Hammer Horror

 Another toon for the dark season, Hammer Horror by the one and only Kate Bush.

https://youtu.be/XR4KnfcgLm0?si=gpyLctfBjD5WkxMv

Do you like Kate's music?

On a Rope!

As All Hallows Eve looms ever closer and Monster Base's house band is raising hell in New Jersey, I thought I'd play a few creepy tracks over the next few weeks on MoonBase to get us into the spirit of the dark season.

To kick off here's Rocket from the Crypt with On A Rope from 1996. Yeah!

https://youtu.be/2Ezd9WfXbnI?si=iG4r78BAd1ZGdLYS

Please send in your spooky requests. If you can mix space and monsters then all the better! 

M.C."Screechin' Creech"

Introducing the latest member of Monster Base House Band!

I couldn't find a scale drum kit, so Creech is going to keep the beat with his laptop and provide the hook with his turntables!

- BrianF 

Monster Base 

NJ USA

Rock a Bye Baby Doll and Friends

Recently I saw a big doll on a stall. Clearly from the Sixties or Seventies, the unusual feature was the key at the back. It was musical and played a lullaby, whist gently rocking. 

Googling musical rocking dolls brought me to ... Baby Rock a Bye! And yep, I would say that's the doll I saw, 18 inches tall, like the Kenner ALIEN! 

Obviously a design that kept on rockin', Baby Rock a Bye morphed into or came from .... Jane and Jenny!

But then again, Lucy maybe the wellspring too.

I bet this doll in some form or other appeared in some Sixties or Seventies TV show like the Avengers.

Is it a doll you know readers?

Here it is in lullaby mode. Careful! You may fall asleep! 

https://youtu.be/0f8dqMrDsjw?feature=shared

Glimpses of Machinery

Discussing droids among us earlier in the month I recalled some songs about futuristic machines.

The earliest I remember is the fabulous Memory of a Free Festival by David Bowie. I was enthralled as a 12 year old with it vision of young people communing with Venusians and a Sun Machine:

We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes

And saw machines of every shape and size

We talked with tall Venusians passing through

And Peter tried to climb aboard

But the Captain shook his head and away they soared

Climbing through the ivory vibrant cloud

Someone passed some bliss among the crowd

And We walked back to the road, unchained

The Sun Machine is coming down, and we're gonna have a party.

Similar but darker is Bowie's Saviour Machine and it's terrifying mantra of My logic Says Burn! 

President Joe once had a dream

The world held his hand, gave their pledge

So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine

They called it the Prayer, its answer was law

Its logic stopped war, gave them food

How they adored till it cried in its boredom

Please don't believe in me, please disagree with me

Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now

Or maybe a war, or I may kill you all

Don't let me stay, don't let me stay

My logic says burn so send me away

Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

I need you flying, and I'll show that dying

Is living beyond reason, sacred dimension of time

I perceive every sign, I can steal every mind

Don't let me stay, don't let me stay

My logic says burn so send me away

Your minds are too green, I despise all I've seen

You can't stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

More recently those guitaring geeksters Radiohead described in stark terms modern mans' banal future sung-spoken in a robot's spooky voice:

Fitter happier

More productive

Comfortable

Not drinking too much

Regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week)

Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries

At ease

Eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)

A patient, better driver

A safer car (baby smiling in back seat)

Sleeping well (no bad dreams)

No paranoia

Careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)

Keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then)

Will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall)

Favours for favours

Fond but not in love

Charity standing orders

On Sundays ring road supermarket

(No killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)

Car wash (also on Sundays)

No longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows

Nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate

Nothing so childish

At a better pace

Slower and more calculated

No chance of escape

Now self-employed

Concerned (but powerless)

An empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)

Will not cry in public

Less chance of illness

Tyres that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)

A good memory

Still cries at a good film

Still kisses with saliva

No longer empty and frantic

Like a cat

Tied to a stick

That's driven into

Frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness)

Calm

Fitter, healthier and more productive

A pig

In a cage

On antibiotics

On my CD player this month I've been enjoying the cyborg imagery of Turin Brakes' Underdog:

Two black lines streaming out like a guidance line.

