The Guvnor (Ian Dury) on being disabled, an actor and poet! “Christ, it’s a Geezer!”| ROUTE BOOKS

Great clip of Ian Dury from the BBC archive

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BBC Archive

 

1979: Ian Dury on making music to dance to

“I really only like working in 4/4 rhythm ‘coz it’s simple… it’s a natural rhythm, it’s heartbeat or whatever, and it’s a dancing rhythm.”

Musician Ian Dury discusses how his writing style centres around simple beats that will make people want to dance.

Clip taken from Nationwide, originally broadcast on BBC One, 10 August 1979.

N.B. we were mentioning Ian's ‘minder’Spider Rowe (as he had been mentioned in England’s Glory) and he features in this lovely clip . . . .

Heck I miss ‘im!

The Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 12-29-1968 |Albums That Should Exist

 

The Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 12-29-1968

Paul says: I recently came across this Steve Miller Band concert bootleg that seemed relatively unknown on popular bootleg sites. The sound quality was excellent except for one major problem, but I was able to fix that problem, so here it is.

The problem I just mentioned is that the vocals were very low in the mix. Nowdays, that's usually an easy fix, thanks to programs like MVSEP. So I boosted the vocals volume relative to the instruments on all songs.

This concert took place at a time when the Steve Miller Band lost band member Boz Scaggs, so they were reduced to a trio for a while. But this was somewhat compensated by the fact that Paul Butterfield guested on harmonica for three songs.

This also was a time when the Steve Miller Band was much more into the blues than the later, much more famous, 1970s version of that band. Nearly all the songs are quite bluesy, with a mix of originals and covers. 

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Stepping Stone 
02 Mercury Blues
03 Blues with a Feeling (Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield)
04 Butterfield Blues [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield)
05 Song for Our Ancestors [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield)
06 Roll with It [Instrumental] 
07 Your Old Lady
08 Drivin' Wheel 
09 Bad Little Woman 

(all tracks Steve Miller Band unless indicated otherwise) 

Now it may be worth mentioning as I haven’t posted much Steve Miller but I always look for his doing Song for Our Ancestors live. It is a track/composition that means a lot to me in that I once went on an early ‘journey’ to which this was part of the soundtrack and it is written indelibly in my soul, so to find it here was a treat and I had to go for it! 

most of the live version on YouTube are this one featured above at the Fillmore and not a patch on the album version but hey . . . . . .

 

I think you’ll get me

Robyn Hitchcock - The Basement, Sydney, Australia, 5-23-2014 (The Basement Tapes) | Albums That Should Exist

 Robyn Hitchcock - The Basement, Sydney, Australia, 5-23-2014 (The Basement Tapes)

Paul notes : "The Basement Tapes" were a collaborative music project between Bob Dylan and the Band in the summer of 1967. Over 100 songs were written and performed, the vast majority of them by Dylan. When a double album of the best songs from these sessions were released in 1975, it became a classic. In 2014, Robyn Hitchcock was living in Australia for a few months, and performed a lot there. One place he played in Sydney is called the Basement. I'm guessing that gave him the idea to perform all the songs from "The Basement Tapes" there, since he's a massive Dylan fan.

Actually, I should clarify he didn't perform all the songs from that double album. For one thing, he skipped the eight songs that primarily featured the Band, and honed in on just the Dylan songs. He also skipped a couple of the Dylan ones: "Apple Suckling Tree" and "Odds and Ends." But on the plus side, he did play a couple of Dylan songs that were recorded at that time and arguably should have been released on the double album: "I Shall Be Released" and "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)." He also ended the concert with a later Dylan classic, "Not Dark Yet."

Robyn was mostly in solo acoustic mode for this concert. However, he did have some backing on some of the songs in the second half of the concert, with Jenny Shimmin on banjo, Brendan Gallagher on acoustic guitar and backing vocals, and Emma Swift on acoustic guitar and vocals. (In addition to being a talented musician, Swift has been Hitchcock's romantic partner from some time prior to this concert through today in 2026.)

