The Good, the Bad and the Reggae

Being a vintage-listening type, ex-Beta Bander Steve Mason's Boys Outside was one of the few 2010 releases to make my end of year round up. Twelve months on he's revisited and refitted the album. Winging in Dennis Bovell to reggae up the setlist - Ghosts Outside is experiments in dub that are King Tubby style, rather than XTC.

The Remix Album is a phrase that you can have you cringing a shoulder or hovering a finger over the skip button. Worst case scenario it's both - usually on projects where some offstage bod is invited onboard to twiddle about a bit, re-sculpting the songs in their favour. Scooping out great chunks of tune and re-filling the spaces where the best bits once were with - soulless fru-fru and whizzery.

So hurrah for Dennis Bovell. All the original hooks and harmonies remain safely in place but the already loose grooves are bulked up with dub so deep you could fall in and never be seen again. Boy's Outside's base-build of slow-drifting tempos and winterish whispers has been warmed up and reheated with looping reverb, ghostly echoes and chunky lumps of thud and thump insulating the newly installed walls of noise. It's not a record to be ignored or used for ambience, but engineered to be heard at high volume.

Steve Mason & Dennis Bovell - Yesterday Dub by DominoRecordCo


In other off-beat offerings: Mick Jagger, Joss stone and Dave Stewart's new project - Superheavy release their debut single - Miracle Worker. My take on it here

12 x 12: When your world is full of strange arrangements

And there's no stranger arrangement than this semi-official, white label Look of Love twelve inch. Trevor Horn - the Joe 90 of pop production - punches every programme on the rinse 'n' spin remix machine: backward loops, varispeed vocals and Fairlight slams make this something of a pop curiosity from the ABC catalogue. Although the whirring blur and boom-box beats all pull tidily into place by the closing coda.

ABC - Look of Love 12" (Special Remix) *offline temporarily*



A Merchant Banker Bonus

I’ve seen the future, I can’t afford it.

Yuppiedom and Sloanies come full circle. With the Blue Meanies in office, tax hikes, library closures, charity snatching and the privatisation of forests (oi Cameron get off our land) and billion pound banker bonuses -  this undervalued tune fits the mood of the moment perfectly

ABC - How To Be A Millionaire 12" (Wall St Mix ) *offline temporarily*

The regulation 7 inch edish, sounds like.....


ABC - How To Be A Millionaire
. -

Me and my SHADO

Did you ever have a Dinky Interceptor ?

Now, I'm not typically given to Fortean type mysteries and mumbles - but wouldn't it be just smashing if,  ex-NORAD bod Stanley Fulham's predictions of ....

A. There will be a major UFO display over Moscow between the end of the first part
of January 2011 and the second week of January 2011.

B. Followed by a major display over London approximately seven-days later.

Actually came to hill of moonbeans - with some silvery outer spacers a'hovering Dr Who style over London town...(Perhaps similar to the flying Dorito seen looming over Red Square). Unless of course, it's the style of green-skinned, contact wearing omni-bothering space bandits that gave Ed Straker and his SHADO chums such an almighty run around...

To his credit Stanley is the same chap who predicted 'UFOs' over New York on October 13th.. last year...

Barry Gray - UFO theme (Alt Version)



Two versions of the UFO theme in this clip...



Why not nip over to  London Lee's  for a few more ET tunes...and as a bonus lend your lugs to Tom Middelton's walloping War of the Worlds remix

Jeff Wayne - Eve of the War (Tom Middleton Mix/Mondo Edit)

Gotta love those Anderson designs - almost equal to any of the Star Wars techno gear and gadgetry 

Three years of blogging and Norfolk 'n' good

Barton Turf: whistling distance from our holiday digs...

We're off for a few days much needed breather and break next week. To Walmington-on-Sea in fact, well not yer actual Kent/Sussex village, but nipping about some parts of Norfolk occasionally spottable in Dad's Army location scenes - it's the flint walls that give it away. Cromer crab, Roys of Wroxham a trip to Narge and boating on the broads are all possibilities at the mo'.

