A thought and a rumour.

A thought:
This is an unusual post as it is something of an operational announcement.
I regard all visitors to my blog very highly and, to try and discover what inspires you, I watch the very limited blog statistics that I can gather accordingly.
I think I have noticed a certain problem:
You are looking for items I mention in my 'I've Just Listened To...' list located in the side bar and the post associated with it has nothing about that artist. There could be several reasons for this but these are the most likely:

• I haven't posted about that item.
• I have posted about this artist but that post is not on the page that you are currently viewing.

I'm currently trying to improve links, including forward ones from old posts, but it is an endless struggle. I try to make links from 'I've Just Listened To...' to items, even if only as an aside, of artists that I have mentioned. If the side-bar mention is a clickable-link then that should take you straight to a post of at least some relevance. If there are problems please let me know (see below) and, similarly, if you think some pages should be cross-linked please suggest which ones and, for the benefit of everyone not least me, why. You might think that obvious but in different ways, that, to one who writes and thinks in a different way that may not seem so. If not then try Google: search "rpgreenhalgh", complete with the quote marks and the item you are looking for, again enclosed in quote marks. Here is an example:

"rpgreenhalgh" "fur and gold"

It will likely return many 'hits' (and you may have to view similar searches not included, as offered at the bottom of the page) but you should be able to pick out the more promising ones from the synopses. Please don't feel bad about it; I do just this when I can't remember where and when I posted something and, for goodness sake, I wrote and posted it in the first instance! I need to do a bit of work there.
If you can't find something then please feel free to contact me directly. I can't promise that I will respond to every question but ask me a simple one, like 'What is the catalogue number of ***some album*** that I have mentioned?' I probably can and will. Either post a comment/question or e-mail me: contact details can be found in the sidebar: About Me>View my complete profile.

A few words of warning:
Your contribution can be credited to you or, if you would rather remain anonymous, I will respect that. You can post an anonymous comment via Blogger and it is simply your choice. It will not affect my decision, as moderator, whether or not to publish it and you can disagree with me as much as you like but - for the good of all - posts that are clearly offensive, libellous, etc. will be not be published and I'm glad to say that I have never had to invoke this yet.
I'm not saying that you can't tell me that you think my current favorite act is utter s**t, because you can, and I might unwittingly post something similar about yours. Maybe I already have!

These are merely some ground rules.

A rumour:

It's the BBC story that just runs and runs; the one that says TOTP could be back for good and 2009 looks to be an extremely appropriate year for it. Booked to run for just a few weeks when it started in 1964 it ran weekly for over forty-two years, in it's heyday had a UK weekly audience of around fifteen million, and that was on a Thursday evening! What channel wouldn't kill for that now?

The title screen in 1968 but not the icon I remember.

I might be wrong but I think that for many of a certain age, and I am one, this single is still inextricably connected with Top Of The Pops.

Down Memory Lane... my 'want to listen to' list - part 3

My 'wants' list gets no shorter but I have got used to that now. Here is one more:

Fireworks Night - 'As Fools We Are'
(Kartel Records/Organ Grinder, 2007.)

Usually, and like the example above that falls in the acoustic/lo-fi category I guess, it is new or at least recent items that get added but last week there was an exception or actually two.
On Friday a work colleague and I became involved in a conversation that, one way or another, ended up turning to the influence that late 1970s German electronic music had on Ultravox in the Midge Ure era. I'm sure this is exactly the kind of thing that everyone discusses at work on a Friday afternoon but it was diverting anyway :-)

At the time Midge Ure was recruited to Ultravox he was touring with Thin Lizzy as a stand-in guitarist on their tour of the album 'Roisín Dubh - Black Rose - A Rock Legend', so something of a change of style there!

We both agreed that this was the period 1980-4, and that the 1986 album 'U-Vox' was utter cr*p. I even had the misfortune to pay good money to see Ultravox tour this album live at Wembley Arena and it remains as probably the worst concert I have ever endured. That left us with four albums, of which we could both remember the names of the first two (but own usable copies of neither) and also most of the tracks on them. These are:

• Vienna (1980)
  
• Rage In Eden (1981)

As for the second pair, although I knew I had owned both on vinyl for at least twenty years, I couldn't for the life of me remember their titles! We did however, during the course of the afternoon, correctly remember several of the singles that were taken from them! These albums are:

• Quartet (1982)
• Lament (1984)

Clearly it was time to dig these out and listen once again, which I did that evening. The problem with the first pair is that I only ever owned them on cassette tape and it was a unreliable Chrysalis "Two on One" edition at that. I decided to buy both again - on CD this time as these releases include some bonus tracks (including several of the tracks sung in German) - but in the end I didn't. While investigating the possibilities I made a very interesting discovery and thus, to keep my long-standing vinyl albums company, I have ordered them as the original vinyl releases instead. It cost little more than the cost of the CDs in any case.

Note added: 10th May 2007.
The above artwork for 'Rage In Eden' is not that of the original UK LP release by the way - thanks to the people that e-mailed me about this. The two LPs were waiting for me when I got home from work this evening so next week maybe I'll try and review all four albums together.