In a world where tickets no longer fall out of your pocket whilst you are rifling for change for the bus and skitter off on the breeze down the street, security staff are helpful and polite and act like they have some pride in their work rather than menacingly demanding a contribution to their ‘Christmas Box’ in the middle of July, merchandising tables no longer capsize forwards if someone happens to walk past them and sneeze and there is a significantly reduced risk of finding yourself stuck next to a sort of grebo bloke with his hair tied back sarcastically shouting “Oh Blur, we LOVE you!!!” after paying money to gain entrance to a Blur gig, it can be difficult to understand why so many seem to so dearly miss the days when live music, live comedy shows and even on occasion live theatre would routinely take place in venues that felt like they were simultaneously about to be demolished, be hoisted aloft by anything stronger than a completely still day and be infiltrated by armed police intent on clapping everyone present in handcuffs on charges yet to be thought of. On the other hand, no matter how less fraught and nerve-jangling an experience they may present, experientially identical right down to the manner in which the bar staff turn around venues where you are smoothly and unstressfully ushered in and out in an orderly fashion and everything starts on schedule and you are as good as compelled to pre-order your interval drinks do seem to lack that exhilarating sense that anything could happen and you never knew quite what you were going to see. In other words, there is simply less of a sense of unpredictability and occasion to the smoother experience and perhaps that is what understandably jaded audiences pining for their glory days of seeing The Frank And Walters as the support act for the seventy four millionth time that week are actually missing.

It may now essentially be little more than a glorified Starbucks, but one particular and indeed particularly ramshackle venue where I once saw amongst many many other Blur, Supergrass, Harry Hill, Super Furry Animals, Big Night Out-era Vic Reeves, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, a feet-finding post-Style Council Paul Weller, Lush, Pulp, Jesus Jones, Linda Smith, The Mock Turtles, The Railway Children and a screening of Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life introduced by Peter Capaldi may well have been notorious for adverse weather conditions merrily whistling through whatever it actually was that they attempted to pass off as ‘doors’ but it also played host to considerably more than its fair share of ‘occasions’, some of which would prove to have a more significant influence on me than anyone could honestly have predicted at the time. It was there that I saw three of the bands who would later feature in Higher Than The Sun touring to support albums that would later feature in Higher Than The Sun, and also attended a recording of an episode of Lionel Nimrod’s Inexplicable World which in a roundabout fashion would eventually lead to both Fun At One and The Larks Ascending. Possibly less consequentially for the nation’s bookshelves, I also saw The Mike Flowers Pops there, an event which I had more to say about in Looks Unfamiliar here. While these may be fond memories with far-reaching implications, however, they do not in any way inspire any curmudgeonly reactionary thoughts about how everything was better in my day, and in one of those wryly amusing juxtapositions that can only really happen as a consequence of chronologically trawling your own archives, an extract from Higher Than The Sun – available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here – concentrating on the career turnaround of one of those venue-sighted bands is immediately preceded by another celebrating the modern art of being courteously ushered in and out of a properly arranged concert; something that the former, as thrilling as it may have been, most certainly was not. There’s also coincidentally enough a small amount of gig-related chatter in Anna Cale’s debut appearance on Looks Unfamiliar, and the list of radio shows that deserve a proper release is at the very least Lionel Nimrod’s Inexplicable World adjacent, and in fairness if you have ever had the misfortune to be standing or seated next to me at a live show then I will almost certainly have mentioned Rubovia before too long as well. Anyway, pausing only to remind you that if you want to pre-order me an interval coffee you can do so here, on with the as-scheduled show…

