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So it goes: Ronnie Hazlehurst dead at 79

By Music and TV

Michael Crawford in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘EmThere’s very little that can con­jure up a child­hood memory like famil­i­ar TV theme music (the smell of Play-Doh, per­haps) and the cre­at­or of the most famil­i­ar all those tune passed away yes­ter­day of a stroke.

Ronnie Hazlehurst wrote and con­duc­ted the sig­na­ture tunes for dozens of BBC shows in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s includ­ing “The Two Ronnies”, “Last of the Summer Wine”, “Parkinson” and “Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em” and hear­ing any of them instantly pro­vokes waves of nos­tal­gia in this writer (except “Blankety Blank” which was truly awful though undeni­ably catchy):

From a very lovely Independent obit­u­ary:

One of Hazlehurst’s trade­marks was to make his themes fit the title of the pro­gramme. For example, for Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em – the clas­sic com­edy star­ring Michael Crawford as the effete Frank Spencer – he used a pic­colo to play the let­ters of the title in Morse code.

For brave read­ers want­ing to share the memor­ies here are the themes to “Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em” (includ­ing Morse code), “The Two Ronnies” and the won­der­ful “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin”.

By Asides and Music

Jon Lusk on Fat Freddys Drop, just played at Glastonbury (from The Guardian):

The band’s laid­back, island-time ambi­ence is unmis­take­ably a product of its envir­on­ment, but that seems only to have enhanced their appeal to British listen­ers. Though Mu’s beach­front home has just been sold, the new own­ers have agreed to let him to work­ing there for the time being, and it is just the right set­ting for the band’s calm, cool, mari­time style. 

I think this is the same Jon Lusk who was Programme Director at Radio Active when I star­ted back in 1986.

Johnny Marr joins Might Mouse ...

By Asides and Music

Every band has been there: you’ve just had a hit album – then your Johnny Marr-esque gui­tar­ist quits. Meet the group that came up with a crazy solution …

On the fourth or fifth day, when all six of us were play­ing, we saw some home­less people hanging out­side Isaac’s house,” he says. “It occurred to me that I had no idea where this music was com­ing from but I could see them dan­cing in the dark. The exper­i­ence was like a short cir­cuit to my feet.

Willie and Wynton

By Music

200701162211Now this is a gig I would have giv­en a lot to see: Willie Nelson play­ing with Wynton Marsalis in New York in a con­cert organ­ised by Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Click here for the review from the New York Times (reg. req. and recommended):

He also brought his intract­able style, which posed more of a chal­lenge to the oth­er musi­cians than any clash of genre. His con­ver­sa­tion­al way with rhythm, in par­tic­u­lar, moment­ar­ily threw the band. During a series of stop-time breaks on “Basin Street Blues,” the second tune, Mr. Nelson’s phras­ing was almost per­versely free of tempo, rust­ling like a breeze. In much the same way, he seemed to regard the jump-blues thrust of “Caldonia” as merely a recom­mend­a­tion, some­thing to heed at will.

I have seen both of these artists, although sep­ar­ately. Wynton Marsalis played at the Michael Fowler Centre at an early Festival of the Arts and my only memory of that con­cert was being annoyed by the noise from the air-conditioning dur­ing the quiet bits.

Willie played at Athletic Park with The Highwaymen in (pause while I go and find the pro­gramme to check the date) 1991. A life-changing experience.

Note: I know the block­quotes look rub­bish. Sorry, it’s on the list of things to fix.

Tuesday Allsorts #3

By Asides, Cinema, Magazines and Music

Trying to get back to a reg­u­lar post­ing sched­ule. Here goes:

Holy Hell, pos­sibly the fun­ni­est thing in the world: Some deranged geni­us adds James Earl Jones dia­logue from oth­er movies to Star Wars. I shit you not!

The Be Good Tanyas live at The Barbican in London (reviewed in The Grauniad);

A.O. Scott in the NY Times (reg. req.) pon­ders why crit­ics and pub­lic respond so dif­fer­ently, so often (I just watched POTC:DMC and can see both sides “com­plete shit” v “a $9 diver­sion with a few laughs”;

Amazon are in big trub for selling cock-fighting magazines – but that’s not all they sell… (thanks Gawker);

Bob Geldof gets a hard time for can­cel­ling in Italy when 45 people turn up to the 12,000 seat sta­di­um (“Harden up, Sir Bob!”) but let us not for­get that he helped organ­ise a bene­fit con­cert in Auckland when the Neon Picnic was can­celled in 1988 so he’s alright by me – the $1,500 a plate shindig in Auckland the oth­er week is much harder to excuse.

iTunes Sentience (pt 3)

By iTunes and Music

OK, I know I haven’t fixed the col­ours but I’ve been away for a few days – the longest sus­tained absence of Internet in 10 years I real­ised yes­ter­day (A fam­ily wed­ding in Christchurch if you must know).

But this really is freaky: The Million Dollar Quartet’s 1956 ver­sion of Don’t Be Cruel fol­lowed by Elvis’ ori­gin­al. With 1745 tracks on that playl­ist to choose from, iTunes becomes a radio-programming-God.