ROSS NOBLE..

  

At 10:30 Ross starts to talk about losing his home in Australia in the fires..

Out of bad good things come though! He has moved back to the UK and hopefully will do more live shows as I still haven't seen him yet!

  

AND ON THE SMOOTH TIP..

  

Most of the people that read my blog will not have a clue what I'm talking about with this title.. but hey! you have to learn (at least) one new thing every day don't you? Read on.

I currently have two books in my live reading list pile - one hilarious and one very very enlightening and informative..

So to hilarity..

Touch Wood, Confessions of an Accidental Porn Director... I found this book by accident in a store in London.  Heading for lunch with a few hours to spare before my next meeting and on my own.  I read the back and it sounded brilliant - a fly on the wall, possibly spoof? docu-diary by an anonymous author.  An account of setting up a porn movie business and running around England making mistake after mistake in the process.  It was cheap enough to take a chance on so it was bought.  I opened it and couldn't stop reading and laughing - whizzing through most of the book by the time I stepped off the train home that evening.

It is hilarious, revelatory, I think probably written by someone in the business but maybe not a real porn business owner.

The thing is it seems to have hit a vein in the UK public and is selling like crazy.  I checked amazon to provide a link on this blog and they appear to have only 3 left in stock?!  For a cheap new release that is some going.  So - unashamedly - I recommend everyone who reads this to click the link and buy the book (new or second hand).  And, yes, I do get a referral fee! Not much, but it might add up to the price of my next book over time.

So, on to the much more enlightening (but also at times funny)Jeff Chang. This book is called Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation. A proper account of the social/economic/political impacts of the hip hop generation.

In case you're already jumping to the all too wrong conclusion that I'm talking about rap music here. Think again! Hip hop is a culture, it is a culture that has roots way back and is far greater than the pop-rap world that most (very unfortunately) associate with the hip hop tag these days. Hip hop truly is a way of life - one that I and many of my white British friends follow in the way they live, view the world, etc as far apart as we are from the Bronx in the 80s or LA in the early 90s and certainly even further away from the diamond (diamante?) wearing bling rappers of today. Why do they wear stupid jewellery like that?

This book does concentrate on the hip hop phenomenon from a US perspective - and that's the only criticism I'd have of it - but it sets out the roots of the culture well; the interactions between the black inner city deprived neighbourhoods and Jewish middle class white boy world that is US hip hop, telling tales of some very strong minded people along the way.

Again, if you have an interest, click the link.

What was that about the smooth tip? Sorry, this does come from rap - an old phrase that people used to use instead of the more modern 'chillin' out'... (also the title of a favourite 12" vinyl of mine - a 1988 release by female rapper Sweet Tee - On The Smooth Tip) so, now you know.

I will resume my usual ranting broadcast of things that annoy me in my next blog.
  

GOD IS MR PAUL HEATON...

Upon browsing through Paul Heaton's - he of The Housemartins, Beautiful South etc fame and some say infamy - blog today I found this all too true comment and prophecy that Heaton penned at the end of 2009...

These indeed are low times for a high brow singer and it would be tragic

for us to lose home grown artists such as Hawley, Cocker and Heaton, to

the passing storm of The Cowell Dollar and the plastic breast. We must

cling to the rocks together, safe in the knowledge that this storm, like

all those before it, will pass or burn itself out, battering the very

rocks we cling to. Then slowly we shall rise- Tilbrook, Costello,

Morrissey, Difford, Heaton, Hawley, Cocker, Weller, Bragg and many more,

til next year will finally herald the return of something we thought

we'd lost, the sweet call of the English Songbird!

Now I might have a slightly different view of one or two of these artists - I've never been a fan of Elvis Costello for example and I personally think Paul Weller is a pumped up wannabe-cool haystack-haired southern puff - but all in all never a truer word has been spoken about the malaise that is the British music industry.. and the international one (read American) is in all too much of the same dire straits.  And a lot of the blame has to be foisted on the same black t-shirted individual to be honest.. and I ain't talking about my black t-shirts!

