Lazy blog post no. 1 - bandwagoneering

Luke Wright is a rather fine poet. He's written a fairly atypical poem loosely about the Royal Wedding but less loosely about class, wealth and poverty. On the eve of Waity-Katie's nuptials to Bill Wales, let me jump on the bandwagon and reproduce Luke's poem for you here. I hope he won't mind, especially if I link back to his website and the original post with the poem in it.

The Squeezed Middletons

Oh no, cried Papa Middleton on opening his Times,
the Pound has shed its value and we’re set for steeper climes.
They’re going to freeze my salary, inflation’s just increased
we’ll have to sell the horses, well a few of them at least.

Oh blow, chimed Mother Middleton, oh what a darned palaver
I’ll cut down on the champers, but I shan’t resort to cava!
What’s this?! Young Monty Middleton let loose a stroppy roar,
no quail’s eggs for breakfast? Why Mother, are we poor?

My Darling, cried his anxious Ma, some how we’ll muddle through
but if Pa sells the chopper, well, I’m not sure what we’ll do.
But then solution came to Pa, a thought so stray and wild:
Now mother am I right to think we have another child?

Why yes, my dear your daughter Kate, we made her in the eighties
the year you did that deal with those dubious Kuwaitis.
Of course, the red-cheeked fellow barked, the answer dear’s a cinch
we’ll peddle Monty’s sister to a emerald-laden prince!

So Kate was fetched and telegrams sent forth into the world
and soon a queue of inbred boys arrived to see the girl.
A deal was struck and cards were swiped, a son-in-law was gained
and after that the Middletons were never squeezed again.

Lazy blog post no. 8 - the old chestnut

Included here for no other reason than this - many years ago, my brother and I used to recreate this sketch for the amusement of our parents, often in the car on long journeys. Feels like a long time ago now. I miss those simpler times.

Lazy blog post no. 9 - whimsy

A week or so ago, the cook in my works canteen had the day off, so I had occasion to walk to a cornershop in the village to buy something for lunch. Since it is only a cornershop, I settled for a sandwich and a packet of crisps - Frazzles, to be precise.

Now I haven't had proper Frazzles for a good long time, probably nearly twenty years (supermarket own-brand imitations do not count). After wolfing them down in a riot of MSG and a Mexican-wave of nostalgia, I glanced at the back of the packet. And read the following:

Did you know your favourite Frazzles have been around since 1975 and these crispy, crunchy bacon flavour bites are as delicious now as they have always been!

1975?! That's not old! That isn't long enough ago to be dressed up as heritage! I mean, 1975, that was the year I started primary school... so if Frazzles are officially old then I must be...

As if that wasn't bad enough, Smith's Crisps, the purveyors of this salted snack antique, are now nothing more than a division of Walker's. Wasn't like that when I were a lad, etc...

Lazy blog post no. 15 - the redirecting link

This week is Climate Week and it's, like, a really good thing so you should, like, check it out. Or somethin'.

Lazy blog post no. 41 - embedded videos without context

Because if you can't think of anything original to write, you can always chase the Zeitgeist, right? Grab any old video from YouTube that is vaguely current affairs-ish and bang it in your blog. No need to add any thought or insight of your own, so no worries! And embedding equals fun, right? Makes your website "pop", right?

Right?

Lazy blog post no. 83 - the "humourous" photo

I know that house prices are falling at a rate of knots right now, but I'm pretty sure I could get more for it than this. Thanks Asset Residential!

(Thank you, I'm here all week...)

Clandestine Classic XIII - No Lucifer

The thirteenth 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.

Of the twelve songs that have featured in this series before today's offering, eleven come from 1998 or earlier. At least seven of the bands featured have split up too. Clearly I am not down with the kids, as I'm led to believe the saying goes. It is with pleasure then that I can, today, offer something a little more contemporary, and from a band that are not only still plying their trade but are, indeed, at the height of their powers. For today's clandestine classic is No Lucifer, a single from March 2008 by the inestimable British Sea Power.

It's no coincidence that I've just seen British Sea Power live, of course, and this is the song that the crowd were chanting for when the encore started. It's very chantable, you see, including as it does a Big Daddy-referencing call and response of "Easy! Easy!" Anyway... the Brighton-based band (though they're from all over the place) are fronted by brothers Yan and Hamilton Wilkinson, who seem to divvy up the vocal duties between them. Hamilton takes the lead here. They've got a new album out at the moment, Valhalla Dancehall and I suppose I could have been tragically hip and championed a song from that. But excellent though it is, I've gone for a track from their third album instead, the utterly superb Do You Like Rock Music?

Yep, that's right, you heard me. Utterly superb. And, for me, No Lucifer is the standout track. I almost went for the brilliant Waving Flags, which also presses buttons often labelled "epic", but No Lucifer just won out. It's a song that builds from the gentlest of intros into something that drives along, then coasts to let you get your breath back, then drives on some more. It has that chant. And it's a bit of a rabble-rouser, at least in British Sea Power terms - the sort of track that really demands to be played as loudly as possible, insists that you immerse yourself in it. You get the idea - I like this song. Oh, and it has lyrics that don't just verge on surreal but actually make a Dali lobster-telephone seem about as phantasmagoric as an iPhone...

