No Way, No Way

  As you may have gathered by now, music is super important to me. I spend a lot of time looking for new music and frequently uncover some real gems. Sometimes it's a new band, sometimes I discover a song from years ago that I never heard before. 

While it's always great to unearth something the world passed by, this is not about that. 

Nope. This is about a record that needs to be remembered because the world needs to know how bad things can get and not make the same mistakes again.

Let me give some background first.  

 The year is 1997.  The Spice Girls have become the biggest band on the planet despite being crap and the hype machine is in overdrive. 

 The Spice Girls

are

 fucking

everywhere. 

One of many reasons why I am not keen on 90s music. 

 Anyway, the music industry does it's usual; "The kids are listening to this right now and there's money to be made. Let's flood the market with something similar."

 So it came to pass that record labels unleashed a flood of girl-bands on the nation: All Saints, Atomic Kitten, Cleopatra, Hepburn, Thunderbug, B*witched, Sugababes and so on. Out of the whole movement there were maybe one or two decent songs released. 

This is not about any of those songs or indeed any of those bands. Nope we're talking about these girls.

 For those who haven't guessed yet, we're talking about Vanilla and their hit song "No way, No way" a song which somehow got to #14 in the UK singles charts and in the process proved once again that some of the British public should not be allowed anywhere near a record shop. 

 Now over the years I've been doing the "Metal project" I've heard some "bad" songs. However this wasn't done by 3 Mexican teenagers in a garage and recorded with a potato. This was an actual song, put together by a proper record label, with proper equipment.

My favourite theory is the one that states that two bods at the label had a bet where one claimed he could get 4 random girls out of a nightclub and get them a hit record.  Nothing else makes sense. 

Screw it, here's the song.  Maybe it wasn't as bad as I remember...

 Jesus Pogo-dancing Christ, what the hell is this and why did people buy it? 

I need to go listen to some  Rush and flush this out of my ears and my brain. 

That's All Folks. 

Welcome to 2024

Hello everybody and welcome to the start of a brand new year. #

 Now I don't really do New years resolutions because it turns out I am really bad at keeping them. 

However, just for a change, here's a short list of things I want to achieve in 2024. Order irrelevant. 

1. Visit the Solent Hovercraft  Museum. 

    I do love a good museum, especially if it's a museum that does big, old machines.  For some reason I've never got around to visiting this one so this year I plan to change that. 

2. Visit the Remembrance Museum in Hilsea. 

    A museum that's relatively close so I really have no excuse for not going. As a bonus, I can have a wander along the Hilsea Lines while I'm at it. 

3. Finally work out how to use the cassette-MP3 adapter I bought months ago. 

   Technology is not my friend. But I do have some old tapes I want to digitise and post to my Youtube.  I can see this one causing my headaches and possibly the odd tantrum. 

 Either I post some songs or I post a picture of the damn thing embedded in a wall.

4.  Visit Chingford. 

 A bit of explanation is needed, I feel. 

  Ever since I was a kid, I've had this weird fascination with Chingford.  I mean, it's called Chingford for chrissakes. Why is it called that?  Why does it exist?  What is the purposes of fording the Ching? I used to make up little songs about Chingford which, thankfully, I can no longer remember.  

I must go there and see this place for myself. 

Some people want to go to Katmandu but it's a long way away and I'm pretty sure you have to walk up a mountain. I would rather go somewhere I can hit in an afternoon.

Yeah, it's not the most exciting list in the world but it'll do for now.

Happy New year and that's all folks.