So, sat in 2010 I'm eagerly waiting the passing of the silicon/shit storm and, in my mind anyhow, today I have elected that God is Paul Heaton.. 

Turns out Mr Heaton has been busy cycling around and getting fit for a bike tour of British pubs to sing new songs.  Who better to highlight the plight of 100+ local pubs closing every week around the country than the man who has sat in a lot of them for a lot of time - watching, waiting, observing, writing in between drinking himself very nearly into the grave at one point in order to bring us some of the finest songs (of all time?).

Ol' red eyes is back, this time they're only red from all the miles that he's cycled!

The full blog and details of his pub cycle tour during 2010 are here

MAD MAD MAD.. CRAZY MAD..

Something has been bugging me for ages. Like a few years in fact. And it's this.

There's a property entrepreneur in Manchester called Tom Bloxham whose company I have prepared work for from time to time.  His face reminds me of someone.  I've been unable to fully identify who else he looks like, or they look like him. You get the idea.

But, I think I have it.  Courtesy of a very odd doctored photo of Mick Jones, he of The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite, that I stumbled across to day on his current bands website - Carbon/Silicon.  (Check them out by the way, full of politico-environmental lyrics as you might expect from such a superior wordsmith as Mr Jones - ...smith from Jones haha very clever if I say so myself!).  Best of all they do everything (except live gigs) for free - get to their site download area and bag yourself an MP-Free as Mick would pronounce it..

Anyway..

Here's Mick in strange stereo:

And here's Tom:

As you can see I have been wrong all along.  I don't think they look much alike at all now I've spent 5 minutes with Fireworks and brought them alongside each other.

In fact, here's another pic from the front Carbon/Silicon website page.  Tom Bloxham may indeed look more like another of my favourite musicians. Mick's right hand man in Carbon/Silicon Tony James (Generation X, London SS, Sigue Sigue Sputnik).

So the moral of the story is.. sometimes (just sometimes ) you can't trust your own judgement.

THINGS JAPANESE..

A random and meandering blog (sorry) that is inspired by an in-joke between my and my partner -
that will necessarily be less 'in-' and more 'out' after this blog..

So, here it is world.. dah, dah da da (cue drum roll and all that).. I have a thing for Japanese girls. Not a dark secret, not sinister. In fact, something I'm quite proud of really!

It all started in 1986. I hot-footed my ass down to London in search of golden pavements. In a way, I found mine for a while - working in the City in a new trading department dealing in Government Bond Futures contracts.. Japanese ones to be exact. New instruments. New world. Loadsa dosh etc etc and all those other 80s emotions!

I worked for Diawa Europe, a Japanese Securities House. As their current website states, your insight to asian financial markets..

During my time there I had ample chance to learn a bit about Japanese culture, food (as we regularly worked late nights to settle trading positions with Japan overnight we had fresh Japanese food in the office each evening for free - heaven!). And the best bit was yet to come.

All of the Directors were Japanese imports. Unsurprisingly. But their daughters (never did see any sons - but maybe I wasn't looking?) often dropped by the office to grab Daddy's gold card (when gold cards were only for people who were earning the really big money not just anyone who wanted one). As an 18 year old kid from a 99.9% 80s white town my eyes were truly opened! For me Daiwa Europe was more like my insight into asian females. Don't get me wrong, I don't like other Asian looks at all but Japanese girls hold a special place for me.

In the Wag Club with a friend one Saturday I fell over myself and fell in love with one Japanese girl in particular. Truly beautiful. My only problem was that she had only just hit London, her dad was an investment banker or some such and she had moved over to attend the esteemed Japanese College in London. I managed to be able to buy her a drink - which turned out in relative terms to be as expensive as the drinks are nowadays in Tokyo! Well, the Wag Club was THE place to be at that time. Derek B and Yazz on the turntables. Gilles Peterson with his new Talkin' Loud sound. House music exploding all over the place etc.


One problem. My Japanese language skills in those days didn't extend much further than a few numbers, yes, no and ham and egg sandwich (honestly - hamu eggu sandoicchi.. see it's not that difficult!). Ishiko or Michiko (whatever!) knew less English than I did Japanese. Not surprising the conversation didn't go very far. But hey! I have the memory!

