Showing posts with label 1980s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1980s. Show all posts
wee pop rock
some of my favourite music from scotland - from the last few years.
this only scrapes the very tip of the iceberg to say the least...
1 i hate rock and roll - jesus and marychain
2 into the valley - the skids
3 velocity girl - primal scream
4 rebel rebel - bay city rollers
5 heartbeat - jazzateers
6 million tears - the pastels
7 citizens - josef k
8 premonition - simple minds
9 texan - jazzateers
10 the angle - josef k
11 saturday girl - bubblegum lemonade
12 what you do to me - teenage fanclub
13 2cv - lloyd cole & the commotions
14 superficial cat - edwynn collins
15 orchid girl - aztec camera
16 ease your feet in the sea - belle & sebastian
17 you've been a friend - jesus and marychain
18 higher than the sun (dub symphony in two parts) - primal scream
19 mid air - paul buchanan
the revolutionary spirit
in response to olivia's request for three songs, that evoke a certain mood:
1. what is your saddest song: shipbuilding/robert wyatt
well, i could choose anything off the last few joe strummer and the mescaleros album, esp.silver and gold, the final song, where he yells "ok, that's a take!" in the closing moments of the track - his last ever recorded utterance.
most country and western music, is as depressing as any indie song i could ever think of... joy division could have easily fitted in to the nashville scene, with all those tales of loss and regret... when robert gordon who i am a big fan of - got himself into faron young, that opened-up a whole new can of old sad songs:
revolutionary spirit by the wild swans - that has a certain sadness to it, but is also uplifting at times... sometimes melancholic thoughts return from when i first heard the song back in the 80s... along with out of season by icicle works - both take me back to my days as an outsider, when i used to sit by campfires in the woods with friends debating the meaning of life(which mostly revolved around avoiding gainful employment and wearing old raincoats)... we were starting to fracture from society and forge our own way, but it was sad to realise that things weren't going to just fall into our laps.
truly though, despite being depressed as hell every time i played bad town by BSA, as it reminded me of living well out of the loop, in a dead-end place in life, the one song i can remember repeatedly playing whilst actually looking out of a rain-soaked window at nothing-ness is shipbuilding by robert wyatt:
here you have the song that really spoke about what was going on in britain at that time, i was of conscription age then, i could see the falklands war was a complete sham, instigated by a horrendous old woman in power at the time, to bolster her vote in the forthcoming elections... and there was talk of signing-up teenagers to go out and kill other teenagers, in the name of a patch of land, very far away. it really seemed like there wasn't any point to starting-out on life, as we were all hanging in the balance waiting to see what would happen next... there was no optimism at all. this came to pass, obviously... and life went on, but for a certain period, it was like the 50's all over again, it takes me back to sitting in my mother's lounge, watching the rain come down outside, the week after i'd been off camping in the lake district, to come back to a family falling apart in a country that was falling apart.
obviously this was a blip in the scheme of things - Rota Fortunae and all that... life did fall apart, but i picked myself up from the torpor and started all over again..
automobile noise/the blue nile - another low point, spending a day-out in glasgow, seeing the possibilities of what i could be doing, listening to this song on my red walkman, as i waited in buchanan street bus station, watching a light snow coming down, feeling the chill, the soundtrack to my broken home.
2. which song turns you on: rollercoaster/the jesus and marychain
maybe the swagger of something by jesus and marychain, when they were in their heyday - they were channelling kenneth anger/the velvet underground/the stooges, wearing leather jackets like i did, and i even looked like i was in the band(most indie blokes did at that point to be honest), but i was so identified by them(even though i didn't listen to them all the time, contrary to popular belief), people would avoid/start relationships with me, based entirely on them.
there was more to it than that of course, i'd quit my hometown and was living a life away from parents and felt free for the first time, like i was truly being myself - i was also meeting girls who wanted to be with me(as opposed to most of the local girls back home, who avoided me like the plague), so i could say that the music was soundtracking my own awakening. despite all this, my own relationships were slightly lacking in the actual danger of a JAMC song, and more closely resembled a lloyd cole song:
- i was never going to hang out with a cool arty woman, shooting drugs in an NYC loft, i would have been more inclined to bump into a fellow outsider in a library or indie club, much more my style...
