Sunday shorts: Mick's Blessings

Can't beat an early Style Council instrumental from the pen of the Mighty Mick Talbot. Weller on hand claps, I expect. Play loud!!!

Sunday shorts: Picture Framed

I haven't written about Swagger for at least a couple of months, and that won't do, so let's return to The Blue Aeroplanes' finest moment once more, and pick out Picture Framed for a beautiful Sunday short.

Sunday shorts: What Goes Around

I don't know anything about Jimmy Nebula other than that he seems to be in thrall of the Hulmerist on this track, particularly the lyrics of Jack the Ripper.

I have tried to find out a bit more about Jimmy, and looked in all the usual places, but really this is the only thing that stands out in any way. And even then it seems to abruptly fade out just as it gets going.

This has not been a great post, has it? Sorry. Feel like I've been scrabbling around the bottom of an empty barrel of late, dull scraper in hand.

Sunday shorts: You Never Wash Up After Yourself (live)

This, from Radiohead's excellent 1994 EP My Iron Lung, could just as easily have featured as a Blue Friday post, but it's short, so here we are.

I must get out once in a while
Everything is starting to die
The dust settles, the worms dig
Spiders crawl over the bed

I must get out once in a while
I eat all day and now I'm fat
Yesterday's meal is hugging the plates
You never wash up after yourself

Sunday shorts: Game of Pricks

If you haven't already consumed the entirety of animator and film-maker Steve Cutts's YouTube channel, what are you waiting for? He has an excellent, dark sense of humour that I very much appreciate, and think you might too. Here's an example, the first short film of his that I saw.

There, that was good, wasn't it? The music used therein is Game of Pricks by Guided by Voices. Here's the full track in all its 93-second, retro-sounding, Sunday short glory.

Sunday shorts: Isla de Encanta

Sunday is a day of rest, right, so let's take a break from Cover Charge with another classic slice of early Pixies that comes in comfortably under the two-minute threshold required for Sunday shorts.

Isla de Encanta is also meat and drink for the Duolingo-bothering learner of Spanish (me, currently), with enough words for me to pick out to get the gist.

Anyway, all the way back from when I was 17 (though I didn't hear it until I was 19, but that's another story), here's the track.

I think we can all agree that's marvellous, right? And the only "love island" worth the time of day.

As for those lyrics? With apologies to any actual Spanish speakers...

Hermanita ven conmigo Hermanita ven conmigo Hay aviones cada hora Isla de encanta Me voy, me voy, me voy Donde no hay sufrimiento Donde no hay sufrimiento Me vieron pasar por la calle Isla de encanta Me voy, me voy, me voy Nuestro propio animal Canta a la gente pa'gratis Hey babe, what are we doing here? Laaaa, laaaa, patria Isla de encanta Me voy, me voy, me voy

Little sister, come with me Little sister, come with me There are planes every hour Island of love I'm going, I'm going, I'm going Where there is no suffering Where there is no suffering They saw me passing by on the street Island of love I'm going, I'm going, I'm going Our own animal sings To the people for free Hey babe, what are we doing here? Laaaa, laaaa, homeland Island of love I'm going, I'm going, I'm going

The Cover Charge resumes next time.

Sunday shorts: Lead Me Home

Another track that surfaced from introducing The Walking Dead to Amusements Minor (series 3, episode 12, fact fans).

I don't know much about Jamie N. Commons but I can tell you that, for all his bluesy Americana, he was born in Bristol, before moving across the pond whilst still in single digits. Oh, and I can tell you that I quite like this.

Sunday shorts: The Thing

Pixies first thing on a Sunday, you say? No problem. Here's The Thing, originally a B-side to Velouria.

Sunday shorts: Commercial Break

Start playing the video now and it could be over around the time you finish reading...

Parklife may be the album that sold pajillions, and the brilliant 13 may be their creative highpoint, but I maintain Blur's best album is Modern Life Is Rubbish. Rarely has the sound of a band reinventing itself - saving itself, arguably - sounded so good. An album that was so strong they could afford to leave manifesto single Popscene off it. Okay, so maybe it was also the last Blur album not to top the UK chart, but what do we care for charts here at Amusement Towers?

