Yes, yes. Buses. Nothing for ages then two in one day. Go on, say it.
Actually, due to my infrequent/non-existent posting of late, I’m late posting this. I thought the Oscars were on tonight, but it turns out they were on last night so I’ve missed the chance to look cool and clever and ahead of the curve on the film I want to write about, which is up for five awards, including Best Picture. As I write this (early Monday morning), it’s won Best Original Screenplay; I’ll update this post should that be added to as I’m writing. (PS: it wasn’t.)
There was talk a couple of years ago about whether Netflix original content, which had never been shown in movie theatres, should be recognised by the Oscars, but now, with the event of Covid – where pretty much nothing has been shown in cinemas for over a year, along with two other massive media corporations – Amazon and Sky – joining in the fun, there wasn’t really any way this content could be ignored anymore.
And it’s a film from Sky’s output that I want to flag to you today, specifically Promising Young Woman. If you’ve not seen it yet, redress that as soon as possible (if you can) before some idiot spoils it for you. I’ll try to avoid giving you any major spoilers.
We first meet central character Cassie (played, brilliantly, by Carey Mulligan – married to a Mumford as she is, her choice in life-partner is questionable even if her keen eye for a great role cannot be faulted, and man alive can she act – she’s done lots since but those of us who remember her breakthrough in an episode of (Tennant era) Dr Who – Blink, also often referred to as the episode the Doctor barely appears in, have known for long time what she is capable of) seemingly passed out in a bar. Three male office types at the bar see her; one, claiming chivalrous intentions, approaches her, offers to make sure she gets home okay. Home becomes his home rather than hers, and before you know it, he is taking advantage of this drunk woman, unable to resist, protest or fight him off.
Except Cassie isn’t drunk. She isn’t vulnerable. She’s very much in control, and she’s teaching guys like this a lesson.
As well as learning that invaluable lesson (which I would hope most of you knew already), we learn that Cassie is in her early thirties, works in a coffee shop and still lives with her parents, who needless to say keep dropping very unsubtle hints about wanting her to move out. Props to the casting crew here for picking Jennifer Coolidge – Stiffler’s Mom from the American Pie series as Cassie’s mother and Clancy Brown – perhaps best known as the evil bastard warden in The Shawshank Redemption (yes, that’s where you recognised him from) – who both play against type and are brilliant. When nerdy but determined love interest and paediatrician Ryan (Bo Burnham) shuffles awkwardly into her life, they are delighted, and we also learn that Cassie used to be a promising medical student, until she dropped out.
For a while it seems Ryan is going to be the catalyst to shake her out of her rut, and in a way he is, just not in the way expected. If this were your standard rom-com, then meeting Ryan would ultimately end up being the life-changing event which makes her stop her one woman correction-centre ways. Instead her focus switches to gaining some semblance of vengeance against those she considers culpable for the gang rape, subsequent cover-up and then suicide of her best friend at medical school, Nina. This, it transpires, has been the impetus behind her actions all along, it just took Ryan’s appearance – and his own back story – to make her become more focused in her actions.
I’ll venture no further plot-wise for fear of spoiling things. Suffice it so say that this film comes with a massive thumbs up recommend from me.
And, as you would expect from something I’m recommending, there are some great musical moments in the film too.
For a start, there’s the inclusion of this song, and a sequence which, just for a few moments, makes it okay to like it:
And then, at a point where you fear just how dark this film is prepared to go, you notice the strings on the soundtrack, wonder how long they’ve been playing for and then suddenly you recognise them and know: bad things are about to happen.
And then, at the end, there’s this, a song which I could have sworn had popped up on these pages before, but I can’t find any such post now. When it arrives in the film, it’s just so perfectly placed because…no, no spoilers. Let’s just say that the whole thing had me standing up and applauding.
It would be easy to characterise Promising Young Woman as a #MeToo movie, but it’s so much more than just a hashtag. It’s smart, funny and shocking in unequal measures. It’s a film which every man needs to watch to learn a valuable lesson, and every woman should watch to confirm they’re not alone in their experience.
More soon.
Promising Young Woman is available on NOWTV and Sky.
