Microphonic is a Blood & Fire spin off dedicated to (80s?) deejay music. Seems to be run by Steve Barrow (of B&F, Rough Guide to Reggae and a whole heap more) and soundsystem electronics bod Colin B.
Their first release is going to be an Echo Minott retrospective, iirc. Funding permitting (get in touch if you are rich…)
I also just found out they have a blog called Microphonically Speaking
yesterday, down my road:
mentalist 1: “oh yeah I found loads of great dubplates in there”.
me: “huh?”
mentalist 1: “yeah Studio One, Prince Buster…”
me: [speechless]
mentalist 1: “yeah all that stuff like the Fun Boy 3. [mutters] it’s not my thing really. [continues muttering, stares into space].
me: oh right. I guess that’s the luck of the draw…
mentalist 2: “oh you don’t see many people buying those these days, oh yeah I’ve still got my dansette we used to get it out during parties y’know when family came round I had one aunt with blue hair and one with pink hair I’ve got two kids but I never see them I never go there it’s always raining”
me: where’s that?
mentalist 2: Blackpool. [shuffles records]
Nestling in the pile of sevens were a couple of Fun Boy 3 singles which I picked up. I was beginning to think that perhaps mentalist 1 was actually on to something, and that somebody else had unaccountably deposited some (no doubt hugely valuable) Studio One records in the shop since I had last been in there 2 days ago.
Such is life. Sometimes nothing, sometimes a Sizzla CD for a quid.
I bought the FB3 records and some others. It was a joy to hear “Our Lips are Sealed” again after so many years. Nobody really rates the Fun Boy 3, do they? I always thought they were ace – the logical continuation of “Ghost Town”‘s bleakness.
“OLAS” is produced by David Byrne and features a b-side in Urdu. Bang on! I never knew this before and was sorely tempted to post an mp3 of it.
But this morning I discover that my mate Merrick has, in a freaky example of synchronicity, already done this at his new mp3 blog, Dust On The Stylus.
Merrick is exactly the sort of person who should have an mp3 blog as he is fantastically enthusiastic, eclectic and random in his music tastes. A fellow charidee shop mentalist.
Also thrilling to discover that one of the many videos I used to see on that Max Headroom show is “Get Out of London” by Interferon – another tune in my head identified 20 years later…
Russ D’s latest Broadcast includes the absolutely crucial Too Much Religion by the engagingly named Jerry Hitler. Mad squelching reggae like you dreamed of…
A BIG BLACK FIST STRIKES A BLOW HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD’.
“Diamond-hard… Relentless… The heaviest mother in town is on the prowl again … Equal parts of guts, wits and power… John Shaft whips it on the international underworld in a jewel of a caper, as wift, violent and unpredictable as any he’s ever known!”
A genuine “what the…?” moment a week or so back as I stood in yer typical hackernee commmunity centre and my eyes espied this little beauty amongst some mouldering paperbacks.
Tidyman wrote the first Shaft and the others. This seems to be the only one not made into a film, which I can undertstand well enough (imagine the pitch!). What I don’t get is why Tidyman thought this was a reasonable way of following up the first book… “Hmmm groundbreaking novel, movie to come. I know, why not do a 2nd book loosely based around corruption in the diamond trade, with Shaft getting hired by a load of hasidic jews?”
It’s not a bad read as pulp stuff goes, some good lovin’ and good fightin’, some funny bits (Shaft gets his office garishly redecorated by his girlfriend and it gives him migraines) and of course the godlike cool of the man himself. He remains the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks.
Ya damn right!
54 – A Novel by Wu Ming, i.e. the Luther Blissetts who wrote “Q”.
Published by William Heinemann on the 5th May.
’54 plays with the forms of espionage novel, the noir genre, and social realism. It seeks to transcend those forms, and it does: this is mutant fiction, a living narrative organism composed of various bodies that aim at multiple endpoints. The most accomplished: a spy story on the surface, with an eye on the ordinary citizen, who acts as witness or protagonist of history. This happens at a level where myths – the archetypical hero, but it goes beyond that – are described as doubtful and ambiguous constructions. It makes sense then that Cary Grant reads Casino Royale (the first James Bond novel) with perplexity and amazement, before he meets Marshall Tito and ends up talking with him about the personality cult.’
(Qué Pasa, Chile)
The goth-dub retro fusion mashup has now OFFICIALLY begun over at Pounding System with Dubversion’s rather excellent Bela Lugosi’s Dread available for download and comment.
He’s currently weighing up the logistics of a vinyl release complete with remixes by Dub Dada and the one like Aphasic (Ambush/Junk).
Get it now for free and tell him what you think… (oh and check the great cover)
“Days, weeks and months turned into years and I was still drifting along aimlessly, I had nothing to show for my life. My only achievement was locked away gathering dust in the garage at the bottom of the garden. Well the year 2000 arrived, it was time to wake up out of this deep sleep I fell into, time to relive again, time to make a comeback…”
greengalloway: Subway surfing anarcho-goths.
I warned you – Alistair is really getting into his stride now! See also the entries on battling Tesco and the Battle of the Beanfield…