Song of the day

"Pajarillo", by Aldemaro Romero Y Su Onda Nueva.

If this were a Hollywood pitch, it would go as follows:

"Philip Glass meets The Swingle Singers."

Which is slightly unfair to all three parties, but I promise you that if you have "Einstein On The Beach" in mind when listening to this, you can certainly imagine it as something that may have sneakily insinuated itself into Glass's masterwork.

The Venezuelan New Wave may not have been our New Wave, but it was, in its own way, pretty damn cool.



PS if I can survive the next two weeks I hope to resume slightly more regular transmission shortly thereafter. But at this stage that is a pretty big "if".

A few words about "Moonrise Kingdom", a film directed by Wes Anderson

Perhaps the best way to describe Wes Anderson's new film, "Moonrise Kingdom", is by saying that it is just like any other Wes Anderson picture you have seen, only more so. Accordingly, you will either love it or hate it depending on your predisposition towards the Wes Anderson way of doing things. (I have unequivocally loved and admired everything he is ever done, including his advertising work, but I concede that it is a fine line he is treading, and I predict that, if his style ever manages to attract imitators, their films are likely to be uniformly awful.)

So anyway, all I really wanted to say here is that when Adrienne and I were leaving the cinema, she mentioned to me that the film put her in mind of "Time of Wonder", a children's book by Robert McCloskey (author of one of the all-time classic children's picture books, "Make Way For Ducklings"). As is her way, having sowed the Wes Anderson seed, she then silently deposited the book on my side of the bed. Of course, I then just had to read it immediately, even though it has been in the house for years. (She is very good at this sort of thing. The phrase "Bart would wear that shirt" also has a proven track record.)

It turned out, unsurprisingly, to be a wonderful book, even if it does shine an uncomfortable light on how much better, at least in some respects, the lives if children were fifty years ago. And of course Adrienne is right: the similarities between the book and the film are many. The setting, around the islands of New England, is perhaps the most obvious one. But there is also the theme of children having adventures out of the sight of adults, sailing boats, watching the weather. There is the great storm that is the centrepiece of both the film and the book. Even the houses look curiously similar. The film being by Wes Anderson, there are, of course, inner demons of one sort or another in all of the characters; a dog gets harmed; and everyone is impeccably dressed and/or has a very precise taste in, say, music. None of those things is reflected in Robert McCloskey's book (which was written eight years before the year that Anderson's film is set in). There are no boy scouts in the book, either (unless they are hiding in the shadows).

It would be interesting to know, wouldn't it, and I suppose it would not be surprising in the slightest, if Anderson had read this book as a child and if, consciously or otherwise, it sparked an idea that evolved into "Moonrise Kingdom". Or maybe it is total coincidence. I was expecting to find that Anderson himself grew up in New England, but this appears not to be the case (Texas, it would seem, which is about as far from New England as you can get while still being a part of the United States), which makes the similarity of the worlds depicted in the film and the book even more intriguing.

Anyway. Read the book. See the film. That's all.

Hypothetical mixtape: February 2012

The time is upon us once more to flatten one month's worth of internet trolling into one seamless (not!) sub-80-minute smackdown. Or something.

How far behind the times are we? Way far. Let's party like it's February 2012.

1. "DoYaThing", by Gorillaz. Or, the reappearance of James Murphy. This also exists as a radio-length song, but once you have heard the full thirteen minutes you will wonder why. There's a nice bit of Iggy Pop channelling that goes down from the five-minute mark.

2. "Wolf Girl", by Simian Ghost. Once in a while a song comes along that breaks your heart so completely that all you can do it sit quietly and observe, helpless, as it ever so subtly and unexpectedly draws the tears into your eyes. For now, for me, this is that song. I have no explanation for this.

3. "Faithless", by Scritti Politti. Whereas thirty years ago that song would have been a song not unlike this. I can't profess to ever having heard the 12" version before. At over nine minutes, it demonstrates conclusively that, no, you can't have too much of a good thing.

