Rock Dad

Seth Lakeman: Poor Man's Heaven.

2008-06-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

Seth Lakeman's new CD Poor Man's Heaven is released on the 30th of June and you can buy it from Amazon for £7.98.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and where you can buy the CD if you want to.

Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon.

"Louis Prima"

2008-06-15T05:22:00.000-07:00

The CD "Louis Prima: Capitol Collectors Series" is available from Amazon for £5.97. which is the compilation of Prima's work that I have and is a pretty comprehensive "best of". However it does not have "I Wanna Be Like You" - but you can find a version of that song on "Jump Jive An' Wail: the Essential Louis Prima" which is available for £10.98.

Click on either link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and buy the CD's if you wish.

Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability do sometimes change at Amazon.

"Rock 'n' Roll 39-59 "

2008-06-07T10:17:00.000-07:00

The book "Rock 'n' Roll 39-59" is currently on sale at Amazon for the price of £28 which is a 30% discount. Also as the price is currently over £15 the book is eligible for free delivery with the Super Saver Delivery option.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and where you can buy the book if you want to.

Please note that the information above is correct at the time of writing but that price and availability can change at Amazon

"The Autobiography" by Johnnie Walker

2008-05-31T04:03:00.000-07:00

The book "The Autobiography" by Johnnie Walker is available from Amazon for £6.29 (which is a 34% discount on the RRP)
Click on the link below to directly to the correct page at Amazon, where you can read more (including some very positive reviews) and where you can buy the book if you want to.

Please note that whilst the information above is correct at the time of writing Amazon do sometimes change price and availability.

"On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno"

2008-05-25T05:46:00.000-07:00

"On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of Brian Eno" by David Sheppard is available from Amazon for £11.39 which is a 43% discount.

Click on the link below to go directly to the correct page at Amazon where you can read more and buy the book if you want to.

Please note that all the information above is correct at the time of my writing but Amazon do sometimes change price and availability.

John Cooper Clarke.

2008-05-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

Great documentary about about John Copper Clarke on Radio 4 this morning (which makes me feel really middle aged). Particularly liked Phil Jupitus' line that Cooper Clarke was more Les Dawson than Patti Smith and also a very odd anecdote by Mark E Smith (I'm pretty sure that you can still listen to the show on Radio 4's listen again facility if you want to hear it).
If you want to buy some of his stuff then the two adverts below will take you to the Amazon page and in my opinion these two CDs are the bast place to start.

I've also added a link to Mark E Smith's biography because it's a great book.

and here he is in the Sugar Puffs advert.

Midnight Voices: the Clive James-Pete Atkin Songbook

2008-05-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

Great to hear Clive James talking about his work as a lyricist for Pete Atkin this afternoon. As he said the music is in the tradition of chanson - something that never really grabbed our Anglo-Saxon tastes - though any fan of the Divine Comedy or Scott Walker will probably like this.

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

Just Look Them In The Eye And Say Pogue Mahone. New Pogues Boxset

2008-04-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

The new Pogues Box Set "Just Look Them In The Eye and Say Pogue Mahone" is released on the 2nd June and you can pre-order it from Amazon.

This is a five CD box set compiled by Phil Chevron (who happily seems to be over his illness), there are 111 tracks three quarters of which have not been officially released anywhere else and it covers their career from the earliest sessions to recordings from the recent Brixton Academy gigs.

I'm as excited as a giddy kid before christmas.

Renegade. Mark E. Smith's new Biography

2008-04-14T05:05:00.000-07:00

Mark E. Smith's biography "Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith" is available from Amazon at £12.48 which is a 34% reduction.

..and you can also order the new LP "Imperial Wax Solvent" from the same place.

I get the Fall more now in my forties than I did in my teens and twenties. One fairly straight forward reason is because every time I saw them in the eighties and nineties Smith was playing the full on curmudgeon (back to the audience, fiddling with the knobs on the amps, harranging his band members and so on), and it just irritated me. However I saw them last year at the last ever gig to be played at the Hammersmith Palais and they played a short, brilliant set. They finished with the song "Reformation" from the Fall's last LP and I couldn't get the song's bass riff type thing out of my head. I went home that night in an almost autistic reverie, a slightly drunk 40 year old bloke, on the last train to leave Kings X back to Cambridge listening to that same song over and over again on my ipod. Almost deafened myself. From then I developed a major obsession with the Fall.

But I'm not sure this obsession with a band was the right sort of thing for a middle aged dad to be having. As a teen I would get obsessed by a band or an LP or a song - but almost all teens are idiots (and I certainly was) - but now I don't have youth as an excuse. Of course the Fall are sort of cool - (on the front of today's Guardian no less) so perhaps this adolescent obsession in a 40 year old does not seem so bad. But what if you replace the Fall with Jethro Tull or AC/DC - both bands with whom I have developed an odd obsession with since turning 40. Clearly an unhealthy descent into an I r idiot world.

(Here's an odd fact. The bass type riff thing in "Reformation" is very similar to the bass type riff thing in AC/DC's "Hail Caeser")

The new book is co-authored (or co-ghost authored) by Austin Collins who is a friend. I got the impression the process was fairly torturous for him. The point of writing a biography (or auto biography) is, in some ways, to explain and clarify but Smith's instinct is that of the obscurant. "Whatever people say I am that's what I'm not" - may be a quote from a fictional character from Nottingham (and an LP title by a Sheffield band) but in Manchester that outlook becomes a world view and becomes the basis of some people's entire personalities, and in a city where being contrary is like a religion Smith is the Godhead (along with those Man City fans who support City just because they are not MUFC).

So Austin was working with one of the most contrary men on earth, which made the process of co-writing the book difficult, but he was also working with a man whose innate inability to be straightforward takes this book, much like the best Fall LPs, in all sorts of odd, compelling and brilliantly entertaining directions.