I'm still here!

How come moving house consumes everything? Time, money, sanity. But it's insanely exciting too, hence no posts since Friday. But I'll be back!

Lily TV

I'm looking forward to Lily's show, Lily Allen and Friends, about which she says: "There will be good celebrity guests, not rubbish...." The explosion in a wallpaper factory set looks great, if that is indeed it.

Behind-the-scenes, hot dogs, jumping frogs.

I'm not a big fan of the music but I like her attitude. Hopefully it won't be toe-curling like Gob-on-a-stick Church's awful chat show. And BBC Three promise to spread their shows across the web which is good news for those outside the UK. Go and have a nose around here.

Some egos are bigger than others

Whatever you do, don't tell Mozz you like Elton John.

This entertaining piece in TimesOnline is slightly freakish in two ways. Firstly, the writer, who was dressing Mozzer doesn't seem to understand that being an undercover journo on his tour was probably the reason he was sacked after a day, and secondly, I always suspected Morrissey to have an ego as big as his figure of hate, but getting an assistant to spray a fragrance betwixt Himself and the audience is beyond even Dame Elton.

La Wino in meltdown

Bugger all that chit chat about Amy Wino's 'Nosedive into oblivion' (quite good that one). I saw this on a certain gossip monger's site and thought it summed up the hoo hah perfectly.

A page in your diary, babe...

It had to happen. Called Yazoo Reconnected, Vince and Alf are back together for a tour (and some re-packaged product)! It's totally coincidental that another all-time favourite band (known as Yaz in the US of A, pop fans, blah, blah, yadda, yadda), follows directly on the posts about Human League and ABC.

In May there's a box-set (obv.!) called In Your Room (a sly reference to the geeky nature of box-sets?) with every Yazoo recording, ever. Well, two albums' worth plus b-sides. And there's the rub about this band. Their huge influence belies the fact that they were only together for 18 months.

Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke were an odd pairing but perfect for each other too. They had that pop mystery: are they shagging each other? Are they gay? Are they a brother/sister combo? WTF? Together their sound was unique; Vince added the pop to Alf's Joni Mitchell poetry. Who cares that they didn't have much in common, the longevity of the music they created has surprised even themselves. With their very different individual work over the past 25 years, won't it be strange to see them back together?

Can't wait.

Goodbye Seventies - Yazoo (zShare) - From Upstairs at Eric's

Anyone - Yazoo (zShare) - From You and Me Both

The Other Side of Love (12" Mix) - Yazoo (zShare) - A one-off single release.

The tour dates are as follows: (exclusive pre-sale tickets are available on the 25th January from alisonmoyet.com)

• Wed 4th June, Glasgow Clyde Auditorium

• Sat 7th June, Manchester Apollo

• Thu 12th June, Wolverhampton Civic Hall

• Sun 15th June, Brighton Centre

• Wed 18th June, London Hammersmith Apollo

For more info and the full press release clicky here.

Nobody's Diary, video, 1983. Imagine Vince and Alf walking onto to the set (1:30) and realising the interpretation was quite literal. How 80s.

Hometown glory

Congrats to da luvverley London girl, Adele. Number 2 on this week's charts, kept off the top by the kiddies favourite, Basshunter. Here's the very photogenic lass doing her single Hometown Glory on the weird (but good) BBC2 show Sound. Good on ya darling!

YouTube League Treat!

Every now and again, YouTube comes into its own as a channel for fans and obsessives to reach out to their fellow fans and obsessives. And below is the perfect example. Capturing the Human League on their march, march, march to world domination, these clips from Ozzie pop show Countdown are a rare treat in having the whole band together in one shot - even if they lark around and don't actually reveal anything.

Adrian Wright and Jo Callis on being at number seven (!) in the Billboard Hot 100

18 year olds, Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall, doing girl power long before the Spice Girls. But notice how old-sounding their accents are. Really broad northern tones always come across as pensionable!

Susanne and Jo on the now well-worn tale of how Phil Oakey picked them up in the Crazy Daisy club in Sheffield. And I love Jo's blunt northerner description of Grace Jones: "OK for the first half hour and then boring".

The whole band together where Phil Oakey doesn't get one word in.

Love Action, Countdown 1982. I love this voiceover on this, full of showbiz! And the girls! They really can't dance...

Don't You Want Me, Countdown, 1982. Love Jo's very literal interpretation of the lyrics in dance at 0:50.

Is there a girl being attacked in the audience during the first verse? Those screams are blood curdling! And what's with the screams on the chorus? Is it an Ozzie thing?

Thanks to Crowbaby 5 and Noveauxromo

ABC Affectionately (part 2)

In a case of blogs eating themselves (or blatantly copying) here are my 10+1 favourite ABC tracks. There's a crossover of 5 but no 90s stuff here. I bought the Up album with much the same trepidation as I bought The Human League's Romantic? and left it at that. I've had a mega ABC post on the tip of my tongue forever, so until then, this is a perfect excuse to at least do a list!