4. "Saturday Night", by Central Unit. There is a time in your life, if you are "into" music, when you are suddenly old and/or independent enough to start to get out into the world, and perhaps adventurous and/or curious enough to discover some musicians, or some sounds, that are so new that you might be able, for a time, to call them your own. 1982 was my time. These particular floppy-haired wonders would appear to have been Italian, but essentially the same music was being made in Melbourne then, too. Who needed the internet?

5. "Visions (Nite Jewel Seance)", by Stevie Wonder. Speaking of the internet, it has been easy, and particularly rewarding, to have been able to watch the evolution of Nite Jewel. Our little girl is now (musically speaking, anyways) all grown up. It's a brave step to take a song by someone as untouchable as Stevie Wonder and strip it back to practically nothing: two chords teased out, slowly, on an electric piano: music suspended in mid-air with no support. It might be John Martyn's "Small Hours" in miniature.

6. "I Don't Know What I Can Save You From (Royksopp Remix)", by Kings of Convenience. The Kings have a way with melody. Royksopp have a way with sound. That works.

7. "It's A Lovely Day Today", by The Walter Wanderley Trio. Back in the mid-1990s, when we frequented Grumpy Warren's Record Paradise, down the road from the Galleon Cafe in St Kilda, we bought lots of records like this. Just how good is the echo on that Hammond? (Rhetorical. It's good.) Smile for the camera, fellas.

8. "Fallin' In Love", by American Spring. Written by Dennis Wilson. Produced by Brian Wilson. Made in 1973. What more do you need to know?

9. "People Make The World Go Round", by The Stylistics. Evidently there was more to The Stylistics than "You Are Everything" and ritzy suits. Thanks (as always) to Marcello Carlin for writing sufficiently eloquently about this song for me to want to track it down.

10. "All Across The Nation", by All Saved Freak Band. Heavy metal church music. Yes, you read that right.

11. "Heya", by Bosques. Garage rock from Argentina. Garage rock really was the universal language for a while there. Someone is playing the guitar (or is it a mandolin?) in the background in a way that invents Ed Kuepper.

12. "Mary Lou", by Black Mountain. Canada's finest hairy guitar-wranglers come down from the (black) mountain after too long an absence, and we're glad they did. This is them at their most krautrockinest. Is it also perhaps a nod towards early Stereolab? Or maybe they were both merely drinking from the same well.

13. "Chinese Rocks", by Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers. This month's Oldies Radio contribution.

14. "You Know You Like It (Raffertie Remix)", by AlunaGeorge. On the other hand, sometimes we feel compelled to give a passing nod to music that could only have been made in the here and now.

15. "The Sometime Girl", by Gerry Pond. This was the b-side to a Reprise single from 1966. Gerry Pond seems to have made no other records. He had clearly been listening to Donovan before he made this one (not a criticism). Fascinating and, in its own way, slightly terrifying.

16. "The Way You Look Tonight", by Dexys Midnight Runners. Let us celebrate the return of Dexys, after a thirty-year absence, with this lesser known off-cut from their previous album, "Don't Stand Me Down", the one the critics loved but nobody bought. (Although it may be that that description, sadly, will also fit the new one.) The last 20 seconds of this version of this well-known song kill me. Kevin Rowland is The Man.

Song of the day

"Privacy Settings", by Ital.

Kids, learn from my mistakes. Do not listen to this, especially on headphones, if, as I have been for most of the last couple of weeks, you are labouring under a nauseous stomach and a woozy head. It's like anti-aspirin.

Internets of the day

I'm not going to beat around the (Kate) Bush here; I'm just going to link directly to this Dangerous Minds post that conveniently collates all the 1982 Kate Bush videotape you could wish to see.

So, um, why are you still here?

They also served

At times, these pages can resemble an obituaries column. It is probably unfair to say so, but sometimes people don't come to the front of your thoughts until something bad happens to them. Two persons of note have, sadly, fallen into that category in the past couple of weeks.

The first, and if I'm honest the one that stopped me in my tracks, was Jon Lord, keyboard player for Deep Purple.

