The End?

My file server has chosen to introduce a premium service, something that I stupidly suggested, but instead of providing an improved service they have decided to cripple the bandwidth of their existing free service. As a consequence all files on this site take an unpardonable amount of time to download - which is not good. So, I'm reviewing my options... I'm not sure what I am going to do. I simply can't afford their $25 monthly fee for making access the way they should, so I'm temporarily mothballing this site until I can find a more agreeable solution.

I'll be back... Ta-ta for now!

Simon Smith & His Amazing Dancing Bear

Brrrrr... It's Twelfth Night down here by the side of the Thames and it's bloody freezing. I'm surprised that the river hasn't frozen over. If it had we could have had an old fashioned frost fair with dwarf tossing, witch ducking and bear baiting...

"Simon Smith & His Amazing Dancing Bear" - Alan Price

Swords of a Thousand Men

Sorry for the pregnant pause...

Let's get back to the cut and thrust with "The Swords of a Thousand Men", a suitably silly number from barking Eddie Tudor-Pole - Ooo-Rah, Ooo-Rah, Ooh-Rah-Yea!

"The Swords of a Thousand Men" - Tenpole Tudor

Permafrost

Brrrrr... it's bloomin' freezin' here in uptown downbeat London town. Time for a little "Permafrost" from Magazine, purveyors of the shortest lived genre in the history of pop - Prog-Punk. Still, who can resist a song with date rape lyrics like "I will drug you and fuck you"?

"Permafrost" - Magazine

Come Back to Camden

My darling daughter has moved to Camden. As a born and bred South Londoner I naturally disapprove, but I wish her well and play this song for her. Only Morrissey could write a beautiful ballad about this bellicose borough of London...

"Come Back to Camden" - Morrissey

Walk Like a Panther

When Peter Kay made a Z-Star studded video for Tony Christie's "Is This the Way to Amarillo" it propelled the old lounge crooner and village fete opener, to number one. But a couple of years earlier he'd enjoyed chart success with this Jarvis Cocker penned number for All Seeing I...

"Walk Like a Panther" - All Seeing I

Trailerpussy

I'm off to see The Trailerpussy Show in Mornington Crescent this evening - it's a post-modernist burlesque review (or so I keep telling myself). So whilst I'm squeezing myself into my 1950s insect repellent salesman suit and oiling what's left of my hair, here's a suitably sleazy soundtrack...

The Stripper - David Rose

High Anxiety

After an unbeatable series of classic comedies, from "The Producers" to "Young Frankenstein", it seemed that Mel Brooks could do no wrong, but the rot had set in by the time he made this lame Hitchcock pastiche. However its Vegas style title song (best thing in the movie) is still worth a listen...

High Anxiety - Mel Brooks

Colourbox

Here's a couple of tracks from the best 80s band you never heard of; Colourbox. "Captain Scarlet", "Future World", "Escape from New York" and Spaghetti Westerns, sliced, diced and served up in a rub-a-dub stylee...

1. Baby I Love You So
2. Looks Like We're Shy One Horse
3. Say You

Gunpowder, Treason & Plot

Well it's Guy Fawkes Night here in the UK. The evening when we celebrate the failed attempt by Britain's first proto-anarchist to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

The air is full of billowing clouds of cordite and sulfur, and spent missiles are raining on our heads like so many malfunctioning Sputniks.

When I was a child an integral part of the festival was the burning of an effigy of the "Traitor", however these days we're all a little smarter and politically savvy. Now we mark the anniversary by setting off the biggest explosives we can afford - just to remind the over-paid feckless politicians that, at a pinch, our arsenal could be posted through their letter boxes...

1. "Smash It Up" - The Damned
2. "A-Bomb in Wardour Street" - The Jam
3. "Anarchy in the UK" - Sex Pistols
4. "Bang Bang" - B.A. Robertson

Halloween: Tunes from the Crypt (Recycled)

I'm too lazy do do another Halloween compilation this year, so I am shamelessly reposting last year's "Tunes from the Crypt", complete with its own CD cover. You can also download the whole thing as a Zip file. For more spooky stuff check out my other previous Halloween posts: Ghosts, Satan, Vampires, Witches and Zombies.

Files deleted by the cunts at www.hotlinkfiles.com
.

They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!

