Friday Night Music Club Vol 95

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Evening all.

Here’s the latest instalment – a bit of a slow-burner for a start, but it gets going and fairly skips along in the usual indie/pop way.

Track-listing below as usual, but also, as mentioned last time (and I still can’t believe it took me until Vol 94 to say it): looking at the track-listing in advance is to look for spoilers – just listen and check back if you want to know what on earth I’ve picked this week (there are two songs by acts who apparently have never featured on these pages before):

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Friday Night Music Club Vol 95

Track-listing:

  1. Malcolm McLaren – Madam Butterfly (Un bel di vedremo)
  2. Björk – Play Dead
  3. Lykke Li – Sadness Is A Blessing
  4. I Am Kloot – Northern Skies
  5. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Ironmasters
  6. Raymonde – No-One Can Hold A Candle To You
  7. Eat – Skin
  8. Jamie T – Zombie
  9. INXS – Heaven Sent
  10. Sugar – If I Can’t Change Your Mind
  11. Jane Wiedlin – Rush Hour
  12. Madonna – Beautiful Stranger (William Orbit Radio Edit)
  13. Mambo Taxi – Do You Always Dress Like That In Front Of Other People’s Boyfriends?
  14. Teenage Fanclub – Sparky’s Dream
  15. Dinosaur Jr. – Freak Scene

That’s yer lot.

More soon.

It Never Rains

Some of you may have noticed that in my last post I mentioned in passing what the diagnosis had been following the analysis of my recently removed right kidney had been: as suspected it was a grade 3 renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer), measuring 73mm by 50mm,

I had my first post-op consultation with the Urology Team at Addenbrooke’s yesterday; they confirmed that diagnosis and also that they were satisfied the cancer had not spread anywhere else. However, there is a 10-15% chance that it may return, so I’m to go and have a scan at the six-month post operation point, and then….who knows.

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Chumbawamba – Tubthumping (Album Version)

And just to act as a counter-balance for what is to follow, here’s a terrible cover version of that:

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The Wurzels – Tubthumping

(NB: pre-operation, the surgeon advised me that as I would be down to one kidney, I had to take care of it, or risk being on a dialysis machine for the rest of my days. For the years leading up to his passing, I witnessed my Dad being hooked up to one such machine, saw how poor his quality of life was, despite my Mum’s tireless, valiant efforts, and have no desire to replicate it. Suffice it say, from hereon in, there will be considerably less consumption of whisky drinks, lager drinks, or, indeed, vodka drinks).

But for now, I’m cancer-free – Yey! – and incredibly grateful for the efforts of the medical teams who cared for me for the past few months.

Lucky, too.

It may seem odd for someone who had cancer to describe themselves as “lucky”, and it’s certainly not a word I would choose to describe my life generally. Yes, yes, I’m a white middle class male, part of the patriarchy (like it or not) but I’ve rarely felt the dice landed in my favour.

But at this point in time: lucky, on two fronts.

Firstly, that I’ve gone through this without having to endure the horrors of either radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Ok, I have no hair to lose from my head as a result of the treatment, but I’m very aware that those who have gone through it report the most unpleasant of side effects. I witnessed it first hand with Llŷr, who always denied finding the treatment difficult, but I could always detect a change in his demeanour afterwards, no matter how slight, no matter how brave a face he put on. I never challenged him on this, of course: whilst I wanted him to open up about it, if his way of dealing with it was to deny it was having an impact, who was I to try and break down that barrier?

I had a meeting with my employer’s Occupation Health consultant the other week, and I jokingly said that if I wasn’t to have radio or chemotherapy, then I almost felt cheated that I wasn’t going to get the whole cancer experience. A poor taste comment, probably, but finding some humour in the misery, some light in the dark is my coping method. That, and writing here.

Secondly, I was lucky they caught it when they did. To recap for newer readers: I was experiencing some of the symptoms associated with prostate cancer, so (eventually) I contacted my GP, who set the wheels in motion. That included a colonoscopy (in simplistic terms: a dildo-shaped camera up the jacksie), which found that a) I didn’t have prostate cancer, and b) caught right in the corner of one of the up-arse images, there was something amiss with my right kidney, which required further investigation, and which turned out to be cancer. So, yes: lucky that it got spotted at all, and at a stage where action could be taken without the need for radio or chemotherapy.

