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The Big Book of Paddy "Pudsy" Morris

UndergRound Up of the Year, Part 2....

 

"Music is back!", they screamed (while most penniless artists cried, a UK based musician absolutely raking it in with an on average 14K earnings a year). That's right, in 2024 sales hit a 20 year high - but kind of not actually really if adjusted for inflation and streaming and all that - so the shops and Spotify are quite happy to clean up.... as well as all ye olde "legacy artists" still (re)punting their 20-30-40-50 years + wares. With all that in mind, let's keep things moving forward thinking with, er, Braw's UndergRound up of all things, erm, kinda pretty much legacy artist, um....

First up The Orb had a fairly quiet 2024, cropping up for a joint (ahem!) tour with Ozric Tentacles and yet another hardcore fan fleece in the (admittedly quite beautiful looking) Orboretum, curated by the one and only (perpetual dawning member) Alex Paterson, a man well versed in dressing mutton like lamb, especially in this case, the (very best, early) tracks truncated for reasons of space and much of the rest of it given over to their particularly anonymous and superflous Kompact era. What about Orboring, perhaps the better title?

 

Still, when all else fails Rob always defers to the advice of the wonderful The Orb Music & Remixes Facebook group and thus finally properly stumped up for two of Paterson's more recent side-projects, Seti by Sedibus, a warm, organic, semi-ambient stunner with (back) on point samples and Enter The Kettle by OSS, a mostly lumpen 4/4 techno stomper that fails miserably by comparison. It's sprightly, sure, and better reveals itself in part over time, but of the 8 tracks it's a similar split of 4/4, half (mindless floor) filler and half fine (enough)....

After his successful 'redux' of Cydonia it was high time Rob got around to mapping and exploring the vast soundscapes of Orbvs Terrarvm, making good use of the 2008 2cd version to cook up a similarly satisfying reconstructed alternate take. In fact, the mixes on the second cd are mostly far superior to the album versions - they have a certain space and clarity often denied the claustrophobic, overstuffed initial release - so with a bit of reordering, and the inclusion of Montagne D'Or from the BBC Sessions 1989-2001, he made a wonderful travelling companion to their '94 peak....

So it was therefore left to System 7's 777 and Power of Seven to plug this gaping black hole, Miquette Giraudy's shimmering synths and Steve Hillage's stuttering guitars more than a match for the lower reaches of the Ultraworld.... that Thrash, Paterson, Keogh and Glover are all guesting surely helps. Close your eyes (always helps!) and 'Ship of the Desert' could be an adventurous early Orb outlier....

System 7 - Ship of the Desert

Oh, and how's that for a connection as Steve Hillage was also to be found setting the controls on The Charlatans' third album, Up To Our Hips, another record that was subject to creator 'curation' in 2024, a certain Tim Burgess hoping, "the expanded edition allows the listener a never before sneak peek behind the curtain at a record being made by a band in crisis." Apparently. As, for a start you can't really tell this from peeking at any of the extras and, as you can imagine, this release still trails miles behind Rob's own super deluxe of 2023. If anything it seems The Charlatans were not so much in crisis in 1993/4 as unable to tell which of their songs were in fact the best. If you ever had the chance to set a record in definitive stone for the future Rob doubts he'd fill up a second cd with weaker versions of the superior non-album tracks - Subterranean still sparkles but the excellent You and Everybody is subject to a step back, a half-baked demo which is a waste of vinyl, the Easy Life (a fairly pedestrian track in itself) b-side being far superior and not some tinny sounding workout. As well as the welcome Hammond surge of the hitherto unreleased Full of Culture, perhaps set aside as the guitar/organ interplay is still a little clumsy, yet to settle down, there's nice alternate run throughs of Feel Flows and Stir It Up, a trailing b-side that even 30 years ago had more life and urgency than much of the album proper. In addition we have airings of a near-grinding Out , it's not nearly as weedy in its official capacity as Rob remembers, just trimmed down to its detriment, and Withdrawn, tho the already out there session of Up To Our Hips is superfluous compared to the demo*, what with its better "Angels" chorus and genuinely affecting stoned whoosh....

