Xhristmas (Ha BumBug!)

Spoken word records hold a small fascination for me; tangible proof that there was life before the internet - or even the VHS. In the olden days, before everything was a click away from everything else and everyone had everything ever recorded crammed into their increasingly tiny phones (someday someone is going to loose all of Western Culture down a toilet) and had it piped directly into their heads through increasingly tiny headphones, people used to buy these big round pieces of plastic and listen to them together.

So throw another bundle of unopened Christmas cards on the fire, draw up closer to the computer with a mug of mulled punch, and and listen to proper actors reading real words.

Hardly a beat in the thing. I meant to post this last Christmas - but with one thing and another... So here it is. Another 50p well spent in the local charity shop.

A Christmas Carol - With Ronald Coleman

Mr Pickwick's Christmas - Charles Laughton

Long time no post - having new babies will do that.

To keep yourself entertained till I dig out some beloved vinyl from under the mountains of baby stuff that has descended on us, you could do worse than go listen to the groovy sounds over at Tittyshakers.com.

Well, That Didn't Work Quite Like I Was Expecting It To

So you'll just have to click on this link instead:

vinylforever.jpg (JPEG Image, 613x480 pixels)

The Golden Hour Presents A Stereo Showcase

Another cheesy gem from the vaults. I won't bore the world with most of this LP (or even its very dull cover) because it is mostly pretty run of the mill, in one ear - out the other easy listening dross interspersed with a couple of semi-decent jazz-lite tracks. Though the lyrics on side one track three; Mexico nearly made the grade,

Mexico!
La-la la-la la-la la-la!
Mexico!
La-la la-la la-la la-la!
Mexico!
La-la la-la la-la la-la!

What leapt out at me though was side one, track six - yet another version of Lennon & McCartney's Norwegian Wood - which, if nothing else, answered a question I have often asked myself:

If the Beatles had never formed would John and Paul have gone to America and ended up writing the theme music to Battlestar Gallactica?

(I lay awake at night worrying about stuff like this.)

Here's just the music so you can listen to it in comfort and try not to think of spaceships.

Norwegian Wood

Science Fiction Double Feature

When I'm in Charity shops and not flipping through boxes of unlistenable to crap LPs I'm either giving myself neck-strain from doing that bend your head to read shelfuls* of book-spines thing, or flipping through hundreds of cruddy CDs, hoping to find some gold among all the last week's boyband's entire (depressingly huge) back catalogue.
Yesterday I walked away from town with three possible CDs in my grubby little mits. One went straight back into the charity shop bin after two tracks, the second is on my way to my mother-in-law because she likes plainsong (Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) and the third....

Ah! the third...

To be precise it was only half a third. Disc 2 of a 2 disc set called Psyche-Rock et Minijupes (Psychedelic Rock and Miniskirts?) one of a series entitled Pop A Paris. No idea where disc 1 went. I did hunt for it.


Some of the names on here I knew, Serge Gainsberg, Bridget Bardot, Johnny Halliday, some I didn't, Nicoletta (giving a gutsy French rendition of Dusty Springfield's Son of A Preacherman) is a knockout.

The Highlight of the show though, was this track:

Psyche-Rock by Les Yper-Sound

Psyche Rock (after an exhaustive speed-reading of a few web pages) turns out to be a Mr Pierre Henry. A big cheese in Avant Garde music and another of those all-round incredibly influential, Inventors Of The Twentieth Century, type people who I've never heard of before now.

Here's Fatboy Slim's remix - which doesn't really add much to the glory of the original:

And here it is turned into the theme for a Fox TV show (sorry I couldn't embed this link):

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oN_QE45fVkU


Next day, playing the Soundrack Album of cheesy British softcore porno movie The Stud I hear this:

Close Encounter Of The Third Kind - Cameroon

I may have to put together a whole post of Science Fiction disco (What's not to like?). As soon as I can find my treasured copy of Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip's I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper...







*Shelvesfuls? Shelf-fulls?