'BLUE MONDAY'

Treat of the Week!

New Order classic played on old instruments of the 1930's!
 “Orkestra Obsolete,”

(via New Order’s “Blue Monday” Played with Obsolete 1930s Instruments) Released 33 years ago this week, New Order’s “Blue Monday” (hear the original EP version here) became, according to the BBC, “a crucial link between Seventies disco and the dance/house boom that took off at the end of the Eighties.” If you frequented a dance club during the 1980s, you almost certainly know the song.
 Created by the “Orkestra Obsolete,” this version tries to imagine what the song would have sounded like in 1933, using only instruments available at the time— for example, writes the BBC, the theremin, musical saw, harmonium and prepared piano. Quite a change from the Powertron Sequencer, Moog Source synthesizer, and Oberheim DMX drum machine used to record the song in the 80s. Enjoy this little thought experiment put in action.

SUPERB!

Links here

Open Culture

DIAMOND DOG?

Terry O'Neill (b.1938)David Bowie, Diamond Dogs, 

London1974 silver gelatin fine art archival print 72 x 48" edition of 50

David Bowie Diamond Dogs Contact Sheet by Terry O'Neill, 1974

Signed by Terry O'Neill. Limited edition of 50.

© Iconic Images / Terry O'Neill

Terry O'Neill was asked to shoot photos for the promotion of Bowies new album Diamond Dogs. 

As Terry remembers Bowie walked into the studio with this giant, beautiful dog. 

He sat in a chair, all stretched out, with the dog standing next to him. 

But every time we took a photo, the dog would bark at the strobe light. 

The dog got so excited by the light, he started to leap at it. 

That image, with David just sitting there, completely unaffected by this large, imposing, soaring dog, 

has become one of the most iconic shots in rock-and-roll. 

I was behind the camera, Bowie was on the chair but everyone else ran.

BRENDAN BEHAN

Being an unspecified number in an occasional series of Favourite Drunkards - perhaps this needs qualification - I am fond of several drunks, or alcoholics and have worked with chronic alcoholics and addicts for the past 15+ years or so and whilst they are amongst the most difficult addict to work with, we can only feel the deepest sorrow for those taken too early like Behan at 41 and Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac etc etc and hope we learn something from their truly dreadful example. The key it seems is knowing when to stop but the disease of alcoholism appears to take this faculty away. I am one of the lucky ones . . . . . 

Today is the birthday of Irish playwright, poet and IRA supporter Brendan Behan. Dead at 41 through the drink, he was a slave to alcohol all his life and back when being an alcoholic was considered entertainment he was to prove beyond all help. Diagnosed late after suffering six years of diabetes, his favourite tipple being the literally fatal combination of champagne and sherry. He wrote:

"Never throw stones at your mother,

You'll be sorry for it when she's dead,Never throw stones at your mother,Throw bricks at your father instead."

Seen here with the great British painter Lucien Freud his most famous witicism was

 "I am a drinker with a writing problem"

Film catch up . . . .Saw a fine film recently and late night random stumble across ‘August: Osage County’ with Meryl Streep, Sam Shepherd, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Julianne Nicholson, and unusually somehow Benedict Cumberbatch as a ‘simple cousin’ ‘Little Charlie’ upon whose parentage the whole story sits for the denouement, by Margo Martindale, and Misty Upham based upon a play by Tracy Letts and co-produced by George Clooney amongst quite a team, if that is of any interest.
Also starring Chris Cooper and Dermot Mulroney and the youngster Abigail Breslin who I had just seen in the excellent and hilarious Zombieland, it was one of those films and plays that effects to be the crumbling to collapse of a family this time from the Plains of America. Superb stuff if a trifle obviously from a stage production. 

PENTANGLE!

LIVE IN OSLO! 1968!!

Yes that's what I said. Didn't think I would be writing that any time soon and it astonishes me that I have written it just now but bear with me. Big O (where else?) have posted the most extraordinary set this morning from Oslo in 1968. Noe ordinarily and in my experience this would spell disaster in terms of quality and recording. Not so!
This is clearly lifted from the audio track of a TV broadcast and probably from Norwegian audio sources but is really a treat. Pentangle were truly important in terms of the development if not birth of folk/rock and the line up alone here inspires each being a exemplary player in their own right and all this with the soaring pure vocals of Jacqui McShee. It is really worth a listen

Pentangle Oslo 68

It is worth posting the intro from Big O if only to convince you of how great this truly is

They say -

Croatian Viewing Festival, The Dolphin Club, Masonic Building, Oslo, Norway; May 30, 1968 (broadcast June 7, 1968). Very good mono soundboard (likely ripped from TV broadcast).
A pristine 40 minutes’ worth of Pentangle live footage! Incredible. The thing that always impresses me about this band is how seamlessly they blend together so many different ingredients. Today, the folk-rock-jazz hybrid is a fixture on the landscape, but in 1968, there wasn’t really a map for Jansch, McShee, Thompson, Cox and Renbourn to follow. But their fearless explorations still remain pretty much unsurpassed. - doomandgloomfromthetomb
Thanks to NewWildWest for sharing the show at Dime.
+ + + + +

Try it you really won't be disappointed


Chris dropped by with a link to the tape of this

Pentangle live on Vine Festival

Wasn't sure if I had heard this bonnie lassie before but thanks to Willard's Wormholes (again? I know!) this version of 'Voodoo Chile [Slight Return]'  an unassailable masterpiece from our Jimi,  I had to give her more credit. This definitely sets a groove thank goin' I tells ya!

ANGELIQUE KIDJO Oremi (1998)

February 6, 2017 – 08:06

Oremi (1998)
A Thing Of Rare Beauty

FROM 2007: Arguably Angelique Kidjo’s finest example of Africanized groove-oriented pop. The All Music Guide calls this album “sexy, thrilling, and powerful.” Her brilliant version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” represents a master vocalist and vocal arranger at work. The rest of the Oremi is just as good. An outstanding singer and artist at her peak. Welcome to the next world, and don’t be late. A penny at Amazon, HERE.

Introduction
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Never Know
Babalao
Loloye
Itche Koutche
Open Your Eyes
Yaki Yaki
Give It Up
Oremi
Orubaba
No Worry

"A hardened dark ivory clip held saleable everyday pencils. I wish I had a pair ‘o bongos!
Bongo Fury! Bongo Fury! Oowwwww! Bongo Fury!
(boogie!)
Bongo Fury! Bongo Fury!"  

'Sam With The Showing Flat Top' Captain Beefheart [Don Van Vliet]     (1975)

Notes from found photos . . . . . . . an occasional series

©  Getty Images

“As Paul Hogan came dashing down the steps of London’s Tate Gallery in 1956 with a £7m Impressionist masterpiece under his arm after coolly unhooking it from its hanging place moments earlier, his picture was taken by a press photographer who happened to be waiting outside.”

independent article here

One of my favourite albums of all time is discussed here over at the wonderful WILLARD'S WORMHOLES both in Deluxe editions and the rare remix Mono beloved of collectors and another SEVEN versions of it!

RAM - Paul McCartney

Ram on . . .

PAUL and LINDA McCARTNEY RAM (1971/2012)PAUL and LINDA McCARTNEY RAM (MONO) (1971/2012)PERCY “THRILLS” THRILLINGTON Thrillington (1977)VARIOUS ARTISTS RAM On L.A. (2009)VARIOUS ARTISTS TOM: A Tribute To RAM (2009)TIM CHRISTIANSEN Pure McCartney (2013)DAVE DEPPER The RAM Project (2011)

Check it out now you won't be disappointed 

just because . . . . . .

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

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