Saturday, April 21, 2007

These are a few of my favourite films...


















In order : The Sopranos (better than most movies), Z, The Parallax View, Un Air De Famille, Traffic, The Apartment, Der Himmel über Berlin, Une pure formalité, Les Quatre Cent Coups, La Dolce Vita, McCabe And Mrs Miller, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, Comme Une Image and The Wicker Man (1973, of course).
I've seen other great films, some like Urga, Ucho and Roma, Città Aperta I had trouble finding images for whilst others like Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and Lost In Translation are maybe a bit obvious.
Love the cinema. Not the movies.
Haven't seen too many recently but inspired by seeing Soderbergh's The Good German (Soderbergh's the Daddy right now) - a solid 4 stars - into looking back.
Love French movies. You can sit through 100 American films to find a winner but you can often watch one French movie to do the same.
Looking forward to seeing Das Leben Der Anderen - acclaimed German film about rare compassion in East Berlin and Combien Tu M'Aimes (Depardieu, Bellucci and Darroussin - can't really go wrong). However the versions I've got from Azureus are without subtitles and I have no clue how to apply subtitles. Any help appreciated.
Oh and someone download my mix for fuck's sake!!!

Monday, April 16, 2007

Some fine downloads


Motherlode - James Brown.


Some of his best stuff on this '88 compilation of obscurities from the late 60s / early 70s heyday...




Song X - Pat Metheney & Ornette Coleman


Avante-garde jazz from '85. First track is especially challenging but there's quite a lot of variety over the 8 tracks.




Commercial Zone - Public Image Limited


Alternate version of the last album from PiL. My mate Darran really rates them and he knows the New Wave era intimately. Fresher than the copycats, as he likes to point out.




I often get into things some time after I download them. This great compilation of a Swiss jazz unit called the Boillat Thérace Quintet seems to still be available so don't hang around...




Also Joy by Karin Krog is still there, I think I recommended it here before. Mr Joy is up there with Carr & Rendell's Black Marigolds and Cinematic Orchestra's Diabolus as some of the most spine chillingest jazz recorded. A must check.




Impeccably tasteful Brasilian jazz from Quarteto Novo here at Orgy. I already snagged this one from another blog but don't let that stop you...




Theater Of Eternal Music - Day Of Niagara & Bootleg


The incredible FM Shades has dug out one of John Cale's other 60s projects here. 'Drone Underground' apparently. You wait for Venus In Furs or Hey Mr Rain to start but instead it just goes on... droning. Its good though, somehow. Organic and intimate.



Just Another Diamond Day - Vashti Bunyan


I think it was the lately inactive Burnt Brown Karl who turned me onto this lovely gentle folkster and here's the classic album. Wicker Man vibes - in a good way. Scroll to the second entry on this page.




Its all about Nara. Oodles. The 65 album here is gorgeous as fuck. A Shakira fuck. You know what I'm talking about. Don't act like you don't.




And Phaoroah's Dance is assassinating it ice cold. Check a rare Herbie trio date from 77, the classic Dee Dee Bridgewater album Afro Blue and a smokin' obscurity from Rene McLean.




Don Ellis / big band fans will be pleased to see this new blog. This Don Ellis Quintet recording from 61 with Ron Carter on bass is solido. Al Francis - a new name for me - smokin' on the vibes.


Meanwhile a certain large mammal of the felled tree variety has upped that mix for real now after some technical hitches. From Red Astaire to Bugge Wesseltoft in 17 crazy moves.


http://s19.quicksharing.com/v/6846022/ben_s_proper_mix_mix.rar.html

OK for now.


Image is something nice I found on Lambiek by Cristina Duran.






