Friday Would Like to Show You One it Prepared Earlier
Yes, that’s right, it’s Blue Peter weekend at Toad Hall this weekend. Not in the kiddie fiddling, coke snorting, hard drinking sort of way (well, not all of them anyway) but in the stickyback plastic, here’s one I prepared earlier sort of manner.
What crafts, you ask? Well the Meursault singles are being recorded in the living room for starters. But while all that’s happening, the rest of us will be in the dining room with felt tips and hot glue guns doing the following things: painting and folding the Jesus H. Foxx EPs, which arrive today; painting, shading and titling the next run of Nothing Broke, which sold out last week; adding a little colour to the Builders & the Butchers/Loch Lomond Split 12″ vinyl covers; and finally, folding the inlays for ninety Song, by Toad Records Samplers for the Avalanche Album Club. They are going to look brilliant, so it’s a shame we’ll be giving them all away. I’d like to sell them on the site, but divvying up the money between twelve bands would be a pretty considerable pain in the arse, so I don’t think I’ll bother.
So, I am still up do my puckered anus in Proper Job, but there is a fine meal down at the Shore waiting for me this evening, with the light of my misspent and wayward life, the beautiful Mrs. Toad. I am very much looking forward to that.
This weekend’s podcast and Sunday Supplement will be coming from Ruth, who runs the Bowery with her friend Jane. After being turned into a Magner’s trough during the Festival, The Bowery is reopening on Monday 7th, so this is rather good timing. I for one will be grateful to have it back, not least because the Jesus H. Foxx EP launch is being held there on Saturday 12th September, assuming the paint has dried on all the covers by then!
1. Last really Blue Petery handcraft thingy you did.
2. Did you make your own Christmas cards when you were a kid too?
3. Favourite kids TV programme which encouraged you to do things other than TV (and no, teenage pregnancy and experimenting with hard drugs do not count, so Grange Hill is forbidden – let’s maintain some innocence here please, people).
4. Most surreal kids’ TV programme you watched.
5. At what stage in the computer revolution did your childhood generally occur?
Jay Farrar – Cahokian
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Kelly Joe Phelps – Taylor John
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Bonnie Prince Billy – Wolf Among Wolves
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I should really answer your 5 questions dilligently, but I’m too anarchic for that, likesay, eh? So, I’ll just point you to a video based on a surreal/disturbing moment from yon Blue Peter. I give you, Anthea Turner’s Cock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIRMpEssB-k
1. I am making CD covers too, which probably counts
2. Of course…
3. Anything arty – like Tony Hart’s one. I did attempt the Blue Peter stuff, but i didn’t have access to sticky back plastic being 8.
4. Think it was called Nightmare – a computer generated thing where a poor child in a massive helmet is guided through strange worlds by his geeky mates…
5. i had some form of computer game system when i was really young, but it was for rainy days only. Got a commodor 64 when i was 10 and didn’t know what to do with it short of play Horace goes Skiing
interesting fact – Peter Duncan of Blue Peter and Duncan Dares fame was in my pub last night
Tommy just made me feel like a Song by Toad geek…
1. I do quite a lot of crafty things, cd cases, kids book illustration and making a rocket are amongst my recent ventures.
2. Yip still do, this years card was a 3d epic, a fuck load better than when I was wee.
3. Blue Peter, I remember making the turtles lair out of a box and toilet roll inners. Oh, and Art Attack with Neil Buchanan, paper mache galore.
4. Round the twist was pretty fruity, had an ace theme tune though.
5. I had a commodore 64, load in the cassette and a mere 45 mins later you could play chucky egg. It really felt like the future.
1. Am in the process of making a reward/sticker type chart thing for a kid I work with at school. There’s a bit of drawing and cutting and pasting and laminating involved so I guess that counts.
2. Not so much Christmas cards, but I did make my own wrapping paper for a few years I think.
3. Playschool
4. Mulligrubs – Aussie show on when I was about 8 or 9. Very hard to explain to those who don’t remember it. Have tried to find a youtube clip to show you, but there are none to be found! Very disappointing.
