Songs to Change the World

Let no one say we don't mix in the right circles! This new release, Songs to Change the World has just been released by the Peaksoft label. It is an album of protest songs from the beginnings of recorded sound through to songs that were Internet download hits without troubling the official Charts.

We are featured on the opening track, having been asked by the man behind Peaksoft, Mr Harry Whitehouse, if we could record a song made famous in the early 1960s on the many CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) marches.

"The words of H Bomb's Thunder" (writes Harry in the sleeve notes) "were written by the best-selling novelist John Brunner and set to the traditional tune Miner's Lifeguard in 1958. Its haunting melody has helped it to live on in the memories of those who marched 50 years ago."

It was recorded by a youth choir on an early LP record, long since deleted and unavailable and Harry asked us if we could contribute an arrangement for this album.

This is not the first Peaksoft compilation we have contributed to, but never before have we found ourselves in such exalted company as Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Paul Robeson, Billie Holliday, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Ewan MacColl and others. But nice to be in the company of our fellow artiste from Harry's Billy Fury website; the Gentleman from the Isle of Wight, Johnny Storme!

The CD is available through the merchandise page of the Billy Fury website, from the Peaksoft website, or from Amazon and some independant retailers.

The Sunnyside of Creeping Bentgrass

Yay! It's here at last! Our long-awaited new album that we started as soon as we finished the last one! Two and a half years in the making! Our first album as a duo.

Called "The Sunnyside of Creeping Bentgrass" it contains 17 tracks which includes a solo track of John's - a cover of The Beatles' This Boy.

Sunnyside is the name of the club near Northampton that was the site of Billy Fury's last public performance prior to his untimely death in 1983. The front cover shows the band performing at the club for a memorial concert in March 2009 and we are proud to be returning in 2010 to play alongside some of the fabulous artists who have formed close relationships on the message boards of billyfury.com

The full track listing is given below. Some tracks can be downloaded from the band's website, or the album is available mail order from:

Creeping Bentgrass
195 Palatine Road
Blackpool
Lancashire
England

Each CD costs 5 UK pounds plus 1 UK pound postage and packing to addresses in the UK and 2 UK pounds postage and packing elsewhere. Payment must be made in sterling by personal cheque.

Track List:

The Gambler
Have You Ever Seen The Rain
Sweet Caroline
A Thousand Stars
Bunch of Thyme
Crystal Chandeliers
When You Say Nothing At All
Be My Baby
King For Tonight
Green Green Grass of Home
I Can Only Imagine
Living Next Door To Alice
The Night Has 1000 Eyes
Forever Autumn
Halfway To Paradise
This Boy
24 Hours From Tulsa
.

New Christmas CD

The band are featured on a new CD that has been released by billyfury.com in memory of forum member Pauline Swindells, who passed away recently. Johnny Storme, a great singer from the Isle of Wight, as nice a fella as you could hope to meet, sings a brand new song, Christmas Day Again, written by another forum member, Steven Sinclair

Good King Wencelas by Creeping Bentgrass is one of 9 tracks on the CD which can be ordered from the Billy Fury site above or direct from Amazon. Proceeds from the CD will be donated between the Earl Mountbatten Hospice, Isle of Wight and the Heart Fund at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool.

The Lancashire Hotpots - Pot Sounds

Trogging round the sales today during a brief break from the tiling.

Anything worth having has already gone from most shops but then this gem caught my eye in HMV...

It would have been worth the money just for the laugh of the cover, but it's playing now and the songs are quite funny too. With such gems as I Fear Ikea, The Beer Olympics and The Girl From Bargain Booze this will tickle the fancy of any Lancashire lads and lasses! Worra bunch o' nutters! Reet good!

The Golden Age of Rock 'n' Roll

This tidy up lark's not all bad is it? By which I suppose I mean it's not always all that effective either...

I found these...

A set of six triple CDs with some great early rock 'n' roll music on them. Yes ok, I already had much of it but there were some gems I've had to stop tidying up to listen to and then I had to rip them to the PC so the CDs can go back up in the attic (which at least stops them cluttering up the spare room a bit).

How do we acquire so much stuff???

And how does a week fly past so quick? I mean - it's Thursday already! All I've done is tidy up, rehash the website, realise how few of the lost websites I can find the original photos of to scan them larger (film huh?), go into town, upgrade my phone (still same number for those who know what it is), take Fran looking for a craft shop in Preston (small - hardly worth the trip), watch DVDs (Kingdom of Heaven, Sing As We Go, That'll Be The Day, Stardust), take Fran to work (heh!), taken Fran to lunch, plan to meet Alex and Jackie for lunch in Liverpool...

I don't feel so bad after reading Jackie's email which goes along similar lines to my own experience. She writes:

"Mr W is off on hols this week and we've been having a de clutter fortnight instead of a holiday---- -great... So far I've only suceeded in moving clutter around and forming new attachments to it, much to Mr W's dismay."

I can relate to that...

Who's Gonna Rock You?

Spent most of yesterday, surrounded by old CD cases as we emptied the CD jukeboxes to restock them in some semblance of order.

Now, in case that sounds far too grand I have to point out that although we have two of them and they each take 200 CDs, they are not huge things with bubble tubes and lights. They fit into a standard hi-fi cabinet and are roughly twice the height of a standard CD player. Just tall enough and wide enough for a carousel of CDs standing on edge in fact.

Having 400 CDs spread all over the place though makes for some chuckling at remembering some of the ones we haven't heard for ages. If I play the CDs these days it tends to be by pressing the random button which plays one track at random from a CD then finds another CD and repeats the process. Some of them you might not hear for years...

Anyway it was a prompt to play a couple of CDs all the way through. Aaaaaaahhhh!

Toy Record Player

We had a short run out to Bygone Times, an old mill converted to an antiques centre with three warehouses filled with assorted old stuff of all sizes. Bygone Times, in bygone times, was bigger and probably better.

A lot of the fun stuff, that they knew would never sell but was there to bring people in, has disappeared and it is now just like any other antiques warehouse. If you like antiques though it's still a great place to go but I used to enjoy all the huge model aircraft, the old pinball machines totally beyond any attempts at restoration and the old architectural antiques - bar fittings, dentist chairs and so on, that used to litter the place to great effect!

We were walking around and Fran said "Oh there's a record player for you there!" It was a "toy" 78rpm record player and whilst I resisted purchasing it did make me reflect that ever since CD players came out there has been no such thing as a toy record player or any other sort of music playing equipment. There were toy cassette players that were aimed at children but these days with iPods and MP3 players which are so small anyway, there's no point in producing them just for kids.

I think there was a Barbie recently with an MP3 player built in but all kids have a mobile phone these days and they can play music now. It's not the same is it? What's the last kid's song you can remember? They are few and far between now aren't they? Vic Reeve's Shaun the Sheep theme tune may have been the latest but before that? Where's Max Bygraves when you need him?

Return to Record Players Index Page

Return to Toys Index Page