Day: March 24, 2020

Keeping Spirits Up

A friend shared this video to me via Facebook. I found it was absolutely hilarious. It is very UK-specific humour, but I know I have some UK readers.

It possibly needs an explanation to non-UK readers that we are very much not a firearm culture. Most of us have never even seen a gun, except in the hands of a policeman. So you have to take the video in this context.

I realise that in some places, this might be a little too close to reality to be funny. If it offends you, I apologise.

Tick Tock Tuesday (24 March 2020) – Frankie Goes To Hollywood

I thought I’d create a new challenge. It is a challenge primarily for me, because I’m new to this platform, and because you don’t really know me yet, nor I you. As my name suggests, I am recovering from a stroke, and I like to push myself in all kinds of little ways… including getting to know the Wonderful World of WordPress. Although this is something I will be doing, I invite you, if this idea takes your fancy, to play along with me and share with me some of your own selections.

My plan is: each Tuesday, until I run dry, I shall post some piece of art with which I have some connection – which has helped to mould me, which makes me tick. Okay, a piece of art is a bit vague – it might be a piece of music, a movie, a book, a painting, or ???? – so my phrasiology is deliberate. It might be anything – I will play this post by ear, so I’m not sure what I’ll think of each week. And, I’ll keep posting on the theme weekly until I run out of ideas.

My rules? Well, I’m not big on rules! My choice will be something with which I feel a connection. That’ll be the important thing, just having some kind of fleeting affection for something probably won’t be enough, unless I’m using my choice as an example of something bigger.

It will be one choice per week – I’m aware that long posts can be quite onerous to read, and I’m in no hurry to complete this so if I have two ideas, I’ll probably hold the second until the next week.

In that same vein, I’ve created this block as a Reusable Block, which I intend repeating for every post on this theme. The block ends with a full-width separator, so if you want to skip ahead each week it doesn’t really matter.

I probably won’t post any lyrics, or any kind of analysis – if you like my choice, the information will be out there for you. But I will try to briefly explain why I feel a connection to my choice, just to try and enhance readers’ understanding of what makes me tick.

I will tag my posts TTT and I will go looking for other posts with that tag. If you’d like to join in, please do the same, or comment, or pingback to this post, and feel free to reproduce my graphic. Lastly, I look forward to reading about what makes you tick.

I’ve been talking these last few weeks about local bands, and you could not be in the UK (let alone in Liverpool) in the mid-Eighties without hearing Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Their first three singles all went to #1 in the UK, something not even achieved by the Beatles. That summer of 1984, my first summer working, and Liverpool just rocked!

The associated album was called Welcome to the Pleasuredome, which was still fun a couple of years later, when I started university. I’d saved up my pennies (literally, pennies!) and had actually bought my very first (unbranded) Walkman. Not Sony, of course, because that was still way too expensive, but one of these generic copies available from cheap High Street retailers. And, Pleasuredome was my one cassette, which I played to death!

I have to admit, though, that Frankie were not really my kind of music – they were very produced, they sounded very different when they played live, compared to one of their records – my favourite musicians are those who can just pick up an instrument and play it. But I did like the voice of their lead singer, Holly Johnson, and I choose him today. Frankie did not last long before, having made their fortunes, they went their seperate ways. Holly Johnson is the only guy I ever heard of again, and he went on to have a small solo career. There’s a big appetite for nostalgia acts these days, and I daresay he earns his keep. Americanos is one of his, released in 1989, after the band had split but while the public still recognised him.