If your life revolves around listening to music, there are certain sounds that leave a particularly strong, deeply profound impression on you. These days, for example, I regularly succumb to the (al)lure of the Hammond B-3 organ and the Fender Rhodes electric piano. As a nine-year-old, listening to tapes on my Sanyo portable cassette recorder (those tapes were frequently bootlegs picked up for next to nothing at Dandenong Market; favourite mistyped song title (actually the only one I can remember, but they were legion): "When the Leave Breaks"), I wasn't in a position to start to pick out individual instruments (well, drums and guitars, obviously). The first unique sound that I recall being able to recognise was a deep, grinding, slightly wheezing sound: a sound I now know to have been Jon Lord, playing a Hammond B-3 through a thing called a Leslie cabinet, a device that one might describe -- probably offensively to aficionados -- as like the effect of talking to somebody from the other side of a rotating fan (cue the scene where Rizzo the Rat sends secret messages to Gonzo in "Muppets From Space").

The Deep Purple record that I was listening to in those impressionable times was "Made in Japan", a double album on one cassette (!) that, as it turns out, is perhaps the best example of (the) Lord's work. (The three classic studio albums tended ever so slightly to overemphasise the guitars at the expense of the organ.) It was the time of the double live album: my collection grew to include entries from Status Quo and Jethro Tull (Led Zeppelin, Peter Frampton, Cheap Trick and Bob Dylan all put out, in the space of a few short years, double live albums of their own (what was this thing called Budokan?), but none of those were on my radar (well, except for Frampton, who was all over everything in the early days of FM radio; ah, the "talk box": another musical Rosebud)).

Anyway. When next you listen to "Smoke on the Water", consider that iconic guitar line, the one that everyone plays the first time they pick up a guitar (or, in the case of someone in our family, the fife), and listen to it closely: aside from the first couple of bars, whatever the guitar is doing, Jon Lord is right in there behind him. In fact, if it wasn't for the almost subliminal tonality / cadence / depth that the organ adds to what the guitar is doing (or maybe it's vice versa), I sometimes wonder if it would have worked at all.

The other fallen soldier this time around was Darryl Cotton.

If you were born in 1964, and absorbing Countdown and 3XY from when you were, say, nine years old into your early teens, you knew certain names and faces of Australian music: Little River Band. The Angels. Darryl Cotton. Brian Cadd. Russell Morris. At that age, you accept everything at face value. You have no idea that any of these people had a past. This only comes to you later on. As it turns out, there was a generation of Australian musicians, of which Cotton was an important part, who opened a door for the likes of Skyhooks (who themselves had a foot in the sixties), Sherbet, Mark Holden and others -- right through to your Kylies and Jasons -- to be considered as musicians first, Australians second. I am not ignoring the significance individuals such as Slim Dusty and Johnny O'Keefe, who forged a path of their own, but the wave of music that came from "home grown" (ignoring nationalities here; many were actually Poms) acts such as The Zoot and The Masters Apprentices, and the songwriting titans Vanda and Young (again, I had no idea, when "Hey St Peter" was one of my first Best Song Evahs, that these two unusual characters were already legends of the scene several times over), even the great Molly Meldrum himself, was, or at least seems from this distance to have been, the first appearance of anything like an Australian music "scene". (Where the Bee Gees fit into this idea I cannot say; they strike me as more like the Barry Humphrieses, Germaine Greers and Clive Jameses of Australian music: going overseas in order to become famous.)

In other words, if I had been born five or ten years earlier my impression would have been very different. For me, Darryl Cotton played a crucial but somewhat secondary role in the Countdown years. For my hypothetical older brother, he was much more than that. (Date of birth, however, has no bearing on the fact -- fact! -- that The Zoot's version of "Eleanor Rigby" is one of the greatest covers of a Beatles song ever. Ever.)

Song of the day

"Sylvia", by Arthur Verocai.

While listening to this song, you can do one of two things.

One, you might contemplate the genius of Stereolab, and how close they were able to go to blatantly appropriating other people's songs while creating music that was entirely their own. The particular reference point here is the three albums they released after "Emperor Tomato Ketchup", which, although each of them is in parts rather unwieldy, might turn out to be the central component of their career.