Put one foot on the road now where the cyborgs are driving,

With the WD-40 in their veins the screeching little brakes complain.

And their starkly evocative Future boy with lines like:

Why are you pushing info into me,

I have no need for it, I'm from the stars.

Perhaps the earliest futuristic passage that appeared on MC back at the beginning was this brilliant but dark imagery by Damon Knight in his short story Masks. It even references a Moon Prospector! 

The prospector was climbing a crater slope with its handling members retracted and its head tilted up. Behind it the distant ringwall and the horizon, the black sky, the pin-point stars. And he was there, and it was not far enough, not yet, for the Earth hung overhead like a rotten fruit, blue with mold, crawling, wrinkling, purulent and alive.

What's your favourite lyric, line, verse or passage about machines,bots, droids and spaceships readers? 

WINGS OVER MOONBASE

 Awaiting for Evri to arrive and collect my daughter's Sindy sales, I'm currently listening to an old fave LP, Band on the Run, by Wings.

I always found Wings pleasantly melodic and wistful. Paul and Linda McCartney, young husband and wife, playing together in the band really counted. You could feel the warmth.

I guess I'm nostalgic about them, reminding me of the Missus and I as was in the Seventies, a shaggy loved-up couple, although we've been apart much more. Paul and Linda were apart for a single night before she sadly passed away I've read.

Anyway, enough soppy stuff. Band on the Run is one of many fine Wings albums. Wildlife and RAM are two more I really enjoyed as a teenager in the Seventies and still do.

They released loads of singles too: Jet, Juniors Farm, The Frog Chorus, Live and Let Die to name a few.

Do you like Wings?

Not everyone's cup of tea I know, can you name the people on the cover of Band on the Run?

Heavy Metal Day! High Tides' Sea Shanties: Heavy Canticles in 1969

It was today in 1970 that heavy metal was born with the release of Sabbath's eponymous album.

No-one can argue with this.

What can be picked over are the distorted bones of the pre-Sabbath corpus.

Millions of words have been penned in the quest to elicit the sparks, to name the building storm, to label the flames that would be consumed and consummated in Sabbath's debut.

Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, bits of The Who, Hendrix, Gallagher, Beck, Cream, Sir Lord Baltimore and many many more bands have been named as the darkening roots of heavy rock.

As a fan all my life I'd like to add one more band to the rocky road toward Sabbath's coming.

High Tide.

I only came across this band in the 2000's when I got a CD copy of their 1969 LP Sea Shanties. I wuz blown away. Within its bombastic bag of bone-crunchers, the sound is a maelstrom of fuzz, high-pitched riffs and a fabulously rich vocal. Sea Shanties is a work of some great heaviness I would say.

Now the differences between prog, heavy metal, heavy rock and hard rock can be argued till the seraphim fall but I'm sure any definition of heaviness would include dirge-like melodies, doom-laden lyrics, distortion-sawed chords and fabulous song titles.

Sea Shanties has them all in spades. OK, the overt presence of the Dark Lord can't be felt like it can in the first grimoire from Ozzy, Tony and the brummy coven, but in High Tide's blistering opus a thick heavy watermark was left in 1969 for all to see and follow.

I often wonder if Black Sabbath had heard Sea Shanties before launching themselves onto the Earth?

Anyways, here it is, courtesy of modern means, High Tides' Sea Shanties from 1969. See what you think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpBCXof2qCc&list=PLEMzLROuENR2TrnybowmwRELji6w26THM&index=1

The Ghastly Ones - A Very Strange CD

I found this music video on You Tube, an instrumental, by a group called The Ghastly Ones (there was a movie called The Ghastly Ones, directed by Andy Milligan - which was banned in Britain, where it was classed as a Video Nasty).

The interesting part is that the video features a make believe Aurora box top of a grave digger - or a grave robber.

Apparently, this is the cover for their 2005 CD All Plastic Assembly Kit. Some photos of the cover show the Aurora name spelt as Augora.

Very weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GbXQvUArdE

Here is some information on the group and the CD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghastly_Ones

https://www.discogs.com/release/2700700-The-Ghastly-Ones-All-Plastic-Assembly-Kit

Paul Adams from New Zealand

IVY AND BANE WALKING IN THE RAIN

This year's resolution is doctor's orders. Get fitter! So with that in mind the Missus and me headed to picturesque Hebden Bridge in the Pennines for a country walk.

