Raves Archive 2006
"Die Musik findet immer nach Haus" (*)
It's time once more for yer Judge's Hundred Best Tunes,
where I go through my collection and pick out a round century of tracks
which are special to me, if only at that particular time. Having said
that, twenty four of the new Hundred have featured in every one of
theses lists since I started doing them in December 1998.
I haven't added very much to the collection this year, so the few
brand-new entries (about four) are drawn from the back-list.
I suppose it's no real surprise, given my age, that the majority of
the tracks (about two third of them, in fact) are drawn from the 70s
and 80s. In fact, it's probably only the Peel Effect which ensured that
the last sixteen years were represented in any major degree.
Anyway, enough waffle. The new list can be found here.
(*) "Music will always find its way home" - title of a track by
Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle
Complaints? It's Their Department...
This is most brilliant thing I've come across on the Web in ages!
Enjoy the Helsinki Complaints Choir on YouTube, or even
download the QuickTime
movie (but beware! It's a 24Mb file!).
Let The Music Play!
I've just received the line up for the first half of the new season
at Wrexham Unplugged, the folk and acoustic music club at the Nag's
Head in Wrexham.
You can find it here.
A Voice For Freedom
From a distance, one gets a thoroughly jaundiced view of American
broadcast journalism. The halcyon days of Murrow and Kronkite, Brinkley
and Huntley, seem long dead. Now, one has the impression of a landscape
of Limbaughs and O'Reillys, Hannitys and Humes, spreading their
Bush-backing bile like a tide of effluent over the living-rooms of Mr,
Mrs and Ms America.
Just occasionally, however, a hand rises out of and above the waves
of sewage, and gestures defiance.
On Wednesday night on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann delivered a swashing
riposte to the repulsive rhetoric of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at a
speech to veterans in Utah the previous day.
It should be required viewing for any intelligent American: and
those of the rest who still, despite the buckets of carefully-mixed
chauvinism masquerading as 'patriotism' cast over them daily by their
rulers, know in the hearts that things need not be as they are.
Read the transcript or view the video here.
A Choice Of Listening
Not many updates lately, I know. Strange, you might think, when
I've been taking my customary June fortnight away from the
ever-deepening pool of confusion which is the office. But, I was
determined to spend as much of it as possible outdoors, and I've been
lucky enough to have pretty good weather this year. Besides, the hedge
needed cutting. I have a hedge which is about 30 metres long, and which
is a real parade of variety. I have the standard privet, of course, but
interspersed with this I also have lilac, hawthorn, elder, Buddleia
globosa, hypericum (I can't figure out how that got
there), and one or two things I can't readily identify.
So, not much sitting around indoors, then. Except for watching the
World Cup, of course (and I went out for a walk last Friday afternoon,
thereby missing Argentina v. Serbia and what, by all account, was the
team performance of the event so far).
But, the hedge having been tamed and the weather having turned a
bit, I have finally been able to put together my six-monthly list of My
Hundred Best Tunes.
For new readers, an explanation: every six months, I go through my
expanding collection of music and pick out a hundred tracks. These may
be permanent favourites (about a dozen or so), or they may be whatever
takes my fancy at the time.
Having made my list, I randomise them so as to produce a sort of
playlist, which I then listen to at odd moments during the following
week or so.
You might as well see how varied/interesting.downright bizarre
(delete as appropriate) my musical tastes are. So, follow this link for the playlist.
As usual, there are some sound clips available, including eight new
ones.
Enjoy!
In Bloom
I've had a go before about people who put too many photographs on
their sites and make them slow to load.
So, I'm a hypocrite.
Aquilegia, or European Columbine
I took this photograph on Sunday, and I was so pleased with how it
turned out that I couldn't resist sharing it with you.
(Thanks to Anke, Louise & CCA of alt.fan.pratchett for putting a name
to the plant).
B...SOD!!
I'm sure we've all had the experience, but the humorous rap outfit
known as Sudden Death have set it to music here.
(Flash required).
Yay! It's Spring!
A Fond Farewell...
(Don't panic! It's not yet another obituary: goodness knows I've
had to write enough of those lately, as regular readers of the Not A Blog page
will know)
Today was an historic occasion for the denizens of that palace of
lost hopes known as HM Revenue & Customs, Wrexham.
Today saw the retirement of Terence ('Tex') Burke, after more years
of service than you could shake a stick at.
That retiring creature Texus Majoris Mancuniosa in
his accustomed habitat. Here accompanied by his glamorous assistant
Gill.
