Thoughts around Rolf Harris

It's Friday so it's blog time with propably the most difficult post make on this blog that encrouches into a big chunk of my own childhood with the announcement on Tuesday Mr Rolf Harris had died.

If you were around from the turn of the 1970's onwards watched television a lot you saw a lot of him on art and skit based shows throughout that decade and right into the early 2000's you followed his career because those shows were great shows, inspiring you to draw at a time arts education in school tend to put you down and helped promote caring for animals.

You watched shows like Rolf's On Saturday-OK and later on Animal Hospital, might of had the Annuals those shows published at the time.

You may have Two Little Boys as song he did not write but popularized in 1970 as one of very first musical experiences and it is a lovely song of long lasting boyfriendship. It's a personal favourite.

You have to balence all of that and what means with the other side, that he was convicted of abuse against women and girls which no one can condone not least those of us who have been through such things and have worked to bring to justice those responsible.

People seldom come in totally black and white packages so that death is noted for how I felt as that child and young person in the era and certainly not for what rightly he did time for.

Dandy and Beano Summer Specials 2023

This week we're returning to an age old ritual routed in boyhood where the arrival of summer punctuated by Sports Day and the School Holidays meant we needed a little extra fun reading for when we were out playing for what seemed likes ages in July and August and to get through any rainy days while on our own Hols where going out wasn't going work.

Most of us had the Beano in its regular form and often had annuals for Christmas so the idea of a glossy special for the summer where all our favourite characters like us were on holidays having adventures appealed.

The Beano is the one regular comic that survived the wave of closures of the nineteen nineties and early part of this century and so the sixty eight page special with stickers returns with a common story theme of a Gnasher that's appears supersized, dwarfing the children although in reality it is they who have been shrunk in size.

Can they escape that fate?

The Dandy was one of those unlucky comics that went in paper form in 2012 but we do get a Summer Special ever since the 2013 edition proved very popular.

There have been a few comic strips started in recent years and a little more inclusivity than was the case but it mixes some reprints from the past with the new

This year the “Dandytown Scouts” strip drawn by Mychailo Kazybrid and inked by Bambos Georgiou has been added.

They attend their Scouts sessions on Friday evenings, are and do work on gaining their badges, having adventures and having fun while doing so.

Mychailo created the design for these characters and the characters feature can see on the cover. 

There should also be a couple of strips starring these characters in the Dandy Annual this year to keep that fresh and appealing to all ages.

These should be available from W H Smith -  the dandy itself  only from WH Smiths-  and can be ordered via Amazon.uk.

Unlike previous years they don't appear to be available from D C Thompson's own web sites and indeed the whole thing around if and when they might is rather messy.

Given the rush to get them out while normally there's more of a build up for the May 17th publication suggests the ball was dropped a little and they're playing catch up.

However that happened, normal childhood rituals are restored this year.

Big Band Music and me

 Something I had an interest in from around the age of ten to fourteen was "Big band" music following Alan Dell's BBC Radio 2 show on Monday nights and owning a number of records like the late 60's Glen Miller compilations in their "to the moon and back" echo laden fake stereo and having seen them perform live at the Victoria Hall here in Stoke on Trent, the Syd Laurence Orchestra who revived the form rather well.

From Big Band, from the late ninteen forties we had the advent of Be-Bop which took us via Miles Davies and others to Modern Jazz and A Kind Of Blue.

Released just this week in Canada on cd is this super compilation of Big Band masterpieces taken from the original metal work as back the magetic tape wasn't around to make master recordings.

These are recordings by such legends as Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman,Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey and Harry James apart from Glen Miller at their prime.

What distinguishes this set is not just ensuring the original hit recording is used rather than a remake but through the skilful use modern computerized audio technology to extract a whole sound spectrum from the monophonic disc recordings and mix them into stereo so it is almost as if we're hearing them perform in the studio with the sound spread between the left and right.

This is closer in many respects to jazz and popular recordings of the mid to late nineteen fifties than those fake stereo lps RCA and CBS/Columbia inflicted upon us in the sixties and seventies which never were that convincing.

This is a fantastic new collection and I'd love to see some individual artist compilations by these performers.