After that, Japanese life was a barren desert for many a year. I moved back up North, to a city with very few Japanese faces in it (in those days, less so now after a few successful inward investment projects). I quickly forgot about my Japanese fetish (apart from sporadic Yohji Yamamoto clothes purchases) and got on with my life. Probably for the best!

Then, recently I re-visited early 90s band Sultans of Ping on my mp3 player (and went to see them too - which I can't recommend highly enough). Their song I Like Japanese Girls reminded me of the old days and my partner has wound me up about it from time to time in our healthy rivalrous way. It is funny. It is a fetish. It is, let's face it, part of what makes Polko Polko.


So, there it is. It's out. Polko likes Japanese Girls... Cool cool cool cool Japanese Girls...

vid link here if you're interested!

and this is just funny!

REALIT-V

As I was having a relatively laid back day at work today I was playing a random playlist of tracks. I say random. I mean barely random in the spirit of being drawn from my own hand-picked collection of mp3's that sit safe and happy on my 500Gb external hard drive. A back up of everything that is Polko-digital. And why not? Given Polko is somewhat of a digital ego anyway?

Anywaaaay...

I'm not a U2 fan but.. isn't Beautiful Day a great track? Or is it just my mood today? Or the fact that it has stopped raining at last today and I find I have to go to the post office with my 48 year old classic car sat outside and ready to please. It may be a slightly indirect journey?

So here they are. Simple and plain. Like the way I spell my name.

The traffic is stuck and you're not moving anywhere.
You thought you’d found a friend to take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand in return for grace

It's a beautiful day,
the sky falls
And you feel like it's a beautiful day,
Don’t let it get away

This track was followed by Spiller's Groovejet.. big change!

Parts of the track also reminded me of someone that I have 'bumped' into and off recently. But more pertinent perhaps are these lyrics from Roland Orzabal - always good listening if he's behind the lyrics..

Wake up
You've had an operation
Ideas above your station
Too much reality
(Everybody Loves A Happy Ending, from CD of same name)

Says it all about the individual in question really. I'd only embellish it further by changing reality to realit-v. But it was written sometime before 2004, slightly ahead of the mass invasion of the nation by reality shows. A better day. A more beautiful day in fact.

Gotta go now. A Nick Cave track has just entered the playlist and that's a very different mood for a very different days blogging.

IT'S SPRING AGAIN...

Today has reminded me of why I moved to this house on a hill. One very great day. It is very chilled here in Polko-land.

Among the myriad of Spring cleaning-like activities (though not direct spring cleaning activity - those that know me know I don't do the cleaning at Polko-ville) I've junked eMule and moved to another 'provider' so to speak. Recommendation of a friend who is usually the one asking me about things IT, and most definitely a great recommendation. Among other things I've just downloaded Talk Talk 'The Colour of Spring' - their 1986 album which is loaded with great tracks to play out the evening sunset over the hills out of my kitchen window.

One track is in particular very relevant - it's called April 5th.
Check it here: Talk Talk - April 5th
Sounds very moody, Depeche Mode-like?

Busy week ahead, trying to fit five days work into two and half but fitting in a trip to Nodnol in between to watch ABC re-do The Lexicon of Love with the BBC Orchestra - and it's going to be good. Real good!

LAST TWENTY..

No, I'm not giving up smoking (since I never started). Nor down to my last twenty quid (which would be worrying?).

It's that time again. The post of my last twenty mp3's played on MediaMonkey. For what it's worth (well, fills up another post?)

Here it is (if you can't read it, then click the picture to see more detail):


Another strange mix... the OneTwo stuff and the 808 State electronica are fairly obvious choices for me. But those few A-ha tracks surprised me. I burnt a Best Of collection of A-ha when I was last at Sister Polko's house (bad man. home taping is killing music after all?) and when I've listened to them I've been most impressed. I'd go so far as to say that Coldplay must have listened to this CD just before they went into the studio... go on, try them back to back. Strange enough they are very similar with A-ha just slightly ahead of Coldplay given that they have the authentic 80s sound after all.