The Charlatans - Up To Our Hips, You & Everybody and Subterranean demos

(*hardcore 'Charlafans' might be interested in also checking out the delightful demo version of Feel The Pressure, tucked away on the second cd of Forever: The Singles, the choppy guitar (and so much more) lost in the completely overcooked, or indeed overcoked, album version. Still, Tim does kind of apologise for steering Up At The Lake in that direction in his autobiography....) 

Photo by Derek Phillip, Manchester 1989

Another UTOH out-take (the last?), Dardanella, is to be found on The Charlatans' own sprawling best of, A Head Full of Ideas (Deluxe Edition) which, a little like the lavish Acetone box set of 2023, is worth the entry price alone for this colour picture of late drummer Jon Brookes thrashing away at his kit (as per the b/w cover of debut single Indian Rope)....

Keeping with the Manchester connection, if ever there was a surprise waiting in the musical wings in early 2024 then it had to be wholly unexpected partnership of Liam Gallagher and John Squire, the guitarist renewed and unleashed after 20 years (pretty much) inactivity, ditching the downbeat, the weary and the reflective questioning of his solo albums in favour of lyrics with a more wry and familiar (and populist) ring, seeming to have recovered some of his anthemic qualities and found a comfortable middle ground between the chime of the Roses debut, Second Coming's rocky bombast and the more Beatles-ish songwriting that characterized The Seahorses. 

"Welcome back, to the land of the living...."

Of course, if anything required quite an adjustment for Rob, then getting used to Liam's "big" voice as they stormed through a more overdriven sound than the Stone Roses ever had, the powerhouse stadium scraping vocals and lashes of guitar, while not ever feeling too far from that band. It's easy to imagine several of the songs filtered through Mani and Reni's glorious rhythmical dynamic and coupled with John Leckie's spacious production - no doubt it would have made a very respectable third coming (with about 5 years more polish, ahem). Overall it's a little too verse, chorus, verse, chorus, guitar, chorus in structure throughout, but with Squire's subtle, slow-burn songsmithery at work it's a triumphant return after 20 years away. Indeed, poor old Ian Brown must be fizzing (in a typically defiant and somewhat churlish manner) at the "what could have beens" of 2017's creative has-beens.

And, as a final thought, how about the frightening fact we're now as far away from OASIS as they were from The Beatles when they started out. Hmm....

Similarly, Goth behemoths The Cure - pretty much a genre all to themselves - unleashed their much anticipated Songs of a Lost World, which finally arrived after 16 years (of latterly teasing), a huge sprawling sweep of emotion, like watching your last sunset, bathed in glorious warmth as the light fades and a cold, unstoppable darkness creeps into your bones.... A strange record with a magnetic pull, hard to resist such is the overpowering weight (or should that be wait?) of it, a critically impervious monster of an album that moves glacially, all consuming, and one that never fails to put an increasingly-creaking Rob on an existential edge....

In spite of the comedown from Stuart Braithwaite's pill-poppingly pointless autobiography, there was a definite rewarding resurgence Rob-side for Mogwai's discography in 2024 - are they a "legacy" act, given they seem to have a loyal following, a vitality and anticipation about them and people still buy their records? They're certainly not caught in a cash cow milking cycle of anniversary tours and deluxe/expanded edition reissues....

Mogwai - Every Country's Sun (live on KEXP)

They're also the only act, maybe GY!BE aside?, who have truly gone the post-rock distance, from the Scot-snot upstartin' somethin' of their fearless (Satan aside) Mogwai Young Team to the icy atmospherics of Happy Songs (f)or Happy People, or the hammer home of Mr Beast, to the simmering threat of Zidane, right on up (yeez) to 2025's top 5 album, The Bad Fire. Although they seem to have lost their knack for memorable titles, that joy jumped the shark several albums ago, and truly (monu)mental tracks - nothing these days slams home like early tracks Helicon 1 or Summer - but their strength, as recent records tighten up and become more consistently album-y(?), as they settle into a middle-age of slow-burn, is that on any given day, on any given album, a track, hitherto perhaps passed over, will sidle up and emotionally sucker punch you, leaving you breathless on the floor. Only a few months to go until Rob checks them out to see how they fare live in '25....

