Not Every Song from the Sixties is a Classic

The new single by The Dreaming Spires is officially rather good!



It's out as a download-only from Monday, with an album scheduled for the summer. Nice.

What lies beneath

A post-Housemartins, pre-Fatboy Slim Norman Cook released this gem of a single featuring Lester Noel from North Of Cornwallis on lead vocals. For Spacious Lies missed out on the pop 40 but by crikey it deserved better!

Montreux Pop!

You can barely move in the summer months nowadays for the sheer volume of music festival coverage on TV - some good, some bad, but most indifferent. But the televisual festival landscape was a very different place back in the mid-80s, oh yes. Unless there was a special one-off event such as Live Aid in 1985 or, umm, that Free Nelson Mandela thingy a few years later, you'd be left with the BBC's annual (highlights-only) coverage of the Montreux Pop Festival from Switzerland in May.The line-ups were generally frighteningly mainstream but as I was going through my prime mainstream pop years at the time, that was perfectly fine with me.

As you're wont to do when you get to a certain stage in life, I suddenly became nostalgic for these programmes this morning so thus scuttled over to YouTube to relive them. Unsurprisingly, the prospect of Duran Duran, The Thompson Twins and Bananarama miming along to their biggest hits has lost a lot of its lustre down the years but there were some real gems in there amongst the QVC diamonique bracelets. Have a gander at this lot!

Agnetha Faltskog - One Way Love (1985). Although this track from her second solo album conspicuously failed to bother the chart scorers over here, it sounds rather good to me, and certainly deserved better. She may well be singing over the top of a backing track here but who cares? It's Agnetha off of ABBA!



Talk Talk - Life's What You Make It (1986). OK, so this one is actually from the Montreux Jazz (Mmm, grrreat) Festival but it's a rare performance of the band just as they were on the brink of going all noodly and experimental - and this one is definitely being played completely live.



 Colonel Abrams - Over & Over (1986). There's a nice bit at the start of the following clip where the interviewer asks Colonel Abrams what his real name is, to which he replies "Colonel Abrams is my real name". Hmm, right, if you say so Colonel. While Over & Over failed to emulate the success of his monster hit from the previous year, Trapped (which peaked at #3 while spending 23 weeks in the UK singles chart), it's still a game effort from the militarily-monickered moustachioed man. He left his epaulets at home for this one but still cuts a dashing figure in that tweed sports jacket. Try getting [insert name of modern-day equivalent here. Titchy Streisand?] to pitch up in one of those!





So there we have it. They don't make them like that any more (the sports jackets, the pop festivals or the pop stars), more's the pity. The Montreux Jazz Festival is still going strong though, which is kind of comforting in a way, even if it does involve jazz.

Running out of ideas

Saw what may well be the most poorly-conceived compilation album I've ever laid eyes on the other day, Now That's What I Call Running - ironically, a really lazy title. There are no songs about running on it. Even if there were it would still be a nonsensical name - unless it were chock full of audio clips of people running, which come to think of it would be an even dafter concept (although it would at least involve some logic).

So anyway, no 'running' songs whatsoever, however tenuous. No Keep On Running, No Run To You, I Ran or Road To Nowhere (which, come to think of it, would have just the right rhythm and tempo for jogging); hell, no Tears For Fears or their largely-forgotten 1986 charity single Everybody Wants To Run The World, adapted from the then ubiquitous Everybody Wants To Rule The World in about five minutes as part of that year's big Sport Relief campaign. There wasn't even an attempt to introduce a touch of levity into proceedings by including Jarvis Cocker's Cunts Are Still Running The World (although in fairness that may have risked alienating the target audience). As for the absence of Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill (or, if the rights were a problem, a cover version of said track), words fail me!

Instead the compilers have plumped for a hodge-podge of largely baffling and presumably cheap contemporary filler such as Sexy & I Know It by lmfao (Deluded & You Don't Know It, more like), Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5 (about renowned keep-fit freak Mick Jogger Jagger) and, erm, Maneater by Nelly Furtado, with just the odd concession to anyone with an age or IQ over 15. Honestly, though, 1 out of 10 for imagination. To borrow an expression from the type of person who'd presumably be in Now That's What I Call Running's intended demographic, whoever cobbled this old guff together can jog on.

While we're on the subject, the following video features much jogging and is very funny, so you should have a look!

The Whispers - My Girl

Saw this and thought of you.

Random Swedish Song of the Day

The first in an exciting* new series! I have a memory stick full of Swedish music which I shall shuffle whenever the mood takes me and then post the first track that comes up each time. The memory stick doesn't contain any Europe, Sylvia, Herreys or Ace of Base (yet) however, so no need to panic!



Frida Hyvönen - London mp3

*Excitement levels can go down as well as up. Consult your GP if symptoms persist. Too Much Apple Pie is not an equal opportunities employer.

ABBA: The Movie

I've featured more than my fair share of Swedish music on this blog over the years, but none will ever quite match the majesty of that generated by original Swedish superstars ABBA - of course it won't. Tonight I've been rewatching 1977's ABBA: The Movie in its entirety and even now I'm taken aback by quite how brilliant the songs are; even the "plain" old album tracks. Amazing to think that the band's chart career wasn't even at its halfway point by this stage either, so there were still shedloads of classic hits the guys hadn't yet got around to writing.

