you?

Echo & The Bunnymen - 'Bedbugs And Ballyhoo' (1987)

Birthday Boogaloo

Bunny rabbit shadowpuppets second to none

.Many Happy Returns Richard Starkey MBE, 68 today.

'Time and tide wait for no man - but at least you can move your deckchair further up the shore'

Ringo Starr - 'Photograph' (1973)

Meanwhile...

Finally busted, Madam Marie

ASBURY PARK, N.J. (AP) - Bruce Springsteen is paying tribute to a boardwalk fortuneteller he made famous in a song. Madam Marie Castello, who told fortunes on the Asbury Park Boardwalk in New Jersey, died recently. She was 93. Springsteen wrote about her in his 1973 song "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)". In a posting on his Web site, Springsteen remembers Castello as a boardwalk fixture at the Temple of Knowledge."I'd sit across from her on the metal guard rail bordering the beach, and watched as she led the day-trippers into the small back room where she would unlock a few of the mysteries of their future," he writes. "She always told me mine looked pretty good - she was right". Springsteen adds: "Over here on E Street, we will miss her". On the Net: http://brucespringsteen.net/news/index.html

I misspent my teens in a British seaside town and spent many a summer 'banging on them pleasure machines' but Asbury Park, New Jersey sounded like an impossibly bigger-budget widescreen remake of the cathode ray tube view I had in Paignton, Devon - the vistas sweeping, the cars and the girls sleek and fast and the boardwalk long, long, long. We had a pier. Still, Bruce knew too he had to get out or get caught, and he was right, I knew he was right, because so did I.

You can almost smell the candyfloss ('cotton candy'?), frying onions and generator two-stroke in this and I know the stuff is easy to parody and a soft target to mock, but damn it I liked Bruce when he was all epic/poetic.

Have a nice day U.S of A.

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - '4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)' (1973)

It Should Be On Eight Track Cartridge

In the easy listening bureau de change one Glen Campbell is worth at least ten Bobby Goldsboros.

The kind of record that would make my Auntie Haulwen in South Wales come over all unnecessary, and understandably so.

He was once in the Beach Boys you know.

Words and music by the great Jimmy Webb.

Glen Campbell - 'Honey Come Back' (1970)

Love At Second Sight

I'm not sure many people remember The Bible, which is a shame; frontperson Boo Herwerdine's songs were heartfelt, literate, inventive, melodious - and they looked like they might make it big for a while. They were big in our final year student flat (Wood Street, Walthamstow, just down from the Whipp's Cross roundabout, scarily distant from...bloody everywhere worth being).

They released two albums in the late 80s - usual story, the first a cracker, the second more 'mature' but somehow less gripping - and along with 'The Queen Is Dead' their debut soundtracked our stuffy London summer of 1986, the Finals done, the whole of The Rest Of Our Lives ahead of us and none of us with any sense at all of what the hell we might do with it.

And when you want to live

How d'you start

Where d'you go

Who d'you need to know?

I turned out my dusty TDK of the record in my spring rummage this year and uploaded a few tracks to the computer; they sounded great.

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

The Bible - 'Graceland' (1986)

The Bible - 'King Chicago' (1986)

Boo Hewerdine is still busy and The Bible reformed in the late 90s, though we've kind of lost touch. You can buy a shiny new CD of Walking The Ghost Back Home here, and I just might.

Meanwhile...(last day of June)

I'm sorry but I couldn't stop myself; I'm a bad person, I know.

Brylcreem In The Hair

Despite recent concern in some quarters regarding my chilled beats and barefoot bar fantasy I must assure you that I am as likely to frequent a dingy boozer as the next man (and you should see the next man, arf).

In fact I would go so far as to say that I now have a proud and illustrious 20 year track record in the treading of the sticky carpet and the sluicing back of the lusty ale and you'd never notice to look at me in daylight just as long as I breathe in and am wearing black.

Of course, there's no activity more certain to land you in a dodgy bar with beer spilt down your front than going to see a dodgy band, and we've all seen a few of them in our time, right?

Blimey, as I've mentioned here before, I once even had friends in a dodgy band and they often played this dodgy, and now derelict, pub. Actually, I think it was always derelict, it's just now it's actually closed.

