Things you can learn from the new podcast
* What Peter Mandelson said to get out of listening to one of Mark Ellen's anecdotes
* How Matt Hall's getting on with his commute from Lincs
* The dumbest things in entertainment according to you
* How one reader had an uncle who had a collection of one eight-track
* About the Flaming Lips CD that you had to play four copies of simultaneously
* Whether Joanne Lumley found the Northern Lights or not
* What happened when David Hepworth took his curious method of picking horses to the biggest flat race meeting of the year
* How we can cut down on the number of newscasters at a stroke
Go here to sign on for the free podcast and the occasional Backstage podcast. Don't forget to join the Word podcast Facebook group. You can hear the new podcast below.
Judge for yourself...
Dark Side of the Moon synced with The Wizard of Oz:
More importantly, is it true that Oldham is advertised as "the home of the tubular bandage"?
Yes
Or at least that's what it said on Mumps Bridge:
Thank you, Oldham, thank you!
Echoes/2001
This is the other old chestnut
But I must admit I find it a rather fitting Memorial to both Rick and Arthur C Clarke
Nick
PS perhaps an even more fitting memorial in that this is being dictated to the computer ...
Hippies in a chain...
...and the girl having her face painted. The most true and funniest thing I have heard in ages.
See your tubular bandage and raise you
Shame
I wanted it to say "Artichoke heart of the world".
Mispronounced band names
Apart from frequent confusions with Steeley Dan, Steeleye Span once arrived at a gig in the States to find an audience, more metalheads than folkies, eagerly awaiting some head-banging action from the advertised Steel Ice Band...
I have a huge problem with this myself
Living abroad and speaking and listening to very little English in my everyday life (the podcast probably accounts for a good 50% of the ordinary conversational English I'll hear in a given week), I'm left stranded when it comes to pronouncing many names that have come to prominence since I left the UK (yes, that means you, David Douche-ovny and Eye-dris Elba). Sometimes it doesn't matter -- not knowing how to say the names of Big Brother housemates is actually a badge of honour, I would have thought -- but more often than not it leaves me feeling like this barrister:
Cripes!
That makes two of us
And what I write on this site is 100% of my written English in a week...
True dat
Not counting films on DVD, that is, where they seldom get round to sorting you out about how to pronounce the names of actors from The Wire. The podcast's general random-bollocks chit-ch...er I mean casual conversation touching on all walks of life often gives me lots of clues. I'll be eternally grateful to you lot for easing my pain over how to say "Autechre", largely because the consensus among you was that you didn't know either. Perhaps you should ask Juliet for guidance.
I do know that it's "Pallin" and "Bidden", though. Ha! You won't catch me out there.
Fame at last!
I got two mentions on the Podcast which was a rather nice surprise, so thank you for that.
My wife wasn't that impressed when I told her, but then it was just after midnight and she had just woken up with terrible back pain caused by soon-due child and she considered there were better ways to take her mind off it.
Named and shamed
Yes, it was a very blog-intensive podcast this week. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.
Especially
since our namechecks were preceded by a gleeful description of the way productivity in Britain ground to a halt as the Word Massive spent its Friday afternoon auditioning for Grumpy Old Men. Hope my boss wasn't listening. (Though it was worth it for the "egoboo" - an old SF-fandom term for the warm glow one derives from seeing one's name in print, or in this case mentioned in dispatches on the podcast).
That's wimmin for you
Self self self.
Hidden Tracks and Alternate grooves
I always thought that the best "hidden track" was on Marillion's album Brave. It was a concept album (but of course) that began with this girl stood on a bridge about to jump, and after four sides of angst, soul searching and guitar solos she's back on the bridge, but decides to make a go of it, like a bright new morning etc etc. (as can be heard here, accompanied by terrible terrible video).
)
But the fourth side had two grooves, like the Monty Python disc, so if you hit the alternate groove, with the bad ending (ie. it goes all minor key, she bungs herself off the thing and you're left with chronic depression and twenty minutes of the sound of waves).
That would have been a brilliant idea, except that it was released in 1994, so everyone just bought it on CD.
