tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91342642024-03-18T17:34:20.811+00:00Electronic Music Stuff with Fat RolandWriter, comedian, events droog, sentient tower.
Operations @AnthonyBurgess. Columnist @ElectronicMagUK. Also @AngryBeetham @BadLanguageMcr @F1LosersLeagueFat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.comBlogger1594125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-59368278692256184322024-03-18T17:27:00.011+00:002024-03-18T17:33:43.801+00:00Ultimate 90s number one: (G)love (puppet)'s got the world in motion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf0j9AEyP1FqhbtBC0bf26_NNCY-EYfN9i3FwRqE52nnEbIEYFTkPEA6ci7QhRTzqJmXwyUfz93jZrh-9-RezunGUQWHfjzpyqNTSk-j0bM-T8MqxB3U-zLc1fNGe1Ec7YqSn1sY1V0iM_misxV9qfQvfRiKxS0i7JOz2xIGmILEyx8Z9maKp0/s750/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one%20NewOrder%20FlatEric.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf0j9AEyP1FqhbtBC0bf26_NNCY-EYfN9i3FwRqE52nnEbIEYFTkPEA6ci7QhRTzqJmXwyUfz93jZrh-9-RezunGUQWHfjzpyqNTSk-j0bM-T8MqxB3U-zLc1fNGe1Ec7YqSn1sY1V0iM_misxV9qfQvfRiKxS0i7JOz2xIGmILEyx8Z9maKp0/w400-h400/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one%20NewOrder%20FlatEric.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>This is the latest in a long line of terminally dull blog posts about all of the awful music that topped the charts too many years ago to be interesting.</p><p>I'm attempting to discover the <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">best UK number one single of the 1990s</a>. Criterion number one: is it a banger? Criterion number two: does it bleep? In other words, does it have electronic music credentials?</p><p>There are 206 UK chart-toppers to get through, so can you please shut up so I can get on with it. Here are the latest 10 contenders...</p><p><b>The contenders</b></p><p>2 Unlimited<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>No Limit | Backstreet Boys<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>I Want It That Way | Boyzone<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>No Matter What | Boyzone<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Words | The Clash<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Should I Stay or Should I Go | Eiffel 65<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Blue (Da Ba Dee) | Englandneworder<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>World in Motion | Mr. Oizo<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Flat Beat | Spice Girls<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Spice Up Your Life | UB40<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>(I Can't Help) Falling in Love With You</p><p><b>Banned bands</b></p><p>If your band name begins with B, you are automatically eliminated. That means Backstreet Boys and Boyzone are out. There has never been a good band beginning with B. Please do not analyse this statement; let's just pretend that it's true. Bombalurina. Bob The Builder. Bluetones. See? Every single one of them, terrible.</p><p>Now let's deal with The Clash, the Spice Girls and UB40.</p><p><b>Wanton</b></p><p>Spice Up Your Life was a good single. The United Colours of Benetton wrapped up in girl power. Just don't pay too much attention to its wanton lyrics.</p><p>Which brings us to The Clash and UB40. The latter's take on Elvis's Can't Help Falling in Love takes all the charm of the original and squeezes it into a husk of uninspired pop drudgery. And The Clash's rock plodder is so ploppily plodding, when I first heard it, I thought the entire history of music had suffered one massive seizure. </p><p>The fact that these reached the top of the charts while Transglobal Underground failed to score a single top 75 chart hit should be investigated by the UN immediately. Criminal.</p><p>Still. It couldn't get any worse. Could it? Surely not.</p><p><b>It gets worse</b></p><p>Next up is 2 Unlimited<span style="white-space: pre;">'s </span>No Limit and Eiffel 65<span style="white-space: pre;">'s </span>Blue (Da Ba Dee). Excuse me while I feed my earballs into this woodchipper.</p><p>Whenever I mention that I'm into techno, people quote 2 Unlimited at me. "Techno, techno, techno, techno." Right into my face. These people are idiots and do not know the world of The Black Dog and Autechre and the like. I can't allow 2 Unlimited to progress in this competition.</p><div>I would have ranted about how stupid Eiffel 65 were, but a couple of years ago David Guetta achieved the mathematically impossible feat of releasing a cover version that was nintey-twelvety trillion-bajillion times worse. Please don't google it: your ears will hate you forever. The Blue song goes in the same bin as 2 Unlimited.</div><div><br /></div><div>But wait! Just when I thought all hope was lost, we have two genuine bangers.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Doo-bi-doo dee dooo</b></div><div><br /></div><div>You've got to hold and flibble, do it at the right time, doo-bi-doo dee dooo, something about getting to the line. You tell 'em, John Barnes. <b>Englandneworder's </b>World in Motion is possibly the best football song of all time. Yes, even better than Pop Will Eat Itself's Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina.</div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, <b>Mr. Oizo'</b><span style="white-space: pre;"><b>s</b> </span>Flat Beat introduced the world to Flat Eric, that floppy yellow puppet that smoked sausages while nailing business deals.<span> Despite the novelty feel of this 1999 number one single, </span>Quentin 'Oizo' Dupieux has impressive music and film-making pedigree. AND he stopped Eminem's debut single from getting to the top of the charts. That puppet is out of CONTROL.</div><div><br /></div><div>Both of these songs have electronic music credentials, and they are back-of-the-net bangers. They were hits at opposite ends of the decade, but Englandneworder progress hand-in-hand with Mr. Oizo to the final of <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">this competition</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>I bet if you inflated Flat Eric until he nearly burst, he'd make a great football.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">More of the Ultimate 90s number one</a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-55444268017666898702024-03-11T10:42:00.010+00:002024-03-11T10:52:41.942+00:00Ultimate 90s number one: Steel and Spice and some things nice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUOJ1L_i_2M7sUjnPqouH9COvpCq4rfMytcZMkERj1f8ZCvUKTw3grUOB6WfDdxnV8bq5nDkZKEIUjq6_Z1Au71cECYa9zd91qE2xFMRBhtEihpjENS1D-BtGS1r1lDwKsnympaMDzys_UYrLov8G_zrH_mSBsh7QuWVjAKY2VRtTdiG4T-Lhl/s750/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one%20Bono%20Shakespears.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUOJ1L_i_2M7sUjnPqouH9COvpCq4rfMytcZMkERj1f8ZCvUKTw3grUOB6WfDdxnV8bq5nDkZKEIUjq6_Z1Au71cECYa9zd91qE2xFMRBhtEihpjENS1D-BtGS1r1lDwKsnympaMDzys_UYrLov8G_zrH_mSBsh7QuWVjAKY2VRtTdiG4T-Lhl/w400-h400/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one%20Bono%20Shakespears.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>The fight for the <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">best 1990s number one single</a> continues. (See all the posts here.) This series of hastily-written and ill-thought-through blog posts will decide, once and for all, which 1990s chart topping single is the bestest and bleepiest of the decade.</p><p>Each time, I randomly choose ten (or so) singles, then pick one (or so) to go through to a final. Let's finger through the latest buffet of tasty tunes.</p><p><b>The contenders</b></p><p>George Michael<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Jesus to a Child | George Michael and Elton John: Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me | LL Cool J<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Ain't Nobody | Prince<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>The Most Beautiful Girl in the World | Shakespears Sister<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Stay | Spice Girls<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Say You'll Be There | The Tamperer featuring Maya<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Feel It | Vengaboys<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>We're Going to Ibiza! | Westlife<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>If I Let You Go | U2<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>The Fly | Whitney Houston<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>I Will Always Love You</p><p><b>Bright balls</b></p><div><div>Let's start with opening a window to release the guff. <b>George Michael </b>doing Jesus to a Child is about as exciting as Alan Titchmarsh doing I Can Sing A Rainbow. I like a bit of <b>Prince </b>falsetto, but his ballad about beautiful girls was a load of Hallmark slop: "A face to be soft as a flower." Yeah, and balls as bright as begonias. Thanks for that insight, Prince. There's a <b>Westlife </b>single in this list, but I've already forgotten it exists.</div><div><br /></div><div>The childish party anthem served up by the <b>Vengaboys </b>put me off Ibiza for life. Can you imagine being stuck at a resort with them? I just want to sit on a sun lounger and read my book. Preferably indoors. This would be the most annoying song on this list, but <b>Whitney Houston </b>belting out I Will Always Love You has my ears bleeding. The only positive spin on Whitney's overplayed warble waffle is that it kept Michael Jackson's shmaltzy Heal the World off the top spot.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Medical gloves</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The mid-tier songs on this list are... fine. <b>George Michael</b> duetting with <b>Elton John </b>was enough to blow the cobwebs away, and the spiders along with it. <b>LL Cool J's </b>take on Chaka Khan's Ain't Nobody was fairly pedestrian. Meanwhile, Say You'll Be There is one of the better singles by the <b>Spice Girls</b>, heightened by a sci-fi video in which they kidnap men in a desert. Baby Spice wears blue medical gloves. They were definitely putting alien probes up bottoms.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Not feeling it</b></div><div><br /></div><div>This list is randomly picked, and the top tier will not always turn out to be both banging and bleepy. Unfortunately, this is the case with this selection.</div><div><br /></div><div>When it was released, <b>U2's </b>The Fly sent me wild. Steel and leather, and lots of television screens. A glorious U2 period. My one gigging regret is that I never got to see the Zoo TV tour. Despite Brian Eno having his hands on Bono's tiller, it doesn't really fit the bleepy criteria.</div><div><br /></div><div>Next we have Stay by <b>Shakespears Sister</b>, one of the greatest number one singles of all time. The moral of its video narrative? Don't mess with Siobhan Fahey: she looks terrifying. In a way, its sinister sci-fi tones make it a sister single to Say You'll Be There. In a way.</div><div><br /></div><div>All this brings us to <b>The Tamperer's </b>take on Can You Feel It by The Jacksons. It's the danciest song of this selection, but it's only a few grades above Vengaboys. I can't get excited about this being the best of this list. The high point of any wedding buffet are always the sausage rolls, but they're just sausage rolls. They'll never win a culinary award. Can You Feel It isn't even the best track called Can You Feel It (step forward Mr Fingers).</div><div><br /></div><div>So all of this comes to nothing. You may be disappointed, but to quote the aforementioned Mr Fingers track, I am the creator and this is my house. Plenty more to come in this 1990s number one competition. Keep reading.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">More of the Ultimate 90s number one</a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-72624246982536930052024-03-04T16:41:00.013+00:002024-03-04T16:46:01.648+00:00Ultimate 90s number one: Frosty Madge versus the ambient sheep guys<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP5fR-EVH2JkZ77ykhKiWldF0HbhgeP6_pAIVLhr5A9RGBVtEiYCElcY_6KOPxcI3I-417_FlHBRhQ1cTn5QVu4wLYyGY2zIXfdoPOd2OKJUzUGYREu_V3vOddgjyN_CQYWXEw5C9V-3SDvm1aYoGB6V1OeBo2Xv86y-B2lduOfDy3v2Geoh9N/s750/ultimate%2090s%20Madonna%20KLF.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP5fR-EVH2JkZ77ykhKiWldF0HbhgeP6_pAIVLhr5A9RGBVtEiYCElcY_6KOPxcI3I-417_FlHBRhQ1cTn5QVu4wLYyGY2zIXfdoPOd2OKJUzUGYREu_V3vOddgjyN_CQYWXEw5C9V-3SDvm1aYoGB6V1OeBo2Xv86y-B2lduOfDy3v2Geoh9N/w400-h400/ultimate%2090s%20Madonna%20KLF.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>We are in the throes of battle. Not Blur versus Oasis, not City versus United, not Emu versus that green witch woman that kept knocking at the door. This is much more epic. It's the fight to decide the ultimate UK 1990s number one hit single.</p><p>The basic criteria for judging the best chart-topper is (a) whether it's a banger and (b) whether it bleeps. Let's enter the arena and check out our musical gladiators.