Salivating in anticipation ...

O wow! Look what I've found!

Released on 28 November (according to eil.com) is a best of S L A D E DVD and double CD. Cor! The DVD has a lot of material that's not on the 'Wall of Hits' video so this is a very exciting development. There's nothing new on the (remastered) CD but I don't care - I want it!

The DVD track listing is:

1. Coz I Luv You - Promo Video
2. Mama Weer All Craze Now - from Top Of The Pops
3. Gudbuy T'Jane - Promo Video
4. Cum On Feel The Noize - Promo Video
5. Skweeze Me Pleeze Me - Promo Video
6. My Friend Stan - Promo Video
7. Merry Xmas Everybody - from Top Of The Pops, 1975
8. Far Far Away - Promo Video
9. Thanks For The Memory (Wham Bam Thank You Mam) - Promo Video
10. Let's Call It Quits - Promo Video
11. Nobody's Fool - Promo Video
12. My Baby Left Me - That's All Right - Promo Video
13. Give US A Goal - Promo Video
14. My Oh My - Promo Video
15. Run Run Away - Promo Video
16. Radio Wall Of Sound - Promo Video
17. Hear Me Calling - from Granada TV's Six Of The Best
18. Look What You Dun - from Granada TV's Six Of The Best
19. Darling Be Homes Soon - from Granada TV's Six Of The Best
20. Coz I Luv You - from Granada TV's Six Of The Best
21. Get Down And Get With It - from Granada TV's Six Of The Best
22. Born To Be Wild - from Granada TV's Six Of The Best
23. Them Kind Of Monkeys Can't Swing - from Slade in 'Flame'
24. Take Me Bak 'Ome - from 2G's and the Pop People
25. Everyday - from Top Of The Pops, 1972
26. How Does It Feel? - from the Russell Harty Show, 1975
27. In For A Penny - from Supersonic, 1975
28. The Bangin' Man - from Supersonic, 1975

How can I find out if this is all true? There must be a website about future releases ...

Don't say it in Russian ...

Been to see the amazing Marianne Faithfull tonight - an excellent show indeed. She has such a large back catalogue it's either easy to choose a track list or the most difficult thing in the world - please the punters or please yourself and I thought she played it just right. Her version of 'Working Class Hero' is astonishing and it's a song she's made her own after all these years (and Yoko Ono applauding at Patti Smith's Meltdown over the summer).

It was also a delight to find out afterwards that Anita Pallenberg was sitting behind me! I wondered who was rustling a crisp packet at one point but now assume she was opening a packet of fags since she she lit up as soon as the concert ended!

I'm so dedicated to my work as well - jut done some briefing for our press office on likely questions from (biased) journalists following a conference tomorrow - had a tip-off that the BBC and other TV channels will be asking questions ... that will then be picked up by the 'papers as is usually the way ... all in a day's work, I suppose. *yawn*

And so to work...

Went to work today (aren't I brave?). Not too bad at all, left home at lunchtime for a trip to the Hotel Russell in Russell Square for an awayday of sorts. Downside was that it went on till after 6.00pm and I had to travel home at the peak rush hour, standing most of the way on the tube and all the way on the bus. My poor back.

Downloaded Kate Bush's new single - it's there on repeat on her website. Definitely wasn't too sure about it the first time I hear it, but it's growing. I want to hear the full album!

And the man at the back said everyone attack...

... and it turned into a Ballroom Blitz!

I am *loving* The Grimley's sountrack CD which has a surprisingly good selection of music. Listening to it and loving Ballroom Blitz, Tiger feet, Spirit in the Sky and all those other old goodies from yesteryear. The inclusion of the Bay City Rollers is a disappointment but I can live with it - 30 years ago I would have sworn at the very mention of their name and now I own one of their records. How times change.

Mind you, I really ought to listen to some new music sometime soon (just not quite yet). I'm turning into an old fogey thinking all the new hot acts (or however one describes them in trend speak) sound like old bands - Franz Ferdinand sound like the Jam, others sound like watered down versions of the Clash - even Robbie Williams' new song sounds like Madness. I heard KT Tunstall on something the other week and she sounded sort of original so I might dip my toe in her (so to speak).

I've bought dozens and dozens of CDs over the summer but they're all of old people - I need some new music to perk me up. In a nice way.

Until then I'll play my Glam Gods LOUD!

