Well, it's the 1st of March, and this is from third album Marchin' Already. You can see what I did there.
Lots of people don't have much time for Ocean Colour Scene, but I always quite liked them. I'm seeing them live in the summer, supporting Roger Daltrey, can you believe?
This is a fine old song too. Guitarist and Weller-wingman Steve Cradock, in particular, is giving it the full mod revival revival, and is all the better for it, in my book.
Hell of a driving song too.
Seems like barely a day goes by at the moment without someone dying that gives pause for thought. As I write this, the circumstances of Gene Hackman's death are unclear, beyond that he, his wife and their dog were all found dead together at their home.
For some, Gene will forever be Popeye Doyle. For others, he may be the definitive big-screen Lex Luthor. But for me, he will always be Little Bill Daggett, the role that garnered him a second Oscar. Unforgiven is a rare thing, just about a perfect movie, something that I always watch whenever it is on, regardless of how often I have seen it and despite also owning it on DVD. All the principals in it are superb, but none more so than Gene.
And I haven't even mentioned The Conversation.
RIP Gene and Betsy.
The news yesterday that Henry Kelly has died made me sad, as much for that long-lost time in my late teens as for anything else. For me, Henry was Going For Gold, simple as that - the show aimed to identify the quiz champion of Europe, and had contestants from 15 countries ... though all the questions were in English, so the home nations always did well.
Beyond the excellent theme music, Henry's quirky and idiomatic phrasing was another feature of the show, and led to a number of new terms entering my teenage lexicon, notably: "Good man yourself", "You're playing catch-up" and adding "proper" onto the end of everything (as in "You're through to the first round proper" after getting through the actual first round). Different times.
Here's the grand final of the first series, from all the way back in Spring 1988. Beyond the theme tune, the cake (!) ten minutes in, and Henry being Henry, note the winner, Daphne. If she looks familiar, well, she went on to be a member of the in-house pro team on another quiz, Eggheads.
I love everything about this video - it's time-capsule TV and perfectly encapsulates a simpler time, when people clapped each other rather than themselves. How we used to live, eh?
Rest in peace, Henry - you were a good man yourself.
As The Man Of Cheese astutely pointed out on this blog's birthday last year, you're not nineteen forever, so here are The Courteeners to remind us of that fact.
In other words, yes, this blog is 20 today: a score, two decades. Incredible, really. Thanks for being here, still reading the drivel. It might not sound like it, but I do appreciate it.
Right then, where's the cake?
This is The World Is Mine, a 2019 single by UK R&B artist Samm Henshaw. No, it's not my usual bag*, but I do very much like it. I could almost imagine it being a 21st Century Bond theme ... and maybe I'm not alone in thinking that, because it did get picked up for the excellent TV adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's teen spy series Alex Rider. That's where I first heard it, courtesy of Amusements Minor, so today seems a good day, the best day, to post it. The world is yours, my son.
Great video too.
* My usual bag, such as it is, will no doubt resume next time.
But then came the messages from Paul and Bruce, and coverage on BBC News. It was undeniably true. I WhatsApped The Man Of Cheese with the awful news.
I'm not going to write much about The Jam, today. If you're reading this, you already know all about them and probably have an idea how much they meant to me. Mean to me, still. I will post music though, celebrating a sound that has stood the test of time since it was made four and a half decades ago. For example, here is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Jam song on which Rick had a co-writing credit.
Fantastic, isn't it? And Rick's rattling tom-toms and driving snare propelled it forward with such energy and urgency, typical of the dynamism he brought to the band as one half of a crack rhythm section.
It wasn't all plain sailing, of course. Rick could never really get his head around Paul calling time on The Jam, a decision he regarded as crazy. He felt that both he and Bruce could have gone in the different musical directions Paul was keen to follow, and maybe he was right, technically. Hard to imagine Rick being happy on Confessions of a Pop Group though.
Outside of music, Rick was a devoted family man, honest and passionate according to all those that knew him. He was willingly involved in, and showed up for, many Jam retrospectives, not least About The Young Idea. And he still managed to use his music business experience, working in artist management and promotion.
Rick's obit mentions that he had recently been forced to cancel a spoken-word tour of UK venues because of health problems, and that his death followed a short illness. This news comes not long after Bruce announced that the current run of From The Jam dates will be his last with the band, as he retires to focus on his health. Our heroes are getting old. Inevitable, I know, but sad nonetheless. At least they know, when their time comes, that they have left a mark, made something that endures. Oh, to be that lucky.