Paul Merton monologue


Once a breath of fresh air on British TV was Paul Merton, whose hilarious monologue I stumbled across yesterday and am now posting. I really liked his surreal sketch show which was part of what I am just now identifying as a surreal sketch show movement in the early Nineties with Newman And Baddiel - In Pieces, The All New Alexei Sayle Show and Sean's Show (reportedly a rip-off of Its Garry Shandling's Show - which I never saw). Later sketch shows like Fast Show, Little Britain, Bo'Selecta and even Reeves And Mortimer I wouldn't include in this category being based on character observation (celebrities or stereotypes). The other four were all surreal expressions of the comedians' selves. My favourite of these was Newman And Baddiel where the two protagonists seemed so cool in this mutant sitcom as they talked sex, suicide and Eighties bands I'd never heard of and pushed old men down stairs. But I also loved Merton's show, observing the world from his newspaper kiosk, with the occasional dolphin dropping by for a Mars bar. Underrated. His Great Escape parody where he was the last Allied soldier left in a Nazi PoW camp was a stroke of genius too. I remember him doing exercises in the yard with eight mannequins attatched to poles on either arm, the German guards getting more suspicious... Here's the monologue. Enjoy.
"On Wednesday 14th December last at approximately 10:43 AM while patrolling along Streatham High Road I observed a motor vehicle illegally parked outside the all night Clement Atlee massage parlour. I questioned the occupant, a Mr Jack E Stewart, who said:
"Urinate off you effin love child"
Mr Stewart then apologised and offered me a yellow chocolate covered confectionery known to the uniformed branch as a Smartie. I accepted the smartie and swallowed it. A smartie which I now know contained an hallucinogenic drug.
Thirty five minutes later, while sat on an intergalactic spacecraft bound for the planet Zanussi, I observed Constable Parrish approaching me disguised as a fortnights holiday in Benidorm.
"Hello Constable Parrish !" I said through the back of my neck."And what news of my Lord Buckingham?"
To which Constable Parrish replied "Get down off that bus shelter, you stupid git."
I then ate Constable Parrish.
His notebook then exploded releasing a thousand tiny giraffe heads on little penguin bodies.
I was enticed down from said bus shelter by the lovely Marilyn Monroe, former screen starlet. We kissed, formally, until Marilyn, sweet tender Marilyn, revealed herself as Mr Brinsley Ocomo, a scrap metal dealer from Peckham.
A panda patrol car flew past and three large uniformed pandas got out.
I was charged by Chief Constable Warren with gross indecency, impersonating a Spaniard, acting the goat and eating a police Constable while in the course of his duty.
I burst into hysterical laughter which lasted five months.
And that is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Two treats - a new mix by me & The Last Poets (1970)



I've been working on this mix for a couple of nights for my mate Ben. I'm pretty proud of it. It would be better actually mixed and with more adjustments to the noise levels (The Cure track is particularly quiet) but I think its a fairly solid, and nicely eclectic, selection. Unfortunately I still haven't even begun to grapple with mixing technology. One step at a time.

This is probably the most cohesive mix I've published the tracklisting for (and I will get round to uploading all the mixes for the tracklistings I've put up here. One particular highlight is a fantastic Italo track called Secret Life by Material, which I found on Soulseek after someone (Dave Mothersole or one of his guests) mentioned it as one of the seminal Italo tracks which predates even early Chicago house. House, let me take this opportunity to say, is the equivalent of jazz in the dance music world. It is the Daddy of all the forms, the one with the longevity and the scope for constant development. Drum & bass or breaks may be more visceral (depending on what drugs you are on) or garage more sexy, or electro more fashionable, but they are all ultimately more limited offshoots of the source. The source is tribal rhythms and, through the mixing of other influences have given rise to two main forms - jazz and house (I consider rock and hip hop to be basically offshoots of jazz). Anyway, I digress. I never know when a waffle rattling around my head is going to take over.

Another big tune for this set is Collage Of Dreams by John Beltran - an ambient classic. I've been getting into the visionary Manuel Gottsching whose early experiments in electronica still sound like amazingly fresh contributions to the genres of ambient in Inventions For Electric Guitar and house / techno (can never really distinguish the two - nor do I particularly like getting into a taxonomy of music) in E2-e4. Some would call it prog but after having so far failed to get into much of the genre (I like Soft Machine's Third but can't get into Yes or King Crimson) I would tend to distance most of his work from this sometimes undesirable epithet (not Early Water though which I'm listening to now which is like a crisper Tangerine Dream).
I don't want to waffle about every track but I'd like to mention the track by Gentleman which I heard on David Rodegan's Kiss show 4 or 5 years ago and loved but forgot about til recently. Gentleman is a young German man who became influenced by Jamaican music at a young age and travelled there to become part of the scene, the most surprising part of this being that he makes good records, the tune here being a feelgood classic (for me, anyway)
I've also been chasing Paul Raymond edits as avidly as Moonstarrs, Moodymanns or Rub N Tugs after his edit of Chicago's Street Player blew the roof off the Black Note when I played it there a couple of weeks back. His remix here I originally heard as an untraceable white on a GP show in 97 / 98 while I was buzzing off one of my first glorious spliffs which opened my mind to the Music. If I'd smoked more of the righteous herb that Gentleman seems to be enjoying at the top of the page instead of the way overstrong varieties of skunk which were flooding the market in London at that time, I'd be a happier man today.
Anyway, here's the full tracklisting...
1. Mambo El Kingston RED ASTAIRE
2. Drumpan Sound REGGIE STEPPER
3. Heard It Through The Grapevine THE SLITS
4. My Beat BLAZE / SUMO
5. Fire In Cairo THE CURE
6. Secret Life MATERIAL
7. Its Great To Be Here JACKSON 5 / KENNY DOPE
8. Caan Hold Us Down GENTLEMAN, DADDY RINGS & BARRINGTON LEVY
9. Pass It On THE CORAL
10. Canto De Ossanha BADEN POWELL
11. Le Coeur Qui Jazze FRANCE GALL
12. Anambra OZO / PAUL RAYMOND
13. Spanish Joint D’ANGELO
14. Blue Monday NOUVELLE VAGUE
15. Feel Flows BEACH BOYS
16. Collage Of Dreams JOHN BELTRAN
17. Trying Times SIDSEL ENDRESEN & BUGGE WESSELTOFT
And the link
A friend of mine was flabbergasted I played The Last Poets during my first set but, as I've been reading, there've been quite a few permutations of the group over the years at one point splitting into an Islamic half and a Def Jam half - guess which half got playedin my set.
Their recording debut came up on Soulseek. Users of the programme know how some items are interminably slow to arrive in your hungry carpetas whilst others zip across. The Last Poets' 1970 debut came up in no time flat and I was so impressed with the raw force of this record I thought I'd better share the wealth. Some will be inspired, others perhaps offended but no-one can deny its power (and trailblazing status for hip hop). Real poetry and bongos business - just like Flanders' parents!