Shortly after Llŷr passed away in 2019, I wrote what I guess you could call my eulogy to him (although I’m sure he would have loved to have read it for himself, I’m equally sure he would have thought it a tad premature had I written it any sooner). I wrote these words:
“See that “There’s No Such Thing As A Guilty Pleasure” tagline? It simply wouldn’t be there were it not for Llŷr.
I’ll go further. Without that little seed sown, I wouldn’t be writing this and you wouldn’t be reading it.”
And now I’ll go further still, for it was Llŷr who first introduced me to the wonderful world of music blogs. He knew how much I loved a good cover version (the ratio of How To Do A Cover Version posts here against the number of How Not To Do A Cover Version is testament to this) so he sent me a link to a blog, now also sadly deceased, which featured nothing but cover versions. And then he directed me to the sidebar, to the list of other music blogs, and that was me off, following numerous other blogs. Friends: always check the sidebar, for although mine is woefully in need of an update, you’ll find some lovely surprises there.
Anyway, when I was younger, as soon as I got home from school, the first thing I would do would be to run upstairs, plug my guitar in and play VERY LOUDLY for half an hour or so. My mum used to describe it as me “getting my fix”, and for a time that’s how blogs grabbed me too. The moment I got home from work, I disappeared into my room, fired up my PC and spent a good couple of hours roaming around various blogs, seeking out tracks I’d loved and lost over the years, before finally emerging, gushing to Llŷr about what my haul for the day included. He would nod, offer the occasional “that’s cool”, the even more occasional “I don’t think I know that…”, which was usually reserved for some late 80s jingly-jangly twee-pop record.
Although I would undoubtedly have loved them anyway, my love for cover versions manifested itself in a love of what I guess many would consider to be a joke band: Goldie Lookin Chain.
You won’t be surprised to hear that, after Super Furry Animals, they are probably the band that Llŷr and I saw the most together.
I will always remember that on my birthday one year, we found that Super Furries were playing in Port Talbot, with GLC supporting them. Llŷr got a group of us together, hired a minibus and driver, and we set off to the gig. At the venue, a sports centre, if I recall correctly, and a few beers down, I popped to the gents, only to find it absolutely rammed, queue out the door. As I returned, Llŷr spotted my face, white in shock.
“You alright, Jez?”
“Just been to the bogs. It was rammo. I never thought I’d see three men sharing…”
“A cubicle? Probably not pissing, Jez”
“No, not a cubicle…”
“A urinal?”
“No….three men pissing into the same sink.”
“Welcome to Port Talbot!” Llŷr said raising a bottle (of beer) in my direction.
I can see why many people consider GLC to be a joke band – they’ve never released a serious record in their lives, and pretty much all of their songs are about being chavs from Newport, and/or (usually and) about smoking draw – but to dismiss them as “just” a joke band is a mistake, for in my book they are so much more than that. For a start, they clearly know their stuff – their musical references and samples are always spot-on – and are proficient hip-hop musicians and rappers in their own right. Yes, the individual members may have comedy names (Two Hats remains my favourite – say it quickly and you’ll see why) but that shouldn’t denigrate from how good they are.
For me, their songs fall into three categories:
1 – funny song which features a sample or samples I don’t recognise
2 – a funny song which features a sample or samples I do recognise – see Your Missus Is A Nutter (which samples – appropriately – Serge Gainsbourg’s Cannabis – and which they controversially performed before a Wales v England football match in 2005, dedicating it to “our old friend Victoria Beckham”, who seemed to see the funny side, to be fair); Your Mother’s Got a Penis (which samples Eric Clapton’s Behind The Mask); Charm School which features the Grange Hill Theme Tune
3 – a funny song which is a straight-up parody of another song, and includes a play-on-words on the original song title. I call these, with affection, their Barron Knights tracks.
One day, as they often did, a Llŷr-curated mix-CD was thrust into my hands. It contained two of the latter type of GLC tracks, neither of which, as far as I can make out, have ever had official releases. (The second has featured on these pages before, though.)
They still make me laugh whenever I hear them; more importantly, they remind me of Llŷr.
Oh, and of course, there’s a fair amount of effing and jeffing, so please don’t listen to these if you get offended by rude words.
And that would be the end of that, were it not for the fact that when I was trying to find out whether or not the two tracks featured had received an official release or not, I stumbled across another GLC track which samples one of Llŷr’s favourite records.
Since I’ve never heard it before, I can only assume he hadn’t either, because no two ways about it, he would have told me about this:
I’ve mentioned before that I have a somewhat chequered experience with tribute albums.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, a tribute album is where a bunch of cover versions of songs by acts who cite the writer as an influence are pulled together in one place. Sometimes it’s a load of songs which already existed, sometimes acts will be asked to record a cover specifically for the tribute, sometimes it’s a bit of both.
To my mind, perhaps as one would expect, they’re a bit of a hodge-podge, for every one decent cover you get three absolute clangers.
The first one I ever bought, I think, was the quite wonderful tribute to The Carpenters “If I Were A Carpenter”: 12 covers and I’d say that 10 of them are really good covers. Conversely, “Surprise Your Pig: A Tribute to R.E.M.” – who I love more than I love The Carpenters – has 17 tracks and maybe 3 of them are kind of ok.
I guess it depends on the quality of the source material, which is why it’s no surprise that “Holding Things Together -The Merle Haggard Songbook” has 24 songs and I’m struggling to find a duff cover amongst them.
Which is how I find myself typing some words that I honestly never thought I would on here.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here’s: The Grateful Dead with a song that doesn’t go on for as long as their doobies:
For the record, there was no post yesterday not out of any respect for the dead Royal, but because I couldn’t be arsed with writing one.
And here we are and I feel I’m expected to say something controversial.
Well, ok.
I like Miley Cyrus.
She’s a popstar who really seems to be flourishing on her own terms to me: when she isn’t appearing in particularly brilliant episodes of the already-brilliant Black Mirror, she’s making albums with The Flaming Lips, performing blindingly great sets at Glastonbury (remember Glastonbury?) – ok, she loses several million credibility points by getting her Dad up on stage too and thereby reminding us of the line-dancing monstrosity he was responsible for – she’s releasing really quite wonderful stuff like this:
Back in 2018, Legacy Recordings released Forever Words, a collection of new songs featuring previously unheard lyrics by Johnny Cash. The 16-track set offered new melodies and performances by artists such as Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson & Kris Kristofferson, John Mellencamp, Jewel, Brad Paisley, The Jayhawks, Robert Glasper, Cash’s daughter Rosanne Cash, and his step- daughter Carlene Carter.
Now comes an expanded version of the album which adds a further 18 tracks, 16 of which are previously unreleased. These have been rolled out on digital service providers on a bimonthly basis, culminating in a full second disc of tracks.
This is from the original release, doubtless further choice cuts from this will feature soon enough:
In my efforts to get back on the horse with writing here, an easy one, a soul classic, which deserves to have it’s moment in the Late Night Stargazing canon.
Here’s Billy Paul telling the story of his canoodling with Mrs Jones.
I mean just look at him in that picture, cool as feck. I mean, I would, if he left his hat on.
Wait, have we inadvertently stumbled upon the greatest bit of pop gossip ever?
Mr Jones is apparently in the dark about the affair – or is he? Surely when Tom Jones sang “You Can Leave Your Hat On” he was referring to a desire to be physically involved with a fedora wearing Mr Paul and/or his missus. No….?
Creation Stories is a Sky Original film which attempts to dramatise the life of Creation record label founder, Alan McGee.
A quick glance at the promotional material fills you with hope:
Missing from that is that this was co-written by Irvine Welsh. But there’s Danny Boyle’s name given prominance. And although you may not recognise him from the picture, that’s Ewen Bremner in the main role.
And what a soundtrack that promises to be!
Here’s the trailer:
Looks good, right?
*Scrolls through the rest of the imdb entry*
Look, there’s actual proper acting royalty in the form of Steven Berkoff and Saskia Reeves. Actual comic acting royalty supplied by Paul Kaye, Rufus Jones and Danny John-Jules. There’s Richard Jobson, making a pretty good fist of doing something useful for the first time since The Skids split up. There’s comedians Ed Byrne as…er…Alistair Campbell (I wish I could say: “Now that’s ironic!” here, but it isn’t) and Alistair McGowan as Jimmy Savile (are you sure about this? – Ed). Blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos by Bez, Carl Barat and Brix Smith-Start. And practically the entire cast of This Is England is involved (well, the ones who haven’t gone on to super-stardom since, anyway) and that can’t be a bad thing.
