VHS

hi there

this post, alas, is not about the mostly decent horror film called VHS, and indeed not about its sequel, which i have not seen yet. this relates to the actual thing that was VHS, it being the only practical way to watch films not broadcast on TV at home from the late 70s to the late 90s.

there exists a great deal of nostalgia and history for VHS, despite the fact that not one single sane person on earth misses the quality of them. VHS wasn't even the best video format - Beta was, easily, but VHS was cheaper and more widespread. this post then shall be a stack of memories, as well as a look at a few titles, all for random reasons.

why VHS now? well, my sorting and packing business of late, as regular readers will be aware of, has at last got to the stage of attacking a 20+ year VHS collection, a collection untouched for 7 or so years. most of it, then, had to go. and when i say most of it, here are two of the boxes that have been purged and slung, boxes like this also exist, or existed if you like.

with the overwhelming majority of my film collection upgraded to DVD, and a few upgraded again to that Blu Ray thing, the nostalgia thing just was not enough to warrant keeping most of the tapes any longer. however, as with tapes and records,where not everything recorded ever made it on to CD, or even that iTwat thingie, not every film that was released on VHS has made it to DVD.

i thus feel a need to keep a handful of VHS tapes. to be precise (sort of), these.

well, these and an ex-rental copy of Starstruck from Australia, which i packed up before i thought to take pictures, sorry. note, this Starstruck, not the Disney thing.

before we go on to have a look at a few of them, and have a few memories, here is a film i am not keeping, in the hope that it exists on DVD and i can get it at some point. i suspect it does. it's here to address certain observations from one Robert De Niro, and please note the comments around the next two pictures feature *** MASSIVE SPOILERS *** in respect of the film Taxi Driver.

in a recent interview, De Niro said that he would have liked to do a sequel to Taxi Driver, saying he would find it interesting to see what happened to Travis Bickle. he acted with some surprise to news that some fans interpreted the ending as saying Bickle was dead, as that was never the intention.

anyway, methinks De Niro forgets that he did make a sequel to Taxi Driver, with Martin Scorsese no less. well, it is sort of a sequel.

The King Of Comedy is a dark, frequently (despite the low age restriction) disturbing and rather funny parody of Taxi Driver. it was also well ahead of its time, which is probably why not many saw it at the time and it's become sadly overlooked if not forgotten over the years.

to say that the character De Niro plays in this one, Rupert Pupkin, is a darker soul than Travis Bickle is no overstatement. star of the show, however, is Jerry Lewis - who plays it straight and should have been an Oscar contender for his work here. the performance from Lewis gives every suggestion that maybe he was an actor that could have carried the infamous The Day The Clown Cried, but it is unlikely we will ever find that out.

so yeah, if you've never seen or even heard of The King Of Comedy, have a look for it.

on to some of the tapes i am keeping, then, and to start with two music ones that have not really surfaced on DVD. except that they sort of have.

if i remember right, Everything Live by the Manic Street Preachers did get a Japanese only DVD release, a DVD of somewhat debatable quality, in particular when looked at the cost of importing it from Japan. as the Manics love making some things exclusive to their Japanese fans only it is unlikely it will ever get a DVD release in the rest of the world, so the VHS of it stays. not ideal, but there you go.

musicians and VHS. back in the 70s, something of a rite of passage for any UK musician visiting New York was to call in at John Lennon's apartment and watch The Exorcist on video. this had all kinds of awesome to it. firstly, in the 70s this whole video business had not really made it to England on a wide basis. secondly, you couldn't see The Exorcist in England at all, as the censors had told Warner to "not even bother" trying to get a certificate for release, so widespread was its reputation. thirdly, that's the John Lennon inviting you round to watch a video. sounds better than, say, Ringo allowing you on to his premises to watch a DVD of Ringo, doesn't it?

as for the Frankie Goes To Hollywood video, Shoot!, well, the record label owning the rights to Frankie are quite expert in never getting a release quite right. the Frankie DVD that came along, Hard On, was sort of OK in a "this is all that is available so it will do" sense. it however missed a few things out. on this VHS, i think, that is not on the DVD, are "backstage banter" bits of footage of the band, apparently lifted from the obscure From A Wasteland To An Artificial Paradise laserdisc, and a different version of Relax, one that is somewhat less orgy related.

