Today is a beautiful day… but mostly I’m stuck at work. I just sat in the garden over lunch and listened to The Comforts of Madness by Pale Saints – an album that takes me away from where I am and puts me in a much better place. Like many I suspect my first introduction to Pale Saints was on SnubTV.

I saw them a few times including one last time at the ICA after Ian had left… they were still not bad (although arguably not Pale Saints).

The first time I saw Ozzy was supporting Motorhead at Port Vale in ’81 – he blew me away… I was already a Sabbath fan having been sucked in with a copy of Paranoid I picked up at a jumble sale a couple of years previously, but had never managed to see them live. I saw Ozzy a couple more times in 81 and 82.

The last time I saw Ozzy was at The Hammersmith Odeon in 82 or 83, it was in his hanging-midgets period, and at the very tail-end of my heavy metal period. I don’t remember particularly enjoying it… maybe because I was growing up, but I suspect it was more to do with the pantomime that Ozzy had become by then, don’t get me wrong… I’m quite fond of the panto side of HM but I don’t think he was doing it that well then.

Over the last few years the Internet has turned me into a nostalgia fiend and seeing that Ozzy was back at the Hammy Odeon last night I found too hard to resist. I took my Nirvana-loving son along… because you can’t really love Nirvana and not love Sabbath.

I loved it. Here are some reasons why I maybe shouldn’t have:

• Ozzy’s voice is shot.
• His stage patter takes three forms:
  • “I can’t fucking hear you”
  • “Let me see your fucking hands”
  • “I still can’t fucking hear you”
• He has an unhealthy fondness for the HM ballad – we were treated to three including one as an encore – who wants an effing ballad for an encore!?
• Drum solo <yawn>
• Guitar solo – with wind effects! <yawn x2>

And here’s why I did:
The man is a legend, he’s 62 years old and still loves what he does. His energy is boundless, his love for the audience and for what he does is admirable. He has fun on-stage. Of course it’s still panto complete with buckets of water and a foam-spraying water-cannon, but it doesn’t seem to matter – in fact it’s probably better this way. If Ozzy dared to try and take himself seriously this would have been awful but he’s better than that. Much much better. I also love how he hobbles around the stage like an old man in his carpet slippers on his way to put the kettle on.

There’re a few more pictures on Flickr:

Here’s my video of half of Fairies Wear Boots (until my battery died):

And here’s a better video of set-closer Paranoid:

The Impossibles – Delphis

Curve – Coast is Clear
I saw Curve in 1995 at the Town & Country and it was the show that made it clear to me that I was not the sort of person who could cope with the indie disco… I realised I preferred to enjoy my music alone – or in an environment where I could pretend to be alone.

Dubstar – Stars

McCarthy – Get a Knife Between Your Teeth
Maybe it did smack ever so slightly of McCarthy jumping on a bandwagon… but if it means that if I wanted to I could dance to McCarthy…

Thousand Yard Stare – Wonderment

The Stone Roses – Waterfall

Buffy by Ryan

The Gentlemen by Rupert Giles

Motorhead’s Killed by Death was first released on the compilation album No Remorse and was one of the four songs on that album that killed my love for Motorhead.. but it was the best of the four so…

A TUNE THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY/SMILE/LAUGH
Stereolab – Stomach Worm
Here’s a listen video –
… and here’s a (live) watch one.

A TUNE THAT YOU HATE
Eric Clapton – Wonderful Tonight
I hate this with all the hate that its possible to have – I scare myself just how much I hate it – the opening guitar line and those mawkish lyrics – it is a crime… I’m only posting a link because it’s in the rules… don’t click!

A TUNE THAT YOU LOVE
Today it will be Galaxie 500 – Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste – on other days it will be other Galaxie 500 songs
No idea what it has to do with Matt Dillon and Rumble Fish but it was the only video I could find

A TUNE YOU’D WANT PLAYED AT YOUR FUNERAL
Fairport Convention – Who Knows Where the Time Goes
Could have chosen any of a dozen Sandy songs…

A TUNE THAT IS YOUR GUILTY PLEASURE
I don’t think I have guilty pleasures – there is no music I love that I feel guilty for loving and I’m utterly convinced that it is all unquestionably cool but just to put something in here…

Slade – Far, Far Away

A TUNE FROM A FAVOURITE FILM OR TV SHOW
Jacky – White Horses
Loved this for ever so it was just an extra special treat that Dean & Britta covered it… twice

A TUNE THAT YOU THINK NO ONE ELSE WILL KNOW
Schrasj – Tower
Actually I’ve no idea if anyone else knows this or not – but it’s awesome. I was sent a 7″ of this in the early days of the Galaxie 500 mailing list – I tragically can’t even remember who sent it… if it was you I am forever in your debt.
Here’s a live video (which I’d never seen before)
And you can listen to (or download) both sides of the single over here – do that!

Great gig, The Sid Presley Experience split and half of them went onto form The Godfathers who were the not the same (despite I think trying to be) and by then I’d moved on.

This blog post has collected together pretty much the complete works of The SPE including both singles, radio sessions and some live stuff.

I love that people post videos of them playing their records to YouTube and I never get tired of watching them – here are a few favourites, most of which I found in a 30 minute trawl of YouTube – there is so much vinyl joy out there!

The Champs  – Tequila

The Monkees – Porpoise Song

The Shangri-Las – Give Him a Great Big Kiss

The Special A.K.A. – Gangsters

Luna – Dear Paulina (of course!)

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Picture nicked from The Lost Planet

Of all the albums I owned in the days before Motorhead, Out of the Blue was certainly the one that had the longest lasting affect on me. If you asked me to name any albums from before my heavy metal Damascus (In late 1979) I’m sure I could name very few. And I suspect that the only one that was a real album, as opposed to compilations, was the Electric Light Orchestra‘s finest hour.