</p><p><b>The contenders</b></p><p>Aqua<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Turn Back Time | ATB<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>9 PM (Till I Come) | Chef<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You) | The KLF<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>3 a.m. Eternal | Madonna<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Frozen | Queen<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Bohemian Rhapsody / These Are the Days of Our Lives | Right Said Fred<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Deeply Dippy | Spice Girls<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Too Much | Take That<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Never Forget | Take That<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Pray</p><p><b>Flushing the poo</b></p><div>It's confession time. I have a plush toy of Mr Hanky the Christmas Poo in my bathroom. Yes, I am a grown adult. So I have fondness for South Park, although if I watched it these days it would probably offend my fragile snowflake sensibilities. In any case, <b>Chef</b>'s comical poo song isn't worthy of this competition, so this can be flushed pretty early on.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Sad songs</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Two of the tracks make me sad. Queen's <b>Bohemian Rhapsody</b> returned to the top of the charts in 1991 following the death of Freddie Mercury. It's a belter of a banger, but it's more of a weepy than a bleepy. And I'm ignoring <b>Right Said Fred</b> on the basis of one of the brothers being a right bell-plop. Which is a shame because Deeply Dippy is their best song.</div><div><div><br /></div></div><div>Next come the all-dominating <b>Spice Girls</b> and <b>Take That</b>. Between them, they had 16 number one hits in the 1990s. The Spices delivered a slinky ballad with Too Much, while the Thats gave us Pray, an efficient ballad, plus Never Forget, their iconic stadium singalong. Never Forget, or Nev Forge as I like to call it, is the dictionary definition of a pop music banger. But none of these shall proceed in this competition, which is unashamedly biased towards electronic music.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>A final four</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The final four tracks in this selection are notable in different ways. Let's stroke their bleeps one by one.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>Scandi candy-poppers <b>Aqua </b>surprised us with Turn Back Time, displaying a melancholic maturity hiding behind their plastic pink prattling. This is a bit of a banger, certainly compared to their previous nonsense, and part of the verse reminds me of Heart by the Pet Shop Boys.</div><div><br /></div><div>After fooling everyone into thinking religion was sexy, <b>Madonna </b>transformed her identity with Frozen. Electronic music producer William Orbit cast a real, er, ray of light on this stage of Madge's career. I love the idea of Madonna listening to Orbit's Strange Cargo albums and thinking, "yeah, I'm gonna work with this guy".<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Everyone got their trance pants in a twist when <b>ATB </b>knocked Vengaboys off the number one spot. ATB chose 9pm as his time after a long day in the studio. In all fairness, that is a late finish, and the local Spar probably shuts at 8, so he can't even get a cheeky Pot Noodle on the way home. Both this and the Madonna record would have won this week. Except for...</div><div><br /></div><div>All hail Rockman Rock and King Boy D, otherwise known as the KLF, furthermore known as the JAMs. The career of the <b>KLF </b>sounds like a random plot generator gone rogue. Timelords, success manual, stadium house, extreme noise, cash combustion, ice cream van, rambling helpline, Stonehenge destruction, machine gun and ambient sheep. At the pinnacle of all of that is 3am Eternal. Everything that pop music should be about. If you don't believe me, look up their eccentric hooded Top of the Pops performance.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Because the selection was so strong, let's pick two of these tracks to go through to the final of this 1990s chart battle. The KLF are the kings of heavyweight jams, so they go through. As does Madonna and her chilly tune.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">More of the Ultimate 90s number one</a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-67707718591742404272024-03-01T08:08:00.003+00:002024-03-01T08:20:39.503+00:00Ultimate 90s number one: Fat Roland says uh-oh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhidbNK-2xrfp7-8XXqfECovl9IW5I3ZZVlmLRapjGo0YClOxihuoxW51qv-Mwn9EzG7BeK1RhoFwFmRpw7mkgLbRwcmR4iLq5zNCS9je2-yX1SQ_Rn4ejnE0t4sFgKHnU2AQjp6wowMY5781Mpqk5KYIMfrnS3j_GXokEYhdqWaO6E26kbggQA/s750/ultimate%2090s%20Teletubbies.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Teletubbies" border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhidbNK-2xrfp7-8XXqfECovl9IW5I3ZZVlmLRapjGo0YClOxihuoxW51qv-Mwn9EzG7BeK1RhoFwFmRpw7mkgLbRwcmR4iLq5zNCS9je2-yX1SQ_Rn4ejnE0t4sFgKHnU2AQjp6wowMY5781Mpqk5KYIMfrnS3j_GXokEYhdqWaO6E26kbggQA/w400-h400/ultimate%2090s%20Teletubbies.jpg" width="400"></a></div><p>All is woe. My <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">1990s number one countdown</a> has gone horribly wrong. I flew too close to the blogging sun, and my feathery quill has burst into flames.</p><p>Let me explain.</p><p>I am judging every UK number one single of the 1990s to find the most banging and, crucially, the most bleepy chart-topper of the decade. All was going well. Fatboy Slim scored a big fat success, and Enigma chanted their way to victory.</p><p>I loaded up my third batch of contenders... and this is where things fell apart. Let's go through this latest list one by one, and you'll see what I mean.</p><p><b>The contenders</b></p><p>B*Witched<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Rollercoaster | Charles & Eddie<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Would I Lie to You? | Christina Aguilera<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Genie in a Bottle | Gary Barlow<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Love Won't Wait | George Michael<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Fastlove | Gina G<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Ooh Aah... Just a Little Bit | Iron Maiden<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter | KWS<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Please Don't Go | Pato Banton featuring Ali and Robin Campbell<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Baby Come Back | Teletubbies<span style="white-space: pre;">: </span>Teletubbies say Eh-oh!</p><p><b>Not so bewitched</b></p><p>Let's start with <b>B*Witched</b>, the double-denimed Dubliners. Rollercoaster is an insipid Marks & Spencer's Sunday shop of room-temperature pop that clearly got ejected by every act on earth before the B-star crew said "ah well, we'll give it a go". At least the <b>Charles & Eddie</b> track has some songwriting oomph about itself, although if that guy squeaks "oh year" one more time, I'm going to weep.</p><p>What is <b>Christina Aguilera </b>waffling on about? Genies don't come in bottles. Absolute tosh. Let's skip past <b>Gary Barlow</b>. He was meant to be the songwriting talent in Take That, yet his solo career was so unmemorable, I've already forgotten-- oh look, a pony. Where was I? Oh yes. <b>George Michael's</b> Faslove is one of his better tunes, made even better by using the same Forget Me Nots inspiration as Men In Black. But none of this twiddles my tassel.</p><div><b>Music for babies</b></div><div><br></div><div>That <b>Gina G </b>song did pretty well in the Eurovision Song Contest, but let's be honest: it's a babyish tune for babies who suck at being babies. It makes the Vengaboys look like Rachmaninov. Next on the list is <b>Iron Maiden</b>, whose New Year 1991 chart-topper came as a surprise to everyone. A wonderfully stupid and bombastic triumph, but nothing that can be considered as a bleepy track.</div><div><br></div><div>This list is in alphabetical order by artist, but I really think it's trolling me. <b>KWS's </b>cover of KC and the Sunshine Band's Please Don't Go is one of the most soulless singles ever. It stayed at number one for a month, preventing SL2, Shut Up And Dance and Kris Kross from topping the charts. I think it may be evil.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Cheesy mediocrity</b></div><div><br></div><div>I thought I had reached rock bottom, but next comes the cheesy reggae mediocrity of Baby Come Back, with <b>Pato Banton</b> having any potential credibility beiged out by the UB40 guys. And then there's the <b>Teletubbies</b>. Four overgrown cuddly toys, who have their stomachs ripped out and replaced with televisions, talk absolute gibberish while a burning, decapitated baby's head laughs at a sentient hoover. No. Thank. You.</div><div><br></div><div>That's it. That's the list. Not a single song to recommend. Complete waste of time. Let's hope <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">the next batch</a> throws up something better.</div><div><br></div><div><div><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">More of the Ultimate 90s number one</a></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-4246237316780949282024-02-29T08:08:00.001+00:002024-02-29T08:08:00.125+00:00Ultimate 90s number one: A rubbery travesty and something Badd<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPiCvAzyRb8FKnjnjp5KEaiUukbeg25rbgyFiVmrZbUiUnD-xg9AbYFWNSK-myf1NLpTZ6hFw01W5lN_eitN_nuIEj93bLsMD3ozGGlCk_Zhyphenhyphen2M8CzpIfTAo5LG0J03AEocTIOoCAZk2ZwnLPj8TK2CGoRftyzjpvqQ2ksAYZPpe9lz5HLwBzd/s750/ultimate%2090s%20Britney%20Enigma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Britney Spears in school uniform, a monk in a brown habit" border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPiCvAzyRb8FKnjnjp5KEaiUukbeg25rbgyFiVmrZbUiUnD-xg9AbYFWNSK-myf1NLpTZ6hFw01W5lN_eitN_nuIEj93bLsMD3ozGGlCk_Zhyphenhyphen2M8CzpIfTAo5LG0J03AEocTIOoCAZk2ZwnLPj8TK2CGoRftyzjpvqQ2ksAYZPpe9lz5HLwBzd/w400-h400/ultimate%2090s%20Britney%20Enigma.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>I've laid down a gauntlet. What is the <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">best UK number one single of the 1990s</a>? Let's pick up that gauntlet and slap a few more contenders about the face.</p><p><b>The contenders</b></p><p>Britney Spears, ...Baby One More Time | Color Me Badd, I Wanna Sex You Up | Enigma, Sadeness (Part I) | Mr Blobby, Mr Blobby | Ricky Martin, Livin' la Vida Loca | Spice Girls, Goodbye | Spice Girls, Viva Forever | Take That, Sure | Tasmin Archer, Sleeping Satellite | Will Smith, Men in Black</p><div>Remember the two criteria for judgement. Is it a banger? Is it bleepy?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Rubbery travesty</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I am big and pink and covered in spots, like <b>Mr Blobby</b>. I am clumsy, like Mr Blobby. I talk utter nonsense, just like Mr Blobby. However, this rubbery travesty can shove himself right up his own crinkly bottom. He has no place on this list.</div><div><br /></div><div>Equally terrible is <b>Color Me Badd</b> and their insistence at sexing people "up". Up where? A dreary r 'n' b dirge for creeps. On the positive side, they're named after a horse. No, really. The horse was called Color Me Bad. The band added an extra D so people didn't get confused.</div><div><br /></div><div>While we're getting rid of rubbish singles, you might like <b>Ricky Martin's</b> late-90s number one Livin' la Vida Loca, but you're wrong. There are many reasons to admire Martin: there can't be many gay Puerto Ricans as leading lights in pop music. But the song is shash. And annoying. And pants. And also shash. Did I mention annoying?</div><div><br /></div><div>Hey, <b>Will Smith</b>, I see you sneaking out of the room. Get back here. Men in Black sampling of Forget Me Nots is a clever move, but that's as far as it goes. It doesn't half go on a bit. Let's zap ourselves with a neuralyzer and forget this was ever released.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Viva not quite forever</b></div><div><div><div></div></div></div><p>This brings us to the mid-tier choices in this batch. And they are really mid. Both<b> Spice Girls</b> tracks can be placed at the exact middle of their artistic ouvre. I mean, Goodbye and Viva Forever are fine. FINE. But fine is not good enough for this countdown. Chewits are fine, but I'm not choosing them as my last meal. Actually, that's a bad example. Chewits are amazing. Shower them on me when I get to death row.</p><p>Meanwhile, <b>Take That's</b> Sure is one of their poorer number one singles, especially in the light of the two singles that followed this, the blistering Back for Good and the iconic Never Forget. The lesson is: never name your single after a deodorant.</p><p><b>Hunks of monks</b></p><p>This brings us to the final three.</p><p>As odes to space exploration go, <b>Tasmin Archer's</b> Sleeping Satellite is up there. It's no Bowie, but what a tune. Turning middle-of-the-road pop music into a bonafide banger, It's got some Madchester-style organ action to boot, which gets it some bleepy bonus points.</p><p>If sexy schoolgirls are your thing, then look no further than <b>Britney Spears'</b> breakthrough it ...Baby One More Time. Despite the questionable concept behind the promo video, there's no denying how impressive this was for a debut single. Unfortunately, like much of this randomly-picked list, it doesn't satisfy the bleep factor.