Music Show 5 is here and there's not a single Eurovision or Doctor's name joke in the building. But who needs that when we're having a LIVE MUSIC SPECIAL!
Yes, its a festival in my head type thing with music from Random Hand, Hellsongs, Kenickie, Patch Kelly, Eels, Victoria Wood, The Bad Plus, Los Campesinos! and The Alternate Universe Beautiful South. Plus: why women aren't funny, no mocking at the Budokan, not getting metal, fun with multi-tracking and someone gets left out again. Nyehhhhh....
Random Hand's live album can be bought here - and I genuinely can hear me at the end of songs occasionally, Ben shouting in public spaces fans! - http://randomhand.bandcamp.com/
Yes, its the "All New Browned-Up Kojak Show!" with back-up feature "The Balding Jewish Men's Transvestite Charles Townsend Detective Agency Adventures". I hope to god for the sake of children's mattresses everywhere the free poster didn't look anything like that.
And as we've shown issues 2 and 3, might as well have the first too...
Are these meant to be the same people as on the previous image? This time the Angels look less male and more 'a thousand years old' whilst Cannon apparently learns against some Cadbury's Fingers and Kojak forgets how to use a telephone ("is it murders, boss?") in front of Hazell who has been caught midway through applying his Pikachu face makeup.
Plus Patrick Mower as Literally No-One Cares.
Can you find much worse? I'd be delighted / appalled to see them in the comments below. With thanks again to Wacky Comics for the images. And if you like this sort of thing with looks at comics of the past, get over to Two Headed Thingies for plenty of it done properly, not to mention some truly baffling Viz knock-offs.
Now if you'll excuse me I've got superbikes to chart...
Living in the mobile everything is age is enormously good fun but also super miserable. Once you could go for a walk in a field at not be harassed by German ex-girlfriends or requests to play Texas BBQ Card Glomp Hands Free Poker 9 and Bejewelled Rip-Off #75 on any of your devices. Rude phone calls and texts however seem to have existed from the moment Alexander Graham Bell rang his assistant in the other room to enquire if he'd been mis-sold a PPI then rang back and asked if there were any Walls in the house.
I'm a fan of phone hacking or "phreaking" to give it a better title (as documented by the likes of Philip Lapsley's "Exploding The Phone" or notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick's hugely recommended "Ghost In The Wires") but the dark side is the same in any new technology - how easy can this make boobs happen? Ascii text representations of spunking cocks aside, I thought anonymous text filth had given way to one-handed Facebook stalking in the modern age but as I learnt yesterday being a creepy unpleasant weirdo is still a popular pursuit.
It started last night when my friend Tia started getting weird messages from an unknown number. Whether their intention from the start or seemingly spurred on by her apparent interest, they got creepier. And thats when she posted the number online to see if anyone knew it. No-one did. But some of us may have had plans for it...
I'd used the free SMS service before when out of credit on pay as you go. They were gawdy but practical and I figured a great way of spreading some love to our new textual pal without anyone else's number getting spammed also.
People soon started to get involved, whether they knew Tia or not, and I encouraged them to be as surreal and nonsensical as they could manage. People are ready to be told sexual gross misconduct involving their mothers but enquiries as to the biggest leaf or very specific TV memories of the past...surprisingly less so.
My TATP pals Tim and Phil got into the spirit and soon came up with several insane ones of their own, including the following....
And TISM are always good inspiration for dadaist idiocy.
Not even Fresh Fields but its even less interesting and / or remembered sequel. Take THAT Thatcher!
And finally some more direct spamming nonsense sending people the way of one of the world's leading most singer / songwriters / Thatcherlovers...
None of us got any replies but the sudden phone explosion of tens of texts from a whole bunch of them being either deeply insulting or insultingly deep seemed to put them off their creepy stride, at which point Tia reported them to the Police. Whether we did good or bad I don't know but it was a lot of fun trying to find out.
And now the bit you've all been waiting for - hardcore nudity!
I went to a record fair and I liked it. Something something dog's lipstick. Here's my £33's worth of haul (click to embiggen)
So what did I get?
Any pop fan fule kno that the Dukes of Stratosphear were XTC under an assumed name playing "Nuggets" style pop psych pastiches of the late 60s. And bloody brilliant they are too. this was the priciest thing I got at £8 but its a beautiful thing to behold and looking at the price guide, I made the right decision. Not that I'm going to sell it or indeed any of these as I'm not really that sort of collector. I just buy stuff I like.
As my friend Dave of the wonderful Left and To The Backposted in 2011"a single consisting entirely of a quartet of schoolmasters singing extracts from The Highway Code in an Anglican chant style got to number 25 in the charts." Produced by George Martin and with a rather gorgeous sleeve, I couldn't resist this one for just two pounds. You can hear it here. Baffling.
