Silvery Sparklers

Hurrah for Silvery. I first picked up on them over at Pileys place (he's got a tip top Pickwick/Top of the Pops records feature running at the moment too).

Silvery are everything you hope for in a new band. They're young. They like people I like - Bowie, Sparks, XTC. They've got smart jackets and even smarter tunes with all the clang and spangle you could want and they're playing this Saturday at Blow Up Metro on a double bill with The Bongolian (one of my fave albums of last year). I'll certainly be there raising a glass and shaking a leg. But until then have a peep at their new single 'Horrors', released as a double A side with 'Orders' - it's my single of the year already, and we're not even out of January yet.

Silvery - Horrors


Silvery - Orders(Demo)


PS - If you're at the Silvery/Bongolian gig and see a chap in polka dot cravat - do come and say hello. It'll be me.

Funky Friday - New Wave Nuggets

This week on Funky Friday it's a couple of cheeky New Wave dance routines and two punky based booty remixes.First up ..

Hot Gossip - The Hardest Part

Hot Gossip were always cheeky, funky and futuristic but their romps and routines never quite captured the swish, sparkle or understated 'oomph' of Pan's People.'The Hardest Part' was a low level hit in the U.S for Blondie - the original vid' with Debbie Harry strutting like a dark haired dominatrix
is here


Hot Gossip - 'All stood still'

'All Stood Still' is probably the only Ultravox track that's not too jarring to these ears. The 'Goss's video is painfully 80's( but loaded with some spectacular leg actions) and seems to filmed in the sort of club that would fire up the 'dry ice' and 'laser display' at 10:30 of an evening.


Go Home Productions/Mark Vidler is the Big Boss of bootleg remixes', these two Punk/New Wave 'bastard pop' pieces are a couple of his obscure but outstanding tasty treats that really should have been huge international hits.

XTC - 'Making Plans For Nigel' and Tweet - 'Oops (Oh My)' get bunged in the blender for..
Making Plans For Vinyl.mp3


And the Sex Pistols 'No Feelings' and Cher's 'Believe' get refitted and recycled as ...
No Fun 4 Cher.mp3

Bovver Boots

As I've mentioned before I am a mentalist for a mashup. I don't know what the exact scores on the doors are, but at the last count it was roughly 15 - 20 CDs worth of self compiled booty bounty grabbed from the net.

This trio of terrors are three of the Punky bootleg remixes from the collection. I would give credits - dates, details etc.. to whoever produced these tracks, but like most cyberspace oddities of the time, these were only available online for a few days and the sketchy info below is all I have.

The Lurkers vs Beyonce.mp3


The Buzzcocks vs Madison Avenue.mp3


The Ramones vs The Beastie Boys.mp3

Favourite Shirts - Blackmail Boy

Inspired by some recent rummage related posings from Davey H (vintage cassettes) and Ally (Postcard Records brochure), here's my contibution to lovelies from the loft - the BOY mail order catalogue 'Blackmail'.



When Seditionaries closed in 1980 to be refitted and restyled as swishy, squiggly World's End, BOY at 153 King's Road sold off any remaining Seditionaries stock and continued production of a few selected Westwood and McClarens designs along side it's own BOY and Kitsch 22 togs . These are a few of the items from the 1981 2nd edition catalogue - with titles, prices and (designs by in brackets). Check out the long sleeve muslins for £8.50!! - how much do they go for on ebay now?? I had two and binned them. Whoops!

Nigel Shirt (BOY) - £18.50
Stringy Pullover(BOY) - £15
Long Sleeved Muslin (Seditionaries) - £8.50

Adam and the Ants T shirt (BOY)- £4.50

Striped Jeans and Leopard Jeans (Modzart)- £17.50

Crazy Colour - £3.50 - Wraparound shades (BOY) - £3.95

And to continue the theme of New Wave nuggets here's.....

Sex Pistols - Black Leather.mp3

A post Pistols/pre Professionals period Cook and Jones track recorded but rejected for 'The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle'.

Adam and The Ants - Ligotage.mp3

An almost XTC'ish 'Dirk' era Ants track, only ever recorded as part of a John Peel Session.