3. what song scares me: crossroads/robert johnson
well apart from the obvious mind-bender - which i experienced whilst at a techno clubnight, back in the early 00's, the first scary song i can recall hearing is devil's answer by atomic rooster, although most of their songs were fairly scary to my 12 year old ears... dealing with madness, demonic possession, desperation... it should come as no surprise that vincent crane, the main mover behind the band was treated for bipolar disorder.
as a child however, i recall being scared shitless of some dark wooden cottages that my grandad was visiting(they were just regular old folk homes), but they reminded me of hansel and gretel(surely that scariest story ever, by the aptly named brothers grimm), and i ran off screaming they were witches houses - this public information film, that used to be shown constantly on tv in the 70's would frighten the life out of me, and (which i suspect was the idea) put me off going near wooded areas with dark water:
was it really necessary to scare kids like that? all of this(coupled with watching too many hammer horror films), seemed to be encapsulated in the music of atomic rooster.
i didn't realise this until i started listening to them, back in '93 whilst on a road trip to cromer, and we passed thru some foggy landscapes and dark wooden farm houses - it all came flooding back to me...
this final track however, struck a chord with me, a few years back - i really did feel i'd reached the crossroads and all that would entail: the story of robert johnson going to the crossroads at midnight, on a deserted highway, and meeting a dark and foreboding stranger - who gave him a guitar that he could suddenly play without any effort, coming home days later - unrecognisable to anyone who knew him... that's a fear that i always have, that one day i'll return home and no one will know who i am anymore... not to mention my fear of selling-out to get what i want, making a pact with the unknown.
what is it that connects all three? awakening, i suppose... coming out of my sheltered existence and finding myself, being who i wanted to be, and ignoring the superstitions and fears of the past.
1. what is your saddest song: shipbuilding/robert wyatt
well, i could choose anything off the last few joe strummer and the mescaleros album, esp.silver and gold, the final song, where he yells "ok, that's a take!" in the closing moments of the track - his last ever recorded utterance.
most country and western music, is as depressing as any indie song i could ever think of... joy division could have easily fitted in to the nashville scene, with all those tales of loss and regret... when robert gordon who i am a big fan of - got himself into faron young, that opened-up a whole new can of old sad songs:
revolutionary spirit by the wild swans - that has a certain sadness to it, but is also uplifting at times... sometimes melancholic thoughts return from when i first heard the song back in the 80s... along with out of season by icicle works - both take me back to my days as an outsider, when i used to sit by campfires in the woods with friends debating the meaning of life(which mostly revolved around avoiding gainful employment and wearing old raincoats)... we were starting to fracture from society and forge our own way, but it was sad to realise that things weren't going to just fall into our laps.
truly though, despite being depressed as hell every time i played bad town by BSA, as it reminded me of living well out of the loop, in a dead-end place in life, the one song i can remember repeatedly playing whilst actually looking out of a rain-soaked window at nothing-ness is shipbuilding by robert wyatt:
here you have the song that really spoke about what was going on in britain at that time, i was of conscription age then, i could see the falklands war was a complete sham, instigated by a horrendous old woman in power at the time, to bolster her vote in the forthcoming elections... and there was talk of signing-up teenagers to go out and kill other teenagers, in the name of a patch of land, very far away. it really seemed like there wasn't any point to starting-out on life, as we were all hanging in the balance waiting to see what would happen next... there was no optimism at all. this came to pass, obviously... and life went on, but for a certain period, it was like the 50's all over again, it takes me back to sitting in my mother's lounge, watching the rain come down outside, the week after i'd been off camping in the lake district, to come back to a family falling apart in a country that was falling apart.
obviously this was a blip in the scheme of things - Rota Fortunae and all that... life did fall apart, but i picked myself up from the torpor and started all over again..
automobile noise/the blue nile - another low point, spending a day-out in glasgow, seeing the possibilities of what i could be doing, listening to this song on my red walkman, as i waited in buchanan street bus station, watching a light snow coming down, feeling the chill, the soundtrack to my broken home.
