Thursday’s live band in Norton’s Red Lion.
My favourite Velvet Underground track varies frequently, at the moment it’s this…
Sometimes I feel so happy,
Sometimes I feel so sad.
Sometimes I feel so happy,
But mostly you just make me mad.
Baby, you just make me mad.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Thought of you as my mountain top,
Thought of you as my peak.
Thought of you as everything,
I’ve had but couldn’t keep.
I’ve had but couldn’t keep.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see,
I’d put you in the mirror,
I put in front of me.
I put in front of me.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Skip a life completely.
Stuff it in a cup.
She said, Money is like us in time,
It lies, but can’t stand up.
Down for you is up.”
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
It was good what we did yesterday.
And I’d do it once again.
The fact that you are married,
Only proves, you’re my best friend.
But it’s truly, truly a sin.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
A report from theaccidentalgroundhopper of the Boxing Day derby between Synners and Town in Billingham.
http://theaccidentalgroundhopper.blogspot.com/2011/12/ground-199-central-avenue-stadium.html?m=1
I couldn’t think of any songs about, or even mentioning Boxing Day, but a quick YouTube search came up with these two.
First Elvis Costello performing TKO (Boxing Day) on Tyne Tees TV’s The Tube after the programme had gone off air but with the cameras still running (obviously)…
And in a pub in Derbyshire on Boxing Day 2008 here’s Helen Morris performing her self-composed Boxing Day Song…
With a bottle of Brakspear’s Oxford Gold. A Christmas present from Dawn and Andy.
I walked to my mother’s home in Billingham for Christmas lunch. Here’s a couple of pictures I took on the way.
Norton duck pond.
The Forum Theatre.
The Damned’s 1980 Christmas single…
I’ve put my Christmas decoration up.

Live TOTP performance broadcast on Wednesday night for the first time since January 1973. Thought to be lost, the fish eye camera operator John Henshsall had kept a personal copy while the BBC had wiped its own…
The latest newsletter about the progress in restoring this theatre includes this photo by Gary Walsh…
Adam Slater has some good pictures from earlier in the year when the restoration was just beginning.
From Gemini 6 on 16th December 1965…
Thanks to How to Geek and buzzlab.
On December 16, 1965, while in orbit above planet Earth, the crew of Gemini 6 added another milestone to their already historic mission.
Astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford reported sighting an object, a satellite, in a “polar orbit…traveling North to South.”
“Stand by, he’s trying to signal something,” reported Schirra.
The next thing heard at Mission Control was a rendition of Jingle Bells performed by the astronauts using instruments which they had smuggled onboard.
The story is well known. The harmonica and string of bells are now housed at The Smithsonian, and the incident is believed to be the first time human beings ever played music in outer space.
But no recording of the song has ever been made available. Until now.
I’ve been looking all over the Internet for this recording for more than a year with no success. So I started asking for help.
KUOW reporter Phyllis Fletcher pointed me toward NASA’s Media Resource Center in Houston Texas.
After digging around their Web site and calling the phone tree at Johnson Space Center, I eventually reached Librarian Jody Russell. Her contacts in the Audio Department pointed me to the online archive for the entire Gemini 6 and 7 joint mission.
They narrowed it down to 8 audio files for me, which covered about 33 hours of the mission. They also provided me with links to mission transcripts that I could use as reference to find the song.
The message from NASA ended with “…it’s in there somewhere.”
And it was.
Enjoy!
An interesting and amusing half hour’s talk by John Osborne on Radio 4 this morning, it’s on iPlayer for the next 7 days.
Direct from a five-star, complete sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival, comes John Osborne’s Radio 4 debut partly adapted from his acclaimed book Radio Head (Radio 4’s Book Of The Week).
In 2002, John Osborne won a competition on John Peel’s Radio One show. His prize was a box of records that took eight years to listen to. This is an ode to radio, those records and anyone who’s ever sought solace in the wireless.
A story about one man’s love for radio, how it allows you to escape into another world. Based on his book Radio Head, up and down the dial of British Radio, this is about what happened next: a show about the pleasure of having your own personal project. The story is about passion, obsession with music and about legacy; trying to do something special with such a rare, eclectic box of records.
Produced by John Pocock
Writer and performer John Osborne is based in Norwich. Experienced at performing poetry, storytelling and book readings. Performed across the UK since 2006. Member of poetry collective Aisle16.
Published work
‘Radio Head’, up and down the dial of British Radio. Radio 4’s Book of the Week.
‘The Newsagent’s Window’, adventures in a world of second hand cars and lost cats. ‘Bring Me Sunshine’, a travel book for the AA about British seaside towns, due for publication May 2013.
First full poetry collection with Nasty Little Press, due for publication November 2012.
Thanks to BoingBoing.
Monday’s live band at Norton’s Red Lion.
Wildwood Flower… I love kinescope!
Sweet Little Sixteen. Some great 1950s kinescope…
Featured in the Vintage Ads group.
My new wallet, and the box it came in.
Live tonight in the Red Lion, Norton.
Rockin' Brian 