Month: April 2010

Summer in the city


I’m not any kind of transportation anorak who gets all swoony over buses and trains but I felt my heart sigh a little watching some of the lovely old documentaries now up at the The London Transport Museum website. Of particular interest is the wonderful All That Mighty Heart, a day-in-the-life film about London shot on a hot summer day in 1962 full of gleaming red buses driven by men with shiny Brylcreemed hair, pretty young housewives in modern new shopping centres, tennis at Wimbledon, cricket at Lords, kids enjoying a day at London Zoo and making sandcastles on the banks of the Thames (really!), all shot in vibrant you-never-had-it-so-good colour.


All That Mighty Heart is even more special to me as I was born in the summer of ’62 which according to my mother was a hot one and she often told me of the time my old man took her to see Lawrence of Arabia that summer and she had to sit through a three-hour film in a stuffy, non-air conditioned cinema while heavily pregnant with me. She suffered for me, you know.



Also worth a butchers is London On The Move made in 1970 showing a city that I actually remember, particularly those red tube trains with the green interior which brought a lot of happy memories flooding back.

So does this record, though not quite such old ones.

Download: Riding On A Train – The Pasadenas (mp3)

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(Still) Under Construction

Remember back in the early days of the internet before everyone had a blog they built their own website at places like Geocities, Tripod, and Angelfire? But most people never did anything beyond a page full of links (usually in blue type on a purple background) so on every other page you’d see one of these:

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So I’m still tweaking, moving bits left and right, but I’m nearly there so posting should resume shortly (not that I have anything new written, but that’s another story). Thank you for your patience if you’re still out there.

Download: Right Said Fred – Bernard Cribbins (mp3)

Something for the weekend

I’ve had a miserable bloody week at work and watching this has really cheered me up, it’s easy to mock but there should always be a place in pop music for this kind of innocent pleasure. I don’t remember finding The Nolans particularly attractive back then (though I did have a minor thing for Colleen at one point) as they seemed too wholesome and family-entertainment but now they all look, dare I say it…quite sexy.

Talcy Malcy


For someone with such a reputation as a bullshitter and sleazy manipulator I’m surprised at how sad I am about the death of Maclolm McLaren. Perhaps because, like it or not, without him there would have been no Sex Pistols and without them my life would have been different and probably far less interesting.

So thank you for that Malcolm, and for Bow Wow Wow, “Buffalo Gals” and this.

Download: Double Dutch (12″ version) – Malcolm Mclaren (mp3)

On The Move


For technical reasons I’m going to be moving this site to another blogging platform, most likely WordPress. I’ll be starting the process next week and hopefully I’ll be able to move everything intact and keep the same URL though the chances are there will be a cock-up or two along the way so if this place suddenly goes dark for a while you’ll know what’s going on – I’m just trying to find light bulbs that work in the new home.

Download: You’re Moving Out Today – Carole Bayer Sager (mp3)

Though Carole Bayer Sager was a well-known songwriter this was her only hit under her own name (in 1977) and I guess it qualifies as a “novelty” record as it’s rather silly but I always loved it.