Currently, there is no national screening program in the UK for prostate cancer, unlike say, cervical or breast cancer (Boo hoo! Us poor, misunderstood men!).

Hear me out.

Men are notoriously rubbish at seeking medical advice. We’d much rather pretend nothing’s wrong, or that whatever symptoms we may have will magically disappear, or that the NHS service is so overwhelmed we don’t want to burden them further. All utter bollocks (apart from the NHS service being overwhelmed, that’s true enough – but they will find time for you). But we all know our own bodies, and know when something is wrong, so if you’re concerned about anything, seek medical assistance. Sod being embarrassed about the possibility of having to drop your trousers to be examined, which would you prefer? Which is worse: a medical professional catching sight of your cock and balls or having to go through much more gruelling treatment than you would have had, if whatever it is had been identified earlier? Or, worse, dying from something which could have been headed off at the pass.

My story is testament to this. Don’t ignore it.

*****

Of course, it’s not all good news. Those unfavourable dice have been rolled again.

When I was discharged from hospital, I spent a short while convalescing at my Mum’s home. I’m not going to lie, we clashed like we hadn’t done since I was a teenager. We’ve worked it out now, of course.

My buddy Richie got in touch, asking if he could come and visit me at my Mum’s house. Even better, I suggested, would he mind picking me up and taking me home? If that’s what we wanted, then he’d happily oblige.

Richie picked me up on the Friday before Christmas, the idea being I would then have a couple of days at home, to see how I coped, and we would discuss what the best way forward was when I met with my family again a few days later for Christmas. Richie and I stopped for a coffee on the way home (we try to meet for coffee at least once a month for a catch-up and a general, setting-the-world-to-right chat) and then he drove me home. As we drove along the street where I live, I scanned for a parking space as close to my house as possible. I spotted one, but it was outside a house with a For Sale sign on it. Weird, that can’t be mine.

Wait. That is my house. With a For Sale sign on it. What the actual fuck?

In the six weeks or so since I went into hospital, not a word from the letting agents that I rent my house through. Bear in mind that they knew I’d gone into hospital for surgery, knew I was convalescing at my Mum’s, but didn’t know when I would be returning to the property. And still, no heads-up, no “by the way, the landlord is looking at selling”, nothing: I’ve subsequently emailed them a couple of times about other issues, but didn’t mention the For Sale sign – as far as I was concerned it was for them to tell me, not for me to ask. They replied to the emails, but no mention of the house being sold.

Nothing. Estate agents, eh? Lovely people.

Until Friday, when I received, via email, an eviction notice. A further three copies were received in the post the following day (one of which, oddly, was not in an envelope). I have until April 4th to find somewhere new to live: I emailed them (twice) to ask how much notice I have to give if I want to move out before then: at the time of writing, no answer.

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Dire Straits – It Never Rains

So, you’ll forgive me, I hope, if posts round here are even less frequent than usual, but I need to pack, clean, and find somewhere new to live.

There’ll be a Friday Night Music Club this week (all being well), and maybe one or two more of them that I have ready to go to fill the void, but other than that, I’ll be back once I have everything sorted and I’m set up in my new boudoir.

More soon (who knows when?)

Be Llŷrious

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Today sees the seventh anniversary of the passing of my best friend Llŷr, and yet again I find myself wondering where time has gone, and that it simply can’t be possible that so much of it has passed since I last saw him.

I wonder if he’s been watching me have my own brush with cancer recently (which, in case you’re interested, has now been formally diagnosed as a grade 3 renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer), measuring 73mm by 50mm – all safely removed, as far as I know, although I’m waiting to have a post-op consultation with the surgeon) and wondering if I’d be coming to join him soon.

I can imagine him gesticulating to a group of friends he’s made since he’s been up there, pointing them back to the bar: “Bowie, Prince, Parfitt – sorry, he’s not coming this time. Back inside. Who’s round is it?”

I almost feel like I’ve let him down by surviving, but I’m damn sure that’s not how he would view it.

As I often do around this time, I also find myself revisiting previous posts I’ve written about him, to check there will be no repetition of either song or story. This will always include a visit to the “eulogy” I wrote shortly after he passed and this time I was drawn to these words:

“We became inseparable. On the rare occasions that he went out without me, he would come home telling me everyone had been asking where I was, and I found the reverse to be true.”

