GEN X RAP SNOB: In my day, we sampled records made with REAL instruments.

RZA's ballet score is beautiful on its own terms. It's also fascinating on the meta level because he's swaggeringly confident in the new form. We still hear the artist who looped soul records with dialogue from kung fu films on 36 Chambers. It isn't hip hop at all, but the spirit's easy to feel.

'Tis the season for M! R! James!

Don't want to hear the reality. This is Sir Mix a Lot crashing an orchestral evening, the musicians spontaneosly bursting into Baby Got Back, and a room full of socialites losing their minds on hearing the song for the first time. Many a monacle dropped. Give me this much. youtu.be/w59e20ijOpE?...

Starting to feel like good odds that the last coherent thought that fires across my dying synapses will be 01818118181.

The Princess Bride and Spinal Tap are two of my favourite films of all times. If either was starting right now, I'd watch to the end. Reiner as a director was unflashy. He didn't have much of a recognisable visual style. He just made the best film in the style that suited the story.

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"And now we come to 'people I worked with 30 years ago who objected, in the most mild terms, to my decade long, monomaniacal campaign of targeted abuse against a vulnerable minority, targeting countless specific individuals and the group as a whole.' Some real bastards in here!"

So I pull the sleigh Looking for the answer Am I Rudolph Or am I Prancer

Marlon Brando 🤝Superman III Got wrecked by Richard Pryor

This one got me.

Not on the Wikipedia for 'Dub Be Good to Me,' so it's been wiped from history to an extent. Check the music mags at the time & find Norman Cook, Housemartins member, DJ, & architect of the single spend a few weeks claiming the bassline came from "...an old ska record..." youtu.be/-MnELifX3sQ?...

Spotify wrapped must be madly off. What kind of a lunatic would have an obscure 1980s Bob Dylan outtake as their number one listened-to song for 2025?

A guitar loving man came round my house with the rest of his band. He looked at my battered, charity shop acoustic, used up like a toddler's favourite soft toy. "If you file down the neck, [several other helpful, intelligent suggestions that I stopped listening to] you'd find it plays better."

Woke up excited for new socks. We've got money to replace socks now. They're bright red, like Neville Staples said sixties Rudies wore. Felt a twang of boring bastardry but reassured myself by echoing Capone in Mamet's script out loud. "A man's got to have enthusiasms... enthusiasms..." "What?"

Disney+ has given me the chance to watch The Golden Girls for the first time since I was an infant on my nan's knee and it's great. As overused as murder's become as a story engine, I'd watch any of the main characters, solo, together, or in any combination, solving crimes and travelling the U.S.

And hey, since Christmas is approaching us like an empty-bellied Doomsday Machine, I'd be remiss in my duties were I not to point out that my first book was released this year, and it would *definitely* make for what could only be described as "a present". www.idfc.co.uk/category/all...

New on the blog: IDFC ends its first year back in business with an essay on SNW's "Children Of The Comet". Thoughts on tunes and theology, and the intersection thereof. Shout out to my Dad for the foundational phrase, and to @jameslatrmurphy.bsky.social for his perfect summation of Brian Wilson.

Usually, I'll play music as I read. It isn't kind to the musician or the author, but blocking out the world is some of the point. Borges makes me turn everything else off. Shut up, you geniuses of sound, I must hear Jorge Luis. He blocks out everything else.

Got one of those alarms that fake a sunrise and some birdsong to try do something about the SADness. On the box, the blurred bastard is waking up at 8.30. Doubt I'd have quite as many mental health issues if I could sleep in til half eight, guys.

Great talents, lots of priceless joy, and I'm getting Pictures of Lily'd all the way down.

Just realised it's been 19 years since I left secondary school. Here's a picture taken that last day, an image that, thanks to the massive 2006 camera phone pixels, looks as dated as a pal's brigade racing off to the trenches. L to R, Luke, Saul, Richard, Ryan, me, Kumar, and Troy.

UK Workers: Yes, boss. I'll eat at my desk. Stay late? No problem. Hopefully, we get a chance to speak on Saturday. Spanish workers: [midday, slamming the table] I may return after my lovely nap!

And I, I, was trying to update my address with the bank and my driver's license and... change my council tax borough. And I said, I told them, I said... once the internet made these things *easier*! Not a hateful Kafkaesque nightmare! So they locked me in here and called me Crazy Old Maurice.

Man, it's a funny place, up there on Mars, I gotta tell ya. One guy says to me, "I'd like you to meet my mother, my dog, and clowns." And there was one woman standing there.