</p><p>In nomine Christi! Yeah, you heard. The unlikely winner for this batch is a bunch of singing monks. Michael Cretu 's new-age noodlings as <b>Enigma </b>produced this unlikely smash hit. Cretu, who was credited on the single as "Curly M.C", refused to publicise the release, and its Gregorian chant samples got him sued. Instant hit. Beyond the novelty, this is a modern ambient classic, and the album holds up better now than it did then.</p><p>Bet you didn't expect the monks to win. There are oodles of other <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">1990s chart-toppers</a> to come. </p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">More of the Ultimate 90s number one</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-61682842697966744122024-02-28T08:00:00.002+00:002024-02-28T09:00:38.848+00:00Ultimate 90s number one: Should we praise Fatboy Slim like we should?<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx8EMQSaAodeXhhzZFvLM1AYd25f9_IzWP96RRuuiY12o6P6SV1LPgR6oJcv1vGilJ6-re0o8VQ0lxnYA8D61MK5pyAswZh-guEQlW998lP8x3CzjvLAIcxsQk1gf-ktvXQE2gmVaduuxE3dvVDJnRG109tC6SeIrwE9ATBU3AGHgqArM3pokz/s750/ultimate%2090s%20Tori%20Fatboy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx8EMQSaAodeXhhzZFvLM1AYd25f9_IzWP96RRuuiY12o6P6SV1LPgR6oJcv1vGilJ6-re0o8VQ0lxnYA8D61MK5pyAswZh-guEQlW998lP8x3CzjvLAIcxsQk1gf-ktvXQE2gmVaduuxE3dvVDJnRG109tC6SeIrwE9ATBU3AGHgqArM3pokz/w400-h400/ultimate%2090s%20Tori%20Fatboy.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><p>Yesterday, I announced my quest to discover the <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">best UK number one single of the 1990s</a>. My two main judging criteria were (a) is it a banger? and (b) is it bleepy?</p><p>Time to delve into my first randomly-picked noisebag of nineties tunes. Here are the first contenders, including the record label and the date it got to number one.</p><p><b>The contenders</b></p><p>All Saints, Under the Bridge / Lady Marmalade | Boyzone, A Different Beat | B*Witched, C'est la Vie | Deep Blue Something, Breakfast at Tiffany's | DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Boom! Shake the Room | Fatboy Slim, Praise You | Hanson, MMMBop | Lou Bega, Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...) | Michael Jackson, Black or White | Tori Amos, Professional Widow (It's Got to Be Big)</p><p><b>Harpooning the worst</b></p><p>Let's harpoon some blubber before we've even cast anchor. <b>Lou Bega</b> can get lost, with his mangling of 1940s Cuban instrumental Mambo No. 5. I don't want to know how much he fancies Monica, Erica, Ethel and Ermintrude. </p><p>And apologies to any Friends fans, but I rewatched a load of Friends over lockdown, and it's horribly one-dimensional and depressing. <b>Deep Blue Something</b> are deep blue nothing. </p><p>Oh and no <b>Boyzone</b>. Absolutely no Boyzone.</p><p><b>A black and white decision</b></p><p>That's three of this ten dispatched pretty quickly. Now it gets more difficult. Black or White is <b>Michael Jackson's</b> best single of the 1990s, but that's not saying much. This whole period felt like echoes of his more spectacular past. </p><p>At the other end of the pop careers were <b>All Saints</b> and <b>B*Witched</b>, the first with a questionable cover version and the second with too much denim. </p><p>And that <b>Hanson </b>single was a, er, bop, but have you heard it recently? Utter hogwash.</p><p><b>A Tori victory?</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Which leaves us with three genuinely impressive singles. Boom! Shake the Room, Praise You and Professional Widow.</div><p>I knew all the lyrics to the <b>Fresh Prince's</b> 1993 hit Boom! Shake the Room. "Pump it up, Prince!" I used to shout before going "tick, tick, tick, tick, boom" and doing a bomb impression with my hands. The track was so joyful, and yet hinted towards a violence that would erupt at the 94th Oscars when Smith tolchocked Chris Rock across the choppers. Rather too banging for my liking.</p><p>Next? <b>Fatboy Slim's</b> Praise You topped the charts in early 1999, and was pay-off for Norman Cook's incredible transformation from humble Housemartin into big beat remixer extraordinaire. He brought the Roland TB-303 to the forefront of chart popularism, and even made Cornershop cool. The sample-and-paste simplicity of Praise You had us all dancing around ghetto blasters. </p><p>You may be less aware of <b>Tori Amos's</b> 1997 hit Professional Widow. You could dismiss Amos as kooky, but here was a titanic talent who refused to compromise in an era of uncompromising women: step forward Polly Harvey and Bjork. In a way, it's a shame that the single that topped the UK charts was a Armand van Helden remix, because it reduced her fascinating complexities to vocal fragments. Still. Very much a banger.</p><p><b>Praising the best</b></p><div>Praise You is the best of the batch. It may not have had Christopher Walken defying gravity, as in one of Fatboy Slim's other videos, but it fits my criteria perfectly. It bangs. It bleeps. We're going to go a long, long way together.</div><div><br /></div><div>I guess Mr Slim moves forward to.. the final? Yes, let's have a final. Plenty more of this to come.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">More of the Ultimate 90s number one</a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-73807601408305975422024-02-27T18:21:00.005+00:002024-02-28T09:00:02.679+00:00Ultimate 90s number one: an introduction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOeddiIvUc_AkbyMrU8hEyTFhQUuKn1jWapvLR1C6MushyphenhyphenomWa9rMflI-oN8T5LaOor7ZUWMr8PDfw4B3hiGLV2ZZZffCRqhLaTVq06u_t6PUONqj90XQCNZedDRqm150PuLUc7n2oyrViQVUtoTw5g1MZuCMdmLfU00oDRb7BN2urW0iHnWRP/s500/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one%20web.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="500" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOeddiIvUc_AkbyMrU8hEyTFhQUuKn1jWapvLR1C6MushyphenhyphenomWa9rMflI-oN8T5LaOor7ZUWMr8PDfw4B3hiGLV2ZZZffCRqhLaTVq06u_t6PUONqj90XQCNZedDRqm150PuLUc7n2oyrViQVUtoTw5g1MZuCMdmLfU00oDRb7BN2urW0iHnWRP/w400-h160/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one%20web.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>What can be said of the 1990s? Blur versus Oasis, war, the rise of grunge, Nelson Mandela meeting the Spice Girls, cults, Dolly the sheep somehow not having a novelty number one hit, the Euro, David Bowie going jungle.</p><p>Above all, it was a fascinating decade for music. Rock music got all grubby, and dance music got all aggressive. We didn't think twice about puppets and animated characters topping the charts, or about worshipping boy bands that were closet tax-dodgers or Tories.</p><p>So, it is time to decide. What was the <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">best UK number one single of the 1990s</a>?</p><p>How hard can it be to find out? All I need to do is listen to all of the number one singles from that decade, then blog about them until I decide what's best.</p><p>How will I organise this? I'll do them in batches of ten, randomly picked from a big long list I've copied from the Official Charts website. Other than that list, and listening to the music, there will be no preplanning. It'll be like one of those internet reaction videos, but really slow because it's a blog.</p><p>And how will I judge what's best? Firstly, I'll ask the all-important question. Is it a banger? In other words, how well written is the track? Does it poke your ears with a knitting needle? If you played it at a party, would people drop their sausage rolls in amazement?</p><p>Secondly, I will judge each track on the basis of this being an an electronic music blog. This will skew things somewhat, but this is an electronic music blog, so them's the rules. Does it have a pleasing bleepiness? Would a robot rock to this? Would it get their antennae in a twist? To be frank, this is going to rule out a lot of number one singles pretty quickly.</p><p>So there we go. Batches of ten until I get through all of the 1990s UK number one singles. No particular blog schedule: I'll post updates as and when I get time. By the end of it, I'll have a winner. Probably.</p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/search/label/Ultimate%2090s%20number%20one">See all of the posts (so far) in this series.</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-81473266419631104032024-01-10T08:08:00.002+00:002024-01-10T09:32:49.457+00:00Dance music has far better lyrics than Liam Gallagher and John Squire<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpaCuHSOJRsY4uFPWpXXOn42bi8rGyuM_yEuj0ji1IaoJSq1Mo_Mqg811EKLR6jhJWLajRJoL551sdaSvUH1jRyw3tNQG3zQF1_sm3a2NRo4VJisYOvbpZ8qMeGnALZsXr5tMBBsF5bu0XvRvzKvPMmYoO0e8NIhe1PNb_hy5u0t3TIwNUkWht/s1024/Liam%20Gallagher%20fat%20roland%20blog%20jan%202024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpaCuHSOJRsY4uFPWpXXOn42bi8rGyuM_yEuj0ji1IaoJSq1Mo_Mqg811EKLR6jhJWLajRJoL551sdaSvUH1jRyw3tNQG3zQF1_sm3a2NRo4VJisYOvbpZ8qMeGnALZsXr5tMBBsF5bu0XvRvzKvPMmYoO0e8NIhe1PNb_hy5u0t3TIwNUkWht/w400-h400/Liam%20Gallagher%20fat%20roland%20blog%20jan%202024.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>'Just Another Rainbow' is the new song by Liam Gallagher and John Squire. A meeting of musical minds that has Oasis and Stone Roses fans drinking celebratory lager from their bucket hats.</p><p>The single is predictable enough. I won't link to the actual song here, in the same way I wouldn't show you a photograph of a turd I'd found in a nearby alleyway. But I can tell you Gallagher sounds like a donkey on a torture rack, while Squire is so unmemorable, I've already forgotten what instrument he plays. Balalaika? Kazoo?</p><p>What I wasn't prepared for was how bad the lyrics would be. I wasn't expecting Oscar Wilde, but the lyrics are so banal, I thought the Oxford English Dictionary had glitched and all the good words had fallen out. Here are the main offenders:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>"Just another rainbow dripping on my tree."</p><p>"Red and orange, yellow and green. blue, indigo, violet. We've crossed a line."</p><p>"Just another rainbow paying the bills. Am I your windmill?"</p></blockquote><p>One thing can be certain is that the boys have never seen a rainbow. A rainbow has never offered financial support for my household amenities, never mind been used as a wind-powered turbine. At least they got the colours right, although a true 'bow connoisseur would include infrared and ultraviolet.</p><p>This is why dance music is much better than this turgid indie pop. Dance music has a history of innovative lyrics that really speak to the human condition. Its music makers put thought in the message they want to purvey. It is music for intelligent people.</p><p>I'm almost reluctant to do this, because I don't want to shame Liam and John. But here are list of the most insightful dance music lyrics of all time. Next time, lads, put your guitars down and don your raving gloves. You may learn a thing or two.,,</p><p><b>Black Box: Everybody Everybody</b> – "(Everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody) Oh, everybody (Everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody) Everybody, oh everybody. (Everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody) Everybody."</p><p><b>DJ Snake: Get Low </b>– "Get low, get get get low, get low, get get get low, get low, get get get low, get low, get get get low, get low, get get get low, get low, get get get low, get low, get get get low, get low, get get get low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low."</p><p><b>Fatboy Slim: The Rockafeller Skank </b>– "Bout, 'bout, 'bout, 'bout, 'bout, 'bout, 'bout, 'bout, funk, funk, funk, funk, funk, funk, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro." </p><p><b>Roni Size: Brown Paper Bag </b>– "Step step step step step step step step step step, p-p-paper paper paper paper paper, mmmmmmmmmmmm."</p><p><b>Duck Sauce: Barbra Streisand </b>– "Oo-oo who-oo-oo whooo-oo oo-oo, oo-oo who-oo-oo whooo-oo oo-oo, oo-oo who-oo-oo whooo-oo, Barbra Streisand."</p><p>No wait, hold on. These are way to repetitive. I need something more insightful. Lyrics with real thought. Proper deep thinking as if they were written by Albert Einstein or Lorraine Kelly or something. Right. Here we go...</p><p><b>Prodigy: Memphis Belles </b>– "Lick it once, lick it twice, c'mon, put that sh*t on ice."</p><p><b>Calvin Harris: The Girls </b>– "I like them black girls, I like them white girls, I like them Asian girls, I like them mixed-race girls [etc etc etc]"</p><p><b>Scooter: Friends Turbo </b>– "Can you tell me, how do I get off the bus?"</p><p>Ye gods, who ARE these monsters? This is going horribly wrong. Excuse me while I dig into my Warp Records collection. There must be something intelligent in those old purple twelve-inches. Intelligent techno and all that. Ah, here we are...</p><p><b>LFO: LFO </b>– "LFO."</p><p><b>Tricky Disco: Tricky Disco </b>– "Tricky disco."</p><p>I give up.</p><p><i>Pictured: A hyperfuturistic digital 3D rendering of Liam Gallagher</i></p><div><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2011/01/guest-post-crimes-against-crimes.html">Further Fats: Guest post – Crimes against crimes against keyboards (2011)</a></p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2021/02/there-is-one-john-cage-joke-and-it-is.html">Further Fats: There is one John Cage joke and it is this (2021)</a></p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-38557668217486088382024-01-05T08:37:00.001+00:002024-01-05T08:37:21.802+00:00On the Slipmat with Saturn: a Gorillaz-inspired microstory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi-eQP19uSBdj3KH7TzwlyNqERfXWu8YCvvV7Fc8XQrhGM7H5HT_p-DhWr5FpKLrQDZCUAid547snMcGDVA2f0aodLx7slkSdyrT90xHPXkOMdEap7pGe3orfZP36WyxB35F7jyPXifWiQuF0PTA8bU78ggZwYPsm_Bfybd_BrlwNFi3GzkdgL/s1024/Slimpat%20Saturn%20fat%20roland%20blog%20jan%202024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi-eQP19uSBdj3KH7TzwlyNqERfXWu8YCvvV7Fc8XQrhGM7H5HT_p-DhWr5FpKLrQDZCUAid547snMcGDVA2f0aodLx7slkSdyrT90xHPXkOMdEap7pGe3orfZP36WyxB35F7jyPXifWiQuF0PTA8bU78ggZwYPsm_Bfybd_BrlwNFi3GzkdgL/w400-h400/Slimpat%20Saturn%20fat%20roland%20blog%20jan%202024.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>I found the following text in my blog drafts. It was an attempt at a picture story, a little micro-fiction slash thought poem, with added pretty pics. The images are taken from the video for <i>Saturnz Barz</i> by Gorillaz, which came out when I wrote this piece seven years ago. Time to finally publish it.<div><br /></div><div><b>On the Slipmat with Saturn</b><br /><div><br /></div><div>I was browsing someone else's record collection. Leafing through the seven-inches, flipping them to check the b-sides. You only really know someone by the quality of their b-sides.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMU-_ZVOKugXH7hSYm1L1o6ov1EdCkFiWyQ821jmtVa6d2iqH_En9lsJWcuGwWtP3bkv8GARN8tJnPd7YpcA-FrWURDKSYjvL_ox8sOVA5HtZzkSxwSFXRKJUsGybjy66sv_YS/s1600/GRZrecords.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMU-_ZVOKugXH7hSYm1L1o6ov1EdCkFiWyQ821jmtVa6d2iqH_En9lsJWcuGwWtP3bkv8GARN8tJnPd7YpcA-FrWURDKSYjvL_ox8sOVA5HtZzkSxwSFXRKJUsGybjy66sv_YS/s400/GRZrecords.jpg" width="400" /></a>
