Thursday 8 September 2011

His Punishment For Deceiving Him: He Went And Shot My Dog.


Another Moviedrome inspired post. To be read in the voice of Sissy Spacek as if a 15 year old Texan reading from pop comics:

He was 25 years old. He combed his hair like James Dean. She was 15. She took music lessons and could twirl a baton. For a while they lived together in a tree house. In 1959, she watched while he killed a lot of people.

Carl Orff's Musica Poetica is used by Terrence Mallick in his film Badlands from his story based around the Charles Starkweather & Caril Fugate murders in the 50s. The film influenced Tony Scott's True Romance (written by Tarantino)via it's girl and boy on the run from the law story but more obviously through it's soundtrack.



Orff is worth reading up on. Definitely not a black and white story. His most popular work, O Fortuna from Carmina Burana, you will know I assure you.

Oh, yes, this is classical music something I know very little about. It reminds me of Smokebelch (Beatless Mix). Does that make me a pleb?

Friday 2 September 2011

But nothing still has altered just the seasons ring a change



I love Ronnie Lane. Who couldn't. I don't like Rod Stewart. Who could. Stone was a Lane song from The Faces First Steps album that was also re-recorded and completely rearranged by Ronnie Lane for the Slim Chance album from '74 a year after he left the Faces due, in no small part, to Sir Roderick of Stewart (RIP Tom Hibbert). In a constant, yet ridiculous quest for the definite article (of anything!), I'd given up on the Faces version for Plonk's. Listening back today the Faces version is just as good and could certainly show any beardy serious young man a thing or two about doing it with swing. Rod's a wailing away in the background as Marriott used to a year or two before in Ronnie's former beat group. Stay cool won'tcha.

Saw your picture in the paper. My, you're looking pretty good.


Odessey and Oracle by The Zombies is unquestionably the greatest album ever made so don't even think about it Sonny Jim. Released after the band split up, running time of less than 35 minutes, spelling mistakes, layers of mellotron and organ underpinning the plaintive voice of Colin Blunstone. It's bloody gorgeously fleeting and it wasn't until my mid thirties that I heard it. Where had it been all my life? You can take your Sid Barrett, Who, Kinks, Beatles & Stones and shove them. This was the real deal.

Colin Blunstone's solo back catalogue, at first glance, seems as sparse as his former band's so hoping to find further gems was always going to be tricky. Some guy called Neil MacArthur covered the Zombies She's Not There in a fantastically baroque over the top style with a fine imitation of Blunstone's voice but then the trail goes cold....





....so anyway, Caroline Goodbye featured on Blunstone's debut, One Year, it was one of a number of self penned songs alongside Argent, Mike D'arbo and Tim Hardin choices. It gives me a chance to post a lovely picture of Dr Phibes Return's star, Caroline Munro. Buy the album.

Rod Argent soon.

Thursday 1 September 2011

Who's Pushing The Pedals On The Season Cycle?


I'm fighting it. The loss of the season. The Green Man moves on. The Roman calender tells me that the 23rs of September is the end of summer time. We don't need no stinking calender to tell us that the harvest is in and the red and brown will soon slip over the land touching even the city. But to hell with the cold, one more weekend by the sea will do me, one more weekend.