Full tracklist:

1 Opus No. 1 - Tommy Dorsey [Stereo Debut]

2 In the Mood - Glenn Miller [2020 Stereo Debut]

3 Begin the Beguine - Artie Shaw [Stereo Debut]

4 Frenesi - Artie Shaw [Stereo Debut]

5 Chattanooga Choo Choo - Glenn Miller with Tex Beneke [Stereo Debut]

6 Sing Sing Sing - Benny Goodman [Stereo Debut]

7 Let's Dance - Benny Goodman [Stereo Debut]

8 String of Pearls - Glenn Miller [Stereo Debut]

9 Star Dust - Artie Shaw [Stereo Debut]

10 Moonlight Serenade - Glenn Miller [Stereo Debut]

11 Sentimental Journey - Les Brown with Doris Day [Stereo Debut]

12 Why Don't You Do Right - Benny Goodman with Peggy Lee [Stereo Debut]

13 A-Tisket, A-Tasket - Chick Webb with Ella Fitzgerald [Stereo Debut]

14 Woodchopper's Ball - Woody Herman [Stereo Debut]

15 Boogie Woogie - Tommy Dorsey [Stereo Debut]

16 You Made Me Love You - Harry James [Stereo Debut]

17 I Can't Get Started - Bunny Berigan [Stereo Debut]

18 Take the "A" Train - Duke Ellington [Stereo Debut]

19 One O'Clock Jump - Count Basie [Stereo Debut]

20 April in Paris - Count Basie [Stereo Debut]

21 So Rare - Jimmy Dorsey [2020 Stereo Debut]

22 Heartaches (Decca Version) - Ted Weems [Stereo Debut

23 I Wanna Be Loved By You - Marilyn Monroe (From "Some Like It Hot") [Stereo Debut]

Returned pasts and more memories

The year 1977 is well etched on my brain not least for the events of the Silver Jubilee of our late Queen, Elizabeth, waiting alongside a road in Bangor, North Wales on school trip to wave at here and school parties.

It was on one afternoon after one everybody in our form had to make a line and wait in turn to be presented with a special Jubilee commemorative mug and a gift one of which was rather like this.

I do have a number including one in blue with gold text through other connections and they are in wooden case still which probably tells you I do value them a lot emotionally.

This last week saw the Coronation of our King, Charles III and this is a special commemorative mug I have.

This is the reverse side.

It is signed by the artist who designed it  and was made locally from bone china, expressly NOT from China.

Having this does take me back me back those earlier years and where youngsters today as then also have had mugs presented to them in a number of instances and given I'm no longer in an official school, this for me makes up for that continuing the tradition where it can be displayed with the others.

In a week where I was publically in grey short trousers at church for a cake and tea coronation get together it's a fitting reminder.

Take three

It's Coronation weekend so rather than running with the obvious I thought I'd try something a bit random with a vague connection and pull out three lp records from my collection which I don't talk about much on here.

Bad Reputation is one the finest Thin Lizzy albums ever, I'd take it over Jailbreak, nay one the finest when it comes to playing in heavy rock ever that came out in 1977, the year of the Silver Jubilee, bunting, street parties and things given to us to mark this occassion as children.

I still have my jubilee mugs.

It was year that my tastes started to move towards albums rather than singles and Thin Lizzy caught my attention seeing them in a memorable Sight And Sound in Concert show on BBC2 and stereo radio and their show made a major impression on me.

This with the great riffs of the title track and the Dancing In the Moonlight single is my original UK edition.

1977 was the year some thirteen years after the event we got a live album from The Beatles which while not perfect and missing the classic Rubber Soul and Revolver period, did give those of who'd missed on what a beatles gig was all about, a feel of how it was with its excitement and wild screaming fans in recordings from two shows from the Hollywood Bowl, California.

That's my second copy, the Japanese first pressing which had a much better quality sleeve than UK editions did.

2012 was the year of second Olympics here in the UK, one which royalty played a part and the year some four years after the issuing of the remastered compact discs, the vinyl equivilents were issued most of which having British stereo copies from the 70's in prestine condition I didn't bother with.

This was one one I did because it does gather up non album singles with their b sides, stereo mixes of their Long Tall Sally EP and the two German language singles in stereo.

Although it had been issued before in October of 1988 on record several months after the cds, that edition didn't sound very good on record at all, not that that cd sound that good either!

This sounded much fuller even though you need turn the volume up a little as the second disc has longish sides and helps round out a collection of analogue tape cut editions although it was could from a digital master (which upsets analogue purists).

Given the dynamics are better on the record I'd take that over the cd which was one the better ones of the 2009 series that are currently in press.

Stuff in the post...

 

Posts on this blog are always written a a bit in advance so like this is being written Wednesday on an overcast afternoon with the first Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album, all thirty odd minutes of it, playing out on my stereo.

By the time this is published Now Yearbook 1978 with its Grease inspired Pink cover colour  will be here and a review done for the other blog on Monday.

I received a couple of my Record Store Day purchases from Saturday in todays post  but in with that was something else.

Next Thursday among many things in a week that includes a Early May bank holiday most of England will have elections, not that on this blog we talk politics but this year arrangements around how you vote have changed and the simple version of things is you need Photo ID to cast a vote in person on the day unless you arranged and got alternative systems of issued ID already sorted.

