Of floral abundance, prehistoric birds, the ultimate pin-up, sweet treats and Temptation

[click any pic to embiggen]

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• King Sniffs Beckham's Bloomers news: The world's greatest floral extravaganza, Chelsea Flower Show opened its doors today, but not before HM The King Charles and Camilla had a good old pootle around. Charles, Sir David Beckham and former Gardeners World host Alan Titchmarsh were co-sponsors/co-creators of the RHS and The King’s Foundation Curious Garden, designed by Frances Tophill. The show commands crowds of 40,000 visitors per day over five days - and tickets are currently completely sold out!
• Pseudo-scientific hoo-ha news: A US biotech company that previously claimed to have recreated a long-extinct dire wolf by gene manipulation, and claims to be working on the "de-extinction" of the woolly mammoth, has announced it has taken the first steps towards doing the same with the giant Moa bird of New Zealand. A quote from Dr Louise Johnson, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Reading, on this announcement made me laugh out loud: "It sounds impressive but then it would, because it’s a press release. I look forward to reading more details when they’re published, but until there’s a peer-reviewed paper I might as well give expert commentary on a YouTube ad." More Jurassic Park than real science, then.

• Boop-boop-bee-doo news: In celebration of her 100th birthday on 1st June, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait will explore the life, career and legacy of Marilyn Monroe through portraits created by some of the greatest photographers and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery {from 4th June - 6th September 2026} will also include personal belongings such as books, scripts and clothes to enrich understanding of the woman behind the image. [NB Coincidentally, it was on this very day in 1962 that Marilyn Monroe performed her famously breathy rendition of Happy Birthday, Mr President for JFK]
• "All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening" news: We're in the midst of National Doughnut Week - and I didn't even notice... I am just going to have to buy a massive bag of Morrisons' finest jammy ones on my way to the office tomorrow, and scoff the lot!
• And finally: Sharing the day, as he does, with a host of luminaries including Victoria Wood, Grace Jones, Alma Cogan, Lady Nancy Astor, Malcolm X, Pete Townshend, Dame Nellie Melba, Ho Chi Minh, Edward de Bono, Sandy Wilson, Nancy Kwan, James Fox, Sam Smith, Joey Ramone and (erm) Pol Pot - it's Martyn Ware's 70th birthday today! Co-founder of the original Human League, British Electric Foundation and Heaven 17, it is to the latter we turn by way of a tribute [and a song that, despite being an all-time favourite, I appear never to have featured here before! How?]

Heaven 17 - Temptation

Utter genius!

And the weather? Blustery, showers, still too cold for mid-May. Grim. However, the forecast looks much improved for the end of the week and the Bank Holiday Weekend!

The best years of our lives - the hope of it survives

Three birthdays of note today - and an excuse (as if I ever I needed such a reason) to play some retro music from the 80s and early 90s.

First up, Mr Derry Brownson of the band whose full name was "Epsom Mad Funkers" (which was apparently the name of a New Order fan club):

EMF - Unbelievable

Next, Mr Andy Partridge, lead vocalist and guitarist in XTC (which I don't think is an acronym of anything):

XTC - Sgt Rock Is Going To Help Me

And, finally, Ian Craig Marsh, founder member of both the Human League and Heaven 17 (both band names taken from sci-fi/futuristic novels, of course)...

Heaven 17 - Let Me Go

Ah, memories...

Everybody move to prove the groove

Extracts from an article by Paul Gallagher over at Dangerous Minds today:

In 1981, the BBC banned Heaven 17’s début single (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang on the grounds the song’s lyrics were possibly libellous to President Ronald Reagan.

The couplet that caused the Beeb’s legal eagles such wrinkled brows was contained in the song’s third verse:

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan’s president elect
Fascist god in motion
Generals tell him what to do
Stop your good time dancing
Train their guns on me and you
Fascist thang advancing

[The song] was very much of its time... the lyrics contain the expected tropes on racism, fascism, Adolf Hitler, nuclear war, cruise missiles and a call to “unlock that funky chain dance.”

And to a man the nation asked, “Why hadn’t we thought of this before? Unlocking our funky chain dance to stop nuclear war?”

The BBC has always had a strange relationship with pop music. In 1969, they banned The Kinks’ song Plastic Man because it contained the word “bum”. Just a few years later in 1972, they were happily piping out Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side with its lines about “giving head” to the Beeb’s Radio 2 grey-haired Daily Mail-reading middle aged listeners. Now, they were quaking that "the Gipper" might possibly, maybe, well you just never know, sue the ass off the Corporation for some rather juvenile political pop posturing?

Despite the ban, Heaven 17 didn't come off too badly. (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang made the lower reaches of the charts, and garnered a lot of attention in the "cool" clubs of the New Romantic era [I remember dancing to it myself at the "Bowie/Roxy Nights" at Lazers in Newport, with friends of Steve Strange] - and the band went on to have a string of smash chart hits, including the classics Temptation and Come Live with Me. And they're still going today.

The BBC did everyone a big favour, just as they did for Frankie Goes To Hollywood a mere three years later... And here's the "controversial" song in question:

Heaven 17 - (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang

Heaven 17 official website

Kiss the boys goodbye

Timeslip moment again...

Thirty years ago this week (a terrifying thought), one of my favourite songs by a favourite band of all time was in the Top Ten.

Formed out of the remnants of the original Human League, and hot on the heels of their British Electric Foundation (BEF) side-project, it's Messrs Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh and Glenn Gregory - aka Heaven 17!

Heaven 17 - Come Live With Me

I was thirty-seven
You were seventeen
You were half my age
The youth I'd never seen
Unlikely people meeting in a dream
Heaven only knows
The way it should have been

Here today, my tomorrow
Where you lead
I will follow
All that kissing
No passion missing
Come live with me

Kiss the boys goodbye
Come live with me
Kiss the boys goodbye
Come live with me

Dinner parties followed
And all my age implies
My friends began to talk
I began to realize
If half the things they say
Are quarter true of me
Then how can I eclipse the youth
You gave to set me free?

There was something in your smile
That was hard to reconcile
The time had come to testify to reason
Though years will not erase
Remembrance of those days
At least there's
No submission to heart's treason

Here today, my tomorrow
No more shame, only sorrow
All that kissing
There's something missing

Come live with me
Kiss the boys goodbye
Come live with me
Kiss the boys goodbye
Come live with me

Sheer poetry...

Heaven 17 official website