Guitarist failed the audition for Waters' band (couldn't sing, apparently), odd concept albums about geese, had a bass player called (brillianatly) Colin Bass, the singer's not been well. I give you (pause for extraction of rizlas from pockets of greatcoats) the mighty Camel!

Warning - may include panpipe solo and eighties concept-style video footage...

Thanks I'm sure, but you really shouldn't have bothered. Really.

I know there are some who don't like Doctor Who (Mr Ellen and Hepworth to name two) but here's a nice montage of his regenerations so far, for those who do like the show.

Two shots of music and fun with Bill Bailey

Is it rare when music and comedy are brought together so well?

Is this the way forward for the modern day drummer?

.facebook.com/home.php?

Following David Hepworth's rediscovering of Al Green, I've just had a similar experience with the Flying Burritto Brothers.

Is this not one of the most spine-tingling pieces of music ever recorded?

Wonderful.

Just been given the all clear to put the Helen Mirren bikini picture on the fridge, on the spurious grounds that it’s a shining example of the benefits of restraint at the the trough for those of us no longer in the first flush of youth.
The GLW (unlike her Scrumpy Jack-guzzling husband) is as trim as she was twenty years ago but nevertheless she fell for it “h, l & s”. It’s a cunning ( and slightly underhand) ruse, but ... well ... you know.
I’m sure Dame Helen will be a big hit with her fellow fridgemates, who are:
* Delia Smith (pictured in the late 60s/early 70s brandishing a whisk, a mixing bowl and an egg and looking, it has to be said, ever so slightly foxy.)
* Paul & Linda (in a lovey-dovey early ’70s shot)
* Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais (sitting on a lawn, with long hair and “sideies”)
* A recipe for some sort of paprika-based sauce
* The mobile number of a Lithuanian meathead called Helmut who is a lovely fella and a master of the plastering arts
* Paul Weller and his eldest kids, Nat and Leah, at the Mojo awards the other week.
* A poem I wrote to mark the occasion of our daughter’s pet rabbit being killed by a fox a few years ago - an attempt to console her rather than an account of the actual event.
* Some guff from school.

Ours is, on the whole, a cheerful fridge (and, as nobody has ever said: “a cheerful fridge is a cheerful home”), but it‘s just got a whole lot hotter.

Prompted by the post on the Shining advert, I thought the Massive may wish to jot a line about this most underrated of movie oeuvres, the (good) Horror Film. Now I agree that this has become, these days, somewhat of an oxymoron, ever since it was decreed that horrors were either opportunities for teenage girls to display their bosoms ahead of being eviscerated, or opportunities for the director to display how ironic and comedic he can be with the past catalogue of this genre.
My shortlist of favourites:
Night of the Demon, an old black and white british effort, passing the runes to avoid (an agreeably laughable by modern standards version of) the devil. Still succeeds to raise a frisson.
The Shining, frequently deplored thru' Jack Nicholsons, um, excitable portrayal, but a very scary film, if you avoid the more obvious scary bits, in favour of imagining the reality of seeing the twin girls in the corridor. Or the chilling observations of the ghostly bartender.
Ghost Story, again often passed over, this tale of old men haunted by their collective past, and featuring some very old and very previously famous faces, always chills me.
28 Days later, right up to speed, this is a cracker. OK, as memorably pointed out by "Roasted" in the Observer colour supplement, please remember that this is not, repeat not, a zombie film. Zombies can't run. They are infected. Got that! (28 weeks later is crap, BTW)
Night of the living../Dawn of the.../Day of the Dead, the original George A Romero trilogy. My 3 favourite films ever, as my kids will testify, having been made to watch them from a (far too) young age. Parables of society, and the humans, or the most of them, are the bad guys. The remake of Night was not so good, but the remake of Dawn was surprisingly strong, even if forgetting "Roasted"s cardinal rule. It is sad that Land of the Dead was so dire; I had had high hopes. I am awaiting the new one,Diary of the Dead, now on DVD, following an cinema release so brief that even the dead could not have risen during its screening window, with some hope. (Maybe some have seen it already?)
As the man says, "They're coming to get you, Barbara"... Come and get me with your favourite recommendations.

The big hilarious joke this morning on TV and radio is that Alistair Darling has been seeking relief from the country's economic travails by going to see - wait for it - Leonard Cohen!

How could he do this, the talking heads ask, when Cohen's known as being uniquely depressing? The notion that Leonard Cohen has always had a reputation as the poet of swinging suicides is now so deeply embedded in people's heads that last week I heard David Davies (the sports hack) and Gabby Logan talking about it on the radio as if it were as incontrovertible a fact as Pete Docherty's interest in heroin.

I'm getting tired of it. If anyone's listening, I remember the arrival of Leonard Cohen's first record and he was known as being lugubrious and introspective but *not remotely depressing*. Since then he's been increasingly noted for his humour, both in his delivery and compositions. If you're the kind of person who can't recognise humour in songs unless it's delivered by somebody in a clown wig you probably don't appreciate this verse from "Chelsea Hotel".