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There was still something thrilling about placing the record over the spindle. The satisfying 'clump' as the disc settles onto the slipmat. A physical experience before a single note has hit you.<br />
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<br /><div><div>The needle travelled the grooves as the music played. A seemingly endless spiral. Satisfaction in ever-decreasing circles. My mind wandered more freely than that. Lost in eddies and twirls, beyond geometry. </div><div><br /></div>
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<br /><div><div>"You like it when my record goes round, huh?" The fifty-foot worm appeared from nowhere. It seemed flattered. A kindred spirit, connected in musical taste if not in anatomy. I handled it well. My screams were in tune with the music.</div></div><div><br /></div>
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<br /><div>How we listened. Let the bass shake us. We jumped between tracks together, hand and tentacle on stylus. Our minds found a rhythm. We travelled to space. Rockets and planets and nebula, playing music in the infinite vacuum with my huge bendy friend.</div><div><br /></div>
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<div><br /></div><div>You can plan your days. Play the music you want to listen to. But sometimes the needle doesn't go the way you want it to. Life can become the b-side. You will know this has happened when you find yourself travelling along a different kind of spiral.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>
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<br />Me and the worm. And the satisfying 'clump' as a new record begins.</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Pictured: A hyperfuturistic digital 3D rendering of the worm from the Gorillaz video</i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-got-pop-song-i-got-melody.html">Further Fats: I got the pop song, I got the melody (about earworms, 2011)</a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2020/01/story-meeting-regarding-new-material-by.html">Further Fats: Story: A meeting regarding new material by the electronic music producer Aphex Twin (2020)</a></div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-74702354327072506412023-12-31T13:23:00.010+00:002024-01-01T17:16:06.385+00:00Muskering, sorry, mustering up the courage for 2024<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiliBRS8Q_1-Sy9wgYsPOSoAULj4PbqzFz6I8G_l6LABmb6SueKMDPk9YwEg9GP4ojNt6vS8feCPRd1ntAOzDL1MtrbpwFlonZtiCyU3XaxAOFtH3judMiXTvYUsYC0WlFyLNh5xPyT55cyXHHOR3KO_RoG_On6PVarMIiRumHw0-1llgiQ3Qvz/s1024/fat%20roland%20blog%20Elon%20Musk.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiliBRS8Q_1-Sy9wgYsPOSoAULj4PbqzFz6I8G_l6LABmb6SueKMDPk9YwEg9GP4ojNt6vS8feCPRd1ntAOzDL1MtrbpwFlonZtiCyU3XaxAOFtH3judMiXTvYUsYC0WlFyLNh5xPyT55cyXHHOR3KO_RoG_On6PVarMIiRumHw0-1llgiQ3Qvz/w400-h400/fat%20roland%20blog%20Elon%20Musk.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Hello, it's Fat Roland here. You can think of me as your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Except without the spiders. Or being in your neighbourhood. And I'm not sure how friendly I am. Am I even a man?</p><p>I'm always sceptical about the effectiveness of new years' resolutions, and I certainly didn't have 2023 down as my "stroke year". But let's play some lip service to this annual festival of arbitrary date-based life curation. Here are ten resolutions I have for 2024. And because I like to cheat, I've made a start on some of these already.</p><p>Resolution one. Embrace colour. I wore black for years, but the Johnny Cash aesthetic doesn't really suit my mood. I'm not saying I want to look like Timmy Mallett mating with the Teletubbies, but splashes of colour would be welcome in 2024.</p><p>Resolution two. Come up with more contemporary references than Timmy Mallett and the Teletubbies. That said, Mallett has an endearing TikTok account. Not sure about the social status of Dipsy's gang.</p><p>Resolution three. Build on my amazing day job. This isn't the most exciting of resolutions. It's a bit like a plumber wishing for more pipes. But I enjoy my work at the Burgess Foundation, and I want to push myself to be more efficient and more creative and more of an ultraviolent droog. Watch out for your kneecaps!</p><div>Resolution four. Let writing become the fulcrum of my artistic, erm, lever or something. I really should have looked up the word 'fulcrum' in a dictionary before writing this. I continue my scribbling for Electronic Sound, and in 2024 I shall return to writing short stories. Performance is also a Thing in my life, with a capital T, and I'm sure this will happen to. But writing comes first.</div><p>Resolution sixteen. (I've lost count.) Get cartooning again. Drawing my eggs on social media (see my previous blog post) was a way back into restarting the broken visual section of my brain. Expect more of this in 2024. Not professionally. Just faffing. Proper good faffing.</p><p>Resolution five hundred and ninety six. Be healthy. I did not do a good job of this in 2023. Stupid brain. But this is not just about a better body, although a healthy(ish) lifestyle will certainly help. Better living space, better relationships, better downtime, the whole holistic sausage. No pressure or anything, but if I do not do this exactly right, I will give everyone on earth a million pounds.</p><p>Resolution infinity plus three, and this is related to the previous resolution. Don't have another stroke. This seems obvious, but writing this down makes it official. At some point in 2024, my brain is going to read this back and decide, "Yeah, Fats, that's a cracking idea. Let's not have another stroke."</p><p>Resolution alpha epsilon followed by the eye of Horus. Social media has become a big pile of meh. This scrolling world of ours is fractured, and any one social media platform is not the behemoth it was. The only way to get traction is to personally fist dollar bills into Elon Musk's trousers on the daily. I will post, of course, because people seem to like it. But... let's hold it lightly.</p><p>Resolution a badly drawn picture of an egg. Learn to count. I mean, seriously. I know most of the numbers. Seven. Is seven a number? I'm going to buy a calculator every day until I learn to count to ten.</p><p>Resolution ten. Yes! I did it! Carry on blogging. Sorry to disappoint you with this, but this tired old blog will drag itself onwards like a knackered horse attempting a never-ending lap of the glue factory. This has been my worst complete blogging year in history but HEY, I HAVE REASONS FOR THAT. However, this is my home, and this is where my words belong, and I am grateful for your visit.</p><p>Happy new year. As Spider-Man would say, to 2024 and beyond!</p><p><i>Pictured: Hyperfuturistic digital 3D rendering of Elon Musk</i></p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2005/01/my-new-year-pub-gorman-egg-pi.html">Further Fats: My New Year: pub, Gorman, egg, pi (2005)</a></p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2021/01/happy-new-2021-fat-roland.html">Further Fats: Happy new 2021 Fat Roland (2021)</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-47983592970163076402023-12-13T18:59:00.013+00:002023-12-13T19:07:08.222+00:00Eggvent: it's what Father Christmegg would have wanted<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2MKVOd4eodlYkzANC7QQOyeQdm3npElLDWrpMFY68ATTa74umitEf9qNTpGZAPya1efZLl1HRmUcJULV3B1F51U4hpRPq0Z0uVkN3Ib6UIEnN5IOJ6bJMn4M7mrj1Ov2COISfU27v_9UtsP-fO5VQJt_v6gdu-P_3YlmrsdSVbZVKq6OOFuxH/s1024/Egg%20East%2017%20fat%20roland%20blog.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2MKVOd4eodlYkzANC7QQOyeQdm3npElLDWrpMFY68ATTa74umitEf9qNTpGZAPya1efZLl1HRmUcJULV3B1F51U4hpRPq0Z0uVkN3Ib6UIEnN5IOJ6bJMn4M7mrj1Ov2COISfU27v_9UtsP-fO5VQJt_v6gdu-P_3YlmrsdSVbZVKq6OOFuxH/w400-h400/Egg%20East%2017%20fat%20roland%20blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Eggs. Loads of eggs. Everything is full of eggs. <p></p><p>As readers of this blog will know, I've had quite a year. My brain went bang and I've been recovering ever since. To be fair to my brain, it is doing a brilliant job of helping me recover even though it's my stupid brain that caused all this trouble in the first place. I am working again, and writing, and going to gigs, and doing many things a normal human would do.</p><p>I've been slower to get back to cartooning. Lots of screen time makes me tired. When I'm creating cartoons digitally, that involves peering at pixels for long stretches of time. This is no good. I had to come up with a way of getting back to cartooning that wouldn't overwhelm me.</p><p>The solution? Eggs. Lots of eggs. They are easy to draw. There is no shape more simple than an egg shape. This is geometric fact. Look at triangles: eeeugh, they're so complex and full of angles. Unlike an egg, which is easy. Anyone can draw an egg, even if they have a brain made of bent spanners.</p><p>My egg series has been published on my social media throughout this month, It is, of course, advent themed. "Eggvent." There has been a nativity shepherd that's an egg. Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer that's an egg. The robot from the Dr Who episode 'Wild Blue Yonder'... that's also an egg with a Chrimbo hat on.</p><p>The latest one is the Christmas chart topping London band East 17 as eggs. Who, of course, had an excellent hit single with the chorus "Everybody in the house of l'oeuf." I just thought of that on the spot. Maybe my brain isn't so spannered after all.</p><p>What's next? I could do other foodstuffs. Potatoes. They're kind of egg-shaped. Sausages. They're just oblong eggs. Broccoli? No, way too complicated.</p><p>Follow my egg exploits (my eggsploits) on <a href="https://twitter.com/fatroland" target="_blank">Twitter (X)</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/fat_roland/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/fatroland" target="_blank">Facebook</a> or <a href="https://bsky.app/" target="_blank">Bluesky</a>.</p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2005/04/weebl-bob-pimp-kudos-joy.html"><b><i>Further eggy Fats: Weebl & Bob pimp kudos joy (2005)</i></b></a></p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2014/01/this-is-what-happens-when-i-change-my.html"><b><i>Further eggy Fats: This is what happens when I change my Facebook profile picture (2014)</i></b></a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-73252989290210215372023-11-27T20:59:00.003+00:002023-11-27T20:59:45.761+00:00Ancient potted shrubbery: some thoughts on the new Beatles track<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHBUjbnBiIaZWr6DdxPv0dN3tyWL5sJ0VxwF6AnJgTL_Oa9ylOqwLsQfr3IAVLRPJZ9XB0vBp1bh1I-bO-sEaZyJov1mvAAX9HYuoJ4g6XT62fHkkp8ioX9UWDfO_aExcGuY_RwhnliKWSWMHdnScGQfkV9mT6awqTqYwXtSAoSSS5ZO2mALR/s1000/beatle%20cartooon%20fat%20roland%20blog.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHBUjbnBiIaZWr6DdxPv0dN3tyWL5sJ0VxwF6AnJgTL_Oa9ylOqwLsQfr3IAVLRPJZ9XB0vBp1bh1I-bO-sEaZyJov1mvAAX9HYuoJ4g6XT62fHkkp8ioX9UWDfO_aExcGuY_RwhnliKWSWMHdnScGQfkV9mT6awqTqYwXtSAoSSS5ZO2mALR/w400-h400/beatle%20cartooon%20fat%20roland%20blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>The brand new Beatles song <i>Now And Then</i> caused quite the stir. The lost Lennon song returned them to the number one spot for the first time since 1969. That's an awfully long time. To be fair, <i>Free As A Bird</i> should have been top of the pops in 1995, but the exorable <i>Earth Song</i> kept it off number one.