Frankie Smith - Yo-Yo Champ (1982)

Frankie Smith - Yo-Yo Champ

Another cash in record. Great coverizzle.

Deeply deeply depressing

Please do not click if your are easily depressed

Deeply depressing

Strange Days (1995)

I think I was watching Heat or Casino or possibly Beavis and Butthead Do America at the cinema in South End Green, when the screen went dark and Ralph Fiennes face popped up. "Have you ever jacked in? Have you ever been wired?" he enquired of me. Fiennes was shot in a mid-shot, on a chair against a white background reciting his show piece monologue from the film. And then it finished in a mess of action shots and the title. Strange Days. And that was it. Gone.

I AM FUCKING SEEING THAT! And I waited. And I waited. And I fucking waited. And then one day it slipped into a cinema or two and was gone. Piss.

I managed to see it because my mate Matthew had done two weeks work experience at a London post-production facility. They had done some work on the film and bang! I was handed a VHS copy with timecode and 'property of 20th Century Fox' slapped all over it and I was away. Back home from college one afternoon, popped it into the machine and was suddenly propelled a full 2 YEARS into the future (I think I saw the film in 1997). And then about 2hrs 20mins odd later, I was left agog.

I loved this film the first time I saw it, and yes with hindsight there are many many problems with the film but I set that apart and remember that this film, along with Boogie Nights are the two films I would have love to have made. Both midnight pictures, cultish, over reaching and technically very brilliant.

After seeing this film I did, as usual, pretty much hoover up anything associated with it. Luckily for me it was a flop and there wasn't much going. I bought the laserdisc version which had a full commentary from a BFI or NFT talk Kathryn Bigelow did for the opening POV sequence. I also purchased James Cameron's 'scriptment'. This was a bit unusual. Films it seems are made on treatments, who the fuck has time to read a whole 100 pages, even in the mid-90's! A one or two page digestion of the whole script is written so that Johnny Chi-tea Latte can take it all in. What James Cameron did was to get all jazzed up and write a cross over between script and treatment. So his 'scriptment' contains various themes, ideas, scenes and lines which were then turned over to Jay Cocks (ha ha) to write the finished script from. And then it was published in booook form and I read a lot of it on the toilet.

The film also has the merit of getting me into university because I stole the Time Out review and passed it off as my own for my entrance sample essay. "Pre-millenial tension" is the only line I can remember. Cheers JC and TO you've made me the man I am today.

Lo Fi Fnk

I was at this gig - Trash, 2006(?)

Girlkillsbear (Lo-Fi-Fnk Remix) - Softlightes

The End - Lo Fi Fnk

For what seems like now, an achingly small amount of time I actually knew about music. I went to Trash on Mondays with my best mate, I went to gigs on odd nights of the week (Wednesday, in Dalston? Madness) and I saw bands that weren't famous but now are, a bit.

Lo Fi Fnk. Seen'em, heard'em and I do still love'em.

4 Men With Beards Records

4 Men With Beards

A record label I am little obsessed by.

Have a Kung Fu Christmas...

National Lampoons - Kung Fu Christmas

I know it's early for Festivus songs but I am well excited.

Overheard in this pub...

2 (Many) DJ's (in the pub) "I'm not playing Mr Brightside anymore". WHAT! Any fule knows you should be playing Christmas in Hollis

Songs for men

Asia - Heat of the Moment

Stan Bush - The Touch

Rick Springfield - Jessie's Girl

On the tube listening to Stan Bush and I just thought "hey, I'm gonna blog songs for men". Good time tunes for the boys. Air guitars wailing like mutherphukkas.

Come on ladies. Lets hear it for the boys.

Why aren't I watching this right now!

I simply cannot wait to see this film. The DVD has been sat on my desk for 2 months now and I haven't got round to watching it. Dick!

The Last Days of Disco (1998)

Janice Mcclain - Smack Dab in the Middle

"And did the Emperor of Disco realise his empire was to crumble when he saw the new romantics and casuals pouring forth over the hill?" I wish someone had written that in some super duper, dissembling biography of disco. No one has.

The Last Days of Disco, I had really wanted to this be a good film when I first saw it. The title seemed to sum up the things I wish I had witnessed had I been not born completely out of time and place for the apocalyptic end of the disco era (I like to imagine it was apocalyptic but it probably really wasn't. Like most things there wouldn't have been a day when disco was there, followed by the next day when it wasn't. I don't think eras simply come to end that abruptly).

But as it turns out, the story of middle class, office workers and grad students YAKKING ENDLESSLY whilst dancing around in of the most poorly staged club scenes ever shot is a little tedious. Beckinsale and Sevingy are able to speak at almost dinner party levels, never once straining to be heard above the din. Bollocks. You'd barely be able to hear one another over the pulsing racket of the disco beat.

And that for me spoilt the whole film.

Eazy E - Merry Muthaphuckkin' Xmas(1992)

Eazy E - Merry Muthaphuckkin' Xmas


It'll be here soon! Yeah.

Diana Ross - I'm Coming Out (1980)

Diana Ross - I'm Coming Out

Completely how I feel today. Not the coming out bit, but the completely positive bit. I came out as Star Trek: The Next Generation fan AAAGGGGEEEESSSS ago.

Double Exposure - Everyman (The 70's)

Double Exposure - Everyman

Well bloody known and one of those annoying Norman Jay type records but this sounded well good this morning as I welcomed having my amp and speakers back in my life after 2, tinny Mac speaker filled, months apart.

1776

I pray that the internet delivers me this joy!

The Smal Faces - All or Nothing (60's or summat)

Small Faces - All or Nothing

The unfortunate way I live my life.