And If You Need Me, You Can Find Me Ironing My Shirt

It is arguably far from the most consequential of the consequences arising from a private individual with an extremely public track record of extremely public tantrums somehow being allowed to buy outright the world’s largest communication tool, but revisiting this feature now does inevitably highlight how far entirely innocent individuals’ lives and careers have been detrimentally impacted by a major social media platform being forcibly remodelled in the image of a developmentally arrested billionaire with a face like Further Up Pompeii! being broadcast in the incorrect aspect ratio and a personality and temperament that makes Luke Rattigan look like a cautious understatement purely for the purposes of permitting himself to quote-post batshit racism with the comment ‘food for thought’ and that idiotic thumb and forefinger addressing chin emoji free of the risk of chastisement. I first went to see Grace Petrie live – and found myself at one of the absolute best gigs I have ever been to – when she posted on Twitter attempting to drum up interest in an underselling show, prompting me to take an evening-filling punt which I was very much glad that I did and indeed led me to regularly attend her touring shows from that point on. Nowadays you can find Grace closing her shows with an acknowledgement that Twitter as was is as good as useless for promotion and exhorting everyone present to the tune of Englishman In New York to “sign the mailing list, sign the fucking mailing list, to find out when I’ll be on tour”. In some regards it does feel both wildly unfair and moderately disrespectful to open a look back at a celebration of Grace Petrie with so much commentary that is technically actually about the dangerous yet indulged whims of the world’s most useless wrung flannel of a ‘genius’, but in fairness the above does serve to underline just how woefully incapable clothwit and his army of sycophantic ‘real boy’ dullards would be of finding anything like the excitement and joy of that I found in that randomly spotted social media-plugged gig, and indeed the excitement and joy that drove me to write this short but heartfelt celebration of Grace as a live act, named in case you were wondering after a key line in Black Tie. Incidentally you don’t actually have to sign the fucking mailing list to find out when she’ll be on tour, as all forthcoming dates are handily listed here. You can find the original version of And If You Need Me, You Can Find Me Ironing My Shirt here and a slightly updated version in Keep Left, Swipe Right here.

Just What Is It That You Want To Do?

The first instalment of an inconvenient confluence of repurposed old rope in inconveniently close proximity in this collection of archival highlights, and rather appropriately so in this case as this is an edited extract from a key chapter in Higher Than The Sun looking at how a floundering Primal Scream turned their unloved and unwanted country-rock tinged 1989 single I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have into 1990’s epochal genre-redefining dance music anthem Loaded almost by mistake. Efforts to promote this in itself already somewhat promotional effort – again forming part of something of an unintentional theme – were largely met with both are-you-sure merchants tetchily reiterating points that were comprehensively covered or even in some cases disproved at some length even in this condensed version, and equally blunt assertions from individuals determined to make it clear to anyone who might be randomly observing that they personally do not like Primal Scream please and thank you, but nonetheless it seemed to have the required effect and did indeed succeed in boosting sales for a good while. Although thankfully I had abandoned my in retrospect ludicrous plan to released Loaded-style ‘remixes’ of the book by then. You can find the original version of Just What Is It That You Want To Do? here and the full story of Loaded‘s parent album Screamadelica in Higher Than The Sun here.

The TV That Time Forgot: Rubovia

We have already alighted on my obsession with the long-forgotten ‘fourth’ Trumptonshire series Rubovia several times during this jaunt through even dustier corners of the archives than the one where the escapades of Queen Caroline and company are sitting dust-encrustedly unconsulted on a dust-encrusted shelf. This overview of the series slash attempt to prove in the face of frequently overwhelming scepticism that it actually did exist was originally written for the TV That Time Forgot project, and eventually I elected to reuse it here on the possibly slightly over-optimistic assumption that it was likely to draw in the odd similarly Chigley-Faced Green Dragon-troubled reader. Well, in fairness it was substantially more liable to than Something For The Weekend or Hear’Say It’s Saturday! would have been. That said, I also had something of an ulterior reason for dredging it up again, in that it seemed an ideal avenue to attempt to harness the power of social media by linking to it and commenting that Rubovia is the one programme that I am convinced that only I remember, and inviting all and sundry to nominate their own personal equivalent. This did, of course, prove to be something of a lesson of the sort that Mr. Weatherspoon and Rubina never actually quite seemed to learn. Even aside from the deluge of responses nominating ‘grange hill’, ‘rhubarb and custard’ and inevitably ‘would you like to swing on a star’, there was also an almost immediate and noticeably disproportionate barrage of retorts objecting to my use of ‘engagement tweets’ in a manner that suggested the complainant had been bundled into a cart and pressganged into service on a Seventeenth Century rum clipper as a consequence of having seen it recur once or twice in their timelines. More out of exasperation than any sense of guilt for apparently ruining people’s Whit Weekend plans by mentioning some puppets, I did think long and hard before attempting any similar tactic again. Although I did also repeatedly deliberately reuse that original tweet on numerous regular occasions specifically to annoy those specific original objectors as quite frankly they deserved it. Quite what Farmer Bottle would have thought about all of this is anyone’s guess. You can find the original version of The TV That Time Forgot: Rubovia here and a much more detailed look at the story behind all of Gordon Murray’s ‘Trumptonshire’ shows in The Golden Age Of Children’s TV here.