also, it is Frankie. asking me to throw out something Frankie related is a bit like saying you really do wish to feel how hard i can punch.

onwards, then, towards an oddity of 80s marketing that made sense at the time. the, if you will, ladies and gentlemen, 'video single'.

not many video singles got released, as it happens, as not many people bought them. i think the biggest seller was probably the I Want Your Sex by George Michael one, since no TV station would screen it. i don't have that one, or any others than these two.

the Sigue Sigue Sputnik one is as class as it gets with the band. you either like them or you don't. Sputnik had a minimum of two drummers on stage and on each song. if you don't get how awesome that is you don't get the band, really.

the video features what some may consider a "live" performance of Love Missile F1-11, intercut with interviews with fans celebrating all things Sputnik. one lady fan says that they are "the best thing since the Sex Pistols". i tend to shout and swear a lot at her, as this overlooks bands like Frankie, and indeed Adam And The Ants, who came in-between those two bands.

as for the Bad News one, well, it has like Sputnik not made it to a DVD release. i don't expect either of these video singles to ever get a DVD release, sadly. Bad News' video single is 10 minutes of Bad News brilliance, featuring their epic cover of Bohemian Rhapsody and a little documentary in regards of what they think of their record label. actually, it could be that the comments they make about their record label are why the label, EMI, are reluctant to actually release loads and loads of Bad News things. which is a shame, as they have lots of fans.

no way could i give up my Bad News video. it's brilliant, and Norman Bastard would twat me one if he found out i had given it away.

more music then, and two bands perhaps more popular - rightly or wrongly -  than Bad News and Sigue Sigue Sputnik combined.

I think that this The Complete Stone Roses video has footage on it that did not make it to DVD. however, now that i think a bit more, it did. there was a 2xDVD set called The Stone Roses, with one disc featuring the documentary here and the (let's be honest, awful) promo videos, with the other disc featuring the brilliant Blackpool Live thing. so i probably didn't need to keep this tape. whoops.

as for the Primal Scream one, i believe i got this off of my mate Shaun. it was made and released at the time of the album, which is to say it is not the recent Screamadelica anniversary tour thing. with the footage on this not on DVD anywhere it means i kind of have to keep hold of the tape. what would Bobby Gillespie say if he found i had thrown it out?

if you asked people of my age to answer honestly, i would wager that they would say they watched the same film more times on VHS than they did with the DVD or "download" of any film today. granted, this could be because we all had a lot less video tapes and only 4 TV channels. whilst that's a partial reason, it gives way to a real reason - because we had so few options, that's why a VHS of a film was cherished and appreciated.

these days, with cheap DVDs and even cheaper downloads (you know what i mean), people can cheaply build a collection of hundreds of films. there was a time when if you had four or five films on video you were considered to have an impressive collection. were those simpler times indeed better times? maybe.

a class thing with VHS was that illicit material just seemed better, no matter how poor the quality of the video was. bootlegs of films were class and owned like a badge of honour. and then of course there was porn.

i introduce that subject as my mate Spiros got quite excited when i told him i was going through my VHS tapes and getting rid of them. he asked if i still had his copy of Under The Rainbow. as it turns out, indeed i did, and here - reluctantly - is the most subtle picture i could take of it.

Under The Rainbow features, let us not hide away from it, midgets. that, i believe, is all i need to tell you. as for why i have it, Spiros went through a short-lived and indeed what many people considered to be an ill-fated experimental period where he gave heterosexuality a go. he gave it a fairly good go for a day or so, but just did not particularly care for what heterosexuality had to offer and did not like at all what he saw in this video he bought in-between purchasing Brut aftershave and trying to eat food with his fingers. so he dumped it on me, cheers for that.

moving on, and to a band i love but rarely mention here, The Stranglers.

there have been quite a few DVDs of The Stranglers out, but none of them have covered the ground of these two videos, in particular the superb The Old Testament collection. this tape, for a start, features solo videos from Hugh and JJ, with JJ's Freddie Laker in particular being a masterpiece.