Anyone who knows me (or indeed has heard my podcast recently) will know I absolutely adored Frank Sidebottom and I was overjoyed to find this mint copy of the 7" Queen tribute EP (missing the fantastic Kylie Minogue silliness of the 12"). Hear the fantastic medley track "Everybody (Likes To) Sing Queen" on YouTube at this link.
I also was practically giddy to find a copy of the 12" release of Chris Sievey's second stab at chart success "Wrap Up The Rockets And its Gonna Get Better" with the B-side "Tell Her I'm Ill" which I played just last week on my Music Show. Squee, glee, etc.
Now this next one is particularly special as its a promo only and otherwise unreleased single by the great "two hit wonder" John Otway, recorded as the theme to good-but-not-as-good-or-depressing-as-the-tv-version "Whoops Apocalypse" film. A decent tune which fits Otway's slightly shambolic outsider rock nature and the slightly shambolic film it was recorded for. Someone's made their own video from clips of the film here.
Weird Alan from "A Beatin' It Off" fame was a welcome face to see even though I don't think this Bad parody or the album ("Even Worse") it came from were that interesting compared to his later stuff. Not sure how many singles were released in the UK but not many is my guess. This peaked at No. 80 here, somewhat behind his previous Jacko parody "Eat It" which made No. 36 and even got a brief play on Top Of The Pops.
When I saw him live in Manchester a few years back this was his finale complete with inflated suit. S'alright. But I'd rather he'd played "Everything You Know Is Wrong"...
A Play School LP in fairly poor sleeve quality but hardly played for a pound was bought as much for making my pal Tim Worthington smile than anything else. The seller was very impressed and asked if I'd seen the "Quiller" 7" on another table. I said I was holding out for "Hong Kong Beat" which he seemed satisfied with.
Nice birra 12" single shouting fun from the Chumbas with the terrific Warhol-does-Kes cover. Bought this to give to a friend then thought "fuck it" and kept it for myself. I'm nice like that.
Was cheered to see this Carter USM release in a rack of random 7" singles. As Uncle Discogs says "Christmas-themed 7" given away by the band at a performance at the Town And Country Club, London, on December 14th 1990." and it contains a live version of "GI Blues" from 101 Damnations, plus a slightly more jingly version of "Shopper's Paradise" which would appear on the chart-cracking "30 Something" the following year in less festive mode. Bizarrely, inside this record was a old ticket stub for a Macc Lads gig circa 1990. Imagine if it been for somebody good.
Not especially rare but I wanted to own a copy of this Sandie-does-Smiths record, some of which you can hear in The TATP Years: 1984 mix I made funnily enough. The link is here if you want it. Oh boy, you want it.
WARNING: Contains brief Morrissey "opinions".
A dull looking but limited to 2,500 Supergrass single, their first of both the millennium and from the then-forthcoming "Life On Other Planets" - a fairly ignored but rather smashing love letter to glam / punk nonsense that they do so well. Go have a listen now. I'll wait.
Look, I own Snot Rap 1 on vinyl so I might as well own its awful, awful sequel too. Here's all the video segments from series 3 plugging it to no avail. The B-side is "Snotty Club Mix" as if any club in the history of ever has played this. Its no "Nice Time" I'll tell you...
And finally Kenickie because... fuck you, that's why.
Sigh. Sorry, I didn't mean to get angry. Its just that rotten 10 O' Clock Live gang Lauren's fallen in with. Tragic really. Remember her this way...
This weekend myself and three friends - Patch, Josh and Colin - got together for a FA Cup-ignoring day of playing video games, talking shite, eating curry and talking even more shite. With Patch having his own YouTube channel (which you can find here) where he plays games, we tried to do something collaborative with us all chipping in "witty" "comments". ("Thanks".)
Sadly the recording program made everything slow to a crawl so we instead decided to use my portable TASCAM recorder to do it as a podcast instead. Initially I was going to use it as part of my Music Show (hence me saying rather arrogantly that people know I'm Ben at the start) but it seems nice to have the whole thing up here with occasional visual put together by Patch.
Have a watch and let me know if we should try more collaborative things like this in the future. Now don your orange jumpsuit and prepare for hell...
Songs this week from TV21, My Little Pony (not that one), Red Box, The Freshies, Frank Sidebottom, Not ACDC, Amy Claro and The Plimptons.
Plus: UKIP Funnies, Ray Moore Mania, a typical Saturday night in 1975, The Lotus Eaters get big headed, Bob Dylan launches a complaint, why Die Hard is the best anything ever and much much some a bit more.
NOTES My Little Pony are now sensibly called Making Marks and you can find lots of their terrific stuff at this link: http://makingmarks.bandcamp.com/
Amy Claro has her debut album out now and very recommended it is too: http://www.amyclaro.com
The Plimptons were originally most of The Hector Collectors as played in show 1. They split up last month sadly but left a rather joyful back catalogue and a handy new best of: http://theplimptons.bandcamp.com/
