sovay | 'Cause not everything is uniform

Last night as an ironic side effect of falling through a bunch of Welsh-language folk-rock, I discovered the Pipettes, whose retro-bubblegum I had completely missed at the time it was going through its polka-dotted shape-pulling moment in the disco lights. It turns out that I have about the same aural tolerance for the retro style as the historical stuff, which means that I can enjoy the equivalent of an LP before I start wanting something with a pencil stuck through its speaker cone, but I am deeply charmed by the early single from their short-lived original lineup, "I Like a Boy in Uniform (School Uniform)" (2005), which plays at first like the teen-pop version of Anakreon fr. 358 before pivoting into a jubilant discovery of its narrator's bisexuality: And now I know that all it is / Is plenty more that I can kiss / And when I think about the bliss / Of looking at the girls, looking at the girls, looking at the girls . . . Her cheerfully, climactically all-encompassing attraction to her classmates reminded me of the opener of Dorothy's "I Confess" (1980): I like boys in Beatle boots / And tall slim girls in well-cut suits, which is how I discovered that since the last time I checked, there had been a remastered resurrection of Rema-Rema, the abrasively art-rock band for which Dorothy Max Prior drummed before lending her vocals to some unrecognizably breathy, boppy pop. So I listened to their ear-snarling feedback and was satisfied. It is not lost on me that since recovering the archive of Bertie's music, I am just listening a lot more.

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I like both songs (and had never heard either). I can't believe I never heard "I Confess" when it came out; it's exactly the sort of thing Rodney Bingenheimer used to play on his Sunday-night radio show on KROQ.

I like both songs (and had never heard either).

Hooray!

I can't believe I never heard "I Confess" when it came out; it's exactly the sort of thing Rodney Bingenheimer used to play on his Sunday-night radio show on KROQ.

I found it a decade ago on the random internet! I love its catalogue: "Lipstick names like Crimson Sorbet / Bunk! Real Gold by Paolozzi." If I don't hear it some night soon on WHRB, I should see if they take requests.

Ha! That was bouncy and fun. ... I feel like I've seen the woman on the right. I wonder if I've seen a different Pipettes video at some point. (But who would have shown it to me except you? And you've only just discovered them. Hmmmm.)

They were quite popular in the mid-2000's! You may well have picked them up from someone else! I am just arriving late to the retro-party.

(Their second and most prolific lineup included Gwenno, is how I got here. I knew her from a single from her debut album in 2015 and the soundtrack of Enys Men (2022), but had never listened extensively to her catalogue. I am going to need a CD of Le Kov (2018), which is the all-Cornish one.)

I'm recalling something with a wedding and a murder? I'm probably confabulating.

I'd love to know what the wedding and murder combo was!

Another random Martin Jarvis comment (sorry), but I happened to stumble over a new-to-me YT uploader of Old Brit TV and noticed that they had both series of Breakaway. I don't know if you're interested in watching s1 as well as s2 (the serial where Martin Jarvis tries to write a children's book in his beige murder flat), but if you are, it's here, for the moment at least: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZaEXw0agZE

Another random Martin Jarvis comment (sorry), but I happened to stumble over a new-to-me YT uploader of Old Brit TV and noticed that they had both series of Breakaway.

Nice! Thank you for the link and please keep me appraised of further developments. Distractions always appreciated whether or not I can actually watch that many of them.

'Cause not everything is uniform

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