Sunday, June 19, 2005

Mugging Normski

I'm not waiting around on my haunches for this survey to eventually come my way like I did with this one, so despite the danger of being accused that this blog is nothing more than a series of surveys - its collective term being a 'banality of memes' - here comes yet another post where I inflict my taste on an unsuspecting internet population:
1. The total volume of music on my pc: Not much at the moment, as a few months back I burnt most of it onto discs, but at times in the past it was something like 7GB.
2. Songs playing right now: John Cooper Clarke's Readers' Wives
make a date with the brassy brides of britain
the altogether ruder readers' wives
who put down their needles and their knitting
at the doorway to our dismal daily lives
the fablon top scenarios of passion
nipples peep through holes in leatherette
they seem to be saying in their fashion'
I'm freezing charlie - haven't ya finished yet?'
cold flesh the colour of potatoes
in an instamatic living room of sin
all the required apparatus
too bad they couldn't fit her head in
in latex pyjamas with bananas going ape
their identities are cunningly disguised
by a six-inch strip of insulation tape
strategically stuck across their eyes
wives from inverness to inner london
prettiness and pimples co-exist
pictorially wife-swapping with someone
who's happily married to his wrist
Part of the reason I seized the opportunity of doing this survey is because I was going to cut and paste the lyrics above as a post anyway. I can't believe that I have had this track burned onto a CD for a couple of months now, and it is only just now that I have discovered how absolutely brilliant it is. Literally discovered it this morning.
Though I've always been aware of Cooper Clarke; from seeing the two minute splenetic blast of 'I Don't Want To Be Nice' on a Best of the Old Grey Whistle Test special to my exclaimation of: "Who the fuck is the anoxeric Mike Scott advertising Sugar Puffs alongside the Honey Monster?" he only really registered with me a few years back when I was listening to the Mark Radcliffe Show on Radio One late one night. I loved John Peel to bits, but I always preferred the music that Radcliffe played on his show, and this particular night he played The Kinks Dead End Street and Cooper Clarke's Beasley Street back to back. I hadn't heard either song before and both songs totally blew me away. Definitely one of those special musical moments.
3. Last albums I bought: Gang of Four's Shrinkwrapped.
4. Five songs I've been listening to a lot: Josef K 'Sorry For Laughing'; John Cooper Clarke's 'Readers' Wives'; Kathryn Williams 'No One Takes You Home'; Magazine 'Model Worker'; Human League 'Empire State Human'.
5. Passing this along to: Kara, Victor and Lisa (Reidski, you'll tell me anyway, whether I ask you or not ;-)

5 comments:

Lisa Rullsenberg said...

Josef K! Praise for the Mark Radcliffe 10-midnight show on Radio One!

Sigh. Too, too much.

I have several extracts of the shows of Mark and Lard on tape: just some great juxtapositions of songs and commentary (and humour). I refuse to throw them out even though all logic says I don't have the space to keep them...

Imposs1904 said...

Aye, I used to love the Mark Radcliffe 10-midnight show. Only problem was that I was working nights at the time, so I had to put a blank tape into my cassette player and settle for only being able to tape the show most nights.

Christ, the brilliant songs I heard for the first time on that show. The list is endless, but I remember one - The Cavedogs 'Love Grenade' - blowing me away, and then the pain when I found that I couldn't find a copy anywhere (thank christ for file-sharing ;-)

Also remember Jarvis Cocker reading extracts from the Ian McEwan short story, 'The Last Day of Summer'. Just a really tremendous show all round - except when he would play the ambient guff sometimes at the end of the show.

Any time you feel like throwing those tapes out, just give me a shout. By way of exchange, I could send you some burned mp3 CDs of the talking bits from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's radio show on XFM.

Lisa Rullsenberg said...

Ah yes! I think I have the Cocker reading McEwan thing... (note to self: dig tape out!)

Hmm, re: Gervais and Merchant - sometimes I can find RG very amusing, and sometimes I want to slap him. I have a thing about certain types of comedy, and sadly The Office just made me curl (too too close to my memories of office life and in no good way: shiver...)

So, I like the offer but choose the good bits!

I'll try and dig out the tapes of Mark R and see what I have on them. If I had a half-decent system I could MP3/CD the damn things! Grrr....

Imposs1904 said...

I have to be honest that the first time I saw the second series of the Office - after falling in love with the first series - more often than not I had to either look away or watch it through fingers, the comedy was so cruel but at the same time I have to say that it is the best ever British sit com, bar none. People can witter on about Fawlty Towers and this or that series of Black Adder but neither of them even come close to the brilliance and pathos of the Office.

Oh aye, and I went to the same uni as Gervais so I have to stick up for a fellow college chum, in the same way that Reidski has to back up Martin Smith. ;-)

Reidski said...

I haven't backed him up and he's not my fucking chum! You're cruel and you've made me cry - boo hoo hoo.