http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b008yw99/BBC_Four_Sessions_kd_lang/

Enjoy.

Or maybe with the middle-aged...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100618/twl-vatican-blues-brothers-on-missio...

I've just ordered the 2 DVD set of Tutti Frutti, and am looking forward to reliving my mid-80s student days watching Danny McGlone and The Majestics bickering their way round Scotland, and Eddie Clockerty - Richard Wilson's finest hour - and Miss Toner bickering their way round the office.

As a public service, I can reveal that it's available here:

http://www.guardianoffers.co.uk/

for the bargain price of £14.99, postage included. Enjoy.

I arrived home this evening after a lovely day with my grand-daughter and her dog to find on the mat my subscription renewal letter. Has it really been a year since the last one? I love The Word - it's the only magazine I subscribe to - and I love this site, which is far and away the one I visit most. At every opportunity I recommend both mag and site to anyone I think might be interested.

I shall, naturally, be renewing my subscription - the cheque will be in the post tomorrow* - but I have one small complaint. I realise we've had an Easter weekend in the interim to slow things down, but if I'm being sent a "reply within 14 days" offer it would be helpful if it didn't take 12 days to reach me...

Otherwise I think you're all doing a fine job. (Apart from my not getting a mention in the blog contributors' Roll of Honour, of course.) Keep up the good work.

*How much longer will we be able to say that, I wonder?

Long term membership of the Massive tells me there's a vast store of expertise on this site just waiting to be tapped into. And now I need your help.

I am the proud owner of an 17" 1.83 GHz iMac Intel Core Duo, which has of late started to exhibit 'issues' in the reading and burning of CDs and DVDs - "medium write" errors when burning CDs; telling me I've inserted a blank CD when one with data burned from my mate's Mac is in the slot; ejecting blank DVDs without even an error message when trying to archive stuff. And all this on media we've successfully used in the past. A little trawling on the net strongly suggests my DVD drive is dying and needs to be replaced.

So...does anyone here have any recommendations as to what to go for? Internal or external drive would be OK - the MouseMaster has the expertise to replace an internal drive should we find a compatible one. I'd rather not spend a king's ransom, but reliability is the main concern rather than cost.

PS James Blast, I am very jealous...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/1/20090531/ten-the-la-s-reform-c60bd6d.html

The new edition of The Word arrived one minute ago, and I'm experiencing a weird mixture of joy (as always at this stage of the month) and trauma. And that's without even unwrapping the mag.

Is it too late to say I'd prefer a cover with lots and lots of text?

Regretting my subscription renewal already ;-)

Just back from Norwich Arts Centre, where I witnessed a storming set from James Hunter. What a singer : it's as if Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson somehow had a child who plays stinging lead guitar into the bargain. A very friendly and approachable chap too - I bumped into him a few hours before the gig, and had a brief chat. Great band, too. (And the sax players look like a pair of gangland debt collectors, which only added to my enjoyment. I had visions of them screwing to a cake stand the pelvis of any promoter who tried to renegotiate their fee.) I'd urge anyone who's up for a healthy dose of sweaty rhythm & blues to try and see them - they play Newcastle on 26th, Brighton on 30th and Cranleigh on 31st. NAC was sold out, but you might be lucky.

Anyway, I owe the good people at The Word a vote of thanks. I discovered James's music when 'People Gonna Talk' was on one of the covermount CDs - I went and bought the eponymous album the next day, and loved it. But live.... bloody hell! How his voice holds out over the course of a tour I can't imagine. Here's a taste :

August Bank Holiday weekend 1975, Reading Festival - the Friday evening. There I was, a callow 17 year old, at my first major music event. I'd travelled down with my mate Wal - we hadn't yet met up with Mark, who'd arrived separately. Penultimate act that night : the mighty Dr Feelgood. Wal and I got as close to the front of the stage as we could - about 40 yards away, with some of that distance occupied by what I think was a photographers' pit. Packed shoulder to shoulder with our fellow revellers, it was as if we were in a football crowd (terraces in those days, of course), with added dancing. One of the best sets I've ever witnessed.

We were young, enthused, thoroughly entertained : it was good to be alive.

Next on was Hawkwind. (Sorry, can't bring myself to find a vid for them. You'll soon understand why.) While waiting for them to set up everyone sat down. And, of course, stayed sitting once they started. (Bloody hippies.) Now you take up a lot more room when sitting than when packed in like frantically bopping upright sardines. Several people were sitting on my legs. Several more were so close behind me that superglue might have been involved. Moving was impossible. Imagine my dismay when I realised (it only took a splt second) that a comfortable distance from which to be witnessing the headliners would have been about half a mile. And I couldn't move an inch. Hawkwind went so far beyond uncomfortably loud, and went on for so long, that it wasn't so much that I wished it were possible to gouge out one's own ears, more that I wanted to die and wondered A) why dying had to take so long; and B) why the band had to be so sodding literal in their rendition of Sonic Attack ( "Do not waste time blocking your ears... do not attempt to use your own limbs...there will be bleeding from orifices...think only of yourself..."). The horror, the horror. Thirty three years on and the memory of that experience still chills my blood.

So, fellow Wordies, has anyone else a similar tale to tell of how, in the space of a few minutes, a peak musical experience has changed into the stuff of nightmares?

Seeing Wilco Johnson scurrying around in the background while Ian Dury performed Sweet Gene Vincent (Songs by Artists About Other Artists blog - paul beard's entry 13/8/08), led me down the You Tube after Dr Feelgood.

On investigating Roxette I heard Mr Hepworth describe Wilco's moves thus : "...like a clockwork mouse on rails, rattling back and forth." Instantly, I was reminded (funny how the mind works) of my favourite ever line from Word - Julian Cope, writing about some Scandinavian metal track (a form of music I'd not listen to if my life depended on it) : "...slow and brooding, like compost with a grudge."

What similarly well-wrought phrases have stuck in the minds of my fellow members of the massive?