The Concept - Mr DJ

Hadn't thought of this song for years until reading this post from Rol about songs featuring weather forecasts. This immediately sprang to mind, along with Midnight Star's Headlines (from a similar vintage). Mr DJ made number 27 in the UK top 40 in late 1985 so just about confers one-hit wonder status on the Concept - whoever they were! Pretty cheesy, but it knocks Steve Wright in the Afternoon into a cocked hat any day of the week.

Monkeeing around

My top eight Monkees songs, in no particular order, that weren't UK top 40 hits:

1) The Girl I Left Behind Me

Gorgeous, heartfelt ballad from young Davy.

2) Listen To The Band

Being a huge teen sensation created, of course, by The Man, The Monkees had some of the best songwriters on the planet at their disposal - but they also had someone in their own ranks - Mike Nesmith - who could write a killer tune himself. Listen to the Band is one such number.

3) Gonna Buy Me A Dog

Essentially Mickey and Davy arsing about and ad-libbing over the prospect of purchasing a pooch, for two minutes. Pure, unmitigated fun.

4) Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)

Davy's got a dilemma; he loves two women and can't choose between them. This alternate version is made even better by Peter's voiceover man-style narration during the instrumental bits.

5) Shades of Gray

Lovely, existential ballad. One verse apiece from Peter and Davy. The only way this song could've been improved upon would be if the other two had chipped in with verses too. But it's fantastic enough as it is.

6) Someday Man

A double-A side with Listen to the Band. Two great songs, number 47 in the UK charts. Go figure. Sort of like a sanguine alternative to Shades of Gray. Co-written by Paul Williams of Bugsy Malone soundtrack fame.

7) Your Auntie Grizelda

Peter takes the lead on this hugely enjoyable bunkum. Nice clip too. The TV series may not have aged especially well but the music certainly has - and these clips are just the ticket. Make you want to re-watch the series as well; but, if you're over 12, don't do it!

8) Tapioca Tundra

Mike Nesmith's greatest composition? Works for me!

Public service announcement

Just in case you didn't know, and with apologies to readers outside the UK, Sky Sports 1 is free today on Freeview channel 11 (Pick TV). Highlights include Leeds v Sheffield Wednesday at lunchtime and Swansea v Man Utd at teatime.

They're only doing it to try and nobble BT Sport's big day (whose live coverage features the opening game of the Premier League season, Liverpool v Stoke at 12.45pm), but the important thing here is that, for the first time in twenty-odd years there's an actual live top-division English league game on national terrestrial television (even if it does feature Manchester bloody United).

Three of a Kind #115

It's been over two years since the last Three of a Kind post so one's long overdue I think. (I hadn't just forgotten about this series, honest! Much.) The common link between today's featured three is that they're all by female-fronted German bands from the nineteen eighties - Rainbirds, Propaganda and FSK (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle) - and are all right up there among my favourite songs of that particular decade. Oh, and none of them reached the UK pop 40, natch. Some cracking promo videos here, too.

Fantasy Football 2013/14

With the start of the English Premier League football season just days away there's never been a better time to get your squad picked for 2013/14 Fantasy Football. Our Group of Death league looks as if it's proving as popular as ever but we always welcome new members so if you've not signed up yet - join us! It's completely free.

The code to sign up to the Group of Death is: 329745-86055

See you there!

Craig Ferguson on the deification of youth and imbecility

This is absolutely brilliant. Get it watched!

Song of the Day

I love a good part-animated, part-live-action video, me. Of course it helps if it's accompanied by a properly great song; in which case the promo for Montreal alt folk singer songwriter Caracol's (real name: Carole Facal. See what she did there?) Shiver ticks all (or both) the right boxes. Check it oot!

If you like what you see and hear, there's more of the same at Caracol's YouTube channel. She's making an appearance in the UK at the end of this month too, playing at the Lodestar Festival in Cambridge, on August 30th.

Buy Shiver on Bandcamp

Horseplay

If you've ever wanted to watch some live music with an audience comprised entirely of indifferent horses, here's your chance. Oh yes, that Frida Hyvönen's in a field of her own.

Nord & Syd

Purveyors of gorgeous, ethereal indie pop, Sweden's Nord & Syd released their debut LP Som en människa on 13th March, and every track is a winner. I really cannot recommend this album highly enough. The lyrics are all in Swedish but there's a translation here for non-native speakers; the album is about death, love and alienation. (Three of my favourite things!) Here's the video for debut single Inte idag (Not Today):

The song is their own composition but to see how others interpreted it they asked four other singer-songwriters - Mattias Alkberg, Ulf Stureson, Johan Borgert and Annika Norlin - to record versions of it without having heard the original song beforehand. The results are on Nord & Syd's website but obviously I can't resist putting Annika Norlin's version up here, what with being a massive fanboy and all.

Here's another single - my favourite - from the album, Min Arm. This song is, quite simply, irresistible!

Buy Som en människa on CD here or download the mp3 album here

Brotherly love

I'm incredibly impressed that, not only are Electric Soft Parade still going (they're back! back! back! after a six-year hiatus), but that their new single, Brother, You Must Walk Your Path Alone is as impressive as anything they've ever done. This is essentially the best song Belle & Sebastian never wrote and I love it to bits. The new album, Idiots!, follows on June 17th. Can't wait.

Buy Brother, You Must Walk Your Path Alone as a digital download here

Gideon Coe 6 Music interview with Alex and Thomas White of ESP (interview starts 2 hours & 8 minutes in)

I dun arf like... Toast!

Here's another 1978 Top of the Pops performance that'll probably never see the light of day on BBC Four thanks to the edition it featured on being presented by DLT. Shame! I love the fact that the singer narrator* went on to become one of the biggest pop stars in the world for a while five years later, and also that it eulogises an often overlooked culinary delight. I mean, when did you last see one of those poncey cooks on the millions of TV food porn programmes preparing a toast-based dish?!