And this list marks a welcome return for Joan Armatrading on my playlist - I own every album (those big black plastic disc like things.. you remember..?) that the woman from Birmingham has ever released. One of the country's finest songwriters - when you're in the mood for it - but I think it's such a shame that she represents all that is bad with Birmingham. How many bands/singers do you know from there that have stayed? or support it in some way? UB40 are probably the only ones?? rest my case m'lord..

..which brings us neatly to The Twang. This track was played as I was just emailing a friend with a few examples of this bands material (and they may well go out and buy the CD? who says home taping is killing music now?). If you don't know about them - find something and play it. Then buy some. Or ask a friend like me to send you more! Anyway, they are a Birmingham band - not exactly famous or big in the hits list, but brilliant all the same. Check out their info here.

The other things on the list (and this is the house PC not my own work PC or my notebook) reflect a desire to play something different and shock people as to the breadth of my musical appreciation. Has it worked? You tell me.

Oh, it's also nice to see - in a six degrees of separation kind of way - that I'm never more than 20 steps away from a Braintax track too! If you haven't heard of him, then you haven't been born yet - as Jazzie B once said Get A Life... which may well be my next track played..

HOW DID YOU FEEL? (aka DECADE DREAMING)

In the middle of the 80's I used to buy the Sunday Times religously. This might not be strange in itself given it was a Sunday when I did it. Nothing special there you might think? Only, I was 16 or 17 years old and I guess it's not the usual thing you'd expect someone of that age to settle down to read. Especially given that I wasn't a nerdy 6th former type at the time (not me - not then, not now, not ever!). On the Saturday night you'd usually have found me dancing around to the latest synth-pop electronic music at my local nightclub, driving around the town with my mates eyeing up women or, a year or so later, taking my girlfriend out.

So, what was I doing with the Times on my knee each Sunday afternoon. Tucked up happily in a suburban house somewhere, essentially nowhere (but that's open to debate) in the east of the country?

In fact, after a quick read through a news section or two (back then the Sunday Times was even bigger and heavier than it is now.. or maybe my hands are bigger?), I used to spend most of my time browsing the Jobs pages, focused mainly on City of London type jobs, and the Cars and Houses pages stuffed full of ads for Bentley's, exotic Italian sports cars and Thames-side apartments that were going for £100,000... imagine that £100,000! (I'll have 3 of those these days). I used to amaze myself at what some people were selling - not becuase of the fact that it was a real life Lamborghini like I'd grown up with on my bedroom wall, but more because I realised that some people were on the other side of the transaction and had the sort of money that most people could never ever dream of having (back then credit wasn't thrown at you like in recent times and if you drove a nice car you were not leasing it). I even set myself a target of being a millionaire by the time I was 30 and driving a Porsche 928S. Don't ask me where that particular dream went, but come and go it certainly did despite a move to London and a really well paid job for a while - I think I know what happened along the way but that's for another blog post..

Hmmm... What brought this retro-rant on you might ask? Last week I was completing some work for a client listening to The Pet Shop Boys 'Please' and the various 12 inches associated with it in the background. Listening to Opportunities or Love Comes Quickly brought back a feint whiff of my mindset and aspirations at the time. Like a lot of kids in the 80s I did have the Lamborghini Countach poster on the wall alongside Debbie Harry wrapped provocatively in a plastic sheet (focus, Polko, focus!). So, mine was a typical UK upbringing of glorification of material items and money-making and Thatcher was in power and people were indeed making lot's of money.. some people anyway, and my world was touching on that little group through girlfriends and family businesses so what did I know of others in Merseyside or elsewhere that were actually not making anything at all.? That was to be changed a few years later in the episode where Polko ventures west from his home town.