</p><p>I should be frothing at the gills for a new single by the Beatles. Truth is, the Beatles never really excited me. Yeah, I know their place in history. Their phenomenal production techniques, their tape-twisting sonic savviness, the blueprint they set for the rest of time. But songs about submarines and octopuses seemed so childish. Says the man who owns numerous cartoon rave singles.</p><p>I spent many of my younger years in the Manchester Boys Choir, a well-regarded choir that hit the buffers when its choirmaster turned out to be a wrong 'un. My overwhelming memory of our repertoire was singing the iconic Beatles song <i>Yesterday</i> over and over again. And again. And again. This was not a good thing. It quashed any kind of Beatlemania I could have developed as a child.</p><p>As a fan of dance music, I should be into the Beatles by law. The references throughout the history of electronic bleeps are legion. The Chemical Brothers paid tribute to the Beatles on more than one occasion, from aping <i>Tomorrow Never Knows</i> for <i>Setting Sun,</i> to dropping in a snippet of <i>Revolution 9</i> into <i>Chemical Beats</i>. </p><p>Danger Mouse spliced <i>The White Album</i> with Jay Z for <i>The Grey Album, </i>one of the most interesting mash-up albums. You can hear a bit of the Beatles in the Black Dog's <i>Book Of Dogma</i>, and on UNKLE's <i>Psyence Fiction</i> album. And Massive Attack directly referenced <i>Here Comes The Sun</i> on their <i>Blue Lines</i> album.</p><p>Having said all this, a few years ago, I did make a video about the Beatles. It called The Fabulous Four, made for a project called Let The Artists In. The cartoon video has television snakes, ancient potted shrubbery, a safety-conscious canary, and an unexpected fourth member of the Beatles. Absolute glorious nonsense. And quite fitting too: I have a copy of John Lennon's In His Own Write, which is also full of cartoon daftery.</p><p>Incidentally, the silly Ringo reference in the video was taken from my Seven Inch show (2018/2019). The Beatles sketches featured in the video are the actual A3 cartoon props used in that show.</p><p>There you go. A blog post about the Beatles. And I didn't mention Candy Flip once.</p><p><style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style></p><div class="embed-container"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G1DQDgRvpSU"></iframe></div><p></p><p>A few years ago, I suc</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-79177406892390967312023-10-30T16:29:00.004+00:002023-10-30T16:29:58.598+00:00Things I am willing to sell for Underworld<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDwW7qvDCZCS4SA4LtILIzymFw8RMe3xNi5ehLvUIakNuZqIggE3_ulPnIjqHddDSEwDVNPebal2alUWCqpGyQGSaSS6AVxO3RtG5Ju1EeualNP1XfcXXUgIrCQSWKCakUxUx9vFlP3p6otORtD2YcWl1WjaLPuU3LiGfdwCLu79WYCEdbn3Ht/s1133/fat%20roland%20blog%20fats%20and%20a%20rabbit%20of%20course.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1133" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDwW7qvDCZCS4SA4LtILIzymFw8RMe3xNi5ehLvUIakNuZqIggE3_ulPnIjqHddDSEwDVNPebal2alUWCqpGyQGSaSS6AVxO3RtG5Ju1EeualNP1XfcXXUgIrCQSWKCakUxUx9vFlP3p6otORtD2YcWl1WjaLPuU3LiGfdwCLu79WYCEdbn3Ht/w361-h400/fat%20roland%20blog%20fats%20and%20a%20rabbit%20of%20course.jpg" width="361" /></a></div><p>Underworld are playing in Manchester next year, and I completely failed to get a ticket.</p><p>No. You don't understand. I am really, really into Underworld. I've listened to loads of their songs. Like, more than ten of them. I've followed them from before you even grew ears. And I failed to get tickets. Call myself a fan? This is pathetic.</p><p>The news of their latest show passed me by. I must have received an email, but it was subsumed into a mire of spam messages and mailing list gunk. I must have been pinged by Facebook, or poked or shanked or whatever Facebook does these days. But the notification would have been lost in an endless scrolling carousel of political memes and nostalgia clickbaits.</p><p>So if you are selling a ticket for Underworld's Manchestet show in April 2024, here are ten things I would be willing to trade in return for said ticket:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>An arm</p><p>A leg</p><p>One little finger</p><p>That green patch on my shoulder that seems to change shape every day</p><p>My shadow</p><p>All but three of my regrets</p><p>My ability to taste semolina</p><p>A greckel, whatever that is</p><p>The angry accountant that lives in my loft because I demand to have prime numbers shouted at me every 41 seconds</p><p>The value of the ticket</p></blockquote><p>The Underworld gig is at Aviva Studios, Manchester's brand new mega-venue run by Factory International. I went there for Danny Boyle's Free Your Mind, a dance show based on The Matrix and Alan Turing. Which sounds awful, and the second half was ropey, but the first half was mesmerising and full of surprises.</p><p>Also I had two interesting encounters at the Danny Boyle show. One: I met a giant rabbit. Two: I met Danny Boyle. I only have a picture of one of these encounters, as you can see in the picture above. I wonder if the rabbit had an Underworld ticket. Hmmm. Should have checked its pockets.</p><p>Note to self: Always check rabbit pockets for elusive merch.</p><p><iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4287518067/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=e99708/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=788626600/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="https://underworld.bandcamp.com/album/drift-series-1-complete">DRIFT Series 1 - Complete by Underworld</a></iframe></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-38953763802579245412023-09-30T17:11:00.004+01:002023-09-30T17:12:08.789+01:00A yammer about planners and crammers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_mlrHtfwQfD2Vh8gdrrVIF0tGk7Hgc-tTQ2spKqEAqULPZrRYnX-ygBf_Wipy0qPMRD192U9FqOQi531Pe0ZWRpwqSbsgQnrd6FMExW6-oSu0T2U7rArJlmdGoBOQxx4RaY7sdUosUR-aNF0qs75p_YDCDiTyVDl3u_GFjhgZ16kYiyh6C2C7/s1000/fat%20roland%20blog%20writing%20projects.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_mlrHtfwQfD2Vh8gdrrVIF0tGk7Hgc-tTQ2spKqEAqULPZrRYnX-ygBf_Wipy0qPMRD192U9FqOQi531Pe0ZWRpwqSbsgQnrd6FMExW6-oSu0T2U7rArJlmdGoBOQxx4RaY7sdUosUR-aNF0qs75p_YDCDiTyVDl3u_GFjhgZ16kYiyh6C2C7/w400-h400/fat%20roland%20blog%20writing%20projects.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>There are two ways of approaching deadlines. There's planning, and then there's cramming.</p><p>Planners will be methodical in their use of time. They will make lists, draw charts and use coloured pens to track their progress. They embrace routine, and know that a little goes a long way. They are the organisation equivalent of Doctor Who's Weeping Angels, slowly creeping forward knowing that they will eventually snog their victim to death. Is that what the Weeping Angels did? I can't remember.</p><p>Crammers will leave things until the last minute. A deadline is an abstract concept to be ignored, like death or mortgages or Pokemon. They will wait until the white heat of a deadline is burning their eyeballs before starting a project. And that's when they will do their best work. Like Superman only saving things at the last minute because he suddenly remembers he could rotate the Earth in a backwards direction and therefore reverse time, a chunk of scientific bunkum that would have left Isaac Newton literally spinning in his grave. </p><p>I realise this sounds awfully binary. Planners and crammers. Opposite sides of a coin, like odd socks versus matching socks, toilet roll positioning, Tennant stans versus Smith stans, or techno heads arguing over their favourite Orbital brother.</p><p>The truth is, life is not binary. Real lift is nuanced, with gradations of grey, or 'greydations' for short. True joy is found in the inbetween places, in neither one extreme nor the other. How else can you explain the beauty of twilight, the thrill of salted caramel, or your third child who is neither the prettiest not the brightest but, y'know, they're a good kid.</p><p>But if we are to buy into the pseudo-psychological device of identifying people as planners or crammers then I am most definitely a crammer. I need deadlines to add spark to my creativity. It's why this blog post exists: I promised that I wouldn't go a month without blogging, and look, here we are, on the last day of the month squeezing out a blog turd before the month is flushed away.</p><p>A while ago, I posted about a rather large medical crisis. I am doing well, and my medical stats are good. Last week. my GP rang me to tell me how well I was doing, and how handsome I was, and how if I was to ride a horse, I would ride it brilliantly. Something like that anyway; I wasn't really listening. But yes, I am surviving well. Thriving, even.</p><p>This does mean that next month, I am going to step up my creative projects. I am back to full-time at the Burgess Foundation, and I have continued to pen my column for Electronic Sound magazine. In a few weeks, I will step up my commitments by increasing my writing work.</p><p>This does mean I'm going to have to learn to plan*. Now that I'm using assistive technology for read and write, and now that I am susceptible to the kind of fatigue that is probably common for people whose brains have exploded, I'm going to have to get organised. Writing diaries, wordcount deadlines, not starting my end-of-year album countdown a few days before the end of the year. Planning, not cramming.</p><p>There are three, not two, ways of approaching deadlines. There's planning. There's cramming. And there's planning the cramming, a whole new third nexus of human operation that will (a) blow a hole in all of our existing realities and (b) maybe guarantee that I produce more than one blog post a month.</p><p>* "I'm going to have to learn to plan" makes me sound super amateurish, as if I'm careening from one calamity to another. I'm actually an excellent planner. I remember to empty my bin before the bin lorry comes and everything.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-46463680661250227872023-08-31T19:10:00.009+01:002023-08-31T19:23:25.605+01:00Twitter: a pile of collapsed scaffolding populated by only bird crap and rats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyC3gET1au9T8DYSWqad4EuvGmxB2qgdPWBSY2VK4mAXiKqTXBQG8kyPzm5sgbD5VOfls8ta7XVTm5xWbKYWENOp6eRx2W-fs1qQKzYYjimwmWtG5RWutL2PjMGJgdzC67dUwaDpbR52b-E3ssVyJSyVJoLyTxydRnYg0mrGVyAoZ-n-k0SKnO/s1000/doja%20cat%201000px%20fat%20roland%20blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyC3gET1au9T8DYSWqad4EuvGmxB2qgdPWBSY2VK4mAXiKqTXBQG8kyPzm5sgbD5VOfls8ta7XVTm5xWbKYWENOp6eRx2W-fs1qQKzYYjimwmWtG5RWutL2PjMGJgdzC67dUwaDpbR52b-E3ssVyJSyVJoLyTxydRnYg0mrGVyAoZ-n-k0SKnO/w400-h400/doja%20cat%201000px%20fat%20roland%20blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Every now and then I will publish a 'my favourite tweets' blog post, because it's easy content and I am so super lazy.<div><br /></div><div>Except, I can't do that anymore, can I. Twitter is now a waste ground, a pile of collapsed scaffolding populated by only bird crap and rats. It's not even called Twitter anymore. It's called Eggs or something. Absolute rubbish.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which is a shame. I quite liked the synergy between my Twitter feed and this blog. Twitter definitely fed this blog. And sometimes I would fart out a tweet with very little forethought, and that would inspire a blog post.</div><div><br /></div><div>Facebook isn't in great shape either. Recently I read every single post on Facebook that had ever been published in the history of humankind, and 98% of them were a picture of a cassette tape and a pencil, next to the words "like this picture if you know what the link is". I'm old enough to remember cassette tapes. We didn't use pencils to wind them. We use tape players. They had fast forward buttons. AND a rewind button. Pencils?! Jeez.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then there's Instagram and Threads and Blue Balls and Mastubate and honestly I can't keep up with the modem world. In my day, the only way you could publish something was to cave ten commandments into a stone tablet then hike up a mountain until you were smited by God.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good job Blogger is still massively trendy. All the kids are on Blogger. Skateboards, handstands, tank tops, blogs. These are all the cool things that cool kids keep cool to.</div><div><br /></div><div>Crikes. What a waste of a blog post. This is worse than Twitter. I could have written something interesting, such as the fact that the top seven positions in the current UK singles chart are occupied by women, or how to get Pot Noodle stains out of a vicar's underwear. But no. More semi-translucent thoughts vomited into a cavern of nothing.</div><div><br /></div><div>I shall end this blog post with a list of my five favourite tweets, although they're not real tweets because I just made them up right here right now.</div><div><br /></div><div>1. Aaaaargh.</div><div><br /></div><div>2. Aaaaaaaaaargh.</div><div><br /></div><div>3. Seriously, is someone going to help me, I'm up to my neck in frogs.</div><div><br /></div><div>4. Aaaaargh. Why are you typing? Stop typing. The frogs!