The Coolest Month

Here I am in two magazines again this month. April's Music Teacher includes my article about music courses for adults, while Shindig! issue 32 (out 11th April) hosts my contribution to the regular 'What's In A Label?' feature; an interview with my good friends at Ghost Box records. This issue should be an absolute cracker, with a really terrific Broadcast interview and some exclusive Julian House artwork.

MediaMagazine Issue 43

If you're in a school or college after half term you may spot the new issue of MediaMagazine (issue 43, the Independence issue) with a piece on pop-up cinema by yours truly. The mag looks great as usual.

Publications

Just a little bit of news for those who may be interested... two publications to which I have contributed will be in your local newsagents this month. The February issue of Music Teacher contains my article on early years music classes and is out now, while Shindig! issue 31 will be published on 14th February, and will contain my 'Vinyl Art' column, the subject of which I won't give away in case you like to be surprised. They're each pretty different, I'll give you that.

Biomusic

While on a lovely trip to Belbury taking tea with the vicar last week, we found a great curiosity in a local 'vintage' shop; a vinyl copy of Ron Geesin and Roger Waters' music from The Body.

The album is still in print, not surprisingly given the Pink Floyd interest, and provokes some quite contrasting reviews!

As fascinating and brilliantly strange as the music is, it really needs to be seen in context (like all film music. Discuss), so I was pleased to find a bit of Roy Battersby's 1970 documentary movie on the ubiquitous YouTube. Enjoy this (mildly NSFW) snippet.

Bring Back 1997

I stumbled happily upon Weller at the BBC last week. Whatever you think of his more recent output or his status as 'The Modfather', the man is something of a legend, and his 90s output is fantastic, at least in my book.

But what was this, nothing from Heavy Soul? My favourite Weller album overlooked! To right that wrong here's a little clip I found from Later... featuring the mighty Matt Deighton on guitar and the ever-funky Yolanda Charles on bass. Why the BBC doesn't get me to curate this stuff is beyond me.

"Ah, but if you look to your right..."

Being something of a Beatles fan, it had always been a source of quiet shame to me that I'd never actually seen Magical Mystery Tour. Beyond the difficulty of actually getting a copy, I'd always been afraid that it might actually be rubbish. If the Beatles had made a giant misstep at some point in their career, it was better that I didn't know about it.

Even when BBC4 broadcast the film recently, with an accompanying Arena documentary, I only felt safe recording it and leaving it for a rainy day. So imagine my surprise, gentle reader, when it turns out that Magical Mystery Tour is actually great!

In 'Revolution in the Head' (surely the best piece of music writing ever?), Ian MacDonald is scathing about the Beatles MMT-era output, describing their lack of focus, lack of quality control. And when you get inside his analyses of the songs, it's hard to disagree with many of his points. But the new Arena documentary pitched the Beatles as heroes and leaders of the counterculture in this period, and seen through this prism the film takes on new meaning. Sure, it's amateurish at times, but it's truly experimental and even challenging in places, and if the Beatles hadn't earned the right to experiment, then who had?

One thing I'm amazed that critics don't make more of is the influence MMT had particularly on Monty Python's Flying Circus. The whole structure of the film, from the disjointed editing, to the flash-forwards and flash-backs and dream sequences is similar to an early Python episode. John shovelling spaghetti onto Aunt Jessie's plate is surely a precursor to Mr Creosote, and Victor Spinetti's Sgt. Major must have inspired Cleese and Chapman's portrayals of officious Army types and shouty PT instructors.

If you've read this far, you'll probably want to get the new DVD of the movie, but do watch the Arena documentary too. It's not on iPlayer but has been uploaded to YouTube Dailymotion.


Magical Mystery Tour Revisited BBC Arena... by My_Beatles_Stuff

Autumn 2012 Mix

In the best mixtape tradition, here's a mix of songs that I've been listening to a lot over the last few months.

Autumn 2012 Mix by Christopher Budd on Mixcloud