Mogwai - Black Spider 2

RIDE's Interplay arrived sounding just a little bit different, with a stripped back sound, tho Andy Bell and Mark Gardener never sounded so youthful, so much like themselves. Of course, there's the typical RIDE rush of the soaring Portland Rocks, a recapture of that early shoegaze sound arriving with a catchy jolt of instant misty-eyed nostalgia....

DIIV's Boiling a Frog seemed to take previous album Deceiver's woozy (and best) moments (Lorelei) and stretch them out over a whole record, while sticking to their strange remit of having utterly terrible album covers (their debut aside). Unfortunately this frustratingly vague approach sees much of the record drift off – the minimal riffs and melodies don't really catch, the lyrics are lost and at (the best of) times it simply seems to hark back to the previous record's edge, so indeed why not just listen to that?

DIIV - Soul-net

The big question is how would it (and the band) land in a live setting (at SWG3, no less - "Scotland's Worst Gig x 3" or "Surely the Worst venue in Glasgow" by a long shot, with sludgy sound and rubbish views of the stage)....

Elsewhere Rob enjoyed early Underworld, London by way of the charity shop and  Cafe del Mar, to immerse himself in the incredible layered and rippling warm synth washes of Second Toughest In The Infants (and to an extent their debut Dubnobasswithmyheadman), surely peerless in the genre of classic techno 'builder' as tracks morph and weave together creating a fantastic journey. Other than that, there was plenty electronic joy in the slinky minimal acid techno of Plastikman's Musik (and to an extent his darker follow up, Consumed), the pastoral folk-no of Ultramarine's United Kingdoms and (to an extent their prior Every Man and Woman is a Star), and the gloriously Global Communication-esque ambient-ish outings of one half Tom Middleton's Lifetracks and the other half Mark Pritchard's Under the Sun (and to a certain extent his shorter follow up, The Four Worlds)....

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but Rob can't deny when he stumbled across the above record online, the sleeve of Dinosaur Jr's spiky Farm, he was sold (or indeed bought). Add to that the shuddering stoner sprawl of Bardo Pond's Lapsed and Amanita, the modern love (as in Arthur Lee) shapes of Arial Pink's Haunted Graffiti's Before Today, the crisp sparkle and 'in the room' vibe of Canyon's chest drumming Canyon s/t, the boozy sticky floor bar-room b(r)awls of Japandroids Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock, the super soar of Magazine's keyboards on Play (and Play+), the torch lit candles of (other Slowdive incarnation) Mojave 3, the surprising quality of Mansun's 'underrate it or overhate it' Little Kix, the angular indie jabs of Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights, an album finally hitting home and painfully so....

Interpol - Untitled

And there's always (tea) time for MF DOOM's gassed drawls, his own distinct brand of hip-hop in the supervillain shape of the holy “quinity” of Operation Doomsday, King Geedorah, Madvillainy, Viktor Vaughn and MM..FOOD (with a hefty side salad of his Special Herbs for very good measure)....

After much stargazing Rob settled on Quark, Strangeness and Charm as his Hawkwind homeworld, touched down by its move away from their early speed freak outs into a more melancholy space-rock mood and being a blatant sucker for the sweep of its sf tinged lyrics. Thanks to Atomhenge there's a nice 2cd version that, with a bit of i-Tweaking, yields up an equally satisfying alternative take....

