The quintissential artist

"Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing."

Happy 76th birthday today to the incredibly talented Quincy Delight Jones.

Quincy began his musical journey as a trumpeter with bandleader Lionel Hampton in the 1950s, and from there soon gained a name for himself as an arranger, working with a cavalcade of the top artists of the day, including Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa and Ray Charles. With this respected career under his belt, he moved on to composing his own music, and was soon snapped up by Hollywood to write film scores, including In The Heat of The Night and The Italian Job.

He continued as an arranger, working with Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Dinah Washington and Ella Fitzgerald. En route he found time to write the classic Soul Bossa Nova (as featured in Austin Powers), and "discovered" Lesley Gore and wrote It's My Party for her. Whew!

Quincy Jones - Soul Bossa Nova

But this prodigious output continued throughout the 70s and 80s, and his success was assured as producer of Michael Jackson's greatest works, including his seminal solo album Off The Wall - a record that sold 20 million copies worldwide and rocketed Quincy Jones into the stratosphere of fame. He went on to produce both the biggest-selling album of all time, Thriller, and Jackson's follow-up Bad.

In the 80s he also had a solo pop career, covering Chaz Jankel's Ai No Corrida and latching onto the jazz-funk groove of the early 80s with Razzamataz, and continues writing, producing and arranging to this day...

Quincy Jones - Ai No Corrida

A staggering talent!

Quincy Jones website

Whip it real good

As the news breaks today that arch surrealists Devo are going to release their first new album in 20 years and will play their entire debut album live in concert in London in May, what better excuse than this to post their all-time classic number, one of my favourite post-punk songs...

Devo - Whip It

Read the article on the BBC

Total war, Martha? Total!

Who knew that Edward Albee was still alive? Celebrating his birthday today, at 81 Albee has certainly earned his title of "America's greatest living playwright".



Adopted by a high society couple as a child, Albee ran away from his constrictive upbringing to join the literary set of New York's Greenwich Village in the 1950s. And his phenomenal legacy began there, with critically-acclaimed works such as Zoo Story and The Death of Bessie Smith. He was awarded the Pulitzer prize for A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women, and continued to produce award-winning plays over five decades, including The American Dream, and most recently with the 2002 hit Broadway and West End play The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?.

"I'm loud, and I'm vulgar, and I wear the pants in this house 'cos God knows, somebody has to! But I'm not a monster, I'm not!!"

But it of course for his masterwork Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? that he is (rightly) most admired and remembered. This tortuous dissection of a stifling relationship between two headstrong (and drunken) characters is held up today as a classic of world drama. It caused massive controversy in the straight-laced early 60s for its uncompromising use of vulgar language and uncomfortable scenes of verbal humiliation and implicit "sexual decadence".

The 1966 film adaptation was a massive success, featuring possibly the very best cinematic performances of all the leading players' careers - Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Sandy Dennis and George Segal. All four were nominated for Oscars (the film itself having been nominated in all thirteen eligible categories, unprecedented at the time), and Miss Taylor and Miss Dennis won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively.

In the hands of these masters, the movie is a brilliantly disturbing and engrossing example of modern film noir, as the viewer "eavesdrops" on the agonies of Martha and George's spiteful attacks on each other, and experiences the stifling discomfort of their humiliated guests.

The film, as the play before it, caused uproar in an age when cinema censorship was still rife, and apparently Jack Warner chose to pay a fine of $5,000 in order that it would remain as faithful to the play (with its profanity) as possible. His faith in the project certainly paid off.

Here are just a couple of clips from this, one of my and Madame Acarti's favourite films ever:

Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? - "Getting angry, Baby?"

Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? - "I am NOT a Monster!"

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on IMDB

Following the river of death downstream

Thirty years ago this week, the charts were dominated by one song - Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel. Everyone was sick to death of it, as I recall. I don't know anyone who actually bought it. But there it was, in the words of Phil Oakey "the black hit of space, sucking in the human race."