Two, you can forget all of that angsty, music critic stuff and enjoy this song, basking in the lilting rhythms, silky strings and general sense of spare-no-expense opulence that seems to have gone with every damn record that was made between the early sixties and the early seventies. (See also: Lee Hazlewood.)

Song of the day

"Space", by Magic Wands.

If The Cure had invented surf beat ...

Song of the day

"I'm Going To Spain", by Steve Bent.

What we have here is a one-off single from 1976, released on Bradley's Records, sometime home of The Goodies. Its main claim to fame would appear to be its spot on Kenny Everett's "World's Worst Record Show" compilation (seeing is believing). That is a little unfair. It is a perfectly nice snapshot of 1960s British pop (note the George Martinesque sliding strings near the start) filtered through the Chinnichap prism of 1970s British pop, while also putting me in mind of "Eanie Meany", by Jim Noir, which is a snapshot of 1960s British pop as rendered in the early 21st century.




But wait, there's more.

The Fall, as you know, have always had an ear for the obscure cover version ("Victoria", by the then forgotten Kinks; "Mr Pharmacist"; "There's A Ghost In My House"). It will come as no surprise to you, then, to learn that "I'm Going To Spain" appears on their 1993 album, "The Infotainment Scan". And a pretty nice job they do of it, too: it's a rare opportunity for you to hear Mark E Smith doing something that (loosely) fits the description of "singing".

A few words about "Brave", a film from Pixar

Following on from the seemingly franchise-driven slight misstep "Cars 2" (which, in Pixar's defence, it really had to make; I don't see how you could ignore the fact that toy shops were still full of merchandise several years after the film all those toys were based on last showed in a cinema), Pixar has, much to the relief of those of us who have believed in Pixar for so long and spent nights lying awake worrying if, or more likely when, the Disney takeover would work Disney's particular form of anti-magic, gone back to what it does best: telling stories.

"Brave" is not merely the name of the film. "Brave" is also what Pixar was when it decided to make the film. For "Brave" is an unusual thing: an American mainstream film set in an imagined Scotland and with no concession to American audiences. (It is very Scottish. I kept being reminded of our first night in Glasgow in 1996 with Adrienne's aunt and uncle, when they had invited a number of their friends around to meet us and also to celebrate Adrienne's uncle's birthday: people talking to me in an almost aggressively friendly manner, with me failing to understand more than the occasional word but having a lovely time nonetheless.) Also, both of the main characters are female. (There are, I think, leaving aside the servants, only two female characters, but the entire film is built around those two characters. It is possible that their strength draws in part from their position in what is very much a man's world.) And, to put a complete end to the "Cars 2" complaints, there would appear to be no marketing, spin-off or sequel opportunities with this one. It simply is what it is.

Is "Brave" an act of penance, then? Presumably not, as Pixar's usual working method would suggest that the film would have been well into production before "Cars 2" hit the screen. Or, if it is an act of penance, then it must have been pre-emptive penance, if such a thing is possible. What it might be, though, is John Lasseter's tip of the hat to Hayao Miyazaki. We know that Lasseter was a driving force behind bringing the Studio Ghibli masterpieces to English-speaking audiences. There is much of Miyazaki in this film: the painting-like backgrounds, especially on the long-range landscape shots; the strong young female lead; the mystical elements (the forest sprites in "Brave" echo the dust mites in "Totoro", for example); the physical appearance of the witch, who is very much of a type with some of Miyazaki's elderly grannies and crones. (The witch, and her cottage, I am now thinking, must also be something of an homage to the witches that permeated the classic early Disney movies. Well, "duh".)

If you asked me to come up with a pithy mathematical calculation to sum up this film, then, it would probably be "Studio Ghibli meets 'The Secret of Roan Inish'" (a film, Adrienne and I discovered when comparing notes afterwards, that we had both been put in mind of): predominantly whimsical and mystical (the "Roan Inish" connection), but with just the right amount of mindless violence, suspense, and the customary race against time just before the finish.

