pop music 🎵
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what was the last gig that you went to?
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it was one of the Gallagher brothers…but I can’t remember which one
Malcolm Tucker on the Cramps
Our influences were Bowie, Talking Heads and the Cramps, who were like a voodoo-swamp version of the Munsters
Podcast episodes I enjoyed in March - Pat Nevin, the Irishness of Kate Bush, Nazi sterilizations, Mike Leigh, Nicholas Parsons, Naomi Klein, ice cream, the Taj Mahal, Boy George, Oliver Cromwell, and Lenny Henry's influence on Theresa May and Caitli
Word In Your Ear - Pat Nevin - “Pat Nevin has musical memories even better than scoring a diving header against Arsenal”….a sentence that could keep Socrates, Plato, and every phone-in host on every radio station busy for years
BBC Witness History - Nazi Eugenics - horrific, tragic and weirdly banal. A tough listen. “In July 1933, Adolf Hitler passed a law requiring the sterilisation of Germans with physical and mental disabilities. Helga Gross was one of those sterilised.”
Word in your ear - Nick Duerden’s talked to 50 pop stars about life when the big time’s behind you - Eddie Tenpole-Tudor (of the Swords of a Thousand Men, and Who Killed Bambi) got down to a shortlist of two for the Richard E. Grant role in Withnail and I
Give Kate Bush back to the Irish - Kate Bush is judged to score 9.5 on the Irish-o-meter
This Cultural Life - Mike Leigh - on the night of the second or third repeating of Abigails Party, the weather was dreadful, a strike had taken out ITV, and BBC2 was showing something ‘very esoteric’. 16 million people therefore watched Mike Leigh’s show
BBC - Political Thinking with Nick Robinson - The Theresa May One - the former PM relates how hearing Lenny Henry changed her mind about the Windrush scandal. Henry was giving a speech at a memorial for Stephen Lawrence and he said that the Windrush people had to produce four pieces of documentation for every year they had been in the UK
BBC - This Cultural Life - Caitlin Moran - aged 13, Caitlin Moran somewhat optimisitically applied for the job of Managing Director of Comic Relief. Lenny Henry replied “You wouldn’t want to be MD of Comic Relief, it’s really boring, but I’m sure you will fly like a comet through British society’’”. Moran says she lost the letter but knows it off by heart
Hancocks Half Hour - The Blood Donor - perfect, in my opinion
That Reminds Me - Nicholas Parsons - originally the host of Just A Minute was going to be Jimmy Edwards, but he was unavailable when the pilot was recorded
WTF with Marc Maron - Naomi Klein - “conspiracy culture often seems like it’s anti-establishment…its a gift to the establishment”
BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4 - Scoop - Mr Whippy ice cream was based on the American Mr Softy. Mrs Thatcher didn’t invent either
This Cultural Life - Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis Cocker says that the lady in Common People is not the wife of the Greek Finance Minister
Linda Smith’s A Brief History of Timewasting - I’ve only heard one of these but it was very funny. There was a great line from Margaret John (Doris from Gavin and Stacey) to the effect that if life was a Countdown puzzle then she’s in the bibbedy-bibby-boo bit rather than the boom-diddy-boom bit. Or words to that effect.
Cardew ‘The Cad’ Robinson? Comedy’s great lost heroes remembered by Robert Ross - The Word in your Ear podcast - lovely chat about old semi-forgotten comedians, like Roy Jay, the “Spook Spook Slither Hither” chap. The podcast / book needs to be a multi-part BBC4 series
EP99: Yoon Suk Yeol–The Hated and the Dead - South Korean presidents can only serve one term. Not having any prospect of re-election seems to be a bad thing
Dave Rimmer’s classic Culture Club book is republished. Boy George hated it “as it was all true” - Word in Your Ear - Culture Club split their songwriting royalties equally, like U2 and REM
History Extra - Great Reputations - Oliver Cromwell - Oliver Cromwell’s was voted the 10th ever Greatest Briton in a poll in 2002. I guess ‘great’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good’?
A short history of the Taj Mahal - the poet Rabindranath Tagore described the Taj as ‘a teardrop on the cheek of time’
I love pop music and I love Chelsea (Pat was a great Chelsea player in the ’80s)
The sentence below will keep me awake at nights
I very much like the cover of the upcoming Kate Rusby LP…but does it look a bit like it’s going to be another Christmas record?
Happy 'Boys from the County Hell's day to all those celebrating it today
On the first day of March it was raining
It was raining worse than anything that I have ever seen
I drank ten pints of beer and I cursed all the people there
I wish that all this rain would stop falling down on me
And it’s lend me ten pounds, I’ll buy you a drink
And mother wake me early in the morning
The Pogues (or possibly Pogue Mahone when this originally came out, I don’t remember) - The Boys from the County Hell
#TodayILearned that 'Bouncing Babies' by the Teardrop Explodes has been streamed 516,716 times, but 'I can't get Bouncing Babies by the Teardrop Explodes' by The Freshies has only been streamed 24,393 times
<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/139254/2025/16772316772303-3.jpg" width=“300” height=“300” alt=“A vinyl record label featuring the text “bouncing babies” and “The Teardrop Explodes” with a yellow triangle design.">
In honour of it being 80 years since the birth of Bob Marley, this is a bit of an obscurity, but it’s one of my favourites.