Most interesting bit of film history near me was the Clockwork Orange Ludovico scene being filmed in the building that became my first library. In terms of larger South London set films, I gotta go with Blow Up.

Didn't find time on, I think, Tuesday for any drink or drugs. Decided to take a few days off. Haven't missed anything at all, so it's possible I've gotten a bit bored of them. Feeling the knifesharp clarity that I remember from childhood, but I've learnt enough since not to find it oppressive.

Turns out sports pricks use my road for free parking on game day, so I've had to park on the next street for the first time. Guess which racist single glazing enthusiast that one's named after?

Old British comedy songs will leave their punning & metaphors in their last lines to give a serious sounding PSA against the most ghastly behaviour. Like My hot water bottle sure holds heat I like to fill it up any place And when you walk down the ice cold street Don't kick an infant in the face

Oh, no I've dropped and broken my kintsugi kit.

Top 5 Scorseses as of today 1. Goodfellas 2. Mean Streets 3. The Wolf of Wall Street 4. The Last Temptation of Christ 5. Casino

Starting the day blasting Chas 'n' Dave. We agree that it's like being at Butlins in the eighties, but that makes me grin and her scowl.

Been watching Hamilton on Disney+, piecemeal. It'd be better regarded if Manuel-Miranda hadn't given himself the lead. He's the worst rapper onstage and, like Seth MacFarlane when he nabs a live action role, the camera has no interest in him. At Lin's best, you think: he's trying hard here.

Starting the day with the Equals. That's a band twenty years ahead of their time. You can drop them into a 2 Tone mix and they'll still sound the newest.

Cinematic version of Hell: what's the first film that comes to mind?

The boss gets a lot but I'm not bitter That's why I check tinder on the shitter

In the GP's waiting room yesterday, I was idly Wikipedia diving on the earliest Old English and read about the Franks Casket for the first time. That's not where Dennis Hopper ended up in Blue Velvet, but an eight hcentury artefact where the language is emerging.

A mate gifted me a code for a year's free Disney+ so I'm slowly rewatching chunks of the Beatles making Let It Be. McCartney comes off well, with the exception of any interaction with Harrison, where he suddenly becomes an airy, condescending 15 year old barely tolerating an ignorant 14 year old.

Post you from a different era: isn't he gorgeous? He's only got his terrible personality holding him back.

welearnedmorefromathreeminuterecord.libsyn.com/13-live-1975... @kitgonzo.bsky.social and I return to discuss the first disc of the mighty Live/1975-85 with our mate, dogg, @matedog.bsky.social

You know, you think you've long ago jettisoned your Gifted Kid need for praise, then you find yourself repeatedly imagining the moving man you've hired looking thrilled aa they survey the way you've prepped your flat. "Wow!" They say in your head. "If only all my customers were like you!"

One of those unusually busy days ahead. What nan would call "running around like a blue arsed fly." Was going to look for a Spotify playlist with a name like Cocaine Is a Helluva Drug, but decided to just put on Rumours by Fleetwood Mac instead.

Wrote a Steven Wright joke: This morning, I couldn't find milk for my cereal. My milk had gone missing. So I put a picture of it on a t-shirt and had a kid from my neighbourhood wear it all over town.

Was in a pub that had karaoke on and some young women made the bold move of doing WAP together. Brave, I thought. They owned it at the start, but got sweetly more self conscious as the lyrics continued to unroll the filth. Half hearted choruses, shy giggles, and silence by the end of the song.

Ray Charles' Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music this morning. Wish there was less strings & choirs, but a great version of You Win Again. What would country music even be, if not for Hank Williams' wife ethicless non-monogamy? Put that woman's underwear in the country music hall of fame imo.

The Kubrick Stare is

Morning after meeting the wife's colleagues for a drink. Her: Claire has lost loads of weight and she just doesn't need to Me: Yeah. I thought she was a bit of a stunner and found her a lot less attractive last night. Her: She's working too hard at it and she needs to be comfortable with herself.

My tribute to Kaleb Horton and The Last Exit Show, a podcast he hosted with @jameslatrmurphy.bsky.social

It's funny that the best Jay-Z song of this millennium - My 1st Song (not My First Single as I always misname it) - is about how he never, ever phones it in. A statement belied by the rest of his discography.

Chubby Checker's Singles C'mon, Baby Let's Do the Twist Let's Twist Again! Twist (For Peace in South East Asia) Funky Twistin' (Live - Next Door to the Apollo) (Baby) You Can Twist at the Discoteque The Twist Rap (w/ the Fat Boys) Please Twist?