Category: music

Get Well Soon, @themarkrad

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I’m not into celebrity worship. I get enough of that at home, in the streets of Cape Town, in the gym and… well… everywhere. I recognise that it can be wearing for the celebrity involved.

But this is Mark Radcliffe and he’s been part of my musical education, upbringing and enlightenment since I can remember.

On Wednesday evening, he announced that he would be taking some time off work as he had been diagnosed with cancer. And he did it in typically understated style:

His tweets followed an advert on his timeline for his local pub’s annual conker championship, because that’s the sort of bloke he is. And in case you were wondering how others feel about him, there were tweets from every decent band going, artists, fellow DJs, football teams and apparently most of the general public wishing him well.

I’m really hoping that everything works out well and that we’re not deprived of his frivolity and humour for too long.

Get Well Soon, Mark.

Trick of the Light

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NOTE: Trick of the Light is one of the many brilliant tracks on my inspired by 6 Spotify playlist.
Go see. Go share.

 

Villagers in the BBC 6 Music Live Room. Wonderful.

I didn’t know much about Villagers, so I went to their website where I found that they are:

an Irish indie folk band from Dublin, formed in 2008.

Which is a little too Mumford and Sons for my liking if I’m honest.
They do have the most Irish line up ever though:

Conor O’Brien, Tommy McLaughlin, Cormac Curran, Danny Snow, James Byrne

Oh, and they have a new album out: The Art Of Pretending To Swim.

Sounds like it might be worth a listen.

Trick of the Light is one of the many brilliant tracks on my inspired by 6 Spotify playlist. Did I mention that already?

Can you blog about anything?

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My daughter saw my back end the other day.

Of my blog – the back end of my blog. The bit where I write stuff.
Jeez. I need to make these things clear up front, hey?

We had a short conversation about blogging and she asked whether I could blog about anything. Could I, for example, blog about the glass harmonica she learned about at school?

This one?

The glass harmonica, also known as the glass armonica, glass harmonium, bowl organ, hydrocrystalophone, or simply the armonica or harmonica (derived from  harmonia, the Greek word for harmony).

You had me at hydrocrystalophone.

Well, yes I can. And I can even share a video of one being played.

This is the original, mechanical, sideways version of those wine glass street performers that you see in tourist areas of major european cities. The design is credited to Benjamin Franklin back in 1761.

So yes, my dear, I can blog about anything. The world is my whelk.

Whether anyone reads it is a completely different matter altogether, of course.

Gold Rush

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When I hear a song and I enjoy it, it doesn’t bother me who it’s by.

I’m not proud.

Obviously, if it was by Beyonce or Sicky Dion, I might have other thoughts, but then I wouldn’t enjoy anything by them, so moot point.

And of course, there are some bands and artists that I am more likely to enjoy; Death Cab For Cutie seem to be becoming one of them. I heard their new track Autumn Love this week, and loved it.

And I would love to share it with you, but there’s no video just yet, so I’m going to have to use their last release Gold Rush – in which lead singer Ben Gibbard takes a walk along his local pavement sidewalk playing a more subservient version of Richard Ashcroft.

Although this wasn’t the video I wanted to share, I do like the song and the narrative of the video: everyone being too concerned with their cellphones to notice that the world is irrevocably changing for the worse around them.

The eventual, inevitable smothering of our protagonist is not lost on me.

I feel his pain.