Thoughts from the Bus Stop

Nickel Creek: Toxic

Nickel Creek performing 'Toxic' (venue unknown)

Because I love bluegrass, and I love pop. Because I love unusual cover versions. Because I heard Nickel Creek's performance of Britney Spears' Toxic on Radio 2's coverage of the Cambridge Folk Festival yesterday and I'd love to go there one year. Because unfortunately the word 'toxic' has sprung to mind too many times today.

Tindersticks: Bathtime

Video for Bathtime by Tindersticks

I listed to Tindersticks' Bathtime for the first time in ages last night. I was going through old favourites and I'd already found my single of Can We Start Again? (from the Simple Pleasures album, which is always a joy. Then I remembered how I fell for Tindersticks...

"There’s a city filth that lingers
All over my naked hands
Deep into the weave of the clothes I wear

And every step brings another
Every hour adds some more
Till I’m on the other side leaning on your door

Are the taps running, darling?
Is the air thick with steam?
Can I find some place to cry these tears of shame?

I know Stuart Staples' voice is an acquired taste (yes, he can sound like Vic Reeves' mumbling pub singer to the uninitiated), but for me it mainly has the effect of making me sigh, go giddy and dissolve into a big puddle, Amelié-style.

It was all Mark Radcliffe's doing, of course. Again. I think Tindersticks were his most frequent session guests during his time at Radio 1, doing the wonderful Graveyard Shift show with Marc Riley. (I still remember the 'Dickon's arse' episode with great fondness.) I'd never been particularly grabbed by the music, though.

But I bought the Curtains album and was overwhelmed - particularly by Let's Pretend and (Tonight) Are You Trying To Fall In Love Again? - lush, sexy, melancholic yearning of the most delicious kind - perfect if you've had a glass of red and fancy a good wallow.

NME, 14 July 06: Tindersticks join 'Don't Look Back' season
Pitchfork: Review - Leaving Songs by Stuart A. Staples
Amazon.co.uk:
Leaving Songs, Stuart A. Staples
Lucky Dog Recordings 03-04, Stuart A. Staples

The Pipettes: Pull Shapes

Video for Pull Shapes by The Pipettes

I like to disco
And I like to rock n' roll
I like to hip hop
And we can do it all, just don't let the music stop
Pull shapes
I lead with my left hand
I stomp with my right foot
And I just have to freak out
Coz I just want to move, don't care what the song's about

Dance with me pretty boy tonight
Dance with me and we'll be alright
There's a whole floor before us, just for you and me
So follow my lead and we'll 1, 2, 3
Pull shapes!

Is there a drum beat?
And is the bass sweet?
Well, then the rhythm is complete
So get up on the floor, it's time for you to move your feet

I can't get the new Pipettes' single, Pull Shapes, out of my head. Ooh, I'm a sucker for fizzy girl-group pop with shiny orchestration and handclaps. And I can dance to it. I want to be a Pipette! (I do suit pencil skirts and often wear polka dots...)

To my shame I've only just become aware of The Pipettes' existence (even though two of them are from Brighton). I got into the single after hearing it a few times on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 2 show.

The video (above) is great - it's a remake of a scene from Russ Meyer's cult film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The album, We Are The Pipettes, is out on 17 July.

MySpace: The Pipettes
Pitchfork: Track Review - The Pipettes: Pull Shapes
Skatterbrain: The Pipettes Cover 'I Think We're Alone Now'
AMP: A brief history of the polka dot, from C19th England to Brighton's Pipettes
BBC, 15/03/05: Joining the dots with Brighton's hottest new prospect
Telegraph, 24/06/2006: Top of the Spots
Entertainmentwise: Review: The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes
The Joplin Globe: Jeremiah Tucker: Girl-group sound resurges
Music Like Dirt: We are the Pipettes fans, and we are squashed
Music-News: The Pipettes (interview)
Drowned In Sound: Chaser shots and polka dots: on the p*ss with The Pipettes

Start Wearing Purple

The first time I heard Gogol Bordello's Start Wearing Purple, on the Mark Radcliffe show the other week, I thought it was awful (and a little scary... a bit 'You're MY wife now!'). The second time he played it, it started to grow on me. By yesterday night, when they were in session on the show, I'd completely fallen for it.

"Start wearing purple wearing purple
Start wearing purple for me now
All your sanity and wits they will all vanish, I promise
It's just a matter of time

I met you when you were a twenty, and I was twenty
But thought that some years from now
A purple little little lady will be perfect
For dirty old and useless clown

I know it all from Diogenis to Foucault
From Lozgechkin to Paspartu
I ja kljanus obostzav dva paltza
Schto muziko poshla ot Zzukov Mu!

Party!

