Living To Music
In true ‘living to music’ tradition I’ve arranged to come together with a group of friends from time to time to listen to a favourite album.
A One Man Show – Grace Jones
Featuring tracks from the classic Sly & Robbie era (plus a high drama re-vocal of her magnifique Tom Moulton produced ‘La Vie En Rose’), ‘A One Man Show’, directed by Jean-Paul Goude, captures Grace Jones at her most potent.
Bumblebee Land
A well observed comment on the state of popular culture taken from John Niven’s Malcolm McLaren obituary in Q Magazine (June 2010)
Rotoscope Moocher
Animation - Max & Dave Fleischer, Cab Calloway, Betty Boop – proper genius from 1932.
Werewolf Girls
Got to know Kid Acne in 2008 when we we’re both part of the Invisible Players line-up that featured in the Rizla Arena at the Bestival, Big Chill and Rockness festivals. These are some of his well wicked Werewolf Girls cut out and stuck onto burnt spray cans.
Five Tunes
I was asked earlier this year by the Australian based blog Spank! to write about five tracks that had inspired me and, with the proviso that "it could have been many others, but I decided to go with these five”, I spread my selections over a sequence of black music styles spanning a two decade period, from Soul through to House:
Ten Books I’ve Read At Least Twice
List of ‘Ten Books I’ve Read At Least Twice’ for RVNG INTL website in the US (July 2008).
Glamour And Excess – Edie Sedgwick
A whole new generation has come to know Edie Sedgwick via the flawed ‘Factory Girl’ biopic (2006). Dismissed by Village Voice as ‘Edie for dummies’, the film was widely criticised for lapsing into fictionalization in the name of ‘artistic license’, but there were still many people, unaware of the rumpus, who took it at face value and have no reason for regarding the portrayal of Edie as anything less than authentic. For me this is the curse of the biopic – it’s a quick fix for someone to gain a bit of passing info about someone of cultural significance, so they can tick them off their ‘I know who that is’ list and drop a cool name in the right company, but, as we know, fast food isn’t all that nourishing, especially when what’s in the bun isn’t exactly a burger
Maestra
Delia Derbyshire, electronic music pioneer.
The One That Got Away
Filmed by Granada TV in 1964, this is a wonderful piece of footage of Liverpool’s The Chants performing on Merseyside - there's something very heartfelt about it, especially the close-ups showing some of the girls swooning over them. The song is ‘I Could Write A Book’ and was written by Rodgers & Hart, originally appearing in the 1940 musical ‘Pal Joey’ (later, in 1957, made into a movie, where it was sung by Frank Sinatra). It would be the second single by The Chants, released on PYE records, and famously given the thumbs up by all four Beatles on the TV show Juke Box Jury (Dec 7th 1963), although even the Fabs’ wholehearted endorsement failed to help it break into the charts.
Recent Comments