2. which song turns you on: rollercoaster/the jesus and marychain
maybe the swagger of something by jesus and marychain, when they were in their heyday - they were channelling kenneth anger/the velvet underground/the stooges, wearing leather jackets like i did, and i even looked like i was in the band(most indie blokes did at that point to be honest), but i was so identified by them(even though i didn't listen to them all the time, contrary to popular belief), people would avoid/start relationships with me, based entirely on them.
there was more to it than that of course, i'd quit my hometown and was living a life away from parents and felt free for the first time, like i was truly being myself - i was also meeting girls who wanted to be with me(as opposed to most of the local girls back home, who avoided me like the plague), so i could say that the music was soundtracking my own awakening. despite all this, my own relationships were slightly lacking in the actual danger of a JAMC song, and more closely resembled a lloyd cole song:
- i was never going to hang out with a cool arty woman, shooting drugs in an NYC loft, i would have been more inclined to bump into a fellow outsider in a library or indie club, much more my style...
3. what song scares me: crossroads/robert johnson
well apart from the obvious mind-bender - which i experienced whilst at a techno clubnight, back in the early 00's, the first scary song i can recall hearing is devil's answer by atomic rooster, although most of their songs were fairly scary to my 12 year old ears... dealing with madness, demonic possession, desperation... it should come as no surprise that vincent crane, the main mover behind the band was treated for bipolar disorder.
as a child however, i recall being scared shitless of some dark wooden cottages that my grandad was visiting(they were just regular old folk homes), but they reminded me of hansel and gretel(surely that scariest story ever, by the aptly named brothers grimm), and i ran off screaming they were witches houses - this public information film, that used to be shown constantly on tv in the 70's would frighten the life out of me, and (which i suspect was the idea) put me off going near wooded areas with dark water:
was it really necessary to scare kids like that? all of this(coupled with watching too many hammer horror films), seemed to be encapsulated in the music of atomic rooster.
i didn't realise this until i started listening to them, back in '93 whilst on a road trip to cromer, and we passed thru some foggy landscapes and dark wooden farm houses - it all came flooding back to me...
this final track however, struck a chord with me, a few years back - i really did feel i'd reached the crossroads and all that would entail: the story of robert johnson going to the crossroads at midnight, on a deserted highway, and meeting a dark and foreboding stranger - who gave him a guitar that he could suddenly play without any effort, coming home days later - unrecognisable to anyone who knew him... that's a fear that i always have, that one day i'll return home and no one will know who i am anymore... not to mention my fear of selling-out to get what i want, making a pact with the unknown.
what is it that connects all three? awakening, i suppose... coming out of my sheltered existence and finding myself, being who i wanted to be, and ignoring the superstitions and fears of the past.
autumn is the finest time of all
i was reminded of this fine tune(whilst browsing a forum i haunt), and it took me back to my 80's days in scotland, when i was living in kilmarnock or aberdeen....
walking around in oversized coats, with those fingerless gloves that fishermen wear, spending a lot of time getting back to nature in various woods, hanging around with new people(the taste of dandelion coffee springs to mind as a signifier of the new era... we were re-inventing our world), there was a feeling that the old world order had changed, and that something new was dawning, although to be honest it did feel more like a nuclear winter than autumn.
i was exploring new places and meeting the sort of people i wanted to hang out with, as opposed to those that fate had thrown my way.
one of those periods in life, when you throw off the shackles of who you used to be at school(or more likely - who you were told you should be), as i was starting to find myself... a scruffy indie-kid with a rockabilly hair-do, listening to winsome indie music, post punk hybrids and the polecats...
it really did feel like one long wintertime, that carried on forever.
bonfires in the woods, walking along deserted beaches, taking shortcuts across industrial wastelands, finding the abandoned cricket pitch in kilmarnock with it's 1940's buildings still intact but unused in decades, parents well out of the scene - as they busied themselves with being old and boring(i was working now, so no longer depended on the past to support me), reading futurist manifestoes, looking at european art and wishing i could be as savvy as modern french illustrators, punks from sink estates tearing it up whilst drunk on cider, rattling old buses with no heating and steamy windows, riding around on my bike in impractical clothing, wondering why all my friends were disapearing one after another into some strange nether world called "beyond the town".
i was a mobile urban dodger(as i-D called us), wearing 50's clothing, raincoats, avoiding anything remotely fusty, listening to new music... working as a graphic designer for the local council, always staying one step ahead of responsibility, always on the lookout for joy.
