Inspiration for this morning’s tune comes from a tv show I watched recently.
The Big Door Prize aired on Apple TV, and Our Town – by the same artist and from the same album this appears on, 1992’s Grammy-nominated debut album Infamous Angel – popped up in one of the episodes, and led me to investigate further.
I’d never heard of Iris DeMent before this, or at least I didn’t think I had – turns out she had sung four duets with John Prine on his 1999 album In Spite of Ourselves, so her name and voice should have rung a bell. I’ve even posted a Prine/DeMent duet on these pages before!
I appreciate that those of you who have been using streaming services for a lot longer than this recent convert will already know this, but one of the things I’m loving about having made the switch from iPod to streaming service for my on-the-go music needs, is that, since I’m no longer restricted by the memory size of my iPod, I can be a lot less selective about what I can import on to iTunes.
Which means I’ve spent a lot of time recently importing all the music I have on my external hard drive onto iTunes and from there to the cloud. Which means that I’m revisiting a lot of music for the first time in ages, often uncovering songs I never knew I had, and occasionally hearing things for the first time.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times recently that I’ve had to check my phone to establish what on earth is going into my ears; approximately 95% of the time because I like it, 3% of the time because I don’t, and 2% because I can’t work out who it is and it’s doing my head in.
Anyway, tonight’s song is one that I had forgotten I owned; to me it’s the sound of dark, smoky bars, and with Louis Balfour – John Thompson’s ‘Jazz Club’ host from The Fast Show – turning to the camera and mouthing the words “Grrrrreat! or “Nice!”
It’s been a while since I wrote one of these. That’s not through choice, it’s just that the news moves so bloody fast that by the time I’ve alighted on something I fancy writing about, things have moved on so far as to make anything I may want to write utterly obsolete.
Before I go any further, I should warn any of you with a nervous disposition or a delicate bowel, this post contains a lot of unsavoury ne’er-do-wells who, for want of a better phrase, really boil my piss.
OK. If you’re still reading, your reaction is all on you.
So, I figured I’d start with something personal to me.
Although common sense prevents me from stating exactly which one, I work for one of the London Borough councils. Long term readers may recall that I lived in the Borough that I worked for, until, a year and a half ago, when the owner of the flat I rented decided to sell up, the new owner decided they didn’t want me in there anymore, evicted me and, unable to afford rent on my own in London and unwilling to go back to flatsharing (I’m in my 50s, I’m too old and set in my ways to go back to sharing, and I’m not sure anyone would particularly want to share with me), I ended up moving back to Peterborough, the town closest to where I grew up.
This all happened towards the end of lockdown, when we’d been working from home for almost 12 months with no demonstrable effect on our efficiency. (Actually, that’s not 100% true: it was pointed out to me mid-way through lockdown that my productivity had dropped off a bit; we considered what was different and alighted on the fact that I had the radio on at home, which I didn’t have in the office. I duly stopped tuning in to Pop Master (sorry Ken!) every day, and bingo! Productivity back up to normal again.) Anyway, before I moved, I sought permission from my managers, and it was agreed that as long as I came back into the office for monthly team meetings, and for any other meetings I needed to attend in my normal course of work, there would be no issue with me mostly working from home. Fair enough. Most accommodating, I thought. I agreed, of course.
And so it proceeded for a goodly while. Until recently, and I should stress this was not the idea of the managers who consented to me moving away, but very senior management, at the behest of the (Tory) councillors, told us that we have to go into the office twice a week.
It costs me a little over £50 a time for me to travel into work, which means it’ll cost me at least £400 a month to fulfil this obligation. So much for saving money by moving out of London.
And of course, my health has deteriorated since I moved, my mobility is restricted, which makes the long slog on the train into London especially arduous.
This whole “you cannot work from home anymore” ethic has, of course been started by Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who a while ago went around leaving passive aggressive notes (presumably word-checked by Nanny, since there’s no Latin in it) like this:
(I’m sure Pete Wylie would really appreciate being associated with the Moggster…)
Many of you will doubtless recall how Rees-Mogg himself acts when he is “in the office”, his place of work being, of course, the Houses of Parliament. In case you don’t, here he is, treating the Parliament with all the respect he feels is due:
I’d like to think I’m better than just slinging unsavoury swear words at those who govern, but for him I’ll make an exception: the man’s a fucking twat. And a hypocritical twat, at that.
