On this day - hello, happy Wednesday - Hey Charlie! founder, loving chum, Go-Betweens fan, teacup specialist, devoted soul gardener and official Greatest Person Ever, Bianca Ferguson, celebrates her birthday. i hear it's ungentlemanly to reveal a lady's age (and if there's one lady i'd want to be gentlemanly to, it's her) but rest assured she's yet to reach even halfway to Loudon Wainwright III levels when he wrote this:
i realise that in terms of birthday-related tracks Teenage Kicks is already a step ahead of us this week, and i appreciate that my lover isn't really a big fan of The Sugarcubes anyway, but it's blogging tradition and i'm willing to accept that not all traditions are bad. Plus i reckon this is a pretty neat demo, probably surpassing the single itself, if shoehorning an indier-than-thou statement of approval into proceedings is acceptable at this juncture of course.
But anyway. All it leaves me to say, hoping that any other readers we have don't find their breakfast revisiting them, and yet in the sincerest most affectionate way:
Happy birthday Bee. You are fabulous and i love you.
People are still going on about last weekend’s Glastonbury festival, and there’s nothing like jumping on a bandwagon a week late. So here we are. i can assure you that this first entry is the only time i will mention the word mud.
The only performance that i’ve seen from the abundant internet Glastonbury audio-visual material that looked particularly exciting is CSS, which is particularly good because of…balloons! Look! Balloons all over the stage! Oh and that they’re a great band. But still. Balloons! Check out also how it obviously takes three burly men to wade in and manhandle a petite and be-leotarded Lovefoxx from the adoring grasps of, ooh, half a dozen people? Obviously for her own safety. Three big blokes. With big hands. One small lady. Yes. Also, note the close up of her bum as well. But only because it’s got mud on it. No other reason. Nope.
Back a year (we think), this is the bard of Barking singing the greatest Billy Bragg song he never wrote. With the person who wrote it. We ought to do a post about Mr Bailey at some point. Remind me.
If you didn’t think we could get more self-indulgent, here’s that band my lover likes a lot. Just because she likes them and i love it when she’s happy.
More balloons! And two perpetual suns! And a dolphin! And a tiger! And several thousand other things! Those good ol’ boys from Oklahoma really do put some effort into it, and this was before Wayne decided to travel to gigs in a bloody massive inflatable ball. There’s a large chunk of the rest of this set online if you’re interested, which you probably ought to be.
And back in the real world – oh okay, away from the countryside then – this week saw the sudden yet unsurprising end to Fopp, making another big weapon in the music industry’s arsenal when arguing value for money doesn’t pay. (This of course being the same week that the music industry were furious that Prince would do anything as innovative and relatively selfless to his fans as give away his new album for nowt, although they seem to have ignored that the real reason to get mad is that in order to get your mitts on a copy you’d have to actually purchase the worst newspaper in Britain.) One thing that Fopp were good at – obviously not making much profit, or treating their employees with dignity and respect by actually paying them for their final month’s work – was in-store performances, and although they varied in quality they at least re-ignited in some way the notion that going out and buying records could be an experience and actually, whisper it, fun, rather than something you did in Tesco between choosing the shortest till to queue at and picking up some Tic Tacs. Here’s one of the in-store performances from Jim Noir, which as you’ll be able to tell is really rather badly out of synch. Bye Fopp, i’m sorry i didn’t buy that cheap reissue of After The Gold Rush as a way of saying farewell.
And finally, some added Misty’s Big Adventure, who this week at last saw the fruits of a video shoot for ‘Night Time Better Than The Day Time’…which came out as a single on Awkward Records in, uhm, 2004. You’ve got to hand it to director Marke Locke, he’s pretty nifty with the camera, and at least this use of his (generous) talent didn’t languish in a vault for evermore. Funny Times due soon too, thankfully.
Readers should note that all mp3s featured are for evaluation purposes only, please endeavour to research, support and love all artists you can. If you are the artist in question and feel irked, or if you just fancy a word about anything, please get in touch: tabdrinkink74[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk
Readers should note that all mp3s featured are for evaluation purposes only, please endeavour to research, support and love all artists you can. If you are the artist in question and feel irked, or if you just fancy a word about anything, please get in touch: tabdrinkink74[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk
are two halves of the same whole living on either side of a very very very very very large rock. Thomas knew he wanted to be Bianca's friend when she said she wanted a relationship where the only communication was through mixtapes.
