Friday 30 March 2007

a to z



omis and palones... we are proud to present... the bona school of polari!


so zoosh your riah, grab your darkest ogle fakes, and let's get cracking, duckies.


inspired by my old pal david callahan's champion ranting " the internet's just about being being cool and having good musical taste but doing fuck all" (hear the whole genius interview on the rain fell down )



the bona school - in 26 funpacked installments we'll be ...

- teaching you a word in polari

- picking a favourite english word

- illustrating the weeks letter with a picture from the eine shop shutter graffiti alphabet

- playing you a tune

fantabulosa!


so this week it's ... (wait for it, wait for it) ...






a is for ...


aris meaning bottom , bottle and glass - bottle - aristotle - aris

as in ' oooh, 'ave a vada at his baggy old aris! '


a is also for ...


arse! a gloriously wide ranging expletive i use with alarming regularity , although i do think it's best in a 'cor blimey , look at that arse on that' kind of a way, particularly when you're pointing but trying not to get caught pointing.

our american chums will know this as ass but that's just wrong - tits and arse my friends, tits and arse.


and a is also for ...


alton ellis the king of studio one soul. scratchy as hell but lovely.

alton ellis - can i change my mind

Wednesday 21 March 2007

boogie oogie oogie

if you've been following the goings on here you'll know by now that i'm quite shockingly shallow, and far more easily swayed by a pretty picture and a whistlable tune than reams of devastating insight and a five album box set. so my favourite journalism generally involves the desperately important 'what's your favourite colour socks?' questions. the fabulous kevin rowland manages to make even the comedy record mirror profile as seroius as he can....

and i know we weren't supposed to laugh at all of dexys makeovers, but we did.

'searching for the young soul rebels' is still a magical record though

Monday 19 March 2007

no i won't tell the fuckers to dance kevin


me and the raw herbs and andy wake from medium cool used to run a club - we put bands on really, basically so that our own bands could play whenever they liked.the basement bar on the euston road we used was open till late, so after the bands had finished we played records and tried to get people to stay and dance, or hang about boozing ,or just not go home yet. more often than not everyone went home.


eventually our pal richard starting playing records down there a bit more properly, and we tried to pretend this was almost a seperate thing altogether. pretty much everyone still went home. even when we pretended we were going to play records by the sort of bands they'd come to see every now and again. we didn't actually play them, we just said we would in true bastard dj style, then played old soul tunes and some girl groups. maybe the sorts who go to see bands just aren't dancey. maybe it was too many geeky indie boys who didn't want to dazzle the ladies,or the other geeky indie boys, with their latest moves. the records were fabulous so i'm buggered if i know... i mean how could you not stay and dance to this...?
mary love - you turned my bitter into sweet

Friday 16 March 2007

the revolutionary spirit



because we could still do with a cultural militia and the dream of the international brigade still swells my idealistic heart



i'm informed almost entirely by a lifetime of the clash and posters in a language i don't understand but sometimes that's all you need





and there are records like this that can only be listened to with a fist raised in salute
working week - venceremos

Tuesday 13 March 2007

postcard from paradise

tired of your holiday correspondence looking like this...?




now you can transform your wet weekend on the isle of wight into a trip to california's most glamourous hideaway.



all you have to do is decide if you're lunching with Pazza or LiLo...



obviously if your postcards look like this you don't need to resort to such lying piggery - everyone will be insanely jealous already...

Thursday 8 March 2007

dolly



i've fancied a trip to dollywood for ages, mainly for the genius name, and obviously, because like everyone should, we love dolly. after the disappointment of not getting tickets to see her (she's just about to hit this country for the first time since heaven knows when) i looked up stuff about the place and wished i hadn't. turns out it's just a theme park. with a shop that sells dollyesque outfits. you can get everything with extra rhinestones. i'd imagined a kind of even more nuts gracelands but it looks like blackpool pleasurebeach with fat americans instead of pissed geordies. and with more sequins. actually it sounds quite good now. it's the sequins that've turned it all around. i think there's a day dolly visits so i'll go then



dolly never disappoints. well allright she mostly disappoints, but when she's good she's untouchable.
buy the 'coat of many colours' lp (it should come with a free box of tissues) and prepare to be heartbroken.

dolly parton - dagger through the heart

frente - here you come again

and here's dolly...