Grappelling reading

I was pleased to be asked recently to write a piece for the excellent Stupefaction blog. A big thank you to Head Honcho, Tim Brown, for posting my Appreciation of Stephane Grappelli. 

Lift up your skirt and fly

Desdemona by John's Children was (Smashed) Blocked

We live in an age where we can say and broadcast almost anything. If the footage had existed the BBC would have reveled in showing us Andrew Mitchell cycling up to Plod and calling him a fucking pl*b. But it wasn't always thus. From George Formby to Frankie Goes To Hollywood, the Beeb have banned numerous recordings. This collection brings together 75 of them.

LII

After the ups and downs of the last two years (a roller-coaster ride doesn't even come close), it was with a positive spring in my step that I came down the stairs in our new home this morning. Yes, a year older than yesterday morning but, with a sense, finally, of being in the right place (and, it feels to me, as near to the right time as powers higher than me have probably preordained*).

But, hey, it's just another birthday. Although not significant - but I would argue that any birthday is significant - I shall probably do all the usual things I've done on previous birthdays, shoehorned as it is between Christmas and New Year.

Before that I'll go around the house straightening all the pictures to this soundtrack. Well, I would if we'd got round to hanging them. But it is a stunning piece of music.

Igor Stravinsky: Pulcinella Overture



* Apologies if this comes across as pompous, it's just how I felt at 8 o'clock this morning.

Even walls fall down

Writing and performing your own songs is great fun - you can fluff the words and/or tune and nobody's any the wiser. It's only when they take on a life of their own and people start singing them back to you that I'll start worrying. I'll get back to you on that one.

Therefore I'm a bit picky when it comes to covering other people's stuff: I avoid popular songs like the plague: the one cover on my Pickering Place EP is a very obscure Slade B-Side which even the writer Jim Lea would struggle to recognise as one of his.

But when I play Tom Petty's Walls, I don't change it at all. And the last time I saw Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby they played it with a straight bat too. It's just such a good song. Who couldn't be moved by the last verse:

Some things are over

Some things go on

Part of me you carry

And part of me is gone

Exterminate: going postal

Time was, you either had to be dead or the Monarch (or married into the Monarchy) to appear on a British postage stamp. Now you don't have to die at all; you just have to be able to regenerate. Either that or be a race of extraterrestrial science fiction mutants.

Daleks don't climb stairs. They level the building.