Oh wait.
Danny Boyle is just the Executive Producer. Along with fourteen others (not including Co-Executive Producers). Which means he’s put some cash into the project and that’s about the end of his involvement.
Oh wait.
I don’t know if you saw it flash up in the trailer, but this is directed by Nick Moran, who also plays Malcolm McLaren. Hmm, this is starting to look less promising by the second.
And so it proves to be.
There’s an awful lot that’s wrong with Creation Stories.
The first thing is that given the vast amount of Class A drugs ingested by McGee in the film, and given he is played by Ewen Bremner – a fine actor, and no mistake – it becomes almost impossible to shake off the memory of the other drug-guzzling character he has played in a Boyle/Welsh collaboration: Spud in Trainspotting.
There’s nothing here but reminders of Spud’s most iconic moments, the interview:
and the…er…morning after scene:
(The fact that in a review of one film, I’m posting clips from an entirely different film speaks volumes.)
To be clear, I’ve seen Bremner in many other productions, and after the initial recognition has passed, not once did I have Spud on my mind. It’s not Bremner’s fault that Creation Stories is such a dud, he does the very best he can with what he’s been given. I just think they could have cast somebody who didn’t invoke all these memories and comparisons, which have an undesirable effect on his performance and the film. Although I am struggling to think of who that might be.
And what of the crowd-pleasing creatives, namely Boyle and Welsh? To be honest, I can’t see Boyle’s influence at all here, and I reckon the most that Welsh had to do with writing it was ensuring the Scottish vernacular remained honest and true. “I’ve finished the screenplay now Irvine, can you chuck some swear words in, and make sure they’re not snorting when they should be smoking?”
To drive the plot, the film uses perhaps the laziest premise for a biopic: a journalist is interviewing McGee for a retrospective article in an American paper, or magazine, or TV show, it’s not made terribly clear. His story is told via a series of anecdotes, transposed to flashbacks. This method is employed so that the narrative can jump from one momentous moment to the next without really having to explain how we got from point A to point B.
(I wasn’t taking notes, but I also suspect there were several errors in the chronology.)
And I wouldn’t get too excited about that soundtrack, for the moments when you’re swept away by the music are few and far between.
I appreciate, of course, that Creation Records were responsible for a lot of amazing output during it’s all-to-brief tenure as the self-proclaimed “Coolest Record Label on Earth”, and there’s a lot to try and cram into one movie, but there are some acts who are conspicuous by their absence: there’s no mention at all of Super Furry Animals, and they once hired a tank and drove it through London to promote one of their records, which surely would have been visual gold.
Similarly, Teenage Fanclub barely get a mention, overlooking how integral to the label’s success their Bandwagonesque album was. I think I heard a snatch of this in the background in one scene, mind:
McGee is presented as an egotistical chancer, who repeatedly got lucky by being at events where unsigned bands just happened to be playing, and I’m not sure that’s entirely true.
But it’s here that I found the one true highlight of them film, when McGee’s own band are playing in a dingy backstreet London boozer, the Television Personalities invade the stage and take over, perform one song, announce “Here’s our second song. It’s the same as the first one, BUT LOUDER!” once it’s finished, before launching into exactly the same song, which they do indeed played louder than they had the first time.
If you’re at entry level, know nothing about Creation Records or Alan McGee, then I’d recommend Creation Stories as a stepping-on point and nothing more.
Otherwise, I’d say avoid at all costs. Stick with the 2010 Upside Down: The Creation RecordsStory documentary instead.
In the past, when a momentous occasion took place, a standard question as to where you were when you heard the news would circulate.
“Where were you when you heard that Kennedy had been assassinated?” they would ask of Vox-Poppers, or “Where were you when the moon landings happened?”. Folks would trip over themselves to try and outdo each other as to what flamboyant act they were engaged in when they heard the news, a bit like the competing Yorkshiremen in that old Monty Python sketch:
(And yes, before any of you get in touch, I’m perfectly aware that the sketch actually pre-dates Monty Python, having first been performed on At Last The 1948 Show.)