In other news: I only realised a few days after last Sunday had passed, this place had clocked up three years on the blog-o-meter. I had been planning a third anniversary jamboree of sorts - but it's all slipped sideways over the summer. Luckily, those jolly ol' rockers The Wolfmen have allowed me to give an exclusive debut airing to their flute-tootin remix of the latest single July 20. It's the sort of Hanna-Barbera bouncer perfect for lolloping off on your hol's.

So I'll see you in a week or there abouts my booties. And perhaps we'll catch up on the missing Dear Diary posts when I'm back.

The Wolfmen - July 20 (CC's Canned Heat Summer Flute Mix)


The original version of July 20 can be bagged right here along with a variant remix from The Dandy Warhol's Courtney Taylor-Taylor

Perhaps by year four I'll have remembered hyperlink code without having to look it up.

Funky Friday - Britpopping

If you were between 18 to 30, and based in the UK during the Britpop years (bookended by Suede and the Spice Girls) it was possibly the closest anyone too young to remember the sixties got to tasting the uncorked excitement of an England Swings experience. The mid-nineties saw Britain's music scene blossom and bloom into hot spots of home grown, hybrid-mixing, hit makers - stretching from newly minted Anglocentric anthems, Indie rockers and Big Beaters to rediscovered retro funk, swishy soundtrack highlights and cheesy listening lounge tunes.

Add in Blur vs Oasis, Weller's return to form, former shy-eyed shoegazer guitarists giving it Guitar Hero riffery and the upsurge and momentum of the moment was enough to revive the surviving Beatles into action releasing new recordings and archived outtakes via Anthology.

If you fancied a night in there was the reinvented Radio One (which had finally shaved off it's beardy ol' DJs) or Vic and Bob's Shooting Stars. For a night out how about catching Trainspotting or any number or Brit-flicks hitting the cinemas or even shaking a leg at clubs like Blow Up.

So instead of waving the flag with the typical Britpop colours, how about a couple of remixed remodels and two often overlooked vids..

And you must check out Piley's review of Blur's recent Southend gig - their warm up for Glastonbury and Hyde Park.


The Pulp/Blur tracks are taken from the Steve Lamacq mixed Weekenders, so download them and they'll join neatly togther when played in sequence

Pulp - Common People(Motiv-8 Mix)



Blur - Girls and Boys (Pet Shop Boys remix)



Almost the forgotten men of Britpop, Black Grape's It's Great When You're Straight.... Yeah! is still the perfect summer soundtrack almost 15 years on from it's release - yes it really has been that long.

Black Grape - Tramazi Party

An Offbeat Interlude

Can you believe it - the busiest day ever on the blog last Friday with double the daily hit rate and it's all down to Brenda Lee! Of all the tunes and tracks posted and popped on the blog it's Brenda's 'Walk A Mile In My Shoes' that got picked up by Hype Machine sending a stackload of extra traffic this way. Typically it's the Torero Brass Band and this Bardot picture that draws in the drifters and anonobods - so following on from the Brenda's (is anyone called Brenda anymore?) WAMIMS cover here's a Bob Andy's reggae flavoured rework and as bonus Billy Childish's moonstomping version of the Dads Army theme which you may have seen on some recent TV ads

Bob Andy - Walk A Mile In My Shoes



Wild Billy Childish And The Blackhands - Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler

Rocket Fuel

Amazing what a bit tweaking and retuning can do.

With a just bit of jiggery-poppery the funky Buzzcocks bounce and shoegazer a go-go shuffle of the regular version....

Hey Venus




Becomes a white trainers with outsized tounges and long sleeved T-shirt 'lectro pop nugget (which kind of reminds of this a bit)

Hey Venus - Mad Thatcher Disease Mix



PS - my ol' mate Marmite has just started a new music based blog Floating In Space - so why not pop on over and have a peep.

Buzzing Off

I'm out and about for a few days - but while I'm on the hoof - riddle me this pop pickers? Why was this cheeky piece of pop perfectness only a mini blip and not a monster hit?

Mint Royale (with Lauren Laverne) 'Don't Falter'


Mint Royale (with Lauren Laverne)- 'Don't Falter'



Back Friday playmates.

PS - if anyones's got a copy of the Mint Royale remix below (Frank Sinatra 'This Town') - could you do a bloke a flavour and knock me a copy? I'm buzzing for it.