Supergrass and ash at Truck Festival Sounds Almost Tempting

Don’t know about you but I find the Festival to be one of the least enticing methods of listening to music. Oh sure, when the sun shines and you get the opportunity to see The Cardigans, The Fall, JTQ, The Specials (well, four of them not including Jerry or Terry) and the Sex Pistols, as I did on my only afternoon at Phoenix, or Pulp’s legendary stand-in for the hapless Stone Roses at Glastonbury (which I didn’t witness) then I imagine the thought passes through your brain that you should do this sort of thing every weekend.

But such days are surely the exception, aren’t they? Like having a season ticket for a mediochre Fourth Division side who draw mighty Premier League Aston Villa, for example, at home in the Third Round of the Cup and get an 87th minute equaliser that you can tell the grandchildren about. That you lose the replay 5-0 is neither here nor there.

Usually it is chilly, overcast and dull, if not WET. I know all about the english summer. I have spent my adult life playing cricket in it, but we have a pavilion to retreat to when the rain comes.

I guess playing at a festival is wonderful fun. Free booze, VIP tents, rubbing shoulders with the great and good and then performing in front of 150 people in one of the side tents, or 1500, 15000 or 150000 depending on who you are.

Am I a grouch to say that the thought of watching my favourite bands among several thousand others, with queues for beers and portaloos, really doesn’t excite me? Let alone bands that leave me non-plussed?

Anyway, last year I had the fortune to have a nice Sunday out at the Truck Festival in Oxfordshire, don’t ask me where exactly, I wasn’t driving. I found it to be a rather friendly, compact and jolly festival. Plenty of stuff aimed at hippies, but also very family orientated; all quite pleasant.

I was there to see my girlfriend’s band who are rather smashing, as you’d expect me to say, and this year’s headliners have been announced; Supergrass and Ash. Not a fan of Ash, but then again not not a fan either; got a mate who loves them, but Supergrass are bloody magic if you ask me.

Why are Supergrass so under-rated? Or is it just me who thinks they are? Anyway, they headline on Sunday 25th July with Ash topping the Saturday bill. Gaz and the boys are also playing Cheltenham’s Wychwood festival on May 30th and Sellinge festival in Kent on June 6th.

Pop Junkies’s Dream Blur Set List ~ Part One ~ The Secret Warm Up Gig

Oh, I can hardly wait, ‘cept I haven’t got a ticket. Blur are a very special band for me. I don’t imagine that I’m the only one that feels this way, but please permit me to tell you why.

I fell out of love with music, specifically pop music, around about 1983. As punk fizzled and splintered I had liked the Human League, Heaven 17, Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Fire Engines and The Associates but as they all imploded or rested no-one seemed to take their place. Prince, Wham and Culture Club took over the NME. I was not in tune with any of them. By the time The Smiths came along they seemed a lone half-decent band in a world I no longer understood.

So I just ignored everything. I now know I missed out on good music ~ there is always good music, you just have to seek it out sometimes, it is not always spoon fed. I just stubbornly refused to look.

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This Video is not Available in Your Country ~ The Cure, The Clash and Michael Jackson not on UK YouTube

Within a day of the Youtube/PRS dispute breaking down Youtube began taking down ‘Premium’ videos from the site. We at Pop Junkie were dismayed to hear this, as the resource has proven to be one of the very best uses found for the internet; a chance to discover unseen footage from favourites or rediscover half-remembered stuff seen many moons ago, which you thought you’d never see again. Cue Stevie Wonder singing Superstition on Sesame Street. (Though in the 34 years between viewings, before I found this last year, my memory told me Big Bird was standing behind Stevie, with Bert, Ernie, Oscar and the like all gathered round the piano. Oh well!)

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Slight Return for The Bluetones - Expecting to Fly gets reissued with loads of extra stuff

There’s nothing to make you feel your age like a Britpop album that you bought when it first came out being re-released ‘cos it’s supposedly a classic recording. That’s the case with,err, The Bluetones - Middlesex’s answer to The Stone Roses, whose 1996 debut, Expecting To Fly, is re-issued next week in an expanded version.

I’ve certainly expanded since then. Back when I was a wee indie slip of a lad, I actually supported The Bluetones and Supergrass as a DJ on the University Glamorgan date of their joint UK tour. As a thank you gesture, The Bluetones gave me a limited blue vinyl single of Slight Return, which I still have locked away at home. Form an orderly queue, burglars. Is that The Antiques Roadshow on the phone?

Anyway,the second CD in the expanded version of Expecting To Fly includes BBC sessions and live recordings, recorded throughout 1995. There will also be a digital only release, which will also feature The Bluetones Live at Reading Festival on 26th August 1995. Hard to believe, but when it was released, Expecting To Fly knocked Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? off the Number 1 spot in the UK album charts just one week after the Oasis album won two Brit Awards,

Recently The Bluetones have revived Expecting To Fly for a tour of the UK. Just like,err, Brian Wilson doing Pet Sounds and Van Morrison tackling Astral Weeks, they’ve been performing the album in its entirety.
Whatever next? Menswear reforming for a one-off Nuisance concert? Shed 7 doing A Maximum High for seven nights at the 02 Centre? We can but dream.

Farewell Patrick McGoohan, “There’s Only One Number Six”

No disrespect to Bobby Moore, Tony Adams, Ian Botham or Steve Waugh but Patrick McGoohan lays claim to be the Greatest of all Number Six’s.

RIP Patrick McGoohan, the man who created and starred in the poppiest non-pop television series in history. I think you know what I mean. From The Prisoner’s opening credits with its stirring Ron Grainer theme, McGoohan’s distinctive yacht-casual attire, to the Portmeirion setting, everything about the series was underwritten with Style. Part James Bond adventure and part Kafkaesque nightmare, set in rural north Wales with wafts of breeze from Swinging London.

Those of us of a certain age recall the frisson of excitement with the news that The Prisoner was to be repeated in the mid 1980s. It hadn’t been shown for around a decade. I had vague memories of having seen the odd episode, of seeing a big gossamer bubble chasing a man on a deserted beach. It was weird, that much I did know. So, for a few weeks social events had to be reworked around the hour-long episodes. It was cerebral. It was innovative. It has stood the test of time.

An influence on seemingly everyone from The Clash to Supergrass to Iron Maiden, here’s Ed Ball and co with the 1983 classic I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape followed by a Top 6 hats-off to the number 6 in pop history.

1. Midnight to 6 Man – The Pretty Things

2. (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 – Rolling Stones or check out Chuck Berry’s version too

3. If 6 was 9 – The Jimi Hendrix Experience

4. The 6 Teens – The Sweet

5. 6 - Mansun

6. Big 6 – Judge Dread - Parental Discretion Advised, it’s a bit blue!