torment tuesday

joe meek must've been a football supporter. there's no other way there couldve been such anguish pouring out of 304 holloway road. i hate football. i used to like it but preston north end have put me right off. this week is going to be awful. they've just thrown away the season. there's the tiniest hope of the play - offs, but it's so tiny and involves beating birmingham and other teams losing that it's too torturous to think about. and i don't think i could cope with play offs for the third year running anyway. the fact that john leyton was in the great escape is not something i'm taking as any kind of omen. really. bollocks.



'johnny remember me' was made for weeks like this. i'll rattle on about why next week when i've calmed down a bit.


john leyton - johnny remember me


you can watch a gorgeous bit of john leyton singing this here

i'm not getting on that bloody thing

my london has been suffering lately. the last couple of years have seen horrid horrid things. both my 10p italian soho eating spots closed, the staff in the coach stopped being quite so hilariously rubbish, reckless records slowly crumbled to nothing, the should be bloomin listed raymond revue bar sign was covered by some of the direst graphics you'll ever see, and buses went long and bendy. they're the foul transport of the devil, and to prove it we asked the nice people at consumer champions magazine which? to do us a graph and some other stuff...







nothing proves a point better that a mystifying graph. i've got a thing about graphs, i can't do maths, never know what they're on about, but show me a pie chart and i'm sold.




most of all lets think of the children.
what kind of future can we expect when there's a whole generation who will never know the joy of making your shopping laden folks clamber up windy cramped too steep lurching as the bus moves off stairs cos you've got to get that front right hand seat and drive. and what's the point of not buying a ticket if you don't have to hide under your seat giggling madly when the conducter comes round. we're doomed i tell you, doomed.




you can keep you're 69 chevys and your brand new cadillacs, i'll be sneaking a crafty fag and scratching i woz ere on the back seat top deck and daring anyone to try and stop me...

torment tuesday

i'm a big fan of the regular feature, the comfort of opening heat straight to 'where's winehouse?', or the ghost of electricity friday funk bit , so i thought we'd best have one here. it's time then for...

torment tuesday! a journey into the darkest depths of despair on the worst day of the week...

and no one knows tears and heartbreak like a teenage girl, especially one with big hair. forget the sad dull mumblings of your radioheads or your gawd knows who else is supposed to be depressing schoolboys and music writers this week, the songs of the truly defeated are sung by the shangri-las


the myrmidons of melodrama have it all


the shangri-las - dressed in black

so the desperate hopes of the weekend crumble, the phone still doesn't ring, and teenage angst is back again...

abc

and this week kenneth opens his doors to the letter c.
now that you're getting the hang of this polari lark i think it's time we gave you a few more words to learn each bijou lesson, something to really sink your bexleys into. so my dears, here's...



c is for

charper
meaning to seek or look
from which we get...
charpering omee
a policeman!

and we'll have
chavvies
meaning children

and to introduce a bit of filth how's about
cleaning the kitchen
which all you perverse deviants will already know as rimming. shocking i'm sure.

next week we'll try to string a few things together to give you a few choice phrases to throw into your delightful conversations, so get practicing duckies...


the best english c word is definately
cuddle
everyone loves a good cuddle, and it's so much better than a hug. i generally insist on the standard north london pronunciation which turns L into W, the whole thing kind of ends up cahdawl (or something). think a much softer eastenders and you're halfway there.


c is also for deeply missed, ever wonderful
curtis mayfield
i feel like something stirring and majestic this morning so let's have 'right on for the darkness' off of 'back to the world'. soul heaven.

curtis mayfield - right on for the darkness

happy birthday dusty

so today we celebrate

i tried very hard all weekend to write something good for a change but it was all sunny and i had a whole lot of sitting around to do and i convinced myself that all my gushing would be wasted because you've all got everything ever released and know everything there is to know and that all that would make your day of dusty complete would be some funny pictures and a couple of live treasures...



