Tuesday 30 October 2007

one day we will all be free

if you don't cry almost all the way through spartacus you're a heartless bastard. i start if i see it in the telly listings. it used to be at the bit when jean simmons is sent to his cell and he's all heroic and whatnot and the first quiet swoon of the love theme creeps in but now i know that's coming i just can't stop myself. i daren't even think about the rest or i'll be ruined all day.


yusef lateef - love theme from spartacus


magnificence

okay okay so i forgot trouble man. i know. i'm even stupider than i look. and shaft and shaft in africa and across 110th street. but all that's filling my tiny brain are songs out of films that i don't know the rest of the soundtrack of. theme tunes. big numbers. the magnificent seven. robert vaughn was my favourite.
elmer bernstein - the magnificent seven


Sunday 28 October 2007

she's been a scrubber all her life

apparently purple rain is the best film soundtrack ever. i didn't get as far as finding out who decided this what with all the seething and cursing and general unreasonableness. everyone knows it's superfly. everyone. then there's a great big pile of one from the hearts and morricones and the harder they comes and even grosse point blanks for gawds sake. and up the junctions.

the pretending life's a song gang were drooling over suzy kendall last week, like you do, and reminded me to dig out my manfred mann lp. i know it should make me think of sixties south london but it actually takes me right back to san francisco 1999 where my dearest old pal played it daily with some champion singing along and mad dancing. and of dennis waterman who's managed to be in three of my favourite telly shows. and of how i've not seen the bloody film. how i've missed it all these years is a mystery but there you go. anyhow i think we'll have a week of film music to encourage whoever it was that made a crap list to have another go.

manfred mann - up the junction

Wednesday 24 October 2007

girls kissing

this weeks nuts magazine is a 69 girls kissing special. you can't move these days for girl on girl action. they all have boyfriends who don't mind them fondling some other glamourpuss you know. what's happened to all the evil predatory lesbians vic godard warned us about? and if i'm to believe all that nuts tells me why isn't he encouraging his girl to get together with the little vixen who's after her so he can watch? lesbians are always desperate for a man to join in apparently. poor old vic. imagine the fun he could've had.
vic godard and the subway sect - stop that girl

i've been shouting along to ambition for nearly 30 years now and i still only know a handfull of the words. i won't be tempted by vile evils cos vile evils are vile evils is sometimes all you need to know.
subway sect - ambition

Monday 22 October 2007

i'm so excited

by my reckoning the 19th and 25th of november will be big nights for london's babysitters what with every creaking old soak heading out to celebrate dear edwyn's return to the stage so book em in now sweethearts before it's too late. i know he's playing in that camden first but camden smells and we'll all be needing a little sit down in a nice theatre not a sticky dancefloor with nowhere to put your coat. and we get vic godard.
for those of you who can't get there that nice mr collins is doing a live webcast (how modern...) tonight at 7 o'clock
edwyn collins live webcast tonight at 7

way way way back long ago we pretended to interview edwyn for the first horrific go at a rubbish fanzine. sat upstairs in the cambridge in soho with a whopping great radio/cassette with a comedy built in microphone we forgot everything we were going to ask him and tried to keep up with his trips to the bar. on the way home i had to get off the tube to be sick. being the considerate kind soul what i am i tried to be sick in a bin (there used to be bins on platforms children where could put rubbish - imagine that) but it cleverly had no bottom so i was sick on my shoes. a night to treasure all round then. somehow from the tinny garbled noise left on the tape we managed to cobble together this mess.

and to get you in the mood how about the b side of don't shilly shally
edwyn collins - if ever you're ready

Friday 19 October 2007

so wrong it's gotta be right


still obsessing about cover versions and the perfect song and i'm impressed by how sweet and nice and generous lots of you are, not minding who ruins you're favourites like you do. i'm a much more mean and vicious soul who'd tear the throat out of anyone who even looked at some of my records funny let alone started trying to sing them. i'll try and get a list (ooooh a list) together of stuff to slap a preservation order on next week so get any last minute changes of heart in quick.
if you must to have a go at a classic for gawds sake try your best to follow the studio one recipe - wild guess at most of the words + out of tune pub piano + sir coxsone dodd = stomping gloriously over rod and cat and everyone and turning out fabulous

norma frazer - the first cut is the deepest

Tuesday 16 October 2007

Monday 15 October 2007

what the world needs now

okay so i'm getting obsessed by this goddamn listed songs thing. i can't stop thinking of songs to keep safe from harm. one minute there are hundreds the next they've all go jumbled in my noggin and i can't think of any. except if you want me to stay by sly and the family stone. but more of that later.
every good cover (and a million things besides) is safe in the hands of sergio mendes
and brasil 66. i stress brasil 66 because the silly old duffer went and almost spoiled everything by getting caught up in some terrible remix thing involving black eyed peas and all sorts of equally foul beasts for which i find it hard to forgive. never mind, at least we have 66 and most of 77 come to think of it. love music is ace. a sunday afternoon at dingwalls classic. anyway...wouldn't it've been nice if that mccartney and lennon and harrison lot had just been denmark street song writing hacks instead of a mystifyingly popular pop group. they could even've been let in the brill building at a push. i could've liked them then. if the world had been introduced to 'something' via shirley bassey and sergio mendes and brasil 66 had been what dionne warwick had been to bacharach and david.. there'd've been none of that love me do nonsense or any handholding unless cilla wanted a crack at them maybe and norwegian wood would've never been tainted by moptops and that famous scouse wit and lani hall would've been adorded

sergio mendes & brasil 66 - norwegian woodhell i got distracted madly there. that's what sergio can do to a soul. listed songs i was on about. and witchita lineman. i would save glen's version. it's a special thing.
and sergio has done the definitive cover already so let's leave it at that.



