Scratching around

My life’s been a bit hectic in recent days, and the fallout now is that sitting in front of the computer seems to be a bit of a chore. Everything from searching for cheaper car insurance, to trawling ebay for another vinyl fix, to bouncing around my favourite blogs, to attempting to compose something half way entertaining and/or informative for this blog – oh I just can’t be bothered.

So I will keep it brief this time – some quick random observations.

Sometime last week while I was away oiling the wheels of British (well, German now, I guess in my case) industry this blog racked up 100.000 hits according to Sitemeter. Pull those party poppers!

If you missed Dave Gorman’s latest televisual delight last week – the one where he tries to make it coast to coast across America without giving any money to “The Man” - then you missed a treat. The DVD is released today though, so no excuses (OK so the link is to Amazon, "A Man", but then Dave Gorman's shop link to the DVD is also to Amazon, so I figure that's OK). For a long time I have harboured the dream of doing pretty much exactly what Dave Gorman actually attempted in his documentary (in my dream also to include stopping at every thrift store and second had record store I can find, of course). Suffice to say I loved the program and am now very jealous.

Davy H at The Ghost Of Electricity has been treating us to some of his old mix tapes recently (cassettes, remember those?). I dropped him a comment that contained a tracklist from one of my old mix tapes that crystallised some of John Peel’s shows back in ’78 (no Soul on this one, but JP did of course have impeccable taste in Soul too):
V2 - Man In The Box
Burning Spear - Mr. Garvey
Pere Ubu - Dub Housing
Arabs - Longlife
Public Image Limited - Lowlife, Attack, Fodder Stompf
Parliament - Aqua Boogie
Mikey Dread & The Instigators - Robbers Roost
Aswad - Behold
XTC - Rhythm
Bunny Wailer - Falling Angel
Big In Japan - Nothing Special
Lee Perry - Baffling Smoke Signal

The final track on this particular tape was from the Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, someone who has ably demonstrated down the years that madness and genius can indeed be two sides of the same coin. I loved this one so much I bought the 12”, and here it is for you. (Although it's not obvious from the picture the cover has a smaller centre hole than usual, I love that, it sort lends an added air of mystery to this 12").

This post may not be up to scratch by my standards, but Lee certainly is.

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry – Bafflin’ Smoke Signal 1978