Tower of Power - You've Got To Funkifize

Came across a lovely slice of vintage James Brown style funk courtesy of the mighty Tower Of Power whilst trawling through some of the squillion albums I've somehow accumulated over the past...good grief...38 or so years of collecting. Play it loud and get yo' funk on!

Panatical - Get Lucky

For various reasons I don't get to see much live music at the moment so when I heard the distant sound of a steel drum version of Daft Punk's Get Lucky drifting over the garden wall at Baron Towers I had to go and investigate. It turns out it was a school band called Panatical from Hampshire who've played, amongst other places, the Albert Hall, Radio 2 and Chris Evans' Car Fest thingy. They went on to play a dizzying array of tracks for almost three hours (all from memory I hasten to add) and were ruddy brilliant. A huge slap on the back for whoever booked them to play Dawlish Artsfest this year.

Parquet Courts - Wide Awake

Here's one for the file marked 'Great singles by a band I've never had any interest in before and quite possibly won't again'. It's a bit post punk / no wavey and will no doubt get used to advertise something unspeakable awful like the new i-Phone but there we go, welcome to the 21st century.

Hot Hot Heat - Bandages

Blimey...it's almost hot today. What's going on eh? Anyone would think it was summer. Shhhhh don't tell anyone. Anyway, today's blast from the past comes from the suitably named Hot Hot Heat who were ruddy great when I saw them a mere 15 years ago. Sadly they packed it in back in 2016 but we'll always have 'bag of jizz' to remember them by...

Soft Cell - L'Esqualita

No idea why this track popped into my head wandering the beaches of Dawlish this morning but who knows how the human mind - especially mine - works eh? This is especially for anyone out there who thinks that Soft Cell only ever did Tainted Love. It's a little different n'est ce pas?

Gwenno - Eus Keus

It's still pretty rare to hear a track sung in anything but English on the radio these days so gwrys yn ta to Gwenno and 6Music for giving the Kerneweck language a chance. I particularly love the fact that the track translates as 'Is there cheese' and apparently a t-shirt bearing the legend 'Eus Keus' is quite the fashion item amongst those in the know. 

Old buggers like me may well remember Gwenno from her Pipette days. Here she is pulling shapes...

Cornershop - Brimful of Asha (DJ Ivan Scratchin' Remix)

Itttttttttttttttttttttttttt's Friday. And what better way to celebrate than an ever so slightly cheesy (or maybe that should be paneery) mix of Cornerhop's seminal classic Brimful of Asha eh? Another Friday banger to dance around in yer pants to.

Michael Jablonka - Flump

After yesterday's excursion into glossy 80s jazz pop here's something a lot rawer (and newer), Michael Jablonka's latest release, Flump, a kind of  rocky/bluesy bastard grandson of Hendrix and Nirvana with a little added glam for good measure. Play it LOUD!

Julia Fordham - Where Does The Time Go?

You can say that again Julia. Not only are we almost half way through 2018 but at 48 the chances are I'm considerably well over half way through this thing called L - I - F - E too. Ah well, whattya gonna do eh? Fegeddaboutit.

Back in 1988 I had a bit of a thing for Julia Fordham. Okay so her music may well have soundtracked a million yuppie (remember them?) dinner parties but I'm a sucker for glossily produced jazz tinged beauties like this one.

Oh go on then, let's have a little Happy Ever After too, a massive number 27 smash hit back in the day.

Sunflower Bean - Twentytwo

It's been some considerable time since I was 22, 26 years on Monday in fact (yes, it's my 48th birthday...cards, rum, warped vinyl all gratefully received). Good grief. But I'm still loving the new single from Sunflower Bean, one of those bands whose singles I've pretty much all loved but whose name somehow slips my mind whenever anyone asks me what I'm listening to these days. That's old age for you.

I wasn't a huge fan of my 20s or 30s. Bloody hard work and a whole lifetime of slog stretching out ahead of you. Of course it's a lot worse for the poor sods who are in their 20s these days. A pension age that's likely to exceed your life expectancy, house prices beyond the reach of most and rising rents that suck up pretty much every penny you earn, especially if you've got one of those lovely 'zero hours contracts'. Oh happy days. Youth isn't so much wasted on the young these days but imposed on the unlucky buggers.

Maybe that's why so much new music these days is either pretty low key and reflective (see the Sunflower Bean track above for instance) or an escapist piece of auto tuned fluff that always seems to 'feature' some bloke who wanders on and raps badly (also known as doing a Sean Paul). By contrast my 40s haven't been too bad. Okay there have been one or two hiccups along the way but I spent a good 5 years of my 40s going to more gigs, shows and festivals than I had hot dinners and I'll either fall off my perch at some stage in the next 20 years or slip into a retirement and take up position at Ye Old Cider Bar. Result! Anyway, that's enough reflection for one year, here are a few more Sunflower Bean's classics...