i hear a new world

trolling about flickr can sometimes leave me with nightmares of auntie doris in the park or a million cats looking dumb or our car parked on a road or eight zillion bits of crap graffiti and often all of that muddled together in some horrible mind bogglingly dull mess. and then there are days when everything is saved by geniuses like dan mcpharlin and his cardboard miniature synthesizers. i want them all.


they make me think of joe meek who would've surely dreamed of such fantastic creations every minute he wasn't dreaming of handsome young things in his favourite cottages.




it's not often mentioned that the adorable mr meek unleashed the very first explicitly gay 45 on an innocent and oblivious 1966. admittidly it's tucked away on the b side of a tornados single nobody bought but it's there all the same in all it's camp queeny fabness.
jon savage has written about all of this in much more detail and style than i'll ever get round to so read all about it properly there.
you can marvel at those innocent times along with the tornados and the rest of not too swinging really london here first. wilder, madder and camper than a beatles hairdo...

the tornados - do you come here often?

and just so we don't forget just what a proper pop pioneer meek could be here's his super smash space hit without which modern music would be just ...oh you know all that already don't you sweeties so i won't blather on


the tornados - telstar



with thanks to the lovely brogues for the tip

seaside special

apparently in some strange bits of the world summer has stuff called sunshine and you don't need a cardigan on and your hair doesn't get wrecked the second you step out the door. but not here. oh no.
i've been using a tape i made in the lovely warm bits of last year as a memory aid, hoping that the beautiful music will transport me back to strange lost days of paddling and ice cream and moaning that it was too bloody hot. if i stand right next to the fire and put my goolie ogle fakes on it nearly works.

maybe it'll work for you

barbara lewis - hello stranger
the shangri la's - train from kansas city
barbara mason - world in crisis
johnny osbourne & the sensations - come back darlin
the seekers - georgy girl
love affair - everlasting love
judy street - what
alton ellis - can i change my mind
lorez alexander - send in the clowns
phyllis dillon - don't stay away
the jackson five - looking through the window
pat kelly - since you are gone
timi yuro - what's the matter baby

dusty7s summer spectacular

or you can try a not sure how you do this individual songs version
dusty7s summer spectacular super size edition

the song is king

did anyone ever see edwyns show west heath yard ? i don't watch much telly but madness like this would have me square eyed in no time

summer school

some of you young scamps may think you're on holiday now but the bona school never closes. we're at it all day and every night with barely enough time off for a round of crazy golf down the arnold palmer and a celebratory gin and it with the coarse pro.


so here's... g!

g is for

goolie ogle fakes - why say sunglasses when this is so much easier

and

groinage meaning jewelery. you know it's what gerald ratner would've used

and

gildy meaning fancy


and back in the world of the slightly less limp wristed g is for

good gawd as on 'oh my good gawd' as said by captain of industry arthur daley about ten times every episode of minder and even more in our house what with arthur being one of our all time favourite dodgy londoners of all time.
and i want membership of the winchester. ' vodka slimline please dave, and put it on the slate'.
we've recently ploughed through all of the sweeney and all but the last two serieses of minder and i can't recommend them enough.



and what with me still feeling a bit punky and angular this morning g can be for the gang of four as well.


gang of four - damaged goods

old dumb and kind of pasty

it's young week in contrastpodcastville and yet again i was very lazy about it all and just picked something with young in the title. it's a very good something mind that should have you movin and shakin but i can't help but feel i should've been a bit more imaginative.

bob and marcia - young gifted and black

the more i think about it the more i realise that being young was horrible. mainly because of school which was a terrible ghastly burn the fucker down terror which left me only with a mastery of lying cheating and making ever more ridiculous excuses. penguin modern classics didn't help much either. how are you supposed to be a bright and shining child when you're trying to plow through satre and camus (pronounced came-us obviously - well no one told me...) and holden caulfield is your only saviour? at least there was records.(there WERE records stupid child). loud shouty turn that bloody racket down call that music? it's just a bloody noise records. stiff little fingers records. they were the first band i went to see without my mum and if there's anything great about being a kid it's being able to jump around like an idiot with a few hundred equally sweaty shouty nogoodniks and never want to stop. so i should've picked this...



stiff little fingers - alternative ulster

winners!

well done everyone who had a go at our siddeleys competition and guessed that the tortured soul scrawled in honour on the back of johhny johnson's hand had to be our favourite holloway road nutjob joe meek. i desperately want there to be an alf quiet but hey.

so telstar forever to...

fil, jessel, marianne, rhany, gareth, mattias, wayne, cherry, resty, richard

your hard won siddleys/reserve flexis will be on their way as soon as it stops raining long enough for me to get to the post office.
i do like the idea of there being a bit of this thing that actually gets put in an envelope and escapes from the screen and it's always lovely getting stuff through the post so i'm going to try and come up with more exciting prizes somehow. preston tuesday boot fair here we come.