</div><div><br /></div><div>5. Oh hi. A frog here. Ignore the screaming. Nothing suspicious going on here. Go about your day. Pay no attention to the millions of frogs with knives. Nope. Everything is normal.</div><div><br /></div><div>* As of week ending 31 August 2023. In order: Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat (pictured), Taylor Swift, Peggy Gou, Becky Hill.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-13895306384557913252023-08-20T19:13:00.005+01:002023-08-20T19:13:39.031+01:00Belief to the Max: What my brain enjoyed at BlueDot 2023<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOE0dqU_r6l4VigVmNfjxnLxwxMdUqNcncZf-B0-VMAK508kyrIn6khTYLxv5mYeeTvv0GBKMLbr6mDV_0fz4cgoE9Fd124aKmyR5tlUjCKSQfwe7YMnwv2yAp_LoFXdBDOqeZdBsHu9GA1-Pt0hlCo0pL7wkNLzTVAdfUB5VbMEFWN13htOqc/s512/Bluedot%20A%20512x512.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOE0dqU_r6l4VigVmNfjxnLxwxMdUqNcncZf-B0-VMAK508kyrIn6khTYLxv5mYeeTvv0GBKMLbr6mDV_0fz4cgoE9Fd124aKmyR5tlUjCKSQfwe7YMnwv2yAp_LoFXdBDOqeZdBsHu9GA1-Pt0hlCo0pL7wkNLzTVAdfUB5VbMEFWN13htOqc/s16000/Bluedot%20A%20512x512.jpg" /></a></div><p>I never thought I would make it to BlueDot Festival. As mentioned in a previous blog post, my brain exploded and I've been quite poorly.</p><p>But made it, I did. It was a real achievement, like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, or even more impressively, the moon walking all over Neil Armstrong. One small step for a pre-stroke Roland, but a giant leap considering my recent circumstances. </p><p>BlueDot is an annual festival dedicated to music and science. The music often has an electronic music bent, which is my favourite kind of bent. And the science side of the programming is especially relevant because the festival takes place at the Jodrell Bank observatory, its giant outer space magic dish looming wherever you go.</p><p>Honestly, that dish is so dang cool, firing its radio waves with abandon at the furthest reaches of space. The dish constantly moves throughout the weekend, and during headline performances it becomes the trendiest projection screen this side of Venus. The dish is especially exciting for Doctor Who fans, of which there are many at BlueDot. Firstly, a TV prop version of the telescope killed off the Tom Baker Doctor Who. And secondly, the dish often moves position when you're not looking, like those scary statues in Blink.</p><p>So let's go through some favourite acts from the weekend.</p><p>Pop powerhouse Georgia plays all of the instruments all of the time. Joyous sunshine on a cloudy day. Her father Leftfield also played the festival, Neil Barnes' perfect sound design making him a contender for the loudest act of the weekend, perhaps tying in the decibel destruction stakes with the raucous Snapped Ankles.</p><p>We danced like crazy to Acid Klaus, a wonderfully hedonistic party band led by Adrian Flanagan from the International Teachers Of Pop. Onipa was my surprise of the weekend. They gave us a relentless Afrobeat explosion led by human Duracell bunny KOG. Irresistible Ghanaian rhythms colliding enthusiastically with UK electronica. And the bawdy electrostomp of MADMADMAD brought on the cowbell apocalypse while, later in the gig, channeling the ferocity of very early Chemical Brothers.</p><p>There was so much more, including Grace Jones and TVAM and Creep Show, but let's end things with my top two bestest fave acts of the weekend. </p><p>Belief were in many ways on of the simplest acts in the line-up. Two guys, a bunch of gear, not much else. But when it's acid house of such housey acidity, I'm not complaining. Oh, it was so good. </p><p>And all hail Max Cooper, whose audiovisual extravaganza I'd failed to catch on two previous occasions. He. Was. Stunning. One of the best gigs I've been to, with super duper techno gorgeousness soundtracking colossal juxtaposing visuals. I mean, really colossal. Front rail, eyes the size of jellyfish, brain flung into the cosmos.</p><p>There's much I missed, including most of Grace Jones because I was busy maxxing out to Max Cooper. The endless deluge of mud curtailed much of my casual browsing, so I missed Adam Buxton and Toby Hadoke and Pavement. The one talk I did catch was the brilliant Matthew Cobb talking about all the horrible diseases that are going to destroy humankind. Maybe not the best talk to attend when you're up to your neck in mud, but hey ho.</p><p>A special shout-out to Nina, Nick, Dave, my surprise neighbour Angela from Nine Arches Press, my glamping tent which lessened the worst effects of the mid, the topless drunk dancer who fed me pizza, and the horrible person who did a big Mr Whippy poo in the showers.</p><p>Roll on 2024.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwFfE4M2F8s_5afa-2an7WJWSu0UYbIHDutrWAjiaefJSz2daYZZB--hxJ0PVvZjhbAFvXsLYKxHFFg0U1ftqrMHcqnFErVpZoswsfNQGvRsSa8BzvxOVPPa8PGEkoYVxgEG-8ABEDCwWtljEBdHw_5c9ZvsL_AMVmpYszwYkmBlOcxAuxJss7/s512/Bluedot%20B%20512x512.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwFfE4M2F8s_5afa-2an7WJWSu0UYbIHDutrWAjiaefJSz2daYZZB--hxJ0PVvZjhbAFvXsLYKxHFFg0U1ftqrMHcqnFErVpZoswsfNQGvRsSa8BzvxOVPPa8PGEkoYVxgEG-8ABEDCwWtljEBdHw_5c9ZvsL_AMVmpYszwYkmBlOcxAuxJss7/s16000/Bluedot%20B%20512x512.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-58138768618605420232023-08-13T13:42:00.001+01:002023-08-13T13:42:17.105+01:0050<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvo6J8kogF-kyeKar3x6lTFAIEbI4z16nP9VIZE9n8rhEjD8iy4B3p42QSqncZBH4bUv65onpoRlJf7KcT4ycZaBoAP1cvdWgytGh7Qsu3YZYQCe_LS9gkujVkoXhfPfy6SDyDFHqu8W7SZsgEGn4nki0SxepXrFEd_TG1U-82kpaj5H8Dt7SY/s1024/50%20square.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvo6J8kogF-kyeKar3x6lTFAIEbI4z16nP9VIZE9n8rhEjD8iy4B3p42QSqncZBH4bUv65onpoRlJf7KcT4ycZaBoAP1cvdWgytGh7Qsu3YZYQCe_LS9gkujVkoXhfPfy6SDyDFHqu8W7SZsgEGn4nki0SxepXrFEd_TG1U-82kpaj5H8Dt7SY/w400-h400/50%20square.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />I'm 50 years old today. The full Five Oh. In da club with 50 Cent. 50 wheels on my wagon.<p></p><p>I don't really know how I got here. I started this blog when I was 31. And now here I am, on a diet of coal dust and zimmer frames. I remember when this was all fields.</p><p>I'm super grateful to reach this landmark. It is, of course, completely arbitrary. I might as well measure my life in shapes or whisks or Aphex Twin Soundcloud tracks. Still. It's a sense of achievement, like getting your steps in or putting the bins out.</p><p>My original plans for this landmark birthday were grand. Go clubbing. Ride on a pleasure cruise. Launch a rocket and punch Jupiter in the face. But I scaled down my ambitions. I've had to make do with drinks with friends, which has been a whole bucket of lovely. Friends are great, aren't they.</p><p>Can I derive any special meaning from having my 50th today? Probably not. <i>Barbie Girl</i> by Aqua is currently number 50 in the singles chart, an unwelcome revival prompted by the (very good) Barbie movie. At number 50 in the current albums chart is <i>Legend</i>, the greatest hits compilation by Bob Marley and the Wailers. This all seems suitably old school for an old guy.</p><p>How about the number 50 in terms of Warp Records catalogue numbers? WAP50 is the woozy space jam <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUxZz4lVRfA" target="_blank">Wilmot</a> </i>by Sabres of Paradise. That'll do nicely. The track is drunken and lazy and atmospheric and giddy, and I shall wish for no better a metaphor.</p><p>Orbital's fiftieth album track, if you line up their studio albums on Discogs then do a rough count that might be wrong, is the Ian Drury-sampling bovver boy techno stomp <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnTc62PyoQY" target="_blank">Oi!</a></i> Maybe that should set my attitude for the next ten years. Lots of stomping. Shouting "hit me!" a lot. Kick up a bit of trouble.</p><p>Earlier this year, Fifty Fifty became the first female K-pop band to score a top ten single in the UK. <i>Cupid</i> is a sickly-sweet slice of Spice Girls-lite pop that, I think, I've heard knocking about TikTok somewhere. I like this much less than the Orbital and Sabres thing. Forget I ever mentioned this.</p><p>I feel optimistic about my fifties. Partly because I came through a lot to get here, and I'm grateful for being on planet Earth. And also partly because I have an empty brain and I am easily amused, like a puppy or a jellyfish or Ken from the Barbie film.</p><p>Enough waffle about being 50. I've got a pub to go to. I'm going to have 50 pints and them I'm going to have 50 cakes and then I'm going to go to 50 more pubs, because I will double down on this 50 theme until I'm 50 feet under.</p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2012/08/because-melon-only-slightly-birthday.html"><i><b>Further Fats: Because / a melon / only slightly: birthday thoughts (2012)</b></i></a></p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2018/11/five-starring-roles-in-video-for-aphex.html"><i><b>Further Fats: Five starring roles in the video for Aphex Twin's On (2018)</b></i></a></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-89551993862825473492023-07-17T09:57:00.000+01:002023-07-17T09:57:06.285+01:001990s techno just trended on TikTok<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAfFOhsIeDCTc3P7ozcc8W3XMhm2EZ18tnpdX_-85_oJB13RNcEZZotE-aAUOhTLZ-XH4EXA9j_ypXG7Z40brtQiJDKd0HKpR17CLK0cdyEiTvHLO09KIMJAOhmh8JAkmtGDlmec36Q_vPC_i-TcG6vCvWZeii5ab6biJJ_zNCq-E21zkqDbGR/s500/tiktokker%20taylor%20swift%20fan%20Web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAfFOhsIeDCTc3P7ozcc8W3XMhm2EZ18tnpdX_-85_oJB13RNcEZZotE-aAUOhTLZ-XH4EXA9j_ypXG7Z40brtQiJDKd0HKpR17CLK0cdyEiTvHLO09KIMJAOhmh8JAkmtGDlmec36Q_vPC_i-TcG6vCvWZeii5ab6biJJ_zNCq-E21zkqDbGR/s16000/tiktokker%20taylor%20swift%20fan%20Web.jpg" /></a></div><p>Latest news from TikTok land. A user has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66179045" target="_blank">posted about a misprinted vinyl edition</a> of Taylor Swift's <i>Speak Now (Taylor's Version)</i>. Instead of the dulcet tones of Pennsylvania's favourite country music escapee, it played the album <i>Happy Land: A Compendium Of Electronic Music From The British Isles 1992-1996 Vol. 1</i>. Quite the surprise.</p><p>I have to admit something. I know nothing about Taylor Swift's music. I have a good working knowledge of a lot of pop acts – Girls Aloud, Lil Nas X, Pet Shop Boys, Years & Years, Kylie Minogue, Crazy Frog. But Taylor's music leaves me cold, with her being my least preferred speed-themed music star after Rush, Fast Food Rockers and Hurry Styles. (Sorry.) </p><p>TikTokker Rachel Hunter was the victim of an anomaly, like buying a packet of porridge and accidentally getting a vortex to an alternative universe in which glow sticks and tie-dyed t-shirts are the norm. She accidentally found herself listening to:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>Xeper's <i>Carceres Ex Novum</i>, produced by the bloke from The Black Dog and featured on the first <i>Trance Europe Express</i> album.</p><p><i>Soul Vine (70 Billion People)</i> which found Cabaret Voltaire embracing 90s techno while sampling TV show The Outer Limits.</p><p>Thunderhead's 11-minute acid ambient dub monster <i>True Romance</i>. This also appeared on Holistic Recordings' <i>Paul Smith EP</i>, which I don't think has anything to do with the similarly named lead singer of Maxïmo Park.</p></blockquote><p>And more. There's Matthew Herbert, Aphex Twin, and <i>Happy Land</i> by Ultramarine starring the melty vocals of Robert Wyatt.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@mischief_marauder/video/7254267410310532378" target="_blank">original TikTok video</a> is great. She focusses on a sinister Cabaret Voltaire sample. "There's 70 billion people on earth, where are they hiding," says the voice. Fair point. My local Spar is always dead so they're definitely not in there. Where are they? Inside the freezer cabinet? Hiding under the frozen peas? Good question, CabVol.</p><p>I once bought an album called <i>Anthology</i> by the 1990s techno act Pentatonik (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA_iBafjHqA" target="_blank">listen to <i>Green</i> here</a>). A lovely vinyl edition bought from an underground independent Manchester record shop, the name of which escapes me. I was gutted to find two sides were identical: clearly a misprint. I never got it replaced. I've still got it somewhere – it's probably worth, oooh, at least £5.24 now.</p><p>Big up to Above Board Distribution, who I hope will sell loads more copies of their British electronica compilation. I didn't expect 1990s techno to be trending on TikTok. That's like a penny farthing competing the Tour de France. Us old timers will never win, but, y'know, it's nice to be noticed sometimes.</p><p><b><i><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2016/01/tiny-promises-that-get-me-through.html">Further Fats: Tiny promises that get me through (2016)</a></i></b></p><p><b><i><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2022/07/are-number-one-singles-getting-shorter.html">Further Fats: Are number one singles getting shorter? (TL;DR: #1s shorter Y/N?) (2022)</a></i></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-44679255406291547492023-06-30T22:43:00.006+01:002023-07-03T09:06:54.058+01:00Braindance: an update<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjWSq45k7kKFXVk2-1zBTRjv2pbMXjsjsVDTl-JNFGvsyFeLsmZGAsSNxjwUx38sWOLqK4dW1iX3mcwXaJPuy_kVXt7oRb7_l4bPIEAh3QXLGaQxpY5h3Glk3k1SyI6llU_6GFLRRXObA66pB_zDuRIcNt3wlpviKf0dUf0WnlCPSGBdKxUNq-/s500/autechre%20500px%20blog.