Month: May 2010

Half-Remembering

While I try and find the time to do some new writing I hope you’ll find this little diversion as interesting as I did. James Cargill of Broadcast talking about English children’s TV shows of the 1970s and how disturbing they often were. I like what he says at the end about preferring to half-remember them rather than knowing the whole thing, I’m not sure I’d really want to see The Owl Service or Children of The Stones again as I might be disappointed and I’d rather remember the effect they had on me as a kid and keep the creepy sights and sounds from them I still have in my head, they’re much more powerful as dream-like fragments.

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Guitar Heroine


You might think that this picture of my daughter is merely cute but that’s my retirement plan right there. I’m relying on her becoming a rich and famous rock star to support me in my old age.

Download: So You Want to Be (A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star) – Patti Smith (mp3)

I loved this single when it came out in 1979 and it still sounds thumpingly good now, though I think I might have been the only person who bought a copy of it at the time.

PS: In case you’re thinking that I’m turning into some old bore who keeps showing you pictures of his kids don’t worry, my paternity leave ends and I go back to work next week so it won’t be long before the clouds of miserablist gloom descend upon this blog once more.

Tag, you’re it


You may have noticed that I’ve added tags to every post now, all 384 of them going back over three years which took bloody ages but was worth it as the site now has an index of sorts (which you’ll find at the bottom of the column at right) so it will be easier to find the good stuff from back when I actually posted new and interesting writing on this blog. Some of the tags, like Pauline Murray and Phwoooaaaarrr!, should be fairly obvious, but others like Nice Lungs! and The Discount of Our Winter Tents are a little more obscure but I’m sure clever people like you can figure out the theme.

Been wanting to post this track for a while and this seems as good a place as any, some blazingly funky Hip-Hop from 1989.

Download: Know How – Young MC (mp3)

Once more unto the breach


The new baby is due any minute/second/day now so I’ll be vanishing into the New Daddy Twilight Zone which means there won’t be much posting for a while. I know that happens a lot here but this time I have a really good excuse.

Here’s a lovely slice of dusty old Motown to keep you company.

Download: Baby A Go-Go – Barbara McNair (mp3)

Kinski Boots


Inspired by a recent conversation with Davy H I dug out the soundtrack album to Francis Ford Coppola’s visually extravagant 1982 musical One From The Heart and sunk myself once more into its lush songs by the sandpaper-and-silk pairing of Tom Waits and Crystal Gaye. Listening to it also reminded me how heartbreakingly gorgeous Nastassja Kinski was in the film and the main reason I went to see it twice when it came out, her short-but-very-sweet role as an alluring trapeze artist was about the best argument I’d ever heard for running away and joining the circus.

With her exotic, pouty face and heavy-lidded eyes Kinski was almost dangerously sexy as if she’d been created for the sole purpose of driving men crazy and back then I would have gladly crawled on my hands and knees across broken glass just to touch the hem of her garment, or at least ask her to be my girlfriend. I wasn’t the only one either as she was usually cast in films as the mysterious object of desire that men would risk everything for (not just in the land of make-believe either, one famous director completely lost his mind over her.) In Cat People a man even risks being eaten alive by a panther just so he can have sex with her which, when you’re talking about Nastassja Kinski, seemed like a perfectly reasonable chance to take.

Download: This One’s From The Heart – Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle (mp3)
Download: Cat People (original single version) – David Bowie (mp3)