Another book and CD

I finally started reading the biography of Kirsty MacColl, one of my long-term musical favourites. I've had the book for ages but it's been stuck underneath a pile of 20-30 CDs so it's easier to pick up other books. Reading about the Great God Nod yesterday made me decide to finally read it so I started and I'm about half-way through.

It's interesting and nice to read about Kirsty but it's a bit of an undergraduate dissertation, full of quotes from people about Kirsty rather than original writing. Nothing wrong with that really, but not quite what I expected.

It brought up some nice memories for me, like wandering over Clapham Common to get the bus to work in Fulham in 1989 listening to 'Days' on the radio and singing along. I loved 'Kite', some great songs on that album (in my case, a cassette). Then I got all the subsequent albums up to 'Tropical Brainstorm' - didn't get that album for some reason (can't really recall why not). But I got it as a wonderful surprise Christmas present a couple of years later and I *love* it. "Alegria, alegria, happiness and joy!"

I also got my latest CD today (I'm listening to it even as I type). It's 'The Grimleys' soundtrack from the first series. I didn't see the series but I had to get the CD since it's got an accoustic version of 'Coz I Luv You' by none other than Noddy Holder! The surprising thing is that it's actually a good selection of early-mid '70s chart music. I've already got most of the songs on other compilations but there are a few I'm pleased to be able to add to my collection, so it's a good investment on top of getting the Noddy track (which is a great version of S L A D E's first number 1 single).

I even ventured into work today, hobbling along the street, a pronounced limp but at least I could stand up properly. A walking stick would've helped (O God, I'm an old man already...). The bus was a bit painful, feeling every stop and start and bump in the road in the nerve ends jangling in my lower back. Ouch. Only did half a day but that allowed me to clear my inbox and deal with a few things. Started getting a bit tetchy after a couple of hours with all the little movements involved in being at work - like turning round to see who was walking into my office (I sit with back to the door) which was a right pain - nice of people to pop in to see how I was but ..... ggrrrrrr.

Keep on Rocking!

That's not only the standard sign-off strap-line on postings to S L A D E fora, it's also how Noddy Holder (aka The Great God Nod) ends his autobiography. I've been meaning to read it for the past month or so but only got round to reading it today - and read it right through in one sitting. Fascinating stuff, a lot of which I already knew in outline, but great to read about Noddy's life in his own words.

He'll be 60 next year, and it's S L A D E's 40th anniversary as well... might that mean a proper retrospective might be issued? or a DVD? or a proper (glossy) book about them? or (sharp intake of breath) a reunion? I wouldn't put anything past the Lords of Noize!

It was a stroll down memory lane in some respects, and not just for the S L A D E memories. Noddy's description of his home and way of life in the '50s wasn't that different in some respects from mine in the '60s. Except we always had an indoor toilet and bathroom, of course.

The book focuses on Noddy growing up in the '50s and '60s, the early days in the 'N Betweens and months spent in Germany, becoming Ambrose Slade and then dropping the 'Ambrose' to become global gods everywhere but America. The period from about 1978 to 1991 is only briefy covered and 1991-1998 is only a few pages. The glory years of the early '70s are covered nicely and invoked many memories for me. Lots of name dropping, of course, and a crash course on how he invented his famous mirrored top hat - all lovely stuff.

As a result of reading the book I've just downloaded 'You Boyz Make Big Noize' from iTunes, the last album I need to complete my S L A D E collection. It's sad how many of their albums just aren't available on CD - or, rather, have been discontinued. The 'greatest hits' is still available but that doesn't even include all the hits. And I want the 'B' sides as well! I'll just have to be satisfied with I've got... for the moment ...

Contemplating the Nature of Time

What's it all about then? As far as I'm concerned it's Tuesday night but when this is published it'll show as a Wednesday posting. Time passes.

Went to see 'The Big Life' this evening. The evening didn't start off too good with me hobbling round the West End trying to avoid being bumped by the crowds wandering around aimlessly. A five minute walk from the tube station took a lot longer than it should have and I was exhausted by the time I met Chris at the theatre - walking is such an effort. Not the ideal way to start an evening at the theatre I'd been looking forward to for a long time.

'The Big Life' is billed as "a feel-good ska musical which transports the plot of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost to 1950s London" beginning with the characters arriving in England on the Windrush from the Caribbean. So, it's 2005 outside but the 1950s in the theatre. Except we're watching it with 21st century sensibilities.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, great fun, loud and always on the move. In a couple of places it seemed a bit raw and not quite right and the pace of the production made clapping a bit awkward since the scenes changed so quickly. But that aside, it was a good show. And it ended with snow in Picadilly Circus as our new friends were out for a night on the town.