The Meninblack In Colour is perhaps not as in your face as what one gets with The Old Testament, but there's still some ace stuff on it.

i imagine you are getting bored of this now, so the last two for you.

ah, Tin Machine. see several previous posts of mine, i guess - they were not a bad band at all, far from it. this is a solid, good live set from the band, even if it does feature rather too much of Hunt Sales on vocals for the more casual of Bowie fans.

chances of this making it to DVD? none, since getting their second album on CD is hard work in itself. one can only hope that Bowie really does do a "tin machine retrospective" set and throws this in to the mix on a disc. some of the Tin Machine promo videos were high budget, impressive affairs too. go on Dave, release them!

as for The Supergrass, it remains one of the funniest films i have ever seen. i have it on DVD, as part of the mostly ace Comic Strip Presents box set, but for some reason they have made strange and weird cuts to the film. not censorship ones, but what seems like "timing" ones. best i hold on to the VHS, then, with the full version of the film on it.

and i believe that will do, thanks.

many thanks for reading, and if you have some fond memories of the days of VHS, if not the VHS tapes themselves (note how i steered away from subjects like rewinding and tracking), you are not alone, it would seem!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Three Inches Of Prince

Hi there

a while ago, well a few days, i posted something about the class and magic that was the 3" sized mini CD single. in that post i mentioned i had a few, and that one of them was the celebrated Batdance by the celebrated Prince. wouldn't you know i found it as i was sort through stuff.

whilst that ebay thing suggests it is not really rare or all that valuable, i thought it worth showing off here for anyone interested. and everyone should have an interest in Prince.

i am not quite sure how exactly i ended up keeping the WEA / Warner plastic sleeve it was displayed in, but there you go! it means that the single is in reasonably good condition, bar a little touch of dust on the back as you will see just now.

is this worth owning? well, yes, i guess. i think the mix of Batdance here is slightly different from the usual versions, and 200 Balloons didn't make it on to the Batman soundtrack album. although it is on the 3 CD The Hits / The B-Sides set, whereas Batdance itself does not due to some sort of legal wranglings at the time.

also it has the Batman logo on it, and the name of Prince, so it is quite class and worth owning anyway.

now that i think i probably should have given the disc a spin, or "ripped" it to the iTwat, before i repacked it. whoops.

moving, arguably, to the other end of the talent spectrum from where Prince does his thing, i found a stack of Oasis single too. two of them were, i thought, worth throwing pictures up here of.

the one on the left, or right depending on how you are looking at it, is the Australia-only single of Morning Glory. as you can sort of see in the below pic, the b-sides are those that graced Roll With It, so i assume that the Aussies didn't get Roll With It as a single, or that they did and for some reason Australians really, really like getting the same b-sides again and again.

on the right/left there's There And Then, a CD single that, if i recall right, came free with some sort of video. probably an Oasis video. of the three tracks on it, the last, Champange Supernova, features a certain John Squire as a guest guitarist. the crowd start booing him from the instant he appears on stage, it sounds like. at one point Noel seems to say "go on, it's OK to boo him, he's a Man United fan".

as the booing starts well before Noel says that, i have always suspected that it was down to him not so much being a Man United man, rather more to do with him having recently split up The Stone Roses via a lawyer's letter. hey ho.

right, let me seek other interesting, shiny things to post here.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

homage to selfie

hi there

in tribute to the fact that the producers of the Oxford English Dictionary have decided that the word "selfie", usually accepted as being invented in the early 2000s, is in fact the best newly created word of 2013, i thought i would treat you all to a few new selfies. see it as as a sort of celebration on the flexibility of Oxford, if you like.

actually it's probably more of a celebration of the fact that i had adopted a love of surgical masks for reasons that, quite frankly, i am not going to go into. just admire.

yes, that one above seems to have scared one or two people, really. or at least the original version did; the upload to blogger of it has seen it take on some sort of bizarre red tint, which might well make it all the more scary i suppose.

speaking of which, as i was sorting through stuff, i found a classic of American 90s literature, and so decided to read it, seeing as i had the mask on and everything.

that was a difficult selfie to take, believe me. might have been easier if i had some gloves or something, but i am not sure i have any that fit me.