This is a question which I think we will see being asked less and less as time goes on, for the answer will almost always be: I was at home, same place as I’ve been for the last XX years.
For the record, I was at home, same place as I’ve been for the last 12 months, when I heard the news. I’d been in what we still feel obliged to refer to as a “virtual meeting” all morning which had, as is the norm, over-ran by an hour or so, and so I was already in a bit of a bad mood as this meant I had missed the TV show which has become my lunchtime staple viewing – Bargain Hunt – and I was pretty sure that meant that it would have inevitably been hosted on this occasion by my favourite presenter (and I suspect also the favourite of many other housebound gentlemen), the lovely posh-but-twinkly Christina Trevillian (*sighs*), as it almost always is when I manage to miss most/all of it (as opposed to the occasions when I catch it from the start and it’s hosted – always – by Anita bloody Manning, who, as with Julia Roberts and Keifer Sutherland, I simply cannot stand to watch. She reminds me of a particularly annoying Little Britain character:)
Anyway. My lunch break was at such a late hour that I realised it would actually correlate with my favourite afternoon TV quiz show, Impossible, which – and you read it here first – I’m pretty sure will one day replace Pointless in the prime, just before the news slot.
But no. There it was: all channels showing what appeared to be the longest news broadcast since Wills and Kate (but not Harry and Meghan, oh no) last dropped a sprog, with everything else for the rest of the day cancelled, unless you wanted to venture onto some of the more unpleasant reality/fly-on-the-wall TV shows, like Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away!, which you can tell just from the name is a Channel 5 show. It follows bailiffs High Court Enforcement Officers as they go about their jolly day, catching up with people who haven’t been able to pay a debt, or evicting people from rented properties because the landlord has decided to put the rent up and they can no longer afford to live there.
I was stopped once by a shop assistant in my local supermarket and asked if I was one of said Court Enforcement Officers from the show; I said I wasn’t and had never seen the programme, but caught a bit of it one Sunday afternoon when there was nothing else on. Let’s just say I was not flattered.
But anyway, I digress. Prince Phillip, the Duke Of Edinburgh died yesterday, and we’re all supposed to be in mourning.
Although, the Prince’s favourite show, Babestation, aired as usual, only with the models wearing black armbands as a tribute, I noted when I checked for…er…research purposes.
And of course, whilst it’s very sad that a family has lost a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, it’s news which I think many of us had been expecting for a goodly while now. He was 99 years old, he’d just had an extended stay in hospital after some kind of heart surgery, and, let’s face it, he didn’t look well when he was taken home. This was not exactly a surprise.
Not that I think that knowing someone is likely to pass makes it any easier to deal with their actual passing. I know from my own recent, brutal, experience that no matter how prepared, how steeled you might think you are, when the news comes through it still hits you like a juggernaut and you’re still shattered. There is no escape from grief.
Now, I’m no Royalist, but were we to get a day off work for the funeral then I will happily dress in black and weep into a hanky for as long as it takes. But I imagine they’ll do what they did when Diana was murdered died: pop the funeral on a weekend so the national economy isn’t affected, but the Union Jack and florist industries flourish.
I was living in Cardiff back in 1997, when Diana died, still working in Boots The Chemist selling tights, tampons and panty-liners to the capital’s finest. The funeral was on a Saturday, and we were given the morning off to watch the ceremony and pay our respects. I didn’t watch it, I enjoyed a couple of extra hours in bed.
I actually had the opportunity to meet Diana several years earlier. At the time I was at college, and serving on the Student Union Executive, in my utterly non-political role as Social Secretary. Because my role was non-political, I gained a reputation for fence-sitting or abstaining when it came to votes of a political nature. As far as I saw it, I had not been elected on the basis of any political views I may or may not have held, I was elected on the basis of my ability to organise a good night out for the students. So, I didn’t think it right that my political views should have any bearing on matters.
