Gaylord Fields

"Yeah Yeah ... Uh, No: Exploring the Audiovisual Phenomenon of Beatles-Lookalike Long Playing Albums"

Entertaining and informative, I think you'll agree. So we can forgive the huge gaff about Capital's Meet The Beatles being the first US Beatles album, when any fool can tell you that Vee-Jay's shoddy Introducing the Beatles hit the shops a full ten days earlier, on 10 January 1964. Tut.

Where the hell have I been?

There's nothing more shameful than the Neglectful Blogger's Hat that I've been wearing for tha last few months. I have no real excuses. Even worse, I'm only posting this so that I can tweet — and, erm, 'book? face? Is there a single-syllable put-it-on-facebook verb yet? — this bit of video.

I promise I'll be back soon with some posts of substance.

What will Rita Moreno be remembered for?

Fame is fickle, and history is fickler. More fickle. Ficklest. Anyway, what role will people think of when they hear the name Rita Moreno, in a thousand years time?

Will it be Anita, in West Side Story? Zelda the snitch in Singing in the Rain? Googie Gomez ("Hot Bitches") in Dick Lester's 1973 bath-house farce The Ritz? Compassionate Sister Peter Marie in Oz?

So Lilly Gave to Solly, just what Billy gave to Molly.

No of course not. Here's the performance that will last a thousand years. Here is a touch of distilled musical genius. Here is her crowning achievement: playing Lilly in the Electric Company's Billy Lick A Lolly. Got a hangover? Turn the volume right up: this will burn right through it, pal.

Goodbye Blossom

Blossom Dearie is no more: http://tinyurl.com/bs2zj6

Here's her wonderful I Walk A Little Faster:

Hey Fred! I fixed it!

This blog’s getting a little too valedictory. Goodbye Blossom. I walk a little slower.

Goodbye Lux

Lux Interior 1948–2009

Well when I die don't you burry me at all,
Just nail my bones up on the wall,
Beneath these bones let these words be seen,
“This is the bloody gears of a boppin’ machine”

—“Rockin’ Bones”

In My Life — Fay Fife & Eugene Reynolds

Here’s an old documentary on the Rezillos I found on Google video.

I was a big Rezillos fan back in the late seventies, and I've seen them a couple of times since they reformed. If anything, I'd say they were now even better: Faye & Eugene's singing voices are certainly more powerful, and richer, too. And I'd forgotten what a good guitarist Jo "Luke Warm" Callis is, in that lead-and-rhythm-together style of, I dunno, erm, Mick Green? Wilko Johnson? (music journalism hat falls off).

And —swoon— I got to stand next to Faye & Eugene in the audience at the last Bis Christmas show at Oran Mor. Too starstruck to actually say anything, though.

Anyway here they are being interviewed in 2001, before they reformed, talking about the band's history, including their intermediate "Revillos" project. With some hard-to-find archive footage.

To watch in a bigger window, or download it, go to Google video here.

Go Raj!