This 1966 single by Napoleon XIV caused some consternation amongst the feeble minded who considered it an insult to the mentally ill. I, for one, am impressed with it's minimalist approach (not a single musical note is played) and I've yet to meet a loony who doesn't love it.

"Coming To Take Me Away!" - Napoleon XIV

Remixed & Reimagined

Nina Simone - young, gifted and black, and, toward the end of her career, madder than a bag of spanners. She is the latest in a long line of artists to get the postumous DJ remix treatment...

"Look of Love (Madison Park vs Lenny B Remix)" - Nina Simone

Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo

Moving right along, here's sultry Sophia Loren with a nonsensical number culled from an LP cashing in on the success of the bowdlerized movie version of George Bernard Shaw's "The Millionairess" with Peter Sellers. Zoo be zoo be zoo...

"Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo" - Sophia Loren

Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch

After posting the previous item I was racking my brains to remember who that wigged out psycho killer reminded me of. It was of course the Afro-tastic Hair Bear from "Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch". Seems like a reasonable enough excuse to hear the theme...

"Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch" - Hanna Barbera

Murder = Okay (Official!)

And so it's hats off to the demented, derranged, and wigged out murderer Phil Spector – two out of twelve jurors didn't believe that you silenced actress Lana Clarkson with a wall of sound (from a .38) – so you're free to go off and play golf with OJ all weekend – hurrah!

File deleted by the cunts at www.hotlinkfiles.com
.

Assault on Precinct 13

The term "Busted Flush" could almost have been invented for John Carpenter. His career is entirely backwards - we'd had the best of him before we'd even heard of him.

His film school debut was a "hippies in space" movie called "Dark Star". It was an extremely low budget affair, with dodgey scenes - such as a battle between a beach ball and a mop - that were carried off more through charisma than cinematography, but it had an intelligent charm that still endures to this day.

His retro noir follow up was "Assault on Precinct 13", an explosive reworking of an old Howard Hawks western called "Rio Bravo". It was dramatically and thematically as tight as a nun's arse and featured an innovative self composed soundtrack that set it apart from the crowd.

Then there was his first big success, "Halloween", the movie that launched a thousand misogynist "slasher" derivatives: Teenagers + Sex = Death, the girl with the least clothes on must die first, etc - this was the film that made up all those silly rules. However it was distinguished by another iconoclastic self-penned synthy soundtrack.

His last good movie was the "The Thing" in 1982, which saw him return to Howard Hawks' back catalogue to give the marauding walking carrot alien of the original a scarier spin.

There is a theory that right wing politics and creativity do not walk hand in hand. Perhaps it was his partnership with über right wing former child star Kurt Russell, whom he had worked with since his unlikely directorship of an Elvis biopic in 1979, that made him give up his happy hippy liberal values - who knows? Suffice to say that everything he has made since 1983 has been shit - and he's still working...

Why is he here? Why am I posting one of his compositions? Because, like it or not, John Carpenter IS a musical innovator. He may have snorted his life's work into a ball of fascist bunkham, but he's up there with Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone as one of the finest film composers of the 20th century.

Files deleted by the cunts at www.hotlinkfiles.com
.

Lemmings

Eleven years before "Spinal Tap" Tony Hendra and Christopher Guest, under the auspices of National Lampoon, created a spoof of the Woodstock Festival called "Lemmings". One of the highlights was John Belushi's Joe Cocker number. The tragedy is that Belushi is dead and Cocker still lives.

Files deleted by the cunts at www.hotlinkfiles.com
.

Mongoloid

Following yesterday's slice of devolved Devo devotion here's an unusual and unlikely a cappella choral cover version of "Mongoloid" by Popchor Berlin, a twenty five person choir from Germany. Oddly it just about works... in a creepy kind of way...

Files deleted by the cunts at www.hotlinkfiles.com
.

Swelling Itching Brain

I've always had a soft spot for Devo ever since I saw them get pelted off the stage at Knebworth by angry Genesis fans...

So it's no suprise that I was pleased to hear that they'd got back together again and was sorry to have missed their recent London dates (chronicled so well by Kevo Thomson here).

Their "new single" may be just a jingle lifted from a Dell commercial but it's a swelling itching pleasure to see the spud boys back in action.

Files deleted by the cunts at www.hotlinkfiles.com
.