Nothing wrong with a bit of dreaming though if you ask me. People were still social, people still talked to each other. These days almost everyone is unable to talk sensibly to you as they are tapping away at the text keys of the latest mobile gizmo - a disease that started sometime in the 90s and has subsequently come into its horrible own in the first ten years of the 21st century. Even if they did start a conversation today it would probably be about some minor celebrity on tv last night, their latest BMW 3-series lease car, football or some other drivel wholly unrelated to how they were really feeling or thinking. Almost certainly not the state of the Middle East or about something with a little more meaning than kicking around a piece of leather that is meant to symbolise a pigs stomach for some unknown reason.

Give me the 80s any day - to (mis-)quote Depeche Mode, back then People Were People...

...oh, and the winning Euromillions Lottery numbers this week would come in handy to buy some of those things I used to look at too. I'd still drive that white Lamborghini Countach (if only to disgust my current girlfriend!) but might pass on the London flat for something a little more rural, and a little more French.. with horses darling!

Dream on.

RUTHLESS (IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE)

An abstract thought, but I hope interesting nonetheless.

I was driving in a town near me the other day and kept reaching the traffic lights next to a security van. Time after time it was me and the security guards looking into each others vehicles (my car is a 4x4 so they could see me and I them). This carried on for four or five sets of lights around the ring road and I felt like they were looking at me and becoming suspicious - not that I routinely look like a gangster or ne'er do well but I had been out the night before with a friend and was unshaven and hungover so probably looked a little rough at the edges to say the least. If only they knew I was at that very moment listening to Wham's Greatest Hits in my car! I'm guessing this is hardly your average gangsters choice of music while on the job.

I got to thinking what is statistically the most significant day of the week for security vans to get done over / blagged / held up - you choose the dialect and accent depending on where your from. There must be a specific day that more vans get done over than any other? Friday's, and this was a Friday that I am speaking of, have got to be up there as a prime candidate? End of week wages blags and all that? And, taking this further, there are probably regional variations in preferred days of operation of the scumbags, preferred vehicles and methods of operation.. Now, if you could collate all that information into a database and analyse it spatially you would have a great - and profitable - line of business. Advising the security firms of when to go out, what to look for and which vans to have tagged and followed by others/Police etc?

Or, given the millions involved in this line of business, maybe this already happens?

Anyway... onto something a little lighter... as if! This week I am finally going to dig out my copy of the Ruthless Rap Assassins 1991 release Th!nk - It Ain't Illegal Yet. One of my all time favourite UK conscious rap releases, and all done in a flat in Hulme - now sadly (in a strange way?) pulled down and 'regenerated' into an entire district of Lego houses all resplendent with an array of 'To Let' or 'For Sale' signs on them, inhabited by grey students whose only act of rebellion these days is ordering the Grandé Cappuccino at Starbucks not the Regular, or perhaps sprinkling a little more cocoa powder on there than usual? These kiddies would shudder at the thought of the student squats that used to stand where mummy and daddy have bought their little box in the city, sorry I should use the term apartment. There, does that make you feel better for paying so much for it?


The link is this. The Ruthless Rap Assassins, three black kids who grew up North Hulme, Manchester in the 80s wrote some amazing lyrics about how life was getting a little duller each day, people's minds becoming numbed by everyday celebrity tat and how the US and UK governments (along with many other of their cronies) was marauding the world in the honest name of capitalism and democracy! This was 1991. This was the age of the Gulf War. Who knows what happened to Anderson, Kermit and Carson (and if you do, please get in touch as I'd personally love to buy 'em all a drink and ask them to start writing this stuff again) but their lyrics are now more salient than ever in describing the trajectory that this country has found itself on.. from the students who now live their Wi-Fi broadband-enabled Diesel-clothes-clad lives where the Assassins flat and those of others such as A Guy Called Gerald once stood to the countless hordes of suburban families in Barratt Homes feeding off a diet of cheap Tesco food, Hello! magazine, Celebrity This And That on TV and shopping centres filled from floor to ceiling with all the latest stuff you never knew you didn't want.

I'm not a Celebrity, Get Me Outta Here..