it took me an age to decide which songs to play so being a ditherer for england i've picked three fairly randomly. 'where am i going?' i still find almost impossible to listen to without bursting into tears, the longing of 'the look of love' is pretty much crippling too, so there's 'people get ready' to set you off to face the world again (once your tears have dried).

dusty springfield - where am a going
dusty springfield - the look of love (live)
dusty springfield - people get ready (live)

there's masses of dusty gems on youtube but i'd never seen her delivering bread before ...

i'm so jealous i could ....aaaarrrrggghhh!!!

andy wake must die. i used to like him but he's just sent me these pictures. these are his. not just pictures but actual bits of whatever it is badges are made from.


you can send death threats and pleas to go round for at least a little look to medium cool
and i thought my wah! heat badge was good...

CHEWITS - the monster muncher

with huge thanks to simon james via a comment on i like. these adverts make me giggle like an i don't know what.

Chewits

terrys ten

just for the coincidence of 'what do i get?' really. and i bet 'take five' isn't one of his favourite bits of music anymore. charles aznavour though...well done terry


charles aznanour - she

funny how there's nothing on the list that would lead me to think of the specials or the fun boy three, but it kinda makes some sense of the colourfield (terry's couple of alright singles but generally uninspiring pop act).
i saw terry in boots on upper street a couple of years ago and got so stupidly excited i had to rush home before i started blabbing 'you're terry hall you , you're great you are...'. it was quite a shock.

time's up mr mcclane

there are days i would make a brilliant film baddie. i was going to say bond villian but i'm thinking more die hard 5 because we love bruce , and they always have excellent baddies who can't do accents. i can't do accents, and i have a mean cat and some murderously pointy shoes so i think the role is mine. ideally the base for my nefarious doings would be here

but it could also be here

or here


if bruce wouldn't come to blighty i'd be more than happy to do my plotting and scheming from a sunnier location.
maybe here

here

or here


the lengths i will go to for sparkly treasures know no bounds and the targets of my greed this week are so marvelous i'm not sure you could stand to look upon them.
they currently live in the manchester music archive , but not for long...
oh go on then, look, but don't forget they're mine.





buzzcocks were (well, are) everything you could ever want from a pop group. there's the super enigmatic weird disappeared one, the camp one, the bit of rough, the pretty one, and the one you can't quite picture (but when you look it turns out he's a real sweetie), all making singles of unrellenting excellence.
you'll all have 'singles going steady' (obviously) so here's 'time's up' off of spiral scratch. everyone knows that 'boredom' is untouchable but this has one of the world's greatest opening lines...

buzzcocks - time's up

and 'what do i get?'

polari time

so here we are at week two already - i hope you've been practicing and spent the whole time sat on your aris...


b is for ...

bona meaning good, grand, nice, lovely
as in the bona school of polari, and 'how bona to vada your dolly old eke'.
and instead of the dull old 'good night' let's try ' bona nochy' sweeties.

b is also for

bugger!
if i had to count the number of times i say this every day i'd spend all day counting. it goes very well with arse!.
apparently popular with footballers.

and b is also for

bill evans who everybody digs.
'peace piece' got old gilles peterson sacked from jazz fm on the eve of the last gulf war and sadly is just as apt today.



bill evans - peace piece

BOB

at last there's a proper BOB myspace with a whole bunch of tunes covering their horridly blighted career. i wish i wasn't to blame for a small chunk of it, and had at least made sure the covers for the sombrero releases were nicer, but what you gonna do?
they were going to be the turn featured under B in the next polari lesson, but now you can just head over to myspace instead - BOB house of teeth



they're probably best remembered in a monkees without a tv show kind of way, and for a couple of years their live shows were the happiest places in town, but the slightly darker stuff they went on to do has weathered much better. i was going to play you my favourite - 'i don't know', but it's on the myspace, so instead here's a spanking b-side
BOB - time and again

once upon a time