14 febbraio 2013 Spitting Image

14 febbraio 2013 Spitting Image

I am not entirely sure which was my first record that I bought. On tape it was a best of summer music collection, from HMV, now sadly defunct, but I think there were several vinyl purcahses before then. The first I think was a birthday present for my sister - it was "Too good to be forgotten" by Amazulu. It stuck in my head and is still there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caV4ii107eY

Wikipedia gives me the answers as ever. It was from 1986. I never knew it was a cover until now. Bofff. INterestingly they appeared on The Young Ones in 1984 - I never knew that!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynArqA1FGgM
Unfortunately that was a terrible bit, whereas some of the appearances on The Young Ones were nothing short of amazing. In fact, let us go now, to a gathering of the elite, or else a list of those who appeared on The Young Ones. Thank you wiki (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh2GcMnLB08):
Madness - twice
Alexei Sale singing Dr Martin Boots
Dexy's Midnight Runners
Motorhead
The Damnèd

1	Demolition	Nine Below Zero	"Eleven Plus Eleven"
2	Oil	Radical Posture (with Alexei Sayle)	"Dr. Martens Boots"
3	Boring	Madness	"House of Fun"
4	Bomb	Dexys Midnight Runners	"Jackie Wilson Said"
5	Interesting	Rip Rig + Panic (with Andrea Oliver)	"You're My Kind of Climate"
6	Flood	no band; a lion tamer appeared to satisfy the BBC's variety criteria, though the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by Tight Fit plays during the segment.
Series 2
1	Bambi	Motörhead	"Ace of Spades"
2	Cash	Ken Bishop's Nice Twelve	"Subterranean Homesick Blues"
3	Nasty	The Damned	"Nasty"
4	Time	Amazulu	"Moonlight Romance"
5	Sick	Madness	"Our House"
6	Summer Holiday	John Otway	"Body Talk"

I thought there was someone like The Cure in there too, but I obviously have it wrong. I remember loving the Telecaster styling in John Otway's Body Talk, and that's about it. I thought that maybe it was Rat in mi kitchen by UB40 - but no. It's a great song though and although on a compo with stuff like "Mirror in the bathroom" by The English Beat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cbUW2EY4KE) it is still a classic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS0fXQN6zrI). I'm not sure why The Beat were called the English Beat - The Mission were called something like The English Mission too. Who knows?

Of course, The Young Ones really moved me, but I was still a little young. The follow up "Bottom" however fell squarely into the right time for me, from 1991-1995 and my (undergraduate) university years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_(TV_series)). Further some of the intro was on Hammersmith roundabout - a very pertinent place about 10 years later in my life! Classic stuff. In fact, recently I watched Guesthouse Paradiso - one of the feature length films from Bottom - still ok in these days, and amusing for me now is the inclusion of a mental Italian couple. Classic.

Anyway, I digress. The first music I bought for myself was a double A-side vinyl single from Spitting Image with Star Trekking on one A-side and Never Met a Nice South African (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZjwCmJrnlY)on the other. Today we woke up to the news that Oscar Pistorius killed his girlfriend thus helping to reinforce the cliche. There are a couple of exceptions, but they are very and few between, considering the number I have met. And his reaction is not out of sorts, considering his outburst when he got beat during the olys (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/disability-sport/19460868 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2M-SeNMERU). Anyway, sadly I feel vilified.

I'm in the US. Eventually. Should have left Sunday, but Boston got hit by a freak storm and had 25 inches of snow in one night, so our trip on Sunday got delayed. We tried to fly on Monday but this time the 1 inch of snow in Italy knocked us back. Not because it was on the road, but because when we were trying to get from Siena to Florence, the police were testing if the lorries had snow tyres - a) it is obligatory to have snow tyres or carry chains between November and April every year, and b) there had been a lot of snow in the north. They had decided to do this on a single carriage way section of the superstrada and so completely blocked the entire main highway from Siena. So we missed that one and eventually arrived in Boston after three days of trying. Excitingly, there is still plenty of snow around, which is pretty but makes it very difficult to run in the mornings :) Amazingly the river is frozen. I have never seen a frozen river before!

The infrastructure is impressive, on Wednesday night (it had stopped snowing on Saturday morning) they were still shuffling snow from affected regions to the car park near our hotel for storage. Good work Massachusetts.

Meanwhile we reminised today on a cartoon when we were kids of Vicki the Viking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLQz-O5x2g). Three of us in the room are turning 40 this year - scary! I'm sure there should be something that should be done before this classic number is met.

Over n out.

JJ