*Paul Young. But you knew that already, right?

A touch of class

Have you seen Glenda Jackson's parliamentary "tribute" to Thatcher yet? Magnificent.

My generation

Been watching an absolutely brilliant 1983 BBC documentary about Musical Youth, Musical Roots, in which the five Birmingham schoolboys - briefly an internationally famous band - are given eight days off school at the end of January to go on a short tour of Jamaica, where their families had hailed from. What follows is an absolute joy to watch, as five mildly bewildered lads from the UK experience the culture shock of seeing a world far removed from anything they've known before: the poverty-stricken living in shacks and not being able to afford footwear, for example. Oh, and the sun. The blazing sun! And the fact that you can actually stand about in the street and chat without the police moving you on.

Also, there's a hilarious encounter on a bus with someone called Winston Jarrett, who really is quite the character. At least I think he is; I could barely understand a thing he was saying - or, more accurately, raving on about. (I suspect he'd had too many blue Smarties.)

Anyway, please do watch; it's guaranteed to brighten up your day. (God knows we need a bit of cheering up at the moment.) My absolute favourite part would have to be the bit where they visit a school on the island and self-consciously stand up in class when prompted by a teacher and introduce themselves one by one, before miming along to Never Gonna Give You Up during an impromptu show for the schoolkids in the playground.

But the whole thing is just a great snapshot in time and a reminder of just how natural and unobtrusive television documentaries were back then (no narration; no manipulative incidental music; no contrived story arc or spurious emotional "journey"; no teasers; no repetition; no bullshit, in a nutshell. Just an old-fashioned travologue, following people as they explore a new place).

Meanwhile, in 2013, there's a documentary on Channel 4 tonight about... dogging. Grim. No, you can keep the present. I'm having too much fun in 1983.

Mop of the Pops

You'll probably never see this on TV again as it's from the 23rd March 1978 edition of Top of the Pops presented by Dave "Persona non grata" Lee Travis, so I'm putting it up here as it deserves to be seen by as many people as possible (about three, in the case of this blog). It's Legs & Co. frumping up brilliantly to the strains of Donna Summer's Rumour Has It.

March playlist

About time an' all. I was intending to put together one playlist per month of songs that have been catching my ear, but this is the first one I've managed since December. The trouble is, it's taken this long to find 32 songs that I like enough to warrant inclusion. Now I know what you're thinking: Why does it have to be 32 songs? Why not 24, 15 or 12? But I'm very meticulous about this sort of thing. And really, if I let a playlist of anything less than 32 songs slip through the net, heaven only knows what sort of chaos might ensue with the universe. No, it's definitely best to err on the side of caution in these matters I find.

Anyway, here are the 32 songs for March! Give 'em a go & I promise you'll find something you'll like.

Simmering

Apropos of nothing, here's a list of some of the cookery shows currently to be found cluttering up the TV schedules in the UK:

Great British Menu
Food and Drink
Great British Food Revival
Come Dine with Me
What's Cooking?
Masterchef
Country Show Cook Off
Food Glorious Food
Indian Food Made Easy
Saturday Kitchen Live
Nigel Slater's Simple Cooking
My Tasty Travels with Lynda Bellingham
Ant & Dec's Saturday Takeaway*
Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard
Saturday Kitchen Best Bites
The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking with Rachel Khoo
Sunday Brunch

That's just a selection of programmes that have been shown on the four main terrestrial channels this week alone - I've not included Channel 5 as, well, they don't really *do* cookery; not unless you include Steven Seagal's turn as a chef in Under Siege - and it's worth bearing in mind that many of the titles listed above go out pretty much every day of the week. Also, some of them go on for hours & hours. Fancy three hours of Come Dine With Me on a Saturday afternoon? You're in luck, sir/madam, as that's just what Channel Four serve up (har har).

BBCs One and Two are particularly culpable when it comes to this constant diet of cookery shows; if it wasn't for all the antiques programmes and repeats of Homes Under The Hammer and Shop A Scrounger** padding out much of the rest of their schedules, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were tuned into one of the specialist cooking channels (they have those as well!) much of the time.

But just what is it that makes the TV schedulers so keen on forcing all these culinary-based formats down our gullets day-in day-out? I mean, lots of people like caravanning. And knitting. Where are all the programmes about caravanning and knitting? And chess? Where's the chess love? Is British terrestrial television being secretly controlled by a sinister cabal of Jamie Oliver, Nigella and that comedy Italian bloke who won the celebrity jungle thing that time? I think we should be told.

Anyway, balls to all that. The only chef we really need to be seeing on TV never actually gets a look in now that it's not 1978 any more. Where's the justice in that? I ask you. Anyway, here he is. Talks more sense than all of the current rabble masquerading as celebrity cooks combined, too.

Honestly, though, enough of the cookery programmes already. I suppose you could argue that eating is something that everybody must do so it's only right that there should be lots of shows covering the preparation and consumption of food. But I'm not having this. If they were to really make TV based on what people do every day there'd be some pretty unpalatable stuff on our screens all the time. (Oh, actually, there is! Forget that bit!)

On a serious point, I can't imagine how this constant stream of fetishised images of food on our screens is helping ease the nation's obesity crisis one bit. No, it's high time the powers-that-be at the BBC, ITV & Channel 4 went on a cookery show crash diet and trimmed some of the flab from the schedules. What do we want? Caravanning and chess! When do we want it? Umm, straight after the Come Dine with Me omnibus and just before Masterchef: The Professionals. Sorted.

The Chefs - Food mp3

*Probably best to check the veracity of this one before publishing
**And this