at some point, of course, i am going to have to have a try at the "ultimate selfie". that would be me wearing a surgical mask, reflected in a car mirror of some description, with the picture of course taken in Commodore 64 mode. it is going to be some work, that, but i think i can pull it off. as it were.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

in defence of Dancing In The Street

hi there

well, here we go again. yes, this is one of "those" posts. it is a defence of two rock stars who neither want nor need any sort of defence, least of all from some obscure 40 year old fan. why do i bother, then? it's just one of those things that bothers me, so on the blog it goes.

with increasing frequency, "worst ever" lists are featuring all over the internet and indeed in magazines. i am guessing, then, that "best ever" lists have reached some sort of saturation point, and thus readers are encouraged to argue over what is the worst rather than what is the best.

in regards of rock, pop or just music in general, this 1985 number one single is appearing often, usually close to the top (bottom) of worst ever lists, if not being called the worst ever.

yes, that's the cover of David Bowie and Mick Jagger's heartfelt duet of Dancing In The Streets. it was recorded and had a video made for it in record time in order to be played at the celebrated Live Aid event. it was on sale as a single not long at all after Live Aid, and sold many copies.

up front, any website or publication that opts to include any sort of charity record in a "worst of" list is telling you exactly what they are about, and that is not something pleasant. charity records are seldom about any sort of great artistic statement, although of course the artists involved give it their all to make the best record possible. including a charity record in a "worst of" list is, frankly, lazy at best.

not that Live Aid itself, or any charity effort, is beyond question. in many respects, some of the extravagance around the Dancing In The Street single, like Live Aid itself, can easily be questioned and have the wisdom of it doubted. but we will get to that.

the origins of David Bowie and Mick Jagger coming to do Dancing In The Street are both noble and ambitious. with Live Aid set to become a truly global event, with even the Soviet Union and the apartheid controlled South Africa getting involved, the world was likely to do what the song said. who better to deliver a cover of it, then, than Bowie and Jagger? no one, except Bowie was all set to perform at the London show, with Jagger in the States to perform there.

the first idea thrown about was a transatlantic duet via satellite. that would have been ace, but something just about beyond today's technology, never mind the "Commodore 64 is as good as it gets" computers of the 80s. a 30 or so second delay would affect the efforts of a "live by satellite" duet. a solution was for one of the artists to simply mime. yeah, you go and tell Bowie or Jagger to mime in front of any audience, let alone a worldwide one of over a billion.

the way forward, then, was one to fly to the other, record it and be done with it. as Bowie was busy with Absolute Beginners, and indeed polishing his codpiece in anticipation of Labyrinth, it made sense for Jagger to fly to London. which he did.

that, reader, is an example of the arguably "excessive" costs run up by the whole Live Aid thing. Bowie and Jagger doing a duet to raise awareness and funds for charity? cool. flying across the Atlantic to do it? hmn. whereas i have no doubt that Jagger covered the costs all by himself, it seems rather extravagant, especially as he flew back to the US some 15 hours after landing. why not just stay and do the duet with Bowie onstage at Wembley? we will get to that.

it's not the single most extravagant or ridiculous flight taken in the name of Live Aid, of course. that honour goes very much to Phil Collins. whilst most assumed that Phil Collins was invited to play Live Aid either by a very bad accident or some strange practical joke he didn't get, our Phil decided he would make personal history on the day by using Concorde to duck from London to the Philly gig, thus playing two concerts in two continents on the same day. Phil, the starving millions of Ethiopia to this day speak with nothing but pride of this gesture, i am certain.

as for why Mick simply could not stay in fakkin Landhan, innit, to do Dancing On The Street with Bowie at Wembley, well, it would have left the US bill with one star less. the US Live Aid was already a troubled affair, with the likes of Bob Dylan wanting nothing to do with it, saying US musicians should help US people, not strangers in Africa.

more importantly, Jagger was due to duet with Tina Turner. Tina - at this stage - was one of a very small percentage of women worldwide who had not had their skirt ripped off by a member of The Rolling Stones, something Mick was very eager to remedy. with his known admiration of Tina Turner, this was no doubt an important factor in Prince Charles deciding to have a word with his Mummy about a Knighthood for Mick.

on to the song then. just think on this - if the satellite thing had worked, or one had mimed, or both had been in the same country, the world would never have a recording of David Bowie shouting "SARF URMERICAAAAAAA" in a voice so cockney that Chas N Dave sound like Glaswegians in comparison.

