Sometimes there are pieces of incidental music that you’ve been hearing for years without knowning where they originally came from, until you stumble over it one day. The theme to Radio 4’s Saturday Live is one such piece. I didn’t know it was taken from the opening bars of The Raconteurs’ “Steady, as She Goes” until I heard it on the radio just now, but now I know.
And knowing is half the battle.
Have some cool mid sixties Mersey Beat courtesy of The Remo Four to start the weekend.
I’ve been mostly alone at work this week, as most of my cow-orkers are on holiday. To fill up the space I’d normally listen to Radio 4 or 6music, but they’re flakey on my work connection. Youtube to the rescue, as with the removal of the fifteen minute time limit on uploaded videos, it’s now possible to put up entire rock concerts. So’ I’ve been listening to Bruuuce a lot lately, as well as Iron Maiden.
So I was idly browsing Youtube videos, as you do, when I found the video above, which I’d first seen at the Mighty Mighty Godking last year. It was one of the last youtube videos I’d shared with Sandra; correction, one of the last that didn’t annoy her, as I always liked to wind her up (and she me).
Last Thursday it has been seven months already that she died; sharing videos with her is one of the more trivial things I miss. She more than me had a knack of finding funny/interesting/weird videos on Youtube, as well as more interesting shit in general. Of course, the last fiv-six years, with her being home fulltime; not particularly sick, but not always in the best of health either, she often had more time than me to surf and blog. Every now and again I dive in the proggold archives to find something and are reminded of just how good she could write — like here e.g.. It’s no wonder that that particular blog is in a bit of a coma at the moment…
Back when the first wave of punk nostalgia hit, around the start of the War on Iraq, Sandra was immediately dismissive of it. Punk was all about not being like your parents, not being a self indulgant hippy wanker and here we are indulging in the same nostalgic shit. And now, in 2012, it’s another jubilee year and of course there must be another punk retrospective on BBCFour, Lizzie and the Sex Pistols still drawing top crowds. It’s all very and interesting and this time around and at least this time they’re not ignoring pub rock, but it is still painful to see the vanguard of this particular youf revolution as boring old middle aged farts, no different from their hippy and proggy counterparts.
Time flattens all those differences that seemed so important when you were young and in the end all this becomes just more fodder for music nerds, happily playing Yes followed by the Clash with a bit of an obscure delta blues chaser to finish.
But isn’t it time for a Wurzels cornrock revival yet?