Rees-Mogg has a show on GB News. You’ll have heard of GB News, even if you’ve never had the misfortune to actually see it. It’s the channel which models itself on Fox News. It was too right-wing even for Andrew Neil to stomach. It’s basically The Sun “news” paper with moving pictures.
The haunted pencil isn’t the only Conservative MP to have their own show on GB News. There’s also Nadine Dorries.
You remember Nadine, right? Took a load of time off from her parliamentary duties to go into the jungle on I’m A Celebrity…, the urge to chomp on kangaroo cock too much to resist. At least Matt Hancock had the decency to wait until he had been fired before he went in (and that’s the nicest thing I’ll ever say about him. Hilariously, he has just lost an action against The Sunday Mirror who described him as “corrupt” and “…“a failed health secretary and cheating husband who broke the lockdown rules he wrote.”).
Back to Nadine though. Steadfast supporter of Boris for *coughs* whatever reason, and promised a peerage in his resignation list, she was bumped from the list, seemingly to avoid a by-election when she was moved to the House of Lords. Her reaction was furious, announcing that she would be stepping down as an MP “with immediate effect.”
Thing is, that was back in June, and guess what? She hasn’t quit yet.
Here’s a letter sent to her this week from Flitwick Town Council; Flitwick Town is in Mid-Bedfordshire, and Dorries is their MP. They’re not especially pleased with her:
We’re still paying her wages. To do, so her own constituents feel, fuck all.
GB News was a prime mover in the race to identify and bring down Huw Edwards, for no other reason than because he works for the BBC. And possibly because he’s Welsh. Neither of which are crimes, as far as I know. Speaking of crimes, it seems the police aren’t interested in Edwards as, however unsavoury you might consider his actions to have been, he hadn’t actually broken the law.
GB News is co-owned by Sir Paul Marshall. Remember that name, it’ll be cropping up again soon.
Strangely, they’ve been less vociferous in their howls of outrage at the allegations against one of their own employees, Dan Wooton, who just so happens to be an ex-employee of The Sun, the paper which originally ran the story on Edwards despite, it seems, having evidence from the allegedly-expoited male that nothing untoward or coerced had happened.
Once the unwarranted furore about Edwards had abated, a new outrage needed to be manufactured. Preferably one that our friends in power could monetarise, now all the PPE VIP fast lane revenue avenues have been exhausted.
Step forward everyone’s least favourite nicotine stained tree frog, Nigel Farage.
You know what has happened by now, and are probably sick of hearing about it, but here’s a summary: Farage banked with Coutts, who are owned by NatWest. Coutts decided they didn’t want Farage as a customer anymore, so wrote and told him that, now his mortgage was repaid, they would not be keeping him on their books. They offered him an account with NatWest. Nigel didn’t think he should be grubbing about with the plebs who have accounts with a high street bank; he wanted to bank with the high status bank (Coutts). Farage went on the media offensive. Coutts stated that Farage didn’t meet the criteria for their clients (i.e. he didn’t have enough money), but also, after Farage submitted a Subject Access Report (SAR) it transpired that they also didn’t much fancy his politics, his shady links, or where his money was coming from, so decided to close his account.
The situation was made worse when NatWest CEO Dame Allison Rose sat next to BBC Business Editor Simon Jack at a function, where she accidentally let slip some details of Farage’s “relationship with the bank.” Jack duly broadcast it, albeit without naming Rose as his source, thereby providing Farage with more ammunition. Rose ‘fessed up to being the source of the leak, and, despite receiving the backing of the NatWest board, she resigned, closely folowed by the CEO of Coutts, Peter Flavell.
All of this precipitated by some comments by our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who clearly decided he needs to keep Farage, and by extension his employers GB News, on side. It’s funny though, don’t you think, that Sunak came out in support of Farage, but has been remarkably quiet on, for example, the matter of Dame Michelle Mone, and the £29m that she and her children received, originating from the profits of a PPE business that was awarded large government contracts (via the VIP lanes) after she recommended it to ministers.
Now. It takes a lot for me to side with a bank, any bank, particularly NatWest. But when you have to pick a team – them or Farage – it leads to a lot of soul searching. Like in the run up to the Brexit vote, when you had to choose between David Cameron on one side and Boris Johnson (and Farage) on the other. Rarely has the phrase “between a rock and a hard place” been more apt.