Actually, the film was probably shot at the perfect time in terms of capturing the band at their happiest and at the zenith of their powers, before an inevitable jadedness crept in and inter-band relationships became strained or fell apart completely. That's not to suggest for a second that the quality of the music lessened as the years went on, as the latter, more introspective songs were every bit as strong as the ones featured here.

But watching the movie you do get a real reminder - if any any were needed - of just how huge this band were at the time and how much they meant to people, as they tour round the major cities of Australia to general adulation and frenzied excitement, belting out the hits with real gusto; it really is a joy to behold. And blimey, could those girls hold a tune.

There's even a paper-thin plot tacked on, as a Tommy Vance-lookalike radio DJ is tasked by his station manager with securing an exclusive interview with the band and thus spends the whole film chasing them around mostly in vain - with vaguely hilarious consequences. Oh, and there's also a variety of roles for Lou Carpenter from Neighbours and lots of gratuitous shots of Agnetha's rear of the year. What more could you ask for?!

The movie is, somewhat improbably, available to stream in its entirety, completely gratis, online - so why not set aside 95 minutes and take a thoroughly enjoyable trip down memory lane.

Get Down Shep!

Big shout out to my homie Viv (@vividly on Twitter) for flagging this up: Pan's People and some adorable dogs get down to Gilbert O'Sullivan on the Christmas 1973 edition of Top of the Pops. Watch out for the camera-shy mutt in the middle taking the lyrics rather literally half a minute or so in!

Song of the Day

Cud it be magic!



Cud - Oh No Won't Do mp3

Cud's 2012 UK tour dates

Office Politics

Spike spotted a very funny moment during the following Channel 4 News report on Cameron's trip to the States to schmooze with Obama; if you skip to around 4 minutes & 40 seconds in you'll see the President being mobbed by lots of (presumably pre-approved) wellwishers at the side of a basketball court while Cameron is initially out of shot before the camera pans round to show him standing anonymously at the back of the crowd looking on pensively, much like David Brent eyeing a more popular figure hogging the limelight at a sales conference they're both guest speakers at. Basically, Obama's Cameron's Chris Finch. It really does make for marvellous viewing.



Action Biker - By Myself mp3

Now you see them...

This is quite a sight to behold: Richborough Power Station on the Kent coast's cooling towers and chimney being demolished this morning. Probably best viewed with the sound muted if you have a low 'inane soundtrack' threshold.



Talking of inane soundtracks...

Five Star - All Fall Down mp3

(Come on, it's a great pop song!)

Let's get Fizzical

Let me tell you a little bit about Jay Aston...

Song of the Day

I wish this lot could be a bit more prolific, as there are few things quite as joyous as a good Suburban Kids With Biblical Names track. But that's modern bands for you: bone idle. The Beatles used to release about twelve albums a week in their day, you know. Such nice young men as well; always so well turned out. Well, that is until they got mixed up with the alcopops and the Benson & Hedges and started knocking about with that awful Yogi Bear fellow in India and Wales. All you need is love? All you need is a spot of National Service and a good kick up the backside more like. I blame the parents.

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - Trumpets & Violins mp3

Painful

I'd been feeling rather pleased with myself the other day when picking up the best of Dinosaur Jr on CD for 99p in a charity shop. At least that's what I thought I'd bought. It wasn't till I played the CD for the first time earlier today that the full horror of what I'd done became apparent - the disc inside wasn't actually the best of Dinosaur Jr at all, but an album by the Offspring. The horror!

How Lowe can you go?

We were lucky enough to see Nick Lowe and band play live in his old stomping ground in Kent last week, as part of the world tour that's about to take him, and indeed them, to Australia and the USA. But if you're in the UK - and especially the south eastern part of it - there's still time to see Mr Lowe and co before they depart these shores, as they're embarking on a a mini-residence at the Leicester Square Theatre in London's fashionable West End for the next five nights (March 7-11). And tickets are, as they say, still available. (Click here for details.)

I can pretty much guarantee that you'll have a thoroughly enjoyable evening anyway - but then you really don't need me to tell you that. Here's one he didn't play the other night, but which still sounds absolutely brilliant almost three decades on: Half a Boy & Half a Man missed out on the UK top 40 when it was released, in 1984, too, peaking at #53. How's that for inexplicable?



Mildly Interesting Lowe Fact: Nick's 1979 hit Cruel To Be Kind (which he did play the other night) peaked at number 12 in the British, American, Australian AND Canadian singles charts. At least it did if you believe Wikipedia.

"Your bill is rubbish!"

A revealing clip. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is taken to task by a doctor over the government's controversial Health & Social Care Bill (i.e. their plan to privatise the NHS by stealth), during a visit to the Royal Free hospital yesterday. Here's a useful hint for governments: if the name of your policy is invariably preceded by the word controversial, you've probably gone wrong somewhere.

Apparently BBC News managed to miss out on broadcasting this story - which just makes it doubly handy that literally millions of licence fee payers read this blog.



DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING