Well, Did You Evah!

In 1990 a compilation album of interpretations of Cole Porter songs was released to raise awareness of Aids and money for Aids charities. There are some great covers on the album. I initially bought it for Aztec Camera's beautiful version of Do I Love You. other favourites include the tracks by The Neville Brothers, David Byrne and Lisa Stansfield.

The standout by far has to be Well Did You Evah by Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop which is firmly tongue and cheek but still sounds great and also sounds like the two of them had great fun recording it. I have also posted the rather bizarre video but then again what else would you expect from something by Alex Cox.

Deborah Harry & Iggy Pop - Well, Did You Evah!

Celebrate, What's To Celebrate?

I'm off down to Luton for a few days to "celebrate success" and look to the future. The thing is I'm not really in the mood to celebrate success when I know that by the 23rd of December the office that I worked in for a good few years and many highly competent, professional and knowledgeable people will no longer be there and will no longer be on the end of the phone or just an email away with their expertise and support.

Management just don't get it.  They think that one day we can reflect upon all the successes and the very next say that's the end of that and just get on to the tasks at hand.

I for one am not like that, it will be quite a while before I will be ready to move on. I am not, as they say in management speak, change averse, I just don't like to see good people cast aside while within the leadership  some make themselves indispensable while others have spent the last god knows how long positioning themselves and schmoozing so that they are alright, thank you very much.

On the same day as I will be "celebrating" success, millions of others will be on strike to keep their pension rights.  Credit where credit's due, the government and the right wing press have done a brilliant job in polarising the workforce into public and private sector employees.  What we need to do is stick together against the Coalition and all of those companies using the excuse of the recession to cut their workforce to the bone or transfer the work overseas in order to keep the EPS high and to support each other in the fight for a fair return at the end of our working days, irrespective of whether that was for the public of private sector.

Iggy Pop - Success

"Find one in every car, you'll see"

As a teenager there were 3 videos that were watched avidly by myself and a couple of mates, the Blues Brothers which had to be watched at B's house as his dad had procured a copy and a load of other not so good films  from a video shop that went bust, the reason we had to watch it at his house was due to the fact that it was on Betamax and he was the only one that had a Betamax machine. B's dad was into gadgets and also had plenty of money so he was the first to have all the latest shiny new technology such as a home computer, video games and the first place I ever saw a Bang & Olufsen hi-fi but I digress.

The other two films were Diner, which I have talked about before; from about 1984 until I realised that he was a twat round about 1989 when Wild Orchid was released I kind of idolised Mickey Rourke and eagerly watched for each film to be released that he was in which did include a couple of howlers, A Prayer For The Dying and 9 1/2 Weeks. And finally there was Alex Cox's Repo Man.

Repo Man was the story of a young disillusioned punk that gets a job hanging about with a bunch of social misfits, repossessing cars and tracking down the holy grail for Repo Men, the car which will end all their money worries, a Chevy Malibu which may or may not have rotting alien cadavers in the boot. It is a bizarre and incredibly funny film which gets better with every watch and has a couple of great performances from Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton not to mention the inept punk gang.

The Soundtrack to the film is also brilliant, it features the talents of 80s American punk bands most of whom I had never heard of before, such as the Plugz and The Circle Jerks. It is also memorable for containing the best track Iggy Pop produced during that decade,  the title track for the film and which included a rather vicious guitar riff courtesy of Steve Jones. The album is worth having if you can find it, my vinyl copy is absolutely buggered but I did manage to track down a cd a few years ago.

Here are a couple of tracks from the album.

Iggy Pop - Repo Man

The Plugz - Hombre Secreto

Jesus, This Is Iggy

I'll be turning blue if it gets much fucking colder.


Iggy Pop - Turn Blue