Thanks to the latest Something for the Weekend e-mail, I have been 'enjoying' this deeply-unsettling-in-a-David-Lynch-kind-of-way video:

Apparently though, as this site points out, this style of singing was not intended to be funny like Les Dawson's intentionally bad piano playing, but was part of a long tradition called the Vokaliz style:

There is indeed something uncanny about a lip-synch to a song with no words, and his waxed face and hair helmet certainly do not carry over well. But once one does a bit of research, one learns that the number was not conceived out of some desire to cater to the so-bad-it's-good tastes of the Western YouTube generation, but in fact was meant to please --to genuinely please-- Soviet audiences who were capable of placing this routine, this man, and this song into a familiar context.

This version may serve as something of a palate cleanser. Worked for me anyway:

if you don't watch this and weep for your lost youth you're.....

Mad Men. Last episode but one. Joan's squeezebox. Spellbinding.

I could post the YouTube clip but Mad Men is best enjoyed in its entirety.

That is all.

I already know this is the greatest song ever written in praise of a profession, but do you have any other suggestions?

I posted a previous 'postcard from the hedge' last July about my vague angst

My latest thought is to train to become an HGV driver. This, I have to admit, is largely due to the following influences:

Do you,

A. indulge my mid-life crisis (I'm pushing 43)
B. tell me to stick to my sensible 9-5 office job.

Watched the Manchester derby the other night and noticed the green and yellow scarves. I presumed this was in reference to some anniversary or other of their predecessors Newton Heath. I now discover it's a protest statement against the Glazers.

Just wondered what the views of the Man U supporters among the massive are. As a Rangers fan, I've watched in some amazement as a particularly vocal section of the support, spoiled rotten, imho, by the Souness years, when we could legitimately be called the biggest club in Britain, launched the 'We Deserve Better' campaign. This was directed against a management that had brought the club to its first European final in 36 years and delivered the SPL title the following season and are currently sitting 10 points clear of a Celtic in far ruder financial health (in fact, with a healthy turnover and virtually zero debt, surely one of the healthiest clubs financially in the UK?)

It seems for the self-styled 'true fans', any mere baubles the clubs manage to pick up on the way, even domestic championships or European trophies, are somehow tainted 'pyrrhic victories'. The idea that you can deliberately forego a title in the here and now for one supposedly of more meaning at some distant point down the line is severely suspect in my opinion.

The former William Michael Albert Broad has often been a figure of some mockery, but I submit, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that his 1986 album Whiplash Smile, from whence the track below hails, was a corker:

'Tune' is the word for it, I believe...

...build a flower-shaped home.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/8483162.stm

Be honest, if you clicked on this thread (which clearly you have) you weren't expecting that, were you?

Wonder if he'll invite Carlos round for tea and cakes...

No other comments - just a surreal story!

We have mused quite a bit on here about the sustainability of Spotify and its impact on artists and record labels. This article makes interesting reading.

Revealing for the first time today how the commercial relationship works between the streaming service and the record labels, Rob Wells, the senior vice-president Digital for Universal Music Group International, declared Spotify a very sustainable financial model which was paying out well to the record labels which it has entered into licensing deals with. Mr Wells disclosed that Spotify is paying Universal Music Group a royalty per stream in only two of its territories: the UK and Spain. In its other four territories: Sweden, Norway, Finland and France, Spotify pays the record labels from the money generated by subscriptions and advertising and not on a per stream basis.

Apparently we in the UK, along with the Spanish, are the freeloaders (guilty as charged, m'lud - they'll have to make the ads a lot more annoying and intrusive to force me to switch!)

Mr Wells said it was “lagging behind” in the UK and Spain because of the extremely high quantity of people using the service for free – meaning it was a more difficult task to convert 10 per cent of a much larger number into subscribers. Spotify has recently re-turned on the ‘invite only’ mechanism in the UK to limit the amount of users on the site.
No official figures have been released to show how many people pay £9.99 a month to subscribe to Spotify’s premium service in the UK, which offers an advert free experience. However, it is still thought to be a low number.

Prompted by the rather good Charles Shaar Murray feature (shared with Blur) in the latest issue, check out these vids. Let's just say you wouldn't want to spill their drinks...

Love this one as well. You may recognise the chaps doing the intro...

Check out the comments. Even their fans are hard! Apologies to Messrs Ellen and Hepworth, but can't resist mentioning these ;-)

How dare he say 'not that great musically', bloody journalists can't play a note and he get's high listening to Mike Oldfield. DR FEELGOOD FUCKIN ROCKED!

What were those two clueless c*nts on about?
How the f*ck did they get to be regarded as some kind of rock oracle?
Take 'em down to the Canvey mud flats.....

Eek!

It does exactly what it says on the thread title.

I've just come back from a family holiday to the rather fantastic Disneyland Paris (very cold but a welcome lack of long queues), so I thought, apropos of nothing much, we might put our minds to some Walt-related songs / band names / album titles. Like perhaps:

Through With Buzz Lightyear - Steely Dan

River Deep, Mountain High School Musical - Ike & Tina Turner

Guns'n'Roses - Welcome to the Jungle Book

Off the Walt - Michael Jackson

Further to David H's comments in the Home Service feature of the new issue about coming across a vinyl copy of Phil Collins' solo debut Face Value and being reminded what a great record it was, I've been playing it on heavy rotation on Spotify and he's not wrong. 'In the Air Tonight' - surely one of the best album openers ever? Great cover of Tomorrow Never Knows as well, a Lennon tribute I presume, given that the album was released in 1981. If you listen closely in the track's run-out, he sings Over the Rainbow, which I found subtly touching.

I dimly remembered reading somewhere that Danny Baker chose a Collins tune as one of his all time favourite radio songs. A moment with Google confirmed this, an extract on his own Internet Treehouse site from an interview he did with, you guessed it, David Hepworth, for Mojo.

I ask him to name five great radio records and he comes back with Phil Collins' Heat On The Street ("it just is"), Brooklyn Owes The Charmer by Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell's Free Man In Paris, Lee Dorsey's Eeny Meeny Mini Mo and Ray Charles's Mess Around. "I'm not trying to educate people or show off my record collection. These are just records that work like a steam train. Everything else can flag but those will always whip it up again."

I concur wholeheartedly with Danny's (and The Word's) anti-Guilty Pleasures stance.

I don't work for the big G, I just stumbled across this series of ads for the Chrome browser and thought they were close to genius. That's all.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/m/man_city/8422676.stm

Mark Hughes sacked as Man City manager and Roberto Mancini appointed as replacement. Quite a surprise, I feel, the timing of it anyway.