I'd like to dedicate this mix to my good friend Assunta's beautiful new haircut and how 80s she looked last week 1. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle 2. My Bloody Valentine - Lose My Breath 3. The Cure - Pictures Of You 4. The Replacements - Never Mind 5. Television Personalities - Paradise Is For The Blessed 6. Christian Death - Romeo's Distress 7. The Soft Boys - I Wanna Destroy You 8. The Smiths - Panic 9. Black Tambourine - Throw Aggi Off The Bridge [...]
There are some artists who have had a significant presence in pop while staying very much in the shadows. One of these would be Virginia Astley, whose discography is (mostly) unavailable and in any case entirely obscure to most followers of pop. Born to Edwin (Ted) Astley in 1959, he of "The Saint" and "Danger Man" themes, Virginia found herself in a musical family. Her elder sister Karen married Pete Townshend and her brother Jon was a noted producer and mastering engineer. Taking up piano and then flute, Virginia's initial recorded output was as keyboard player with Victims [...]
I've been banging on about this for a while now, you'll be glad to know it's finally here... If you haven't read anything about it, the idea is a simple one - chose a Peel Session song performed by your favourite artist and post it. Anywhere. If you are on Facebook or Twitter or have your own blog... It's easy to find a track. Google is your best friend obviously, but so is You Tube - just do a search for [...]
There isn't really too much for me to say about this right now. Just listen and then watch the 3rd video if nothing else. HAS ANYBODY SEEN THIS YET AND WHY DID I JUST HEAR ABOUT IT? how is it? k thanks. happy turkey murder or something. The Skids - The Saints Are Coming The Skids - Into The Valley DOWNLOADS The Skids - Into The Valley The Skids - The Saints [...]
To play catch up from last week's missed mix, I'm giving you two once again. They're timely with their themes, the first being all German artists and the second being songs about war. In fact, in many ways these two themes are inextricably linked. As everyone celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, it inevitably brings Berlin's extraordinary history, along with Germany's more generally, back into the spotlight. And Cold War is war after all. I've written about how much I love Berlin here before, and it still remains one of my top cities [...]
The Skids were fronted by a pair of towering talents. With his chiseled jaw line and stentorian voice, Richard Jobson was a natural front man, commanding the stage with the authority of an army officer leading his troops into battle. And Stuart Adamson was every bit his equal, buttressing Jobson's voice with muscular guitar riffs and soaring lead lines that called to mind amassed bagpipes sounding across the highlands of their native Scotland. The band formed in Dunfermline, a working class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where a career in music offered one of the few alternatives [...]
Absolutely Nothing. mp3 : The Skids - And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda mp3 : The Pogues - And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda I can forgive Richard Jobson for all his pretentions simply for the fact that his inclusion of this song on Joy , the final LP by The Skids in 1981 was the first time I ever heard [...]
Regular readers will be aware that I've occasionally mentioned my affection for Raith Rovers FC . The team earned promotion last season to the Scottish First Division, which means we are just one more promotion away from the regular games against the big city teams like Celtic, Rangers, Hearts, Hibs , Dundee United and Aberdeen and a handful of others in the Premier League. Today is the biggest game of the season so far as we head 10 miles across the county of Fife to take on our fiercest rivals [...]
I used the title to give myself a (very poor) excuse to post a demo of The Skids - Circus Games : [See post to listen to audio] (which you can find more demos and live here , plus some Peel Sessions here ) Plus it is (again, a very very poor) pun which enables me to mention the current and upcoming summer footie tournaments which, if you were like me last week when I looked at the upcoming fixtures and saw that there wasn't one match kicking off on Saturday... [...]
Nowadays, singles don't hang around the charts for all that long a period. Not like back in 1979....The Skids were a well established band by November 1979 when they released their seventh single Working For The Yankee Dollar. They had already enjoyed a few Top 30 hits which in turn led to a number of memorable appearances on Top Of The Pops with frontman Richard Jobson bemusing parents up and
Here it is the middle of February, the snow is almost gone (damn, it's snowing again today), and I want to go away somewhere but I can't. I'm now another year older, not wiser. We have a new car (just today - a new Mazda 6), the old crown vic is dead (a write off in a low speed collision, the guy even admitted to hitting me so the insurance covered everything) I really don't feel like writing anything else today so here is one of my favorite songs covered by a [...]