Days of speed and slow time Mondays -
Pissing down with rain on a boring Wednesday -
Watching the news and not eating your tea -
A freezing cold flat and damp on the walls - that's entertainment!
funny how wearing second hand clothes can seem like the future.
this year's model
we are moving house.
i'll be offline at some point possibly for a few weeks, but this explains why i was keen(for once) to spend the afternoon in a housewares emporium(let's call it... ikea, fr'instance...), as well as the reason for a lot of creative downsizing in the last couple of weeks, as i gear up for this momentous up-heaval.
it was disorientating enough that we found ourselves in coventry - which makes you feel like you've wandered onto the set of here we go round the mullberry bush, but to visit this store is like stepping back into the 80's(of course, what would you expect).
i used to pour over a copy of the habitat catalogue that i had back in the early 80's... living in my parent's 70's decor was not good for a young man, i needed something modern to aspire to(even if that modern was tinged with a love of atomic fifties iconography), - all that ordered symmetry and red door handles was like manna from heaven amongst the late 60's furniture and council estate style of my home... habitat was all so thematic, unlike the mish-mash decade-blending(thank you douglas coupland) that my parents unwittingly indulged in - our next door neighbour's house was worse, with their tacky mock-baronial fireplace, replete with brass heraldic shields/swords and abigail's party furniture(the former i got into trouble dueling with and the latter which my mother trashed when she fell over at a party, one evening).
this house also had those staple 70's item: the yellow corner peice sofa, and cylindrical opaque orange standing lamps so beloved of play for today.
but, all that measured order and calmness in the habitat catalogue engaged me(this was when the conran empire was seen as something tastefull, not like today where they sting you £45 for some cardboard boxes with handles on them, etc...), and it was almost warhol-esque, the bright primary colours and stack 'em up, sell 'em off that spoke of happiness and bountiful supply(which was the general idea, to encourage you to buy lots).
admittedly, the only people i knew that owned this stuff were social workers, who wore green cords and had haircuts like mike reid, but we can all dream of our shangri la at least.
this particular shangri la in coventry however, smelled of burnt toast as we entered it's vast front door(on the way there i remarked how the building seemed to be sucking the life out of the nearby area), and the huge elevators were immediately off-putting, like the ones they have in some underground stations, and seemed to have no directions or info about them, it was merely a case of jump onboard.
upon arrival on the sixth floor, we were meeted&greeted by a smiling blonde girl who was handing out oversize shopping sacks(there's that illusion of choice, again), and it was only after i'd walked past, that i noticed she had very, very small arms, totally out-of-context with her body-size.
now this threw both of us out of sync for a bit, so slightly dazed we orienteered our way to the wardrobe section, following the handy map we were given(with it's shortcuts included for brevity)(now is it just me, or does it seem a little bit odd that you should need a map to get around a shop?), and i noticed a few times that there is a direction you have to walk round in... we'd invariably go against the tide, like salmon swimming upstream, only to be met with slightly surprised and almost offended little dry coughs(the english thing that english people do, to express annoyance and indignation)... i also noted the look on (mainly) men's faces, forced to walk round as their other-half's nesting instincts enthused to them about furniture you sit on or sleep on - but the menfolk sported a look that spoke of life slowly draining away from a tortured soul, or of a tired mind that wanted to be down the pub where all his mates were probably.
also interesting was also the amount of tattooes people had - even if they were mainly of the celtic-ibiza beckham-inspired tosh that says nothing about the person other than the fact that they have spent a bit of money on the tatt... designed to look good in the beer-garden in a sleeveless t-shirt... but not something i'd expect to see in this doyen of conformity.
