Middle Ones live

The Middle Ones delighted everyone at the Hangover Lounge last Sunday. Re-live your experience or see what you missed out on with this footage of them playing Young Explorer:

Darren Hayman guest-DJs on Sunday 31st January

If you use one of the variously shonky calendars which sit on the right-hand side of this site you will already be familiar with the fact that Darren Hayman is to be our guest at this Sunday's Lounge. I can think of no better way to see out the last day of the first month of 2010, especially since last time I saw Darren he was talking about how much reggae he'd been listening to lately. I'm hoping for a nicely bass-heavy guest spot.

The only way you're going to have more Hayman-related fun this weekend is to get a TRAIN to Honiton (it's in Devon, dear) then a BUS towards Sidmouth, telling the bus driver to let you know when you've got to Exeter Cross. Get off there and WALK the few hundred yards to Woolbrook. Just past the Balfour, you'll see Hayman's butchers, where they sell world-renowned PORK BRAWN. Pork brawn is what you get when you boil a pig's head and it's delicious. Just ask Rick Stein, who named them amongst his food heroes for their brawn.

Pig's head or Darren's tunes. You decide.

See you on Sunday.

Name That Tune: Drink Wine by The Techniques

Synergy, my friends. Leveraging multiple platforms. Really driving the value from your diversified range of products.

What? Duke Reid. He knew, don't argue. Hard man ex-cop, off-license owner, sound system operator. Also: record producer; largely undisputed king of the rocksteady sound which blew into Jamaica in the 67 / 68 season. Trojan was the sound (the British label inherited the name), Treasure Isle was the label, Treasure Isle was the booze shop.

The result: this beautiful slice of rocksteady, one of my very favourites (and not just because I find the message in the music so sympathetic, or just because of the funky pirate's groovy 'tache on the label).


Come to the dance. Buy lots of booze. Drink same. Not too rowdy, now. I know you'll control yourselves and you'll be... real cool.

Record Fair Upstairs at the Lexington

Double your pleasure at the Hangover Lounge on Sunday January 17 by digging through the crates and scoring some bargains at the King's Cross Record Fair, which will be held upstairs at the Lexington.

Stallholders will be selling punk, pop, indie, new wave, power-pop, soul, Northern, psych, reggae, 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s records, t-shirts and memorabilia. Phew!

Name That Tune: Tonight by Sibylle Baier

Sibylle Baier…put songs in a bottle and kissed them goodbye, not knowing that one day the bottle would drift back, carrying the dreams and emotions of youth, to be picked up by an audience far larger and more appreciative than the one that greeted the music at its inception.
Robert Forster

The hushed melancholy of Sibylle Baier’s one album, Colour Green, recorded between 1970 and 1973 in her native Germany bears comparison to the best of folk’s buried treasures that have been dug up and lauded in the past decade.

In Baier’s case, her reel-to-reel recordings were mostly unreleased and their full issue in 2006 revealed an exceptional talent for hauting atmospherics and alluring homespun melodies.