Bus dem shut (pyaka) - Bob Marley and the Wailers
#TodayILearned that Lily the Pink is actually Lydia E.Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound
#TodayILearned that the Bad Sisters theme is a Leonard Cohen song
I was intrigued by the name of this LP - ‘Live at Basins Nightclub’. Most nightclubs of the time had glamorous sounding names - locally for example we had Oscars, Concordes and the Grange
I can’t imagine why anyone decided to call a nightclub ‘Basins’…but apparently it was in Porstsmouth.
It’s a great record, but as with most live albums, I’d probably advise beginners to listen to a straight Greatest Hits first
I wonder if any of Bob Dylan’s LP’s have ever been advertised on a poster this big? In Andover?
There was a very ‘Radio 4’ exchange on the radio just now
Me vs. Rolling Stone magazine
My thoughts on the top 20 songs from Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. These thoughts clearly say more about me and my taste in music than they do about the songs themselves…but I thought it was fun
20th. Robyn: “Dancing on My Own” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ I’m a sucker for a sad banger
19th. John Lennon: “Imagine” ⭐⭐⭐ I like the simplicity, but, contrariwise, I’m a bit bored with it
18th. Prince and the Revolution: “Purple Rain” ⭐⭐⭐ The only act in Rolling Stone’s top 20 that I’ve seen live, but there are a dozen Prince songs I like better
17th. Queen: “Bohemian Rhapsody” Dreadful drivel.
16th. Beyoncé feat. Jay-Z: “Crazy in Love” ⭐⭐ Resistance is futile
15th. The Beatles: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The best at their best
14th. The Kinks: “Waterloo Sunset” ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The other best at their best…although to be honest his voice often doesn’t work for me, for some reason
13th. The Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter” ⭐ Every 10 years they came up with a song that I’ve loved. Gimme Shelter isn’t one of them.
12th. Stevie Wonder: “Superstition” ⭐⭐⭐ I’d like to like Stevie Wonder more than I do, but as with Ray Davies, I don’t quite get on with his singing voice
11th. The Beach Boys: “God Only Knows” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A work of genius, but it came on the radio when someone close to me was seriously ill. I’ve not been able to listen to it since
10th. Outkast: “Hey Ya!" ⭐ I can sort of see why people like this…but I don’t. Maybe it’s too tricky for my simple taste.
9th. Fleetwood Mac: “Dreams” ⭐ Pleasant enough
8th. Missy Elliott: “Get Ur Freak On” ⭐⭐ I prefer Work It
7th. The Beatles: “Strawberry Fields Forever” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Cleverer than I Want To Hold Your Hand, but not quite as good
6th. Marvin Gaye: “What’s Going On” ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ All the stars aligned, magically
5th. Nirvana: “Smells Like Teen Spirit” ⭐ A bit heavy for me….and a pale imitation of punk rock
4th. Bob Dylan: “Like a Rolling Stone” ⭐⭐ I am not a big Dylan fan, but I like the Greatest Hits
3rd. Sam Cooke: “A Change Is Gonna Come” ⭐⭐ I am a big Sam Cooke fan…but this isn’t my favourite. I think this polls well with critics because they are endorsing the message as much as the song
2nd. Public Enemy: “Fight the Power” ⭐⭐⭐ Loses one star for slagging off Elvis,
1st. Aretha Franklin: “Respect” ⭐⭐ It goes without saying, this is a great song, but it’s not as good as I Say a Little Prayer.
Further to the above….if I’d done a list of 500 All Time Best Songs there would be folk, and reggae, and Elvis, Eddie, Buddy, Chuck, and Smokey in the top 20. I think.
I think the psephology of it is, in at least some cases, that some of my favourite artists had a lot of songs to choose from, whereas, say, Queen has one obvious choice, Aretha has two, Nirvana has one, and the Kinks have one.
Want to read: Season of the Witch: The Book of Goth by Cathi Unsworth 📚
I listened to this podcast in which the author spoke to Mark Ellen and David Hepworth, and the book sounds interesting
The book combines a history of goth with personal memoir, and stuff about the 1980s generally. Unsworth says there was a good queen, Siouxsie Sioux, and a bad queen, Margaret Thatcher
I never saw Goth as being that political tbh, but I’ll be interested to read about it in more detail
Also, Unsworth nominates the Sisters of Mercy single with Alice on one side, and Floorshow on the other as being the Greatest Ever Goth Record….which is, as far as I am concerned, the correct answer 😃
The two best songs which start with the same two words, imho
Goin' back - Dusty Springfield
Going back to my roots - Odyssey
I read in this month’s Record Collector magazine that:
[David Essex’s] performance of Che Guevara in Evita led to a personal invitation from Fidel Castro to meet in Cuba.
It seems odd that Fidel would want to meet someone mainly because they’d played the part of his comrade on stage
Melvyn Bragg once perceptively said that the 1970s McCartney had made a “magnificent attempt to be seen as, and to behave as, a very ordinary young English man” to hide the fact that “he was a most extraordinary young English man”.
Annual-ish post / toot / tweet / skeet….
Please could you all continuosly stream my daughter’s version of Blue Christmas from now until Boxing Day
That would be grand
Thanks in advance
Blue Christmas - Bethany Eve on Spotify
Spotify tells me that I’m in the top 0.2% of listeners to Elvis
….so the year hasn’t been entirely wasted