I've had this bootleg in my music collection for years, but I'd never considered posting it here due to sound quality issues. It was only an audience boot, with a lot of reverb/ echo. But audio editing technology has improved drastically in recent years, so I attempted to fix it. I ran every song through the MVSEP program, using their de-reverb filter. The banter between songs then got extra treatment. I ran all of those tracks through the Adobe speech enhancer. In my opinion, this recording now sounds much better. Almost as good as typical soundboard. Not quite, but close.  

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long. 

01 This Wheel's on Fire 

02 talk 

03 Lo and Behold

04 talk 

05 Quinn the Eskimo [The Mighty Quinn]

06 Million Dollar Bash

07 talk

08 Too Much of Nothing 

09 talk 

10 Tears of Rage

11 talk

12 Crash on the Levee [Down in the Flood] 

13 talk

14 Please, Mrs. Henry 

15 talk 

16 Nothing Was Delivered

17 talk

18 Yea, Heavy and a Bottle of Bread - Tiny Montgomery

19 I Shall Be Released

20 talk

21 Open the Door, Homer 

22 talk 

23 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

24 talk

25 Clothes Line Saga

26 talk 

27 Not Dark Yet 

(all tracks Robyn Hitchcock)

Suzanne Vega - Cover Versions, Volume 2: 1997-2022 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

 Suzanne Vega - Cover Versions, Volume 2: 1997-2022

Paul says: Here's the second and final volume of cover versions performed by Suzanne Vega. As I mentioned in my write-up for Volume 1, she's very rarely put any covers on her studio albums, but she's done some in concerts and in non-album projects. This completes all the ones I could find.

Most of the songs here are officially released. But there are four unreleased ones: "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Man Who Sold the World," "Femme Fatale," and "Dreaming." All of those come from concert bootlegs.

As for the officially released ones, three of them - "Behind Blue Eyes," "Solitaire," and "Have You Met Miss Jones" - are from a DVD called "Live at Montreux 2004." Three more are from a rarities album simply called "Rarities." That leaves three songs, which are from different "various artists" compilations.

By the way, in late 2025, Vega released a new studio album, "Flying with Angels." I think it's very good. If you haven't given it a listen yet, you should. I've been wanting to post a concert of her performing songs from that album, but I haven't come across anything with worthy sound quality yet. 

This album is 42 minutes long. 

01 Coventry Carol
02 Erie Canal (Suzanne Vega with Dan Zanes)
03 Behind Blue Eyes 
04 Solitaire
05 Have You Met Miss Jones 
06 Blowin' in the Wind (Vanessa Paradis & Suzanne Vega)
07 The Man Who Played God (Sparklehorse with Suzanne Vega)
08 Streets of Laredo 
09 Femme Fatale
10 Walk on the Wild Side
11 Dopamine (Mitchell Froom with Suzanne Vega)
12 The Man Who Sold the World 
13 Dreaming

 (all tracks Suzanne Vega except where noted otherwise) 

Art of The Day: Don Van Vliet (drawing)

Art from 1979 by Don Van Vliet, exhibited at the Michael Werner Kunsthandel Gallery, Cologne (Germany) in early 2017. The exhibition, entitled "Sculpture and Drawings", featured three of Don's drawings ('a combination of gouche, felt pen, and ink on paper') dating from the late 1970s as well as various works by other artists

Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band

 

Feist - 1,2,3,4 - on Sesame Street

 My old friend the cinematographer and DoP Stephen Blackman turned me on to Feist and sen me her album which contained her ‘straight’ version of 1,2,3,4 so here she is son Sesame Street . . . .thanks Steve! Miss you!

Sesame Street: Feist sings 1,2,3,4

Jeff Beck on other musics . . . From John McLaughlin to the Bulgarian Women’s choir!