I'll end with two more songs, and a photograph. I love the video for Absolute Beginners, not least because it features a lot of running, and Rick is clearly the most up for it. In this, he looks like he would run through a wall for the band. By contrast, Paul looks like he has smoked way too much (and/or is hungover). Plus, Rick's jumper is cool as.
And then there's their cover of So Sad About Us, which The Jam recorded in tribute to the untimely passing of another drummer, a certain Keith Moon. Here's a live rendition by From The Jam.
As for the picture, it's a relatively recent shot in which Rick recreated the 7" picture sleeve of Down In The Tube Station At Midnight. He looks dignified in it, I think. Dignified, and still cool.
RIP Rick, and thanks for everything.
Jake Bugg burst into the public consciousness around 2012 when his song Lightning Bolt dovetailed serendipitously with Usain's brilliance at the London Olympics - the song was everywhere, and Jake seemed to be a hip, post-Millennial hybrid of Bob Dylan and Lonnie Donnegan, at least to listeners of a certain age. But there's a lot more to him than that, and Slide is a great example of what.
Lyrics are great for today too, for all those who don't subscribe to the hearts and flowers nonsense of February 14th. "Is love just suffering?" Jake wonders. Good question. Let's not forget, Saint Valentine was beaten with clubs, beheaded and buried under cover of darkness, before being disinterred by his followers... but give a card with that on it and I doubt you'll get laid.
An email from Bandcamp just landed in my inbox at lunchtime. Now you don't need me to tell you about Andy Bell but you may be unaware, as I was until the email arrived, that he has just released a new track entitled Apple Green UFO. And it's rather excellent, much of the time sounding like it's arrived here straight from 1989. Imagine a lost Stone Roses track if Ian Brown could sing and, unlikely admittedly, they'd added a brass motif to the chorus. Simple but effective ear-wormy bassline as well.
There are two versions: a four minute-ish edit for the video (below) and an eight minute-ish extended take on Bandcamp (below below).
Good, isn't it?
Way back when, before my so-called career (ha!), I used to work in a hi-fi shop. It wasn't quite like this, though there were occasions when the customer's lack of technical knowledge could be advantageous. Upselling, I'd guess you'd call it these days. Don't judge me, it was a very low paid job with a commission element. Anyway, what I can say is that it was easy to sell expensive kit as long as it was demonstrably better. As long as I could demo a Sony CCD-TR805 camcorder I would sell it, more often than not, even though it was hideously expensive at £1,099.99, just because it was obviously so much better than everything else. Ditto the brilliant TCK-611S cassette deck, again expensive at £299.99 but an easy sell once demonstrated. Likewise the WM-DD33 Walkman (£99.99).
I was a good salesman, I think, because I made sure I knew my stuff, and used that knowledge to find something that matched the customer's needs. I enjoyed the job too, more often that not, and met a good mate there in the form of Tim, a friendship that endures to this day, despite rarely seeing each other.
I was interested in it all too, which is why I still knew those models numbers and prices instantly off the top of my head, despite my time there being more than 30 years ago. The brain's a funny thing, I guess. For the record, the 805 was a better camcorder because it had an optical image stabiliser (basically a clear gel between two lenses that acted as a dynamic prism) rather than the digital efforts of other brands, which tended to give grainy, pixelated results because they just didn't have the necessary processing power back then. And the 611S brought Dolby-S noise reduction to the domestic market, so much better than B and C; with a good quality blank tape (Sony Metal-XR, for example) the 611S would be the best way of recording CDs until MiniDisc and CD-Rs came along. As for the WM-DD33, well, DD stood for direct drive - no drive belts to stretch over time - plus it had heft! A sign of quality components, back then. Terry Hall had a WM-DD33, fact fans (and so did I).
I'll end with a track from a CD we used for demos, mostly because it was a DDD recording - digital recording equipment, digital mastering, digital media (rare then). With a good amp and decent speakers you could really appreciate the sound quality however much you liked the music ... and Sting irked the musos, even then. Here's the closing track from Ten Summoner's Tales, in all its 21st Century, compressed, low-bitrate, embedded YouTube misery. Does anyone care about sound quality any more?
That's a very Beatlesy outro there, isn't it?