And then one day the news came in: Diana was going to be visiting the college, to open the recently completed Princess of Wales Sports Centre. Truly the famous quote from Field of Dreams applies here: If you build it, they will come. The Executive were all invited and expected to attend and meet the Princess. And, much to my mother’s horror when I told her many years later, I declined. And I was the only one from the entire, predominantly left-wing, anti-monarchy Student Union Executive to do so. I gained more political traction from that act, as a man who stood by his principles, than I ever wanted, expected, or indeed anything else I did again. Suddenly, I was a hero. For the rest of their time in position, my Executive colleagues had to answer awkward questions about why they went when I didn’t, were they really in their jobs to work for the students, or to promote themselves and further their own careers? It was quite delicious for a while.
Anyway: on the day of Diana’s funeral, my route to work took me through the Roath and Cathays areas of Cardiff where I lived, traditionally quite a studenty area, and as this was late August/early September, there weren’t too many of those youngsters around. In fact, I remember thinking how quiet it was as I walked to work, and I assumed this was because everyone was at home, watching the TV coverage.
My route took me across the usually busy City Road, and then down an alleyway adjacent to a working men’s club. And I swear, no word of a lie, as I walked down that alleyway, I heard this record booming from an open window of the club:
There will, of course, be a funeral. It will, of course, be paid for by you and I, the British taxpayer. It’s not a two-way deal, of course. Don’t expect Her Maj to break open the massive whiskey bottle containing one and two pence shrapnel so she can chip in for your funeral, because that simply won’t happen.
But who should organise it? Well, I think the Royal Family should take a leaf out of the British Government’s Covid-19 Handbook, and see if there are any posh toffs who could do it for them. A cursory look over Dido Harding’s CV shows she has absolutely no experience whatsoever of arranging funerals, so she seems ideally placed to do it, for just several billion pounds over the amount one could realistically expect to be spent on such a showcase event.
Needless to say, there is never a good time for any family to go through the pain and suffering that a bereavement inevitably brings. But it occurred to me that this one could have come at a worse time for the Windsors. For a start, Prince Andrew must be feeling strangely conflicted right now, sad that his father has died, but at the same time relieved there will be an extended period now where nobody accuses him of being a paedophile. I wonder if, since he was withdrawn from public appearances after his disastrous interview with Emily Maitlis, he’ll be allowed to attend the funeral?
But also, you’ll recall the recent Oprah interview with Harry and Meghan, where there was an allegation that a member of the royal family made racist comments about the likely skin colour of the couple’s offspring. From a PR point of view, Philip’s death presents an opportunity to the very least put some more distance between those allegations and any response – today’s newspapers are, after all, tomorrow’s fish’n’chips wrapping. But it also affords the Royals the chance to, for want of a better term, throw somebody under the bus, for many people felt the racist comment could probably be attributed to Philip, solely on the basis that, well, he had form for saying things which could be described as inappropriate at best.
As I mentioned when I wrote about the interview in a previous post, I don’t buy that it was Philip; sure he has a history of gaffes but – and I say this not to condone any of his comments, but to offer an explanation of them – generally when he said something wrong it was intended in jest, or as an “ice-breaker” intended to put a member of the public at rest. That doesn’t make it right, that makes it an old man getting it wrong and saying something inappropriate, and I think we all know someone like that.
The comment mentioned in the Oprah interview came from a much more savage, hurtful place, and my money remains where it did when I wrote that last piece.
*Pops tongue back in cheek*
But there is something racist, something with a whiff of cancel culture about the timing of Prince Philip’s death which will inevitably lead some of the more gullible to seek some kind of conspiracy. And it is this: forever more, when you type “Prince died April” into Google (other search engines are available), you will be faced with a screen or three full of references to Philip. You will need to scroll down quite some way to find any mention of The Greatest Prince, who also died in April – April 21st 2016, to be precise.
Since I drew a comparison with the death of Diana earlier, I can’t resist posting this bit of comedy genius from Stewart Lee:
*****
To sum up: of course I feel empathy for the Royal Family as they mourn the loss of a beloved family member. But do you know who I empathise with more? The South Pacific tribe on the tiny island of Tanna in the Vanuatu archipelago, who saw Prince Philip as a living god. Who should they follow now?
