Kay Martin and Her Body Guards
The Horizontal Twist
Yes, it’s time for my yearly concession to Christmas. May this er, sleazy little number by Kay Martin (who is apparently not featured on the cover of the album from which the track is from) put a festive spring in your stride. And if that’s not enough, you can just re-listen to last year’s selection.
Merry Christmas everyone and see you on the other side.
‘The Horizontal Twist’, Kay Martin and Her Body Guards, 1962
I had a horrible dream last night that my parents’ house was burning down. In the dream I ran madly around their home trying to rescue all the things we most cherish – Grandpa’s war medals, treasured items of jewellery, favourite books, seemingly endless shelves of my Mum’s carefully arranged photo albums documenting 100 years of family history.
And as the fire engulfed the Swiss Family Robinson style tree house that they were living in (it was a dream you know), I awoke in a panic desperately hoping I’d got to every single one of those bloody photo albums in time.
Awake and in a slightly fevered state, my mind naturally turned to the location of all the items in my house that I needed to save if by chance, it suddenly caught on fire right now.
Digital isn’t romantic, but it sure beats lugging piles of photo albums around.
Loretta Lynn
One’s on the Way
I don’t have much to say about this fabulous tune other than:
‘One’s on the Way’, Loretta Lynn, 1971
I am currently attempting to sort out some financial matters and need to obtain a certified copy of a document. The instructions on how to do this stress that the copy needs to be certified ‘by a professional person (e.g. a banker, lawyer or doctor).’
Fantastic!
Isn’t it lovely that social workers, sales assistants, builders, IT people, photographers, nurses, administrators, graphic designers, plumbers etc. etc. are all considered too untrustworthy and downright dodgy to be able to verify a photocopy, yet a banker or lawyer is.
At least someone still believes in them.
I see that it’s almost the end of the decade.
I’ve been too busy lately to reflect terribly hard on this fact, but reading the current issue of The Word on the train this morning did get me thinking about what the naughties ‘means to me’.
So putting aside climate change, 9/11, people routinely degrading themselves on national television, ongoing threats to bio-diversity, the global collapse of the banking system, the disintegration of feminism, the re-emergence of religious extremism, the widening gap between rich and poor, the ongoing imminent collapse of civilisation etc. etc. one of the biggest impacts of the past decade for me has been the cementing of instant gratification culture and its evil twin, information over-load.
Once upon a time, I scoured second hand record shops, fairs and garage sales for records I knew I couldn’t get anywhere else, I traipsed into town to look for books I’d read about in the single paper I’d read that day (and if the shop didn’t have it they’d order it for me and I’d wait patiently), if I forgot to set the video for a TV show I thought I’d lost it forever and I didn’t ever think that I would see childhood favourites like You Can’t Do That On Television again*. Once upon a time I wrote letters. Once upon a time I actually feared that I would either run out of music or run out of space in my house to put it in.
Faster internet speeds, email, DVDs and the like were beginning to make all these fears redundant around the year 2000, but information was still manageable. Over the past ten years though, almost everything has become available – and instantly available if you want it.
It’s lunchtime as I write this, I’m sitting here at my desk and I’ve just read the headlines of three international newspapers, WBGO a radio station from New York is playing in the background and two Twitter accounts** are constantly updating me on ‘stuff’ from around the world. Last night I watched a Canadian sitcom on Youtube, looked at my mate in Vietnam’s latest photos on Flickr, ordered a DVD boxset from the States and listened to a record I’d tracked down on ebay after years of unsuccessfully searching for it charity shops. And there is so much more I could have done – waded through all that music on Spotify, read even more newspapers online, listened to some of those podcasts I’ve got queuing up on itunes…
I’m not complaining you know. It’s just an odd sensation to realise that in the course of ten years I’ve gone from craving more knowledge and more music to almost drowning in the stuff.
*Surely no one in their right mind would put this show out on a video/DVD boxset?
** I changed my mind alright. I blame work.
If you spend your evenings in front of the TV engaged in excessive hand wringing over the current state of ‘popular entertainment’, then I’d like to cheerfully and annoyingly remind you that it was ever thus.
Yesterday I was at the British Library enjoying the 19th century’s version of mass novelty entertainment thanks to Professor Heard’s Peerless Magic Lantern Show. There, in the dowdy atmosphere-less BL conference centre, Professor Heard enthralled us with some of the most popular (and beautifully hand-painted) magic lantern slides of the day:
Of course, there were other lantern slides and shows – fables, bible stories, morality plays, nice scenery from around the world and the like – but who wants to see those when you can watch someone eating vermin…
In some strange turn of events, I recently decided to shun my usual non-fiction and French textbooks and read a novel. I chose The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – a book I have been thinking about reading for ooh, 15 years.
