James Taylor’s wife is a member of a local amateur choir. He got them to sing on some songs for a recent tour which is now on DVD. There’s something wonderful about seeing “everyday folk” performing with a “star”. And doing it so well.

After Amy, Adele and Duffy along comes a solo Sharleen Spiteri with an album based on ’60s girl group/soul Bouffant Pop.
The first single from it, All The Times I Cried, opens with a blatant “tribute” to The Shangri-Las “Out In The Streets”. It’s a good song though, and I suspect this might be a really popular album. Who’d have thought that one of the biggest influences on 21st century British pop music would be a group long considered to be a kitsch, camp joke.
You can hear Sharleen’s single here: http://ds7.fileflyer.com/d/264609cf-79b7-481e-85b9-1ea5dcd49aa7/G8GR/Sha...

And here’s “Out In The Streets”

A friend of mine interviewed REM around the time of Automatic For The People in the early ’90s. Because he was British they asked him about two records that were big in Britain but were pretty much unknown in America. The first was Dreadlock Holiday by 10cc which they were fascinated by (not surprisingly as it is a bit weird); the second was Better The Devil You Know by Kylie Minogue which they absolutely loved.
That section in the Word where people talk about books, films and music they’re into ocassionally throws up something unexpected. I remember Amy Winehouse discussing JD Salinger and Camus - you wouldn’t have thought she was the bookish type; and Boz Scaggs revealing his love of Rumpole of the Bailey, which is quite mind-boggling.
Any other examples of people being into stuff you wouldn’t expect?
It goes for friendships too. On Bob Harris’s show last night he was reminiscing about spending many, many afternoons trawling around dusty second record shops with John Peel. I suppose it’s daft to be surprised that two DJs of similar vintage who worked at the same radio station for many years would be firm friends, but you always imagined - as they were on different sides of the fence in the punk war - that they weren’t that close.
I suppose the most well-know example of this is when David Cassidy and Alice Cooper struck up a firm friendship in the early ’70s when David was the squeaky-clean teen pin-up and Alice a scary rock’n’roll reprobate. I remember the flyweight popsters Brother Beyond telling me how they’d got on like a house on fire with Wolfsbane when they’d both been using a residential studio. Ping pong was the matchmaker in this case.
Any other unlikely friendships in rock’n’roll?

Just downloaded a couple of songs off i-tunes for my daughter that she’s heard on Gavin & Stacey and really liked: Gravity by Embrace and You Could Be Happy by Snow Patrol. Both of these acts are described by i-tunes as “alternative”. Alternative to what exactly? These sort of records get played on Radio 2 by Ken Bruce and Terry Wogan. They’re both gentle, plodding, achingly conventional, rock ballads that are pretty easy on the air. You could play them in the sitting room at an old folks home during afternoon Scrabble and light nap sessions. In what sense are they “alternative”?

preferably with girls in bikinis. And mermaids. And Rickenbackers.

Football supporters often adopt and rework pop songs to sing the praises of their heroes. The one Liverpool supporters sing for John Arne Riise is based on Bruce Chanel’s Hey Baby: “John Arne Riise, We wanna know-oh-oh, How you scored that goal”. It was coined after a spectacular goal against Man United a few years ago, but I don’t suppose after tuesday’s events it will be sung by anyone other than opposition supporters. A couple of years ago a characteristically fierce Riise drive was blocked by Alan Smith, than playing for United. He was stretchered off with a pretty nasty injury. Within minutes, the song was adapted slightly to “we wanna know-oh-oh, how you broke his leg”.
Not “Instant”, but Karma all the same, I suppose. Once heard John Motson use the phrase “delicious irony”.

Just been watching that awful Andrew Neill programme that wakes you up when you’ve nodded off during Question Time. Dianne Abbot, Michael Portillo and Charles Kennedy were talking about the Brown/Darling “u-turn” over the 10% tax rate issue. They talked about it solely in terms of how it affected the musical chairs in SW1. At no point did it even occur to them to discuss how whatever “changes” were made to the policy (and I’m still none the wiser, despite having sat through a programme that purports to be about politics) affected the people involved.
If the Westminster village idiots (both the MPs and the journalists) want to know why people don’t engage with politics and politicians much anymore they should watch this “show” and have a long, hard think about what they think they’re playing at. It beggars belief.

The fantastic new Kelly Rowland single, which I imagine is going to be a pretty big hit, is a cover of an old Bobby Womack song, Daylight.
Presumably it means Bobby will soon be trousering a pretty hefty chunk of loot. (Unless he cashed in his royalty rights to buy drugs, which isn’t beyond the realms of possibility given his form as Sly Stone’s partner-in-excess). Couldn’t happen to a more deserving undersung talent.
How great must it be for a songwriter to get a sudden unexpected windfall like that.
Wasn’t Nick Lowe suffering an uncomfortable juxtaposition of wolf and door before Peace Love & Understanding was used in The Bodyguard?
Any other examples of writers hitting the jackpot out of the blue?

Didn’t realise until it cropped up on the Mark Ratcliffe show last night that Jerry Dammers’ late father was a fairly high-ranking clergyman, the Dean of Bristol (and previously Provost of Coventry cathedral). He was of the politically radical wing of the C of E and if you read his obituary (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/30/db3001.x...) you can see how he was quite influential on Jerry Dammers’ outlook and crusading zeal.
Neil Hannon, the Divine Comedy, is the son of the Bishop of Clogher. Other pop folk I can think of off the top of my head whose dads were men of the cloth are Jimmy Webb and Marvin Gaye.
Not sure what this has got to do with anything, but I always think that what pop stars’ parents (and siblings) do/did for a living is quite interesting.

Easy to laugh that people fell for this, but I suppose you have to remember that spaghetti was an exotic continental dish at the time which few British people would ever have eaten. Rice, similar texture etc. is a “plant”, so it’s not too far-fetched that spaghetti might be. Also it’s done with that familiar BBC tone of authority and it wouldn’t have occured to many people, who obviously weren’t as media-savvy as we all are now, that it was a spoof.

I know it’s early days, but you could learn a thing or two from these fellas ... (takes a few seconds to “kick in”)

http://producten.hema.nl/

Jonathon Ross (or should I say Andy Davies) has just played Care Of Cell 44 on one of the most listened-to shows on Britain’s biggest music station. Odessey & Oracle (sic) has been re-issued and is being “toured” by a reconvened Zombies.
Mission accomplished. Job done.
Before we roll up our sleeves and start on the next one, let’s decide what it should be.

Just skimming through recent entries on The Daily Mash, a very astute running commentary on the passing show, when I came across this.

And, on an issue that was debated on here a few months ago, this.

Andy Warhol got it slightly wrong. Not everyone is famous for fifteen minutes. But everyone, in these days of Karaoke and TV amateur talent shows, is a performer. And what better situation - in terms of being the centre of attention and being able to rely on a fairly high degree of goodwill - to show off than at the “first dance” at one’s wedding.
This isn’t a one-off. It’s a fully-fledged trend. Tucked away in the eye-watering bill for any modern wedding ceremony worth its salt, alongside frocks, flowers, finger buffet, rings, cars and what-have-you is “choreographer for first dance”.
Bless.

It may sound like a facetious question to ask on a website peopled by music fanatics but it’s a genuine one. Because it’s occured to me that I don’t .
I phoned my father-in-law yesterday to alert him to the fact that Mad Men, that series which the BBC has been trailing since about Bonfire Night, was finally getting under starters orders on BBC4. He used to work in the advertising business, in roughly the same era in which the show is set, so I thought he might be interested in it.
The reason I had to remind him it was on is that whereas his daughter and I, when settling down for the evening, automatically curl up in front of the telly and watch whatever’s on - sometimes having to resort to the Dave channel - he spends his evenings listening to music.
He’s a jazz buff and sits in his armchair, with his headphones on, listening to jazz. And not doing anything else.
Now I listen to music quite a lot, but always as a background to doing something else - driving, cooking, eating, socialising, reading, baiting Guardian readers on the Word website etc. But I never just sit down and simply listen to music. Do other people?

Missed Mad Men by the way because my wife, like most women I know, fancies the pants off Laurence Fox and wanted to watch Lewis. Any good?

Just spent most of the day reorganising bookshelves after a bout of decorating that resulted in the whole house being turned upside down. With that recent thread about what authors people on here read in the back of my mind it struck me that I have rather a lot of books by what could only be called “right wing” writers. I’m not talking about novelists here but commentators on the passing show. I have every book PJ O’Rourke has ever written, plus others by the likes of Auberon Waugh, Dave Barry, Jeremy Clarkson, James Delingpole, Richard Littlejohn - the sort of stuff that would cause outrage in Guardian-reading circles.
I wouldn‘t call myself particularly right-wing but the fact is I enjoy these writers in a way I don’t enjoy their leftie equivalents: the likes of Michael Moore or that fake cockney twat who looks like Andrew Collins and does those “comedy” biography programmes on the telly (can’t remember his name). I quite like John O’Farrell’s novels but found that book of his about being a Labour supporter in the lean years hugely irritating. And Jon Ronson is, of course, ace.
But I think my library needs a bit of political balancing. Any suggestions?

George Harrison would have become a pensioner today.

Anyone feeling a little nauseous this morning after over-doing that lethal cocktail of Brit School brats and Sharon Osbourne last night?
This should flush out the system

YouTube have pulled the “shredding” clips.

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/02/watch-the-parod.html#more