Dance Music Triple
This week Spotify shuffled up some tunes for me as part of its regular Discover Weekly and one song in particular just sent shockwaves through my head as it tumbled through the headphones; that was Hey Music Lover by S’Express, a song I’d not heard since it probably charted in the very late 1980s and which I can only assume I didn’t really care for at the time. My music tastes towards the end of college and prior to university were eclectic but dance and pop weren’t really in the mix. However, listening to it again, decades later… The passage of time clearly affects appreciation for things in the old days. Sometimes it’s bad – old wankers and idiots who’ve never studied history (or probably much at all) voting the country back into a poorer, more oppressive era, for instance – but sometimes, like now, it’s wonderful. S’Express led to a bit of a musical journey through other dance and acid and house tracks this week and here are...
Video Smorgasbord
And now for a selection of videos I’ve been watching recently, partly to show the sorts of things that interest me, mostly to put something on the site since it’s been bloody ages and I really have no excuse other than bone-idleness. Insert annual “I really must post more often” statement of intent here. First up is my favourite episode from season two of The Katering Show, the only food-based series you ever need to see on the internet. Hosted by Australian comedians Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan, a food intolerant and intolerable foodie respectively, this episode – The Cook and The Kates – sees the pair channel their inner Maggie Beer (Australian chef/presenter/something) to appeal to a wider audience and attain an inner calm missing in their lives. I look like laundry. Yes, I feel like a wealthy ghost. Watch to find out why there are so many lemons. The second video is one for fans of The Prisoner who want to know where the inspiration came from. The answer is that it came from an episode of Danger Man called Colony Three. The ending of this episode is really quite dark. Finally, a bit of music that I discovered as the album version formed the background audio to a tutorial on painting weapons for steampunk (I’m going to a fancy dress later this year and I need all the help I can get). This video, though, is a live performance of the track This City Means No Love by J.Viewz featuring vocals by Noa Lembersky. It’s just such a great song performed and sung so well, and a real...
1980s Children’s TV Programmes
During the 1980s television channels in the UK would alter their programming during the summer months to accommodate children staying home. They probably still do but the toil of modern life and the necessity to work for a living means I’ve no idea if that’s true. Anyway, there are plenty of YouTube channels devoted to saving some of the shows themselves and even idents and trails of my youth so it was nice to discover this preview of kids TV programming in the summer of 1983 from what was my local ITV channel at the time, TVS. I remember all the shows in the follow clip quite fondly. The Dead Zone Animated Series Based on the Stephen King novel and tying in with the film release in the same year The Dead Zone Animated Series was an attempt to saturate the market, tackling the adults in the cinema and the kids at home with the intriguing tales of a man who develops the power of precognition but is haunted by the horrors he sees unfolding. Nine episodes of the cartoon were produced but only six were ever broadcast as the storylines were considered too dark for children which was a shame as the penultimate episode accurately predicted Milli Vanilli. The Missing Link Gang An imported series from Canada about a gang of kids who refuse to evolve but try to fit in with society by solving crimes and helping journalists investigate stories. They are constantly tormented by scientific and religious communities and individuals who find their existence to be in violation of biological and theological positions and are slowly killed off by rational and irrational people from all walks of life. Harrowing and with a deep message, nine episodes of the series were filmed but only six were ever broadcast as the storylines were considered too dark for children which was a shame as the penultimate episode warned of the dangers of internet stalkers long before the World Wide Web was even considered. German New Wave Music Hour Music and the new fad of music videos was considered an easy choice to occupy children’s attentions in 1983 but access to the pop charts was prohibited outside the BBC at that time so ITV imported a hastily-made series of hour-long music shows from Europe with each weekly episode featuring a different country and style. Nine episodes of Music Hour were imported but only six were ever broadcast as the pro-Nazi themes in German New Wave and incessant smoking in French Shouting Poems were considered too influential for children which was a shame as the penultimate episode featured Italian Pouting Dance...
Say No To Toddlers – 1970s Public Information Film
Graham Weevilface is not a name that’s particularly well-known these days but in the mid 1970s he was one of the leading producers of public information films on behalf of the British government. He was a recipient of numerous awards for films such as Danger! Slow Worm! and Chalk Cliffs: White Trauma but it’s his 1976 classic Say No To Toddlers that arguably had the most impact on a British public on the cusp of emerging from the darkness of high unemployment and unending energy crises into a brave new world of European integration and booming prosperity. A massive sense of relief following World War II, the rise of promiscuity in the 1960s, and long, dark nights with nothing better to do in the early 1970s led to a state of what was described in government documentation at the time as “too many blasted babies” and so a number of programmes were accelerated in order to reduce the birth rate in the British Isles. Alongside adding bromide to the water supply and inventing a new craze called “aerobics” that was designed to tire people out making sex less likely the services of Weevilface were sought out and in very short order he was able to produce the following classic film clip. Shown in cinemas and on television – particularly before and after schools and colleges programmes as children were most open to the message within – Say No To Toddlers was initially received with the kind of stupefying horror associated with all British public information films; the creepy music and stark voiceover messages were requirements of government-sanctioned movies but Weevilface excelled in the craft. However, in follow-up interviews with childless men and women during the 1980s and early 1990s it’s this specific film warning the dangers that toddlers and children possess that most often came out with a sense of warmth; many interviewees claimed that had it not been for the consideration of the British government they might have inadvertently unleashed swarms of adult-killing, car-stealing babies into the general...
Great Team Leaders: The Borg Queen
We’re undertaking a mandatory course of team leadership at work which has included all the things you’d expect from one of those courses – anger, recriminations, making towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows, bitter comments, dropping oranges on spaghetti bridges, open mockery – and the latest session has required each of us to select a great leader, alive or dead, real or fictional, and to list the attributes we admire in their leadership roles. Examples of people selected by other poor souls forced to participate in these lessons have included Alexander the Great, Bill Gates, and Alex Ferguson. All very typical. As you can probably already tell, I went with someone a little different. When it comes to great leaders with all the leadership qualities you could ever possibly want in one of these team building courses you just can’t beat the Borg Queen. Just what were those skills and attributes that made the Borg Queen a great leader in my opinion? I’m glad you wanted to know. Seeks to improve her team by embracing everyone’s distinctiveness into the whole. Good at assimilating knowledge; encourages her team to assimilate knowledge too. Gives her team the right tools to get the job done. Excellent communicator; listens to everyone and gets her message to everyone too. Adapts quickly to problems. Great determination; considers resistance to the project’s success to be...
1980s Movie Music Triple
Three bits of music from 1980s movies for your listening pleasure. 1980s movie master Kenny Loggins produces a song that is only surpassed by the gopher’s dancing skills in Caddyshack, skills I’ve mastered to the detriment of any other dancing style. Used in a ridiculous number or movies and TV scenes (see: Wikipedia: Oh Yeah) but probably most famously in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Weird Science, just one of those 80s movies that can be a little uncomfortable viewing in later years if you question some of the attitudes to sex and age. But still...
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