Here's a short excerpt of those lyrics written at the emergence of the 90s housing market crisis, 1st Gulf War and post-Poll Tax/Public Utility sell-offs please do take time to think, it really ain't illegal.. yet..

excerpt: Think (Hinds/Hinds), 1991

Britains in a mess because the government stinks
Does anybody care what the poor man thinks
Interest rates rising 'til they can't rise no more
You know the shit was heavy 'cos they started a war
You know who got the blame, they called him insane
But just who was it sold him the weapons and planes
The National Health's in trouble, lack of money is why
But still they spent millions sendin' people to die
Too many people scared to stand up and rebel
You listen to the government and you buy what they sell
They made the cuts and the nation bears the scars
Sold power to the people when the power was ours
And now you're an owner but something ain't right
'Cos if you don't pay your bills they still cut your light
Companies going under and the government say
To keep inflation down that's the price we have to pay
They sold shares in gas and telecon
Most people on the street couldn't get none
Worked like a slave to buy your own house
But when you heard the shout you were gettin' thrown out
Got no bread, can't afford the water
Can't meet the bills at the end of the quarter
Poverty is hell and most are on the brink
You let it happen 'cos you didn't stop and think

ANALOGUE/DIGITAL

I have been spending some time surfing around Youtube and elsewhere saving down live tracks to WAV files and then converting them into mp3's recently. Easy enough to do, even with Windows in-built Sound Recorder and a simple WAV to MP3 filter package (do a google on saving youtube audio with sound recorder and you'll get to the same starting point).

But, among all this searching.. and waiting.. (I have a relatively slow broadband connection, boo hoo..) I came across a new concept in electronic music, something of which I am particularly fond. The reacTable is a new instrument that has made it from University PhD project to stage courtesy of Bjork in 2007 and no doubt others very soon. Take a look at the initial demo below..



I also then took a look around at other developments and found the reacTogon. A nice easy to follow Youtube clip can be seen here..



All a long way away from this..



Though in my eyes they remain the undisputable Kings of Electronic Keyboards!!!

WHILE THE CAT'S AWAY..

Now that Mini-Polko has been dropped at school for the week Polko is having a week without Mrs Polko.. Jetted off to the Canary Islands for a well earned week of sun with Sister Polko she has (well if it keeps 'em happy)..

Not quite alone, and not quite while the cat's away though.. Cat Polko is at home with me too..

Polko is however, also not really working hard this week. A Three Day Week again for me. The way it should be. So, I'm catching up on a whole heap of things I like to do. Playstation 3 online gaming (NHL'09 has just been released.. yay-hey!), mp3 sifting and sorting and re-tagging (the Nerd in Polko strikes again!), fixing up the bathroom, manning the phones, taking long breakfasts in the village coffee shop, finishing three books that are half read, mailing out 300 flyers and, last but not least, cooking up some experimental recipes for Sister Polko and Mrs Polko to try on their return. Life at Polkosville goes on much the same in the correct relaxed fashion.

Now, while we're on the subject.. I'd like to provide a quick list of some mp3's that I've been playing around with / including some bands that I've under-rated for too long..

1. Simple Minds. Just playing through New Gold Dream (one of my favourite 80s albums) but then I also selected some of their greatest hits stuff... and now I realise I really really like Waterfront as a power track. I know it might not be trendy to like this band, but damn they're good. And my first band to see live too - when they weren't famous.. so that counts for something?

2. Braintax. Pure UK consciousness. Those that know Polko know of his admiration for the lyrics this particular lad from Leeds has been pumping since 1991. Pity he's now had enough of fighting the greyness around us and slotted off to Australia to live forever and ever. Amen. I'll be following (not necessarily to the land of Wallabees however!) in 8 more September's after this very one. Nice.

3. Blancmange. Neil Arthur. Pure idiocy and pure brilliance all rolled into one songwriter. I mean, their first release was called Irene and Mavis ??? Check out What's Your Problem if you get a chance for a slice of Blancmange. Only 2 downsides to this band - they're from London (someone has to have the misfortune) and they signed to London Records (the gits who took over Factory Record's catalogue) :-)

And I will also leave you with one of life's imponderables (which in itself is a great word for any Monday?).. why do I always cut one slice of sweet potato thicker than the rest and have to leave it in the pan one minute more?

hmmm.....