But I digress.

This Friday, a song for the backroom of a British boozer - all spilt beer, fags and Brylcreem in the hair. Nothing dodgy about the band, mind.

Dr. Feelgood - 'Milk & Alcohol' (1979)

Mine's a large one.

Easy Blues

Yes, bit by bit I'm blowing the cover on the potential summer mix by posting candidate tracks separately but I can't help it, these are the songs that are sounding good to me right now and what's this place for if not to share the music that's in my head and heart and on the hi-fi and all?

John Martyn sounds especially good at this time of year; there's something about his stoner sound that goes well with fly-buzzin' afternoons and heat haze hanging low over London parks - even the inevitable rain.

This is from Solid Air, but you all know that I'm sure. Groove Armada's Andy Cato has chosen it to open his 2008 mix for Cafe Mambo, not that that should influence your judgement either way, but it does show we're, like, well zeitgeisty, eh?

John Martyn - 'Don't Want To Know' (1973)

Forever Wandering

The lapping water sounds, soft repeating vocal and acoustic guitar to Saint Etienne rhythm thing going on here'll make it a cert for my hot summer 2008 mix; if we have a hot summer in 2008 and I do a mix, that is.

Club 8 - 'We Set Ourselves Free' (2002)
[Buy]

Bong!

I've been Up West being High Powered today (cough) so I haven't had time to knock up a Friday post. What is more, I got to the blog platform only to see the Train Of Inspiration pulling away at speed, and the days when I could still run to catch up with it and swing on from the heavy slamming door in a moment of life-endangering vigour are long past (different doors, slower running).

I thought about nicking Jon's Friday random idea but have resisted because 1) it is Jon's Friday random idea 2) my random thingy came up with records unsuited to Friday listening (slow Richard Hawley ones, that sort of thing).

Feck it. I'll just post a vinyl rip from my favourite Vapors single and muse wryly that Time Did Make Me That Man Someday.

I'm looking forward to Friday nite tonight, but I think I will have to go get some more Tonic for it to really kick off in style.

Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, I salute you.

chin chin.

The Vapors - 'News At Ten' (1980)

It Was Late June

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

------

Only a handful of Edward Thomas's poems were published in his lifetime. He was killed on the first day of the Battle Of Arras, on Easter Monday 1917, aged 39.
I have loved this poem for a long time now - the way it captures that still, special moment in an unexpected stop at an unexpected place in a summertime in England.

They closed Adlestrop railway station in 1966, but they saved the station sign and stuck it in the village bus shelter.

I hope to pop by there someday.

-----

This is from an old cassette I have of RB reading various poems.

Here's to unexpected stops.

Richard Burton - 'Adlestrop' (by Edward Thomas)

(Another) One Of Those Days In England

I had a solo drive west on Saturday for a family wedding near Bristol so I thought something from Swindon's finest might soundtrack my journey nicely. Had a bit of a moment to this whilst whizzing through Wiltshire downland on the M4 motorway.

XTC - 'The Wheel And The Maypole' (2005)

I Got Life

I don't know about you, but sometimes of a Friday I fancy a hit song out of a 1960s American Tribal Love Rock Musical as done by a Great Soul Singer with the full and magnificent backing of the Stax house band from the big warm, bass-rich black vinyl grooves of Stax Soul Explosion (1968).

Carla Thomas - 'Where Do I Go?' (1968)

Let's get naked!

Oh, go on then...

It seems every year or so it falls to a blogger somewhere to post this wonderful and relatively rare early record from Simon Booth's post-Weekend outfit and since I've just converted my precious vinyl copy to an mpthreeple I guess it must be my turn. La lucha continua.

Two versions here: the full 10 mins-plus 12" single A-side, the slower, shorter and in its own way just as lovely 7" 'bossa' B-side. Guest vocalists - Tracey Thorn, Robert Wyatt, Claudia Figueroa.

I weep tears of gratitude and pride that this is one of the most played tracks on my eight and a half year old daughter's iPo. We don't do 'High School Musical' in this house and neither, companeros, need you.