Somehow I haven't managed to see any reviews or box office news, so I have no idea how "Brave" is playing out in the wider world. We couldn't convince the boys to see it, on account of word having gone around that it is a "girls' film" (which it most definitely isn't; or at least not only; well, okay, it does contain scenes of a girl riding a horse, but it's clearly not "Saddle Club"). But I am working on them, slowly, in the hope that I might get to see it again on the big screen rather than just on DVD later on. (Did I forget to mention that the animation, even by Pixar's lofty standards, is frequently how-did-they-do-that stunning?)

(Also, and again in keeping with Pixar tradition, we were treated to a lovely stand-alone short film as a curtain raiser for the main event. The only thing missing, which Pixar used to do -- although I can't remember if this was always the case -- was a trailer for whatever next year's Pixar film turns out to be. (It may or may not be a sequel to "Monsters, Inc". Another Pixar sequel? Well, the two wonderful "Toy Story" sequels suggest that there is no cause for alarm. Let's give Pixar the benefit of the doubt for now and work on the assumption that "Cars 2" was just an off year. Oh, and go and see "Brave", even if you can't find any kids to drag along with you. I promise you will like it.))

Song of the day

"Sit Still", by Each Other.

The guitars alternate between post-punk acridity and Postcard jangle. The voices put one in mind, variously, of The Raincoats and Electrelane. The combination is winning. A hit!

YouTube of the day

I don't think I realised how much Gary Numan meant to me until I started watching this video (warning: it's a download quota crusher). I kind of got that feeling, which I haven't had in a long time, of being at the start of a concert and sensing that something very special was about to happen. Except it was happening on a tiny screen. And I was on the bus home. And it actually took place in 1979. Whatever. It goes to prove that being on the autism spectrum doesn't necessarily prevent you from knowing how to put on a good show.



(via Dangerous Minds)

Song of the day

"And I Love You", by The Darling Dears.

The vocals are best described, at least within my limited and possibly misguided musical vocabulary, as silky smooth Philly soul. The frequently over-mic'd backing track, by the wonderfully named Funky Heavy, would, had this record been made in the 1990s rather than in 1972, be called Trip Hop.

And this was "just" a B-side?

Song of the day

"You're My Drug", by The Dukes of Stratosphear.

Only a quarter of a century late, I sink my teeth into XTC alter ego The Dukes of Stratosphear. This slight detour came about after (if not as a result of) working with Todd Rundgren on "Skylarking". It may well be that this 25-year delay has served a useful purpose. Listening to an eighties band going sixties in 1987 might have just sounded either 1987 or 1960s, whereas listening to the same thing in 2012 allows one to hear a little bit of both sides of the equation: the spiky but sophisticated pop of mid-period XTC; and the influence on it of the music of The Beatles, The Kinks, The Beach Boys and, as evidenced on this phased-out gem, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. XTC, in all of their guises, never really put a foot wrong. They sit perfectly comfortably on any continuum that contains the names listed above.

Carl, aged 14, thinks "You're My Drug" is a very strange name for a song. He much prefers "The Mole From The Ministry", perhaps under the influence of the second Johnny English movie: "You mean there's a mole AND a vole?"

Song of the day

"What Did The Hippie Have In His Bag?", by Cornershop.

Not content with having been responsible for the Best! Song! Ever!, Cornershop have reconvened (not strictly true; they never went away) to bring you the Next! Best! Song! Ever!, while at the same time providing the answer to one of the true mysteries of the universe.

Hypothetical mixtape: January 2012

Every month I find, thanks to my many internet friends, an unfeasibly large number of songs that I think might be worth listening to. These songs have, for some time now, been going into an ever-expanding pile, never to be seen again. At the start of this year I decided to conduct an experiment: could I dump the songs I found each month into discrete little piles, and distil each month's offerings into an 80-minute mix tape, just enough to fit onto one (hypothetical) CD? The hell I could. It's now June, and I have struggled to pare January's hopefuls down to 160 minutes of fun. Okay, so that could be labelled a two-disc set, or a "Deluxe Edition" or "Legacy Edition" (?) with bonus disc. That's not the real problem. The real problem is that, at this rate, the songs I am finding now won't get called for consideration until, on a quick calculation, around 2016. At which point if there are any "new" artists floating around in amongst it all, they will have already gone stratospheric, developed bad personal habits, and/or crashed and burned.