Firstly, I wanted to do a mix unlike the Not Christmas one, which I thought strayed a bit too far into the territories of cheese or chart music. Whilst it served a purpose, it wasn’t really indicative of the sort of tunes which usually feature here.
This one, though is a corker, even if I do say so myself.
Regular readers may recall that way back in the late 1980s, I started DJ’ing at college because I was fed up with being able to guess what song the indie DJs would play next. So imagine my annoyance when my own brother told me that on a previous mix he’d been able to predict my next choice a couple of times. Grrr.
But this mix has proved to be such a pain to complete; when I came to do it today, it tells me that some of the tunes have been played 22 times, which gives you an idea of how many times I’ve tried to get this one right. Pretty much once a week, since Christmas.
What’s gone wrong all those times? Well, on more than one occasion professional pride kicked in: I’ve messed up a mix between tunes, so have elected to start again.
On more than one occasion, preoccupied with playing Solitaire or Candy Crush just to have something to do whilst recording the mix, there’s a sudden, irretrievable silence where the next record should be. Oops!
Once I forgot to stop recording until an hour later, and, triumphant at how the mixes had worked out, I couldn’t understand why the mix lasted over 5 hours, until I listened to it.
The other problem is booze. More than once, I’ve taken drink to such an extent that I’ve forgotten I was doing a mix until the silence after one record has finished hits home and startled me awake.
Last weekend, I got to the third record from the end, and suddenly woke up to silence and realised I’d messed up again. That’s not an indictment of the standard of the mix, by the way, more an example of how drunk I’d gotten.
Even last night, when I finally nailed it, it was my second attempt of the night, having got through most of the mix when I had a drink-spillage event, which I thought I’d sorted, until, four records from the end, suddenly the sound cut out whilst the tunes kept playing and I had no idea if it was still recording the sound or the sound of silence.
Anyway, we’ve got here, and this has been a real pain, so if you could take a listen, that would be great.
I will confess that I have broken the golden rule of not featuring the same act more than once in this mix; this wasn’t intentional, but as the various run-throughs progressed, I simply forgot said acts already appeared as “featuring” acts. One is deliberate. Sue me (Please don’t).
Time for the usual disclaimer: any glitches, skips or jumps are down to the software or the uploading/downloading process, and nothing to do with my limited mixing skills.
Oh, and the usual “effing and jeffing” warning applies; it seems I’m incapable of doing a mix which doesn’t include more than the occasional swear.
I’m not posting a link to download here, other than the one to Soundcloud, where you can either download or stream it.
I couldn’t be bothered with the last ones, but I’ve done it this time: you’ll see a list of all the acts featured in this mix at the bottom of the page, so you can check whether this one’s likely to be your cup of tea before going to the hassle of actually listening to it. If you’re particularly short of things to do, you can try to guess which song I’ve picked by which artist. There’s fun.
But by way of a description: pretty much all life is here, from indie rock to 60s California hippy-shtick, some Old Skool dance classics, some hip-hop and some soul classics via some Northern Soul belters via some TV show theme tunes (sort of); there’s some hoary old rock and some psychobilly, and a couple of tracks which should have featured in a New post by now, but the bands in question played the 6Music festival last weekend so you’ll probably know them intimately by now. And, of course, there’s The Fall.
Easy on the cheese this time, there’s even some poetry so we can all pretend we’re intellectual. You’ll have chance to dance, sit and recover for a few moments, before getting back on it again.
Available for a limited time (i.e. until I do the next one), you can download or stream this on Soundcloud here:
It seems almost incredible that just over a year ago, I was writing about the new sensation that was working from home.
It feels incredible not in a “hasn’t time flies?” kind of way, but more in a “was that only a year ago??” kind of way.
And now it’s Easter weekend, and for the second year running I won’t be travelling to spend it with my parents, although there are pencilled-in plans to visit them for my Dad’s birthday towards the end of the month, provided restrictions have been lifted sufficiently to allow such adventurous activity to happen, and also, of course, assuming he hasn’t gone and got himself a hospital bed like he did last year.
Anyway, there’s on tradition which lives on here at Dubious Towers, and that’s to post this blasphemous slice of camp glory:
A History of Dubious Taste 