eye candy quiz

 

No prize but eternal glory to anyone who can identify the record that this is the back cover of. 

Would really like to know who made this image or is it a sculpture I'm not sure - and how it got made 

a Play opening

  

Watch and listen not for the play itself but the intro / title sequence for Play For Today in 1973 - a cool if brief slice of avant electronic crash bang wallop. The starkness and abrasiveness seem to be preparing the viewers: "gird yourself for some grim, barebones social realism". I noticed this when watching Mike Leigh's debut TV play Hard Labour (there is a season of Leigh on Telly running at the Criterion streamer, things like Grown-Ups, Nuts in May, etc) and that is indeed some grim, barebones social realism. (Oooh... the scene where the put-upon wife rubs rheumatic ointment into her husband's ginger-hairy back and shoulders...)

Here's another Play for Today title sequence which captures a different flavor of the 1970s  - the vibe here is friendly, relaxed, Alan Price-y.... cultured yet softened by a new informality...  it makes me picture Melvyn Bragg's hair....

 

post for Stylo

 A post for Stylo, who's earned it with the energetic commenting, and who could hardly fail to do a better job explaining "what's so good about Happy Mondays?" than this lot... 

I've never understood the Manchester patriotism thing, the jousting with London.... Look, the city's metropolitan population is a fifth of Greater London's. It can't compete - you have this great mass of people clustered down South, a teeming multicultural and multiracial mix that makes for pure ferment, plus it's the political, financial, media, and cultural capital of the nation....  it's a place where nearly everyone from elsewhere in the country with talent or ideas heads as soon as they can... along with people from all over Europe and the world, attracted by its reputation, resources, history, image... it's  an international hub, a world city... No, you can't compete with that, stands to reason - it's just the way things are. 

Which is why Manchester has come up with an intermittent string of great bands (been a while, though, hasn't it?) whereas London spawns outright genres... and a steady stream of great bands.

My favorite of many clunkers in this clip comes when they are all asked about future musical greatness from the city and which Manc groops will be listened to for years to come. Anthony H. Wilson names New Order (already successful for nigh-on a decade...  destined, going forward, to be less successful... less anything in fact), Happy Mondays (already successful for a year or two...  destined, going forward, to be less successful.... less anything in fact), Northside, and Kalima (unsuccessful for several years already).  

Mind you, there's also the lady who predicts great things - lasting things - for Ashley & Jackson. 

reggae eye candy - the eternal returns 2 of ??