Monday, April 09, 2007

Sunday Humour




Peter Kay's Universal Truths...


Never really 'got' Peter Kay as much as some but he can be a funny fucker at times. I got sent these as a bulletin to my myspace and I've put the ones I find most uncannily on point in bold.


1.Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.

2.At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.

3.One of the most awkward things that can happen in a pub is when your pint-to-toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger.

4.You've never quite sure whether it's ok to eat green crisps.

5.Everyone who grew up in the 80's has entered the digits 55378008 into a calculator.
6.Reading when you're drunk is horrible.

7.Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly.

8.You're never quite sure whether it's against the law or not to have a fire in your back garden.
9.Nobody ever dares make cup-a-soup in a bowl.

10.You never know where to look when eating a banana.

11.It's impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat.

12.Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly.

13.Rummaging in an overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.

14.You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses.

15.Everyone always remembers the day a dog ran into your school.

16.The most embarrassing thing you can do as schoolchild is to call your teacher mum or dad.
17.The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first given opportunity.
18.Some days you see lots of people on crutches.

19.Every bloke has at some stage while taking a pee, flushed half way through and then raced against the flush.

20.Old women with mobile phones look wrong.

21.It's impossible to look cool whilst picking up a Frisbee.

22.Driving through a tunnel makes you feel excited.

23.You never ever run out of salt.

24.Old ladies can eat more than you think.

25.You can't respect a man who carries a dog.

26.There's no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you've got your hand or head stuck in something.

27.No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers.

28.Despite constant warning, you have never met anybody who has had their arm broken by a swan.

29.The most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on an upturned plug.
30.People who don't drive slam car doors too hard.

31.You've turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood specifically to stir paint with.

32.Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose.

33.Bricks are horrible to carry.

34.In every plate of chips there is a bad chip.

35.Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.


And this was posted by a fella named Tecwen Hernandez The Third over on Brownswood. Lyrics by Half Man Half Biscuit (aka Nigel Blackwell), a Peel-championed acoustic act.

Bourgeois-baiting business. Its harsh.


To the tune of "He's got the Whole World..."


They've got the whole world
in their house,
they've got the whole wide world
in their house,
they've got the whole world
in their house,
to see the new conservatory


They didn't choose their cat,
the cat chose them,
they didn't choose their cat,
the cat chose them,
they didn't choose their cat,
the cat chose them,
and what do you know,

its got its own website,


they made some real good friends,

on Henman hill,

they made some real good friends,

on Henman hill,

they made some good friends,

on Henman hill,

now they all meet up for boxercise,

They buy soup in cartons,
not in tins,

They buy soup in cartons,
not in tins,

They buy soup in cartons,
not in tins,

And keep a torch in the back of the car,


They go to one-day cricket,
in fancy dress,

They go to one-day cricket,
in fancy dress,

They go to one-day cricket,
in fancy dress,

and choose the pub thats got the ball pond for the kids,


They treat the mercury music,
prize with awe

They treat the mercury music,
prize with awe

They treat the mercury music,
prize with awe

Obviously thats just jealousy on my part,


They seem to think,
it's a really good idea

They seem to think,
it's a really good idea

They seem to think,
it's a really good idea

To hire a stretch limosine,


He gets over emontional,
when he's drunk,

He gets all too emotional,
when he's drunk,

He gets over emontional,
when he's drunk,

And says,"I tell you what mate, that baby changed me life",


If I'd have known they were coming, I'd have slashed me wrists


Add in an extra verse....

They've got nothing but total

Respect for (repeat x3)

....Annie Lennox


The pic is of Underdog, another of those great 60s / 70s budget toons. I saw some of it this morning (dubbed into Spanish of course). Found out today its being made into a rather dry- looking live action movie.
Also saw some of the latest incarnation of Flipper. A character named Jefferson had two amazingly unrealistic heart attacks. I tried to get his name to see on imdb if he'd had a career up to that point but to no avail.