More street art - Adam and Eve get sponsored

More street art/graffiti spotted on the walls of my adopted home town, this time critiquing our corporate-sponsored, modern life. How many logos can you spot?

Other street art posts can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

More street art - make June the end of May

Post-election-inspired street art/graffiti spotted on the walls of my adopted home town. Other street art posts can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.

Wanderlust... still

I did this once before, and can now offer a tiny incremental update.

Still no sign of those tickets to New Zealand though. Or Russia. Or Antarctica. Or Patagonia. Or... or... or...

MP has been to: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Guernsey, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican.
Get your own travel map from Matador Network.

Bottom line? Still not travelled enough.

Feelin' groovy

A proper election fall-out post will follow soon, when I'm not too tired to string a coherent sentence together (that's what you get for staying up all night at my age).

In the meantime, the events of the last 24 hours have left me feeling upbeat, in a way that is very different to the morning after the EU referendum. The post title might lead you to suspect I was about to post some Simon and Garfunkel, but no - instead, here's a well known, incredibly groovy song that always makes me want to dance like I was still young. Play loud, voters! Deee-lovely!

And yes - I may well have had a crush on Lady Miss Kier back in the day...

X marks the spot

As we speak, polling stations around the country are opening their doors, ready to receive your vote, ready for you to do your duty.

And it is a duty. You don't need me to tell you how politics, and more specifically the political decisions and policy making of whoever gets elected, affects almost every aspect of your daily life. So leave for work a bit early, take an umbrella so the rain can't deter you, and vote.

If you're still unsure of who to vote for (I don't blame you - in my experience, no-one agrees with all the policies of their preferred party), you might be interested in a website that asks you lots of questions and then identifies your party of best fit. There are plenty of these website quizzes out there - I've tried lots and have found isidewith.com to be especially good, and as detailed as you want it to be.

Also, if you live in a constituency where tactical voting might be a factor, and you want to get into some of that, you should definitely take a look at tactical2017.com

Most of all though, please just make sure you vote. If you don't, you abdicate your right to bitch about anything for the next five years... and what will our social media timelines be full of then?

Mixing pop and politics

You might know Andrew Collins from his music and television journalism (NME, The Word, The Guardian), or his excellent biography of Billy Bragg, Still Suitable For Miners. Or, most likely, as that bloke who appeared on TV as a "talking head" a lot in the Nineties and Noughties.

You might not know that he is also a terrific blogger, so much so that he scoops the blogger of the year award in my annual round-ups pretty much every year.

Well now, on his personal blog Never Knowingly Underwhelmed, he's written an important think-piece on the imminent general election. Whatever the colour of your rosette (and especially if you're undecided and/or a first-time, newly registered voter), I urge you to have a read.

And while we're on the subject of the general election, in the unlikely event that you're the one person who hasn't already seen it, here's Cassetteboy vs Theresa May. Enjoy, albeit as a black comedy.

Clandestine Classic LII - Wonderful Woman (live)

The fifty-second post in an occasional series that is intended to highlight songs that you might not have heard that I think are excellent - clandestine classics, if you will. Maybe they'll be by bands you've never heard of. Maybe they'll be by more familiar artists, but tracks that were squirelled away on b-sides, unpopular albums, radio sessions or music magazine cover-mounted CDs. Time will, undoubtedly, tell.

Continuing my quest to feature the most influential, most pivotal, most important acts in my personal musical history, today I tackle the big one: how to present a clandestine classic from The Smiths? Not only are the majority of my readers already very well acquainted with this particular Salford lads' club but here's a band whose output has been bootlegged, anthologised, re-issued and repackaged to within an inch of its life. Simply, there isn't much out there left to discover. But there are some tracks that get played less than others. And there are some intriguing live versions out of those lesser played tracks, so that's the card I'm playing - stick with me.

Wonderful Woman originally surfaced as the second B-side on the 12" version of the band's second single, This Charming Man. What we didn't know at the time is that it had been first recorded during the aborted sessions for their debut album (and as such would later appear on the Troy Tate Sessions boot). For whatever reason, it didn't make the cut for the eventual, re-recorded eponymous debut album, which is a shame as it would have fit right in.

But what of the song? I seem to recall reading a theory somewhere once that this song is about Morrissey's mother, but I find that unlikely indeed (and I can't find a source for this theory anywhere online). A more straightforward interpretation is that wonderful is sarcastic, since this seems to be about a thoroughly unpleasant woman who has "ice water for blood, neither heart nor spine" and implores Moz, "I’m starved of mirth, let’s go and trip a dwarf." Or maybe she's wonderfully, terribly beguiling, because Morrissey adds "when she calls me, I do not walk, I run." I don't know about you but I can identify with that - she's bad for him, he knows it, but still he can't resist. Steven, I hear you.

Musically, this is cut from the same cloth as Suffer Little Children, with a deceptively simple repeating guitar motif from Johnny over a steady-as-she-goes rhythm section. Oh, and a whisper of plaintive harmonica. Morrissey's vocal delivery is typical of the earlier recordings, in that it's perfectly serviceable yet lacks the confidence of subsequent songs. So why a classic, I hear you ask? Well, there's something uncanny about the end of each chorus, as Johnny changes up, the harmonica kicks in, and Morrissey repeats "her, her, her." It's not hypnotic but it's certainly an ear-worm - you could quite easily loop that little section and leave it playing in the background all evening and get no complaints from me.