Off for a quick break in the warmth and hopefully the sun on the island of Madeira. It's only for 7 nights, and rather than let TVV slide off your radars altogether, I'm pre-recording some postings looking back at singles that could have made it in the 45 45s at 45 series. Those of you who followed that hugely self-indulgent exercise will know that with a rule of one song per act, it was
A year that was so good it led Smashing Pumpkins to write a song about it. Or maybe not. Thinking back, this was the start of the serious love affair with music. It was the year when I was finally able to go and see bands at the Glasgow Apollo. It was the year that I worked for some 8 weeks over the summer break between 4th and 5th year at school to have some money to begin to build up a record
I’m sure I once read somewhere that some folk out there think that their i-pods can read their minds. The evidence for this seems to be that some song or other that they were thinking of suddenly comes on while their machine is on random shuffle. Now I’m sure if you’ve got a small number of songs on your i-pod, say something in the region of between 50 and 100, then there’s a real possibility
We're at Derby's new venue tonight, The Royal formerly the Royal Hotel although it closed as a hotel in 1950. Both tonight's bands comment on the posh-ness of the surroundings when they come on stage, which is quite late. The support act play at 9.15, the main band at 10.15. First up are a band called Madskull. The name doesn't sound promising and neither does the lack of a drumkit. Then when a badly dressed group of scallies, looking like Oasis after they've eaten all the pies, walk on stage to the sound of 'My Boy Lollipop' possibly [...]
I’m just about halfway through this epic adventure, and maybe it’s a bit of fatigue that’s set in. But its getting more and more difficult to put into words, in a different way, just why a particular 45 means so much to me. I think I’ve also thrown myself by Buzzcocks appearing way down at #23. Can I really justify that it’s better than what you’re getting today? Looks like I’m going to have to
And I bet you thought it was just buskers on the London Underground who covered this:- mp3 : The Skids - All The Young Dudes mp3 : Billy Bragg - All The Young Dudes The former was recorded for a Radio 1 Session for the Kid Jensen show back in 1979, and is on the double-pack single of Working For The Yankee Dollar. The latter is on an official bootleg from a 2004 gig entitled Billy Bragg at The
Though it came and went in the blink of an eye, of all the musical movements, punk tends to live on in the imaginations of people. Just look at the number of documentaries, books, academic studies, magazine cover stories, compilation albums, and fashion aesthetics that still draw on punk. Whether it really was as revolutionary as it seemed, punk has definitely become iconic and continues to influence new bands with its sneering nihilism and DIY-learn-three-chords-and-for m-a-band approach. My personal connection to punk is one that actually started relatively later in life than for most. I was about [...]
Today is All Saints' Day (and before anyone asks, NO FUCKING WAY ) which is as good a time as any to rediscover religion. I went looking for mine this morning, and it turned out to be up in the attic, packed in with a collection of failed hard drives and obsolete video cards in a box marked "unneeded junk." Back when I used to work weekends at the college library, the portion of my shift that didn't involve playing "roust-a-pervert" or explaining to patrons that "no, this is not Boston [...]
Headed out the door in a few minutes to catch Del The Funky Homosapien w/ Mike Relm at The Fillmore... hopefully they are feeling fresher than me, a guy who spent a little too much time last night consuming a bottle of Irish vodka... I did not know that the Irish even were involved in the vodka trade.. go figger The vodka seemed free at the time, but today I've definitely been paying for it... I went out and celebrated after I cashed a check last night for selling some [...]
Gold Soundz
The Same Mistakes
Football and Music
Fantastic Weapon
Condemned to Rock 'N Roll
THE VINYL VILLAIN
Oreo Cookie Blues
Fit For Moshing
Armagideon Time
Lil Mike's Last Known Thoughts & Random Revelations
Boards of Canada – Reach For The Dead
Ace by @thebigsleepnyc #nowplaying
Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe Protein Punched by City Light, Magic Man and Smallpools
HAERTS: “All The Days”