Here are a few snaps of beautiful Hebden Valley; light rain, sleet and ice came too.

 

I loved this glass bottle fence!

At the end of the walk we went into the ever-welcoming Hebden.

In one charity shop I saw this interesting plastic space plane. It had a pull-bag landing gear, which pumped a friction motor. I've seen toy Galaxy Warrior motorbikes that do this as well. Have you got anything like this?

This Lanard 12 incher from 2003 caught my eye too.

I did pick up an old friend, Flairck's Variations on a Lady. I loved this Dutch LP as a teenager and played it to destruction. I've a second copy now! Is this one you know?

I've put it next to Gryphon's Red Queen to Gryphon Three. This was an LP that I wanted as a teenager but never got. My Son-in-Law, Daughter and Grandkids got it me as a late Chrissie present and I'm glad they did. Its great! Do you like Gryphon?

The Missus spotted these in a bargain bin in another Charity too. Ivy and Bane. From one of the worst superhero films ever made, Batman and Robin, 1996. George Clooney, Arnie Schwarzenegger et al. No wonder they look glum!

So, clutching these bad guys, Flairck, Gryphon and an old Mandolin, we left lovely Hebden having racked up ten thousand steps for the Doctor.

MY BLUE-GREEN ROSEDALE ORGAN

 

This is a picture of the Rosedale electronic organ just like the one I had as a kid. I adored this thing and couldn't get enough of its reedy gaspy notes.

Like everything I had it got chucked.

Fortunately I found another one about 10 years ago and could once again enjoy those wispy keys.

Did you have one?

A-HA STATES

I watched A-Ha's old 1984 Take on Me video today. Its one of Moonbase Junior's fave songs. I couldn't help noticing how the final scene where the singer catapults himself from wall to wall in the hallway is something I have seen before, a take on something else!

You may have guessed what I mean. Its that scene in the brilliant Altered States [1980] where William Hurt does exactly the same, pounding the walls as he tried to stave off existential oblivion. Its a powerful scene and has stayed with me since first seeing it.

Do you think they're similar? Am I altering my state!

HUMBER AND TRENTING

 The Moonbase Missus and me have just got back from an overnight stay in our new fave town, Barton Upon Humber in North Lincolnshire. An hour away from Moonbase down the M62, its old and pretty enough to keep us both happy and enough charity shops and cafes to make a sound Saturday morning.

 We also went to a Friday night gig, the main reason for going, to see one Nick Harper at the Ropery Hall.

Nick Harper is the son of folk rock legend Roy Harper, as in Hats off to .... by Led Zep. It can't have been easy forging a musical career in such a legendary shadow but Nick, who we only discovered last month, is enough of a songsmith and above all a guitar virtuoso to completely hold his own and being now 58 has done for decades.

Mind-blowingly original in both voice and guitar you can catch up with Nick Harper here. He's playing Birkenhead tonight!

Mr. Harper was ably supported by a fabulous warm-up act, Patrick Duff. Another fabulous singer-songwriter and guitarist, the small Barton crowd were definately blown away with his seasoned talent and incredible set of lungs! As a teenager he was the frontman of indie band Strangelove, compatriots of Britpop founders Suede and hailed as the next big thing before rock 'n' roll took its toll. You can read about Patrick's life here. We bought his biography for a friend.

After a decent kip overnight we hit Barton's church museum and shops this morning, fuelled by coffee and a Lincolnshire sausage butty.

St Peter's Church is a medieval structure now run as a museum by English Heritage. Full of preserved skeletons of dead residents, ample diseased bones, split skulls and burial artefacts from its hundreds of graves, its one of the most dug-up and researched places from the Middle Ages anywhere. Well worth a visit especially if you're a member of English Heritage, its a grounding pile with its many dark spaces like this, the bell tower.

The charity shops were reassuringly full of the living residents of Barton and proved bountiful too. Well at least I thought so. See what you think in the snap below.

