Item 130. Billy Cotton - When A Black Sheep Meets A White Sheep (early 1940s)

I posted the lyrics to this a few weeks ago, and promised you the MP3. Here it is, then - as taken from my grandparents' original 78. A pity it cuts off rather abruptly towards the end, but then you can't have everything. As for the lyrics: I said it then, and I'll say it again now. White sheep can be such boring little prisses at times, can't they?

Item 131. Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF) - Kebabträume (live at the Electric Ballroom, London) (1980)

Kebabträume in der Mauerstadt / Türk-Kültür hinter Stacheldraht / Neu-Ismir ist in der DDR / Atatürk der neue Herr / Milijet für die Sowjetunion / In jeder Imbissbude ein Spion / Im ZK ein Agent aus Türkei / Deutschland, Deutschland, alles ist vorbei! / Wir sind die Türken von morgen / Wir sind die Türken von morgen.

Blissblog has tipped early period, pre-Virgin DAF - and this piece of rough-n-ready post-punk-electro shoutiness is a prime example.

Those lyrics became a bit of a problem, though. Originally conceived as a wry, deadpan mockery of German reaction to the major influx of Turkish immigrants to Berlin in the 1970s, with a suitably neo-fascistic feel to the delivery, the song (in its better known cover version by the band Fehlfarben) later became re-appropriated by the East German far right, who even devised a reworded anti-Soviet version to chant at football matches. Even to this day, DAF still find themselves having to re-assert that they were never actually fascists themselves. The perils of deliberately provocative "ironic" shock tactics, eh?

1. Half of my favourite links seem to be coming through Groc at the moment - and here's another one. It's a transcript of e-mails between one of those ubiquitous African spam-scam johnnies, and an intrepid spamee who decided to hoax him back. Big time. With photos and everything. (There's also lots more of this sort of thing at www.africanscam.co.uk.) (Incidentally, did I ever tell you that Groc's boyfriend was responsible for introducing me to K, eighteen years ago?)

2. Thanks to Elisabeth for linking to a couple of delightful MP3s from Tiger Baby, a band from Denmark with more than a touch of the Saint Etiennes about them. Which can only be a good thing, right?

3. With only a couple of days to go until the publication of the new Harry Potter novel, Diamond Geezer maps out a few narrative possibilities, based on the two "teaser" fragments which have been released ahead of time (presumably to get us all slavering with moist anticipation). However, the best suggestion of all comes via Pete Dot Nu at This Is The Goo I've Got (which I particularly recommend if, like me, you're still missing the old Acerbia).

4. Are you enjoying the Old Curiosity Box Summer Festival - or Boxstock, as it shall henceforth be known? But does it leave you hungering for still more obscure MP3s? If so, then I suggest that you take beat a path to Fluxblog. This is basically an MP3 weblog, with stacks of interesting and diverse material to choose from. My recommendations? Well, there's a new track from the marvellous Chicks On Speed (featuring Peaches), who were my Official Favourite Band for about six months in late 1999/early 2000. The Pop Group's 1980 single Where There's A Will There's A Way has worn well, and there's also a track from Jarvis Cocker's bizarre new electroclash re-incarnation, Relaxed Muscle.

5. (via Naked Blog) Scaryduck has been asking his readers to nominate the worst films ever made. Here are my suggestions:

• Indecent Proposal (morally bankrupt - or at least it would have been, if it wasn't such a lazy, feeble piece of air-headed, half-assed nothingness.)
  
• Caligula (...but enjoyably so.)
  
• Derek Jarman's Sebastiane (so painfully slow-moving that it doesn't even work as soft pr0n...and oh! my dears! the Latin dialogue!)
  
• One Fine Day (Clooney, Pfeiffer, a supporting cast of deeply annoying little brats, and a stultifyingly hackneyed plotline.)
  
• Just A Gigolo (Bowie & Dietrich's arthouse disaster - and you thought Madonna was the only megastar who couldn't act for toffee? Indeed, Bowie's only remotely decent piece of acting comes when his corpse is laid out at the end of the film. Oops, did I give away the plot?)
  
• Fellini's Casanova (a marathon endurance test of excruciating self-indulgence, which prompted the largest number of walk-outs I have ever witnessed in a cinema.)
  
• Contact (a completely and utterly pointless extended advert for a sequel which never even got made, goddammit.)
  
• Final Destination (oh, let's not even start...)

Item 128. Am I Normal? - David (1983)

Produced by Andy Hill, the man who brought Bucks Fizz and Bardo to the world. This was at a time when a renewed emphasis was being placed on the role of the pop producer, with particular praise being lavished on Martin Rushent (Human League, Altered Images, Pete Shelley) and Trevor Horn (ABC, Dollar, Malcolm McLaren). Occasionally, you would hear Andy Hill's name being tipped as a possible candidate for similar greatness, with intricate, highly polished little techno-pop gems like My Camera Never Lies (for Bucks Fizz) certainly suggesting that he had the potential.