All of that is a problem for another day (or year). For now, I give to you the January A-list. (No links provided, or I wouldn't be putting this up for another month. Anything you want to hear, I'm sure you can find.)

"Moon Jocks N Prog Rocks", by Mungolian Jet Set. Just like the old days, this hypothetical mixtape starts off with an epic space disco anthem. It's not by our old pal Lindstrom, but heck, it might as well be. It tells a kind of shaggy dog story, features some tasty Vocoderised vocals, drops in a circa Chariots of the Gods synth solo and generally motors along at a cracking pace for its ten and a half minutes.

"Gypsy Woman", by Kiki Hitomi. I was giving this one two thumbs up before I even knew what it was I was listening to. It's not either of the songs called "Gypsy Woman" that I know. This one was apparently a "club hit" in 1991. Like I would know. Kiki Hitomi sings with King Midas Sound. That's the first thumbs up. The backing music, which I should have recognised but didn't, is a Ricardo Villalobos track. I thought it sounded like Kraftwerk's "Computer World" fed through every kind of filter. That's two thumbs up.

"Whole Sex Lotta Machine (the Drumloop, the Guitar Riff & the Super Bad)", by Fissunix. In other words, a mashup, the content of which should be discernible from the name alone. If you could insert Jimmy Page's classic riff into James Brown's rampant funkisms, you would, wouldn't you? The drum loop? It sounds like it might be the one from "Walk This Way". Although presumably those dudes copped it from somewhere else.

"Pinball (Ashley Beedle Edit)", by Brian Protheroe. The words "lost psychedelic classic" sit with the song, but not really with the year: 1974. And anyway this is an "edit", meaning some boffin has taken the original track and made it "better". I can't comment on that, but in this iteration it is certainly a "trip", uh, "man".

"Underwater Light Reflections", by Gate Way. I listened to a lot of music in 1975 but I don't think I ever heard anything like this. I don't even know what you would classify it as. "Soundtrack music" might fit, if that even meant anything. If you listen closely you can hear things that, many years later, would go to make up the classic Broadcast sound. Research reveals that Gate Way is actually "Laurence Vanay", who is actually the wife of one of the guys from Magma. Which probably makes as much sense as anything I've written today.

"Just The Two Of Us", by Grover Washington Jr. In my mind, Grover Washington Jr is a saxophone-playing Sesame Street character. Featuring the unmistakeable voice of Bill Withers. You would have thought this song was from 1971 rather than 1981. Which perhaps makes it a bit "old fashioned" when viewed from when it came out (but that didn't stop it being a huge hit) but viewed from today it is just a "timeless classic". Which just goes to show, uh, something.

"Isle de Joie", by Mandre. This invariably makes me think of "Quasimodo's Dream" and "Beautiful", my two favourite albums by Dubbo's finest, The Reels. Go figure.

"Aybatti", by Fikret Kizilok and Tehlikeli Madde. Turkish psychedelic Hammond organ freakout. C'mon, guys. C'mon.

"Yokpo Wa Non Kpo Hami", by Assa Cica et L'Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou. The backing band on this track has been subjected to the archival treatment in the last couple of years. It all sounds wonderful, but there's something singularly remarkable about this song. You are probably not going to believe this, but the horns on this song sound so much like The Laughing Clowns, it's actually uncanny.

"Kelen Ati Len", by Orchestre du Bawobab. Originally released in 1975 in Senegal, and excavated and released as a seven-inch single on Soundway in 2005. And it's great. It crossed my mind that "Orchestre du Bawobab" might be the same as the still-going combo Orchestra Baobab. Turns out it is. There is so much great 1970s African music being unearthed and reissued. I should tell you about it some time.

