Shang-A-Lang

Fints had to get new Microsoft Office installed on here for his work. Apart from everything looking slightly different (annoying) the new Word has this thing where when you opt to create a new document it gives you a choice of creating a new Blog entry instead of the bog-standard one. Quelle Moderne. I decided to give it a whirl but I should have guessed it would want me to connect to their website and register this journal with them first. They’re always trying to get you to register these people, aren’t they? A real tsk tsk tsk when all I wanted to do was hop on, splurge-write right now and hop off again. But I persevered. When I got to the online registration it didn’t even have Live Journal listed as an option, so I tried closing down the annoying by now several windows and this action crashed the browser! What a waste of time: I shall be sticking to the normal documents and just pasting 'em in in future I’m afraid, Microsoft. *waves angry fist*.

A white-hot, fast week has whizzed past. *Suddenly distracted* Ooh I like this one – it’s Teenage Sensation by Credit To The Nation. Haha and I remember Fints hates it and an argument we had about the song when it was out, um, can it really be fourteen years ago? It was in our living room sitting on the old, horrible, nylon, peach carpet which we did not choose but which came with the flat. Probably we’d had too much red wine - this one went on forever, like most of our "discussions" about music. Fortunately we are in accord on the subject about 70% of the time, a case in point occurring just last night at the Sparks gig when during Beat The Clock Russell sang those lines: ”I’ve met everyone but Liz… Now I’ve even met old Liz”* and we both turned to one another and laughed our goddam heads off.

Oh but Sparks were terrific. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from those two (live, they’ve never disappointed yet) playing my favourite album of theirs in its entirety. The definition of a no-brainer. What I wasn’t prepared for was that Ron would take to the stage with his hair restored to its 1979 new wave-disco glory. That is, lop-sided and falling down over his right eye in gloss-black, kinky, Hot-Gossip-naughty-bits ringlets. Now that's class. It was his Top Of The Pops 1979 look top to toe, in fact, for he also sported the crisp, collarless white shirt tucked into high-waisted black baggies (Bowie trousers, we used to call ‘em - see any NME small ads page 1978 - 1982). Old mens' shiny shoes were the full stop.

My, that album stands up well today. My Other Voice (especially My Other Voice), The Number One Song In Heaven, Tryouts For The Human Race et al have a kind of warmth (the real analogue drums is the trick) that shames so much ‘80s synthcrap from a decade later. And I like quite a lot of ‘80s synthcrap. But maybe it’s not surprising Sparks don’t date like other acts. When you operate in a universe entirely of your own making like they do, how can you date and how can you fail? It’s like with The Cramps - normal rules just don’t apply. And the fact that Number One In Heaven also has the fingerprints of the master Moroder all over it only adds to its lustre, makes it even more immortal, like a diamond. Factor in 1-2-3-4-bingo! pints of Carling Extra Cold (oddly I have developed a taste for this) and the company of your bezzers Jock and Ada and, brifely Andrew H and well, the pair of us left that stinky and soulless shopping mall in Islington walking in the air like Aled Jones and his bloomin' Snowman. Whomp That Sucker is on Wednesday – one of their least well known and one of Fints’s favourites. Should be good and Gareth’s going. Mother, may I have a Pizza Express first?

I took my Auntie Janet to see that Supremes exhibition for her birthday on Saturday morning. It was good to go round again, sober and not clutching a champagne flute this time. She was most taken with a lot of the race history stuff I sort of skipped before (a bit shameful, perhaps, but you couldn’t really get close enough to read it) and her favourite of the outfits was not the green and yellow shiny plastic discs mini dress but a kicky 1969 canary yellow blouse and orange sequinned flares ensemble - ”Oh gawd I would have definitely worn that”, she said - and she would have. I clearly remember my Auntie Janet’s outfits – mind-blowing things, you should see the photographs - and one in particular springs to mind now. It was a short-sleeved army shirt with khaki shorts tucked into kind of army knickerbockers (as if such a thing could exist) worn with knee-high blue and white striped socks and massive platforms. She was taking me out somewhere round Walworth and a man, someone she knew from the pub probably, stopped his car and shouted from the window - “Oi, Jan! You just signed up?” Oh, f*** off!”, she shouted back. Wolf whistles all afternoon and probably more swearing but that was just normal going about in the street with Janet in the early-1970s.

But no wolf whistles this afternoon: it was refained. We had a lunch of soup and cake in the V&A café and with about an hour left to kill she suggested going to see the moving dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum. Not moving, not animatronic, what is that word? I can never remember it. It was getting quite busy in there by the time we entered (and so hot – sort it out, museum peeps) but it was exciting standing under the big light box that said T.Rex in red and white. Exciting in that it would have been just amazing if we’d turned the corner and there was scream scream scream a Marc Bolan robot doing Children Of The Recolution or Raw Ramp. Somebody should do a museum like that, now we’ve got the technology. Anyhow, no Marc and Mickey Finn but the creature was certainly big and pretty lifelike and when I reached the bit where I was face to face with its opening and closing impressive jaws I was a little surprised to catch myself hurrying along to get out of its way. One thing: how do they know dinosaurs were always brown? Surely if you’re as a big as a Tyrannosaurus lizard camouflage isn’t going to make much difference one way or another. How do they know they weren’t psychedelically coloured a la The Supremes?

Wanted to get Jock a Love Child top for his birthday from the V&A. Diana Ross wears one on the cover of the LP of the same name and I know he loves the song. But the girl in the Motown mini-shop adjacent to the exhibition held it up and it was a) a pretty flimsy-looking T-shirt version and b) clearly designed for a woman's shape and a tiny woman at that. So instead I got him a brilliant World War II poster design T depicting a big black Bakelite light switch that reads, ”Switch It Off” in that font they always used. And also I gave the Bowie In Berlin book which I so want to read myself but - what is it Basil says in Fawlty Towers? - "that particular avenue of pleasure has been closed to me". Things like that will just have to wait until after The Project.




what jock didn't get for his birthday

* Never met Old Liz either meself but I did meet Petula Clark the other day. She was washing up mugs when i was taken into the studio to say hello. Really wonderful woman. I asked her about Dusty Springfield and she went, "...Poor Dusty" and looked genuinely sad. I haven't got time to go into anymore now.