Watch out WOMAD about

After talking about The New World yesterday and old Terry Malick, I was reminded also of the intense beauty of The Thin Red Line. When I first watched the picture I truly scoffed at it. 'So every solider is a fucking poet is he'? Balls I thought.
First watch.
Second watch.
The sheer power of the film comes through and then, quite wonderfully I was away.

The film ends with some Melanesian choir songs and yeah, it's well well WOMAD. It's beautiful though...

God yu tekkem laef blong mi

AHRT INNIT

Chair, Table and Hat Stand (1969)
*Say in Alan Bennett voice* I do hope mother likes it...

The New World (2005)

Colin Farrel. He's a cunt isn't he? Come on now, be honest. Chancing, Celtic spakker who, fuck me, got massively famous off being in Ballykissangel!

Come on.

And then he goes an does a fuck load of rancid, bilge water fillums and dat;

Tigerland, don't care what anyway one says it balls. A charmless assault on taste by Joel Schumwhacker.
Hart's War, fuck me no.
Phone. Booth.
The Recruit, what?
DAREDEVIL, ha ha ha.
S.W.A.T. T.W.A.T
And then Alexander. Being blonde is not acting my dear boy. Shouting, yes. Dying hair, no.

And with that we waved him goodbye. Goodbye you charmless idiot.

And then, like a timorous star realising that he is chucking his career down the bog by starring in a seemingly never ending cavalcade of shit, old Col slams the breaks on and lands his self a part in The New World. Terry Malick's wonderful film about the first English settlers in Amerikey!

Oh, they have a wonderful time the settlers do and a few winters later, would you adam and believe it. They are all dead, well 'cept Col. He gets kidnapped and spends a bit of time 'going native'.

I love Malick, I'm a film graduate. They don't let you in unless you love Badlands or the shit one, Days of Heaven (ha). The preoccupation with the natural world around the events unfolding in the foreground, the scene in The Thin Red Line when the camera glides through the tall grass as the soldiers unknowingly walk towards a Japanese machine gun nest is quite unsettling. The perfect stillness of the innocent island in comparison to the brutality about to be unleashed.

I would imagine if you added up the total dialogue of the film it would be about 25mins or something and then again, as in Malick's other films, this is part of the supreme power of the film. Time and energy are given over to expressive and beautiful photography. Lingering over the stillness of this natural world and people, the English have stumbled upon and are, eventually, feted to die in but also destroy too. Water, air, light and dark are all conveyed without haste or undue hurry, the acting uncluttered by constant jibber jabber from an overly fat script.



Long, possibly ponderous, lyrical and truly beautiful.

And its loads better then Pocahontas.

The Beat - Save It For Later (1982)

The Beat - Save It For Later

I was going to write this long blog about this song is used in every Farrelly Brothers films.
One IMDB power search later. Turns out I was wrong. It's just in King Pin.

What's that Lars? Yeah, FFFFUUUUCCCCKKKK! Too right sunshine.

Man 2 Man - Male Stripper (1986)

Man 2 Man - Male Stripper

I think this song is about bumders and that. First brought into my life sometime ago by the man 7 Year Glitch

Vascilating wildly

I was down HMV t'other day leafing through their racks of vinyl (I do like their vinyl section because you can find stuff in there that if you went into an independent record shop you would get sneered at for enquiring it's whereabouts) when this little number appeared to leap into my hand.

Now this has a lot going for it to worm it's way deep into my affections. Let us count the virtues

1. The famous heart shaped glasses on Sue Lyons face on the films poster
2. It says Stereo on the cover
3. It's on vinyl
4. It's on 180gram vinyl!
5. It's also on 4 Men with Beards records

*Gone. I'm off down HMV Oxford Circus to buy it*

Recomposed by Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald (2008)

Recomposed vol. 3

Another in an apparent continuing series of chin stroking, or what we termed at school 'chinny rec-kon', music.

I was in Phonica on Poland street the other week, just browsing their fucking confusing genre racks (post-spazz b-boy break down anyone?) when I began to notice this rumbling away in the back ground. I paid it no heed because I was trying to justify buying the Italians Do It Better collection on vinyl for £26 when I already had the two decent tracks on the collection anyway. But then the album hits the 8min 55sec mark and I really began to take some notice. And so I spunked £20 on the vinyl copy, even though my deck wouldn't be available for another 3 weeks or so. Twat.

I have no idea if this is cool or what (I have a sneaky suspicion this is music for cuntz) but there is something wonderfully hypnotic about the continual roll of the French horn(?).

Rub on.

**For additional looped trumpet fun see Fizheuer Zieheuer, the Ricardo Villalobos version. Picnic Land told me this**

Frankie Smith - Double Dutch Bus (1981)

Izzle!

Frankie Smith - Double Dutch Bus

More Patrick Stewart!

Who is weirder, the people who post this stuff on youtube? Or I, as the reposter on my blog?

Either way, here is more from the king of stage and screen Mr. Patrick. Stewart.

Glenn Campbell - Rhinestone Cowboy (1975)

Been listening to this all day.

Rhinestone Cowboy

Gene Clark

White Light




Only Colombe

Yeah it's 'rootsy' but I fucking like me routs & culcha' innit.

And I concede that it's the kind of music that turns up in the Q rereleases section where some bald and also beardy muso talks, AT LENGTH, about the forgotten album this, the lost session that, the abortive (important one, that one) concept album or something.

Yeah, that is all true.

Confession - I own Gene Clarke with the Godsin Brothers on 180 gram vinyl. N*E*R*D.

Cat on a keyboard. In Space!

http://whatyouseewhenyoudie.ytmnd.com/

Jean Jacques Perry - Brazillian Flower

It's ip-not-ic.

Fear of a Black Hat

The other CB4, but really really funny.