So Fio-Fio-Fioletta! Etta! Va-va-va-vaja dama ti moja!
Eh podayte nam karetu, votetu, i mi poedem k ebenjam!

So yeah, start wearing purple wearing purple
Start wearing purple for me now
All your sanity and wits they will all vanish, I promise
It's just a matter of time

To me it sounds like David Devant & His Spirit Wife (their lead singers do bear an uncanny resemblance to each other) - or the Pogues (if they were Ukrainian gypsy punks from New York). Singer Eugene Hutz explained the song's origins to Mark Radcliffe:

It's one of the very few songs I wrote for a girl. I just moved in with my girlfriend in New York. We had a neighbour: an old woman who was always dressed in purple head to toe. She was clearly bonkers. So whenever my girlfriend and I had an argument and she would start screaming at me, I would say: you might as well start wearing purple now."

I love it. It's funny, sinister, exuberant and gets the blood racing... "La-la la-la laaaaaaaaaaa!"

BBC News: Ukraine gypsy punk on world stage

Can Neil Finn save the day?

If you happen to be listening to Radio 2 on Saturday lunchtime, don't miss The Flight Of The Conchords - improvised comedy starring Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, and narrated by Rob Brydon:

"Over six weeks, New Zealand's fourth most popular folk parody band attempt to crack the UK's lucrative novelty music scene with songs such as 'Frodo, don't wear the ring'. Despite the fact The Conchords did appear in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings (do an internet search of the word 'Figwit' if you would like proof) this song was not featured on the original soundtrack, partly explaining why the band left New Zealand in the first place."

Best bit so far? When the band call Neil Finn to ask if Jemaine should or should not engage in a three-way with their only two fans...

Whitetown: Your Woman

Video for Your Woman by Whitetown

I completely fell for White Town's 'Your Woman' when Mark Radcliffe started playing it on his Graveyard Shift show on Radio 1 in 1996. So I was gobsmacked to walk into my local caff the other day and hear a cover version playing. Here's what White Town's Jyoti has to say about it: Tyler James Covers 'Your Woman'.

Manchester Online: Tyler James - Your Woman
BBC Derby: The White Town revival starts here!
Music-News.com: 'Your Woman' was buried for a reason

The Down-The-Pan Daleks

Coinciding neatly with the first episode of the new Doctor Who, I've found a transcript in an old teenage notebook of one of the brilliant Dalek sketches which were on the Steve Wright In The Afternoon show when he was still on Radio 1 in the 1980's:

(Loud Dalek voices): WE ARE THE DALEKS!!!
Dalek 1: No we're not, no we're not - we're just innocent, God-fearing citizens...la, la, laaa...
Dalek 2 (suspiciously): What have you done?
D1: You know the gas man was coming to read the meter?
D2: Ye-eess...
D1: I forgot, and he... he startled me.
D2: Which one did he look like then?
D1: He was a bit Tom Baker-ish. He's in pieces on the floor. I think he's dead.
D2: As a rule, when one is in pieces one IS dead. You HAVE to get over this irritational paranoia that everyone is Doctor Who! The milkman has his head zapped clean off, because he was a little on the Patrick Troughton-ish side. The lollipop lady, heaven knows why, reminded you of Jon Pertwee and the poll tax collector ended up a steaming pile of goo on the doorstep!
D1: I just felt like nuking him...
D2: It's got to stop!
(Door opens)
D1: Aaagh! Peter Davison!!
(ZAAAAAAAPPPPP!!!)
D2: Er - no - Jehovah's Witnesses...
D1: Oh, nice one!
(Both) LEAVE IT.

"You do something to me that I can’t explain..."

There's this lovely, lovely bloke. He's quietly handsome with a really warm personality and a gorgeous smile. He's sweet and funny and modest and down to earth and he's even a Christian. And he keeps playing me my favourite records without knowing they're my favourites, which really floors me.

Last week, totally unprompted, he played me Thinking of You by The Colourfield. This week it was Islands in the Stream followed by Juxtaposed With U. But he's got a girlfriend.

Oh, Dermot O'Leary... I think I love you.

Futureheads: Hounds of Love

Video for The Hounds of Love by The Futureheads

How fantastic is The Futureheads' cover of Kate Bush's The Hounds of Love?! Beautiful Northern pronunciation too - 'luv' and 'luving'. (They're Sunderlanders, like Kenickie.) And the video's great. Oh-o-o-oh-ohhh!

The real Kate Bush is due to reappear soon with a new album, hopefully before Mark Radcliffe runs out of cardboard for his Bushometer (counting how many days since Kate Bush hasn't returned Mark's request to visit the show)...

Hundreds attend John Peel's funeral

Hundreds attend John Peel's funeral