If there was one band that's guaranteed to have Rob buying into Record Store Day then surely it has to be Acetone, who offered up a blistering '98 live set (on clear vinyl in a numbered trifold package.... yawn!) as their 2024 offering. Then again, queueing for hours to only be told, "we asked for that but didn't get it" by one shop before traipsing over to another who didn't have it but could get it for a deposit.... who then phoned to say they actually couldn't.... so Rob hurriedly bought it online.... only to get a call after it'd been despatched to say, "hey, it's on its way". Long story short is Rob momentarily ended up with 2 copies (the 2nd of which he sent back). Even shorter, the insult to people that regularly buy records that is the hoary old major label takeover coloured (or not) vinyl reissue pishue known as RSD can quite frankly kiss Rob's Assetone....

Bandcamp threw up plenty of treats this year too, from the return of The Aliens with a sort of wistful retro-rave (see below), to Off land's tingling, spacious ambient, thru The Longcut's angular post-00's yelp, to the yawning vibes of Los Halos, to the shimmering techno sunrise of Capitol K.... and never forgetting the drone blanket of Scotland's Fordell Research Unit and the clattering post-everything of Boobs of DOOM.... and even a new album from Agent Rob's own musical (misad)venture in the push and pull guitar melding of The Mind Robbers....

The Mind Robbers - Tank Town

A mere day after last year's 'myoosik' round up dropped Rob headed off to the (Glasgow) Barrowland Ballroom to catch Slowdive (capably supported by the amiable, easy London quartet Whitelands, all nifty 'nugaze' shapes, nimble guitar and impressive, propulsive drumming). Slowdive themselves took things up a considerable (and surprising) notch, Rachel Goswell proving to be their secret weapon - she looked like the happiest person there, all wide smiles and gentle, expressive dancing/moves, totally at odds with the scene's general (ie. male, affected) spaced indifference. While perhaps lacking RIDE's killer bombast, there's something undeniable about the band, a soulful and truly affecting emotional core beneath the skyscraping songs, one that reaches deep and resonates. (For Rob there's also a strange tinge of melancholy, knowing that the late Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst loved the band but sadly didn't (have the will to) live to catch this vindicated and exceptional second incarnation.)

September saw Rob head off highly anticipating a near rerun of 2022's concert by Godspeed! You Black Emperor again at the Barrowland Ballroom. Sure, it was more politically pointed than last time around - any tour backing an album called "NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD" has to be - and, yes, it was ridiculously loud and unbelievably good, (oft called) "end times" music documenting the last gasp of humanity - think despairing footage of wildfires and destructive industrial processes - while acting as a breath of life-affirming fresh air, both brutal and beautiful. Who'd imagine stark footage of a small bird bobbing on a branch to a thunderous soundtrack would be so affecting? So is this "new dawn" music perhaps, a band doing everything they can to reach us, to shake us up, to get through to us. Indeed, Rob came away thinking nothing more than the fact that music could and can, that it should, change the world, and, y'know, maybe, just maybe, save it.... 

Those of you paying attention earlier (and who have made it this far!) might be wondering if DIIV managed to pass muster live this time around? Last spotted on these shores just before the pandemic hit it was business as usual for the tight 4 piece, with gurning rhythm guitarist/goblin Andrew Bailey front and centre yet again - evidently he hasn't changed his "medication" since the QMU in 2019 - only this time the song lyrics were projected on to his twisted features, allowing Cole to play to the side(line). "Hi, I'm Zachary Cole Smith of critically acclaimed indie band DIIV and I approve this message", intones a poor actor likeness on the video backdrop. Indeed, the pointed 'prominfomercials' that screen between songs - the band will endorse anything from your product to your corporation or candidacy - seem a little at odds with the vague leanings of the music, the singing barely audible (intentional?), buried in the middling venue's muddied mix (unintentional!). Still, no doubt they gave it their all - no deceiving Rob it was another 5 star performance in a (SWG)3 star venue....

