Susan Matthews - Splinters

Here is a video for a Susan Matthews track which is pleasing me at the moment :

DIY > 40

DIY causes backache, sore limbs, dust in eyes, cuts, bruises. Well it does once you get to your 40s. It seems that once the 30s are left behind, then your body really isn't designed to do much more than eat, sleep and suck boiled sweets (which I suddenly realised that I had started to do again). You appreciate a bit of warmth in the winter to avoid cramps, and a bit of cool in the summer to avoid heatstroke.
Policemen really do look far too young. You start to become grumpy about silly things; such as youngsters. You realise that you left University over half a lifetime ago. You fall asleep on the sofa again before "Later With Jules Holland" started.

Ignoring my grumps, I am glad that we seem to be getting an Autumn this year. I've always liked Spring and Autumn, and just lately, they both seem to be shrinking as we bounce straight from Winter to Summer and back again.

Washing Machine Repair Boolbar

Today I fixed our washing machine. With a little bit of internet searching, an eBay purchase of under £5 (inc. postage) and some cursing using a bent nail, I successfully got that drum rolling again. I never knew that playing with my model trains all those years ago would come in handy for diagnosing electric motors in laundry appliances.

Julian Cope - Black Sheep

Julian Cope - Black Sheep

Disc 1 : Return Of The Native

1 Come The Revolution
2 It's Too Late To Turn Back Now
3 These Things I Know
4 Psychedelic Odin
5 Blood Sacrifice
6 The Shipwreck Of St. Paul

Disc 2 : Return Of The Alternative

1 All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)
2 Feed My Rock 'n' Roll
3 Dhimmi Is Blue
4 The Black Sheep's Song
5 I Can Remember This Song

When I saw Cope perform live in 2000 he was on top form, presenting both his ideas and music in an entertaining style. Easily one of my top gigs ever. However Cope's recent offerings have not been very friendly. For someone who really wants to get his message across and educate the masses (back in 2000 he was aping Blair's "Education Education Education" soundbite), presenting it dosed in dense heavy rock and using lo-fi recordings of a rather ugly vocal style was hardly going to win any new converts.

However closer examination of 2005's Citizen Cain'd and follow up album Heavy Orgasm showed that Cope's ability to craft a pop hook was still intact, albeit hard to spot amidst the swirling mass of noise. Last year's You Gotta Problem With Me showed a move towards more accessible material and now we have Black Sheep, an album bursting with pop hooks, folky chants and generally less scary music. It sounds a bit like a stripped down 20 Mothers, with nods to Peggy Suicide and Fried thrown in. The gloom and anger of previous albums has been replaced with an almost joyous uplifting energy, Cope is back to entertaining and educating at the same time.

Like its predecessors the album is well packaged with a booklet stuffed with Cope's writing and poems with several photos of the leather clad Cope and co. looking like some 80s heavy metal band on holiday. The album is again split over 2 disks (just over half an hour each), just to give you that "get up to change the record over" feeling of yesteryear and a pee break. Or is Cope trying to give us all more exercise ?

It starts rather densely, perhaps showing a link back to the prior albums, and the ugly straining vocals are still in place. However under the rather sombre sound Come The Revolution is similar to 1990s Cope and slowly builds into a chanting singalong. A good start if somewhat average-Copewise. It's Too Late To Turn Back Now rocks a tad more, still with an over excited vocal style and still offering rather middling Cope excitement. Thing pick up with the next tracks. After a fake synth-pop start These Things I Know becomes a more folky sing-along similar to the excellent Woden from You Gotta Problem With Me and Psychedelic Odin is a great 5 minute song albeit with a 2 minute spoken coda with a damp squib of an ending. The first 5 minutes are still one of the highlights of the album however. Blood Sacrifice is one of those odd songs that Cope does so well, and The Shipwreck Of St. Paul sounds like Cope did his vocals while out on one of his travels, but the low-fi slightly distorted vocal suits the mood perfectly.

So far so good.

The second disk gets off to a cracking start. All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers) with its long baiting title is basically a great little pop song. OK, it is a Cope pop song and won't ever see any radio play, but it is darn catchy, even if that chorus is hard to get your gob around. Feed My Rock 'n' Roll starts off like a Misty's Big Adventure song before slowly cranking up the energy into ear-splitting territory. It's both hypnotic and fantastic! Dhimmi Is Blue is a slow number of remarkably simple construction, sounding like it escaped from Fried. Despite its 8 minute length it is rather gripping, almost moving in parts, and proves that Cope's material doesn't need layers of noise to work. The Black Sheep's Song is another odd song and rather charming, although it had to work hard to appeal to me over many listens. Things are finally wrapped up with the mellotron drenched I Can Remember This Song, sounding a bit like it escaped from the final section of 20 Mothers.

