As someone who has been dubbed, and even self-applied, the moniker "Billy Nomates" at various times in his life, I was immediately interested to hear that a new punk-pop star had taken that name. Interested enough to give her debut album a try...
Imagine a Bristolian Patti Smith with a David Coverdale mullet and an old Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip cassette in her glove box, and you're halfway to imagining Billy Nomates. She shouts (because "sings" doesn't really cut it) lyrics full of breadline chic for the disenfranchised of today... and though I can't really class myself in that category, I still enjoy the grubby window into her world.
I could have used the following song in my previous job... the closest thing you'll hear to Chip Taylor's Phoned In Dead this side of the JobCentre Plus. (And no, I'm not putting down anyone forced to frequent that particular establishment: I did my time there ten years ago, for my sins.)
One thing's for certain, Debbie: I'm not going in if Andy's working Friday.
I never had band posters on my wall when I was a kid, despite belonging to the Smash Hits generation. Instead, my walls were plastered with posters from superhero comics as you'll see below...
Actually, you'll notice that in the photo at the end, the one with the extra special Spider-Man bedspread, the walls are free of posters. That's because by then I'd started using the box room at the top of the stairs as my comics storage room, and the middle two photos are from that room. (See the back of my early teenage head in the third picture. A photographer I wasn't.)
That last photo is the most interesting to me. The stickers on my headboard (I can spot Pac Man and ET among the superheroes). The tatty furniture; yet my heart aches to look at it now. To the left, I can see the old clock radio with the red digits on the clock face. Tuned to Radio 2 on evenings, Radio 1 during the day, with a built in cassette to record the highlights of Steve Wright In The Afternoon (back when he was worth listening to). I can see my old watch on the top shelf, a little green safe with a really easy combination one shelf down, the edge of a bookshelf to the left, and I don't know what that grey green thing is on the floor...
I look at these photos now and I remember feeling safe and happy. What else can you ask of your childhood?
I just read that in the early 70s, Charles Bronson was the world's Number One Box Office Star. I find that incredible to believe... but not as incredible as you guys not solving the Snapshots.
Here are this week's candy-coloured solutions...
10. Hoarse or Wonder Horse?
Hoarse would be gruff. Champion The Wonder Horse was a Super Furry Animal. As is a Candylion.
As Jamie Lee opened up for us last weekend, it seems only fair to give her dad a shot at it too. Maybe he can persuade you to have a go at this week's quiz... just identify the ten artists below and work out what might connect their songs. After last week's, I think you'll find this one a doddle...
10. Hoarse or Wonder Horse?
9. Utopian lion.
8. Where the Elephant Man likes to swim.
7. Juvenile boing!
6. Bomb-loving doctors.
5. Dirty copper and his alter ego get tangled up with a Scottish octopus.
4. Yo, Boris, Ron says you're all mixed up.
3. Lost Cleo joins a 10CC Army.
2. Cream Soda & Morgan's child.
1. Listen to the wind blow... on the Mother & Child Reunion.
Some Like It Hot on a Sunday morning... others prefer just to log in for the Snapshots solutions.
I don't have much to say for myself at the moment. Maybe the cat's got my tongue. Or maybe I can only write the autobiographical side of this blog when things aren't going too well. It's certainly nice to not dread going to work anymore... though I could do without the killer commute. Perhaps I'll devote a few Cnut Songs to road rage and traffic jams...
In the meantime, that's Cosmo above. Longtime readers will remember when he was just a tiny kitten. Now he's a bit of a bruiser, prefers to be out rather than in ("Open this door!", he's saying in that picture), though he wasn't fond of last week's fireworks at all.
I don't know why, but I ended up listening to the first Peter Gabriel solo album a lot recently. I discovered Gabriel with So, so never really checked out any of his earlier long players until now. I wasn't sure about it at first, because musically it's all over the place. But slowly the disparate elements are growing on me. Perhaps my initial disappointment was down to the fact that I wanted ten tracks that sounded just like this one, surely one of the best singles of 1977, and one that never grows old.