There was even a little time to enjoy a few music related books in 2024 too, with Future Days by David Stubbs being one, although, a willingness to experiment, to ignore the before and deconstruct the present aside, the lack of real rock and roll characters did make it something of a little hard work (a bit like the genre itself). Still, if ever a quote summed up the creative process and lifespan, this excerpt fits the bill perfectly.... 

...says (Irmin) Schmidt (CAN). 'What makes, I think, a piece of art, whatever, paintings, sculpture, music, literature - it defines a historical moment. It's made, say, in 1971. What makes it last is that when it succeeds, it's because of a presence of mind that includes in it future possibilities.'

'There is a phrase from [French writer] Paul Valery - in an interview, when he was asked about inspiration. The first phase comes from "up there", and the rest is shitty work. There is the potential. And then it is about concentration, to get to the essence.'

Future Days by David Stubbs

And, hey, what about Vic Galloway's Songs in the Key of Fife, a deepdelve into Fence Records and all things The (aforementioned) Aliens and The Beta Band (also seen slowly and joylessly disintegrating in various studios while making Heroes To Zeroes in their Let It Beta DVD documentary), a sort of how not to DIY it lesson in crumbling mental health and teenage psychosis. An absorbing but bleak book....

Then again, it turned out The Aliens returned - though not with a 3 hour ambient version of Luna as mooted in Songs In.... - while John Maclean's just about to unleash his second film Tornado, and - deep breath! - The Beta Band themselves are back for an evening with.... in the autumn. Geez Louise good things come in threes (a bit like their EPs)....

Betas documentary aside, 2024 kicked off big time with The Clash's excellent, enlightening and enthralling Westway To The World, as well as The Charlatans in Mountain Picnic Blues - good enough, but it just lacks a 20 minute coda of how the band regrouped, assimilated new keyboardist Tony Rogers and carried on recording (and somehow doesn't quite reach the same frightening emotional intensity of the loss as their shiver-inducing segment in the Rockfield Studios documentary). Then we had The Stone Roses in Made Of Stone, their early career summary pure (fools) gold, hidden in among the footage of their so-so Third Coming. Finally, how about CSNY trolling their way around America in Deja Vu, genuinely shaking out the (President) Bush-era with their contrary and provoking (and correct) political stance.... 

Book-wise it wasn't that smart a start to the year with mis-fires like Good Omens - oh dear, Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Apocalypse (2 horsemen out of 4, sorry, as Rob gave this up half way through, unable to slog through to the end (times) - and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, another chore where, like the much derided lunar “loonies”, Rob also gave up half way through the revolution.... Sorry. It took William Boyd's thrilling Gabriel's Moon to get things back on track, with a side dip into his early fish out of water farce, Stars & Bars to get things going....

....while Desperation and The Regulators, two great back-to-back reads from Stephen King/Richard Bachman, made for strange unsettling books, putting the same cast of characters through fantastical and decidedly leery situations with some truly memorable scenes and under your skin descriptions that linger long in the mind. Top drawer stuff....

 "Yep, and there is no gravity, the earth just sucks."

Braw fave Billy Connolly meanwhile swapped being windswept (and interesting) for a bit of Rambling Man (indeed, rambling, man) while showcasing his late career diversion into art - he doesn't like the look or term 'cartoony' unfortunately - in The Accidental Artist. Still, always cheering and inspiring stuff from The Big Yin....

With all things Dudley Moore exhausted, Rob has resorted to reading biographies of Peter Cook in order to wring every last drop out of this dynamic and dysfunctional duo - for instance, in his final moments Dudley listened to his own Songs Without Words album. The downside is, well, in Judy Cook's Loving Peter she makes a pretty good case for us not to. For all his comedy godfather genius, etc, there's no shying away from the fact he was a horrible, repugnant person who only became more so as he got older, before he drank himself to death and put everyone out of his misery - likely only Richard Prior is several rungs above him on the comedian's risible human being ladder.... The book may purport to be written from a place of love and devotion, with the best of intentions, but boil it down and it's nothing but a brutal, bare bones hatchet job....