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.

Or that if you want to make jokes about his voice then you'll have to wait until he's finished himself. This is "Tower Of Song":

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the great beyond
They tied me to this table right here
In the tower of song

How many depressives bother writing something so delectable about oral sex as this from "Light As The Breeze"?

So I knelt there at the delta,
at the alpha and the omega,
I knelt there like one who believes.
And the blessings come from heaven
and for something like a second
I'm cured and my heart
is at ease.

And when most artists find that an ex-lover has stolen all their money and ransacked their pension fund, they hurry to write a self-piteous autobiography and then start weeping on the shoulder of every chat show host who will have them. They don't just shrug and go on tour. In fact, if Alistair Darling wanted a reminder of the important things in life and the value of treating triumph and disaster both the same, he could do no better than Leonard Cohen.

I've finally finished Series 4 of The Wire, and I now want to watch that trailer that David Hepworth posted back in January:

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/quotso-duck-goes-barquot-0

But it's not available. I just looked on YouTube, and I'm too scared in case I run into spoilers.

Anyone?

Then I'm going to bed. Honest.

Have you ever had a record that you were so into, you had to hear it at least once a day?

A list of some of my past once-a-day obsessions:

Judee Sill - Jesus Was A Crossmaker
Fountains Of Wayne - Bright Future In Sales
Fats Waller - Carolina Shout
Todd Rundgren - I Saw the Light
Aztec Camera - Walk Out To Winter
Clive Gregson & Christine Collister - Lonesome Whistle
Del Amitri - Not Where It's At
Little Feat - Dixie Chicken
The Temptations - Ain't Too Proud To Beg
Rockpile - If Sugar Was As Sweet As You
The Beach Boys - Don't Worry Baby
Ben Webster - Over The Rainbow

I mentioned this in an earlier thread but thought it might bear repeating as a warning to potential quiz goers and, if I'm being honest, to bring the shame of the central character to a wider audience.

It was the usual pub-quiz format, the quiz master announced the running order - general knowledge, music, history, food, sport, geography, current affairs etc. - and explained that you could play a joker in advance to double up on a particular round. We had a bit of a heated debate and my suggestion that we play the joker on the music round was over-ruled in favour of the food round, by Ben, a graphic designer and self proclaimed amateur chef. We'll call him Ben because that's his name, Ben Thompson.

We scored well in the history section and by half time, during which tiny sausages were served, we were placed 2nd. We played our joker as reluctantly agreed and the first question after the break was 'Who won the FA Cup in 1972' or some such nonsense. Before we could query what was going on we were asked to name the city that hosted the last Winter Olympics.

At this point Ben stood up in the middle of the pub and pointed out fairly loudly that they appeared to have skipped a round and shouldn't we be answering questions on food?

Silence descended as the entire pub stared at our table. After a short pause, the man with the mic said "The sausages were the fucking food mate! Now ... moving on ... what year was Ali's Rumble in the Jungle?"

We came fifth.

Keen To Be Green song

Sooty and Sweep versus Nicko McBrain of Iron Maiden

Check this guy out, he's amazing. Better than Enigma any day of the week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7513571.stm

I know this clip has been doing the rounds but it is very good, drunk ref from Belarus.

This track, a marvellous noise, came on the iPod amidst some Lee Perry dub tunes. But the difference between the two is incredible. What exactly did Lee Perry do when producing The Clash tune? I've heard that the band remixed it afterwards taking away some of the Lee Perry sound making it sound more like the tinny punk of their debut. But I've also heard he was trying to do it as punk as he could.

I'd love to hear it really sounding like Lee Perry producing The Clash!

Oh and also on the iPod, the remaster of The Clash's first album. Wow. That really gave it some OOMMMPHHH.

Who is this? (with the camera, not the mac)

As a signatory to Mr Hepworths Decades Theory in Scotties "1980s not rubbish shock" thread (sorry i cant do hyperlinks yet, any tips?). I dipped into my "it happened but we don't actually *listen* to anything from that far back" category. So I did listen, dipped into my hard drive and uncovered this Joseph Locke weepy from 1947 but still current in the 50s. Anyone else for 50's revisited?

I have a habit of wanting one or maybe two cd's as a result of a recommendation to me on this site. I shoot off to Amazon and make a selection or 2 only to find I am a few quid short of the magic £15 fee delivery threshold. I've just done it off the back of a recommendation for Lonely at the Top by Randy Newman. I then added Damien Rice 9 based on the video clip someone posted a couple of days ago of 9 Crimes which was lovely.

This got me £5 underneath the magic £15 and thereafter a scurry around the sale cd's identified The Platinum Collection - Blancmange (subconsciously prompted by talk of the Bhuttan Philharmonic around these parts last week) and Countdown to Ecstasy by Steely Dan, both at £2.98. £15.92 - job done.

I can't be the only one doing this (Amazon's pricing policy positively forces it). Anyone else doing it and have you any top up recommendations to get the order above £15?