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Autechre" border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjWSq45k7kKFXVk2-1zBTRjv2pbMXjsjsVDTl-JNFGvsyFeLsmZGAsSNxjwUx38sWOLqK4dW1iX3mcwXaJPuy_kVXt7oRb7_l4bPIEAh3QXLGaQxpY5h3Glk3k1SyI6llU_6GFLRRXObA66pB_zDuRIcNt3wlpviKf0dUf0WnlCPSGBdKxUNq-/s16000/autechre%20500px%20blog.jpg" /></a></div><p>Hello there, reader. My name is Fat Roland. You might remember me from the blog post that leaked an Autechre album that turned out not to be an Autechre (pictured) album, or that blog post about Guru Josh that got a slightly snarky response from Guru Josh's PR people.</p><p>It's nearly two months since I posted about "my personal braindance", a euphemistic name I gave to a stroke that I suffered ten weeks ago. I wrote about my hallucinations, my loss of eyesight and the smattering of internet projects that had to come to an end. <a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2023/05/my-own-personal-braindance.html">Go here to read that blog post.</a></p><p>It has been a while, so I guess we're all due for an update.</p><p>There is good news and bad news. Actually, no. There is only really good news. I am doing well. The hallucinations have calmed down, I'm getting better every week, and I've even lost two and a half stone in weight because I'm being a good boy and eating all of my vegetables. I suffer from dizziness and fatigue, but nothing that I can't handle, and even this is improving week by week.</p><p>My vision has improved. In that original blog post, I talked about hallucinations of an inter-dimensional bicycle and a dog-walking shrub. Since then, I've had no significant visual disruption aside from small glitches. My knackered brain has clearly figured out how my eyes work. Well done, brain. I'm still using visual aids to read text, but I don't need it all of the time, although I get less worn out if I let the technology do the work.</p><p>Another thing that happened to me two months ago, and I didn't mention this originally, is that I was diagnosed with diabetes. Type two, which is twice as cool as type one because that's how numbers work. The undiagnosed diabetes didn't cause the stroke, and the stroke didn't cause the diabetes. They both developed because of my crap lifestyle and being a lardy old sausage.</p><p>The medical system is looking after me. I've been to a diabetes support group, I've had personal phone calls from my GP, and on Monday someone's going to put knives in my eyes to see if my brain has fallen out (or something, I didn't read the letter properly). When you have two major conditions, you suddenly get shoved to the front of medical queues. It's like being a celebrity, but almost dead instead of famous.</p><p>So yes, things are going well. Hurrah. Worst and best moments, aside from (worst) the stroke and (best) surviving the stroke?</p><p>The best moment was when my mates delivered a Cameo message from IndyCar racing driver Romain Grosjean, who had famously risen like a phoenix from the flames in a terrible crash at the 2020 Bahrain formula one grand prix. Romain said some very sweet things which made me cry for joy. I'll post the video one day, if you're allowed to post these type of things.</p><p>The worst moment was in the hospital, just a few days after the stroke. The entire ward had just one pillow. One. In the bed next to me was a septuagenarian with a broken hip, so he got the solitary head support. Poor guy. I used my own clothes as a pillow, which is a bit awkward when you only have the one set of clothes and none of the pyjamas fit you. Humiliating. The NHS needs more than claps and rainbow flags. </p><p>I'm doing well. Resting lots, working more, eating boring things, getting stronger. I'm still writing my column for <a href="https://www.electronicsound.co.uk/category/banging-on/" target="_blank">Electronic Sound magazine</a>, and I've still got a hand on the tiller at the <a href="https://www.anthonyburgess.org/" target="_blank">Burgess Foundation</a>. Both have been tremendously supportive.</p><p>And I might write more blog posts soon. I've been slacking off recently...</p><p><b><i><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-have-just-burned-down-my-local-nhs.html">Further Fats: I have just burned down my local NHS hospital while listening to Phil Collins on my walkman (2010)</a></i></b></p><p><b><i><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2023/05/my-own-personal-braindance.html">Further Fats: My own personal braindance (2023)</a></i></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-25291969812170109492023-05-03T10:22:00.005+01:002023-05-16T11:00:04.244+01:00My own personal braindance<p><style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style></p><div class="embed-container"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed//gz4pAbA5oaQ"></iframe></div><p></p><p>It’s when the cycling postman folded into nothing next to the vanishing pensioner that I knew I had a problem.</p><p>A few Saturdays ago, I went to see Plaid. Second time in a year. They were on great form, all angular and melodic and alien. The visuals by Emma Catnip were a treat.</p><p>But the dancefloor was a strange experience. I was right at the front but floating in a void, unaware of those around me. I’d walked into a bin on the way to the gig, and when buying headache tablets from Spar, the packet read like hieroglyphics. I’d have hung around in town, but my head was exploding. And I mean that more literally than you might think.</p><p>After scans and prods and hospital trolleys, I now know the truth of what happened. I might be the first person boogying at the front of a Plaid gig having suffered a stroke earlier in the same day. I wouldn’t be diagnosed for another three days after the concert, with eye drops and brain diagrams and that Kubrickian body tube that goes bang a lot. I was disorientated because part of my visual cortex had fried, rendering me partially sighted.</p><p>The clues were there in the intervening days between my disorientating gig and my hospital stay. On my walk to my GP with what I assumed at that point to be a minor eye problem, two odd things happened. I saw a pensioner walking towards me on a leafy lane. He was on his own. Narrow pavement, casual amble, a rickety wall on one side and a rickety cottage on the other. When I glanced at him a second time, he was accompanied by a wife who definitely wasn’t there before. Shortly afterwards, a postman riding a bicycle folded out of sight then reappeared. It happened before my eyes, as real as the words are on this page. I don’t know much about modern employment conditions within the postal service, but I don’t think dimensional teleportation is part of the contract.</p><p>The stroke has destroyed half of my eyesight. In true surrealist Fat Roland style, the missing halves are the right section of each eye. Because eyes dart about and the brain is clever, I don’t have black spots. I can see everything. But if my brain hasn’t received full information about a section of what I’m looking at, it makes things up. This causes hallucinations. I have looked into the twilight sky and seen a hospital floating mid-air, in full detail. I have seen imaginary crows flapping around the edges of my vision. I have seen a cheerful dog on a lead being walked by a bush because my brain couldn’t register the difference between a dog owner and shrubbery. A quick dart of the eyes, and my visual register filled in the correct information. I think my brain is having far too much fun with this.</p><p>This also means I am learning to read again. I’ve lost the ability to laterally scan text, which is pretty essential for a horizontal writing system. I have lost definition, and may never read a paper book again. That said, I have already seen improvements. I am writing this in Word without the use of a screen reader, which I couldn’t have done a week ago. However, I’m choosing to use assistive tech because reading things – including reading back over these sentences – is a strain. Might as well use tech to preserve stamina. It was worse in the first few days after my stroke. In hospital, all signs were confusing. Words had lost their visual symmetry entirely, and all d’s and b’s and p’s looked the same. I now have my symmetry back as my brain tries ever so hard to cope with my condition.</p><p>The damage is permanent. The fried part of my brain will never be unfried. But I’m confident about recovery as I begin what feels like Life Part Two. I will be slowly integrating back into my role at the brilliant <a href="https://www.anthonyburgess.org/" target="_blank">Burgess Foundation</a>. My work with <a href="https://www.electronicsound.co.uk/" target="_blank">Electronic Sound</a> will continue, although for now will be restrained to a slightly shorter column. I’m sure I will cartoon again, although I may need to learn new techniques. I will likely have to give up running my <a href="https://f1losersleague.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">F1 Losers League</a> because there’s too much detailed spreadsheet and website work. And because casual social media browsing is no longer viable, I am retiring the <a href="https://twitter.com/AngryBeetham" target="_blank">@AngryBeetham</a> Twitter account which I have been secretly running for ten years.</p><p>Best of all, this blog will continue. With my visual input reduced, the world of music is so much more important. Expect a 10,000 word review of the MRI scanner: its endless claustrophobic bangs at my heavily constrained body was some of the best techno I have ever heard. This stroke could be the most techno thing that has ever happened.</p><p><b>Featured video: <a href="https://warp.net/gb/artists/91413-plaid" target="_blank">Plaid’s</a> <i>Return to Return</i>, aka This Is What My Brain Looks Like Now</b></p><p><b><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">For my followers, a little update and a big thank you. You know it's an update because I wrote UPDATE on the video. <a href="https://t.co/ljTRk3RHBA">pic.twitter.com/ljTRk3RHBA</a></p>— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) <a href="https://twitter.com/FatRoland/status/1656371445834870793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 10, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></b></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-85122545628753680642023-04-09T15:47:00.001+01:002023-04-09T17:48:32.058+01:00It's a Miracle: The race for Easter number one<p>Can we talk about the extraordinary run of Easter number one singles we had in the second half of the 1990s? Yes, I know Easter is no Christmas, but bear with me.</p><p>By the mid-1990s, Take That had locked out the Easter number one spot. Yawn. <i>Everything Changes</i>? Easter Sunday number one. <i>Back For Good</i>? Easter Sunday number one. The Manchester popsters had become the second coming of Jesus. This was all about to change.</p><p>On Easter Sunday 1996, the Prodigy scored their first number one single with <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5G_gYLVDKo&ab_channel=%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BA%D1%8190" target="_blank">Firestarter</a></i>. A devil-horned Keith Flint would contort and grimace at the camera and the Easter bunny would be writing a letter of complaint to its local vicar.</p><p>The following Easter, 1997, the Chemical Brothers would follow up their Noel Gallagher collab <i>Setting Sun</i> with the brilliant <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTxOKsyZ0Lw&ab_channel=ChemicalBrothersVEVO" target="_blank">Block Rockin' Beats</a></i>. Easter number one. Its b-side was <i>Morning Lemon</i>, which sounds like something you’d definitely eat at Easter.</p><p>The following year’s Easter number one was <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLGWQfK-6DY&ab_channel=RUNDMCVEVO" target="_blank">It’s Like That</a></i>, Run DMC’s remix with LA producer Jason Nevins. The track kept Celine Dion off the number one spot for three full weeks, which is pretty much the equivalent of dying for our sins.</p><p>Already, we’re in uncharted territory. Cool hits had topped the charts sporadically at Easter – <i>Let’s Dance</i> in 1983, Pet Shop Boys’ <i>Heart </i>in 1988 – but never three years in a row. We’re truly in the middle of an Easter miracle.</p><p>In 1999, a puppet as yellow as an Easter chick topped the Easter chart. The underrated Mr Oizo scored his only hit single with <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmsbP13xu6k&ab_channel=fcommunications">Flat Beat</a></i>. The sausage-chomping muppet Flat Eric (yes, it’s a muppet) denied Eminem a number one spot with his debut single.</p><p>Easter number one in 2000 was Fragma’s <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc4Y_CACf9c&ab_channel=Fragma-Topic" target="_blank">Toca's Miracle</a></i>, and while this clever mashup wasn’t quite as critically acclaimed, it concluded a remarkable five years of electronic music Easter chart toppers. The following year? Emma Bunton or something. Rubbish.