I spent too much of last night lying awake with Mr Blue Sky swimming around my head and so decided that today was the day I should reacquaint myself with Out of the Blue, I wanted to hold the album with its colourful gatefold sleeve and its gorgeous blue vinyl (and the space station cut-out I’d forgotten about). Sadly holding it was out of the question, I’d guess it’s getting tatty and dusty in my dad’s shed with too much of my past.

So the next best thing to holding and stroking and smelling was to give it a listen. So I headed over to we7 and settled in for a morning wallowing in the lush and layerd (and over-lush and over-layered) album of my past. I enjoyed it much more than I expected to. With metal came a dismissal of all that went before, and ELO where probably the most thoroughly shut out. I would suggest that I haven’t heard the whole of OotB since I first heard Overkill.

I’ll not leave it so long again.

I was never a punk, I liked punk music and owned Clash and Damned albums and a fair few punk singles, but I was a headbanger (which is probably why the punk bands I generally liked were very much on the rock side of punk rock – see my previous ascii illustration).

But for all my denim and leather and loud music and lusciously thick and greasy hair (swoon) I still loved pop music. Top of The Pops was still regularly viewed right into the mid 80s and I still bought singles in Boots and Smiths which is where a couple of these tracks stem from.

There is no Clash or Damned or Buzzcocks because none of them made songs that I love as much as these (except maybe The Buzzcocks who came very close to being on this list and would definitely be here if it was a Top 7).

• The Members – The Sound of the Suburbs
  I have enduring memories of The Members performing Sound of the Suburbs on Top of The Pops (although it wasn’t this performance so they must have been on twice – or it was on a different TV show). They looked so ordinary. Sound of the Suburbs is like a punk version of one of my other favourite songs, Pleasant Valley Sunday.
• The Rezillos – Top of the Pops
  I love Faye’s voice, I love the anti-corporate lyrics and the gorgeous irony of their ToTP appearance (and the major label that it was released on), and I love just how it makes me feel.
• Fatal Microbes – Violence Grows
  I suspect there’s a whole swathe of people who have John Peel to thank for their love of Violence Grows, I’m one of them. Honey Bane’s delivery is perfect. I also remember Peel playing it years later as a comparison with Wipe it Away by Bleach. Didn’t Boy George write about his love of this song in Take it Like a Man?
• The Slits – Typical Girls
  I’m pretty certain that I came late to Typical Girls (and The Slits), I do own a 7″ somewhere but bought it at a record fair years afterwards. I di remember a school friend lending me Cut (I guess I probably had to smuggle it into the house) and I had a tape of it around but probably never listened as much as I should have.
• The Newtown Neurotics – Blitzkrieg Bop
  I saw The Newtown Neurotics a couple of times in the mid 80s. This is obviously a cover of The Ramones track but has a wonderful anti-war lyric and one of my favourite song endings ever… “and we’ve gone”
• Television Personalities – Part Time Punks
  Part Time Punks was all I knew of the Television Personalities until quite recently. I can’t remember how or when I became aware of this song and it wasn’t until the TVPs back-catalogue arrived on eMusic that I discovered that they were much more than just this one track.

Adam and I have been fascinated by the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. I have vague memories of watching it first time around – although those memories could easily have been of later missions. We’ve spent a lot of time listening to the “as live” broadcasts played on the We Choose the Moon website (although some “as live” telly would have been nicer). An hour or so (+40 years) back the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility… I was thrilled!

Over the last few days I’ve been randomly using Blip.fm (and The Hype Machine) to post vaguely related songs to Twitter… for no one’s enjoyment of my own and for the same reason I’ll repost here. I was going to create a Spotify playlist but it failed at the first hurdle (ballboy) so I shan’t bother…

• 1:39 PM Jul 16th: Getting ready for the moon launch by listening to the few space related songs I have – Essential Wear for Future Trips to Space by ballboy ♫ http://blip.fm/~a11ub
• 4:12 PM Jul 16th: Two hours to launch ~ psycho helmets on ~ Silver Rocket by Sonic Youth ♫ http://blip.fm/~a15of
• 4:47 PM Jul 16th: Just over an hour to launch – time to load up the Spacemen 3 (sorry!) #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a16tp
• 5:31 PM Jul 16th: 30 minutes to launch ~ Space is Deep by Hawkwind #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a18fv
• 6:08 PM Jul 16th: Off into outer-space you go my friends, we wish you bon voyage. #apollo11 ~ Galaxie 500 – Moonshot ♫ http://blip.fm/~a1a6k
• 6:33 PM Jul 16th: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a1bik
• about 10 hours ago from Blip.fm: “Just to be in space would be the important thing” ~ ballboy – A Day in Space #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a9r38
• about 9 hours ago: “It’s time to fly… into life’s mystery” Jonathan Richman http://hypem.com/track/577181 #apollo11 #hypem
• about 7 hours ago: The colours of the moon #1 – Pink – Nick Drake – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a9xl1
• about 7 hours ago: The colours of the moon #[2] – Blue – Big Star – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a9xoj
• about 7 hours ago: The colours of the moon #3 – Red (and Low) – Belly – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~a9xuv
• about 7 hours ago: “It’s time to go somewhere we’ve never seen” - Luna‘s cover of Jojo’s Fly Into the Mystery http://bit.ly/RX7TB #apollo11
• about 6 hours ago: The colours of the moon #4 – White (and Trash) - Kristin Hersh – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~aa3ct
• about 6 hours ago: The colours of the moon #5 – Blue (revisited) – Cowboy Junkies – #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~aa3im
• about 1 hour ago: Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed (REM) #apollo11 ♫ http://blip.fm/~aaslv