'Night Mail' is an iconic 1936 film made by the Post Office about the night mail train collecting and taking post to Scotland. The words in this last three minutes of the film are by poet W. H. Auden, then still in his twenties, and the music by composer Benjamin Britten, then only 22. The dog is not credited.
Madonna Ciccone is in trouble. Two fans are suing her for coming on stage two hours late. They should count themselves lucky. For those of us old enough to have been to gigs in the last Millennium, two hours is positively early.
There is much Madonna from which to chose, but your Song of the Week editor, being old, has a soft post for 'Borderline'. Mainly because it is fab.
When Mark E Smith, founder of the Fall, heard Coldcut's track 'My Telephone' he thought the guitar, bass and drums fine, but the words, vocals and all the rest of it, rubbish. So he rewrote it (and made it about phone tapping). Smith could be awkward to say the least, and his vocal style (you'd hesitate to call it singing) singular, but he could also be compelling.
When his record company told avant-garde musician Anthony Moore that his work was not commercial enough he wasn't happy. Or rather he was Slapp Happy, the name he gave to his new band with their deliberately commercial sound. The band became less commercial subsequently but not before songs such as 'Blue Flower' bloomed. Dagmar Krause provides the distinctive voice.
Shane McGowan of the Pogues died last week. Aside from all the articles about self-destructive genius and the relentless playing of 'Fairytale of New York' over the next few weeks, it's worth remembering that the Pogues' first three albums are well worth a listen.
Incidentally he went to the same private school (Westminster) as Conrad Shawcross though he was expelled for possessing and selling drugs. Shane that is, not Conrad.