Working Week - 'Venceremos (We Will Win)' [jazz dance special 12" edition] (1984)

Working Week - 'Venceremos (We Will Win)' [7" bossa version] (1984)

Soulstarter

I think you're gonna like this.

Elvis Costello's cover and the medium hit he had with it as a single in the UK may mean it isn't the most obscure song I've ever posted, but Teacher's Edition? This is an act so sadly lost to time that I could find no biographical info, discography or even picture of them on the interwebby; all I know is that, like Al Green, they recorded for Ray Harris's Memphis-based Hi Records and a few of their songs have made minor label soul comps over the years. [I have them on this - thanks to my good friend Dr.Al].

I'd assume that's the Hi house band adding their distinctive sound - so if you love Al Green, and why the heck wouldn't you, you're in for a treat here. Those sweet harmonies....

The sun's shining...throw open those windows baby.

Teacher's Edition - 'I Wanna Be Loved' (1973)

Meanwhile...

Oooh, wasn't being 'politically aware' and shakin' your ass off at the very same time A Darned Good Thing? Yes!

Young Disciples - 'Apparently Nothin' (12") (1991)

Barefoot In The Head

I have a fantasy alternate life where I run a blissed out beach bar somewhere hot and groovy where every night and day lovely people drop by for cold beers and cocktails while chilled beats fill the salty air. The feel of sand is always under my feet because I never wear shoes.

People come from all over the world, we celebrate our diversity; there are regulars too and I know them all by name - sometimes one'll bring a CD they made or an old record they found - 'This'll be right for the bar' - and we stick it on and are pleased to see a few heads nodding, some sandalled feet tapping. The draught San Miguel flows cold and golden and the local rosado is fine. I don't make much money, but I've never been happier in my life.

* * *

I've come up with a thousand reasons why it wouldn't work for real, but I've scratched out this place in the shifting sand and you've kindly popped in - some of you more than once. And I'm really, really glad to have you here. You're some of the grooviest persons a chap could hope to meet. So thank you.

What can I get you?

'Small Balearic Bar Session' - A Davy H Mix (27:08 mins)

[Ingredients available on request]

Davy H's 299th Post

What a relief. I thought it was the 300th and had got all worked up about having to find a 'theme', discovering that if you Google '300' you end up with about that many references to this film, which by the way I had never heard of before, and er...not much else. I'm not even familiar with the number 300 bus route in East London, and there's always a good story in a bus route isn't there?

No, no. Delete that abandoned draft post still cluttering up the list and we're back to a nice, free, anything goes 299 today, leaving the third century for Friday, where I can't help but feel it most properly belongs.

So... this arrived, and I've been enjoying it very much, not least because I thought I'd heard everything Weekend had ever made (which isn't hard) but this is like listening to a lost original album (though most of it's from about fifteen years later).

My favourite things on it are the bonus tracks which originally appeared as the Alison & Spike EP 'Weekend In Wales' (nod to the history). Here are two of them; they sound dead right for a sunny London morning that's burst in on the memory of an early week of rain.

Alison Statton & Spike - 'A Greater Notion' (1993)

Alison Statton & Spike - 'Web Of Decline' (1993)

.

Say hello to the lovely Spike here.

Needling

This revival-of-vinyl easy-upload-to-mp3 format cross-fertilisation mallarkey's all very well but where does a person go for a new stylus? Eh?

This reminds me of all those fruitless trawls I made around smalltown hi-fi shops when I was a nipper except now it's a fruitless trawl around the interwebby and trying to match my cartridge with the cartridges in the smallest, crappiest pictures you've ever seen and failing, either because a) the number of my cartridge does not match the picture of their cartridge with the same number or b) the picture of their cartridge that matches my cartridge is an entirely different number, so different in fact that one gets a distinct feeling of unease about the prospective purchase.

What I want to do is walk into a little shop where the man has a hundred little boxes in a cabinet, hold up my cartridge boldly and say 'Good morning matey tatey, have you got one of these?'

What are the chances of me being able to do that do you think?

*sigh* I think I might just have to get on my bike and find such an emporium and try....

The Velvelettes - 'Needle In A Haystack' (1964)

[Actual cartridge not as shown. Natch.]