5. Ummm I remember DOS computers. And the early Macs. And when the internet was referred to as the ‘information super highway.’
I also have to say that I’m stoked to hear that you’re onto your second run of the Meursault EP Matthew – bloody awesome stuff.
And Round The Twist is awesome too.
Strange things happen…when you’re going around the twist…
1. All these silly record ventures count, but me and Neil tying floral buttonholes for the Toad Summer Party was something to behold.
2. I stopped, and then one year when I was jobless I did it again and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
3. Make it With Hart had Morph. Therefore it beats everything else hands down.
4. I remember some awful sci-fi thing in Singapore that was like an endless re-run of the Death Star canyon run thingy in Star Wars generated by a computer with less oomph that a digital watch. It might as well have been a screen saver.
5. I remember the girl upstairs getting Pong – that was very exciting. Our first one was PGA Tour Golf on our Mac Classic when I was about 15. I played it constantly, along with the inspired screensaver game Lunatic Fringe. That rocked.
1. My contribution to decorating the hall at retreat. Which really just consisted of me saying “that looks great” a lot, and handing people things. Though I did make some mix tapes.
2. No. I used to draw a lot. But I didn’t really get it together to do xmas cards.
3. Street Hawk. Cos after watching it I used to ride my bike and pretend that it could talk. Come to think of it, did the bike in Street Hawk talk? Or did I just make that up? Who knows. Or indeed, cares.
4. the Krankies. A guy who dresses his wife up as a school boy? How the hell did that get aired?
5. I had a C64.
1. It’s not really crafty but I changed a fuse yesterday. Does that count?
2. Yes. They were horrific
3. Probably anything with Tony Hart or Why Don’t You?
4. Booo. I was going to say Knightmare. it was fan-fucking-tastic. So instead Jamie and the Magic Torch was trippy as hell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMNG2LtF41o
5. I had a BBC Basic and would play space invaders a lot.
1. Made my sister’s birthday card. It was inspired by the episode of Blue Peter where they did a google image search, copied the JPEG into Word and printed it off at work.
2. My family always agreed in advance that we’d not get each other Christmas cards as it as a waste of money to get cards for people you’d be sitting in the house spending Christmas with anyway. Then Christmas morning would arrive, and they would all hand cards to each other, then they would each hand a card to me, and I would be sitting there the only one who had actually stuck to our agreement. Nice.
3. The Tony Hart ones with Morph.
4. Battle Of The Planets
5. I was in my late twenties before I even owned a computer. Now I work with them. Gah! How did that happen?!.. Oh yeah, they were hiring.
Battle of the Planets!!!!
Battllllle. Of. The. PLANETS!
1. A few months back I cut the pics out of some old Rothko calendars and re-arranged them, collage-style, in a very large picture frame. Unfortunately, whilst putting the frame in place DC managed to break the glass. Cack-handed twat.
2. I probably did make my own Christmas cards at some point. But DIY Christmas cards have since become the bane of my life. I work in kids tv and I’m the poor sod in the office that opens all the mail and we get sent tonnes of cards by our young viewers around Christmas time, all covered in fucking glitter which means I end up covered in the stuff. Fucking hate glitter. That stuff should be fucking banned. Bah humbug.
3. Best kids TV for encouraging hand-crafty/makey things has to be Take Hart.
4. Pipkins. Those puppets were scary. As was Scampi from Fingerbobs. I’m sure that’s why I don’t like prawns. But one of the most surreal was a Welsh-language version of Calimero – a little black chick with an egg shell hat who kept saying “Does dim blas byw” which means “There’s no point being alive”. Nice.
5. I had a ZX Spectrum 48k (that sounds so shite now) and my favourite game on that was Chuckie Egg.
I’ve got the Battle of the Planets theme stuck in my head now.