the other half found all the little vignettes quite depressing(the pieces where they would have a whole room laid out like sets in a TV studio), they did have some sort of marie-celeste quality about them... although to me, it just brought back memories of the 80's habitat catalogue(see above), and it was quite easy to lose yourself in them, like wandering in and out of people's homes, through mysterious walls, like a ghost.
cutomers got quite avoricious though, and occasionally they would get a leather-jacket swinging accidentally in their direction if they got too close to where i was standing... there was certainly an air of desperation involved - although i was enjoying it all, finding the atmosphere quite entertaining(i don't think that was the idea though...), a bit like a contemporary museum, or more like stepping back into the 80's...
i found some of the ideas very tastefull, there's definately a 50's aesthetic to a lot of the furniture(despite the industrial 80's wire mesh and big red clocks)... i saw a few chairs that recalled Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, Arne Jacobsen and Harry Bertoia... all very stylish and understated.
my favourite was the round dining tables with the moulded swivel chairs(that ITRW would last about a month), and plenty of low slung, close to the ground lounge furniture that was similarily inspired, although i never made it over to the moulded plastic orange coloured chairs that would have matched our 50's dining table.
we were however, only indulging in speculative consumption(to purchase that stuff from the website), so only bought a 50's inpsired throw for the sofa, but all-in-all not a bad concept for a day out(despite being amused at the caretaker nation aspects of the way people were co-erced into moving around the store).
not exactly relaxing though and the canteen was crap.
like a motorway self-service restaurant.
shame on you.
i'll be offline at some point possibly for a few weeks, but this explains why i was keen(for once) to spend the afternoon in a housewares emporium(let's call it... ikea, fr'instance...), as well as the reason for a lot of creative downsizing in the last couple of weeks, as i gear up for this momentous up-heaval.
it was disorientating enough that we found ourselves in coventry - which makes you feel like you've wandered onto the set of here we go round the mullberry bush, but to visit this store is like stepping back into the 80's(of course, what would you expect).
i used to pour over a copy of the habitat catalogue that i had back in the early 80's... living in my parent's 70's decor was not good for a young man, i needed something modern to aspire to(even if that modern was tinged with a love of atomic fifties iconography), - all that ordered symmetry and red door handles was like manna from heaven amongst the late 60's furniture and council estate style of my home... habitat was all so thematic, unlike the mish-mash decade-blending(thank you douglas coupland) that my parents unwittingly indulged in - our next door neighbour's house was worse, with their tacky mock-baronial fireplace, replete with brass heraldic shields/swords and abigail's party furniture(the former i got into trouble dueling with and the latter which my mother trashed when she fell over at a party, one evening).
this house also had those staple 70's item: the yellow corner peice sofa, and cylindrical opaque orange standing lamps so beloved of play for today.
but, all that measured order and calmness in the habitat catalogue engaged me(this was when the conran empire was seen as something tastefull, not like today where they sting you £45 for some cardboard boxes with handles on them, etc...), and it was almost warhol-esque, the bright primary colours and stack 'em up, sell 'em off that spoke of happiness and bountiful supply(which was the general idea, to encourage you to buy lots).
admittedly, the only people i knew that owned this stuff were social workers, who wore green cords and had haircuts like mike reid, but we can all dream of our shangri la at least.
this particular shangri la in coventry however, smelled of burnt toast as we entered it's vast front door(on the way there i remarked how the building seemed to be sucking the life out of the nearby area), and the huge elevators were immediately off-putting, like the ones they have in some underground stations, and seemed to have no directions or info about them, it was merely a case of jump onboard.
upon arrival on the sixth floor, we were meeted&greeted by a smiling blonde girl who was handing out oversize shopping sacks(there's that illusion of choice, again), and it was only after i'd walked past, that i noticed she had very, very small arms, totally out-of-context with her body-size.