the song and the video were all done and dusted in 13 hours. just over half a day, then, for two major artists who never settle for less than perfect to assemble a band, record a version of a song that both were happy with and make a video. and not just any musicians - the likes of Earl Slick and Steve Nieve (the latter to go on to huge cult fame due to being a Jonathan Ross regular) are playing on that record.

is the record, in isolation, any good? oh hell yes. it's a loving cover, meaning it's the boys having fun doing it but not to the extent of taking the p!ss. at worst it's a highly polished, well produced "jam", the likes of which we all assumed megastars got together and did for their own amusement, right before twitter came along and showed off how incredibly boring they are for the most part. there are easily a hundred or so songs far worse than it out in the universe, probably thousands.

it doesn't exist in isolation, though. whereas not many these days associate the song with its Live Aid origins, it is quite difficult to think of the song and not imagine the video.

the video is, as the above screenshot suggests, pretty much as much of a homage to the highest levels of camp homoerotica as you could get away with in the mid-80s. did it play on the Bowie-Jagger rumours? yes of course it did.

what rumours? just about every British pop or rock star has had some sort of homosexual "incident" associated with them over the years. it is the way of the British press, really, and it tends to be only the members of the press that really care. the story that Bowie and Jagger got together and reached a state of sexual congress in the early 70s, however, is a tale that has endured for decades. Angie Bowie certainly thrived on hints of the rumour. when the restraining / gagging orders on her as part of the divorce settlement ended and she published her "interesting" book Backstage Passes, did she reveal all? no, of course not. just more hints and suggestions that maybe they did get together, although she did confirm that she saw them in the same room together.

on that basis, Bowie and Jagger have had even more sex with even more people than was previously thought. a couple of thousand page phone books worth, really, compared to, say, a scribbled note on a piece of paper that Charlie Sheen can hold up. British Sex 1, American Sex 0, then. bravo boys.

viewing the video as a "let's play on this idea that for some reason lots of people are bothered about whether or not we had sex" makes it a revelation. it says "we don't really care what rumours are out there about us, and we know that most of you don't care beyond the amusement factor, so let's play with it and have some fun for a good cause". this certainly ties in with Bowie's views on his life story. when asked if he would ever produce an autobiography, the gist of his response was "just go and look at any one of the many biographies of me out there, find one that amuses you the most and just assume that's the truth". showing his gift for keeping his life private yet not hiding from fans, check out Bowie's VH-1 Storytellers performance. at no point does he reveal anything of himself, just lighthearted stories about some friends and booking agents.

but to get back on topic, having read the facts (and indeed my opinions) on this, does Dancing In The Street, in any sense at all, belong on any "worst ever" list? no, not really. both Bowie and Jagger in their own right have done at least 10 other songs you could easily say are worse than this one.

by all means do not all of a sudden love and embrace the song, and nor should one decide "actually this is a classic". it was a bit of fun to give a boost to a well intentioned cause, that's all, and sounds like what it is - two megastars having fun with a great song whilst showing off flashes of their genius.

by all means do, however, stop putting this song on sh!t lists. it does not belong on them.

yes, i probably do care about this one more than Dave or Sir Mick, but that is what it is to be a fan, i guess.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

tape (mostly)

hi there

yes indeedy, more sorting and boxing, thus a few more pictures of things that may be of interest before they are boxed up for a fair bit of time. this time, as you may well have guessed from the title, we are in the world of audio tapes.

the audio tape gets a lot more love than it should, really. they snapped a good deal easier than a record would scratch, and the quality of sound on them really doesn't compare to a CD. but they are still loved, by me and many others.

why? firstly convenience. a walkman was freedom, you could mooch around and listen to tapes for ages on them before you needed a battery change. when portable CD players hit they were clumsy and power eaters. there's also the "mix tape", the greatest gift you could ever give anyone.

anyway, tapes that i found that may be of interest to some, and let's start off with the "audio book" tape phenomenon. have a look at this stash!

yeah, in regards of "duplicate" Clockwork Orange, one is a tape of Anthony Burgess reading the novel, the other is a BBC radio play adaptation. as indeed is that An American Werewolf In London set you can see, and i assure you it's an amazing adapatation.

