Ken Bruce

G’bye Ken, hi babe

bruceonthefringe 2023, Logan's Close Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

What a day! A new single from Logan’s Close and a sad farewell to Ken Bruce on Radio 2. Old Ken is going over to Greatest Hits Radio and he’s taking Pop Master with him, so good luck Radio 2 finding something to replace that ten thirty fix! I suspect a great many will be retuning their radios. Reading about the move, Ken will be playing music from the 70s, 80s and 90s on his new show which is fine but I think I would get a tad bored. I do like hearing newer stuff in the mix; different tastes and flavours enhancing the platter of sounds.

A neat segue to the juicy spiciness that is Logan’s Close! I can think of a number of LC tunes easily playable on a classic tunes radio show that would have folk wondering how they’d missed hearing it at the time! So many throwback sounds teasing misgotten memories. That evil joker of a friend could easily get you to remember that night, you know, that night, the brunette wearing The Who t-shirt, this was playing – god, yes, yes it was!

Just after midnight another succulent dish was added to the Spotify menu from those master chefs of musical morsels. I feel weird calling it new – I first heard it almost two years ago on the LimbicTV performance and for the last year it’s been a staple of The Scat Rats sets. The song? Babestation, a word that makes certain ears prick up, there’s always a few looks of acknowledgement every time and yes, the song is about what has sprung to those minds. Call me naive, I’d never heard of it, but Mr Marah’s words paint a very vivid picture for the uninitiated.

Babestation is inspired by a late night live adult tv channel, yup, porn. The song oozes with heavy sensuality and sleaze. Carl Marah always sounds beautifully plaintive singing this, but with added the studio production, oh my heartses, the hollow bleakness shattered me to pieces! I loved this song from the off, so was a teensy bit anxious how the studio version would sound, ha, no worries, the Close picked the right midwife to help deliver their baby – Dennis Rux at Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Studios (midwife or obstetrician? Hmmm).

Frisky rhythms from the bass and drums drive the song along, like keeping the babe upbeat to get through it all. Plenty sparseness of guitars and keyboards, a musical nonchalance to the scene (Oo, just saw the lads as a seedy wedding band playing unnoticed in the corner of her room). The verses each build from an almost introspective view from the babe, to looking out at her audience, to the hard coldness of it all, then Showtime, folks! I like the drop downs to quieter moments and the usual slight creepiness to the keyboards at times. The Scat Rats swirl Babestation down so well, but with the rest of LC added in, the result is intoxicating, love the hollow echoiness of Scott’s cries and the drum beat still jauntily going on.

Do check it out on Spotify and I’ve put a reel of The Scat Rats in Whistlebinkies on Instagram, enjoy. Now I must go eat, the Rats are due on at Stramash shortly. Toodle pip!

Messrs Marah and Rough blending

I heard it on the radio

bruceonthefringe 2021, Logan's Close, Music, Radio shows, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

This morning it was the first anniversary of Ken Bruce doing his Radio 2 show from home. He was mentioning it as I tuned in just after the start. I do like Ken Bruce, such a lovely voice and manner, a real gentleman. His music quiz PopMaster is a highlight of the morning, it gives me a reason to be out of bed before half past ten; I very rarely hear anything of Zoe Ball these days (the breakfast show until half past nine). Each day two contestants answer ten questions on pop music, the winner goes on to play Three-In-Ten (three UK chart hits by a particular band in ten seconds) to win a digital radio. Failure in this latter endeavour gets them a Bluetooth speaker; the runner-up gets a consolation prize of a One Year Out t-shirt, so called as one of the ten questions is to give the year that three singles charted, answers given often lead Ken Bruce to commiserate “One year out!” – said so often they made a t shirt of it!

About an hour later Tracks Of My Years can be interesting, depending on who’s choosing! Each week a celebrity picks two tracks every day and chats with Ken about their relevance between the two being played. This week it’s Sanjeev Bhaskar, so I’m paying attention, I’ve liked him since I first heard Good Gracious Me on Radio 4 in 1996 (yes, it’s another show that was on Radio 4 before going to BBC Two). A few weeks ago it was Adam Hills choosing his tracks, that was very entertaining and informative. Great to hear The Goodies’ Funky Gibbon in there with a really lovely anecdote about meeting two of them at the Edinburgh Fringe (a quick squirrel through my Fringe timetables showed it was in 2006, I saw both his and the Goodies show).

Tracks Of My Years is like the Radio 2 cousin of Desert Island Discs. I’ve spent plenty of time pondering on this and have decided it would be easier to pick my TOMYs than my DIDs. Why? Well, the TOMYs are more fixed it seems to me, those are the tracks you pick as having particular relevance to your life at various points, they are what they are from your history. DIDs are significant moments too, but chosen as the only eight tunes you’ll have to listen to for a long time, music for company, to keep your spirits up, to help keep you sane. See that’s why there’s a lot more pressure on those choices, TOMYs is just a bit of reminiscing with Ken!

There’s also the Inheritance Tracks feature on Saturday Live on Radio 4; a small feature that has grown legs and now has a podcast of it’s own. Every Saturday morning a celebrity shares two tracks, one they’ve inherited from a previous generation (often something a parent listened to a lot) and then one that they would pass on to the next generation. I’m not sure what I’d pass on but probably my inherited track would be Mockingbird Hill, I don’t remember who by (oh, I’ve trawled through Google, trying to find the version we had, to no avail!). It was one in a stack of 78 rpm records from our parents’ youthful days; as I recall it, they were just gathering dust in a cupboard (the records not our parents) until my siblings and I happened upon them, claimed them as ours and relocated them to beside the old Bush record player in our playroom. Oh, how we loved playing them and singing along with the likes of Frankie and Johnny or The Three Caballeros. Hmm, we were easily entertained young mooses!

I paused there for my tea. A dozen distractions later……the train of thought has been seriously derailed. Bugger! The kitchen needed cleaning after an interesting reaction when red wine met hot lamb fat and juices. I had to drink the rest of the wine to recover and got sucked into watching the telly. Oo yeah, something did occur to me while I was cleaning up – a track that would be a TOMY and a DID, even possibly my Inheritance track to pass on, Logan Close’s Listen To Your Mother, it ticks all the boxes. I do hope the lads play it on Saturday night, yes, that’s right, this coming Saturday night (27th March) the lads are doing a live stream event on Facebook! Yay! News good enough to make a moose smile!!

G’night! Sweet dreams!