I find a solicitor in London, but he seems very absent-minded and chaotic. He makes arrangements for me to meet him, Peter and Peter's formidable show-business solicitor, Oscar Beuselinck, in his Soho office. When the day of the meeting arrives, we sit and talk in a windowless conference room. Peter has just come from a Private Eye lunch and is very much the worse for wear. He looks terrible, with unwashed hair, a T-shirt that doesn't cover his beer belly, a creased linen jacket and stained, crumpled trousers. He sits smoking a cigarette with one eye closed to help him focus on getting it in his mouth. After an abortive discussion about money he stands up and swears loudly at me. I notice that his flies are undone. When he sits down again, he appears to fall asleep.

Loving Peter: My Life with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore by Judy Cook and Angela Levin

Dudley Moore - Beethoven's Colonel Bogey

So, pull up a chair and grab a cuppa as we enter the final stretch. Yep, you too can be just like Frank Miller's (ridiculous) Batman in The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Years ago, on first read, Rob went in with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, time has been as unkind to DKII as it has been to Rob and it transpires it is truly awful, with half-arsed artwork and unsympathetic digital colouring that cannot paper over the yawning cracks. As laughable as the panel above may be, it is in fact one of the few that looks like some time has been spent on it - it has a tatty, energetic intensity to the inking that is sorely missed elsewhere. Indeed, looking into reviews of the b/w (original art) version it seems as if Miller didn't bother drawing any backgrounds at all, this sloppy shortcoming simply shored up by the crude colouring....

And what better time to revisit Alan Grant's wonderful Strontium Dog: Portrait of a Mutant, perfectly bookended by John Wagner's (more recent but no less impressive) The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha: The Dogs of War. With so much of 70s and 80s culture crushed underfoot by modern scrutiny (and accepted values - see above!), what is particularly impressive is that these and many other 2000AD works of the time have not dated - you'd be hard pushed to pick them apart and critically cancel them these days, a testament to how much these guys were ahead of the curve, how expertly tuned in and at the forefront of everything....

Other comics included Sean Murphy (by way of Sergio Toppi, as indeed we have Frank Quitely by way of Jean Giraud 'Moebius') turning his more than capable hands to Batman in the White Knight tpb. The storytelling may be a bit variable at times - some scenes startle while others are reduced and a mite confusing, but overall it's a mighty effort. (Bonus points for setting it outside of the dreaded DCU continuity too, as we all know that's a load of needless modern comics rubbish that no one in their right mind should care about)....

There was also the absolute indie-astonisher Blankets by Craig Thompson as well as the gentle underground sharpness of Paul Chadwick's beautifully rendered Concrete. Rob's already blogged about his admiration for Mills and O'Neill's amazing Marshal Law, but here's a special mention for the stunning Deluxe Edition of several years ago, the whole damn thing in one big, bad package. Or how about former comics laureate Dave Gibbons sprinkling 80's b/w magic over Who panels in Panini's most welcome The Fourth Doctor Anthology. "Anyone for a jelly baby?"....

And what nicer way to wrap up than with an appreciation of arch art humourist Heath Robinson, who bubbled back up on Rob's radar in 2024. Indeed, there's something of the aforementioned Frank Quitely's earlier, underground work, in Robinson's eternally funny and inspired works, the same mastery of the fine line and expert caricature-isation....

A huge loss in 2024 was Kris Kristofferson, who died age 88, one of the original outlaw country artists. (It's also double frustrating that Rob intended to use a beautiful family tribute here that he now cannot find online, so this paltry embarrassment of and acknowledgement will have to do, sorry. Tho there's something edging close to the sentiment of it here>>, "He was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford, a defensive back, a bartender, a Golden Gloves boxer, a gandy dancer, a forest firefighter, a road crew member, and an Army Ranger who flew helicopters. He was a peacenik, a revolutionary, an actor, a superstar, a sex symbol, and a family man.")....