Evidence - if any were needed - of the eclecticism of music at the time were the "ones that got away"; those that hit the Top 5 in March 1979 but couldn't shift the big 'un.

These included The Jacksons - Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground), Racey - Some Girls, Sex Pistols - Something Else / Friggin' In The Riggin', Sister Sledge - He's The Greatest Dancer , Supertramp - The Logical Song, and this one (amongst my favourites):

Three Degrees - The Runner

Those who came before me lived through their vocations

I was watching Sky Arts' Songbook featuring Bernard Sumner (of Joy Division and New Order fame) last night, and the interviewer asked where the inspiration for the biggest-selling 12" single of all time Blue Monday came from.

Well, apparently the whole thing was conceived during New Order's first tour as a band after Ian Curtis' suicide and the end of Joy Division, and pays its dues to the influence of the electro gay disco being played in New York in the early 80s.

Take a slice of this:

Klein & MBO - Dirty Talk

Mix liberally with a bit of this:

Donna Summer - I Feel Love

And some of this:

Sylvester - You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)

And add a little of this:

Kraftwerk - The Robots

And you get this...

New Order - Blue Monday

Everything about it is appealing, everything that traffic will allow

Monday - sun is shining, daffs are up, and my thoughts turn to tacky music again!

We were listening to the fab Paul O'Grady show on Radio 2 yesterday (so much better than Elaine Paige, for whom he is covering for a few weeks), and among his selection of show music he featured this marvellous slice of incredibly bad kitsch.



For some impossible-to-understand reason back in 1979 someone thought it would be a good idea to get the most powerful voice in showbiz Ethel Merman to record a disco album - and a camp cult classic was born. Unsurprisingly, we have a treasured copy on vinyl as well as the CD (and it is always a guaranteed party hit, if only for the guests screaming for it to stop!). I love it...

Ethel Merman Disco Album - Some People

Ethel Merman Disco Album - There's No Business Like Showbusiness

Ethel Merman Disco Album

And just for a second I thought I remembered you

Happy birthday today to one of my greatest inspirations - Mr Gary Numan.

Why Numan, and not Bowie, Roxy, or Kraftwerk - his own acknowledged biggest influences? I was actually too young to appreciate the coolness of any of them. At the height of their powers in the mid 70s, my world revolved around Top of the Pops, glam (especially Queen), and the emerging "New Wave" and disco sounds.

It was in 1979, after the brief flurry that was Punk had died down, and at a similar time to my obsession with Blondie, that I stumbled upon a performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test by an unknown band called "Tubeway Army". I became absolutely hooked, and I didn't really know why...

Numan's stark, steely presence - like some kind of "space elf" - and his mournful robotic vocals fascinated me. I bought every record (single and LP) he produced, went to see him at the Colston Hall in Bristol on his Telekon tour in '81, and began to model my look and tastes around this new alien synthesizer-driven world of his creation. In night classes, I used his iconic White Album image [above] to screen-print T-shirts, and I craved a diagonal-buttoned jacket like his.



Little did I know at the time how much of a musical sea-change was just around the corner in his wake, with the rise of the Futurist/New Romantic movement I came to embrace. His song Jo The Waiter ["Held me close, behind the door marked 'Gentlemen'"] became a bit of an inspiration during my coming out, too.

His appearance on the music scene ruffled a few long-established feathers. David Bowie famously wanted Gary Numan off the set of the Kenny Everett Show on which they were both scheduled to appear, saying that he didn't know that "cloning was part of the 80s". Miaow. But it was through the "Numan influence" that I, and many others, came to rediscover the ground-breaking music of the original 70s pioneers via our local "Bowie/Roxy nights".

A largely unrecognised legend these days (except perhaps by Richard X), but one dear to my heart:

Tubeway Army - Are Friends Electric?

Tubeway Army - Down in the Park

Gary Numan - I Die, You Die

Gary Numan (born Gary Anthony James Webb, 8th March 1958)