X-ray Spex - The Day the World Turned Dayglo (Rough Mix).mp3

Very similar riffing to 'Black Leather'

Funk Friday - The Right Side of Funky

Every week is Funky Friday on Planet Mondo, and this week it's a guest blog spot from Matt (the Beat Collector) who runs the thumpingly funky blog 'The Right Side of Funky' - Matt cracked out one my fave mix sets of 2007, it's available for download here and includes a couple of proper funky nuggets that were new to me but I've been constantly hammering them ever since.

The Spoiler - Eddie Purrell
You Can’t Go - Lonnie Lester (Check the Triple Decker sidebar to hear this tune)

So over to Matt...

I'm gonna use this golden opportunity to drop a few tracks I couldn't possibly get away with on 'The Right Side of Funky' , Big Beat and the early Speed Garage sound was a real moment for me so I'm having a full on reminisce and dropping some funky garage, big beat and a little funky jazz from youtube. Now I do feel old!

'War' by The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble




Gabrielle - Roy Davis Jnr featuring Peven Everett

Laser Sheep Dip Funk - Lo Fidelity All Stars

Devil In A Sports Shirt - Midfield General

Charity Shop Classics Pt. 1 - Impact

I'm a bugger for a bargain. Always have been. Piley, Marmite and I were regular rummagers at the charity shops digging for winners and hoping to find some spectacular long lost nugget or buried treasure. None of us bagged any real bargains' (apart from Piley's signed cabaret band albums), and typically these 'digs' were a sift through the same ol' smoke stained charity chaff....

Books - 'Jaws', the Sixties and Seventies editions of the 'James Bond' paperbacks.

Vinyl - variations on the following - The Tijuana Brass, Hammond Dance Party and 'Geoff Love plays TV Themes'.

But one album had such outstanding saturation that it was often possible to find multiple copies in the racks. 'Impact' was the champ of charity shop albums. And what a cracker, recorded at Studio 2 Abbey Road, and loaded with cream of cheesy listening including...

Joe Loss - Wheels.mp3


Manuel and the Music of the Mountains - A Man And A Woman.mp3


Franck Pourcel - Love Is Blue.mp3


I may upload some more of these tunes later, but if your in the mood for more retromania, why not tune in to Channel Mondo for a Public Information Film screening.

For the moment here's the full track list for 'Impact'

01 - David Rose - The Stripper
02 - Norrie Paramor - Soul Coaxing
03 - Acker Bilk - Stranger On The Shore
04 - Pepe Jaramillo - Sucu Sucu
05 - Franck Pourcel - Love Is Blue
06 - Ron Goodwin - Legend Of The Glass Mountain
07 - Joe Loss - Wheels
08 - Norman Newell - Live For Life
09 - Basil Henriques - Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You
10 - Ralph Dollimore - The Fool On The Hill
11 - Manuel And The Music Of The Mountains - A Man And A Woman
12 - Jack Emblow - Ritual Fire Dance

By special request for Axe Victim here is
Ralph Dollimore - The Fool On The Hill.mp3

Rolling Stoner

I read the Ron Wood biog' last week, which is pretty much 350ish pages of drunken stumbles, lucky breaks and bad investments. But it left me thinking what must it be like to be a Rolling Stone? Possibly not too dissimilar to this....

Waiting on a Friend.


*Stoner update - I've just found out (via searching Friends Reunited)that I used to go the same Youth Club as Ronnie's Sister in Law. I knew he'd made a few local appearances attended gigs, been spotted in pubs etc - all makes sense now.*

As an extra here's a tune I came up with a couple of years ago. Well, it's not really a tune - it's a 1 take piece of tat that took 10 minutes to crack out as an experiment in 'open G' tuning. Open G is a technique regularly employed by Keith Richards, it's the heart of the Stones sound and more importantly saves having to faff around remembering endless fancy chord shapes (nice and easy if your feeling a bit 'relaxed' of an evening). Tune the guitar to open G and one simple shape fits all frets. Please excuse any clunker notes and blame them on first take nerves.