Cinema also lost one of its true visionaries - and we're not talking self-appointed modern unimaginative and stylistic crapouts like J.J. Abrams or Zack Snyder - with the sudden death of David Lynch at 78. Is there anyone who travelled further out on screen, who married the sublime and the ridiculous with such chilling and unnerving effect? With a (long overdue) rewatch of Twin Peaks finally on the go at last - maybe Rob'll get to series 3 after all! - it's amazing how memorable the mood of the show is, the brooding atmosphere, the latent discomfort, how scenes begin almost farcically, dipping into televisual cheese at times, before the rug is gently pulled from under you to show the dark heart at work, all helped by the suspicious wood panelled warmth, the sheer intensity of the performances (Grace Zabriskie!) and the simply stunning, immersive music....

"I can see the pub from here!"

Autumn saw Rob & Co. head off to Dundee, the (spiritual) home of D.C. Thomson & Co., where he caught up with long lost childhood friends such as Oor Wullie, Desperate Dan and Minnie The Minx (and a little Lemming for good measure)....

More kind words and acknowledgement (from The Herald) following the sad loss of Braw talisman John G. Miller in early 2024. Our lengthy tribute, timed to coincide with his 70th birthday, can be found here>>

Not that Rob's been entirely idle, as John left hundreds of pages of artwork to be sorted, collated and collected, meaning 3 new books should emerge (at some point). There'll be a second A5 John G. Miller Scrapbook (120 pages), a further A4 The Collected John G. Miller, Volume 4 (110 pages) and a final A5 comic book gathering together his recent work/project in the shape of John Stark: Secret Agent (120 pages)....

"I get high because the world is cruel and people are lonely. I work so that I can buy drugs that make people seem kind, friendly, free and beautiful."

Samotari/The Loners

As per every year these round ups end with a few of Rob's favourite moments from time gone by and (somehow, against all odds) in 2024 there were joys aplenty, miraculous, precious minutes plucked from the depths of despair. There was Bill Pullman powerfully breaking down in indie dramedy Igby Goes Down, Bill and Ted meeting their elderly selves in (the otherwise worthless) Bill & Ted Face The Music, the 'copy machine beat down' from Mike Judge's perfectly judged Office Space, the 'greatest love of all' scene from the totally, beautifully bonkers Toni Erdmann, the 'Memory Gospel Dancers' hitting all the right emotive notes in the offbeat Southland Tales....

Climax - Opening Dance Scene

....then there's the jaw dropping, body popping opening scene to Gasper Noe's bad trip dance troupe shocker Climax, or how about being blindsided by The Dukes of Hazzard just driving along in the rain, a sudden reminder that their world, that Rob's world has been and is now completely gone, vanished in a forty year flash....

"Peace is not peace if it's a truce with evil."

Tin Star('s sadly completely dud), Season 2

or just watching Marty Feldman looking out over the balcony of his newly acquired Hampstead home on a crisp, foggy morning in the 1969 BBC documentary One Pair Of Eyes. Or why not end on modern artist supreme David Hockney wearing a badge that says "End Bossiness Soon", as it couldn't say "End Bossiness Now" as that'd be too bossy....

"A ship in harbour is safe, but that's not why ships are built." 

Fremont

And so it goes, you come in on your own and you leave on your own.... Thanks to Verve for playing us out.... See you in the next one (have a good time). This is Agent Rob, over and out....

The place was hot! So very, very hot! He hurried. And he wondered as he sped, the gauge rising before him: What had it been like on that day, Whenever? That day when a tiny sun had lain upon this spot and fought with, and for a time beaten, the brightness of the other sky, before it sank slowly into is sudden burrow? He tried to imagine it, succeeded, then tried to put it out of his mind and couldn't. How do you put out the fires that burn forever? He wished that he knew.

Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny

Coming soon(-ish).... John G. Miller

The Collected John G. Miller, Volume 4

The John G. Miller Scrapbook, Volume 2

The Collected John Stark: Secret Agent

B-Movie - Remembrance Day