Sure, Rose probably had to go for her indiscreet chatter. We get SARs all the time at work, and it’s drummed into us that you cannot put your personal thoughts or feelings on the file, even less discuss them with jouranlists, because that is something likely to get you in a lot of bother.
And I see now that, once again, Farage is being championed as a man of the people, for ensuring banks cannot decide who they have as clients based on the banks personal opinion of them.
Which is odd, because that postion is the polar opposite of a previously expressed Farage view.
You’ll remember this, I think: back in 2015, a Christian cake making company got into bother when they refused to provide a cake featuring Sesame Street‘s Bert & Ernie to a gay couple. Here’s one of the headlines printed in The Telegraph which details Farage’s position, when he was leader of the UKIP Party, on companies being allowed to choose who they have as customers:
Many venues have the word ROAR on their promotional material. It stands for: Right of Access Reserved.
I may have missed it, but I haven’t noticed a full-throttled campaign by Farage to allow clubbers in to their local Electric Avenue wearing trainers and something other than a tidy pair of slacks.
Hmmm. This springs to mind:
So whilst all this has been going on, NatWest’s shares have plummeted. Bad news all round, you’d think, especially as the UK taxpayer is the majority share-holder in the bank.
But fear not: someone is pleased to hear this news. Remember Sir Paul Marshall? Co-owner of GB News, on which Farage has a TV show (along with Nadine and Jacob)? Well, and you’ll never going to believe this: it turns out that he also leads a hedge fund which has made millions from shorting NatWest stock as the bank’s shares fell in the wake of the controversy over Farage’s bank account.
I know! Who’d have thunk it?
This goes some way to explaining why Sunak decided to wade in: this is the Tories, knowing they’re going to be kicked out at the next General Election (although Labour seem to be doing their best to make that less likely, but we’ll save that rant for another time), greedily stuffing theirs and their mates pockets with as much cash as they can before their time runs out.
Evening all. Nice to see you all made it through another week.
A nice mixed bag of pop and indie and indie pop awaits your delectation: this week, despite previous promises that I wouldn’t go off on a tangent/on a theme, that’s exactly what I’ve done here – not once, but twice – although I manage to reign it in after a tune or three. What can I say? I was feeling both Up and Groovy when I did this mix.
Elsewhere, we’ve got Franz Ferdinand remixed by Daft Punk (and, if I’m honest, the more I listen to it, the more I think they’ve ruined it, but it’s the first track so just grit your teeth and you’ll get through it); a tune by Razorlight (remember them??) which contains one of the dumbest lyrics ever; one by two of the characters from the brilliant sitcom Detectorists (are you sure about this? – Ed); one of the greatest records ever (I’ll let you decide for yourself which one I mean); one with the finest one-note keyboard motif ever, and we wind up with a track lifted from a very (overly) popular band’s third album – you know, the one where they did too much of the ol’ Columbian nose powder and ended up releasing singles like this which last over 9 minutes, and which unless I’m very much mistaken, is the UK #1 hit single with the longest duration (by which I most definitely do not mean the one that spent the longest at #1). Actually, we don’t quite end there, as I found I had another three minutes to fill, so slung in an old classic which just happened to have a word in the title which was also in the track before, and so really isn’t a third tangent/theme. So there.
Oh, before I forget, this one needs one of these stamped on it:
You’ll see why soon enough.
Anyway, I’ll stop wanging on, trying to keep the identity of the songs a surprise when I know most of you will have scrolled past this bit already to read the tracklisting. Honestly, I don’t know why I bother.
Simon & Garfunkel – The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
The Driscolls – Groovy Little Town
The Farm – Groovy Train
Razorlight – Somewhere Else
Young Knives – Terra Firma
The Soup Dragons – Head Gone Astray
Oasis – All Around The World
Wreckless Eric – Whole Wide World
Ah. I’ve just found that apparently, in a previous mix, the final tune has already featured. I have therefore broken my rule about never featuring the same song twice. Too late in the day for me to redo the whole thing, and I don’t like any of the other mixes I have enough to post yet, so you’ll just have to put up with it. Sorry.
Regulars will know that while this series deals predominantly with the more mellow tunes I own, every now and then I like to lob in one which shakes it up a bit, providing something which brings a “cacophany of noise”.
A few months ago (I can’t be bothered with tracking back and working out exactly when), I wrote a piece about how much I disliked the idea of streaming.