The K-Tel 40 Supergreats double album, £1, is in near mint condition, a gift for a mate; the JLA novel collection I'd never seen before and in very good shape for £1 each too; the Dr. Who VHS tapes were a punt to be honest - being from the early 1990's they're not old enough for my own VHS collection but maybe of interest to a buyer on Ebay. £1 each, the double set £3.

There were lots more Dr. Who VHS tapes - should I have got them all? -  and a huge collection of hardback books called the History of Dr. Who, each book sealed in plastic and unopened and probably a part-work. At £3 each they were too rich for my purse. What do you think? 

I also snaffled this Dragon magazine from the hey-day of Kung Fu.

With the great Jimmy Wang Yu on the cover and also the centrefold, I so remember these mags and had them all as a youngster. I still have a quite a few now boxed up with my Inside Kung Fu pile in the attic. Did you have magazines like this as a kid?

I was also tempted by this Starline LP of TV Themes from the 1970's, which included the wonderful Catweazle [was it shown were you are?], the classic Please Sir and the Fenn Street Gang, which I think was a Please Sir spin-off, is that right?

Being by the Pandora Orchestra I didn't succumb as anything might happen once opened!

We then set off and toured down the Humber and its tributary the Trent on the eastern banks around Alkborough. Have you been there?

Alkborough Flats is an ethereal drenching of three rivers meeting in the mud. A primitive place complete with an ancient circular turf maze, Julians Bower.

The land and villages around Barton on the Humber and the Trent all seem ancient. Its like stepping back a few hundred years just being there. Flat vistas, distant rises, red brick hamlets, russet soil, wide long rivers, aged trees and empty lanes all give the area an other-worldly feel..

My final shot is a return to St. Peter's. As soon as aI saw the ladder propped up against a bare medieval wall I thought of that scene in the Stone Tape.

You know the one, where a young girl's ghost lets out a blood-curdling scream as she stands at the top of a set of stone steps next to an ancient bare wall!

BBC

Shown to a snug, festive but unwary British public on Christmas Night 1972, the BBC and Nigel Kneale created one of the scariest TV shows ever made. I had just turned 11 and it frightened the bejeebers out of me, as it did Jane Asher's character pictured below near the dreadful steps to nowhere. I hope the Beeb shows it again this Christmas, do you readers?

BBC

YOU GOTTA REACH DOWN TO LIFT THE CROWD UP!

After the glory of our childhood toys came the fizz and gleam of modern music. It did for me and I guess for many as the crazes of infancy gave way to the crazes of youth.

My first musical craze was the pop music around me when I was a listening kid in the late Sixties/ early Seventies : Slade, T. Rex, Suzie Quattro, Donny Osmond, the Partridge Family, the Sweet, Leo Sayer and so on. 

All this good stuff eventually coalesced around David Bowie for me and I bought all of his albums including his early stuff on Images, did a turn as his Ziggy Stardust at the High School talent show and bought some of his fabulous singles. I saw Bowie live at Preston Guild Hall in the early Seventies and thought I'd died and gone to Heaven.

During this period I was also obsessed with Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album and my sister introduced me to Lou Reed's magnificent Transformer, which excitingly had links to Bowie too.

As my hair grew longer in the mid-Seventies my tastes got heavier and Bowie and Lou gave way to hard rock and prog. Bouncing on my bedroom turntable now were LP's borrowed from my two Brothers' stereogram; Cream, Black Sabbath's Masters of Reality, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and the Bumpers/ Fill Your Head with Rock/Nice enough to Eat compilations. My Sister introduced me to the Yes Album and Wishbone Ash's eponymous first LP and Pilgrimage. Some bands she listened to sadly passed me by; James Gang, Caravan, Family, Three Dog Night and maybe Quintessence.

All of this good stuff for me eventually coalesced around Led Zeppelin, Rush, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Free, Jethro Tull, Uriah Heap and the heaviest of them all, Budgie, whom I saw live at Lancaster Uni around 1977.

Behind all the noise were some troubadours, especially Joni Mitchell and emphatically Neil Young. Again I have my sister Rene to thank for introducing me to his After the Goldrush and also to Van Morrison's phenomenal Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece. Rene also played me Talking Heads.