the above were invested in mostly for flights. planes 15 or so years ago, you see, were utter, utter sh!t in regards of inflight entertainment. the music channels were rubbish, as usually was the film they put on the big screen at the front - no personal screen with thousands of things to choose from to watch back then. these tapes, and usually the latest John Grisham from duty free, made the flight bearable.

oddly, though, one of my fondest memories was a 12 or so hour flight with a 90 minute tape of Tommy and highlights from Live At Leeds by The Who just played on repeat. well, played on just flipping the tape when one side had finished.

onwards, then, to two favourite bands, one of which features here frequently.

i think i bought Liverpool, Frankie Goes To Hollywood's second and often overlooked ace second album, on tape as something of an act of desperation. by that point i already had the vinyl and CD, and the band had split up. i probably bought the tape in the hope that it would somehow magically make the band get back together and record something else. hey ho. nice to have, as it features different artwork on the front from the other two formats. at least that is probably what i told myself as i handed over my monies at HMV.

as it turns out, i will only have given a lot of money to their record label and a little bit to the band, as details of the deal in place have it. which is a shame. odd, then, that the same label should have made such a huge mistake with what is conisdered to be the best, most successful album by The Art Of Noise.

if i recall right what i heard or read, the usual label for The Art Of Noise "forgot" to sign the paperwork for their then most recent album, which is how In Visible Silence came to be released on a different label. it was a huge success to boot. and that can be no surprise, as it's an excellent album. quite frustrating, really, that one cannot find it with any ease on CD, at least not at a decent price.


if we speak of tapes, we cannot leave out the king of all things tapes, can we?

whereas the soundtrack to Twin Peaks is a rather widely known thing, that an actual tape of Agent Dale Cooper's tapes was released is not so well known. the whole thing is Dale speaking to Diane on his tape recorder. some of it is specially recorded in a studio, whilst some is lifted directly from the TV series. it's quite class, is what it is.

and speaking of things that are quite class, tapes and devices like the one Dale Cooper had were used to bootleg gigs. some artists, in particular Bruce Springsteen, used to set aside a section for fans wanting to record the gigs, having no problem with fans trading tapes. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were known to be avid purchasers of bootlegs from Led Zeppelin gigs, saying that the fans always seemed to do a better job of recording them than the paid professionals.

at the other end of the spectrum i just drew there, you get this gem.

Bob, Bob and Vim were a band far ahead of their time, and never got appreciated as much as they should have. you would expect me as lead "vocalist" and, from a certain perspective, "guitarist", to defend the band i suppose, but it happens to be true. an amazing gig that was, with hardly anyone in the audience throwing stuff at us.

is the world ready, 25 or so years later, for a digital remaster and release of this live recording? perhaps. somewhere i have video footage of us in action too, so if i can find it maybe i will make a "mega" release.

i am not sure either of the Bobs from the band wish to be named, but i can tell you that one of them exchanged mix tapes with me frequently. i kept all of them, as far as i am aware, and here is but one of them for your viewing pleasure.

yeah, backwards stuff was the in thing in the 80s, thanks mostly to the one they call Prince.

speaking of Prince, here's one of his biggest albums, along with two unrelated tapes but ones that i love just as much.

i bought Simple Minds' Once Upon A Time at Our Price, as it was, in the Cleveland Centre, Middlesbrough. it was with a voucher for a fiver that someone had kindly given me for my birthday. i could guess who, but i would not want to offend if i guessed wrong. it's a great, great album, one that could have been one of the greatest of all time if only Jim Kerr didn't sulk and order (Don't You) Forget About Me to be removed from it, since he didn't write it.

as for Bootleg, the infamous and seldom heard in full second album from Bad News, Norman Bastard kindly got that one for me. a large amount of this album turned up on a deluxe reissue of the Bad News debut album, but many highlights were missing. the song AIDS, for instance, for some reason did not make it onto the CD. i wonder why not.

as for Prince's "music from and inspired by" Batman album, well, wow. it stands as a proper album in itself, and a reminder of the frenzy which greeted the revived Batman by Tim Burton. getting Prince to do the music was a masterstroke, really. having spent most of the decade establishing himself as a genuine talent, a couple of years before this saw Sign O The Times released. it richly deserved the criticial and commercial success it created, making the world at last have no choice but to take Prince as a serious artist. that no doubt added huge amounts of credibility to the decision to move Batman away from an overt comic book adaptation.

