Pretentious? Toi?

I really don’t get much chance to listen to the radio nowadays, and mainly just dip into Steve Wright on the 2 or 3 mornings (I’m 5 hours behind) when I’m not at work.

Unbelievably after years and years of not hearing a peep out of Clifford T Ward, I’ve heard him played twice on that show in the past couple of weeks. Last week there was “Wherewithal” and today, just as I was getting into the shower, I heard an intro, immediately recognised it and thought “Bloody hell, that’s Clifford T Ward, AGAIN! Has he died?”.

I admit to never having liked the badly coiffed Clifford T. I initially laid the blame firmly at the feet of Mr Hague, our old english teacher, who used to think he was wonderful, perhaps because he was a fellow english teacher made good. Making us analyse his lyrics in class didn’t help endear him to us either.

With the maturity that comes with adulthood, I wondered if I would now better appreciate his flowery poetic lyrics? Today we had the leaking cistern in Home Thoughts from Abroad, last week it was nonpareil, elation and nonchalant, all in the same sentence. I’m sure next week the tray of nice things will be upset. Has he grown on me? Nope. I just cringed and thought “Pretentious, Toi?”

Oh and while we’re on the subject of pretentious, if you were called Clifford Ward, why would you add your middle initial instead of shortening your name to the snappier Cliff Ward, I mean it’s hardly a common name, is it???

So, here's "Home Thoughts from Abroad". Let's hope they've called the plumber.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s_rRHCOTXA

Party Party!

My teens do embarrassingly bad things. I cringe. I never, however, cringe as much as I do when I think of this....

Cast your mind back to 1982. I am a student living with the Sevs*. The house is cold and dank. Sarah and Siobhan almost die of carbon monoxide poisoning every time they turn on their gas fire. The house reeks of cabbage. Miss Rose and Miss Lally's rosary drop off the cabinet every time Sarah leaves the house and slams the door. The poor woman on the floor above us doesn't realise she has a driving test until we pop her mail back on the table with her test card info a couple of days before her test date. We heat the whole floor with the gas oven on at max and Sue and I heat our room with a heater powered by a cord from Sarah's room where the electricity is free.... until the Sevs find out.

Worse than that though. Across the road is a nice modern centrally heated flat inhabited by 4 yuppie males...who Sue and I spy on...incessantly. Chevette man, Pork, Simon Slime and Jeckyll. One night Sue sees them unfurl a banner inviting us to a party, which we go to and which is waaaayyyy too embarrassing to contemplate remembering. Anyway, this is the song that was out at the time and reminds me of it, but which is a bit hard to track down. Seems Elvis Costello is as embarrassed of it as we are of the memories it invokes. For some reason it popped up on SiriusXM a few days ago.

Today I found it on youtube.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Party Party" by Elvis Costello. Enjoy, or cringe!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT1uASCsMiA

*Sevs - Short for Severite Sisters, an order of nuns, or so we thought. A quick google today, though, tells me they were in fact "Servite" Sisters!!! They were still mean though.

Alright ..... alright, alright

A real blast from the past today on Ken Bruce (he definitely gets a higher hit-rate than other R2 DJs)

Mungo Jerry - Alright, alright, alright

Time to pay the bill, to say fair's fair

Yes, someone has a bill to pay to me on this one. It'll never happen, either with or without interest. Back in 1993 I bought a ticket, along with my friend A*, to see Midnight Oil. They were playing in Frankfurt-am-Main and we thought we'd go along. We were quite keen to see them and also curious to know if there would be more people there than there were for a B-52s gig at the Festhalle the year before.

At the time I knew my contract would be coming to an end so I was flitting back and forth to the UK for interviews. So, as happened on more than one occasion at the time, I ended up back in the West Midlands sweating it out for a job and unable to go to the gig. As it turned out A* couldn't go either due to illness. We figured that it was more likely that we could recoup the cost of the tickets by selling them on as a pair at face value. M*, A*'s Partner at the time, reckoned he could sell them on quickly. Being a trusting pair of young ladies we decided to let him. All to no avail. As I heard it, he returned home saying no-one was interested and he'd ended up throwing the tickets away. Oh well, never mind. Or so we thought.

Years later it transpired that he had sold them. At an inflated price. He'd then splashed the cash on drugs and treating the girl he was seeing behind A*'s back. Impressive. Not.

Anyway, here's a tune we both missed:

http://youtu.be/lJiwLOUJOMA

*sometimes you need to protect the guilty (no, not her, him!)

The Only Soldier Passing

Something from Simon Mayo the other night which I hadn't heard for ages and always reminds me of studying for Finals against a back drop of Handsworth and Janice Long on R1's evening session.

Suzanne Vega - Marlene On The Wall

Hey, Kid, Rock 'n' Roll......

David Essex on Steve Wright. Cool....

Rock On

Not The First Record I Ever Bought (But Not Far Off)

A bunch of us went out for lunch today to a Pub that usually serves good food and plays reasonable music over it's speakers. Either it's changed hands or the usual Chef is on holiday. Whoever was choosing the music was having an off day too. However, amongst some downright rubbish was this track which I really liked when it came out and it was nice to hear it so unexpectedly amongst the dross*




*all of which has since been sent to the recycling bin of my brain.