from the radio clyde mobile to you

well we haven't had one of these for a while and if i could stick a big free thing on the front of this i promise i would.
by 1984 and one hit out of seven singles polydor seemed to've pretty much given up on getting orange juice in the charts despite having thrown flexis and tapes and stickers and extra singles in foldout poster sleeves and heaven knows what else at a generally not bothered public. by what presence?! there was a free tape but i'm sure it wasn't attached to the record and relied on bored and snooty shop assistants, especially in wood green shopping city, grunting 'wanna tape wiv tha?' and rooting round in a box for this dusty treat. i hope everyone got one cos it's ace.
do you get free stuff with downloads? where do i get the badge that comes with that?


orange juice - in a nutshell (live)
orange juice - simply thrilled honey (live)
orange juice - dying day (live)

and there was a postcard in there somewhere too.

start the week right

we're a winner

the contrast podcast crew have traveled back to 1967 this week without ,thank gawd, the merest hint of moptop and only a drop or two of pachouli.
for me it was the easiest one to pick a tune for for a while. the impressions 'we're a winner' has been somewhere very near the top of my singles pile since my pal richard first introduced me to the glorious pleasures of curtis mayfield and suffers terribly from being played at pretty much every do i've ever played records at.can you imagine this being practically banned by radio at the time. idiots. it's only competition came from the wish to remember john coltrane, who died that year, even though it's really the piano beauty of mccoy tyner that makes me melt, and the village hall disco floor filler of my youth 'there's a ghost in my house'. it's tunes like this that make me want to flatten every idiot that still spouts the tragic drivel about the beadles inventing music...


so freedom sounds, northern floorshakers and modal madness it is then

the impressions - we're a winner

r dean taylor - there's a ghost in my house

wet wednesday torment tuesday siddeleys special

i'm ever so glad that the siddeleys are finally held in the high regard they deserve. perhaps the end of the eighties just wasn't their time. still it's a shame they never got chance to make the records they could've and i shall feel forever guilty that i couldn't do more with the dumb little label i ran extremely shoddily to blast them into all the hearts that needed them most. they were after all in glorious flight a timely reminder that pop music can be instant, effortless and intensely exciting and still possess depths which leave you dizzy...


they still manage to leave their mark on the streets of west london. i don't know why the streets were closed in their name. a parade maybe, or new stock of the lp in rough trade...


a million years ago in some godforsaken camden back room i was given a tape by a gang with the best haircuts in the place and am stunned that it hasn't fallen apart after a gazillion plays. almost all the stuff the siddeleys ever recorded is on slum clearance but a couple of the oldest gems got lost. this was one of my favourites.

the siddeleys - things will be different (original demo)


thankyou uncle john peel. i know it's on the sombrero doodah but i'm very proud of the dear thing, so here's

the siddeleys - sunshine thuggery

to give you an idea of the bizarre madness and crappiness of the music industry at bug level in 1987 peter powell or some other stuntkiting daytime radio one dj apparently whispered that he would play sunshine thuggery on his show if we could get him a seven inch copy. imagine that - daytime radio only played sevens but the independent manufacturers and distributors would only stump up the cash for us to release twelve inch eps and by the time i'd begged and scraped the loot to do it ourselves together they insisted the moment had passed and a huge opportunity went the way of all things. bugger.
at least they're cult heroes now...



competition time

you can win your very own siddeleys flexi disc also featuring those butch and bona omis reserve by simply answering the following worthy of richard and judy brain buster...

gang leader johnny johnson was keen on scrawling the names of her heroes on the back of her hand. who would you most likely find printed large on her clenched fist?

a - alf quiet

b - joe meek

c - ted shy

get it right and a bunch of you will wondering how the hell you're supposed to play the bloody thing.
just leave your answer in the comments bit below and check back soon to see if you've won.
easy.



there are properly written siddeleys celebrations and more tunes to be had here...
the roaring machine whoa whoa, love grows
indie mp3 track of the week
sweeping the nation more songs to learn and sing
medium cool jukebox

photo courtesy of acb

we love les

the day just feels better if i start it laughing. i hope this works for you too.
x

goodbye new piccadilly

so another of london's greatest treasures is to be lost. by the 23rd of september that most classic of classic cafes the new piccadilly will close and, along with every other shabby but wonderful bit of that chunk of denman street, will get bulldozed.
i didn't get down there anything like as often as i should, the holborn tea rooms was more my spot for double egg on toast and paintstripper tea, and it was always just outside my own personal bit of london. (my london is ridiculously little when i think about it and the self imposed by years of habit borders are harder to cross than you'd think - i'd rarely get down brewer st further than walkers court, even piccadilly seeming to far west...) anyway i'm always far too easily tempted by a drop of what killed auntie in the french house, or the coach, or the blue posts or gawd knows how many other boozers along the way.



but i shall miss the old place, despite the classic fm and posters for terrible shows, and i urge you to pop in if you happen to be down that way.
you'll like it i'm sure.


and when i rule the world this will be required listening for every architect and evil developer in the land

chairmen of the board - working on a building of love

photos courtesy of mizzy*
more cafe loveliness at classic cafes

contrast podcast goes elvis (sort of)

there are poor sad souls out there who live half lives in the shadows untouched by the blinding light and burning love of elvis. can you imagine such horror? we can only pity them. or laugh and throw stuff.
some of these bizarre creatures have contributed to this weeks elvis themed contrast podcast turning what should clearly've been an enormous outpouring of love into something quite weird and frightening. you can hear it all here.
maybe this will show them the light...