In 1979/80 I co-formed two rock bands with my friend George [ and occasionally Keiron]. First it was a Blackpool prom busking duo called Alien Cage and then with two more friends, Boyley and Raff, a four-piece called Sirius, which gigged in a Preston pub called the Unicorn. Sadly we disbanded when my fellow band members went to Uni. I was 2 years older and without the band I left my home city too and lived on a bird reserve for a year. Turns out I'd left for good never going home again.

In the Eighties I was married with a young daughter. My old love of rock surfaced in a few bands I jammed with here and abroad and I always encouraged them to try classics like Free's Fire and Water and Tull's Locomotive Breath.

The Eighties' new wave and indie scenes largely passed me by. I wuz still a rocker really but friends did get me into the Smiths, Cocteau Twins and Teardrop Explodes among others. It was only much later that I came to appreciate indie, new wave and punk.

In 1990 a friend's 16 year old daughter came to live with us for a year to improve her English. She brought with her a bunch of cassettes, which she listened all the time to in her room. When she left, for some reason she left the cassettes behind.

13 years and a house move later in 2003, when I had my own man loft to fill with toys and listen to rock I rediscovered those cassettes, buried within the hundreds of tapes I had accumulated myself.

They were a revelation! I adored what was on them. Fresh, loud sounds which were clearly very rocky. Some of the tapes only had song names written on them, so I had no idea who was playing. Songs like Jeremy and Evenflow. Others had band names like Temple of the Dog and Mudhoney. I can still feel the excitement I felt when I first heard Temple of the Dog belt out 'You gotta reach down to lift the crowd up!'

I didn't know it at the time but I was listening to Grunge.

Grunge, like Punk, was a flash of lightning in a dull sky. Grunge's particular sky was Seattle in the late 80's/ early 90's. I was listening to mix tapes of LP's recorded from that time thirteen or fourteen years later! Grunge had already come and gone but I wasn't bothered. To me it as fresh as a daisy and despite being in my forties, once more I felt excited about music.

I listened to all the tapes incessantly and eventually worked out the bands: Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Mudhoney, Nirvana and the mighty Pearl Jam, whom I loved the most.

As it was now the age of the CD I bought the albums on the tapes, especially Pearl Jam. Eventually I packed up those old cassettes and returned them to that young student, now in her thirties!

Two decades later, now in my 60's, I'm still fascinated by Grunge. I'm not alone and last night there was a documentary on the telly to give us what we want, the story of it. 

Although disappointingly non-chronological  [I like origins and endings in order] it did remind me of the fuzz and wail of proper Seattle Grunge and the amazing local music scene it came from.

Green River, Malfunkshon, Mother Love Bone, Skin Yard, together with global superstars Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. They all knew each other and back in the late 80's/early 90's Seattle owned and loved them.

I wish I'd been there.

Have you had musical crazes readers?

Mouldy Old Dough

Hi

               Just found this on You Tube (no, I was not looking for it), a Top of the Pops appearance by the British group Lieutenant Pigeon, performing their big hit Mouldy Old Dough - a British No.1 in 1972. Very possibly the worst song of all time. I recall that in the 1970s it was on the radio all the time, and was later used in a New Zealand television commercial, although I can not recall what for - Lotto or a telephone company ?

Lieutenant Pigeon - Mouldy Old Dough • TopPop - YouTube

Paul Adams from New Zealand

SOME MUSICAL MEANDERINGS THIS FRIDAY NIGHT

A complete aside from all things toys as is my occasional want here are some recent observations of the musical persuasion.

Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull. Now first off I'm a Tull fan and I adored certain LP's in the Seventies. Alas there just wasn't time to listen to all of Tull's prodigious output when I was a teenager and like many bands I have had to catch up with them later. 

Thick as a Brick was one of those missing albums, omitted from my knowledge like a lost jigsaw piece. I did, I sat it out.

So, I have just listened to the whole thing on You Tuber. What can I say. I was sorely disappointed. Apart from the title track, which is classic Jethro, the rest is a mess. It sounded discordant and lacked the Tull sense of melody I found on Stand Up and Aqualung. Am I being thick?

