Our annual boy's getaway took us north this year, including a day in Edinburgh, a place I've long wanted to visit but never had the chance. We drove up from Carlisle in the morning, and my first impression of Scotland was that the roads are amazing. Amazing in that I hardly saw another driver as we took the scenic route through the Borders, and even the motorways were a delight to drive on. The occasional lorry on the inside lane which you pulled out to pass, but none of the horrors you get round these parts. It's telling that on our return journey down the M6, within 30 seconds of passing the border back into England, the motorway was closed down to one lane and everybody started queueing again. Welcome home!
The highlight of Edinburgh for Sam was the Dungeon, where they put on a great educational show with quite a few scares. I was singled out as having the plague and almost ended up as lunch for the local cannibals, so not that different from a night out in Barnsley. After that, we explored the city and worked our way up to the castle, which has a spectacular view and amazing history, but is rather spoilt by the utter touristification of the place (Sam preferred the far less grand environs of Carlisle Castle, because it felt more real). Sadly, we didn't have time to climb up Arthur's Seat, though we did get down to the rather incongruous parliament building... which was taped off by police barricades as someone had thrown paint all over its weird 70s sci-fi film entrance. We also didn't have time to venture into the underground... but I guess that's something for next time. We'll definitely be back.
One curious observation about our time in the city... every charity shop we passed was closed. Some just for the day, or just for the afternoon. It was almost as though they'd heard we were coming and were saving their wares for someone else. I can't imagine who.
Here's a great tune about Edinburgh Castle by a native son...
Edinburgh Castle hugging the sky
Cold grey stone, humourless and dry
Sitting like a cork on top of the town
One of these days I'm gonna blow you down
And here's some lads from up the road in Auchtermuchty...
As a sequel to George's Rainbow Post yesterday, I decided to respond to Martin's Challenge and pick one song for each colour of the rainbow. Only one song!?! Impossible. So instead of picking the obvious tunes, I went looking for some lost gems...
RED
Eat were from Bath. They formed in 1986 and released their debut album, Sell Me A God, in 1989. Red Moon is taken from that, a record which reached #10 in the album chart... though its follow up, four years later, disappeared without a trace. Eat reformed in 2014 because that's the law now.
ORANGE
Romeo Void came out of San Francisco in 1979. They're full of New Wave goodness, and the vocal ramblings of Debora Iyall on this track make me wonder if Florence Shaw from Dry Cleaning is a fan.
YELLOW
This is probably Devendra Banhart's most well-known tune. Was it in an advert at some point? Probably. I prefer not to look that up.
GREEN
Liverpool 1982 welcomed Candy Opera onto the scene, with a similarly lush romanticism to Prefab Sprout. They stuck around until 1993, much unappreciated. And then came back in 2020 with a new album. Because that's the law now. This is one of their older tunes...
BLUE
The X-Certs were Bristolian punks who occasionally flirted with reggae flavourings between 1978 and 1981. I chose this because they're singing about "blue movies", which seem both innocent and antiquated in today's world of wall-to-wall internet pornography. Simpler times.
INDIGO
I have to admit that I struggled a little with indigo, particularly as Martin had already bagged the Peter Murphy track. Then I remembered my favourite Frank Sinatra album, In The Wee Small Hours, and this timeless Duke Ellington tune...
VIOLET
Levon Helm was the drummer in The Band. You probably know that already. He also released some very fine solo records. This comes from his 1980 album American Son, and it's really quite lovely.
No, I'm not getting a divorce. Louise and I aren't even married. Neither of us like a big fuss. And even if we were, she wouldn't divorce me. Too expensive. Far more likely to bump me off for the insurance money. So if I'm not here next week...
No, this post is called Divorce because that's the name of a new band I discovered. I don't know much about them other than that they're from Nottingham and that they continue the recent trend of female-fronted indie bands being far, far more interesting than their male-fronted counterparts. They've only released five singles so far, but they're all top notch, and they recently bunched four of them together on one wonderful EP. Describing their songs, they use phrases such as "juvenile arrogance", "sobering bitterness" and "a tiredness for this life in all its monotony and glass ceilings". And then, the clincher: "There is a humour at the core of this record, a need to not take it all too seriously."