Now, I knew that people would always be asking after him, but I had my doubts that people would have been asking after me. I’ve never been the most self-confident person in the world.

Anyway, that reminded me of an encounter at his memorial service (note: not a wake), which I didn’t think I’d mentioned here before, but, when doing my usual sweep, I found that I had. Dammit. Still, the idea’s in my head now, so I’ll throw a little more flesh on the bones of what I wrote last time out.

I met Llŷr because we had a mutual friend at an insurance company I started working for in 1999, a guy called Richie that I’d worked with years earlier when he first moved to Cardiff, and with whom Llŷr lived at the time. But shortly before he was diagnosed with the brain tumour, Llŷr had quit his job and had enrolled on a speech therapy course. He had identified a lack of Welsh-speaking speech therapists, and, since he was a fluent Welsh-speaker, he figured he had spotted a gap in the market which he could fill. Amongst the many things which broke my heart about his condition was that the medication led to his own speech becoming slow and laboured, and eventually he had to concede that he could not train to do the job he yearned to do.

I have to say that – and since my own time with them ended rather abruptly, I have no reason to be nice about them – the insurance company were brilliant with him; once diagnosed and under a strict regime of medication and treatment, he wanted to go back to work, but he couldn’t do the role he once did, due to his speech, so he was re-employed in an administrative role, where he didn’t have to speak to or argue with policyholders on the phone about how much their stolen car was worth. This must have been incredibly frustrating to him; his mind was just as sharp as ever, it just took him longer to articulate himself than it did before. But not once did I ever hear him complain or moan about the cards he had been dealt. Instead, he would regale me with funny things that happened in the office, involving people I didn’t really know, the admin team he was on being completely separate to the one which fuelled the team I’d been on when I was there. He always seemed happy enough, having accepted that was the best he was going to be able to get, for the time being, at least.

Fast forward to the reception after his memorial service (note: not a wake). His older sister, Hel, and I were waiting to be served at a packed bar. In front of us was a gaggle of Cardiff girls, a couple of whom I recognised, but didn’t know well enough to acknowledge. They were doing what Cardiff girls do best: getting some shots in. Suddenly, shots of I know-not-what were thrust into mine and Hel’s hands. We of course dutifully necked them, it would have been rude not to do so.

The girl who seemed to be the leader asked what our names were; I introduced Hel and told her mine. She stared, open-mouthed, like she was in awe.

“Oh my God,” she said, “You’re Jez! He fucking loved you! He was always talking about you!”

Not for the first nor for the last time that day, I forced a smile and held back a tear.

“The feeling was mutual”, I muttered.

“You’re a lot older than I thought you were,” she continued. “He never told me you were old.”

And suddenly, I wasn’t holding back tears of sadness but tears of laughter.

******

Having regurgitated an old anecdote, a tune not posted in this series before is required. That said, as I have previously mentioned, it was a rare event when I managed to introduce Llŷr to a musical act or record he wasn’t already aware of. This one fits.

We both loved Beck, and in 2009, he embarked on a musical project called: Record Club. So I was both surprised and overjoyed when I sent Llŷr a couple of tracks from one of the albums in the series, including today’s selection, and he had no idea they existed.

The concept: Beck would gather together an informal and fluid collective of musicians (collective was a very “in” term in 2009), cover and record an entire album by another artist in one day. That’s it.

As one might expect from Beck, the list of albums was….eclectic, to say the least: Yanni’s Yanni Live at the Acropolis, The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground & Nico, Skip Spence’s Oar, Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Leonard Cohen and INXS’s Kick. The collective of musicians included (but were not limited to): Devendra Banhart (on Songs of Leonard Cohen), Feist and Wilco (on Oar), Thurston Moore on Yanni Live at the Acropolis, St Vincent (on Kick):

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Beck’s Record Club – Never Tear Us Apart

Miss you dude.

More soon.

New Mood on Monday

Time to blow the dust of another old series. For the uninitiated, here is where I post an upbeat song with a positive message, sound or feel – preferably all three – in the hope of helping you start your week in a similar way.

Yesterday I was watching Smugday – sorry, Sunday Brunch on Channel 4. I know, I know. I can’t stand either host, but often there is at least one guest I like on each week, and on the way back from each commercial break, they play a clip of a new pop single, usually of an indie bent, and then at the end of the show there is a pre-recorded live performance from one of the musical guests of the week.

