Five Things: Wednesday, 16th July

Watching: Amazing Bass Lines
I don’t know whether I admire his stamina or dexterity more. In fact maybe it’s his memory that is the most impressive thing about this…

Watching: Ray Charles sing the hell out of “Sail On Sailor”
Thanks to Grahame for putting me on to this. Fast forward to 9.08. It’s the Beach Boys 25th Anniversary in 1986. It’s in Hawaii. Carl and Brian do a very strange intro, you’re not sure where it’s leading, then suddenly it’s Ray – in an awesome flower-print jacket and garlanded with a Lei.

Finding: A pack of Neil Diamond Playing Cards at a rather desultory Record Fair

Watching: A Recreation of The Sopranos’ Credit Sequence in Grand Theft Auto Style
Why Recreate The Sopranos’ Credit Sequence in Grand Theft Auto Style? Because it was there to be done…

Listening to: Lily Allen on Desert Island Discs
“This song was the first dance of mine  and my husband’s… It was really sweet, actually. Sam and I got together the day I played Glastonbury and I remember I had a week off after that, and I hired a yurt and put it up in my dad’s back garden and invited him down. And as we left he gave me this mix CD that he’d made for me, and this was the first song that was on it and it became the song that we danced to at our wedding. We actually flew the guy that sang it, Tommy McLain, who’s in his nineties, all the way from Louisiana with an eleven-piece band and he played this song…” Tommy McLain’s “Grow Too Old” is a great, great cover version, that finds a seam of melancholy in the midst of songwriter Bobby Charles’ swaggering braggadocio. It was originally on a fabulous compilation called Another Saturday Night, a celebration of the sound of South Louisiana made in 1974 by Charlie Gillett for his Oval Records label.