Early Modern Notes

British readers: don’t miss tonight’s Channel 4 documentary about 2-Tone records (or my slightly self-indulgent post of links at The Dictionary of Received Ideas). Be there at 11pm (or 1.20am on S4C if you’re in Wales and you don’t have a digital box…).

I am listening to Pauline Black singing and I am definitely not under too much pressure right now.

(Best gig I ever went to here in Aber – OK, so not that much to talk about – was to see the current Selecter line up. Pauline is truly awesome.)

Update: Changed my mind since the TDRI post. I’m going to put this Trojan compilation on. Right now. The Skatalites cover The Guns of Navarone, and if that doesn’t do it for you, how about the Granville Wiliams Orchestra’s version of The Third Man theme?

…….

A sort of further update: Memories of Top of the Pops from someone who evidently hit optimum age for the programme (10-13) a few years before me. But teenage TOTP memories, certainly for about 30 years up to the mid 1990s, are probably pretty much universal, except for the changing levels of facial hair. Mostly utter rubbish, occasionally rising to astounding greatness. (Last great TOTP moment that I remember: Nirvana taking the piss.) Since then, as far as I could tell on my rare visits, it was just rubbish.