Stoner.mp3

Funky Friday - Southern Soul

Every Friday is Funky Friday on Planet Mondo, and this week brings you an Elvis special to mark his 72nd birthday earlier this week.

First up a couple of youtube treats.

"Man That's Dirty"

This outtake from the '68 Special is the absolute essence of Elvis and crackles with magic. While the offstage boffins were making technical tweaks and possibly 'checking levels' between takes, Elvis asks for his guitar, kicks off the riff for 'Baby What You Want Me To Do' the orchestra jump in, start jamming and the audience go wild.

PS - Does anyone know what model of guitar Elvis is cranking? - I'm stumped.


"Some a y'all never been down south too much"

Bill Belew who did 'wardrobe' for the '68 Special, also created Elvis's jumpsuits. This is one of his earlier, less fussy designs and a style later reworked by The Osmonds, Evel Knievel David Bowie and possibly the crew of Moonbase Alpha. Elvis delivers a true blue eyed Soul stomping, Vegas vamp version of 'Polk Salad Annie'.

A duet of 'Polk Salad Annie' performed by Tony Joe White (its composer) with Johnny Cash is here if you fancy a peep.


This hidden sizzler from Elvis has everything you want from a fatback track - funky keyboards, a shout of "Hot Damn" and double tempo drums on the home run.
Elvis - I Got A Feeling In My Body(Take 1).mp3



A live almost Booker T type take of 'My Babe'.
Elvis - My Babe (Midnight Show).mp3



Written by Gamble and Huff, the masterminds behind the The O Jays, The Three Degrees and The Sound of Phildelphia 'Only The Strong Survive' is a Northern Soul nugget with Elvis sounding exactly like The Six Million Dollar Man on the spoken intro.
Elvis - Only The Strong Survive.mp3

There's Good Rocking

Hurrah for the 8th of January. "Why the 8th of January?" they chorused.
It's the birthday Of Elvis Presley and David Bowie of course. But as well as sharing the same date of birth there are several other Elvis/Bowie connections, here are 8 of them....

1) Bowie is quoted as saying "Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something."

2) Both had tragedies with their brothers - Elvis' twin Jesse, died at childbirth. Bowie's half-brother Terry, was a schizophrenic who committed suicide in 1985.

3) They were both comic book fans - Elvis's hair and capes were inspired by Captain Marvel, and both used a 'Shazam' style lighting strike symbol - Elvis for the 'Taking care of Business' logo, Bowie for Aladdin Sane.


4) Bowie's manager Tony DeFries styled himself as a 1970s Colonel Tom Parker (Elvis's notorious cigar smoking Manager) a factor in Bowie signing to RCA also Elvis's label, and the DeFries Mainman Management logo being designed to look a cigar band.


5) The Kubrick Link - Elvis's seventies shows started with "Also Sprach Zarathustra" from '2001: A Space Odyssey'. During the Ziggy period Bowie used the 'Clockwork Orange' version of Beethoven's 'Ninth Symphony' for his intro' music.

6) Apparently Bowie wrote Golden Years for Elvis but recorded it himself after Presley turned it down.

7) The 1972 Thailand reissue of 'Space Oddity' featured as Elvis's 'Fool' as the B-side.


8) They've both recorded Beatles covers which are still in the vaults;

Elvis - Lady Madonna ( with Elvis seemingly 'effing and jeffing' around the 'make ends meet' line).

Bowie - Penny Lane (with an extremely flaky accent on 'customer').

And as if by magic....

Elvis Presley - Lady Madonna.mp3



David Bowie - Penny Lane.mp3

Ding Dong Ding Dong

Hello and Happy New Year bloggers, bloggettes and browsers

Hope you all had a tip top Christmas and New Year tear up, I'm still in holiday/hiberbation mode and loving being a cozy loafer, so bit of a lazy bones post for my first one of 2008 - not a strong start to the year is it?.

George Harrison - Ding Dong Ding Dong



I've also bumped a 'where have all the bargains gone'? posting on The Word website. Which is here if you fancy a peep.