1. Hmm, I made my ex a rather lovely birthday card. Gosh, that was ages ago though.
2. I think I did one year, but that’s probably it.
3. Art Attack. Yeah.
4. They are all equally terrifying. Apart from The Herbs.
5. Around about the time folk were shitting themselves about the millenium and all that pish.
1) I installed acoustic foam on the walls of my studio and built a hutch to raise my speakers up so the tweeter lined up exactly with my ears each equidistant from each other and my listening position. My wife has promised not to go after the studio when she eventually divorces me. Which is generous I feel.
2) Yes, and when your brother is a felt-tip fairy, namby-pamby graphic designer that can make you feel pretty fucking useless at life let me tell you.
3) Well, match of the day. But I suppose that wasn’t kids TV really was it. Oh and there was some Ninja show in Singapore which made me want to sneak around and hide stealthily. Which is easy to do when no one is looking for you. Hard to tell in retrospect if I was being a Ninja or just sitting in a bush.
4) MASK. How did none of them get fired? They kept running our on their jobs with no explanation!
5. Hard to say. Some dickhead was constantly playing PGA Golf on my Macintosh classic!
1) I’m rubbish at this stuff and John Noakes is to blame, making CD covers is the best I did for xmas mix albums last year.
2) Nope the best anyone ever got from me at xmas was a box of matchmakers and a teatowel
3) Spoon bending from John Cravens newsround
4) Oh Barney the big purple dinosaur. Whilst feeding a baby with a hangover. me not the baby
5) Galaxians now thats a happy memory
Nice to see you and DC have a traditional arrangement to your relationship, TWOTH.
You do all the delicate, gentile artsy stuff, cutting things out and making collages, then sensibly leave the tough work of building the frame to your man.
Do you like embroidery?
Galaxians? Dammit how many of the people who created this stuff must have been ‘shroomed off their tits!
we get sent tonnes of cards by our young viewers around Christmas time, all covered in fucking glitter which means I end up covered in the stuff. Fucking hate glitter. That stuff should be fucking banned. Bah humbug.
Hahaha! I hope they read Song by Toad. ‘See children, your home made Christmas cards were shiite!’
1. Made the wife a collage/photo display for her first Mothers Day. It looked more or less like shit. A “good idea done shite,” is how Chutters would put it I think.
2. I don’t really remember to be honest. Maybe for school friends.
3. Wonderama, with Bob McAllister (“Exercise, exercise, come on everybody, do your exercise…”). I remember when the cast of Monty Python showed up. Classic.
4. The Magic Garden. Surreal, but so so awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApbGw_G0qxQ.
5. Roughly contemporary with the Univac.
Speaking of Battle of the Planets, when I was in the Fourth Grade, there was one kid in my class who would answer only to the name 7-Zark-7. And when he became angry, he would sweep his arm across his face and shout “transmute”!
1.i made an album
2.nope…refused
3.hartbeat
4.centurians
5.MEGADRIVE!!!!
Mr. Bear, is this really your favourite TV show?
1. Made a birthdday card for my lovely better half
2. can’t remember but was probably made to do so
3. Blue peter was the only one around when I was a kid
4. roobarb and custard
5. I think ony NASA had computers when I was young !!!
I did have one of those games you plugged into the tv that played tennis, tres exciting!!. still don’t get excited about all these new fangled games
1. I was gluing labels on CD slip cases earlier this week.
2. Yup, I made Xmas cards in school, and have been known to set it as an activity in December when kids are really hyper/I am really face down with exhaustion
3. Hartbeat might be one, Why Don’t You?,…
4. Round The Twist, an Australian show much beloved by those of us of a certain age
5. Remember the first family computer a Spectrum ZX81; using BBC Computers at school, and having a donkey kong game.
Donkey Kong tricatronic (sp?) games were fucking brilliant. I loved those bloody things!
1. Re-sealed plastic water bottles filled with vodka to sneak into a music festival
2. Made. Lots of glitter.
3. Childhood is for kids.
4. HR Puff N Stuff.
5. DOS
1.No idea who this Blue Petery person is…. but I wrap. That’s all I do at holidays, I buy the paper and ribbon and I wrap things. Badly with lots of tape and pathetic bows. I’m a dyke, we’re not handy. We marry Femmes who make things pretty. We snarl at the pretty things and make the Femmes cry and then we take them to bed and make them happy. The end.