"Mademoiselle Marie", by Coeur Magique. More archival footage here. French prog rockers circa 1971, rediscovered by the estimable Finders Keepers label. In here for the sound of the guitars, really. As if that ever wasn't enough.

"Eighth Avenue", by Hospitality. And here is proof that absolutely no thought has gone into the sequencing of this mix. Suddenly, like waking up from a prog dream into a pop new morning, we have briskly strummed acoustic guitars and breathy, underplayed female vocals. A certain indefinable "something". As long as people keep making songs that sound like this, I will keep listening. 

"Nice Age", by Hatsune Miku Orchestra. The best thing about this song is that Hatsune Miku doesn't exist. She is a "singing synthesiser application with a female persona". How William Gibson is that? Here "she" is "performing" one of my favourite Yellow Magic Orchestra songs. Ah, what a world we live in.

"Have A Cigar", by John Foxx and The Maths. Foxx's voice here is distorted to within an inch of its life and Benge's synths do a remarkable impression of Foxx-era Ultravox! as they tackle, with gusto, the Pink Floyd song. If there are no second acts, as F Scott Fitgerald is supposed to have said, then nobody told John Foxx. Oh, wait, Fitzgerald limited that rule to American lives, didn't he?

"You'll Improve Me (Caribou Remix)", by Junior Boys. If there's anybody I have been digging in the last few years as much as Junior Boys it's Caribou. Hence at this point my critical faculties switched themselves off.

"Hymn of the Big Wheel (Egyptrixx Remix)", by Massive Attack. It's as if someone said, I wonder what "Hymn of the Big Wheel" would have sounded like if Massive Attack were starting out in 2011. I think this nails it.

"I Close My Eyes", by The Bee Gees. Sadly, The Bee Gees now are like the punchline from the old Dave Allen story about the wide-mouthed frog: "Don't see many of them around these days, do you?" (I say this as a mark of respect, not a cheap joke, but admittedly it could be difficult to tell.) But their songs will live on. It is the disco-era Bee Gees that still command the most column inches, but I believe that their earlier records are the ones that warrant the most latter-day reconsideration. This song is but one case in point. It would be hard to argue that anyone was as good as The Beatles, but crikey, The Bee Gees gave it a shot. My school friend Mark Eddy, who made a lot of unlikely claims, once told me that his uncle had been the drummer for The Bee Gees in their Australian days. A surprising number of Mark's claims turned out to be true, and anyway, why would you make something like that up?

"Tropical", by Nino Nardini and Roger Roger. Groovy. Tropical. The end.

Song of the day

"Cybele's Reverie", by Stereolab.

After 22 years of marriage, at least we can agree on one thing: our favourite Stereolab song.

Happy anniversary, you.

Song of the day

"Sparrow Song", by Acrylics.

If you are about as overburdened with work as it is humanly possible to be while still remaining alive and (barely) upright, it is particularly gratifying when the universe hands you a song that at once sounds like the best song you never heard in 1986 while at the same time being as timeless a slice of dreampop as you are ever likely to hear.

Thank you, universe.

This goes with this (old world vs new world edition)

So anyway, there I was, listening to "Lonely Boy", by The Black Keys, as you do, and I thought to myself: what we have here is good-ol'-boy Southern boogie in the style of the British New Romantics.



Billy Idol could have done this.

And then it dawned on me: he did! But back then it was British New Romantics channelling the Confederate battle cry.



It's a funny old world, isn't it?

Song of the day

"Change", by Tears For Fears.

The place where I have worked for the past 13 years is not actually a family, but it can feel like one. Today I found out that a part of that family, someone who has been a part of the reason I still enjoy my job, against the odds, after all that time -- someone who, in fact, has become an important part of my life over the time that we have worked together -- is about to leave.

This song is for him.

Everybody gets a card when they go. Everybody gets a parting gift. Not everybody gets a blog post.

It's comforting, at times like this, to know that there is a place, amongst the infinite number of parallel universes out there, where it is still the 1980s.

And, because it is the 1980s, it must be the extended version.