Bowie? Bowie. yes, i have a number of Bowie tapes. here are but three of them for you. well, two and a tin machine one.

i think tin machine was released the same week as Holly Johnson's Blast, and possibly Michael Jackson's Bad. i could be off by a few weeks. no matter, that highlights what amazing music we had thrown at us, week in, week out in the 80s. not like the sh!t now.

why tin machine on tape? because the tape, record and CD covers all had different pictures, with the band members stood in different positions. that's why.

Absolute Beginners and When The Wind Blows are, of course, film soundtracks. David did not feel a need to release songs he had done for films on his own albums, so one had to buy the soundtracks to get them. cheers for that. actually, really, cheers for that - both of these have some great music on them.

what's that, you want more Frankie and Frankie related tapes? OK.

what are the above? any Frankie fan would tell you. the one sans cover is the "international" version of Relax, recorded live on Europe A Go Go. it was given away with the ace Frankie computer game. below that is the cassingle for one of several re-releases of Two Tribes. in the middle are not the celebrated "cassingles" of the band's two biggest singles, but the standard 12" releases put out on tape, for the benefit of the Canadian market, i believe. and then on the end we have Holly's second solo album (i could never find the CD at the time), as well as the Atomic City cassingle.

the cassingle. never as popular as the 7" and not as big as selling as the CD single. a shame, really, as they were often quite funky things to buy and own. as these two show off.

where i could, i did indeed get the 7", 12", CD single and cassingle of favourites. yeah, i am that kind of fan. not big and clever, just fortunate. often the cassingle was the 7" shoved on two sides of a tape, but sometimes you got lucky and had the 12" on it. sometimes you got really lucky, as was the case with the intergalactic cassingle. if i remember right, the CD single was a basic 2 track thing, whilst this cassingle is a four remix epic. a, as they say in the trade, keeper.

as for the Ian Brown one, arguably this is a major highlight from his "on hold" solo career. the return of The Stone Roses is of course a very, very, very, very f*****g good thing, but there's been no new music from them, and thus we have not had any new Ian Brown stuff for ages. hopefully, one way or another, that's fixed in the near future.

sometimes bands opted for "exclusives" on the cassingle format, either a way of forcing fans to buy or making them something worthwhile for fans to have. in respect of the Manics you would hope it is the latter, but as they are signed to Sony you cannot exactly rule out the former. i actually have no idea how i came to own the So Why So Sad cassingle, but it has a decent live version of You Stole The Sun From My Heart on it, so it's a happy no idea, as it were.

i stand to be corrected, but i think the Manics threw out a lot of live recordings on the cassingle format. as a band they are against the idea of a live album, considering it a "cheap cash in". the few official live releases and numerous bootlegs, however, suggest that it would not be quite this.

as for the Class Of 94 tape, that features Archives Of Pain by the Manics from their much celebrated The Holy Bible Album, as well as many, many other fine bands. and Warren G.

that's actually a high quality compilation to have been getting for free, sellotaped to the front of a magazine, that is!

speaking of compilations and mixed tapes, the majority of non-originals have now been binned, alas. mixed tapes i made for the car were class, but i have no real need for them now. some, however, i could not get rid of, and this was very much one of them tapes.

this tape was made off of Norman Bastard's copy of Appetite For Destruction. the last two songs off the album are on side two, as are tracks by the likes of Whitesnake, WASP and Iron Maiden. class tape, that is.

this tape was the soundtrack for a summer. i recall playing it as i smashed up old fruit boxes for kindling, out in the old school yard. no way could i get rid of this tape.

onwards, then, and not strictly a tape, but for the most part music related. sort of. as i was going through where the tapes were stashed i found this.

that's a folder i used at University, after it had been beautified. i am convinced that Gillian either did the purple background for me, or it was one she did for herself and i simply pinched it and beautified away with images of things that i like.

what is all of that? well on the back is a class article from Empire magazine about the rather class idea that the La Scala cinema in London had. their class idea was to show A Clockwork Orange at a time when it was withdrawn from release in England by Warner Bros, at the behest of director Stanley Kubrick.