I have to admit it does take a few listens to get into this material, but it is a damn good Cope album, and currently my most played even with the CD juggling that entails.

Buy it now from Head Heritage.

If you haven't heard Julian Cope before then buy Peggy Suicide.

More Pink Penguins Please!

A quick round up of my search stats,
or "what are people expecting to find when they visit here",
or "let's make even more people come here looking for those thing and leave disappointed"

19% are looking for something to do with the album "Wee Tam and The Big Huge" by The Incredible String Band. I'm going to have to dig out my copy and review it properly. Trouble is I don't have a turntable to hand, I don't want to pay for two CDs at the moment, and a quick file sharing download just to hear it could result in a nasty letter. Bah.

16% Still lots of Kate Bush Aerial searches. And people looking for that "Pi Code" (haven't you cracked it yet?) Still the odd "pink penguin" as well. Did you know that Kate Bush's brothers used to listen to the Incredible String Band while painting the penguins pink?

9% Foritensum test results. No I'm not giving anything away. No I haven't finished it. There are clues in the Kate Bush track 'Pi' found on her album 'Aerial'.

5% bic crystal ballpoint pen. Especially in pink it seems. Whether the pen is pink or the ink is pink I'm not sure. Perhaps this has something to do with those pink penguins.

5% of people still can't work out why Genesis "Calling All Stations" is so bad. It does sound better with a pink bic crystal ballpoint pen in each ear. Or even a pink crystal penguin in each ear.

And I still get the important question "how many hamsters does it take to power a car?". The answer is contained in the Kate Bush track 'Pi' found on her album 'Aerial'.

Also inquiries asking after the "strange shoe shop downham market". I assume they mean the one reinforced externally with thousands of multi-coloured crocs (or so it seems.) And yes, that does include pink crocs.

Sorry

Once more I've confused Bill Bailey and Mitch Benn. Mitch Benn, I apologise for calling you Bill Bailey. Bill Bailey I apologise for accusing you of plagiarism. I must also apologise to Jeremy Clarkson for not crediting him with calling the Ka a 'teapot' and to the band 'Gong' for using their album title "flying teapot".

(Speaking of Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear is one of the funniest programs on the TV. It's a shame they spoil the show with the odd dull bit about cars and their fuel injected camshafts with turbo brake horse powered manifolds.)




Apologies also for all those people who have come to this blog searching for the Incredible String Band's album title "Wee Tam and The Big Huge" and not finding anything about said album ('cos I used the title in an earlier posting). Personally I love "The Big Huge" half for its general weirdness.Wee Tam is pretty good, but not up to the high standards of the first three ISB albums. So there.

And apologies in advance to all those coming to this post in the future expecting to find something about a sitcom featuring the huge star Ronnie Corbett. Sorry.

Apologies to the fish I ate last night, but you were rather tasty. Yum.

Apologies to all those who made and worked on the new X-Files movie for my next sentence. It wasn't very good. You've taken what would have been a run-of-the-mill TV episode, made it twice as long, added several holes in the plot and got rid of the "will they/won't they" excitement between the leading characters. Bah!

I must also apologise for my bus like tendencies in not posting for ages,then sending two at once.

Sorry.


Answers to spot the difference.

Part 1. Bill Bailey has a moustache, Mitch Benn has a beard.

Part 2. That is not my car in the top picture. My pointy hat isn't green.

Music, Hamless, teapots

Catching up ... and failing.

A quick thumbs up for Earth Monkey Productions, or "interesting music for free". Try the recent 50:50 compilation.

Tried to get tickets for Hamlet, and failed. Like everyone else. Nothing to do with "who" was in it of course. We just like Hamlet. No really.

My old car (Ford Ka = teapot) failed. Couldn't find a replacement second hand teapot for ages and nearly bought a grannymobile, but found a bargain second hand flying teapot (SportKa). Oddly it uses less fuel despite going like poo from a spade when provoked. Hopefully by the time I need another car the "eco-friendly" modern cars will be cheap and second hand.

Then comes the "Credit Crunch" and Bill Bailey steals my joke about it sounding like a breakfast cereal. Bastard.