 Jeff Beck: I've been so impressed by Eastern music and John McLaughlin. Guys like that are sent here for a purpose – besides to piss you off – as the standard that you have to look at. They exist – they're not figments of your dreams. You can go out and buy the records, listen to them, and learn from them. That's exactly what I did. I got the Bulgarian Women's Choir CD and I thought, "Well, maybe I should just sit and listen to this for about ten years." That CD is the most agonizingly wonderful thing. It had nothing to do with rock and roll, but it impressed me just as much – a part of my psyche moves into tears every time I hear it.

From a technical standpoint, I inadvertently discovered a way of getting microtones and such out of the Strat and making music out of them. Up to that point, the Strat was Buddy Holly's guitar – and Cliff Gallup's of the Blue Caps – and was played very conventionally.

You've been playing without a pick for many years now. Who did you listen to while developing your fingerpicking technique?

I listened to the 50s Merle Travis and Chet Atkins records, and although I loved that style, I never wanted to have a career where I sit on a stool and play. I just did it because I wanted to know how it was done, but I never thought I'd ever put that style into practice. I simply couldn't see the sense of wasting all of the other fingers by holding a pick between your thumb and first finger. The loss of the pick was a blessing in disguise, really.

By Lisa Sharken / Guitar Player

Photo: Robert Knight Archive

"Sweet Summer Sun" Hyde Park Live 2013" The Rolling Stones - Street Fighting Man _LIVE Hyde Park

"Sweet Summer Sun"

The Rolling Stones - Street Fighting Man LIVE Hyde Park 

TURN IT RIGHT UP!

Rock_N_Roll_Fantasy V.S.Rock

This from blog Vintage Everyday? | Jonathan Demme and Melanie Griffiths ‘Something Wild' 1986

 VINTAGE EVERYDAY

we don’t often feature these guys but smitten with Melanie Griffiths in Johnathan Demme’s Something Wild and her iconic image we had to take a look

28 Amazing Photographs of Melanie Griffith on the Set of “Something Wild” (1986)

Melanie Griffith had a positive, collaborative experience on the set of Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (1986), where she played the free-spirited Audrey “Lulu” Hankel opposite Jeff Daniels. Demme pictured her in the role from his first reading of the script, impressed by her bold performance in Brian De Palma’s Body Double (1984). She was the first actor offered the part.

Filming took place mainly from March to May 1986, largely in Tallahassee, Florida (and nearby areas such as Quincy and Havana for key scenes like the liquor store, motels, and reunion), with additional work in New York and New Jersey. The production operated on a relatively modest budget and emphasized spontaneity, Demme often avoided heavy rehearsals or storyboarding, letting actors explore scenes on location.

 

Griffith contributed creatively. She helped shape Lulu’s striking early look (the black Louise Brooks-style bob wig and layers of bold, eclectic jewelry sourced from a New York store called Craft Caravan). Demme later praised her as a hard worker full of ideas who took ownership of the character. She also had informal input on casting the role of her character’s volatile ex-husband: after a bad experience with another actor, she recommended Ray Liotta (a fellow student from her  acting class), which helped him land the part that launched his film career. 

 

She has spoken warmly about the production. In a 1986 interview, she called Demme “very special” for being supportive, he even visited her in the hospital while she was pregnant, and for “set[ting] his actors free,” helping her feel she could take bold chances. In a later interview she recalled the shoot as “great” and “fun,” noting that it was filmed mostly in sequence and that working with Demme and Daniels was excellent. The role itself was a creative high point for her and helped revive her career after earlier ups and downs.

 

 

 

Griffith’s magnetism on set translated into immense critical acclaim. The role earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress and directly paved the way for her iconic, Oscar-nominated starring role in 1988’s Working Girl.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Fire - 1979 | Disco pop flashback!

 The Flickennabokk algorithm threw this up and made me smile . . .do we remember Lizzy and did you spot anyone else at the beginning of the clip!?

Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Fire - 1979

might need to pop down the disco now!?

or maybe just dance round the withdrawing room in my pants!?