As I've already said, you can find today's clandestine classic on Do You Like Rock Music? and, by the constantly amazing miracle of modern life that is YouTube, watch the (slightly disturbing in places) video too (below). Some say that the unscrupulous among you might find something of interest here but, in that case, you ain't seen me, right? But really, in this case really really, just go and buy the album. You won't regret it. Oh, and you might quite like their pun-worthy British Tea Power merchandise too...

Clandestine Classic XII - Dry The Rain

The twelfth 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.

I've recently had cause to trawl back through some old posts on this blog, and it struck me that there are some things that just keep on cropping up. High Fidelity is one such thing, both the excellent book by Nick Hornby and the subsequent film adaptation starring John Cusack. I love both, and I've tried to explain why in the past - they speak to me about what it is to be a bloke, what it is to love music and what it is to be a record collector. Today's clandestine classic came to my attention via the aforementioned film, and I bought the soundtrack to get it. You see, there's a scene in the film where record store owner Rob (Cusack) says "I will now sell five copies of The Three EPs by The Beta Band" and he puts this on. Yes, from 1998, it's Dry The Rain by (obviously) The Beta Band.

You see, the scene from the film captures perfectly why this song is so great. Yes, it is so lo-fi that it really ought to be kept in a cellar, yes, it meanders on at some length and yes, I know that some of the vocals are indistinct to say the least. But none of that matters because, you see, this track grooves. It really is very hard not to sway whilst listening to it. It makes me tap things. It shuffles along infectiously. Oh, and it has deceptively catchy lyrics too, from the opening lines ("This is the definition of my life, lying in bed in the sunlight") to the closing refrain ("If there's something inside that you wanna say, Say it out loud it'll be okay, I will be your light"). It hooks you in, this song - it builds, it hooks you in and leaves its indie dance steps all over you. That, in case you were unsure, is a good thing.

According to their entry on Wikipedia (where I also learnt that the band formed in Edinburgh), The Beta Band called time in 2004, though frontman Steve Mason soldiers on solo, with success perhaps eclipsing that of his old band. I can thoroughly recommend the soundtrack to the film, by the way - it's excellent, not a bad track on it (make sure you get the original version, as linked above - it opens with A Town Called Malice by The Jam). I later bought The Three EPs as well (just as Rob had known I would). It's okay but, if I'm honest, nothing else on there measures up to Dry The Rain. If you're just after this one track then, the dodgy geezers amongst you may be interested in this, of which I, as ever, deny all knowledge. As for your watching pleasure, if you haven't already clicked the link above for a scene from the film of High Fidelity then I suggest you do ("It's good." "I know."). Alternatively, there's this:

To move or not to move?

I used to be quite proud of hosting this blog myself. I hand-code these pages, and my RSS feeds, and FTP them to my host, then manually ping everyone I can think of to let them know there's something new to read. Great. Does have it's drawbacks though. Comments for one - if you send me a comment, it appears in my email - this gives me a sort of moderation. But then to make the comment live, I have to cut'n'paste it into my hand-coded blog page, and hand-code an entry into the comments RSS feed. Oh, and you can't do trackbacks either. And although I've managed to provide clunky permalinks for every post, they're not ideal in that they don't load a post in its own page, but rather load the relevant month's page and then jump you to the post within that page. And another thing (I'm getting warmed up now), I can't email posts in like I can with Blogger, or just go online from wherever I am and add a new post - I have to have my offline copy of all the blog files to hand on my trusty USB stick. Oh, and I can't use widgets, like a blogroll, and neither can I show a nice calendar-based hierarchy of my posts. Blogger lets me do all of these things and more - I know, because I host my fiction blog there.

There are reasons I do things this way - when I started blogging in 2005 the tools offered by the big blog hosts were nothing like as sophisticated as they are now. And I like the ease with which I can integrate the blog into the rest of my site. But here's a thing - my blog doesn't really go with the rest of my site any more, it just doesn't fit. But there are plenty of reasons to stay where I am, notably that the search engines of the world are full of links to my existing blog posts (though I could set up redirects for these). Mainly though, I'm put off by the volume of work it would take to move all the old stuff over from this location to Blogger.

So what should I do? Do you even care? Are you still reading? If you do, and you are, you can have a say on the matter, here, for the next thirty days. Cheers.

Separated at birth II

Do you watch Hustle? I usually find myself watching it on a Friday night, partly because there's naff-all else on and partly because it's fun, harmless, snappily made television. So what if the plots are borderline ludicrous? It's carefree, escapist TV in an age of bland austerity - no wonder it's doing so well. But anyway. I was watching last week when it suddenly struck me that Kelly Adams (left), who plays conwoman Emma, is the living spit of Antipodean perennial pop poppet Kylie Minogue (right). I mean, really, seriously, right down to the arch of the eye-brow, being short and having a rather lovely bottom.

It got me wondering, then - Miss Minogue is often the subject of much press speculation about botox use, but could the real reason she looks younger than her 42 years simply be that she is employing the more youthful Kelly as a stand-in? Or are they simply the same person? After all, who has ever seen them together? And they both have five letter names beginning with 'K'! Coincidence? Well yes, clearly, but I have to come up with something to base these otherwise-groundless conspiracy theories on, don't I?

So, Kelly and Kylie, separated at birth - what do you think? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Oh yes, and the "II" is because I've spotted something like this before...