Save a Prayer by Duran Duran. Being a greasy hippy rocker I was at sea when it came to the New Romantics at the time in the 80's. It seemed like glorified pop but over the decades all things punk and post-punk have grown on me enormously to the point where I'm now very nostalgic about most of it.

I recently heard Save a Prayer and thought, hmm, that opening two-note keyboard motif really reminds me of a sci-fi film melody I'm sure. Its so very John Carpenter. It's also very Terminatorish so I'll plump for that, John Williams' Big Arnie theme tune as my Save a Prayer soundalike. Why do I do this? Tunes just get stuck in my lobes and they absolutely will not stop!

Suffer Little Children by the Smiths. Or is it The Smiths. Probably. This is the song I think another song sounds like but that one's title evades me. With me so far? To be specific its the opening Johnny guitar jangle that I'm on about. There is another song by a later artists with the same opening riff I'm sure. I even said to the Missus 'Hey, Missus, Its The Smiths!" as we listened to Smooth Radio but Lo! it wasn't the Manc shoegazers at all. If only I could remember. Frankly Mister Shankly I'm losing it.

Wicked Game by Chris Isaacs. This hypnotic howl has crept into the nerve-bundle of the Moonbase before and I heard it again recently on the Newcastle Ferry. Its wistful tremelo tip-toed round the decks like a stowaway and brought to mind a musical mystery we once covered, the elusive "Haunted by Two Loves" I think it was called, from the 1997 TV Movie Nightscream. The singer was never revealed. Its VERY Chris Isaacs and Wicked Game immediately jumps to mind. The closest we got to was that the film's music was composed by one Garry Schyman. You can see the film listed here https://garryschyman.com/credits/ As it happens I am having great trouble finding the film to view online so I can't play the song. Even scarcer is the song itself. It doesn't exist online! Now what is going on there? I'm haunted by two songs! Ow-oooooo [Isaacs-style wailing].

That's it. Stylus lifted.

Thoughts?

SAN FRANCISCO CABLE CAR MUSIC BOX

Hi,

Here is a most unusual little 'model', which I picked up second-hand a few years ago in a model shop. 

It is a wooden replica of a San Francisco cable car, but it is also a music box - the key to wind it up is just visible under the model, between the wheels. Red, white, blue, and gold. 

It came with its box, but there is no maker or country of origin on it anywhere. Looks to be a souvenir item.

Has anyone else got anything like this?

Paul Adams form New Zealand

VINTAGE WHINES

I'm a sucker for a beautiful wail. Currently my two favourite wails, both female, are, one a rock song and two, a single based on a sci-fi movie.

So, the rock song is The Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd.  The main vocal is by Richard Wright but the wailing is by Clare Torry and is simply amazing. It always makes my neck hair stand on end. A flawless howl of sheer gorgeousness. She was paid just £30 for it originally.

The single based on a sci-fi film is Man in Black, the first of the movie franchise. The main vocal is by Will Smith but the real action is Coko's wonderful moaning. She sings the chorus and riffs around the song like a bird. Quite fabulous and its a pity she didn't get more time.

There are many more fantastic whines out there and I'm sure you have a favourite. Maybe the Diva in the Fifth Element? Something from the Cocteau Twins? Maybe some other?

Johnny Keating's Getaway [1963] set to Attack from Space Fight Scene [1965]

Hi Woodsy thought this might be of interest. There's numerous scientific papers written about the cross colonisation of culture.

This video in it broadest sense shows the how eastern culture has taken on Western culture. That said I could watch this kind of bonkers all day long - the film is Attack from Space, Japan, 1965

I'm also not under the illusion this music came with the film, who ever put this on here deserves an Oscar, Best use of music in a motion picture!!

Do you agree?

Regards

MJ

Southcoast Base

UK

POSTSCRIPT: Woodsy here: I couldn't help noticing how similar that old 1965 clip of Starman taking on an army from Attack from Space is to the playground fight scene in Matrix Reloaded between Neo and the many many Smiths [2003]! 

Do I detect an inspiration here? What do you think?

POPS IN SPACE LP: THE JOHN WILLIAMS?

I picked this LP up in a charidee shop whilst on my hols, one I'd not seen before: Pops in Space.