This week, that honour fell to The Molotovs, a teenage brother/sister combo, (with full band behind them), and I was rather taken by Mathew and Issey Cartlidge’s mod/ Jam/young Weller cosplay schtick.

Their debut album Wasted on Youth is out this Friday 30th January, available in all good record stores, probably in a couple of not very good ones too, and to pre-order via their website and here’s one of the tunes you’ll be able to find on it:

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The Molotovs – Today’s Gonna Be Our Day

Enjoy. Have a great week.

And, of course, more soon.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

I think that one of the best ways to decide whether one particular song can be described as a classic, is to see who has covered it.

I’m not just talking about the calibre of the covering artist, or how good the cover is for that matter.

This morning’s tune was written by a country legend, and the following have all covered it: The Everley Brother, Joan Baez, The Byrds (albeit only a live version), The Flying Burrito Brothers (with Gram Parsons performing vocals), Marianne Faithful (with Keith Richards), Don Williams, The Grateful Dead, Alabama, and Billy Ray Cyrus. And yes, the quality of that list really does drop off at the end.

You all know the story of the writer, I imagine: incarcerated in Bakersfield Jail following his part in a botched robbery, but was transferred to San Quentin State Prison after an also botched escape attempt. In 1960, he was present at, and inspired by, Johnny Cash’s legendary performance.

As for the song, well (this from wiki:) “….it draws upon the writer’s relationships with two fellow inmates: Caryl Chessman, the “first modern American executed for a non-lethal kidnapping”; and James “Rabbit” Kendrick, who was executed in 1961 for killing a California Highway Patrolman after escaping from prison.

Here, the singer takes the role of an inmate at a state penitentiary, where a condemned prisoner is being led toward the death chamber. The inmate, who regularly plays guitar and sings in his jail cell to pass the time, is asked to perform a final song at the condemned prisoner’s request before he and the guards continue on. As the song is completed, he reflects on a church choir’s visit to the prison just a week earlier, where members performed hymns for the inmates; one of the songs evoked the soon-to-be-executed prisoner’s memories of his mother and carefree childhood … before his life went wrong.”

I speak, of course, of this:

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Merle Haggard & The Strangers – Sing Me Back Home

Cheerful? Nope. A classic? Oh, yes.

More soon.

Friday Night Music Club Vol 94

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You didn’t really think I’d be ditching this so close to hitting a century, did you…?

No, course not.

So, hello, here’s Volume 94 of the usual “something-for-everyone-but-still-ace-(hopefully)” schtick. No spoilers, but there’s a particularly fab Kirsty MacColl song in this one where she warns us that her current beau will smash your face in if you don’t leave her alone, a sentiment I’m sure we’d all extend to whoever was driving the speedboat that killed her.

Anyway, usual remit – just a bunch of songs which sound good together (to these ears) – and, as usual, there’s a track-listing, but (and I don’t think I’ve explicitly said this before) it would be much better if you just listened to it and then checked back to identify any tunes you don’t recognise or can’t remember the name of:

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Friday Night Music Club Vol 94

Track-listing:

  1. Neil Diamond – Beautiful Noise
  2. Micachu – Golden Phone
  3. Stereolab – French Disko
  4. Kylie Minogue – Some Kind of Bliss
  5. Natalie Imbruglia – Big Mistake
  6. Fangs – S.I.C.K.O.
  7. Super Furry Animals – The International Language of Screaming
  8. Kirsty MacColl – Terry
  9. The Chiffons – Sweet Talkin’ Guy
  10. Belle & Sebastian – Dirty Dream Number Two
  11. R.E.M. – Gardening At Night
  12. The Shins – So Says I
  13. Jarvis Cocker – From Auschwitz to Ipswich
  14. Electronic – Forbidden City
  15. The Box Tops – The Letter
  16. Al Wilson – The Snake
  17. Father John Misty – I’m Writing A Novel
  18. The Bluetones – If….

More soon.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

This morning, another Country classic.

A song written by Joe South back in 1967, first recorded by South on his Billy Joe Royal Featuring Hush album, and then a minor hit for Dobie Gray in 1969.