Now Huckleberry Finn is ‘the first of the Great American Novels’ and people have undoubtedly been deconstructing Mark Twain’s tale of a runaway boy and an escaped slave ever since it was published in 1884. Indeed, the debates you could have about racism and slavery are endless – but apart from that what most struck me about the book was its sense of freedom.
By freedom, I don’t mean the obvious type of freedom that inevitably results from escaping slavery or an abusive father for a life of hi-jinks on a raft floating down the Mississippi. I mean the freedom that Huckleberry Finn, a young teenage boy, could actually approach complete and utter strangers, have a chat with them and perhaps stay around for a bit. i.e. freedom from the thought that they might look at him weirdly and tell him to piss off; freedom from the idea that all strangers are potential murderers, rapists, thieves, con-artists and psychos; freedom to believe that people are, by and large, quite nice.
Obviously this is a made-up book in a different place and time, and I’m sure that late 1800s Illinois had its fair share of untrustworthy tossers, but I wish I had it in me to be like Huck Finn and less suspicious of strangers.
I’ve been tagged for this meme by I Should Be Working (who I’m secretly pleased isn’t working as she wouldn’t have time to write such a top blog otherwise). Anyway, the drill is to select a song which always makes me smile and to then tag others with the same request, adding a comment about their blogs which should be smile-inducing.
I’ve spent the weekend pondering over which song to choose because well, quite frankly every song I bung on this blog makes me happy – so what makes this selection different from any other?
To make this ’special’, I’ve decided to be (kind of) radical. I’m throwing away cool and embracing honesty. This tune has probably never been written about in the pages of the NME, The Word or The Wire. My DJ heroes like Giles Peterson, Norman Jay and Stuart Maconie would probably prefer to die than play it. And if you actually listen to the words, you will soon discover that they are so naff that Morrissey’s larynx would probably choose petrol gargling and sword swallowing over singing them.
No right minded music snob should like this song. Come to think of it, no right minded feminist should like a song from a musical whose key message is that domestic abuse is fine and dandy if you love someone.
But hey, we all have failings and this is mine. Rogers and Hammerstein make me happy, and this song says happiness best. Even in November.
‘June is Bustin’ Out All Over’, from Carousel, 1945
Now to spread the joy, I’d like to tag Mr Hoops Hooley over at Horse Overboard. Although we share a common love of Teenage Fanclub, classic pop and tuneful softrock, his ever-enthusiastic musings about his recent musical discoveries always remind me that there is more out there. He is also one of the few people in the world who actually makes me think that I really should get out more and see some live music.
So in stark contrast to the miserable woman in the supermarket was the lovely David Sedaris who we went to see at the BBC Radio Theatre this afternoon.
I’ve heard writer and essayist David Sedaris quite a few times on the This American Life podcast so I was hoping for more of the same – autobiographical stories that ramble along somewhere between pathos, observational comedy and pure self-deprecation.
And so it was.
But what really made the afternoon was Sedaris’ obvious and genuine delight in reading to a live audience. Happiness oozed from the man, positively bouncing off his shoes and radiating around the room, and when we all applauded and whooped (does anyone actually whoop on anything other than Radio 4 comedy shows?) his bashful grin was just plain charming.
At the end he thanked us all very much coming, said he was so pleased to see us, signed some books and drifted out of the theatre with the kind of goodwill that someone like say, the ant eating fools on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, can only ever dream of.
His show, Meet David Sedaris, will be on Radio 4 next April.
I just popped into the supermarket to buy some ‘refreshments’ for the weekend.
‘How old are you? Do you have any ID?’ the woman at the register asked politely.
‘Er… 35′ I replied, adding jokily ‘I guess I should take this as a compliment?’
‘No’ she snapped back ’You just look young and I have to ask.’
Now what I should have asked her is exactly how many under-aged drinkers buy single malt whisky, real ale, stilton and stuffed olives. Or perhaps I really do look young and teenage girls don’t just drink Malibu and coke anymore.
A Brit Out of Water Andrew Collins Carnival Saloon Clairwil Crinkly Bee The Dino Lounge Dusty Sevens Five Centres Happily Stupid Horse Overboard The Ill Man I Should Be Working Left and to the Back Living for Pleasure Alone Planet Mondo Queen Margot and the Supper Club Red Scharlach Simon Says Start the Revolution Without Me