Twelve Radio Programmes That Need To Be Given A Proper Release

Another repurposed already extant feature, and this time one that was already showing its age even then as it had originally been inspired by the fact that so many radio shows that I had listened to as an almost devotional matter of course at the time were now as good as impossible to get hold of in any way shape or form even though all fifty seven million series of Ladies Of Letters were readily available on cassette and CD. By this time, of course, matters had moved on and indeed some long longed-for archival radio holy grails were now regularly repeated on BBC7 – call it by its proper name – and freely listenable on assorted streaming platforms, but even so, some surprising names were not even though all fifty seven million series of Clare In The Community were readily available via a tap or two on your phone, and as I had always felt quite fond of this attempt to argue the case for some relatively obscure overlooked radio highlights using anything other than dry facts, I decided to update and republish it here and it seemed to go down quite well. Until, that is, around four years later, when it was suddenly discovered by men on forums who seemed to take personal objection to the fact that certain aspects of this decidedly non-factual feature were factually out of date and threw in the odd personal insult for good measure, although unless I am missing something I maintain that pretty much all of the shows that I chose to highlight are still relatively difficult to get hold of. Certainly that Orbiter X box set with scans of the original Radio Times artwork and a booklet by Andrew Pixley is conspicuous by its absence from my shelves. Anyway you can find the forum-infuriating version of Twelve Radio Programmes That Need To Be Given A Proper Release here and more about many of the featured shows in Fun At One here and The Larks Ascending here.

Looks Unfamiliar: Anna Cale – Mrs. Mangel’s Living Room Was The Bane Of My Life

Anna was originally suggested as a guest by a Looks Unfamiliar listener, and while I am usually as a rule reluctant to follow such recommendations, especially the ones that are made in public with the intended guest tagged in which would be fine if it was say Scarlett Johansson or whoever but not just someone who makes you laugh because they post a few funny gifs in response to someone else being entirely serious, it was nonetheless clear that Anna would be a perfect fit for the show and indeed she was and is, and not just on Looks Unfamiliar either; we have also had more than a few highly entertaining chats on The Golden Age Of Children’s TV and It’s Good, Except It Sucks too. I was particularly taken with how many listeners found that Anna’s recollections of attempting to make it right the way through a plate of Sosmix without gagging struck a chord with their own juvenile attempts at adopting a vegetarian diet in a world of negligible to non-existent culinary options, although a few correspondents were unhappy about the choice of lead image for the show and more specifically the presence of the logo of the newspaper that the Neighbours sticker album was originally given away free with. Although I frankly took considerably greater exception to the supposition that I may have in any sense taken the decision to use it lightly, sometimes we do just have to accept the past for what it was. If it’s any help, I did subsequently tell a reporter from said newspaper who wanted permission to run a transcript of a section of a different edition of Looks Unfamiliar to ‘fuck right off and stay there’. Also, with the best will in the world, Shackletons High Seat Chairs are not quite as easy on the eye as Kylie Minogue. You can find the full show here and the chat about Wendy Cracked A Walnut in a collection of Looks Unfamiliar highlights here.

The Golden Age Of Children’s TV

If you still refuse to believe me that Rubovia actually existed, you can find plenty of proof of Pongo The Dragon’s veracity in The Golden Age Of Children’s TV, available in all good bookshops and from Waterstones here, Amazon here, from the Kindle Store here and directly from Black And White Publishing here.

Mystery Link! If you want to just go straight to a surprise page completely unrelated to any of the above, click here.

© Tim Worthington.
Please don’t copy this only with more italics and exclamation marks.