man of many moods……..
and congratulations Comrade Marmosette too
It’s the perfect place to sit in a hot car and while away a monday isn’t it? Isn’t it though? The collective were at Glastonbury festival again this year, albeit in depleted numbers and a slightly less visible presence but there all the same, shouting in the mud and drinking in the sun.
looks like we weren't the only ones who missed him
Randy & Earl’s Old Record Club and Comrade Badly both did their bit rockin’ the crowds with some tunes in lunchtime slots at the Pussy Parlure and a fine time was pretty much had by all. It rained some, but then the sun beat down so weatherwise it was a definite win. Why is it that the weather at Glastonbury has become a subject of national interest in recent years? Don’t you find that weird? T.V. coverage, pah.
breakfast of champions
The Specials were great, Neil Young was great and I didn’t bother with Bruce. Comrade Stark saw it through and claimed he had a good time, largely ‘cos he found himself amid a crowd of young, female, fanatical Springsteen fans. Who knew there was such a thing? They may have been a result of his unquenchable cider intake, we’ll never know. We do know it was before he lost his glasses, mind, whereafter Comrade Anoianoid acted heroically as his ’seeing-eye bitch’ for the sunday, a term which seemed more than a little uncharitable in the circumstance. Elsewhere we discovered the wonder of the kidz field, Shangri-La had seriously upped it’s game from last year’s so-so start, Trash City and Arcadia were both packed with incredible stuff and, in the sunshine, the theatre field thronged with people in unlikely outfits and pensioners you could adopt. Not Tony Benn. He was there to speak, first time I’ve actually caught him at Glastonbury amazingly, so that was good too.
Nick Cave and Blur closed out the sunday, The Bad Seeds in fierce form, and Nick having shaved off that troublesome moustache of his. Just the dodgy mullet to sort out then, comrade. Not entirely sure how well their reading of ‘Stagger Lee’ went down with the awaiting Blur massive but having not seen them for a couple of years they were fantastic. So Blur, then. Most people already seem to know where they stand on the subject of Blur. They love them, hate them or just kind of think they’re alright. I’ll be in the third group then. The other two both puzzle me a bit. A good band, but not that good, I wasn’t about to get all overcome ‘cos Graham was back in the band or anything. Still, they rose to the occasion and, as reported just about everywhere, they are on something of a roll since they got back together. They played a great set packed with their suprisingly numerous hits and closed out finally with The Universal which was absolutely awesome. I always though it was just me that thought it their best song but it turned out I was far from alone. It was a great end to the weekend and we’ll choose to keep that as the closing memory of this year and not the A303. Hopefully we’ll see you back there for next year and comrade Dubversion will be back and all bionic and that.
So, bearing in mind the aforementioned belief about Blur here’s a tune, one you won’t know most likely but an early one I always rather liked
dubversion's leg
some of the pins have been removed but no marbles came out of his feet. Which can only be a good thing. He’ll be along shortly, we hope, to tell us all off for mucking about and so on. In the wake of his fall we’ve been a little quiet on the subject of……………
PROD Cymru
so, just to set the record straight, it was, with rather obvious exceptions, quite a success. In the rather wonderful venue of Derwenlas village hall, where we were a little sceptical of running everything from the one plug socket, but we did. There was a good turn out of comrades who’d got the idea of what we were doing and joined our struggle bringing with them a better selection of records than we’ve seen for a while in that there London. With Comrade Ouchmonkey starting to fade alarmingly Comrade Badly stepped up to the wheels of steel to close out the night with a blistering final 20 mins of joy from his box of magic 7″s and a fine time was had all round. Our thanks to those who came and enjoyed themselves (particularly those who travelled long distances) and to our comrades in west Wales who made it all possible. Hopefully we’ll make our return at some point with our faster, stronger, bionic dub-bot at the helm and they’ll have got in a second 13amp plug to run the whole show off.
As many of you may have already heard through underground channels of communication, Comrade Dubversion lies stricken and immobile on a hillside in north Wales following last weekend’s PROD uprising in Derwenlas. Where he was cruelly laid low by a combination of gravity and misfortune. He has a broken knee but is in good care and I’m sure you would all join with us in wishing for his speedy recovery and return, updates on his condition as we receive them.
This tragedy aside the first Welsh PROD was a great success, more of which later………….
Also, this weekend’s PROD at The Windmill is still going ahead with help from other loyal comrades, hopefully we will be able to raise some money to assist he and comrade Marmosette in their time of need.
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Comrades -
PROD is making its first (official) trip to Wales – Derwenlas, to be precise – to take discocracy to the valleys of Powys.
Join us on February 28th for what promises to be a wonderful, and particularly drunken, evening. Not only will the usual PROD nonsense occur (there’s a significant underground cell of PROD comrades hiding out in the area to show the locals how it’s done), but it’s also just a couple of days after the 57th birthday of one of our most loyal and exalted allies, Comrade Fester.
Before the PROD proper begins, we’re doing it for the kids!!! Between 6-8pm, all kids are free with an accompanying adult and we can find out quite how popular all 48 sequels to High School Musical really are.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Madness, Magnificent 7's, mp3, mp3 club
Well comrades, as the collective is celebrating the 7th anniversary of our struggle on the 7th of March we thought it would be fitting to do so by playing only 7″ vinyl records. And that’s a lot of sevens. As discussed elsewhere we have downgraded these demands in order to be most inclusive of your choices. Nevertheless, we are still quite pleased with the whole idea and those of you who do show up with a couple of battered old singles from your younger days will feel not only the warm glow of nostalgia but the pale and sickly glow of comrade Snoddy’s smile.
As a rule not too many people bring down old vinyl singles to PROD on a regular basis and as a night we’ve had a great deal to to thank the CD-R for in terms of practicality and comrades not having to be too concerned about forgetting to pick up their tunes but I would contend, brothers and sisters, that the 7″ is at the heart of what we do. While our open door policy to all genres and tunes that you might bring creates a pleasingly random atmosphere and everything from lengthy dance 12’s to showtunes has gone over great at one time or another there’s hardly anything that’s as much of a guaranteed WIN! on the metaphorical fruit machine of the PROD dancefloor as a cracking 3 minute single. I believe you know what i’m talking about. I’ve attempted, but failed, to elucidate this essential 7″ – ness so here’s Pop professor Comrade Eno on the subject,
….the combination of the three-minute single and the radio station is in my opinion what gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll. The content was drawn from a whole lot of Afro-American, Appalachian, Irish music that filled that new technological space but what really drove the thing was that suddenly it was possible to make a three minute piece of music stand alone, and it could be heard globally in a very short space of time through radio stations and this created a new way of thinking about music.
You see? Anyway The Mp3 club returns with a series of ol’ tunes we bought on 7″ singles, back when they was easy to come by starting with Comrade Ouchmonkeys first ….
I’d love to say I got this from Woolworth’s and it cost me 50p but the truth is I can’t remember and more likely it came from the record shop in the local shopping precinct. Handily there’s seven of them too. On reflection this is just about the perfect first single for a kid isn’t it? It’s about school days and had a video set in a playground in which the sax player (that’s him in the middle in the titular trousers) flew around during his solo. Genius. It came early on in a great run of singles accompanied by equally fun (and much better made) videos.
available on Divine Madness and well worth your cash
here’s that video – it looks even cheaper than I remember and makes the early 80’s look like just after the war……………..
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All the usual PROD Xmas nonsense – dressing up, presents, drinking. Erm.. that’s it.
Do come!
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usual drunken shenanigans, 12 days ’til christmas, and so on
also the return of this much missed little darling….