Its by John Williams and the Boston Pops and was released by Philips in 1980. I assume its THE John Williams - is that him in the picture?

Here's the LP track listing:

1. Superman

2. March 4:23

3. Love Theme 4:47

4. The Empire Strikes Back

5. The Asteroid Field 4:11

6. Yoda's Theme 3:19

7. The Imperial March 3:03

8. Star Wars

9. Main Theme 5:35

10. Princess Leia 4:03

11. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

12. Suite 10:03

Is this an LP you have readers? Do you have any other space film theme compilations like this?

COLLECTING POP SUB-GENRES: SOPHISTI-POP

Having always been a nerd I have always been interested in sub-divisions of things: plants, animals, books, films, toys and music to name a few.

Regarding pop music I heard a song the other day in a shop and I was entranced by it's tribal swaying beat. The song was one I'd heard before and sort of guessed at the artist, one Brian Ferry singing Don't Stop the Dance.

As I adore the tribal rhythms of Talking Head's glorious LP Remain in Light I wondered if Don't Stop the Dance was of a similar throbbing vein, but I was wrong.

Brian Ferry's Don't stop the Dance is a cornerstone of a pop sub-genre called Sophisti-Pop. From an LP I know nothing about called Boys and Girls, ex-Roxy Music's frontman Ferry appears to be the Soph-father of this particular 80's tributary.

Swaying, lazy jazz-pop with strong beats, Sophisti-pop was blended into the background of my Twenties, a more refined blend I largely heard but didn't take note of. With my head in studies and being a young Dad new music took a natural dive. Certainly contemporary music in the mainstream. I was still discovering older singers like Van Morrison, Peter Finger, Pat Methany, Joni Mitchell, along with my own rock LP collection, which moved round the country and Europe with me during that decade.

Now I'm 60 I'm fascinated by that background sound as me and the Missus were young parents in the 80's. First Punk, then New Wave and the New Romantics, with a peppering of Soul, Rockabilly, Ska and Reggae, the mainstream meandered around looking for smooth new flavours. Sophisti-pop appears to be one of those. Back then I may even have dismissed it as yuppie jazz. I was still in a local rock band in 1980, but time and tastes moves on.

It has some famous names, Sade being its Queen and Ferry the King. Simply Red's there too, along with the Style Council and the great Joe Jackson plus many more.

Having listened to many of this particular sub-division's entries this week there are for me a few stand-out tunes that make my neck-hair rise they're so damn good. Here are three sophisticated toons:

Its a Wonderful Life by Black, 1986: there is something simply haunting about this song, which I never ever tire of. A beautiful hymn written in Black's darkest personal period. A Liverpudlian, after his own private turmoil he wanted to be ironic with this tune but for me Wonderful Life is simply gorgeously optimistic. Watch it with the original video for added monotone atmosphere. Sadly Black was tragically died as a result of a car crash in 2016. Such a lost talent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ZoHfJZACA

Mary's Prayer by Danny Wilson, 1987: now this was a revelation. One of those catchy melodies echoing in my deep RAM and almost forgotten, I listened to it again and was knocked out. The sheer energy and verve of this band's performance demands respect and the song itself is quite magnificent. Soulful, sincere and heartfelt, it reminds me of the artistry of bands like Dexy's Midnight Runners and Hothouse Flowers. Looking like a gathering of Gene Vincent, Chris Isaacs, Vincent D'Onofrio and an unseen drummer, Danny Wilson, the name of this terrific Dundee band [and no-one in the grou], had sadly faded away by 1991. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hqgC3W9GUI

Steppin' Out by Joe Jackson, 1982: a tune from an earlier year, Steppin' Out is a fast-paced, sharp, almost two-tone eulogy to the nightlife at the start of the Eighties. From Burton on Trent, Jackson's infectious voice and insistent beat make this a postcard for youth everywhere. His line "We are young but getting old before our time" holds the essence of being young, that fragile mayhem just before adulthood when it will all change. It may also be an early reference to the emergence of AIDS in New York City. However the optimism of its message, to step out into the city, reminds me of the jazz-frontiers of Donald Fagen's The Nightfly album from 1982. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJwt2dxx9yg

Do you have a favourite sophisti-pop song?