Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Facts of Life - Black Box Recorder

I was going to use Up, Up and Away by Fifth Dimension for this entry, but Radcliffe and Maconie upped their game last night with a track that I have never heard on the radio. Certainly not before last night. It's a track I love and to hear it come on the radio so unexpectedly as I motored down the M42 last night just about made my day, if not my musical year.


Tuesday, December 15, 2009

5705

Feeling particularly grumpy. House needs tidying, dinner needs to be made and I have to get my breasts squished and photographed this afternoon.

Then 5705 by City Boy comes on the Steve Wright show, and my day instantly improves.

If I could remember how to embed the video I would, but I can't, so you'll have to click on the link instead!


My good mood is sadly short lived. Michael Buble is the next record on....

Friday, December 11, 2009

Art for Art's Sake - 10cc

Everyone has an extreme guilty pleasure or a not-so-hidden obsession. Something herein is related to that (but I'll be leaving that particular tale or three until the right song comes up). The song for this entry reminds me of those Top of the Pops albums from Pickwick's that your Mum always tried to persuade you were by the Original Artists. I bought my first one when I was about 9 from Asda in West Bridgford and it cost 99p. It still has the price sticker on it. Laughable as they seemed at least they put the hits in your pocket-money sized budget and for the infant school childrent there was the 'Top of the Tots' companion series.

They were good alternatives for parties too as my late paternal Grandmother's collection reveals. Her Beatles collection is riddled with sticky alcohol stains and various other 45s show signs of having been left on radiators or drilled with cigarette butts. Not so the ToTP records. The only muck there is on the sleeves.

The other thing about these albums was that very often you could use them to work out the lyrics to a song much better than the original. As I drove home last night I was quite surprised to hear this tune on The Chain section of the Radcliffe and Maconie show:

Art for Art's Sake - 10cc

one of the first tracks I deciphered the lyrics for from the cheap-rate vinyl version.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Where Have All The Flowers Gone - Marelene Dietrich

Anyone wanting to get a flavour of what Wednesday morning Hymn Practice was like at Greasley Beauvale Junior School between September 1970 and July 1974 should take a listen to roughly ten minutes before the end of this tribute programme to Pete Seeger from Mike Harding on Radio 2.

Beauvale Juniors was a brilliant School to be at for any number of reasons, as had been the Infant School before it. Mr Wooding, the then Headmaster of the Junior School, had a Vision for his Pupils. Every child that attended during his tenure seems to have awarded him some kind of legendary and mythological status. To us, firm, fair and fun must have been his watch-words. Unfortunately, it seems that those who taught under him don't necessarily share those views and are still stunned even now to hear of the reverance 'Wooding Children' accord him.

However, due to Mr Wooding, we're the children who grew up to sit amongst our contemporaries at Pub Quizzes and own the Classical rounds that come up (for example I've yet to meet someone from another School in the locality who can pinpoint 'Carnival of Animals' played on electronic tools at 50 paces). We knew more about the planes that saved Malta and the "night they bombed Coventry" than we did about what happened to the Bakery in Sneinton. We painted the Sorceror's Apprentice on the dining hall walls, wrote our own plays and rode on the Oregon Trail. We also had kick-ass Football and Netball teams. Mr Wooding's Vision was to give us a world view and to encourage our creativity but with a good basic educational grounding.

For all their bemusement at how we view Mr Wooding, his Teachers (whether they realised it or not) imparted that Vision well. Mr Kay had his own class, but was also the School Music Teacher and on the side he was a bit of a rebel. Four days a week he sat under the School Prayer, in the corner just by the Team Flagpole, and played the piano in Assembly. Wednesdays however, were very different. Wednesday Assembly was his. He'd start with the agreed Hymn, the large-print words to which would be up on a stand at the front. We'd have a go at that for a bit and then a few children would be nominated 'on watch' as they sat on the curtain side. He never said why. Then he would turn the largescale hymn-sheet down to reveal something that wasn't sung in Sunday School and got out his guitar. With that we were off on a musical journey of folk and protest but we didn't know it. To us it was Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Peter Paul and Mary, The Byrds and some other bloke. That other bloke was Pete Seeger and going by tonight's programme on the radio, we must have soaked up a fair chunk of his and Woody Guthrie's back catalogues.

