thankyou sweeties

before i started this dumb thing i worried far too much that i wasn't hearing enough music that filled me with unimaginable wonder and had me scouring the long neglected 45s boxes tucked away in the few remaining back street record stores. i wasn't hanging around in clubs very much, i didn't know of any good radio and the two friends who introduced me to so many of the tunes of my life had moved far away.
and then you lot came along and over the past few months i've found some mammoth sounds and been reintroduced to some long forgotten gems. so thankyou.
here's a small but perfectly formed selection.

chris clark - love gone bad
funky 16 corners

the assembly - never never
i'm not always so stupid

judy garland - get happy & the man that got away
pretending life is like a song

jack adaptor - everyone talked about us
frankosonic

dusty springfield - theme from the six million dollar man
junkfood philosophy

the beach boys - let's go away & the warmth of the sun
the ghost of electricity

evie sands - i can't let go
office naps

and as a special treat here's evie



photo courtesy of szen volta's flickr

fantabulosa!

it's polari time again duckies and after a brief, well alright not that brief, bit of getting sidetracked and easily distracted let's have a go at f.


f is for

fantabulosa
meaning marvelous fantastic and even more than fabulosa

and

foofs
your new favourite word for busoms

and speaking of foofs our straight word of choice has to be fondle. go on , you know you want to...


f is also for those happy clappy sunshine poppy kite flying stereolabalikes the free design. i only heard this lot a couple of years ago and laughed my little socks off in a so that's where they got it from kind of a way.

the free design - bubbles

and i couldn't let f go without a blast of levi stubbs and the boys at their finger popping finest. it's easy to forget your motown classics in the mad search for rare gems and trainspotty glory and i'm horridly guilty of not playing these anything like enough. the backing vocals alone made me see the terrible error of my ways

contrast podcast

so i finally got round to having a go at that contrast podcast thing. the theme was midwinter (where it is in the place the chap who suggested the theme is and to be honest fits in perfectly with late june in northern england) so i plumped for holiday hymn by orange juice off of their second peel session, a tune i was convinced for most of my early years involved girls doing something with jacques cousteau amongst other things. not that jacques cousteau is very midwintery, it's the rest of it that is. i'm a big fan of the misheard lyric and spend far too much time giggling madly along with pavarotti singing about elephants over at rathergood.. madonna singing about bill oddie's good too. and all the kittens, especially the northern and punky ones.
anyway to hear everyone elses chilly choices go to contrast podcast

orange juice - holiday hymn (peel session)

the music of our hearts

so it's festival time again and once more i shiver at the horror of a zillion people in a field waving their hands in the air like they just don't care and all the accompanying awfulness. my poor shattered attention span can barely take twenty minutes of my favourite music in the world without wandering off to the bar then sneaking home and the very thought of an encore fills me with dread so three days solid of some of the terriblest acts on the planet with the added unthinkable misery of camping and warm booze is right up there in my most gawd no i'm not going there list of things i'm not having anything to do with.
it is a time which for the past few years had been brightened by the sight of john peel in a funny hat sitting on a bale of hay and trying not to laugh at a stream of incredibly wrecked co presenters on the telly coverage of glastonbury. i'd always turn off when the bands started again but those little snippets of joy almost made me forget the surrounding terrors.
anyway this record always makes me think of peel too - i heard it first on his programme back when i was a nipper and it was the first reggae lp i bought. it popped up on his desert island discs too (i'll dig out and put it here somewhere eventually - it usually gets me blubbing) and was even more magical on radio four on sunday morning than all those years before trying to stay awake late. "the start of this sums up,i like to think, if there's an ethic behind the programme that i do for radio one, this sort of describes what it is"
and if you must have a festival i've never heard a better name for one than the counter-eurovision.


misty in roots - mankind (live at the counter eurovision)

what becomes of the broken hearted

so the poor lost jam rhythm pals are playing together again with a new welleralike and the world is appalled (apart from the bit that isn't and went to see them and sold out the whole tour). i just feel so sorry for the poor old dears, and i'm quite amazed they've managed to hold out this long.
i dug this piece about the jam split out of smash hits and nearly wept...








surely everyone's got every jam record they could ever need (and if you've not head over to the vinyl villain for a quality selection) so here's something weller's probably murdered somewhere along the way

jimmy ruffin - what becomes of the broken hearted

oh alright here's the jam then, being especially bass and drummy...

16 truck driving hits

once upon a time long long ago late night radio belonged to the trucker and those fools who stayed up past peel were treated to hour after sleepy hour of country tearjerkers and classic crooners to feed the pain of those heroes of the highway.
now dustysevens is pleased to bring you a cut out and keep collect the set each issue builds into a fascinating collection order from your newsagents now or risk missing out on this fabulous offer make your very own 16 truck driving hits compilation in 16 thrilling parts special!

and we start big with the undisputed king of the matching jacket and beard... kenny rogers.
to be extra cheery you'll be pleased to hear that the real life story behind the song ended in murder and suicide...



kenny rogers and the first edition - ruby, don't take your love to town

and if you want to see them in action here's kenny ...



ps
i know things've been a bit slack round here lately and i'm very sorry - we've got the builders in and everythings a right state and i spend all my days making tea till i'm too worn out for this lark.

bring me more sunshine

still all fuzzy and airoplaney and incapable of the deep probing insight and devastatingly direct prose stylings that you've come to expect and the day is threatening to surrender to that light rain that soaks you right through and give up on summer before the poor thing ever got going so we're going to need some stong magic to fight the gloom

billy stewart - summertime



wouldn't it be fantastic if this was what all the poor phonies on wherever the hell it is you live idol had to match? what a wonderful world that would be...

bring me sunshine

zooming back from a bit of international jet setting and it's too nice to be stuck inside so throw away your frown and let your hair hang down ...

the marvellos - in the sunshine

(and if it's horrid where you are at least get the talc on your kitchen floor and perfect your spins and slides)

roll on summertime