That's more than enough to make me want a Divorce...
The coffee in my travel mug tasted off. Maybe I hadn’t
rinsed the Fairy Liquid out properly, or maybe it was just that off-tasting
water you get in the kettle sometimes, no real explanation for
it. Whatever the cause, I couldn’t handle the commute without a coffee, so I
decided to stop at the Co-Op petrol station and get a machine Costa. It was
Friday morning, the roads were quiet and Google Maps was telling me the journey
would only take an hour today, not 75 minutes, so an extortionately priced
“Signature Blend” was, if not exactly enticing, then at least better than
washing up water.
As I walked across the forecourt, a grubby-looking White Van
Man sprinted past me, clearly eager to pay for his petrol and be about his day,
ogling young women, driving aggressively close to other motorists, and
screaming obscenities at both. Except… that wasn’t why he was in such a rush.
Oh no. He wanted to get to the coffee machine first. Clearly he’d seen the look
on my face, assessed my need, and decided his was greater. Either that or he
was just an arsehole.
And so, I had to waste my time pretending to scour the Meal
Deal sandwiches, while standing just close enough behind him to be in a sort of
queue if anyone else with a desperate murder-you need for caffeine should try
to butt in. And of course, White Van Man didn’t just want one machine coffee,
he wanted three. My life was slowly ebbing away. And then he was done. At last,
I stepped up to the machine to order my elixir… and that’s when I noticed.
No big cups.
Only the small ones.
I stormed out of the Co-Op in a huff, back to my car, and my
off-tasting travel mug. Which didn’t taste so bad now, to be honest. Actually,
it was all right.
Laurie Shaw is another artist I discovered through compiling
those interminable posts about songs that randomly mention pop culture
ephemera. He’s from the Wirral but currently resides in Cork. He’s incredibly
prolific, having recorded over 100 albums according to bandcamp (7 of which
were released in 2022), and the one with the best title is If You’re So Good,
Then Why Haven’t I Heard Of You? Lately I've been very much enjoying Weird
Weekends, which sounds a lot like pre-fame Pulp. Slightly sordid tales of
yearning adolescent misadventures set to a lo-fi indie soundtrack. He’s even
mastered the Jarvis yelp. Quite wonderful. He's a wonderfully natural storyteller...
We were in your room And we were listening to your mum’s old records You put the White Album on And said this was their magnum opus I didn’t know what you meant But I could see down your vest And then the grooves got out of focus
“There’s a party on on Saturday night, You should come” I said “I’d love to, but the lift in’s a pain For my mum” She said “well, you could stay at mine And it might coincide with my mum Doing nights in the hospital”
If you’ve not caught it yet, Poker Face is very good. It’s
by the guy he does the Knives Out movies and it's basically Columbo for the 21st
Century. Natasha Lyonne brings her typically ramshackle Top Cat chutzpah to the
role of a human lie detector on the run, stumbling across murders wherever she
goes, then bumbling her way to delivering some kind of justice. Highly implausible, but
very entertaining, and Lyonne is a natural successor to the legendary Peter
Falk. Good soundtrack too, including…
My brother lost his wallet in the pub last week. I don’t
talk about my brother much, but here’s all you need to know to understand this
story: he’s a retired builder. Now when I tell you that there was £700 cash in
his wallet when he lost it… well, I just need to refer you back to the previous
sentence.
When he realised his wallet was missing, he returned to the
hostelry in question and asked if anyone had handed it in. They hadn’t, but the
staff were happy to take a look at the CCTV. Sure enough, there was my brother
enjoying his meal, and – whoops! – there goes his wallet onto the floor. Fast
forward to after he’s left the pub and another couple take his table. And… oh,
look, what’s this on the floor? Oh, it’s a wallet. I wonder what’s inside?