And the 'Curtain-side Gang'? If there was any movement from the Admin corridor running off the Hall to the left, the signal was made and the Hymn went up. It was all conspiratorial at the time and much as we loved him, being in on a "little secret" from Mr Wooding was harmless fun. He must have known about it - we couldn't have been singing any quieter than usual - and anyway he was probably planning world domination for the Choir that was being created.

So back to the programme. I wanted to actually put a link to Jackie Oates' version of 'Where Have All the Flowers' gone as played on the show but unforunately that doesn't seem to be possible, which is a shame. So, instead enjoy the following:

Where have all the flowers gone - Marlene Dietrich



or the more familiar version by Peter, Paul and Mary



Now imagine this lot in full voice and just about to compose the best version of the Twelve Days of Christmas anyone had ever heard - and if you can find a three-pronged pickling fork anywhere, do let me know :-)



Monday, December 7, 2009

Driving Home For Christmas - Chris Rea*

(*Saturday 21st November)

I like Christmas. I always have. I don't mind the tunes either. However, I do like to hear them much closer to the Big Day than this.

We're sitting in Burger King at the London Gateway. Stopping off for some quick sustenance on the journey north from The Smoke. Christmas is four weeks away at least. It's not even Advent yet, let alone December. Then it happens. This comes soothingly, yet puzzlingly, over the airwaves



What on earth?

OK, so we are on our way home, but the best time to hear this fantastic tune is Christmas Eve on the car radio when I'm dodging the jam on the A42(M) by taking a diversion through Ashby-de-la-Zouch and then driving over Swarkestone Causeway against the on-coming maniacs. Think of this in the pitch dark (watch for the Bus at 2.03 in and multiply that ten-fold). 40mph? I doubt it.

Whole Of The Moon - The Waterboys*

(*Sunday 1st November - I think)

Blustery, wet autumn evenings when it's warm inside always remind me of far off safe and homely days. Today has been no different. Dark and dreich outside, but cosy, warm and mellow inside. It's also the time of year to bring out and dust down something that for me was an essential part of my Student possessions - a casserole dish. Any Student of the '80s who says they existed solely on beans on toast either had no fiscal nouse, no imaginative culinary disposition or didn't invest £1.95 in a copy of the much derided but still excellent 'Cooking in a Bedsitter' by Katherine Whitehorn.

Earlier in the day as I put the Washer on 'Jet' by Wings came into my head for no apparent reason. Johnnie Walker obliged me by playing it later in the day on Radio 2's Sounds of the Seventies. However, that's not my synhotr.

As I chop, fry and prepare for my casserole, I still have the radio on. Well, not technically. In reality it's radio via the TV as my DAB in the Kitchen doesn't run to QMusic. The Whole of the Moon comes on



I listen and it reminds me of things like the Christmas event referred to here. We surely missed a business opportunity there.

It reminds me of listening to it for the first time on the record player in my brothers bedroom but mostly, these days it reminds me of someone who used to work with and for me. I got to thinking about Jules, wondering what he's doing now and about the time he and his Partner decided to spend Hogmanay in (or around) Aberdeen at a Waterboys-related gig. Unfortunately, on that occasion the weather decided to cancel Auld Years Night on the East coast ....

I'm Falling - The Blubells

I've been under the weather for a while and recently this has culminated in a nasty bout of laryngitis and post-viral listlessness. Nevertheless this evening, whilst preparing Tea, I made like Penelope Pitstop and skated in my socks across the Kitchen floor to pump up the volume as Radcliffe and Maconie "spun" the opening notes of this memorable tune.



(Un)Fortunately the lack of a voice meant I couldn't sing-a-long.

I can't remember when I last heard it and sadly I have no lasting memories attached to it as a song, not like a certain other track by The Bluebells ( and no, that would not be Young At Heart either by them or Bananarama ) .....

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Korgis - If I had You

Well, speak of the Devil and he turns up on the Steve Wright show :-D