There was a very strange moment in the second half when one of the main characters tries to see a professor he's corresponded with and, after checking with said prof, the secretary says something like, 'learn your place nigger' before slamming the door. There was absolute silence at that point, just for a second or two, like we'd all been slapped in the face, before a few murmurs started, cut short by the character starting a soulful, bluesy song about the difficulties of living your dreams.

Hobbling back to Leicester Square tube station I cut through Chinatown and that gave me two thoughts. Firstly, I remembered 'Hot Neon' a song about sleazy Soho from the first Rock Follies series in 1976 and that cut into a discussion I'd had with MTSB at Flashbacks last Saturday about porn cinemas in Soho in the 70s and 80s and how there weren't any there now. And he's quite right - I recall seeing big red neon 'XXX' signs all over the place back when I first moved to London 22 years ago, but you just don't see them any more. Probably for the best. Strangely enough that then made me think of the Bowie song when Time 'falls wanking to the floor'.

My mind's been a proper Tardis this evening.

Oooh, ouch, what the f***....

A slipped disc is an interesting experience (well, that's one way of viewing it). It's certainly painful. It took me about forty minutes just to get out of bed this morning with lots of false starts, ended with seering pain shooting round the nerve endings of my lower back. 'Ouch' is an understatement. At least then I was able to hobble into the living room holding onto furniture to steady myself. This is silly.

It would be boring to dwell on the downside of a slipped disc. One of the bonuses is that after I've put a CD on the player I can't really jump up to change the track or CD. It's easier to listen all the way through than try to change the disc. This means that my latest favourites are Pink's 'Mizunderstood' and the Indigo Girls's 'Rites of Passage'. Both are excellent albums in very different ways.

Prolapse, herniated, slipped

It's been another one of those days when my back reminds me it exists (well, without it I'd fall down a lot, I suppose). Or rather not my back, my slipped disc. I could feel it yesterday, every now and then I'd move and notice it, but didn't pay too much attention to it - it's a bit like a selfish spoilt child, the more you pander to it the more it wants. In my case, the disc presses on the nerve that runs down my left leg. I should be used to it by now but it's a constant surprise when that shooting pain runs down the back of my leg and the foot goes numb. Ouch.

Woke up this morning and there it was, still there even while I was in bed. Bad sign. That says to me I'm going down the usual spiral route of pain and discomfort that lasts a few days and then one morning is fine again. It's happening more frequently lately, probably because I'm carrying an expanded belly round with me and I weigh 15 tonnes. Or thereabouts.

So didn't go to work - I've got enough to do to justify working from home. I need to put some advice to ministers on a couple of things so this is a nice opportunity to draft the notes in peace and quiet - and a bit more comfort than my office. Went out this afternoon to post some eBay products to my customers (as I like to think of them, basically a few CDs I no longer want). Walking was awkward at first but after 15 minutes or so I loosened up enough to walk more normally rather than the odd tense waddle I sometimes have to stop myself doing when my disc is playing up. I still haven't had the real pain yet so maybe this time taking it easy has worked. Maybe?

Lost love

I feel so guilty... someone has just declared their love for me on a certain chat site I frequent. I had no idea, just friendly banter and then this happens. I don't think I've done anything to encourage it but you never know how a flippant remark might be interpretted. I'm at fault somewhere down the line, no doubt, but the important thing is the future not the past... I need to say something appropriate, positive but not encouraging that line of thinking... O dear.

Listening to my Rock Follies CD at the moment (the one from the first series) and the magnicient chorus of 'Biba Nova' ("We're all gonna live forever" repeated several times). Some good tunes on there! Wouldn't it be an idea to do a new Rock Follies series with the same actresses now, to show the development over the past 30 years... I'd watch it!

Had a 'big' meeting this morning (that wasn't really that big I realised after I got there) about getting computers into the homes of the most disadvantaged school pupils. Some interesting discussion with everyone have the *right* solution - most of which contradicted each other as usual. Why do 'third sector' groups (ie voluntary, community and charity) *always* have to present themselves as having the only possible solution to any potential issue or problem. Seems daft to me and easily seen through by anyone who knows the issues. Still, gotta smile and shake hands and make nice... it's really quite tiring though. And I wore shoes for the meeting as well!