Warner are known for being fan friendly, but showing this one film was a no-no. Warner Bros cherished their relationship with Kubrick, and not once did they put pressure on him to release the film once again in England, no matter what financial benefits might be on offer. Warner duly knacked La Scala for this.

if i recall right, the legal action taken was of enough force and of a nature to bring about the demise of the cinema. this of course is a great shame, but then again they should not have done what they did.

on the front, well, it's a mishmash of things that were and indeed mostly still are of great importance to me as i make my way throygh the world. David Bowie doing The Lord's Prayer at the Freddie Mercury thing was included not so much for the act itself, but rather for Angie Bowie's priceless reaction to it, the details of which you are free to google.

i have no idea why exactly The Deer Hunter would have featured so strongly, although oddly recently i have had the splendid soundtrack on the stereo a bit. it is not a film that psychologically or emotionally i want to revisit, to be as brutal with the truth as the film is.

anyhow, back to boxes. yes, VHS will probably feature soon.

hope this has been of passing interest to some!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rickett's Theme

Hi there

just a long overdue link here to the most excellent and awesome theme song the highly talented Jonathan Granville composed for your humble narrator. 

it is easily a theme better than i deserve, so i can only suggest you just enjoy it for what it is and not specifically my theme.

oh yes, the link. here it is

Rickett's Theme


as Jonathan composed it with my selfies in car mirrors in mind, you may want to browse the blog and look at them as you listen. or not. if you like, here's an ad hoc, on request selfie i took during the week.

hope you dig my theme as much as i do!

many thanks again, JG!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the hardest thing in the world

hi there

oh dear. it seems that highly efficient, honest and brilliant organization - and please note i did not call them lazy, incompetent, thieving gypsy bastards, in particular the ones at the mail sorting centre - have had tough times befall them again.

i am not sure if it's another strike, another round of "go slow" protests or just the general standards being maintained, but post is once again suffering huge delays here. it's hard to determine what the cause is, in particular as sometimes it's one mega-combination.

no matter, a parcel arrived for me today, at the least.

this was a parcel which had an estimated delivery date of 14 days ago, or so i thought. what did i think this parcel was? what do you think i thought it was? yes, i was wildly optimistic that this would be, at last, my copy of Made Of Stone, the film about The Stone Roses and Heaton Park.

getting quite excited about seeing it, i did what you would expect me to do, which is get the iTwat ready to take pictures of it in the glory of Commodore 64 mode.

so was it Made Of Stone? alas, no. it was an entirely different disc, one ordered and shipped some time after the one featuring The Stone Roses.

this, to be precise.

that's the latest of the most excellent Lego Star Wars mini-films. actually, it's the latest two, forming a two part story under the general title of the "Yoda Chronicles".

not The Stone Roses, then.

i suppose i should say i am glad that at least this one has turned up, in particular with regards to how much the boys loved it when they caught it by accident on TV, but that's wrong. i should not be glad, or relieved, when things arrive in the post - they are f*****g supposed to. unfortunately the widespread mentality here, way beyond just the post office, is that whenever someone condescends to do something for which they are paid to do they are in fact doing you a massive favour and you should be grateful. f*** that.

hey ho. what does not help, of course is that Royal Mail do not do tracking, either inwards or outwards, for international items. this is annoying, and probably the case either due to "system incompatibility" or just them wanting to force people to use their expensive courier service.

as for this disc, well it has already been played once, and enjoyed. for me it's not quite as good as the first, The Padawan Menace, and nowhere near as good as the second, the brilliant The Empire Strikes Out. that's no doubt why they opted to bundle the two of these together, i guess, to cut down on disappointment.

but don't get me wrong. it's still great fun.

i would rather not give too much away in regards of plot details here. any passing ultra-Star Wars loyalist would no doubt have a right hissy fit at the crossing of characters and times as presented in the Lego Star Wars universe, so they might well want to just give it a miss.

for everyone else, in particular those who want to have some fun and not worry so much if it's accurate or not in regards of a fictional universe, watch and enjoy!

with some luck, then, The Stone Roses will arrive later this week. if it does not, i fear i will have to tell amazon to send it again, and hopefully they will bill the arse off the post office for the cost of the replacement.

fingers crossed, i guess.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!