It was a time for gifts, for smiles and hugs:
At noon, it was off to the Holt Lodge Hotel for those of us going
on the coach. As part of their cunning plan, Anne and Cath (seen above
with Our Hero), made sure that Tex was the last to arrive.
Tex had wanted a quiet end to his career, and for some reason had
been under the impression that there would be no more than a dozen or
so people there. You can perhaps imagine his astonishment when he
walked in to the room to be greeted by about 70 of his colleagues past
and present. Had he suspected, I doubt if we'd have got him near
the place.
The former Area Corporate Services director, Trevor Phillips, made
a short presentation (without PowerPoint™):
Tex, visibly moved, then got up to make a short speech of thanks:
We then got down to some serious conviviality:
It was also a family affair in a special sense, as it has been a
source of amusement down the years how many members of his own family
Tex has got on to the Department's payroll. Here are the members of the
Wrexham chapter:
Tex Burke (centre), with sons Patrick, Terence (Tez) and
Damian, and daughter Cath (Hughes).
It wasn't just those who were there who showed their appreciation.
You can judge what Tex has meant to our office by the number of
messages written on this card:
As the afternoon wound down, and we prepared to head back into town
(many with their minds set on some serious boozing), it was
time to wish Tex what we would all wish for him:
For myself, I can only say this: Tex Burke was my first manager
when I came into the old Inland Revenge in 1991. I think it took a few
months for his eyebrows to come back down again. He encouraged me
through my first year, which was at times a little fraught.
Loyal. Conscientious. Funny. Knowledgeable.
These are just four of the words which could be found in the large
dictionary he kept on his desk. Fortunately, all those words apply in
full to the man himself, and it will seem very strange indeed not to
hear the jangling of keys along the corridor as he comes in to work of
a morning.
So Tex, take the very best care of yourself, yer old bugger,
because you deserve a long, content and active retirement.
By the way, are you available to lock up on Monday night? 
Steel In The Blood
Back in the late 1950s, the singer and activist Ewan MacColl and
the radio producer Charles Parker put together the famous Radio
Ballads, in which the words and experiences of different
communities were set to music in documentary form. These programmes,
broadcast on the BBC at intervals between 1958 and 1964, are rightly
regarded as classics of broadcasting.
Now, a new series has appeared, with John Tams as the musical
director, and John Leonard as producer. The first one was broadcast on
BBC Radio 2 last Monday evening.
It was of particular interest to me, because it was about the
steel-making communities of South Yorkshire. I was born, brought up,
and still live in a former steel-making community in north Wales, and
my father, several of his brothers and members of my mother's family
all worked at Brymbo Steelworks. Indeed, so did my mother; she worked
in the forge during World War II when, despite steel-making being a
'reserved occupation', many of the men from the Works went into the
armed forces.
It was in our genes, it was in our blood. It was in our air as
well, mind. For about fifty weeks a year, the sounds, sights and smells
were ever present; often jarring, sometimes irritating, but always in a
way reassuring; it meant that there was work. Only during the
two-week Shutdown for maintenance in late July and early August each
year did the place fall silent, and the air lose its faint (and
sometimes not-so-faint) russet haze.
It couldn't last of course, and in the late 1980s the works was
taken over by a bunch of asset-strippers who refused to invest in the
Works, and used the consequences of that decision as an excuse to close
the place down, which happened in the autumn of 1990. Foreign
competition was cited as another reason where, through that magical
stupidity called 'free-market economics', it was considered better (and
somehow more moral) to import steel which had been made by
low-paid unprotected workers in eastern Europe and Asia, rather than
keep our own works going, even though the place had never made
a loss and was the origin of the finest special steels in the world.
We still live with the consequences today. Virtually none of the
twelve hundred or more jobs lost at that time has been replaced, and
the steelworks site itself is only now being made ready for re-use,
mostly for housing which local people can hardly afford.
That's why I can't recommend the first of the new Radio Ballads
too highly.
You can find out more about the new series here.
The Signs Are...
...that there's one for every occasion:
Unplugged
The line-up for the rest of the season at Wrexham Folk &
Acoustic Music Club is now online here.
(In case anyone in the know is wondering (or gives a fiddler's
fingernail), I'm taking a break from performing for a while. I'd
started to get a bit jaded, so I just need to recharge my batteries.
I'll be back...he warned...)
Meer!
This stuff is funny.
Imagine Garfield on acid, perhaps as drawn by Gary Larson. That
doesn't really describe it, but the best way is to see for yourself.
