I don’t do this often, but I have another “unknown” song I’d like someone to name. This one’s different as I have the ENTIRE song, but have no idea what it’s called, or who it’s by.

Unknown song

I really don’t know much about this song, though I did actually buy it, or at least the magazine it was given away on. It came part of a free tape on the front of a music magazine from around 1989, possibly 1990. I can tell you I bought it from King Oswy shops, the original tape was black, and came in a slipcase. It may have featured “Inner City Mama” by Nenah Cherry on the tape too.

Not that it helps much.

Unfortunately, the original tape came from a manufacturer who made tapes that didn’t agree with my tape deck, and it probably got chewed up and binned. I certainly don’t have it anymore.

With the borrowment of Andrew’s cassette deck, I’ve been able to source one of my old C90s which had a copy of this song on it. Unfortunately, it was copied in high-speed mode, meaning the above track sounds tinny as hell. Just for old times sake, I’d like to know who it is and who by. Don’t bother googling the “lyrics”. “Blip Blipiddy Blop Bleep” doesn’t bring up any usefull results.

Feel free to comment / email. If it sounds familar, that’s great, but unless you’ve got a *really* good idea of who it is, then don’t! Also ,comments about my questionable taste in music, then, you know that already.

Just typing that into a keyboard can guarantee that in the next few hours, I shall have one of the little blighters land on the back of my neck. If that happens, you can guarantee I’d scream a lot more than if it actually stung me, for you see, I’ve managed to get my first sunburn of the year. In fact, this is the first time for as long as I can remember, I’ve actually made good use of my three days off. I shall use the media of Twitter to help you keep track of the past three days.

2010-05-18 11:34:10: Started walk

After going to bed at 7, and waking up at 9:30, thanks to Daddykins on his rig, and me not turning my speakers off, I thought I’d get up and make use of the day. I demolished some oven chips whilst watching Homes Under the Hammer. The sun was cracking the pavements, so I thought I’d walk off the chips, along with the night before’s kebab wrap.

As you can probably gather, I left the house at that time, and headed along the coast road and up “Hart Road” towards Hart Village.

2010-05-18 12:09:10: Mmm, farmy

This tweet referred to the overpowering stench of shit that filled the patch between Clavering and Hart Village. It was a hot spring day, and the smell of some nearby horses wafted around the place.

Oddly, this was my last tweet of the walk. Instead, I had to work out where I was going to go once I’d reached Hart Village. I could head home, or I could risk crossing three lanes of traffic, and head off to photograph the nearby turbines. Despite them being there for many years now, I’d never actually been near them.

Thanks to Google Streetview, I knew that the journey would be pretty uneventful, except for the afore-mentioned road crossing. I headed up the road that would take me towards the turbine, only to be infiltrated by the locals….

Next stop was the road I feared. I almost felt like King Canute, as when I got to the road, it was entirely empty, and I could quite happily stroll across the carriageway without fear of getting squashed.

I was happy to find that when I got there, the field the turbine was in, was growing oil seed rape, meaning that it gave everything a lovely yellow colour…

The walk back seemed to take for ever. I’d slightly misjudged just how far it was from Mercuryvapour Towers. Turns out, it’s a 5-mile round trip. I think I can safely say I neutralised those chips.

The rest of the day was spent in bed after watching some telly. Daddykins commented about repairing “the door”. For anyone lucky enough to have received a guided tour around Mercuryvapour Towers, you’ll know that the “games room” has had its back door hanging off for several years after a storm snapped it in half. I’d be interested to see if this would come to fruition.

2010-05-19 09:06:28: Off to the flea market. There is a strong smell of rapeseed in the air.

Well, I can’t keep away from the flea market, as much as I try. After waking up stupidly early on Wednesday (5AM), I headed off to the market of fleas. I’d spent the previoous hours changing the music on my phone. I realised, mere minutes into the walk, however, that I should have avoided “Now 40″, as my ears bled along to the sound of Steps.

The walk took me along the scenic vistas of Raby Road, along York Road, and then to the flea market. CDs were purchased, so were records. I couldn’t help myself. I have bought some cheese in the past, but this is pure, ripe Stilton of the highest order…

It cost me 50p, and to be honest, after playing it, I like it a lot more than I thought I was going to. Clare Torry is (only) known for Pink Floyd’s track “Great Gig in the Sky”. Apparently, everyone who purchased her album from Amazon bought it on the strength of that Pink Floyd track.

2010-05-19 09:48:51: On bus home. Flea market poor

On the way home, Daddykins texted me asking if I had my keys. Without a single hint of sarcasm (that was sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell), I replied “Yes. Let me know if you still want to attempt door this afternoon”. Imagine my shock and horror as, at 1PM, we actually went on the search for some wood. Or, at least, some material that a door could be constructed of.

