Week In Music & Such September 14th- 20th

The Divine Comedy's 'Absent Friends' was stuck in my head a lot earlier this week. The perfect song for these times

Heavenly's 'Modestic' has also been in my head quite a lot lately. What a great tune, especially the drive of the chorus

And Katie Dey's 'Darkness' keeps getting stuck in there too, like for weeks now

Had three, count 'em three, great musical discoveries this week!

High On Stress  - I saw the comparisons to The Replacements and early Soul Asylum and they are not wrong! Great songs. Bought the album today

Told Slant - lovely tunes, looking forward to hearing more

And Emma Tricca. Gorgeous voice, melodies, and arrangements. The last by Colorama's Carwyn Ellis, who I spoke with a few years back about Welsh music for The Quietus and met up with him in a pub in Cardiff to talk more music. Great guy. He was involved in Sarah Cracknell's last solo record too. Yesterday I spent a lot of time listening to Ms. Tricca and today I bought 'Relic' and 'St Peter'. 

I heard Emma on 'Lodge 49', which I've been loving. I was taken in by the Pynchon-esque name and was a bit hesitant after the first episode but I'm glad my friend Michelle convinced me to continue. My sort of thing, full of crazy quests. And they seem to play Broadcast an awful lot. I hope to finish the series this evening. 

Continuing on my Diana Rigg kick and luckily there's some more great stuff on YouTube.

'Theatre Of Blood' with Vincent Price

And one of her first TV roles, 'The Hot House', which is quite odd, though she's very good in it.

And my friend Rick tracked down her TV debut I believe, the 'A Very Desirable Plot' episode of 'The Sentimental Agent'. Aired on November 23, 1963, though I don't know when in relation to 'An Unearthly Child'. She's great in this also, of course.

And since re-reading John Higg's KLF book, I've been thinking about Dada a lot lately. Considering that like Dada, Young Southpaw is an appropriate reaction to a world gone mad. There's some documentaries on YouTube I've got lined up and watch Vic Reeves' one the other night

Week in Music and More September 7 - 13th

I interviewed John Higgs for the latest Etcetera ETC With Young Southpaw podcast this week. Great conversation. Recently read his 'Stranger Than We Can Imagine: An Alternative History Of The 20th Century' and loved it. Really looking forward to delving into 'Watling Street' and 'The Future Starts Here'. Recently there was a reissue of his book about the band TC Lethbridge, written before they'd ever played a gig. I really dig that opening ROCK riff:

Matthew Reed Baker tweeted about Can's 'Future Days' which had me throwing the album on, and this bootleg. And thinking how wonderful it must have been to have made this music.

Mostly stuck in my head this week is Carla Easton's fantastic POP song 'Never Knew You'. First time I heard this, I looked up to see if my computer hadn't suddenly started playing Taylor Swift. Infectious chorus. Great video too

Realized that although I had bought John Higg's KLF book when it came out in 2012, I had never finished it. I'd read about 80% of it back then but I decided to re-read the whole thing this week. Excellent stuff. Such an insane, fantastical, and inspiring story. Spent some time watching the old KLF videos too. 'Stand By The JAMS' stuck in my head too:

And their performance at The Brits in 1992. Oh man. So amazing that something like that would ever happen at a music industry event

Diana Rigg's passing really hit me hard. She was just so wonderful. Iconic as Emma Peel and Tracey Draco/Bond, and as herself, watching interviews with her, her spirit was just so...well, wonderful. She will be missed. I watched the one episode of her 1973 US sitcom 'Diana' on YouTube - if anyone has the others, I'd like to see them - and these fun and insightful tv interviews. 

I started reading Kathleen Tracy's biography of her too, which I had picked up at The Iliad bookshop in LA right before lockdown. 

With so much Avengers on my mind, Honor Blackman & Patrick Macnee's 'Let's Keep It Friendly' has been stuck in my head too. 

I had a dream last night that Martin Newell had a new song that used the same chords and feel as Hanoi Rocks' '11th Street Kidz' and it was as EXCELLENT as that sounds. It kind of morphed into 'Cheyenne' when I woke up and that was stuck in my head most of the early part of today.

Then L-Space posted about favourite songs not in English and I listed 7 right off the bat. There's tons, and I was very pleasantly reminded of this Nina Brodskaya song from the 1973 screwball Russian comedy 'Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future'. Such a fantastic pop song, full of spirit, longing, and drive.

Been way into Aquirax Uno again lately. His illustrations are full of wonder and very aesthetically pleasing to me

Read a very good article on Thomas Pynchon's 'Vineland' by Peter Coviello

And this great interview with writer/illustrator Matt Kindt, whose work I've been a fan of for years, especially recently with 'Ether'

The Ladies Of The Avengers...

A tribute to one of the most stylish, elegant and all-around AWESOME shows ever made. All 3 leading ladies of The Avengers also released pop singles!

My favourites, perhaps, being Linda Thorson's.  The sassy, take charge strut of "Here I Am":

Or the lovelorn Southern gospel blues of  "Bad Time To Stop Loving Me".  A handful of other songs were recorded for Ember Records and can be found on A Snapshot Of Swinging London along with Twiggy's pop singles.

Diana Rigg (and oh how Emma Peel has influenced my own pop efforts) recorded 2 songs in 1970,  "Sentimental Journey" ,  featured in Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers" play, and "Forget Yesterday" .  These are the 7" versions but there are alternate versions for each as well (on Spotify).   Shame there's no YouTube clips for these so here's her singing "You're The Top" in the film Evil Under The Sun:





And who could forget Honor Blackman & Patrick Macnee's "Kinky Boots":





And the even better b-side "Let's Keep It Friendly".  "MEOW"!!!