Welcome along to another edition of Snapshots, where I give you a real Sophie's Choice... do you identify all the artists below first to help you work out the connection... or will spotting the link help you name the performers?
Let's see how quickly you solve it this week...
10. Smashed up Z-Cars.
9. When a Snapshot maker's clue is particularly hard to decipher.
8. Half Boy, Half Pickett.
7. Get some unanimous okra mixed into your green salad.
6. Found in a shoe box.
5. Bus, Bunch, Blood, Bees... all washed out.
4. Obliteration.
3. Keeps Clapton's clothes clean while he's eating.
2. DOA Hipster comes apart.
1. White mites, white eat.
Head on back to Marvin's Room... or My Top Ten as it's otherwise known... for the answers tomorrow morning.
A few more songs from the never-ending list of tunes I'm trying to keep up with... and this time, it's all tunes I can't buy on CD.
Often, I find myself listening to an album on the interweb or via some other magical means, and I like it so much that I want a copy on the shelf. Lately however, I've come across a number of records that are just not available on CD. In some cases, it's a vinyl (or cassette!?) only release... in other cases, the record is only available digitally, like this one from Howell Dawdy...
I've featured tracks from Howell's 2021 album Smells Like Love here before. It's only 8 songs long, but every one's a winner and I'd gladly shell out some coppers for a physical copy. Sadly, Howell appears to be an internet-only guy...
In a similar vein, we find Norwegian Americana star Harald Thune, whose 2020 album The Backbounceability of Humans was a particular favourite during Lockdown.
Harald's website is a little sparse, with spaces for biog and tour details, but not even a tab for shopping, and his music appears only to be available via streaming. Which is a shame, because there's a Harald-shaped hole on my CD shelf...
Kevin Morby is considerably more well known than either Harald or Howell, yet his last record was only released on vinyl.
This is a tragedy as it's a companion piece to his previous album, 2020's This Is A Photograph, a CD that has pride of place in my collection. I'd love to own a piece of plastic and paper containing the follow-up, but it looks unlikely to happen...
So desperate am I to own a CD copy of the debut album by Wolves of Glendale that I went on their website (where it's vinyl only, I'm afraid) and emailed them through the "Contact Us" link asking if a CD was forthcoming. No reply.
Maybe CDs really are a dead format.
Oh well, here's a cautionary tale about the hidden dangers of gym membership...
It's a sad day for Huddersfield with the announcement that our local WH Smith is closing down. The Piazza Shopping Centre, a wonderfully 70s concrete carbuncle (built two years before I was born) is to be demolished and replaced with some shiny space age Jetson's promenade... and Smiths has elected not to seek an alternative location in the town.
There are those who argue (quite vocally on local areas of the book of faces) that Huddersfield town centre has been dying slowly for years now, and that this is another nail in its coffin. I'd rather not be drawn into such debates. The town centre where I spent many a happy Saturday morning with my mum, stopping off at all the local newsagents (including Smiths) to see what new comics I cold find... that place is long gone. But so is the culture that fed it. Back then, in the pre-internet era, I could buy four comics for a pound. Nowadays I'd be lucky to buy one and get change from a fiver. You can't turn back the hands of time.
Here are a few songs in honour of WH Smith. You may have won the battle with John Menzies, but nothing lasts forever...
Let's start not in Yorkshire, but over t'other side o' Pennines...
The next track is also a very personal tune, from a collection written during lockdown. I can't find out much about the artist, but he's definitely a Slow Burner...
Tiberius isn't on Snappychat or Instagrass or any of the newer-fangled social networking sites. He checks in with the Book of Faces once or twice a day, mostly to keep up with old friends, drop the occasional witticism and play along with the daily quizzes one or two of his more eccentric peers post. And he quit Tweeter (which he'd rarely used anyway) when Elon Musk turned it into a dystopian autocracy named after an LA band featuring Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom and D. J. Bonebrake.
“If I went an hour without my phone, I would be really stressed.”
“I was talking to people online when I was ten.”
“I would much rather have been born in the Eighties. I would have been working a lot harder.”
“You get a buzz if someone likes your comment. So a phone does give you quite a lot of validation, which is unhealthy in large doses – but it does feel good.”