Imagine my horror when these materials were actually purchased…

We were about to attempt DIY on a scale never attemped before in the ground of Mercuryvapour Towers…

EDIT: Fixed webcam photo as it was broked.

The 80s music on the Drench advert, where a goldfish picks out the location of a ball in a cup, is called “Push it To the Limit”, by Paul Engemann. Although the advert is only a few seconds long, you may recognise it from the soundtrack of Scarface, and of course, GTA 3, as part of Flashback FM. In fact, all of the Flashback FM tracks are from Scarface.

I do like the Scarface soundtrack, and it’s so long since I’ve played it. On it goes.

In other news, at 16:29 today, the Revo Dalek which had been salvaged from Lancaster Road, received its first power in its new home, with help from a gear tray supplied by Andy The Iridium Fan. This is also the first time in my entire life that I’d lit a SOX (low pressure sodium) lantern. I took a photo at the immediate time of switch-on, but the floor in the living room was a mess so none of you will ever get to see it. To me, however, it was a groundbreaking moment.

Would you beilieve it’s almost 2 months since I actually sat down here, and wrote about what’s going on in my life? the rest of the postings have been “recaps”, “best ofs”, or posts which I’d written well in advance, and then set the publish timer to look like I’ve actually been giving time to this site. Crafty old me. Oh yes, and I installed an automatic Twitter thing, which in hindsight was a stupid idea, and I probably should disable it.

Anyway, I have been, and still am, incredibly busy with stuff, which is one of the reasons I’ve not been updating this, plus I’ve had writers block up to the eyeballs. My “drafts” folder is, as usual, full of little snippets of posts I started, then never finished.

Music is one of the things which has been seriously influencing the past couple of months, especially an 8-second clip of a Kraftwerk song.

I was at work about six months ago. Ian, who sits behind me, had a bit of a “Kraftwek” night, and was playing some of their tunes. An 8 second piece of music got stuck in my head. It had been used as a sample in another song, and could I hell remember which song it was. I later found that the song he was playing was “The Robots”, but even after an extensive interwebs search, I couldn’t find out where else I’d heard it. I knew it was in a song from the 1990s.

Off to #speccy, nope, nobody had heard it there, not even Marko who is normally good at this type of stuff. I uploaded it to my phone, and played it to everyone I knew, in the vain hope that it would jog the memory. I even set it as my ringtone, thinking that if someone rang me, and I heard it out of the blue, I’d pick up on it straight away.

Sadly not. I joked to Chris (who also didn’t know it) about me hearing it when I least expect it, totally out of the blue.

That was months ago, fast forward to yesterday. After looking for a few things, I happened to spy my old video recorder in a box. It hadn’t been used for about 6 years, not since my TV card died. I hooked it up to the telly downstairs, and played some old tapes with the intention of transferring them to DVD. There was one particular tape I was after saving. A non-descript looking tape, with a ripped label. Amongst hours of me playing in the garden as a kid, with our old black and white camera, was the very last edition of “Northern Life”. Halfway through, they had an “outtake reel”, with music dubbed over it.

The track was a song I liked, instantly recognisable to me anyway. All of a sudden, 32 seconds into it, there it was. THAT BLOODY KRAFTWERK SAMPLE! I was delighted. And unsurprised that my prediction was right.

The Kraftwerk tune was “The Robots, and the sing I remembered was “I Can’t Stand It by Twenty 4 Seven. Chris shuld be bitterly disappointed that he didn’t get it, but then he doesn’t read here anymore!

Speaking of which, it was Wayne’s 30th the other day. I sent him an email, but it looks as if he’s gone AWOL again.

I can’t believe I’ve not done one of those for previous years, but I thought I’d look back and highlight what I think has been the best songs of 2009.

And, there really aren’t that many. Maybe it’s due to me getting old. I don’t know. Either way.

1. Hockey – A Song Away

Embedding’s disabled, so you’ll need to click here to hear it.

“I wanna write a truthful song over an 80s groove”. And you do it very well too, whoever you are. The whole song reminds me of the Travelling Wilburys. First heard somewhere on the outskirts of Harrogate, on Radio 2.

2. Frankmusik – Confusion Girl

Wahey, I can embed this one…

A great song. Bonus points for the inclusion of…. erm, that ‘bewer’ whose name escapes me, the 80s style mobile phone, pink wheely bins (!) and infinitely shite “special effects”. The guy singing it looks like a pigeon.

Unfortunately, the first time I heard this song, I was in the less glamorous location of the Asda car park. This was obviously before the incident.

3. David Guetta / Kelly Rowland – When Love Takes Over

I like it, even though it has a very Coldplay-esque intro.

I’m now going to sit in a darkened room for the next three hours, and see if I can actually think of any others that entice my ageing eardrums like the afore mentioned trio. Probably not.