now this threw both of us out of sync for a bit, so slightly dazed we orienteered our way to the wardrobe section, following the handy map we were given(with it's shortcuts included for brevity)(now is it just me, or does it seem a little bit odd that you should need a map to get around a shop?), and i noticed a few times that there is a direction you have to walk round in... we'd invariably go against the tide, like salmon swimming upstream, only to be met with slightly surprised and almost offended little dry coughs(the english thing that english people do, to express annoyance and indignation)... i also noted the look on (mainly) men's faces, forced to walk round as their other-half's nesting instincts enthused to them about furniture you sit on or sleep on - but the menfolk sported a look that spoke of life slowly draining away from a tortured soul, or of a tired mind that wanted to be down the pub where all his mates were probably.
also interesting was also the amount of tattooes people had - even if they were mainly of the celtic-ibiza beckham-inspired tosh that says nothing about the person other than the fact that they have spent a bit of money on the tatt... designed to look good in the beer-garden in a sleeveless t-shirt... but not something i'd expect to see in this doyen of conformity.
the other half found all the little vignettes quite depressing(the pieces where they would have a whole room laid out like sets in a TV studio), they did have some sort of marie-celeste quality about them... although to me, it just brought back memories of the 80's habitat catalogue(see above), and it was quite easy to lose yourself in them, like wandering in and out of people's homes, through mysterious walls, like a ghost.
cutomers got quite avoricious though, and occasionally they would get a leather-jacket swinging accidentally in their direction if they got too close to where i was standing... there was certainly an air of desperation involved - although i was enjoying it all, finding the atmosphere quite entertaining(i don't think that was the idea though...), a bit like a contemporary museum, or more like stepping back into the 80's...
i found some of the ideas very tastefull, there's definately a 50's aesthetic to a lot of the furniture(despite the industrial 80's wire mesh and big red clocks)... i saw a few chairs that recalled Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, Arne Jacobsen and Harry Bertoia... all very stylish and understated.
my favourite was the round dining tables with the moulded swivel chairs(that ITRW would last about a month), and plenty of low slung, close to the ground lounge furniture that was similarily inspired, although i never made it over to the moulded plastic orange coloured chairs that would have matched our 50's dining table.
we were however, only indulging in speculative consumption(to purchase that stuff from the website), so only bought a 50's inpsired throw for the sofa, but all-in-all not a bad concept for a day out(despite being amused at the caretaker nation aspects of the way people were co-erced into moving around the store).
not exactly relaxing though and the canteen was crap.
like a motorway self-service restaurant.
shame on you.
radio, radio
sleep, who needs it?
when i can be slogging around the house at 5 in the morning because it's really stuffy in the house, aghast that the lagerlesbians next door are still awake, with all their lights blazing..?
or when i can be up and out the house in digbeth for 9 o'clock, to join in the summer xmas fun of the big paws radio show... which i listen to during saturday breakfast-time.
they were having an xmas special, and invited people along for presents and festive food, so who could resist...
that's me on the right of the photo(wearing a newly acquired vintage tootal shirt), wide awake but keeping quiet (and stifling laughter - hence the expression), as i was off mike, and wouldn't be heard anyway(memories of the pirate broadcasting days and my own little station i ran from my house when i was about 13... somewhere there are tapes of me with a high pitched voice, playing sex pistols records in 1978...)
fun to watch the show in person, surrounded by various regular contributors from the show- even if we couldn't hear some of the songs which was a shame as they played a killer graham parker track!
presents were handed out, H. got a set of badges with shakespearian insults on them, i was given a shuttlecock set with tiger faces on the bats, as well as various crackers being pulled - and in return (keeping to a brum theme)we passed on a tiswas best-of video(that i'd found in a vintage shop) to catnip - as tiswas had been recorded on broad street at central television studios(which is now a vacant lot) and a birmingham information film/video to bounder(which i acquired many moons ago... a short documentary inviting middle class people to move to the suburbs of edgbaston whilst sampling the cultural delights of the city... it's a load of snobbytosh basically, where the only working class people you see are waiters and such... plus it's all pre-inner-city-ghetto living which is now the case in the city centre... so the film is out-of-date anyway! but i thought bounder would appreciate as a psychogeographer of the city viewing a snapshot of how some people wanted birmingham to be presented at the time...) - he's blogged it on here
there was an offer of going to the custard factory cafe for more fun after the show, but we went to visit the vintage shop in digbeth, which surprisingly had some good woolrich coats in stock, amongst all the hipster crap that they usually sell, then headed off for some coffee and croisants followed by a visit to cybercandy for american chocolate.