The basic giste of it was this: I’d already been duped into thinking CDs were better than vinyl, and so ended up repurchasing the same records I already owned on this supposedly superior format. Then I got rid of a large chunk of my vinyl, which I’m still in the process of rebuying, having decided that I much prefer the sound of a needle hitting the groove over the sound of small metal box whirring.
And then mp3s came along, and so I dutifully moved with the times and downloaded (*coughs* legally, of course) as much of my music collection as I could. I didn’t get rid of any of my CDs though; this is where being single makes me a winner: there’s nobody to tell me my music collection is “clutter”, to be disposed of in the great quest for space.
But I drew the line at streaming. Why, I reasoned, would I want to pay – yet again – to hear songs I had already paid for on my laptop or mp3 player (which just happens to be an iPod)?
And then two things happened.
Firstly, Apple announced they would no longer be making iPods, just as my one decided to die on me. I set up an alert on ebay, but found that ones with the memory capacity I desired were selling for £300+. Ouchies.
Secondly, I had to renew my phone contract, and when I did I got offered 3 months free on Apple music. So I signed up, prepared to cancel my subscription when the 3 months had passed and then…
We all know how this pans out, right readers?
Yup, I didn’t cancel my subscription, and now I pay to have all my iTunes tunes on my iPhone.
And now, I can download as many albums as I like every month. And that rules out any issues I may have with tracking things down online and downloading them – why bother when I can just search, click and add an album to my library.
I hate myself for having succumbed to the dark side again,
But it got me thinking: does anybody actually download the mp3s I provide a link to? I can see that people visit and access the link, but what do they do with them then? Why don’t I make this easier for everyone?
I’ve always worried how what I do here, posting links to tunes, is essentially a breach of copyright, so I could get sued at any moment. I mean, I love writing this, but there’s a limit to everything. All it would take is for one litagious act to spot me and I’d be in right bother, grifting away like Laurence Fox trying to make enough cash to cover me losing my retainer in a by-election I predicted I’d win allow me to carry on.
So, going forwards, there will only be links to download mp3s where the thing I’m posting isn’t on any of the recognised streaming apps. Friday Night Music Club, for example, will continue to be an mp3 download for y’all to love and ignore.
But everything else, well it’ll be like this rather apt tune:
Give yourself a big pat on the back and have yourself a wee celebratory drinkie, you made it through another week.
And here is you reward: another exclusive mix created especially for you by yours truly.
No sleevenotes this week, in fact, I’ve decided to ditch them altogether going forwards. I figure you’re more likely to be here for the mix rather than whatever I’ve thought to say about each track. Hopefully, this should free me up to write some more; I’ve got rather bored with just three posts per week, as has been the formula for quite a while here.
So anyway, following on from yesterday’s post, this one starts off with a spacey-theme (by which I most definitely do not mean Kevin), before we go a little bit 70s, a little bit goth, and then a string of top indie-disco bangers, finishing off with one of my favourite ever records, the title track from a film I’ve never seen (because I remember it getting absolutely slated when it came out, but which seems to have had a bit of a critical reappraisal recently, so maybe one day I’ll give it a go).
On this day in 1969, man first walked on the moon (if you believe what The Man tells you).
Nobody biting? No? Good. Then at least I know idiots aren’t reading this.
If, however, you are one of those conspiracy theory nutters, then here’s Stephen Fry and the QI panel to address some of the more common queries:
If Stephen Fry says they happened, then they happened. “Thou Shall not question Stephen Fry”, to quote Scroobius Pip.
Anyway, Mr Fry started that clips with the question: “Would you believe that they put a man on the moon?” which leads me to today’s tune, by the curiously named !!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk, don’t you know) and this little beauty, which you can find on their 2022 Let It Be Blue album (which isn’t a title I can totally get on board with, to be honest: Velvet? A classic bit of Lynch film-making; Politically? Not so much (in the UK, anyway); Movies? Totally fine).
I would never describe the Pernice Brothers as a Country act, mostly because I only own one of their records so have no real knowledge of them, other than that Wiki describes them as an “indie rock bad”, and Wiki’s always right, right?
All that said, the one record I do have by them is 2005’s Discover a Lovelier You, which certainly has it’s country-ish moments, such as this, which, if I’m honest, is the only reason I bought the record in the first place.
See if you can work out what first attracted me to it:
A History of Dubious Taste 