The gleaming, shimmering confection of oh-so-sophisticated early 80s synth-tech-wizadry that is Am I Normal? might well have been the closest that Hill ever got to scaling such heights. Unfortunately, it was also a complete flop of a single. In fact, the only reason I ever knew of its existence was through a mate who was working in Hill's studio at the time, who considered it the best work that the producer had ever done.

What else do I know about it? The singer, Virginia David, had previously been a member of Sailor, joining them just as their short hit-making career was drawing to a close. The song itself is a cover version of the 1979 debut single from Eye To Eye, a duo who went on to have a brief amount of limited success in the US. It is co-written by Julian Marshall, formerly of one-hit wonders Marshall Hain (Dancing In The City). But most notably of all, Am I Normal? has one of the most ludicrously pretentious lyrics I have ever come across (and I've studied a good few of Jon Anderson's lyric sheets, let me tell you). Cop a load of this! And what, pray, is an exhastavent when it's at home?Finally - is it just me, or does this single bear an eerie similarity to Propaganda's Duel, a hit single two years later?

Item 129. Track With No Name - Forgemasters (1989)

According to the uber-hipsters at Blissblog, the "Bleep & Bass" genre of early UK techno (circa 1989/90) is now due for a revival, with the productions of Rob Gordon cited as an example. This is one of his - which also bears the distinction of being the first ever release on Sheffield's highly influential Warp Records label (still going strong nearly 14 years later).

When this track first came out, towards the back end of 1989, I had just retired from regular DJ-ing. Listening to this at the time, I remember wondering how I could possibly have fitted it into one of my sets. Essentially, it was one of those rare "what the f**k is this all about?" records. I had become quite the stuck-up little soulboy purist by then, what with my love of New York/New Jersey garage house, and the whole Soul II Soul thing in the UK. Dance music in the UK was about to hop off in a whole new direction - one which had, for the very first time, absolutely no roots in the soul/funk/r&b tradition. Even with such heavily computerised genres such as electro, acid house and original Detroit techno, these roots had still been in evidence. With this new "bleep & bloop music", (as I witheringly described it at the time), they had been severed for good - and I wasn't having any of it, thank you.

Listening to it again for the first time in years, Track With No Name sounds bloody marvellous. Tinny treble, booming bass, stripped down functionality...and no pretensions to being anything other than a building block in a DJ set. That was something still fairly new, as well: pure club tracks, which hadn't been designed with home listeners even remotely in mind. Dance music as physical, functional music, with no vocals, no song structure, just a groove. The beginning of the end, or a new beginning? It took me quite a while to realise that it was the latter.

As I haven't been popping nearly enough into my curious old box in recent weeks, I have decided to compensate by means of an extended Summer Festival of choice MP3s. Since it's the season for festivals, and since I shan't be attending any in person (for reasons which have already been explained), this strikes me as a more civilised alternative. Plus, there won't be any of those annoying jugglers in twatty Comedy Hats to contend with.

(Which reminds me: in a radical bid to Move With The Times, the official theme for our village parade, to be held in two weekends' time, is "Glastonbury". According to the publicity, this will offer "everything you'd expect from the real Glastonbury - except the mud, the drugs and the traffic hassles." Which doesn't exactly leave much, does it? Except for those bloody jugglers, I suppose. Unless Radiohead are planning an afternoon warm-up gig in an obscure location? Well, we can hope.)

The festival will run like this: two MP3s a day, until the chemical loos fill up, the drugs run out, or David Sodding Gray turns up. And just to show how Bleeding Hedge we can be when we want to be (but only when we want to be) - the second of each day's MP3s will be taken from Blissblog's Uberhipsters United Influences Index - specifically, from the section marked TRES HOT a/k/a RIPE FOR REDISCOVERY [cooler-than-thou dead-cert trump-all-comers power move].

Item 126. Wherever You Are - Ulrich Schnauss (2002)

Let's kick off with some suitably chilled warm-up music, while you pitch your virtual tent and skin up a virtual fat one. Taken from a tribute album to early 90s shoe-gazers Slowdive (believe it!), this is my favourite track by the morose looking dude from Berlin, who Elisabeth, Tag, Buni and I caught live in Nottingham a couple of weeks ago. Not only that, but it shares a title with the weblog whose invocation to Mother Esther finally released me from Care Bear Hell last week. This one is therefore especially dedicated to Vaughan (who should appreciate the shoe-gazing connection) - and to La Rantzen, of course.

Item 127. Under Mi Sleng Teng - Wayne Smith (1985)

According to the Blissblog index, Eighties pre-ragga dancehall reggae is teetering on the point of uber-hipness right now, and what better example could there be than this groundbreaking, massive, mighty track? Generally recognised as the first fully digitised electronic reggae single, this is also remarkable for its lack of reggae's most staple ingredient of all : a bassline. Best played loud, and so good that it makes me want to scream, frankly. (Read more about the track here.)