That last one brings us back to Tiberius. Because, as previously mentioned, Tiberius does write a blog. Something which he claims he only does as a way of relaxing and focusing his mind on his two main interests - music and writing. Tiberius frequently states that he does this purely for himself, that it doesn't matter if other people read his witterings or leave an agreeable comment, and yet... and yet...
Remember our discussion about the benefits and pitfalls of writing?
Remember our brief look at that wonderful feel-good brain chemical dopamine?
According to Dr. Anna Lembke of Stanford University’s dual diagnosis addiction clinic, we are all dopamine addicts when it comes to social media (and that must include blogging). According to the Grauniad...
She calls the smartphone the “modern-day hypodermic needle”: we turn to it for quick hits, seeking attention, validation and distraction with each swipe, like and tweet.
(I couldn't resist slipping that one in. I know: I'm beyond hope.)
Social media, and the internet at large, is directly responsible for the rise in unhappiness in the developed world over the past 30 years. Could the microcosm of the blogosphere be just as responsible for this as TikTok, Tinder and Pornhub? Surely it's not as bad as those appalling supervillains? Well, if it's encouraging our dopamine addiction... maybe.
Dopamine causes addiction because of how the brain works in response to it. After any pleasurable experience (which causes a dopamine release), the brain responds with a process called homeostasis. Which basically uses the lyrics of Pete Seeger's Turn! Turn! Turn! (or the Book of Ecclesiastes, if you want to get Biblical) as a template for self-regulation.
Or you might say it's following Newton's Third Law, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In other words, for every up... there must follow a down. Or a downer, to be more precise.
When we binge on pleasurable things, homeostasis means “our brain compensates by bringing us lower and lower and lower,” says Lembke. Each time the thing becomes less enjoyable, but we eventually become dependent on those stimuli to keep functioning. We spiral into a joy-seeking abyss.
And when it comes to the internet, there's nothing to stop us feeding our addiction. If we're hooked on booze or drugs, eventually we'll run out of the substance in question, or run out of the funds needed to procure them. If you're addicted to social media because of the tiny dopamine spikes that come from a like or a thumbs up or a smiley... or a blogging comment... then short of them turning off your electric (and the batteries on all your mobile devices dying simultaneously), there's nothing to stop you gorging yourself to the point of gluttony.
Which makes Tiberius question... how much blogging is too much blogging? Is up to (and sometimes over) a thousand words a day just too much? In devoting so much time to the dopamine-inducing thrill of blogging, is he denying himself the comedown? What is that doing to his brain?
The problem with calling yourselves Cast is that you're immediately fighting it out with the Cast recordings of every Broadway show in history. Not to mention The Cast of Hollyoaks, The Cast of Casualty or The Cast Of Grange Hill (et al.) whenever they choose to release a record.
Beyond that, Cast is a pretty dull name for a band. Will any of these acts rise above their mediocre monikers? You decide...
CAST #1
Mexican symphonic prog band who first got together in 1978... and were still going strong in 2021. I'm sure that many of you will be pleased to hear that they are "similar in style to early Genesis".
CAST #2
Sweetly synthy soul from Italy in 1980...
THE CAST #3
Canadian metal band from the early 90s.
The lead singer has a very nice purple shirt.
CAST #4
In 1991, bassist John Power left The La's because he was sick of playing the same songs every night for 6 years while Lee Mavers tried to get them to sound the way they did in his head. Or something like that. Those with far more time than me can fill you in on the comical history of The La's, I'm sure. Anyway, Power went off with the drummer from Shack and a couple of other guys and formed a band which Noel Gallagher once described as a "religious experience". I think you can all make up your own punchlines to that.
I was a huge Britpop kid (well, as I was in 20s, but I still felt like a kid)... but I never got too excited about Cast. I mean, they were slightly more appealing than Oasis, but then so is dysentery.
Perhaps the best that can be said about them is that they were Alright...
CAST #5
This is the sound of Norwegian hip hop in 2005...
CAST #6
And here's some Romanian hip hop from a similar epoch. I would say it keeps them off the streets, but looking at the video, that's clearly not the case.
CAST #7
Something a little gentler on the ears to finish today. Ben and Jessica are from Vancouver, and this is how they sounded just last year...
Which Cast would you cast? And which Cast would you cast aside?
