Went to Winchester last night to see The Ukulele Orchestra of GB. Absolutely amazing and so much fun. Favourite tunes for me were “Silver Machine”, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”, an incredible version of Bowie’s “Heroes” and this one which was / is brilliant ....
Where have I been for the past 20 or 30 years? Heard this guy on Radio Tres here in España for the first time ever, Robert Randolph and heard this track. It absolutely rocks!!!
One song for the end of summer. Humble Bridge - Ridgeriders, featuring Chris While, Phil Beer and Ashley Hutchings:
Continuing the folk theme, one of my mates covered this at an Open Mic the other night, but here’s the brilliant Dougie MacLean with the original:
This is about as near as I can get to honouring the scorer of our wonderful match winning goal today from top Malian artist Mamou Sidibe...
Been helping my Dad rediscover his vinyl today. He's a huge Stones fan but rates this as his all-time favourite. Difficult to argue against it, immense vocals from Rod the Mod and haunting guitar work. And this is the first record he bought for me
My nephew, who I educated on the benefits of Vinyl records over CDs and Digital, and gave him a spare Hi-Fi [Connoisseur BD2 Turntable, Sansui Amp and Kef Chorale speakers] when he was a teenager, once asked me who I would be leaving my record collection to. "To you, I guess" said I. There was a pause... Then he said, "I don't want you to die quickly though." I assured him I wouldn't.
The Electric light Orchestra was reasonably successful while band leader Roy Wood led it. Then He and Jeff Lynne had a bit of a disagreement and Roy left to do what Roy does [which is be creative in the way he wants to do] and Jeff Lynne got on with turning the Electric Light Orchestra into ELO and making them a kind of 1970's Beatles and real life Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It took him a little while to get that ELO sound, and they had a few more minor hits before they hit it really big. I read things today about ELO being hugely underrated. Not the case at all. At the time they were everywhere. Their selections would dominate jukeboxes in pubs. I think people finally just got fed up with their trademark sound. They were a bit poppy for me in general, but I still ended up buying an early greatest hits album, and that only scratched the surface of their hits. So they left a mark on me. My favourite "haunt" pub in my teenage years was The Cowherds on the Common. It was just the right stop-off point before walking into town, but often we'd get stuck there instead, having a good time. And although the tunes on the jukebox were nothing like the stuff I played at home, there was always ELO belting out another number. I remember Evil Woman coming along and I thought "that's a great pop record right there." But probably the one that fills me with the most nostalgia and made me realise at the time that we were going to be into an era of ELO was Livin' Thing. This is great pop music:
I wonder just how thrilled Jeff Lynne was when he got to produce George Harrison and ultimately end up playing with him in the Travelling Wilburys as he is clearly a huge fan of The Beatles. I've always liked this song and it has more than a touch of "George" about the way it sounds...
Ahh, The Connoisseur BD2. Did you have to give yours a little 'shove' to get it going? My mate's would occasionally run backwards for some reason