Gracious! It HAS been a while but the old bag is back peddling more music fare for your gently cauliflowered but delicately careworn ears. Here are three good reasons why I like Cornershop:
‘Who Fingered Rock and Roll’ will be the first single off the greatly anticipated next album from Cornershop out on July 27th. For those of you who are big fans – Cornershop will be playing at the Jazz Cafe 26th July. Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres really know how to write and arrange a tune – and I think this is particularly well-arranged. It has just the right amount of pomp and rock’n’roll bluster without completely overdoing it. Great summer tune and wonderful use of old council information film footage. Moving swiftly on to ‘The Roll Off Characteristics (History In The Making)’: There is a fantastic semi-Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s sound creeping in with the brass arrangement here and this track in particular sums up everything I have always loved about Cornershop and Tjinder Singh’s Terry Hall-esque shy-sounding but not shy at all everso quivery voice. I will leave you with Born Disco Died Heavy Metal – not many people know that Cornershop have been going for nearly twenty years and started off as a sort of metal punk band – some of which I have on some very rare vinyl EP’s! Enjoy pop-pickers. Cornershop.Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast out 27th July 2009.
green sunglasses in hope and support for a free Iran….
About bloody time too despite the fact it is awfully late here at Romo Towers. Oh it’s only 02:30 – don’t mind me. Podcast no 24 – here it is. You can download it from my main podcast page here. Enjoy!
Oh dear – I have been so busy being busy and saving my backside from freelance penury that I clean forgot to celebrate my blog’s 5th birthday. How about a cake to celebrate? I think I’ll have this one:
Goodness – what was the baker thinking of? Anyway – what I want to know is why are Kajagoogoo are getting back together? Obvious – money. But, and there is a big but WHO would want to go and see them – especially as they now look like this:
I had no idea Grayson Perry was part of the reunion line-up did you? On the subject of reunions – The Specials performed a few blinder gigs earlier this month – I recommend you cast your eye over a great review here at my mate Ister’s if you want to feel like you were there as well as read some fine commentary on the very subject of 80’s band reunions. Some people unfairly referred to this year’s Specials reunion as ‘chicken in a basket’. What with Kajagoogoo and the like of The Nolan Sisters dusting down their burnt orange polyester cameltoe outfits I find the prospect of them returning more Iceland 100 Vol-au-Vent platters for a £1 if you ask me.
I’m not too shy shy hush hush are you are – I’m off to the Kaja Forum to chat to some real fans and find out just who on earth is going to buy tickets to see them this time around. I might just browse the Kaja Shop too for some fake plaits and white espadrilles while I am at it. I hear they are big in Germany. So is David Hasselhof. Enough said.
Oh no you don’t ladies! Keep back!
Spring roll platter anyone?
A few weeks ago I caught up with Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost (1988) documentary which is about legendary jazz artist Chet Baker. It is a beautiful and seminal biopic of someone’s life through their own eyes. If you have never seen it I can highly recommend it. It is beautifully shot and edited. Weber and Baker became very close friends which adds to the candour and beauty of it all.
I have always been a huge fan of Chet’s. Just the name Chet sounds cool doesn’t it? Chet had it all – amazingly handsome and cool of gait, ridiculous talent for playing the trumpet, brilliant songwriter and his honeycoated voice was so original one wonders how he managed to be so perfect. He also had an legendary appetite for drugs, drink and all out self-destruction. Somehow, despite the fact he lost all his front teeth (official version: in a fight, apparently too ashamed to admit was actually through drug use) he re-adjusted his ’embouchure’ and had to learn to play with dentures. For many trumpet players in this position their career would be over or at the very least their technique/sound changed – Chet’s never faltered. He was a perfectionist.
Chet’s version of My Funny Valentine is epic. My best and sadly departed friend Abbie secretly arranged for a band to play it for me once in a crabshack in US – absolutely brilliant. Despite his his crazy fucked up life he remained true to his sound, his instrument and his work. An enigmatic, clever and tragic man. A beautiful man.
This is Chet in 1987 (a year before he died) performing My Funny Valentine in Tokyo. I really do recommend you watch and listen to it to the end as Chet hated it when people talked all the way through. He really did like hearing the audience listen and so they should. Ironically it wasn’t the drugs that killed him. He fell from his apartment window in Amsterdam in 1988. Shivers, goosebumps, tears. A remarkable man.
Date: Fri 17 April 2009
Time: 19:00 >
Venue: The French House (a pub that only serves halves as Billy so rightly pointed out)
Well I did meet the beautiful and radiant Miss Slaminsky at Amy Winehouse’s other home The Hawley Arms in Camden first where I manically tweeted “Pixie Geldof’s in da house and she is dead posh in her cycling shorts and big boots”. Couldn’t help myself sorry. Yaaaawnn.
