Saturday, June 30, 2012
The Word is Out
For Fox Sake
While I'm bigging up friends and acquaintances (and I know that name-dropping is terribly vulgar- Peter Ustinov once told me that), a quick mention for Bravofox, or Jamie Porteous as he's known to his mum. Currently resident in Ibiza, but once on the staff at my local gym, his new album is reportedly coming out later this year. You can hear some older stuff at http://soundcloud.com/bravofox.
Blog standard
A quick shout-out for a blog that's new to me- http://manafonistas.de/. Named (I think) for David Sylvian's most recent "difficult" recording, it explores some of the outer limits of the music biz, Rune Gramafon, ECM, that sort of thing. It's mostly in German. Wait! Come back! There are one or two English pages, including the written work of one Ian McCartney, who some of you may remember as the man behind blogs such as Hey Asda! and Digital Plamf. And for that I can commend it to you wholeheartedly.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Criminal Word
Click here for an amusing and diverting clip of Springwatch's Chris Packham shoehorning the titles of 51 Bowie tracks into the latest series of the show. He's previously done the same for The Manic Street Preachers and The Smiths, apparently, and clearly gets away with it in large part because he's clearly a total pro in all other respects.
What's always striking, though, about many of the Bowie nuts I come across is how few of them can actually pronounce his surname correctly. The chap who runs my local pub quiz- and he's perfectly wonderful in all other regards- is the same. The biggest fans are usually those that (mis)pronounce it Bowie (as in Bow Wow Wow), as Chris Packham does at 5' 19". Packham is clearly enough of an aficionado to know songs titles such as Moss Garden and Width of a Circle, so it's baffling that he doesn't actually know the name of his hero. More bizarre still was George Clinton, who pronounced it as Boo-ey on the song P-funk(Wants to get Funked Up). For the record, it's actually Bowie (as in bow and arrow). Apparently, there is an official BBC pronunciation guide that gives the correct way to pronounce, for example, the names of foreign ministers. It also tells presenters how to pronounce Bowie, though few at BBC 6Music appear to have read said guide, given the number of times its DJs say it incorrectly. And it appears Chris Packham has never read it either, possibly because he was too busy shtupping Kate Humb(snip- libel ed).
What's always striking, though, about many of the Bowie nuts I come across is how few of them can actually pronounce his surname correctly. The chap who runs my local pub quiz- and he's perfectly wonderful in all other regards- is the same. The biggest fans are usually those that (mis)pronounce it Bowie (as in Bow Wow Wow), as Chris Packham does at 5' 19". Packham is clearly enough of an aficionado to know songs titles such as Moss Garden and Width of a Circle, so it's baffling that he doesn't actually know the name of his hero. More bizarre still was George Clinton, who pronounced it as Boo-ey on the song P-funk(Wants to get Funked Up). For the record, it's actually Bowie (as in bow and arrow). Apparently, there is an official BBC pronunciation guide that gives the correct way to pronounce, for example, the names of foreign ministers. It also tells presenters how to pronounce Bowie, though few at BBC 6Music appear to have read said guide, given the number of times its DJs say it incorrectly. And it appears Chris Packham has never read it either, possibly because he was too busy shtupping Kate Humb(snip- libel ed).
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