Pay it all back

A quick change from the round the world antics, you remember a bit back I was going on about tracking down half remembered tracks? Well, the other day I was walking along with a friend and he only started singing one of them.  This is it.

Macka B Invasion

You can't really argue with that can you?

While my narwhal gently weeps

Every time Bjork releases a new album I read the reviews in the Guardian or whatever and they always say that it's revolutionising or subverting modern music as we know it. And then I listen to a track and it sounds like the same old same old.  This is an oddity.

Bjork Anchor Song

Spy movie car chase

I find most of the tunes on the above compilation a little anodyne, though to be fair the good tracks are very, very good. Like the one I've posted.  I think I'm just about getting over it now but a few months ago I was hitting repeat on this like one of those lab rats punching the button to get its next hit of cocaine.

J Girls Kiiro No Sekai

Song in the key of Syd

England isn't on the list of sovereign countries I've been consulting on wikipedia, because it's been subsumed by the UK as far as that kind of thing is concerned I think.  But for the purposes of this series of posts I'm breaking the UK up into its constituent parts (I need Wales for W) and this is the track I'm using for England.  I became aware of the gentle pop of The Doozer through reading Pete Um's blog.

On the the strength of the single Radio On I took a chance on his album Keep It Together (which, by the way,  doesn't feature Radio On). It flows so nicely it's one of those albums I listen to all the way through every time I put it on. The first time I played it the wife said, "Pffft! It sounds just like Syd Barrett",  and she was actually a bit outraged. My attitude was more, "This is great! It sounds just like Syd Barrett!" .

And it really does.  So, if you feel that Barrett's output was insufficient and you want more of that kind of stuff in your life, go to The Doozer's website and buy this album. It's on vinyl too.

The Doozer Fen Drayton

Vingt et un

My 21st birthday was a relatively mild affair.  I spent the day getting mashed in and out of the pubs of the delightful suburb of Broomhill. The day is chiefly remembered by pub quiz bores as the occasion on which the Grand National was declared void and by my friends for their beloved Blades getting tonked in an FA Cup semi final by their deadly rivals Sheffield Wednesday.  The revels ended at about 9.30pm when I fell asleep face down on a table in the Duke of York.

Not being much of a sports fan the high point for me was the record fair I attended earlier that day at the Leadmill.  It was my birthday so I was probably pretty lavish but the only record I can recall buying was a Francoise Hardy album, Francoise Hardy in English.  I bought it because I'd heard this song on the radio.

Francoise Hardy All Over The World

Possible test match special theme tune

Dashing ahead slightly, I'm posting this because I've been listening to it rather a lot over the last couple of weeks.  Probably a big reason behind this around the world thing is that I'm on a massive African music jag at the minute.  The Afro-Beat Airways compilation that features this track was delivered yesterday. I highly recommend it.  I got mine from Sounds of the Universe, and I think I bought their last copy. Today's post, representing the letter G, is brought to you from Ghana.

Apagya Show Band Ma Nserew Me

International musical alphabet pt1

To inject some life into the blog, on account of it becoming a bit moribund, I thought about doing one of these questionnaires. But I was slightly horrified at the amount of information the answers provided. Far better, I thought, to remain a shadowy persona, a fleeting impression of whom might be gleaned from my musings on beetles, pop music, haggis etc.

So I didn't bother with the questionnaire and you can't force these things so, despite the fact that blog worthy stuff is going on in my life, I reconciled myself to waiting until inspiration struck (it saddens me that I couldn't find the words to blog about the trolley bus exhibition at Fulwell Bus Depot back in May).

Anyway, the other day it occurred to me that the last two albums I'd listened to were by musicians from Argentina and Zambia respectively, and that gave me the only slightly desperate idea to do a round the world thingy about records. Alphabetically around the world in twenty six records.

I picked my countries from the first list I found on the internet, only to find that it's not very accurate  - for D I was all set to have Dhekelia on the grounds that I'd never heard of it and it looks a bit science fiction. But it turns out it's just a British military base on Cyprus, so that's no good.

I think I'll probably hop about a bit rather than do it in strict alphabetical order, as there are bound to be hold ups seeking suitable tracks from various territories. For a start I know I want to use a particular track from Peru for P, but I've lost the link and all I've got to go on is that it sounds like an old woman chanting, shaking some shells and someone hitting two bits of wood together.