Terrible NY stadium error
Gents,
One of the many things I love about your podcast and listening to it on my Friday ride home from work is that it reminds me of my Uncle and his musician mates getting together and me as a youngster listening in to obscure musical conversation in awe.
However this time round it was more like listening to my Mum and her demented friends, getting everything wrong.
It was not Shea stadium that closed a few weeks ago, it was the Yankee stadium. Then to compound your error, Matt said that Shea stadium was the home of the Knicks. The Knicks are a BASKETBALL team that play at Madison Sq Garden. The Mets are the baseball team that play at Shea Stadium, whereas the Yankees obviously play at etc etc.
I know this is absurdly pedantic but I was so surprised at such a huge error I swerved on my bike.
Come on boys, I know it's not a sports podcast but pull it together!
Cheers for otherwise general great mag, website, podcast and so one.
Yes and No
Shea stadium is also being closed. The Mets have a new stadium too.
Ouch
Apologies for not mentioning the Yankees stadium, but it was this one I was talking about;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/oct/01/mlb.playoffs.preview
But yes, my bad for getting the Mets and Knicks mixed up.
Could've been worse
You could've mixed up the Mets and the Nets. Then you'd have opened up a whole inter-state world of pain.
Aha! But not the Jets. . .
who used to share Shea (or shea Share) with the Mets - both of whom, of course, started out sharing the Polo Grounds, which had been vacated by the Giants when they upped and went to San Francisco. The Jets upped and left Shea 25 years ago to share Giants Stadium in New Jersey with their arch rivals, who themselves had previously upped and left Yankee Stadium (although they did share Shea - as you do - with the Jets in 1975). The upshot is that only one of New York's three NFL teams actually plays its home games in New York: the Buffalo Bets. Er, I mean Bills.
Test on Friday.
The Monaco album sent me to sleep
(insert own joke here) and i was awoken by the 'hidden track' of big old gruff Hooky saying 'You can turn it off now'.
I agree they are pointless and a pain in the arse when included in the last track and put on an i-pod but some are funny. The hidden track of World Party's 'Bang' is a apot on Beach Boys pastiche called 'Kuwait City'.
Any song that contains the couplet 'well we dropped our bombs with perfect precision\ I think we've put an end to female circumcision' can't be THAT evil, can it?
and yes, Shea stadium (named after the freedom fighter) is indeed closing. Macca flew down especially to play a couple of songs during the final night's Billy Joel gig. 'I Saw Her Standing There' and 'Let It Be'.
You're right DFB, but so are they
Both Yankee and Shea stadiums are currently being demolished, and the Yankees and Mets are moving to new stadiums being built near the old ones.
All i know about baseball
i learnt from Homer Simpson
'I first fell in love with baseball as a teenager. Like the players, I was always trying to get to second base in spite of the best efforts of the opposing team'
and when he watches a game, stone cold sober:
'I never realized how boring this game is'
I think that Peter Mandelson must have a consistent M.O.
A few years ago, my father attended a lunch at which PM had been invited. He stayed long enough to confirm that there was no one in the room that could be useful to him and then got up mid-course and left, never to return. My father was appalled at his charmlessness and poor manners.
Unwanted website music misery?
An ex-colleague had the reputation of being a serial internet abuser. That is, while he was tucked away in his corner and supposed to be tapping in numbers or arranging them neatly in a grid-like pattern, he was actually emailing his mates, reading the papers, or even offering his valued opinion to web-based communities. How did management work this out? They have monitoring software of course, but things really came to a head when he was issued with a shiny new, feature-rich PC and immediately logged on to some Champions League website, the one which plays you 'Ode to Joy', whether you want to hear it or not. He didn't, as he was deaf, but it was something of a giveaway.
Melanie Bellamy with the standing news
Was reminded of this as well by your extended riff on newsreaders ... not as good as the Day Today but had its moments
Best Hidden Track EVER!!!!
Surely the best ever hidden track is The Citizen's Band by Super Furry Animals on their Guerilla album, where they not only manage to somehow put it at the start of the CD (you have to press play and then keep your finger on the 'rewind' button for about 4 minutes) but it's also quite clearly the most commercial and best song on the album... still not really sure how it was done but it was certainly well hidden...