Anton Barbeau added me on Twitter this week and his bio reads ""File in the buried treasure bin alongside XTC, Robyn Hitchcock, Julian Cope and The Bevis Frond." - Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times". So of course I gave him a listen. And yeah, those comparisons are spot on! Really digging his new record 'Manbird'. And always nice to have a back catalogue to go through.
I also found out that Dean Garcia from Curve, who I loved, has a ton of solo stuff out, releasing a SPC ECO ("Space Echo") EP a month this year. His daughter, Rose, is on vocals. This song is lovely.
I interviewed Amelia Fletcher & Rob Pursey for my ETC podcast about the new Heavenly compilation coming out in December and a couple of their new projects (they have so many) - Swansea Sound and The Drift. Although we didn't get a chance to talk about them, their post-Heavenly band Marine Research has been stuck in my head the most this week. The album 'Sounds From The Gulf Stream' is such a great pop record, in my Top 25 of All-Time. And the single is great as well, I love those b-sides. From the album it's been 'Venn Diagram' that's been stuck in my head all week.
And of course the 'Parallel Horizontal' single is just brilliant.
I finally finished watching the 1974 Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder Film, Rhinocerus. Based on the Ionesco play. I had started it in 2018 one night when I was too tired but had kept it marked to come back to. Enjoyed it, not too absurd but well done. Galt MacDermot's score is really good. I especially like the second half of the main theme, when it goes to the major key.
I've been reading Kim "Howard" Johnson's wonderful 'Monty Pynthon's Tunisian Holiday', the Python biographer's diaries from the film set of Life Of Brian. Very much enjoying it. I love Python. One of the turning points of my life was watching the sketch with "It's spelled 'Luxury Yacht' but it's pronounced 'ThroatWarblerMangrove'." 13 year old me just thought that was the greatest thing, a wonderful sense of imagination and silliness. I'm always really happy when Python comes back into my life and I've been watching the documentaries on Netflix that I haven't seen - The Meaning Of Live and The Meaning Of Monty Python. Also watched Eric Idle's What About Dick? Which is wonderfully anarchic. A play in the form of a radio play that had almost no rehearsal and was only performed 4 times. The cast is stellar, great energy, and Eddie Izzard is especially brilliant, very impressive. And I want Billy Connolly's awesome suit from it.
I finished listening to Momus' autobiography, Niche: A Memoir In Pastiche. In which he 'channels' 217 dead artists to tell his life story. It was very well done. And I loved hearing favourites of mine like J.P. Donleavy talking about Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex, or Witold Gombrowicz mentioning The Sex Pistols, The Beatles, and David Bowie.
Moving on to my next audiobook, I just started Wodehouse's 'Galahad At Blandings'. Felt the need for some Wodehouse as he and 'Letterkenny' have really been the things keeping me laughing this year.
Speaking of 'Wodehouse', 'Archer' Season 11 is a return to form.
Also watched the Killing Joke documentary, 'The Death & Resurrection Show'. It was 2.5 hours long but when I was finished, I didn't see how it could possibly have been any shorter. Very interesting. Heavy on the occult stuff, but what a long career they've had. ConcertArchives.org reminds me that 26 years ago today, on October 26th 1994, I saw them for the first and only time, at Axis in Boston, MA, on the 'Pandemonium' tour. At one point Jaz said 'we've been millionaires on wine & cheese'. That stuck in my head for some reason.
Last night after a busy weekend getting the two podcasts together, I watched The Addams Family and Addams Family Values back to back. It was just the thing.