</p><p>2023's Easter number one is, as it happens, a song called <i>Miracle</i>. This trance collaboration between Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding is a real throw-back to the classic era of dancey Easter number one singles. Electronic music has risen again. It’s what Jesus would have wanted.</p><p><style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }</style></p><div class="embed-container"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed//961v0E3b01g"></iframe></div><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-17961343531210175522023-03-31T22:46:00.000+01:002023-03-31T22:46:01.531+01:00808 State's number tracks in number order<p>Just so we can all get organised, here are 808 State's number tracks in order:</p><p>One in Ten (=0.1)</p><p>Trinity (=3)</p><p>Cubik (=6 sides)</p><p>Atlas 7</p><p>Plan 9</p><p>13 13 (=26)</p><p>20:20 (=40)</p><p>Cubik:98</p><p>10 X 10 (=100)</p><p>106</p><p>Pacific 202</p><p>606</p><p>Pacific 707</p><p>Pacific 718</p><p>Pacific 808:98 (=906)</p><p>808080808 (=loads)</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-42034400060043782512023-02-28T23:53:00.003+00:002023-03-01T08:29:13.834+00:00Ten album titles that are puns - the good, the bad and the willie<p>Recently, Drowned in Sound's Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/DrownedinSound/status/1629507420832636929" target="_blank">posed the question</a>: Has there ever been a good song or album title containing a pun?</p><p>Let's find some kind of answer. Here are ten albums with punny titles along with my thoughts on each and every dang one of them. </p><p><b>The Orb: Orblivion </b><br />Plays into the ever-pulsating galactic dramatics of The Orb. Certainty works better than "Armageddorb" or "Catastrorbphe". Undermined by their other album <i>UF Orb</i> which sounds like a pun but really doesn't work. In fact, it's terrible.</p><p><b>Sleaford Mods: UK Grim<br /></b>Nottingham’s mouthiest geezers have been knocking about for yonks, but it’s only until now that they’ve concocted the perfect album title. This play on ‘UK grime’ speaks to the core of the band: rap music, British vibes, everything being crap. This is excellent pun work from the guys that gave us <i>Tied Up In Nottz</i> and <i>Eton Alive</i>.</p><p><b>Blink-182: Enema of the State <br /></b>Just thinking about this album title makes me empty my bowels. Which is exactly what the California rock imps wanted. Even the cover is awful, with its sexy gloved nurse. A childish embarrassment to puns everywhere. Jeez, guys, what’s your age again?</p><p><b>Salt-N-Pepa: A Salt with a Deadly Pepa</b><br />For a band with a wordplayed DJ in the form of Spinderella, you'd think everyone's fave condiment-themed rappers would nail a pun. Not so. The album title starts well, but like the album it runs out of ideas. "Pepa" is standing in for the word "weapon". Unless you're talking about pepper spray, this doesn't cut the mustard gas. Poor. </p><p><b>The Shirehorses: Our Kid Eh<br /></b>As <a href="https://twitter.com/thomasragsmusic/status/1629626257179541504" target="_blank">suggested by Thomas Ragdale</a> on Twitter. It feels like puns come with the territory with Mark & Lard's parody project, and indeed the first track on the album is If You Tolerate This Piss by the Manic Street Sweepers. What raises this above the average pun is the delightful audacity of knocking off <i>Kid A</i> only a mere seven months after that seminal album's release. Talk about poking sacred cows with a stick. Impressive.</p><p><b>Rednex: Sex & Violins<br />Sparks: Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins<br /></b>No.</p><p><b>David Bowie: Aladdin Sane<br /></b>Bowie really didn’t have many options after Ziggy Stardust. He’d been to Mars, he’d invented the bisexual alter-ego as icon, he’d made a synthesiser sound like a saxophone. A-Lad-Insane is a pretty solid pun which carries all the weight of the craziness of stardom. It's a bit naff but, whisper it, Bowie often was. (Complaint letters to the usual address.)</p><p><b>Will Smith: Willennium <br /></b><i>Big Willie Style</i> is perhaps a more famous album for this freshest of princes, which is unfortunate because in UK slang this is definitely not the kind of pun you need. <i>Willennium </i>is Will Smith’s wild wild western era, and it feels like there were greater puns to be found here rather than this millennial mediocrity. The Good, the Bad and the Willie, maybe.</p><p><b>Bola: Soup</b><br /><b>Bola: Fyuti</b><br /><b>Bola: Gnayse</b><br /><b>Bola: Kroungrine</b><br /><b>Bola: DEG<br /></b>I had to include Manchester’s downtempo maestro in this listing. The albums listed here are puns on a bowl of soup, a footballer, bolognese, crown green bowler, and boiled egg. This should be awful, but Bola somehow managed all this while maintaining his creative integrity. Quite frankly, I’m Bola-d over.</p><p><b>Phats & Small: Now Phats What I Small Music<br /></b>Sometimes you don’t know whether something is absolute genius or the worst thing ever invented, like Marmite or crocs or the jelly toaster. I may have made that last one up. The jury is still out on the title of Phats & Small’s debut album. Considering the album is only ten tracks long and <i>Turn Around </i>features twice, let’s not lose any sleep over it.</p><p>Punning album titles are still all the rage, as evidenced by the title of Orbital's brand new album <i>Optical Delusion</i>. Which punning album titles impress you? Which make you feel all Blink 182ed? <a href="https://twitter.com/fatroland" target="_blank">Let me know on Twitter.</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-2794903529447832762023-01-16T08:52:00.002+00:002023-01-16T08:55:41.961+00:00My magical dream: everything's gone all Chris de Burgh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7uEX0MK0DZ9AhyyM99ykJONh1p7L3NoH3ETK_7sAX9pwtXHsYU0e8eDRh1P8XpqPudedNfqulV9chpKZoAbhQoCOmN8x0USlORjIZ60YbZBLyARJwcxVRXnxVqWC9pPHB8JHHUS29Hy4qn0eZTIXHTYa_D62mVcWPZ9xm65BtIeEklOtPQw/s500/vending%20machine%20fat%20roland%20blog%20500px%20web.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A vending machine" border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7uEX0MK0DZ9AhyyM99ykJONh1p7L3NoH3ETK_7sAX9pwtXHsYU0e8eDRh1P8XpqPudedNfqulV9chpKZoAbhQoCOmN8x0USlORjIZ60YbZBLyARJwcxVRXnxVqWC9pPHB8JHHUS29Hy4qn0eZTIXHTYa_D62mVcWPZ9xm65BtIeEklOtPQw/s16000/vending%20machine%20fat%20roland%20blog%20500px%20web.jpg" /></a></div><p>There's an old 808 song about a magical dream that goes:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>It's a fantasy taking over your mind </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>So let it roll, let it roll with ease</p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>It will take control of the rest of your soul</p><p>And explode... into a magical dream</p></blockquote><div>The song about a magical dream carries on talking about the magical dream and how having a magical dream is great because it's magical and a dream. Can't remember the name of the track.</div><p>Which brings me to the subject of this blog post. Dreams. More specifically, a dream I had. People waffling about dreams can be pretty dull in the scheme of things, so feel free to scroll off to some more fascinating corner of the internet.</p><p>Last night, I dreamed I used a 3D printing vending machine for dresses. A what now? A unit where you pressed a load of buttons and it would spit out a dress. For a women. A proper figure-hugging dress like you see at awards ceremonies.</p><p>After scrolling through some templates on the vending machine touchscreen, I decided to get one. The quality of the material looked good. You could choose the strap design and the neckline and any little extras. Lovely.</p><p>I chose a red dress. Really red, like Mr Strong driving a fire engine then blushing about it. Soooo red. As Chris de Burgh sang:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>The lady in red</p><p>Is dancing with me</p><p>Bum cheek to bum cheek</p></blockquote><p>At least, I think that's how the song went. Looking at the preview screen, the colour was a bit too blocky, so decided to personalise it with a text pattern. Lots of small white type all over the dress, with the words "Fat Roland" over and over again. FAT ROLAND FAT ROLAND FAT ROLAND.</p><p>The machine couldn't handle things, and the text rendered badly. Overlaps, warps, random lines criss-crossing. But then I angled the text at 45 degrees and it was kind of fine. That'll do. If people wanted to read FAT ROLAND, they'll just have to look at it wonky.</p><p>At the bottom of the vending machine menu was a big PURCHASE button, alongside the final price including customisations. It would cost £450. Shocked at how expensive this was, I brought my friends in to discuss the wisdom of the purchase. We had a long conversation acknowledging the substandard quality of the final product, even though it was still a preview on a screen rather than the end print. We discussed my financial situation and whether I could afford to take the hit. We also needed to balance that with a need to serve my monstrous narcissism. </p><p>I also asked if this is how much dresses cost in Primark because, as you can tell from all this, I don't buy dresses.</p><p>And then I fell into a deeper sleep. Drifted from REM into heavy unconsciousness, any dream sequences fading into darkness. Do we still dream when we're properly conked out? Probably not. My drapery frippery was long lost.</p><p>When I finally started waking up, a couple of minutes before my alarm, the dream briefly returned. The discussion with my friends was just finishing. Had they really stuck around all this time? I had opted to not buy the dress because that was the pragmatic and grown-up thing to do. The sense of making a decision made me feel assured as I started my day back in the real world.</p><p>Which is why I'm writing this blog post in my usual rags, and not crammed into a red dress looking like Elmo with haemorrhoids.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9134264.post-18818290395911228832023-01-10T08:17:00.004+00:002023-01-10T08:17:52.831+00:00An interview with Black Box and why Ride On Time was not of its time<p>Here's a Fat Roland flashback (a Flat Rolashback?) to an interview I conducted in 2019. I spoke to Black Box's Daniele Davoli about the band's massive 1989 hit <i>Ride On Time</i>. Labels said the vocals were “very aggressive” and it barely shifted a copy of its first pressing. "It completely cleared the floor," he told me when the tune hit the clubs "It was heartbreaking."</p><p>So how did it become such a big hit single? Read on for a preview. You can read the full piece <a href="https://electronicsound.co.uk/the-regulars/time-machine/ride-on-time/">over at Electronic Sound</a>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwOdYnkICKEcfkDPsSDwR3-PWjBDZLMIxBJUNNO7krKS0wxf8tAHZveTQdWEvCqr4DWQ6-00zbiV9Uhuy2Fkye1bw0A5V4V0HbzhyKhM0G-FvESlt5yclWRUnA-NP9wt5zf1OloVOXTbIVJJvZCRlHst0lR9yq_cZ0Nj5p3vhCv8GLtxvmkw/s500/black%20box%20electronic%20sound%20fat%20roland%20blog%20500px.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Black Box in their studio" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwOdYnkICKEcfkDPsSDwR3-PWjBDZLMIxBJUNNO7krKS0wxf8tAHZveTQdWEvCqr4DWQ6-00zbiV9Uhuy2Fkye1bw0A5V4V0HbzhyKhM0G-FvESlt5yclWRUnA-NP9wt5zf1OloVOXTbIVJJvZCRlHst0lR9yq_cZ0Nj5p3vhCv8GLtxvmkw/s16000/black%20box%20electronic%20sound%20fat%20roland%20blog%20500px.jpg" /></a></div><p>In a dusty room above a garage in northern Italy, a musician brandishes a vacuum cleaner. Scattered along the walls is a guitar, some old keyboards, a half-broken mixer, and a speaker with a wonky tweeter. </p><p>Outside, a bell tower shatters the silence and next door’s dogs yap in response. In this damp, distracting space in Reggio Emilia, Daniele Davoli is trying to rewrite house music history.</p><p>“The bell tower was ding dong, ding dang dong,” recalls Davoli, “and the neighbour’s dogs were woof woof woof. If we were recording vocals, we had to stop. There was no insulation, it was just a bedroom without the bed.”</p><p>This story ends well. Davoli will go on to form Black Box, whose <i>Ride On Time</i>, released in July 1989, popularised choppy Italo house piano lines. But we’re not quite there yet. As the group formed, sample culture had become the socks-and-sandals of dance music: a shortcut for naff. Where Paul Hardcastle once stood, now there was Harry “Loadsamoney” Enfield parodying <i>Pump Up The Volume</i>. <i>Ride On Time</i> was against trend – and its journey to success had more stumbles than the <i>Stutter Rap</i>.</p><p>Davoli was DJ Lelewel, banging out soul and disco hits at Rimini’s Starlight club... [<a href="https://electronicsound.co.uk/the-regulars/time-machine/ride-on-time/">continue reading this article on Electronic Sound</a>]</p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-fat-roland-my-real-father-norwegian.html"><b><i>Further Fats: Is Fat Roland my real father? Norwegian woof. *click* (2011)</i></b></a></p><p><a href="https://fatroland.blogspot.com/2019/01/5-great-new-dance-hits-from-january-1989.html"><b><i>Further Fats: 5 great new dance hits from January 1989 (2019)</i></b></a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">-------------------------
FAT ROLAND. IF THAT WAS A CONUNDRUM, IT WOULD BE DAN TROFLA..
-------------------------</div>Fat Rolandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11374906684948810408noreply@blogger.com0