Then we hot-footed it off (still talking ten to the dozen like proper girls do when they get together) to blogmeetarama en Soho. There we hooked up with him, her and him. Oh we had such a lovely time despite the rain and all being kissed by a happy grateful homeless man who came up and rather honestly claimed he needed money for booze. At which point Billy piped up saying “oh at least he didn’t say heroin’ at which point Mr Footman said to the man “oh I would have had to give you a fiver if you had asked me for that!”. The man was very pleased with his cull of money and went out of his way to say thank you by kissing each and every one of us on the cheek. I think he admired our honesty too in a way. It sort of made my chin go a bit itchy though but probably because I am prone to a winning combination of over-imagination and sensitive skin. Amidst waxing lyrical over Derek Griffiths and Tim’s (or was it Llewtrah’s?) relationship to Brian Cant (brothers wife’s sister’s husband I think) conversation turned to the late Clement Freud. Tim told this joke – one of Clement’s finest. So for those of you that weren’t there and in the absence of my inability to whip up a blogmeet manifesto mainly because there is a very good one here I therefore furnish you with ‘that’ joke:
Bye bye Clement. Bye bye JG Ballard too. Hurray for meetings of blog.
Sorry. This post isn’t about how nice or revolting Marmite is – it is about the power of the underground restaurant ladies and gentlemen although there is a marmite connection that will become clear shortly. Being the thoroughly modern techMiss that I am (not very) I have been spending a bit of time over here lately. It’s quite amazing what one can achieve in 140 characters or less – and it is quite amazing who you bump into via friends of real life friends and what you can learn about/do. Somehow, I can’t quite work out how I became a follower/followee of Ms Marmite Lover but thank god I did. Ms Marmite Lover is an innovative and clever writer, astrologer, blogger and cook who conceived and runs The Underground Restaurant. I can hear a chorus of ‘what’s that’?
The Underground Restaurant explores the thoroughly modern and fantastic phenomenon of turning your living room into a restaurant every week and serving a wonderful bespoke supper for a very reasonable £20-£25 a head (they also do concessions). The procedure is all very exciting and mysterious as are the teen goth/beautiful rockabilly staff and an after-pudding chat with Ms Marmite herself. Most of the produce is organic and all of it is vegetarian. No don’t turn your nose up – see irresistable sample menu below for more detail. What I like about this apart from the obvious food part is that all of this operates on trust. Trust to open your house to complete strangers and cook for them. Brilliant and something that is much needed in this ugly age of mistrust and selfishness. A proper night out with an added ‘new media’ skew on it if you like.
Here is this week’s menu:
You can check out the main Ms Marmite food blog here for further details, pictorial ‘how to’ guides and wonderful mouthwatering recipes. Interested? You can book here.
The Underground Restaurant are also now running The Underground Cooking Class in conjunction with other specialist boutique chefs such as Roberto Cortez where you can learn how to make magic frozen caviar with blue curacao amongst other things – see here for wonderful step-by- step guide on Ms Marmite’s food blog. I am off to purchase my ticket without further ado.
PS: Oh and they do the occasional proper tea as well – delicious!
(all photo’s kind permission and (c) of Ms Marmite Lover/The Underground Restaurant)
For all you Bowie fans out there – it’s fab, it’s Friday and it’s Flight Of the Conchords wiiiiiiiith……
Bowies’ In Space (Do You Want To Borrow My Jumper Bowie?)
Well almost. The continuing saga of Jadedeathgate which once again has been uber-exacerbated by the Daily Scrote (no I won’t link to the Daily Mail because they are offal on the bottom of my shoe – find them yourself) has reached an unprecedented high in the slavishly cheap reporting of her passing. Here is an example of ‘a touching tribute picked out especially by husband Jack Tweed today’:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? No I think I’ll compare you to a teabag darling. The card reads like a Viz Top Tip – who on earth wrote this? And it’s huge and looks like it has been made out of pink icing. Has the world gone mad? I think Jade Goody’s death is both tragic and frightening. I think she has done a great thing raising awareness for cervical cancer and has shown exceptional bravery in the face of her shockingly premature demise but that is what happens when you are dying – it gets ridiculously busy and there is no one as forthright or humblingly brave as a dying person. It sounds odd but when I looked after my terminally ill friend I felt both numb and privileged. Numb in the sense it all seemed so unreal and you could do nothing but accept the unrelentingly gruelling situation which was very tough on the psyche at times. Privileged in the sense that it was extraordinary to witness such strength in the face of knowing and feeling there is very little time left – the moment is crystal clear at all times, the moment is there like a big hand in front of your face. I bow to Jade’s honesty in allowing the press/tv to follow this process but I can’t help feeling it all turned a bit ‘Team Jade’. Is this the acceptable face of reporting now? Is there anything we don’t need to know anymore? I find that invasive and sad. I think it also creates a ‘them’ and ‘us’ divide in society. Not that healthy really.
Yes – one in ten school-leavers are now unemployed. Perhaps this song needs to be re-released? Unfortunately it may lead to more UB40 songs being re-released which would not be good. I think this was the only song they did that was any good. An anthem for the Thatcher and now post-Blair generation.
Rockmother 