And there's the matter of X. Not sure what I'm going to do about that one. Still, we live (as always), in turbulent times and perhaps a suitably initialled breakaway republic will pop up in due course.

So, A.  As usual I've no idea how I got on to this track (I do remember though that it was while I was watching a film called Perfume. God, that was a weird film, unrelentingly weird. I never really got used to what I was seeing).  Juana Molina gives us A for Argentina. I don't throw dinner parties myself, but I imagine she could be the next big thing in dinner party music. For all I know she already is. Or was.

Juana Molina La Verdad

Rip off corner

Snuffling about the internet I discovered this.  Nice sleeve eh?  Listen here (scroll down a bit).  Anyway, ignore the I am the Resurrection drum beat and wait for the guitar.  Released in 1991 and diabolically ripped off to great chart effect six years later.

Lighthouse spotter's badge

I was off this weekend on a short break to Camber Sands, organised by my wife and a couple of her friends. On these jaunts I expect nothing more than salubrious digs, a decent meal out somewhere and a catch up in the pub with my wife's friends' husbands.

However, any trip to the coast will always have me scrabbling for my copy of Lighthouses of England & Wales and I was pleased to see that Dungeness was a distinct possibility.  All that stood between me and it was whether or not I could sway "the gang" into visiting a desolate headland that was also the home of a nuclear power station.  It didn't seem likely and crazy golf at Hastings was very much on the cards, until it started raining cats and dogs.

So, Dungeness. What a weird place, tons of beached boats and rickety little shacks, some kind of military type stuff (on the way my wife shouted out, "A tank!" but I wasn't quick enough to spot it) and a whopping great nuclear power station.  For the lighthouse spotter Dungeness offers exceptional value, with two and a half lighthouses situated there.

Only the old lighthouse is accessible and I zoomed to the top of that (stopping to take some snaps of some pretty, colour lens things). At the top I went through a little hatch onto an outside parapet, the view from which was staggering: the sprawling settlement of Dungeness, the miniature railway carriages (looking a bit like a centipede from this height) and off in the distance the white cliffs of Dover (I think).  The weather had turned lovely and you can sometimes see France from the top of the lighthouse, I didn't notice if you could or not.  I was slightly nervous to be honest and when the breeze got a bit frisky I was back through the hatch.

Back on the ground floor I got chatting to the custodian of the lighthouse and bought a lovely little cruet set, more as a token of support of their efforts in keeping the place going than anything else (I rarely add salt to food and I don't think I've ever added pepper to anything).  Old Dungeness is one of the tallest lighthouses in the country apparently and I read later that they do a certificate for reaching the top. Tragically I was not made aware of this at the time.

I love the whole Victorian-ness of lighthouses but while I was there I thought I ought to check out the new lighthouse (built 1961). You can't go in this one but I had a good squint and was quite taken with it, it's a bit Chris Foss I think.

Also on the list were the acoustic mirrors at nearby Greatstone* which longstanding readers might remember once featured as this blog's header picture.  Sadly I couldn't find out if there were any guided tours on, time was limited and my fellow holiday makers were in any case unwilling to wade through waist deep water and indulge in a little minor trespassing to check out, in their words, "giant lumps of old concrete".

The day before I'd nipped into Rye to pick up some groceries and chanced upon the excellent Grammar School Records shop, possibly the most impressive looking exterior of any record shop I've seen. I was a bit doubtful though when I went in, a surfeit of Alan Parsons Project-type record shop I thought.  But very quickly I found an immaculate copy of the Tom Tom Club's first album, which I snapped up straight away.  (Incidentally, Tina Weymouth's comment, that despite being young and hip in Seventies New York, she'd been shocked by the antics of the Happy Mondays in the Bahamas, used to be one of those things that made me feel proud to be British.  Sullied now though by Shaun Ryder's support for the Tories.)

Anyway, I rate Wordy Rappinghood higher than other early rap, far funnier and more fluent than anything I've heard by the Sugarhill Gang and it knocks Blondie's Rapture into a cocked hat.

* A distinct lack of ancient megalithic monuments, another of my holiday favourites, in the area.

My two cents

I read today that Matt Groening has said that The Simpsons' hometown of Springfield is in Oregon, though there is some skepticism in the media as he has, in the past, made claims for other states. Anyway, you'll be glad to know I have my own (concise) theory. Once upon a time, whiling away the hours, I was scrutinising an atlas. And, yeah, there in Illinois I saw there was a Springfield quite near a Shelbyville.