2. No. Working class children didn’t have cards. We wrapped our presents in newspaper too.
3. Mr. Rogers. He had a land of make-believe which was inhabited with awful home-made puppets with horrible falsetto voices. And you wonder why I’m a dyke? Don’t.
4. H.R. Puff’n'stuff… it’s all about drugs. It was the 70s, we knew it even if were children.
5. It didn’t. The end. Now shut it about my age.
hahahah Andrew, love ya baby! xoox
The glamorous world of the label boss!
1. I have all the stuff I need to make a lightbox for macro photographs, but haven’t gotten around to actually making it
2. Oh yeah. In primary school we made cards out of flimsy sugar paper, and stuck so much junk on them that they wouldn’t stand up.
3. The Gallery on Tony Hart – I always thought ‘I can do that’, but I probably couldn’t.
4. I’m going to say Mysterious Cities of Gold because it starts off as a traditional French cartoon (‘look how evil those Spaniards are!’) and then gets a bit trippy with multi-coloured ponchos and flying condors.
5. Ah, the C64 – I can still remember buying Ghostbusters and finding you could play Space Invaders while you waited for it to load – I thought this was genius.
Woohoo! Tart’s drunk!
And it’s only lunchtime in Chicago!
Haha I am NOT! I’m merely hungover in a non-alcoholic way from staying up most of the night talking to two lovely eggs and a car can be blue
Okay, if I didn’t know they were band names, I would have to conclude that you were far more than merely drunk peter that last comment!
Okay, if I didn’t know they were band names, I would have to conclude that you were far more than merely drunk after that last comment!
Oh?!? Who’s drunky drunk here, Mr. Double post mentalism?
And who the fuck is Blue Peter?
You’d like Blue Peter. Coke and Labradors.
Hmmm drugs and dogs? That does sound like my kinda man. If only he played guitar as well.
By a county mile HRH Puff n Stuff wins. that was the original bonkers
OK I may be drunk but I saw The Undertones play Bingley tonight and it was for free. Thatcher would never let that happen…..go labour
1. ?!?!?!!?
2. no, but i always enjoy putting very small pieces of confetti into cards i send – but can only be done on occasion because folks get wise.
3. not technically a kids program but ‘the six million dollar man’ encouraged me to jump off my roof.
4. Sigmund and the Sea Monsters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3U9BuOMkmM
5. i remember pong as the first – but things didn’t get interesting until defender and donkey kong came along. never had computers proper when i was in school many centuries ago.
Yeah I thought about Sigmund and the Sea Monsters too… but honestly… any theme song that states: “H.R. Pufnstuf, get’s you by when things get rough, H.R. Pufnstuf, ya can’t do a little cause ya can’t do enough” seriously has to be the anthem for a generation or more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-yLYz6ejqw
For the benefit of Tart, Blue Peter is not a person but a long running (over 50 years fer chrissakes) children’s tv magazine show. Can’t really describe it properly in such a short space of time, but no matter how crap it can be it’s become part of the fabric of British life. Over the years it’s given plenty of live tv comedy disasters of which this is the most famous:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_Cj2TtFd_E
It’s also been reknowned for some brilliant scandals including rigging phone competitions (conning children), one presenter being sacked for an ill-advised coke and hookers dalliance which caused the programme to be cancelled for one day and said presenter forced to make a grovelling and uncomfortable straight to camera apology, revelations that original presenter Valerie Singleton like to put it about a bit (and, whisper it, possibly even with women – eeek, the horror!!!), another presenter making controversial references about unionist paramilitary symbolism, and local Edinburgh boy John Leslie allegedly raping another tv presenter.
You see, all the stuff of a proper British institution!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peter
Oooh I love Blue Peter! Matthew knows me so well. Thanks Ian
Nobody’s said ‘Gumby and Pokey’ yet for No. 4. So yeah, that one.