Who's your friend?

Another Friday night and nothing prepared; this is becoming a habit. Try this little gem from a Fingerprintz EP (on blue vinyl).

mp3: Fingerprintz - Who's Your Friend? (1979)
When I get my new stylus maybe I’ll post the other three songs.

Los Bravos con Bob

I stumbled upon this on YouTube recently and it’s pretty good. My ex brother-in-law’s (used to be married to my sister) claim to fame was that he sang with Los Bravos for a while. This excellent clip from Spanish TV shows him in action. My eight year old thinks it’s brilliant.



Interestingly, considering the events this week, the last time I saw him was at a Think Floyd show where his daughter (my niece) was appearing in a production of The Wall.

Get a move on

Hi! Kind hearted 80s disciple Mick here (thanks Steve). I haven’t had any time for blogging this week apart from a wordless tribute to Rick Wright, but I’m going to try and make up for that this weekend. Here’s a Fashion song because Peewit reminded me in his comment that Rick once recorded an album with De Harris and even provided a link if you want to hear it.

mp3: Fashion - Move On (Audio Extra)
Another post to follow later (probably).

Richard William Wright (28 July 1943 - 15 September 2008)

Pink Floyd - Remember A Day

Half forgotten album tracks

You know those album tracks that you loved but weren’t singles and never appear on ‘Best of…’ compilations and don’t even get a little tick next to them on Allmusic reviews? That’s what this is about. It might be part of a series or it might be a one off – it depends how drunk I am and how I feel about it tomorrow.

First up, my favourite track from Journeys To Glory (after To Cut A Long Story Short and The Freeze obviously).

mp3: Spandau Ballet - Confused (1981) (Buy)

Let's Dance...

It’s Friday night and I’ve got several cans of beer so it must be blogging time. It occurred to me recently that it’s almost exactly 20 years since I bought my first CD player and from that moment I stopped buying vinyl albums. I'm pretty sure my last vinyl LP was Joyce Sims Come Into My Life mainly for this:

mp3: Joyce Sims - Lifetime Love

Play loud and stick your head between the speakers around the 3:40 mark

For shame...

From the Urban Dictionary:
1. for shame

used to express great discontent, dissatisfaction, disappointment, often in a funny way; usually used after someone (including oneself) has done something wrong, committed a party foul, or said something not cool (either stupid or politically incorrect)

I bought the Daily Mail today because they were giving away Spandau Ballets True CD. I enjoyed listening to it but nothing quite matched this:

mp3: Spandau Ballet - Glow (12-inch mix)

Rant...

Want to hear about my day? What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t have the occasional rant?

It was my middle sons birthday today and he’s been hinting for weeks that he wants The Legend of Zelda for the Wii so I dutifully ordered it for £30 from HMV (Amazon was out of stock and ironically I don’t use Play because I find them a bit slow). I got an email on 27th Aug saying it had been sent and I looked forward to receiving it. It still hadn’t arrived yesterday (that’s eight days after it had been ‘sent’) so I gave them a call. They said it had definitely been sent but isn’t considered lost until 14 days after the despatch date. But I could get a refund if it arrived late (or not at all).

So, today: We gave him some presents first thing this morning and told him there would be a special one when he got home from school, the idea being if it didn’t arrive today I would nip out and get another. So I waited for the post…and waited. The post was much later than usual today and, of course, when it arrived there was no game. I phoned all the local shops and nobody had it in stock. I started phoning neighbouring towns and the first place I found that had it was HMV (again) in Woking – only now the game was £40 plus a 30-mile round trip in the pouring rain. Anyway, by 2 o’clock I was back home with the game and I finally relaxed. I should have known better. The boy gets home from school, gets all excited about the game and puts it in the Wii…and the f***ing disc is faulty!!!! So, back to Woking, it’s their last copy of course, get refund, go to Game on the floor below and buy yet another copy!! Thank Todd this one works (but I still seem to be £70 out of pocket).

End of rant.

mp3: XTC - Complicated Game (Buy)

Just so we’re clear, this isn’t an anti HMV rant – they’ve actually been very helpful.

Happy Birthday Al

In case you hadn’t noticed I took most of August off. Now I’m being nagged to start blogging again but I haven’t got anything prepared. In desperation I searched wikipedia and discovered it’s Al Jardines 66th birthday today. Fortunately, Al is co-writer and lead singer of one of my all time favourite “guilty pleasures” and I happen to have a brilliant clip of him and the Beach Boys performing it at Knebworth.

Enjoy…