i was after a dressy looking pork pie hat with a stingey brim for a forthcoming thing(to be written about after it happens!), so i dragged our slowly flagging selves down to the birmingham indoor market... but all my regular hat stall had was "mean streets" type leather pork pie hats...
eventually i headed off to top banana for a cool button-down vintage shirt(but not a hat) - where they had some damn nice towncraft shirts, but none in my size, followed by coffee and a chat, to revive myself before heading home tired and sleepy, like eddie cochran did...
today was a good day for spotting people in micheal jackson t-shirts though, the worst of which was the short aggressive woman wearing a black "king of pop" t-shirt, who was offering people to a fight on colmore row(WHO'S BAD!), and the best was seeing a grandad in a red "king of pop" t-shirt, with matching red shorts and sandles in kings heath... whodafunkit!!!
when i can be slogging around the house at 5 in the morning because it's really stuffy in the house, aghast that the lagerlesbians next door are still awake, with all their lights blazing..?
or when i can be up and out the house in digbeth for 9 o'clock, to join in the summer xmas fun of the big paws radio show... which i listen to during saturday breakfast-time.
they were having an xmas special, and invited people along for presents and festive food, so who could resist...
that's me on the right of the photo(wearing a newly acquired vintage tootal shirt), wide awake but keeping quiet (and stifling laughter - hence the expression), as i was off mike, and wouldn't be heard anyway(memories of the pirate broadcasting days and my own little station i ran from my house when i was about 13... somewhere there are tapes of me with a high pitched voice, playing sex pistols records in 1978...)
fun to watch the show in person, surrounded by various regular contributors from the show- even if we couldn't hear some of the songs which was a shame as they played a killer graham parker track!
presents were handed out, H. got a set of badges with shakespearian insults on them, i was given a shuttlecock set with tiger faces on the bats, as well as various crackers being pulled - and in return (keeping to a brum theme)we passed on a tiswas best-of video(that i'd found in a vintage shop) to catnip - as tiswas had been recorded on broad street at central television studios(which is now a vacant lot) and a birmingham information film/video to bounder(which i acquired many moons ago... a short documentary inviting middle class people to move to the suburbs of edgbaston whilst sampling the cultural delights of the city... it's a load of snobbytosh basically, where the only working class people you see are waiters and such... plus it's all pre-inner-city-ghetto living which is now the case in the city centre... so the film is out-of-date anyway! but i thought bounder would appreciate as a psychogeographer of the city viewing a snapshot of how some people wanted birmingham to be presented at the time...) - he's blogged it on here
There Is A Better Lifestyle from bounder on Vimeo.
there was an offer of going to the custard factory cafe for more fun after the show, but we went to visit the vintage shop in digbeth, which surprisingly had some good woolrich coats in stock, amongst all the hipster crap that they usually sell, then headed off for some coffee and croisants followed by a visit to cybercandy for american chocolate.
i was after a dressy looking pork pie hat with a stingey brim for a forthcoming thing(to be written about after it happens!), so i dragged our slowly flagging selves down to the birmingham indoor market... but all my regular hat stall had was "mean streets" type leather pork pie hats...
eventually i headed off to top banana for a cool button-down vintage shirt(but not a hat) - where they had some damn nice towncraft shirts, but none in my size, followed by coffee and a chat, to revive myself before heading home tired and sleepy, like eddie cochran did...
today was a good day for spotting people in micheal jackson t-shirts though, the worst of which was the short aggressive woman wearing a black "king of pop" t-shirt, who was offering people to a fight on colmore row(WHO'S BAD!), and the best was seeing a grandad in a red "king of pop" t-shirt, with matching red shorts and sandles in kings heath... whodafunkit!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