Given I'm not too well and was lacking Photo ID I looked into and got a Permanent postal voted arranged so I don't need that ID and no matter how I am and where I might be when an election is called I can have my say.

Thus today I actually "cast" my vote and posted it before firing up the Chromebook and getting the feedback on those purchases sorted.

We'll know the results by Friday I am sure.

Compilations of the past II - The road to Now That's What I Call Music

 In March we started this mini series looking at past chart based compilations that both played a part in my life at the time and how they became so popular by the late 1980's they were given a chart of their own.

We saw in 1982 the start of the trend towards improving the quality and value of these compilations with the two part Raiders Of The Pop Charts, a year retrospective that did not edit the tracks nor reduce the sound quality to cram ten tracks or more per side by Ronco.

Instead it gave you fifteen per record on a pair of records.

This meant it sounded as good as a regular album by your favourite artist although we saw the old style twenty track release was stil popular with the late 1982 Chart Wars but that form was to fade out.

The road to the pioneering Now That's What I Call Music in late 1983 was kicked off with this release, Chart Runners in early 1983 of hits from January and February that repeated the shorter twin lp set - I say twin set as it wasn't an actual double lp set but two seperate lps to be sold together at a discount -format.

This featured a number of favourites of mine from that period such as Reap The Wild Wind from the excellent Ultravox Quartet album of 1982, U2's New Years Day and Men At Work's Down Under.

The albums had the all important "The tracks contained in the album are the complete unedited singles versions as originally recorded" box, a sign of a quality compilation.

This,Chart Encounters Of The Hit Kind, was the May 1983 follow up issued around the time I took my A Levels, a in some respects stronger set that repeated that shorter higher quality two lp pack format that featured Snot Rap by the outragously funny Kenny Everitt as Sid Snot and Cupid Stunt.

It was compiled by Ashley Abram who went on to compile the Now albums and even had a tape mastering credit.

This gave me U2's Two Hearts Beat As One, introduced me to the musically interesting Thompson Twins with We Are Detective from the Side Kicks album, featured the Grammy winning Africa by Toto, the thoughtful Get The Balence Right by Depeche Mode and the first solo single by Nick Heyward from the mega brilliant North Of A Miracle album.

As Summer was closing and some of us were looking for a job most of jigsaw pieces for the NOW series had come together, sharp visually appealing covers, attention to detail with getting the actual singles versions and cutting the album for higher quality.

Ronco changed format again and went with a short lived series under The Hit Squad with a leather clad music loving posse.

Chart Tracking is a near perfect distilation of classic pop from the summer of '83 with all the hits you would of expected with Cruel Summer by Bananarama, Madness' infectious Wings Of A Dove, Depeche Mode's cynical Everything Counts and the unforgetable Nobody's Diary by Yazoo before they disbanded and Alison Moyet started a successful solo career.

This second issue, issued at the same time as and with similar cover to Chart Tracking was a confusing at the time issue that majored on the popularity of dance music and the twelve inch extended remix although some of those were only on the tape issue despite what the lp jacket implied.

It even duplicated Give It Up, the #1 KC and the Sunshine Band's summer massive hit from that other album while adding Galazy's Dancing Tight, Freeze's I.O.U  which I adored, Mtume's delightful Juicy Fruit and the inspired medly of Steely Dan's Do It Again coupled with Billy Jean by Club House.

I bought this on cassette for the extended mixes playing on my tape deck and very first "Walkman".

Because of the side length this wasn't as good sounding as Chart Tracking but in hindsight this started another trend, the Dance Music chart remix compilation that Now That's What I Call Music expanded up two years later with Now Dance, compiling 12" dance remixes on two lps.

Little did Ronco realize just what was being worked on that in time saw those pioneering chart compilations go within months.

On November 28th 1983 the road to the now justly famous Now That's I Call Music albums and brand emerged pulling together the use of the full unedited singles, a higher quality twin lp format but now packaged as a double lp set and brief background capsule track narration.

For pop fans like me this was fantastic as we had now a high quality deluxe compilation of singles without having to buy loads of individual  ones and flip them every four minutes or so over whose packaging was as good as any regular album. classy but eye catching too.

Now That's What I Call Music was in part a year round up even having the details of the other chart toppers on the inside and the hits of  Autumn of 1983 that bookcased our higher quality Ronco albums of that same year.

The success of the Now series lead to Now and later on the shorter lived CBS/WEA  Hits albums being able to get first dibs for chart compilation inclusion rights which pulled the rug from underneath not just Ronco whose attempts to improve on what we could expect from a chart compilation had lead to these new albums but also K Tel leading them to end chart complations and concentrate more on themed releases such as romantic, year round ups or genre based ones