1. S.O.S. (mp3 zShare)
My absolute favourite, the second single from the album Beauty Stab and the ninth most played on my iPod. Bloody geek.

The very homo-erotic S.O.S. video, 1984

2. Vanity Kills
Listen! A trumpet! Domino Dancing! Torch!

Vanity Kills, video, 1985

3. Look of Love (Part 1 and 4)
"What's the look? Look for your information, yes there's one thing, there's one thing that still holds true..."

Look of Love, Top of the Pops, 1982

4. That Was Then But This is Now (mp3 zShare)
"Can't complain, mustn't grumble, help yourself to another piece of Apple Crumble"

5. The Night You Murdered Love (mp3 zShare)
Another follow-up, this time to the massive When Smokey Sings. I love any track which manages to sing the calendar with panache.

6. Show Me (mp3 zShare)
Ah. Strings. Lots of 'em. Especially in that extended intro.

7. All of My Heart
"Add and subtract, but as a matter of fact. Now that you're gone I still want you back"

All of My Heart, video, 1982. At 3:31... the plug and the blood!!!??

8. A to Z (mp3 zShare)
In an attempt to not appear as the duo they really were, Martin Fry and Mark White had a gay bald midget, David Yarritu and a bewigged Face journo Fiona Russell-Powell (known as Eden) join the band in a Monkees-stylee (see above). This track is the ABC anthem for the How To Be a Zillionaire cartoon album. Martin Fry quotes a Bette Davis movie: "Who needs the moon, when we got the stars" and Eden invites everyone to kiss her snatch. Nice.

Now. Where do we begin? Firstly, who got these kids hooked on this pop filth in the first place? Secondly, the enthusiastic boy on the left is, at a guess, the ringleader/choreographer. Aw, bless, and you KNOW what I'm thinking. And thirdly, someone cut the "snatch"! haha! Just watch the little 'un at the front! Aw, again.

9. 4 Ever 2 Gether (mp3 zShare)
Hot Lips? Speak. No.

10. (How to be a) Millionaire
Martin Fry: "Real life was rubbish. We wanted to reinvent ourselves and our world in cartoons. Larger than life and twice as ugly".

(How to be a) Millionaire, video, 1984

+1. Fear of the World (mp3 zShare)
Another track from the Zillionaire album. This is the opener and the hook.

Postscript: loving the new track!

Kylie and Robyn! Together!

Well, it nearly happened and kind of maybe WILL happen. Whatevs. Apparently it CAN happen. Official. A music blogger's wet dream! In yesterday's interview with Digital Spy, Robyn details the oh-so-nearly opportunity where pop stars being pop stars just didn't have that window in each other's global schedules. Tut tut.

But there is hope for the future: "I'd love to work with Kylie, but who knows what would happen if we went into the studio together? Maybe we wouldn't come up with anything, or maybe we'd write ten songs. Every time you work with someone new, you never know if there's going to be chemistry."

Maybe they could do a mash-up?

With Every 2 Heartbeats?

Better the Bum Like You?

Red Blooded Konichiwa Bitches?

Je Ne Sais Pas That Girl?

Swedish Hot Lips

Another band with not much imagery, so, Major Houlihan here has kindly stepped in to illustrate this post.

S'funny this blogosphere world of music. Everything has to be so NEW. Whilst that's definitely a good thing, stop 'aplogizing' for discovering stuff after someone else, like five minutes afterwards. There are music nuts all over the wonderweb who don't care, they just share, and they're the ones I always rely on. A case in point about a band bloggers have pounced on whilst also issuing disclaimers are Pacific!: "They're Swedish... that's sooo 2006"; "I had this track ages ago but only just got around to playing it". Tsk. Just get on and ENJOY the music dammit.

Pacific! (with their annoying 'screamer' - flipping heck I'm crotchity today) are a classic duo line-up from Gothenburg whose music has been described thus: "You’ve spent a sun-drenched day relaxing on the beach and you’re looking out at the ocean – see that very strong bright light on the water? That’s what new band Pacific! are all about, and it’s a warm sunny emotional feeling that imbues all of their music." Hot Lips, their last single, is a sparkling slice of pop. And their brand spanking new track on iTunes Number 1 consolidates their musical prowess. They have a new album due out early this year in the UK, France and Sweden called Reveries: "The name is inspired by one of Debussy's symphonies and our general way of finding inspiration and truth", explains the high-falutin' band.

Hot Lips - Pacific! (zShare)

And here's the simple and lovely video by their visual colloborator Stephane Manel who also drew the band portrait above.