More things which got missed during the accidental hiatus, or were only written about in comments boxes.

1. The gammy leg. Ooh, the pain. You should understand this: insects never bite me. I seem to exude some sort of repellent musk which keeps them well away, and have often boasted of my good fortune in this respect. Two weeks ago: payback time. God knows what insect it was - and more to the point, God knows what it was eating before it decided to eat me, but it must have been something truly vile. The result: after five days of thinking it was just a harmless zit, the area just above the back of my left knee suddenly swelled up into a massive, sore, tender, weeping, leaking, pustulent mess of utter hideousness. Being on the muscle directly above my knee, every slightest leg movement put strain on the wound, which was also too sore to cover with a dressing...or long trousers...or even the duvet at night, for that matter. I therefore spent most of last week trying to move around as little possible, while waiting in vain for the leaking and bleeding to stop. By Wednesday, the surrounding inflammation had spread from mid-thigh to mid-calf, while the infection had left me feeling poorly and lacking in appetite. Antibiotics were stablising the infection, but couldn't do much to heal the damage. As the week wore on, I became caught in a double bind: too much movement stopped the wound from sealing up, whereas too little movement caused it to set in one position, only to be torn apart once I altered that position. As of now: the surrounding inflammation has died down, the wound is very slowly shrinking, and I'm wearing long trousers and a dressing - but the constant discomfort is still there, and changing the dressing is a painful, messy and frankly disgusting business (helping me out yesterday afternoon, K went very pale and nearly fainted). It really is most tedious.

2. The boring technical background as to why I was unable to post for a week: this was due to a compendium of errors. Firstly, I had breached the maximum 300 files limit on my Blogspot Plus account (a limit which I hadn't previously been aware of). If I had clicked the "more info" link in the Blogger editor directly after Publishing, then a little diagnostic message would have told me this. However, as the Publish operation appeared to complete with no errors, it never occurred to me to try this link. Instead, I started fiddling around with my Publishing Settings, in a doomed attempt to publish to my ISP's web space (doomed, because this space doesn't allow for custom CGI). When restoring my original settings, I then made the false assumption that my Blogspot FTP User ID was the same as my Blogger User ID. Once I had corrected the FTP ID, and moved a few jpegs off Blogspot, then all was well again. Meanwhile, in the course of all of this botheration, I decided to splash out for a new domain and server space (using StreamlineNet, as recommended to me some time ago by Pinky of Chaos), and so shall shortly be deserting Blogspot for good. But not just yet. Because a short period of stability is called for, I think.

3. After eleven years at the same address (how did that happen?), we finally appear to be selling our house in Nottingham, and buying a new one. I've mentioned the new one before. It is quite absurdly gorgeous. The old one goes on the market towards the end of the week. It is all too, too thrilling.

4. SJW cold turkey. Because three and a half years of popping the stuff every morning is quite long enough, thank you, and because the conditions which caused me to start taking the stuff in the first place disappeared a long time ago. Anyway, as Peter warned, mentally weaning myself off proved to be a bumpy, jagged process. But I'm there now, or rather I'm here now, and everything's fine, and here is where I intend to stay. Although I do slightly miss the presence of SJW's emotional safety net, I suspect that what I really miss is the comforting knowledge of having that safety net. In other words: I think there has been a strong psychosomatic element to the various trials and tribulations of the withdrawal process. What SJW did for me: if ever I felt a tug downwards, I was able to say to myself "Nope, not going there. Staying just where I am, thank you." But as the frequency and intensity of these tugs steadily diminished, so there seemed to be no reason left for protecting against them.

5. No, there won't be any commemorative Care Bear Hell merchandise. But we always welcome positive product placement. Like this. And this. Has anything amusing happened in connection with your Troubled Diva merchandise recently?

6. As blogged in last week's comments box: I was delighted to discover a full web edition of Heinrich Hoffman's Struwwelpeter, complete with all the original illustrations. Gothically dark morality tales, designed to scare the f**k out of young children. As a lad, I used to read this over and over again, with grisly fascination. Plus, the drawings are ace. (via Frizzy Logic, which I hadn't visited in a while - my my, lookin' good! In fact, qB's original article on scary reading for children is well worth reading - in particular, check out The Gashlycrumb Tinies.)

7. For committed music obsessives only: Blissblog's Uberhipsters United Influences Index makes fascinating, if sometimes baffling reading. Apparently, the Gang Of Four are passé, the Incredible String Band are "hot for now", Hatfield And The North are a "cooler-than-thou dead-cert trump-all-comers power move", and Terence Trent D’Arby is tipped as having "major ahead-of-the-curve cool potential". Er, just how seriously are we supposed to take this? I feel a few Curiosity Box MP3s coming on here...