A song which, when recorded in 1970 (the version I’m posting today), was a worldwide hit, topping the charts around the globe (it got to #3 in the UK). At 1971’s 13th Annual Grammy Awards, this version won the Grammy for ‘Best Country Vocal Performance, Female’. Mary Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann, in their book Finding Their Voice: The History of Women in Country Music, said it “…ushered in a decade of ‘crossover’ country women whose music reached out to the broader pop marketplace and dramatically expanded country music’s national notoriety…”

I speak, of course, of this:

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Lynn Anderson – Rose Garden

For me, though, it will always be Side one, Track one on a compilation tape in my Dad’s car, which my brother would listen to, accompanied by a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps each, in a pub car park on a Saturday night where we had stopped on the way back from visiting the relatives so Dad could have a drink before closing time.

More soon.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

I’ve always been fascinated by mondegreens.

What are mondegreens? I hear you ask.

Mondegreens are the unintentional switcheroo of correct lyrics for incorrect, creating a new phrase that makes sense (or sometimes more sense) to the listener. It happens when the brain tries to make sense of unclear sounds, leading to a breakdown in auditory perception. 

There are loads of famous examples. like: “Excuse me while I kiss this guy” being sung instead of “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” in Hendrix’s Purple Haze, and thinking that Johnny Nash could see clearer once Lorraine had gone, rather than the much more likely “the rain”.

I’ve written before about growing up in the late 70s/early 80s, and having to listen to Radio 2 at breakfast time. This morning’s selection was often played, and I would always misguidedly think “Blimey, four hundred children! They’ve been busy!!”

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Kenny Rogers – Lucille

Now, I’m no maths genius, never have been, but even I should have been able to work out that the lady in question would have to have started having kids at a very young age, and would have been knocking on a bit to have reached the landmark 400-offspring by the time our Kenny tried to hit on her in a bar. Had it existed back then, I’d probably have been wondering how she hadn’t got her own fly-on-the-wall documentary on Channel 5.

Anyway. More soon.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Well, lookie here, it’s only the return of the internet’s favourite Sunday morning dip into my big bag of Country records.

I had a quick scoot to see when I last wrote one of these and was genuinely shocked to see that the last post in this series was back on August 3rd 2025, and even that was the first post since April 27th 2025. I knew I’d neglected this place a lot last year, with good reason: health issues, stays in hospital, convalescing after stays in hospital blah blah blah. However, I hadn’t fully appreciated just how much I’d neglected the place until now – especially when I see that in 2025 I only posted 44 times, the lowest, by quite some distance, since I started this place up back in 2013/2014.

Not that I’m exactly brimming with ideas or new songs to post, as you’ll see, for today’s song has featured here before, but way back in 2017, so I figure a little repetition refresher won’t hurt.

That said, I wanted my first post of 2026 to be an upbeat, positive tune. And I kind of liked the idea of it starting with the act tuning up and getting ready for their performance/the new year.

But as I’m easing myself back in gently, here’s (some of) what I wrote way back then:

“Perhaps the most well-known version of today’s track is performed by The Whites and appears on the soundtrack of the Coen brothers’ 2000 movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, and is a song recorded many times by the Carter family dynasty – in fact, it’s practically The Carter Family’s theme tune. A.P. Carter’s tombstone even has a gold record of the song embedded in it.

Here’s the version from The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” triple album, complete with explanatory introduction by none other than Mother Maybelle Carter:”

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The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Keep on the Sunny Side

More soon.

H-A-P-P-Y

Hello, and happy betwixmas to you all. For all that celebrate it, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. For those of you that don’t, well, I hope you had a pretty great time too. I had a rather lovely Christmas staying up ay my brother’s house, catching up with his daughters, grandson, and all the rest of that side of the family, testing whether or not it was a good idea or not to have a festive tipple so soon after surgery (Conclusion: yes!).

Which leads me nicely on to this: for those of you who a) are concerned and b) haven’t read my replies to a couple of comments on my last post, just thought I’d check in to let you know my surgery went well; I’m one kidney lighter, and spent the week after I was discharged from hospital convalescing at my mother’s house, and now I’m back home: a bit sore, understandably, but otherwise okay.

Stitches (well, clips, actually – they looked more like staples) came out last week. As I’m sure you’ll expect, I have some gruesome tales to tell about my time in hospital, but we’ll save them for another time; this is just me seeing how painful it is to sit and write at my laptop (Conclusion: quite).

But otherwise….

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Cast – Alright

More soon.