Part of what made the album feel so vital, in the 'alive' sense rather than in the 'must have' sense, is that it felt like the band were packing everything in, just in case they didn't get another go at it. Each side concludes with a quick instumental workout, the sort that sound like the band were just playing with ideas in the studio and committed some to tape. Side One ends with the appropriately titled Intermission, tacked onto the end of Chemical World. Side Two notionally concludes with the decidedly downbeat Resigned but maybe someone, somewhere, felt it wasn't such a good idea to end on a low (they'd do that on the next album, of course) and so this jaunty little thrash was tacked on the end. I see the title as optimistic too - Commercial Break implies the band still felt, or at least hoped, there was more to come, even if some of those around them at the time were doubtful. Maybe, then, this is the sound of Britpop hoving into view... but we shouldn't hold that against it, right?

Sunday shorts: Being Around

Haven't done one of these for a while, so here are 95 seconds of The Lemonheads (well, just Evan Dando really), with some excellent rhyming couplets ... and also some juvenilia about boogers. Enjoy.

Sunday shorts: 40 Second Song

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

As you can tell from the thumbnail, this little REM curio is from the Out Of Time era. Specifically, it got released as a CD-single filler track for Shiny Happy People. And despite the title, it's about 80 seconds long. Maybe they ran through it twice?

Sunday shorts: Love

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

Haven't done a Sunday short in a long time, but this is Love by Dave Monks of Tokyo Police Club, a gently building acoustic stream of consciousness with a lovely, literal video interpretation... "'cos that is love".

Sunday shorts: Prelude 12/21

Time to blow the dust off the Sunday Shorts series. This is Prelude 12/21 by Californian rock outfit AFI (short for A Fire Inside, so I'm told). It's not my usual bag and I know nothing about him/them, I just heard it used as backing music on an old TV programme and thought, "I've got a Christmas blog post with your name on." Appropriately enough for the season, it comes from a 2006 album entitled December Underground...

Sunday shorts: Hark!

I posted this as part of my online Advent calendar back in 2015 but hardly anyone read the blog back then, so I feel okay about repeating myself. Plus at only 1m 42, it qualifies as a Sunday short!

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals. See you on the other side.

Sunday shorts: For Tim Collins

Okay, I know that technically this song is about eight seconds too long to qualify, as it drifts just over the two minute mark. But since this is the song I started the Sunday shorts theme for in the first place I suppose I really ought to feature it - if not now, when? So here's some instrumental Blue Aeroplanes.

Sunday shorts: Pop Art Poem

Technically this is six or seven seconds too long to qualify as a Sunday Short, but sod it, my gaff, my rules.

I remember the first time I heard this so vivdly. It was given away as a bright yellow cover-mounted flexi-disc with the short-lived Flexipop magazine back in February 1981. My brother bought that (I wonder if he still has it?) and played it repeatedly on the big old wood-veneer music centre that sat in one corner of the living room. Me, not yet eleven, was gobsmacked. I taped it, of course (home taping didn't kill music after all), together with the second track (a rough demo of Boy About Town) and in the years that followed I put it on so many mix-tapes, whenever and wherever I had a gap to fill at the end of a side that was too short for a "normal" song. I think I also liked having a rare track to hand, maybe something that my mates hadn't heard.

Of course Pop Art Poem would eventually surface on mop-up collection Extras in April 1992, and then my rarity trump card was gone. To me, though, this still sounds great.

Sunday shorts: A Perfect Reminder

Craig over at the always-excellent Plain or Pan has written a book about The Trash Can Sinatras' album I've Seen Everything, and that's all it took to remind me of this little ditty. You might say it was, ahem, the perfect reminder.

Sunday shorts: In The Street Today

An impossibly young Paul, Bruce and Rick rattle through this for the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1978, complete with a duff chord from Paul around the 49 second mark

Sunday shorts: Tony's Bar & Grill

Hidden track from The Charlatans' sixth studio album Us and Us Only.

Sunday shorts: All By Myself

From Green Day's 1994 breakout album Dookie. What could this song be about? A lyric change in live renditions leaves no doubt.

Sod it, since it is also a short video, here's the actual backstory to this strong, straight from the horse's, i.e. Tré Cool's, mouth: