Entertainment For Lively Minds
Discarded Visage And Other Motorway Detritus
Mr Drakeygirl works on the motorways. I always wanted a man in uniform and Hi Vis will just have to do.
In the course of his employment, which consists of carrying out maintenance and traffic management, he occasionally comes home with some 'found' booty.
We will, of course, never forget the joy of the great wine-lorry crash of 1995 (*hic!*) and the crushing disappointment of the chocolate biscuit spillage of 2002 - delicious treasure which turned out to be contaminated by diesel.
Then there was the Tennents Super delivery that did, literally, fall off the back of a lorry. Mr DG and his workmates aren't terribly fussy about the quality of any free alcohol that may come their way, but none of them were particular fans of the syrupy vagrant-juice. They offered the damaged crate to a gentleman of the road who occasionally slept in their depot's salt shed. Even he turned his nose up, with the immortal words: "I don't drink that shit."
But there is another type of detritus littering the sides of the M1. And that's discarded music. Mainly in the form of CDs, but sometimes, in a blast from the past, the odd cassette tape, or even a vinyl record.
The photo above shows today's 'prize'. Mr DG arrived home this evening, and frisbeed this disc to me - Night Train, a Visage single from 1982.
So, what happened here? I thought for obvious reasons, the in-car turntable never really got off the ground. So was it a Shaun Of The Dead type-scenario, where the car's occupants had to use whatever weapons were at hand to fend off marauding zombies, and hurled the contents of their record box at their undead attackers?
At least because it's a vinyl single, the Visage song doesn't qualify for the Motorway Music Rule. Which is this: whenever the motorway teams find a CD, they have to play that disc, and only that disc, until they find another one. Bow your heads for a moment and reflect on the terrible two weeks in summer 2006, when my husband and his colleagues had to endure what is only referred to in hushed tones as the 'Chris De Burgh Fortnight'. The horror...
So, have you ever ditched any music from a car, possibly in a fight with your passenger over what you were going to listen to next? Or have you ever found any music in odd places?
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Makes me think of John Peel
He made a promise to listen to every tape he was sent - and he did - but when he didn't like it, he simply threw the tape out of his car window.
Andy Fairweather Low
once ran over an album,outside Lichfield City Station i think,in the late 70s on my 1968 Triumph Tiger Cub Trials(One for the Hardcore).It was "La Booga Rooga" by The Ex Amen Corner Vocal Duties bloke. Strange the things you remember.
Ultravox
Like Fade To Grey, Night Train is essentially Ultravox backing Steve Strange. With Barry Adamson on bass too. I love Night Train.
Ner Ner Ner Ner Ner
it's not really my cup of tea.
Do you want it?
Disclaimer: It might jump a little.
Lay-By
Just leave it in the first lay-by past Reading on the westbound M4!
Have you got Jimmy Jimmy
by the Undertones, on green vinyl?
Slip Road Swap Shop. It could catch on...
Surely...
this is the Word equivalent of doging?
Shouldn't you
be in Venice to do that?
Forgive me...
... it shouldn't happen to a doge.
I'll get me robe.
How I remember
those long-gone days when every rural traffic light junction featured a bush or low-hanging tree branch stewn with countless yards of discarded cassette tape, presumably tossed out of car windows in disgust after they were chewed up by the cheap aftermarket Alpine sound system from Halfords.
There was one such place on my way to work which had the mangled innards of so many C-90s hanging from it, it looked like something out of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
"'Chris De Burgh Fortnight"
...the thing is, Drakey, it could have been Chris De Burgh himself who tossed that one.
Just imagine: he's cruising along, humming away to his sickly saccharine schmaltz when he suddenly comes-to, in a rare moment of lucidity, and thinks 'What IS this sh*t?!?' and chucks it out the window. Seconds later he returns to that mental state known as Chris-world - for which there is no cure - and thinks, 'Hmmm, didn't I have The Best Of Myself in the tape player? Still never mind...' as he reaches into the glove compartment where a dozen or so emergency copies lurk...
Not Music But This Guy Makes Art..
..from found hubcaps http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/artist-creates-hubcap-sculptures...
Funny you should say that,
because I found some art that was made from discarded CDs:
http://inhabitat.com/wastelandscape-65000-discarded-cds-form-a-sea-of-me...
65,000 discarded CDs?
Why, that's almost one week's unsold returns for the new Coldplay album.
Round are way
(to quote Oasis) I found a great reggae compilation CD at the side of the road, almost unmarked apart from the last, outer track. Think I still have it now. Another roadside casualty which didn't fare so well was an opera cover disc from the Daily Heil. Although undamaged it was disposed of a little more thoughtfully so as not to damage any more ears of a sensitive nature.
Did Mr DG ever bring home a brace of pheasants?
My grandfather used to work in the City, and drive home to rural Shropshire every Friday night. One evening a mysterious accident (the details of which have never been disclosed) led to his Jag teetering astride the barrier in the central reservation. A kind motorway worker helped him out of this embarrassing predicament, and in his slightly stressed state my grandpa decided to gift him the brace of pheasants that he had lurking in his boot. If they ended up with you, I apologise. It could have been worse. If my memory serves me right, the only cassette Granddad had in his car was a Boney M compilation.
The In-Car Turntable
...as demonstrated by Mike Summerbee, Manchester City footballer in 1967.
Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones before you ask....
Ronan Keating
Several years ago when I was living in a kind of bedsit/studio flat, but with a lovely big garden, the couple next door played Ronan Keating's new single, You Say Nothing At All 18 times in a row (I counted) at full volume at 2am on a Sunday night (going into Mon morning, not weekend).
I asked them politely to "F***king turn it off". They giggled and carried on having loud "petting sessions" in their garden. They then played it ten times or so more. By this time, it was getting on for 3am. I'm afraid I waltzed into the garden (no-one had bothered to mend the fence), went to the CD player, pulled it out and hurled it over the fence into park which our gardens backed into. They were too shocked to do anything and I got my sleep.
So, if any park-keepers in Alexandra Park wonder how the soundtrack to Notting Hill got into the deer enclosure, wonder no more.
Sorry.
Perhaps
they should have been playing Pet Sounds?
But I take my hat off to you JoLean, that's good work. We could do with someone like you round these parts on those long hot summer nights when the parties go on too long.
The Motorway Music Rule
I love anything like that. Chris de Burgh fortnight has made my day.
Phoenix Festival 1994
and me and three mates made a nuisance of ourselves by playing the newly released BC-52's - Meet The Flintstones, every time were at the tent. I think we played it between 100 - 200 times all in all and we weren't very popular with our neighbours.
But, being mainly drunk and looking like we could handle ourselves no-one came to complain.
On the car journey home with the hangovers taking hold, someone thought it would be a good idea to play the song again.
The cassette was last seen bouncing off a Vauxhall's bonnett on a motorway between the festival site and Portsmouth.
I haven't heard the song again to this day.