Well, we better keep that safe… tell you what, why not put in your handbag just
in case anyone unscrupulous should find it?
The police were informed, but my brother’s partner also
decided to enlist the help of the Local Vigilante Action Syndicate (aka
Facebook), posting a CCTV still of the woman with the wallet and asking if
anyone could identify her.
A few hours later, they received a private message.
“That’s my sister. We haven’t spoken in 20 years since she
shacked up with a former MP who’s also a paedophile, but she still lives next
door to me. Here’s the address…”
Rather than pass this information onto the police (see
paragraph #1), my brother instead chose to drive round to the address in
question… but there was nobody in. So he put a note through the door with his
phone number. I don’t know what the note said exactly, but something along the
lines of “Give me my wallet back and I won’t shop you to the bizzies.” Not that
my brother’s a Scouser, I just miss Jimmy Corkhill. A little while later he
received a phone call and was invited round for tea.
Well, not tea, but he did get his wallet and all its
contents back. When asked why the couple hadn’t handed it in to the bar, they
replied, “Oh, we didn’t like the look of the bar staff.”
Don’t ask me why, but I’ve been listening to Grand Funk
Railroad’s Greatest Hits lately. They’re a good time rock ‘n’ roll band, not
quite up there with Steve Miller’s lot, but ploughing a similar furrow. For
some reason, I always thought they were from Canada, which doesn’t make any
sense since their biggest hit was We’re An American Band, but logic was
never my forte. Here’s my favourite track from the compilation, originally
taken from the album 1974 album All The Girls In The World Beware!! Ah, the
70s…
As Robert Palmer told me in a dream last night, Don’t Explain. That was a Billie Holliday song
originally, but for me it’ll always be by Batley Bob, because I heard him do it
first, at an impressionable age.
I stopped at Morrisons last week for a few bits. Went to the self-service checkout so I didn't have to make conversation. After I'd paid, the following message flashed up on the machine...
Lovely to see you. Bye for now.
This offends me in so many way, I can't even begin to count. If a cashier said this to me, I'd think it was weird... but a machine?
The chances of me getting around to featuring the stylistically extravagant action movie director John Woo on Celebrity Jukebox any time soon seem slim. Hopefully for him anyway, since the jukebox has become a hectic requiem in recent weeks. Anyway, here's a song with his name from new London band My Fat Pony.
Love the home-made video.
Louise bought me some socks for Father's Day. My initial reaction was, "I'm not sure I can wear these for work..."
"Oh," she said. "Sorry. I didn't know they said that on them."
I told Ben. He replied with two words.
She knew.
Speaking of Ben, he recommended I listen to Tim Heidecker, an artist he saw on tour earlier in the year. Heidecker's an American actor and comedian, so the first half of his set is a world weary stand-up routine. Then he comes back on and does a set of upbeat, nostalgia-focussed Americana Ben figured would be right up my street. He's not wrong.
Back when I taught in college at The Bad Place, I had a student who regularly called me Brendon. When I asked why, he said it was because I looked like Brendon Urie, lead singer of Panic! At The Disco. I don’t. Brendon’s much younger and prettier than me. The most I can say is that my hair goes back in a similar way.
Despite being named after Smiths lyrics, P!ATD are a band who have said little to me about my life since they emerged from the provincial town of Las Vegas in 2004… however, I’ve been strangely taken by their latest album, Viva Las Vengeance. It’s a tribute to the bands Urie loved when he was a kid, and on first listen the obvious influences (to me, anyway) were Queen, Costello, Thin Lizzy and Steinman. Reviewers have cited The Beatles and The Police, among others… but after repeated listens, the homages coalesce and it all starts to sound like a Panic! record. But a really good one, and a really catchy one. Shame it’s their last, as Urie has announced his retirement… at least until the inevitable comeback tour beckons.
Here's the title track, which immediately made me think of vintage Costello...
