Hello Dolly

Just reviewing some of my snaps from last year and I came across this, which has to be one of the oddest dolls I've ever seen:





Only in Southport!

... and music, music, music

Because of my great age, I no longer find it easy to access Young People's Things like new bands and stuff. I try listening to popular music combos on the wireless but am more-than-somewhat offoput by the enormous amounts of inter-song wittering that seems to pass for entertainment these days. I mean, John Peel, taciturn though he may sometimes have sounded, was never really a man of few words but he knew when to shut up and play the record, unlike today's mindless yahoos who seem to believe we have tickled our cat's whiskers for hours just to hear their mindless babblings (and, yes, I do number Edge Hill alumnus Stuart Maconie, for all his often excellent taste in music, among the number of the babblers).

So [pausing to draw breath] ...

... where does an aging listener turn for her fix of new beat-musique when the trusty transistor lets her down. Well, lately, I've been doing rather well with cover discs from The Word. Most of the stuff is fairly pleasant (though some is pretty unlistenable) and occasionally there's an absolute gem - like the mighty Decemberists, who've featured twice, and my current keep-playing-track-over-and-over-til-Husband-wants-to-throw-cd-out-of-car-window favourite The Mountain Goats, who I now like so much I've bunged a YouTube thingy in this post, so you can all like them too ('cept you've probably known about them for y' know, like, years! and now think I'm hopelessly jejune for even mentioning them:

The Mountain Goats - Sax Rohmer #1