Three of a Kind #77

Valentine's Day was invented in 1927 by executives at Wallmark Cards who saw it as an easy way to fleece money from the lovestruck while simultaneously pissing off and further alienating already embittered singletons the world over. Al Capone hated it so much that he even tried to have Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon bumped off on February the so-called 14th. And all because the lady didn't love Milk Tray. Well really!

On the plus side, Valentine's Day gives modern-day bloggers everywhere the perfect excuse to put up some cheesy old love songs they wouldn't get away with posting during the rest of the year. Which almost makes the whole cynical exercise in shifting overpriced greetings cards and teddy bears with red, heart-shaped "I love you" cushions tied around their necks worthwhile, as far as I'm concerned. Hurrah!

D Train - You're The One For Me mp3

Madder Rose - The Love You Save mp3

Darts - Can't Get Enough Of Your Love mp3

Three of a kind #41

I had a great find in a charity shop the other day: a 40-track double CD entitled The Greatest 80's Soul Weekender. Now, overlooking the erroneous apostrophe, the title of this album was always going to prove an irresistible draw for me, being that it contains two of my favourite words: eighties (or, in the ungrammatical parlance of whoever designed the sleeve, eightie's) and soul.

Actually, while we're on the subject of the title and cover, the tagline isn't too clever either: 40 WHISTLE STOMPING WHITE SOCK SOUL GROOVES OF THE 80'S. Eh? Is it actually possible to stomp one's whistle, then? I suspect not. Unless that's some kind of trendy eighties euphemism I'm not yet au fait with, e.g. I see that Stedman from Five Star's been stomping his own whistle again.

The only other possible explanation I can come up with is that the makers of this album are actually encouraging us, a suggestible album-buying public, to literally stomp on any whistles we should happen to encounter - which is a worry, to say the least. I mean, whistles are people too, you know.

But let's not get too bogged down in semantics here. It's the music that matters; and the music on this album is, for the most part, bloody fantastic. Here are three of my favourite tracks.

Luther Vandross - Never Too Much mp3

D Train - You're The One For Me mp3

The Fatback Band - I Found Lovin' mp3

(mp3s available for 7 days)

Buy The Greate'st 80's S'oul Weekende'r Her'e