Before Masterchef and before Through the Keyhole there was Jet Bronx and The Forbidden, Loyd Grossmans late 70's punk/power pop band!



I had always heard rumours of this band but then low and behold I found the first of their two seven inches in a book shop on Church Street this Saturday (No cover unfortunately!). I was really surprised when I got home and put this on at what a great Power Pop song the A Side "Ain't Doing Nothing" really is.

Fast forward to 2008 and Jet Bronx and The Forbbiden are back, and judging by the newer songs they're still pretty good! Anyone fancy seeing them at the 100 Club in September?

Anyway here's the 7" for your listening pleasure

http://sharebee.com/6b700a28

Happy 30th Birthday Steely Dan!

Chris Marker's 1962 masterpiece, composed entirely of black and white still photographs...

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I'd kind of forgotten about this set of cassettes I got from SST distro in the early 90s til I ran across the double-disc reissue on Negativland's own label, Seeland, the other day and had a chuckle or several, listening to it again.

This is a compilation of sequences from Negativland's 'Over The Edge' radio show, featuring fictional DJ character, Dick Vaughn. Under the guise of a couple of radio shows on the 'California Superstation', Vaughn is a great parodic character and many of the PSAs and ads are actual clips from the 70s/80s that will definitely cue some nostalgia for folks, like myself, who grew up in the USA during this era. The prank calls and lame DJ banter is pretty funny and it's definitely worth a listen if you're a fan of tape splicing/pop culture-spoofing humor.

Disc One
Disc Two

The new Heron Recordings site is up and working. It looks great - head over to listen to music, get gig updates and buy stuff...

Quite simply, I implore you to find a way to watch this. (Made much easier by the recent Mike Leigh box set....)
It is unadulterated genius, a continuation of the stellar form Leigh achieved with the likes of Nuts In May and Abigail's Party. Say no more.

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Founding member of Rush, John Rutsey passed away on the 11th of May 2008. Sadly by not living near Toronto any longer, this one slipped past me.

Enjoy this track by Rush, "Working Man" from the 1974 self titled album; his last with the band before being replaced by Neil Peart due to ill health.

If you could take a single photo, every day, over the span of 18 years - what would it be of?

For many of us stuck in the cycle of the office lifestyle, our eyes maladjusted to the flicker of florescent tubing, the view doesn't change much. A photocopier here, a window there, but more often than not, the steady illumination of a computer monitor.

Jamie Livingston set out to create a photographic memorial of his day to day lifestyle, one photo at a time.

What transpired was some 6,697 photos, all Polaroids, detailing the chronicles of his life -- from sunny afternoons in the park, to his brain tumor surgery, and ultimately his death. His last photo was taken the day before he died, which occured on his 41st birthday.



In 2007, his friends gathered the photos and displayed them at Bard College, NY (which amusingly enough is where Steely Dan formed with Chevy Chase playing drums). The following link will take you through Jamie Livingston's photographic life. Some Photos of That Day.

When I told Simon the first Scorpions album rules, he laughed and said 'Wind of Change?' Well, I would like to watch him eat his words with a knife and fork while he listens to this proto-prog masterpiece at full volume.

Produced by Krautrock mastermind Conny Plank in 1972, this is the only Scorpions album to feature Michael Schenker, who soon left to form UFO, as a full-time member. Schenker was only 16 or 17 at the time, apparently. Klaus Meine's vocals, which later acquired their trademark nasal shriek, are toned down and tougher. Also, you must admit it features some pretty sweet artwork.

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"Pretty profound..."

Watched this interesting documentary the other day about the first pay cable tv channel in the states. It launched in LA in 1974 and was spearheaded by Jerry Harvey, a UCLA student and movie nerd. Harvey showed only quality films and set the format copied later by the commercial cable channels like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax who eventually hastened Z Channel's demise, despite the fact (or because of the fact) that these channels never even brushed Z Channel's standard of excellence.

The other thing we can thank Harvey for is the concept of the 'Director's Cut'. His first claim to film buff fame was his screening of Sam Peckinpah's full cut of 'The Wild Bunch' in Berkeley while he was still a student. Z Channel later famously screened the 220 min version of 'Heaven's Gate', rectifying the wrongs done to the film in the editing room that resulted in the critics' over-the-top vilification of the theatrical release.

Shame, then, that Harvey lost the plot and shot his wife and then himself in their LA home in 1988.

Anyway, the documentary has the usual array of talking heads gooing over how amazing this channel was (cue Quentin Tarantino spraying spit and gesticulating wildly). The best part, however, is the list of films that can be gleaned. These appear after the jump...

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Great little site where people upload emails/chats/texts from their Moms. It's fast set to be my new greatest worktime time waster after lolcats.

Hi sweetie,

Do you know how to google yourself? I heard on the radio that people can google themselves. I’ve done a lot of things to myself before, but I’ve never googled myself.

Check them all out here

True genius comes in many forms...
Outstanding talent...
The ability to attract the best backing band and then mould them to suit your inimitable style perfectly...
Choosing songs that you can represent astonishingly well...

Here's all 3 of the above, twicefold!

Every now and then us Beep Seals end up in a van for several hours with only our wit to entertain us.
"Well, you're knacked then" I hear you cry, sarcastically and yet; we manage it somehow.
Mostly it's by listening to Phil do impressions of well known celebs etc. and sometimes he does little sketches from Stella Street.
Which made me start looking for bits of it on't'web and I found a particularly good "60's Special" I hadn't seen before.
Here it is...

Above is a clip of this reeally neeeat dvd release i watched a few months ago which consists of the two mini-features The London Nobody Knows (1967) / Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1969). The first film completely took me away. "The London Nobody Knows" is an amazing little historical documentary directed by Norman Cohen and narrated by James Mason with beeeautiful music composition by Wilfred Burns.

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