Welcome to my virtual radio show now I'm on leave from BBC 6 Music. Here are the songs I would be playing you were I not still awaiting our second bundle of fun! And I include another weekly round up of the Tour De France 2011 - a welcome distraction from all the baby waiting.
Musically a couple of old favourites first:
Jimmy Smith - The Sermon:
In reality I don't think even at 6 Music I could get away with the full 20 mins 11 secs on a breakfast show. Sheer brilliance from the Hammond organ master.
It by Prince from Sign of the Times:
Not sure if it's my hormones but having reinvigorated crush on the small purple one this pregnancy. Sorry to have missed him at Hop Farm.
And now the new.
Matt and Kim:
I love this New York musical duo. The first time they came to visit me was just before baby number 1 and we were discussing the video for their single Lessons Learned. Matt's harebrained scheme sees an uncomfortable (girlfriend) Kim strip naked in Time Square - Matt's words were 'she's got a great butt I don't mind who sees it'. But the imagery works brilliantly with this, one of my singles of the last few years. I then saw them a few months back for the release of the Camera single and Kim is definitely getting her own back on Matt this time. Visually we see a full on breakdown in relations during a studio rehearsal - again brilliantly choreographed.
Current single Block After Block sees them return to their guerrilla tactics for this:
Definitely one of my favourite current musical duos and contenders for cutest couple in music.
Spank Rock:
New single Energy:
Another mention of his purpleness - got to be the hormones but definite strains of early Prince rang out to me on first listen to this. Perfect slice of rap/rock/pop. Frantic and unmissable. This is the MC Spank Rock Naeem Juwan's latest offering from album Everything Is Boring and Everyone Is A F***ing Liar.
Well worth checking out his Spank Rock compatriot, producer Alex (XXXChange) Epton's 'Win Win' project. The self titled album came out earlier this year with stellar tracks alongside collaborations with Alexis from Hot Chip, Gang Gang Dance and Blaqstarr. A must.
And I would welcome any suggestions of good tracks for a 'waiting' playlist: I'll kick you off with the one below - leave me your suggestions in the comments section:
Tom Waits - Jockey Full of Bourbon
This song came round on shuffle this week and struck a chord. (Obviously not in the sense of being full of whisky...I wasn't, you can stop dialing social services. Now where did I put that baby?).
So to my other obsession keeping me sane during the waiting. The Tour de France 2011: Week 2 Carnage and Unsatisfactory Endings:
And I really wasn't sure I could watch after the departure of British tour hopeful Brad Wiggins. To see Wiggo go down in such a seemingly innocuous crash and end his tour 2011 chances was heartbreaking. But little did we know what was to follow.
Cycling Armageddon: On day 9 of the tour a French media car sideswipes the leading group of the TdF - an unforgivable swerve taking out Johnny Hoogerland and Juan Antonio Fletcher. That this was not the first incident of riders being felled by media vehicles shows how surreal this year's Tour has been already. The fact that both riders survived, got back on their bikes and rode 40kms to the end of the stage - and into the polka dot jersey in the case of JH - beggars belief. The lacerations to Hoogerland would surely earn him a doctor's note in any other profession. After that experience I'm not sure any mortal would consider rejoining the peleton with 30 plus stitches in a very tender place - a result of a 50 km/hr crash with a car and being rag-dolled into a barbed wire fence. These men are superhuman in spirit, if not driven by an unhealthy obsession. Who needs Harry Potter or Hollywood when you've got the Tour de France 2011?
But these were not the only casualties of the day. A separate incident saw 4 other main contenders exit the tour with broken bones. One being an infamous Kazakh (no not Borat!).
Now Alexander Vinokurov is NOT my favourite rider. And I've been smarting at how commentators have subtly changed the pronunciation of his name in a bid to distance him from his 2007 Tour of shame; in amongst a number of high profile dismissals Vino left in disgrace after a too-good-to-be-true time trial performance fuelled by doping. They nearly took my faith in professional sport with them. But Vinokurov's gutsy ride on stage 8 this year and the fact that clean he couldn't pull off the stage win went some way to redemption in my eyes. Watching his team mates pull him out of the bushes on stage 9 (the same stage that Hoogerland later picked himself out of the barbed wire) with a suspected broken pelvis was sobering stuff. Viewing this on the highlights was made worse by the knowledge that at this point he was nursing three fractures in his pelvis and a broken femur and surely should not be standing at all.
What an end to an unsatisfactory career; a gutsy rider who could be exceptionally explosive to watch, only to be excluded in a cloud of shame from the races to which he'd dedicated his life. And what of his come back? The sport making virtually no reference to his absence, but him delivering one of the gutsiest performances of the Tour 2011 so far, only to fall the very next day - taken out of his last Tour by the road. A disappointing finale for a rider who showed such promise but seduced by the darker elements of the cycling world, never really fulfilled his Tour potential. What a shame.