in case you're not convinced of that mendes magic




and just to seal the deal

sergio mendes & brasil 66 - what the world needs now

Thursday 11 October 2007

you can't touch this

i've been reading about cover versions a lot lately especially at junkfood philosophy and pretending life is like a song and it all reminded me of a thing on elms a while back (sorry people that's robert elms who does the lunchtime show on bbc london and is often infuriating and often suprisingly good). it was about songs that should never be allowed to be covered, that should be listed and kept safe from the evil clutches of the terrible horrors who would do unspeakable things to them. i can't for the life of me remember what got picked in the end but i think it's a fine plan. 'a million things' by lowell george was there, and 'northern sky' i think.

anyway i thought maybe we could all have a go at choosing some.

it's way trickier than it should be.
i was going to say golden lady by stevie wonder but then i rembered how much i like the jose feliciano version. or all of what's going on but then there's that ace sarah vaughan inner city blues.
bugger.
i wish i'd not started this now.

and just in case you'd forgotten just how immense stevie could be this is the greatest sesame street appearance you'll ever ever ever see ever



Wednesday 10 October 2007

calling captain autumn

the blogging bit of my brain has definitely turned to mush and been sneezed out in a terrible explosion of waffling rambling and the odd sharp edge from a broken bit of vinyl. how could i forget my long plotted plan for the big haircut one hundred thing when the polari doodah got around to h ? and how come now i've finally remembered i've forgotten what the hell i was going to put ? i amaze myself sometimes really i do.
so haircut 100 then. jumpers, big guitars, trousers tucked in big wooly socks, and each single not really as good as the one before.
that can't be all i had to say surely...
there was something about guitars, how in my world kids would venture into guitar shops and instead of playing some monstrous rock riff they'd hitch a huge red semi acoustic way up high and strum furiously but delightfully the opening chords of favourite shirts.
i don't care much for showing off, especially not with drums or guitars, and still insist the most marvelous guitaring is the mixed low flawless rhythm flowing all the way through move on up. drummers need look no futher than bernard purdies drumming lessons over at planet mondo

maybe the wise words of nick heyward his very self will help...

'the way i see it is that - around 10 - monkees is all you listen to. then - around 13 - you start to disown all those records and you go to discos and start meeting girls. then you start listening to jazz and getting into all this wierd stuff. then you get so depressed with it you cut all your friends off and have a short haircut and get out all your old monkees albums again and start, y'know, enjoying yourself'

'my life's ambition is to live inside a transparent rock. you must've had dreams about sitting in something and watching everything go by. it would be brilliant. not to get old and just watch history. and drink tea. and give people anaemic looks. and wait for girls to come from scotland who've got pale skin and freckles...'


haircut 100 - favourite shirts (boy meets girl)

it wasn't all cheeky grins and saucily tipped hats though. they could get the public all up in arms and organizing themselves into well armed vigilante groups baying for blood...

Sunday 7 October 2007

hello heartface

now i know we're renowned for our lax and shoddy ways round here but three months between lessons is kind of ridiculous so let's leap right into polari mode before kenneth realises just how bad we've been. if he catches you tell him you've been in tangier with babs or something...


h is for

handbag
meaning money. nante handbag is so much nicer than skint now ain't it

and for

heartface
your new favourite term of affection

to get us back up to speed we could probably do with a bit of help from kenneth and hugh so listen carefully duckies

julian and sandy - bona prods


as a rule we only thank our american chums for quality tunes and spelling doughnuts donuts but today we'll add a US of Stateside greeting i wish we heard more here...

howdy

most especially grand in a howdy ladies, you're looking mighty fine this morning kind of way(as actually in real life said to us in a nowhere town on route 66 ("we were somewhere around barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold") by a lovely wrecked already old boy) or anything involving hat tipping.

i couldn't decide on a record so to make up ever so slightly for keeping you waiting so long have two.

lush stereolab croony lovliness

high llamas - cookie bay

and a mad collision of modal and latin jazz


horace parlan - congalegre

Wednesday 3 October 2007

днем рождения Земли

it's silver suits and red stars and universal translators all round as we say happy birthday sputnik. i don't know what you did all the way up there, you didn't look half as fabulous as telstar and you're weren't half littler than i thought you'd be but you beat the yanks after all and i promise i'll look stuff up in time for next year. i hope you all will too.


there are unimaginably huge amounts of records out there i covet and now i've found another. here's the only clip i could find
sputnik - the earth satellite

lets hang up our boxing gloves

...and sit down and try a little love with curtis's friend and mine the lovely otis leavill or is it leaville like it says on my record? gawd knows.
i'm afraid my rambling and waffling muscles are still flabby and useless and i've been wandering about the place mumbling oooh me bad back after the shock of my recent exertions so the music is going to have to do the talking till i see if i can get the hang of this lark again ('like you ever had a hang of it heartface')
one of the sweetest bits of chicago soul should help no end
otis leavill - love uprising


Monday 1 October 2007

you're a heartbreaker

these sad lovely treasures from paul kelly and the saint etienne lot are up at i like already but they're so gorgeous i thought they should be everywhere.
the tea rooms

the copper grill

new piccadilly

treasure lorelei on bateman street and the regency over in pimlico while you can my sweets