Grey day hilarity

Heard this on the wireless this morning and it made me laugh a lot. Simon Munnery improves The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds no end with this, ahem, slightly less quixotic interpretation.



Simon Munnery - Grey Clouds mp3

Scorchio!

During this evening's 6 o'clock bulletin, the weather presenter on Anglia Tonight promised us "T-shirt weather by the end of the week". With these words I can only surmise that she must have set herself some sort of Chris Packham-esque shoehorning-in-song-titles challenge, only with Lucksmiths tracks rather than those by The (not-Luck)Smiths.

Actually, thinking about some Lucksmiths song titles - Sunlight In A Jar, Cat In Sunshine, Weatherboard, Shine On Me, Friendless Summer, Warmer Corners, Spring A Leak, Good Light, Brr It's A Bit Nippy Out - this might just work!*

The Lucksmiths - T-Shirt Weather mp3

*if only it wasn't entirely implausible.

Now that's what I call 1991

Right then, where do we all stand on Curve? I seem to remember them getting a bit of flak in the music press all those years ago, although I can't quite remember why. Bandwagon jumpers? Too shoegazey? Not shoegazey enough? Major label chancers? Singer too good-looking? Guitarist too hairy? I dunno. To me they were like a slightly gothy Lush and, although not a massive fan, I did fork out for Coast Is Clear, which still sounds pretty fine to me two decades on. Am I wrong or am I wrong?



Mildly Interesting Pop Fact: Curve blew so much of the budget for this video on wind machines that they ended up having to shoot it in black and white. It wasn't just because they were trying to look arty or anything. Goodness me no.

A light that never goes out

If only the British music press could stop wetting themselves over First Aid Kit for five minutes, they'd see that there are other Swedish artists worth getting excited about. None more so than the ridiculously talented Frida Hyvönen, who releases her third album, To the Soul, in April.

The first single from it is Terribly Dark, which perhaps doesn't quite match up to the quality of some of her previous songs musically, but as ever the lyrics are a cut above what you'd expect from yer typical modern-day popster, and unlike some others I could, and in fairness already have, mentioned, Frida never affects an American accent when she sings. What more could you ask for from The Swedish Kate Bush?

Song of the Day

This one went down like a lead balloon at the 1986 Royal Variety Performance, culminating in Princess Margaret calling Matt Johnson an "absolute fucking disgrace" and throwing her tiara at him from the royal box. Bit harsh - but what else could he do but suck it up?

Pointless pontificating and a bit of Bergman

If, by some unfathomable sequence of events, I were to become controller of programming at ITV (just go with me on this one) the first thing I'd do would be to schedule Ingmar Bergman's Persona for 8pm the following Saturday on ITV1. That'd wake the buggers up / traumatize their children / make them switch over to ITV2 / get me the sack immediately. Good film though.



(The film's up in its entirely - well, in eight parts - on YouTube if you fancy it.)

Actually, me putting Bergman's name before the title there reminds me of a bloke - let's call him the wazzock - who appeared on Pointless the other night. In the final (because he made it to the final - of course he made it to the final) the wazzock was asked to guess any films that had won the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival since 1975. So this he duly did, but not before he'd shown his expertise by blithely and needlessly announcing the names of each film's director before giving each answer.

This extra director information really wasn't necessary, so the wazzock was to all intents of purposes showboating when giving his guesses as "Roman Polanski's The Pianist", "Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies" & someone or other else's something or other else, rather than just naming the films. Oh, and of course one of the answers - Secrets & Lies - turned out to be pointless (of course it was) and thus earned wazzock that day's jackpot. I don't have a picture of him to hand but his expression immediately afterwards was much like this:



So anyway, the moral to this tale is this: if you're good at trivia and you ever happen to appear on a TV quiz programme where such knowledge is a boon, don't embellish your answers unnecessarily. It just makes you look like a massive arsehole.

The Bear Quartet - It Only Takes A Flashlight To Create A Monster mp3

Play your cards right

Ah, Valentine's Day. The greetings card industry's annual attempt to piss off single people everywhere. Must be fun if your birthday happens to fall on this particular date though, as it would deceive your postman into thinking you're massively popular with the laydeez/gentlemen, what with him or her having to deliver a load of cards bearing your name every 14th Feb. (Alright then, so not that much fun really.)

Valentine's gripes aside, I'm a sucker for a good love song, and this is one of the very best. Magnus Carlson joins Acid House Kings on the wonderful Will You Love Me In The Morning.

Acid House Kings & Magnus Carlson - Will You Love Me In The Morning? mp3

A day at the Racey

It's all about Racey on the blog at the moment. Most chart bands are so po-faced and joyless nowadays that it's easy to forget that pop music used to be about, well, having fun. Which brings us to Lay Your Love On Me and Some Girls. If these songs - and performances - don't cheer you up on a dreary winter's morning, there's really nothing I can do for you.

Not dead, merely resting

Right, time to blow the cobwebs off this mother I think. I've had enough of winter, enough of the coalition, the build-up to the build-up to the presidential race in a country thousands of miles away, the BBC fawning over the monarchy, Cameron having an opinion on everything, top-level football and all its attendant hype, homegrown players throwing themselves around football pitches like they were auditioning for the lead role in a Jurgen Klinsmann biopic, racism (but not Racey. You can never have too much Racey), award ceremonies, red carpets, pop stars popping their clogs, panel shows, bills, people with a sense of entitlement, people whinging on blogs, people not getting irony, people called Alan Shearer, that new bloke on Countdown, and people doing better than me in the fantasy football. You know who you are. But enough of all that. Time to get back to the music I think. As of now this blog is officially in a 'go' situation!

Hands up everyone who'd forgotten how chuffing marvellous this song is?

Synthesiser Patel

My hero!



Buy 'Look Around You'