You can pick up Wonderful Woman, as it appeared on the B-side of This Charming Man, on the fairly comprehensive The Sound Of The Smiths (deluxe edition) and you can read more about the Troy Tate demos over at the excellent Passions Just Like Mine. But, to paraphrase Chris Tarrant, I don't want to give you those. To maximise the clandestine value of today's classic, instead let's go for a live recording from a gig at The Hacienda dating back to 4th February, 1983. I read somewhere that this was The Smiths' third gig proper, and the first for which a recording exists (albeit with pretty poor sound quality). Also the first as a four-piece (they'd had James Maker on-stage as a dancer prior to this). The night this was recorded I was twelve and a half and didn't know Morrissey existed. Little did I know how much The Smiths would mean to me over the next 30+ years. In a week when Morrissey has taken a lot of flack for comments that even I, a past apologist, struggle to explain away¹, I choose instead to remember some music from a band that, for me, was, is and always shall be life-changing.

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1. What did Morrissey say about the Manchester bombing? Here. Martin Rossiter's response? Here. For contrast, Moz's subsequent critique of Tory plans to reverse the fox hunting ban, here.

Clandestine Classic LI - Blood Sports (live)

The fifty-first post in an occasional series that is intended to highlight songs that you might not have heard that I think are excellent - clandestine classics, if you will. Maybe they'll be by bands you've never heard of. Maybe they'll be by more familiar artists, but tracks that were squirelled away on b-sides, unpopular albums, radio sessions or music magazine cover-mounted CDs. Time will, undoubtedly, tell.

Last time I did one of these, I lamented the fact that it's hard to feature the most influential, most pivotal, most important acts in my personal musical history. How, I mused, was it possible to come up with a clandestine classic from The Smiths/The Jam/REM when 90% or more of this blog's readership is already very familiar with The Smiths/The Jam/REM? Not easily. But I did resolve to address this problem in future posts, and that change starts here. For today's post comes from quite early on in the second phase of Paul Weller's career, when his fans were still bellowing for Jam tracks but he was moving on. Yes - tonight Matthew, I will be featuring The Style Council.

The year is 1985. The Style Council are still riding the bow wave of a run of Top 20 singles, are about to release Our Favourite Shop (which will become their only chart-topping album) and have yet to completely deter all their old Mod fans with the arty stuff (The Cappuccino Kid liner notes, fey videos), or sidetrack into Red Wedge territory. It's a good time to be a Councillor. The first single from Our Favourite Shop is chosen, and it's the excellent, rabble-rousing, quite-possible-to-imagine-The-Jam-performing Walls Come Tumbling Down. Everyone is happy.

One of that single's B-sides is today's classic: a lyrical, almost pastoral in places, critique of the lunacy of hunting animals for pleasure, and the hideousness of those who do so, Blood Sports is a song that would do Morrissey proud. As musically apart from its A-side as a B-side can be, here is a song that shows a band at the peak of their powers daring to do something a bit different (again), and not being afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves.

On the off-chance that choosing a B-side still isn't enough to make this song clandestine enough for you, let's feature a live rendition. The video featured here is a clip from an 80's television programme called Worldwise, in which the band are introduced (and later interviewed) by Sarah Greene. Weller gets away with singing the line "Who gets a hard-on with blood on their hands?" too, which must have given someone at the Beeb kittens. Some might say Mick's keyboard solo is a bit "of its time", and that's generous, but he's trying to emulate a different sound, the pan-pipe sound of the recorded version. Anyway, give them a break and instead concentrate on the lyrics, Weller's delivery and, at a time when he wasn't playing much guitar, watch those chords - easy to play and tailor-made to be adopted by the cause... (except it wasn't - a shame).

There are a plethora of greatest hits and compilations from TSC out there, but choose carefully. If you want to pick up the studio version of Blood Sports you can find it on The Collection (choose even more carefully here, as there are several compilations called The Collection or variations thereon) or Here's Some That Got Away, both of which are excellent, and both of which also feature The Ghosts Of Dachau, a slice of haunting brilliance that I almost chose for today's classic. Or why not just treat yourself, and splash out on The Complete Adventures box set, a steal at under £30.

Until then, here's that live TV performance from 1985. Who'd have thought, 32 years later and in a supposedly more enlightened time, that this subject would still be an issue, with Theresa's shade of blue looking to repeal the foxhunting ban? In that context, it would be nice to see Paul reprise this at his live shows this year. On that note, over to Sarah Greene.

Europe. It's like a different country or something... IV

Now I knew they were making a comeback, but I didn't know it was in chocolate form.

As seen (and eaten - it's like an Aero-Wispa hybrid) in Amsterdam.

All posts in this very occasional series.

Blogger's Lament (or, proof that it's a good job I don't often write poems)

I don't know why I write this blog,
I'm really at a loss.
The hit count's low, the comments few;
The Web don't give a toss.

A guest post here, a retweet there,
But not much to delight in.
Maybe I should bin the lot
And do some proper writing.