Friday Photo #78

Yesterday evening saw the final ever Late Show with Stephen Colbert, following its cancellation by the CBS network. Colbert's tenure ends after eleven years, the past nine of them at No.1 in the ratings. The blame for the scrapping of the Late Show franchise has been widely placed in the hands of the current US administration, who have individually and collectively borne the brunt of Colbert's hilariously withering political analysis, delivered during his monologues at the top of each show. 

I was lucky enough to attend recordings of The Late Show while visiting my cousin and her family in both 2023 and 2025 and sitting in the historic Ed Sullivan Theatre is a hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck experience I can tell you. In the attached video, Colbert leads a short guided tour of his set and surroundings, touching on a little of the theatre's back story.

Over the past few years, an occasional feature of the show has been the amusingly titled Colbert Questionert, where a celebrity guest is asked 15 quick-fire questions, a mixture of the deep and the flippant, with the aim to become truly 'known' by Stephen - there are plenty of examples available to peruse on YouTube. To mark the end of The Late Show, as a two time former attendee, I'm now taking the Colbert Questionert.

1. What’s the best sandwich? 

Eye-wateringly strong cheddar, with thinly sliced red onion and sweet chili sauce. 

2. What’s one thing you own that you really should throw out? 

I have two large dolls of my Mum's from when she was a kid in the early 1930s. They're in a box together with a selection of baby clothes that were worn by my brother, the child my parents lost in unbearably tragic circumstances two years before I came along. The contents of the box aren't directly connected to me, have no commercial value and I have no-one to pass them on to, yet, over 15 years after Mum's death, I can't bring myself to part with them. 

3. What is the scariest animal? 

Any animal protecting its young. A couple of summers ago I made the rookie mistake of walking between a cow and its calf while crossing a field in the middle of nowhere. I was a good distance from both animals, but the cow was not amused and became quite agitated. They are intimidatingly large up close. Bulls, of course, even more so.

4. Apples or oranges? 

Apples. 

5. Have you ever asked someone for their autograph? 

Many, many times, since I was a very young kid going to speedway matches with my Dad. Later musicians, I still get LPs signed today if I get the chance. 

6. What do you think happens when we die? 

The rest is silence. 

7. Earliest memory? 

I have a couple of early memories, both involve me crying hysterically. One was falling down the stairs at home, the other was temporarily losing sight of Mum & Dad while shopping in Clacton-on-Sea. I would've been 3-4 years of age on both occasions. Also, come to think of it, my first day at school, when I became so hysterical that the staff had to call Mum in to take me home and calm me down. What a melodramatic child I was in 1964.

8. Favourite smell? 

Really good coffee. 

9. Least favourite smell? 

Boiling beetroot. It felt as if my aunt, who lived upstairs from me when I was a child, boiled beetroot morning, noon and night - I can still smell the gag-inducing aroma now. Also, I can't let this question pass with mentioning mushrooms - the smell, the texture, the taste. They truly are the devil's shite. 

10. Exercise: worth it? 

Absolutely, physically and mentally. I'm only sorry that I left it relatively late in life to figure that out. 

11. Flat or sparkling? 

Beer flat, water sparkling.

12. Most used app on your phone? 

Pocket Casts. I listen to podcasts by day and night. 

13. You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it? (Colbert points out that this doesn’t mean listening to it on repeat, but every time you choose to listen to music this is the only song you’ll hear). 

The piece of music I could literally listen to on a permanent loop is 'Circle in the Round' by Miles Davis, though given that it's 30+ minutes long I'm probably bending the rules a bit. If we're talking about a normal length song, '1952 Vincent Black Lightning' by Richard Thompson is very difficult to beat, particularly a live acoustic version. 

14. Window or aisle? 

If we're talking flying, it makes little difference. I'll have no legroom either way and spend the entire flight in a state of extreme anxiety. For ground transportation I'll take a window. 

15. Describe the rest of your life in 5 words. 

All over bar the shouting.

 

Friday Photo #77

Ah, the old double exposure. When the film didn't wind on completely and you ended up with a photo of a zebra superimposed over that lovely view of your garden. I have a few such happy accidents in my own family archive, though I strongly suspect that today's anonymous example is a very deliberate one. I can offer no information or explanation for the shot, other than it was part of a job lot of similar ephemera that I purchased at auction a decade ago, though one can imagine an enthusiastic offspring directing their parents to remain completely still while moving their respective heads from one shoulder to the other between clicks.

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A considerable amount of record company money was thrown at young guitar bands in the mid-1990s. Good, bad or indifferent, many were given a chance to make a single or two and perhaps, if they were very fortunate, a whole album. Coming straight outta the Lake District, TC: Hug was one such band, who gave it their best shot for a couple of years before falling off the map. They deserved better. Their songwriting was strong and they weren't afraid to throw in the odd curveball every now and then. 'Two Heads' initially appeared on the b-side of TC: Hug's debut single 'Day Today' in the summer of '96, before being rejigged (to its detriment I reckon) for their one and only album 'Pie-MONDO' early the following year. This, needless to say, is the first of those versions.

Two Heads

Monday Long Song

Anita Ward went to No.1 on both sides of the Atlantic in 1979 with 'Ring My Bell' and, before the year was out, UK lovers rock trio Blood Sisters put out a bass driven cover of the massive hit. They really were blood sisters too - Ouida, Moira and Yvonne McCarthy. Keeping the family theme going, the band on the recording consisted of five brothers - Errol, E. Lloyd, Jerry, Trevor and Paul Robinson, who would go on to issue a couple of albums of their own in the early 1980s, under the One Blood moniker. E. Lloyd Robinson's bassline is even more prominent on the flipside of the 'Ring My Bell' 12", titled, not unreasonably, 'One Blood Dub'. Blood Sisters issued a mere handful of singles during their recording career, though, as of late last year at least, they are still performing in and around London.

I found 'One Blood Dub' lurking on an old hard drive in an anonymous folder of similar vinyl rips. I've no idea where I got it from and in truth the contents are a bit of a mixed bag, but it does contain one or two other dubs worthy of attention that I might swing back to somewhere down the line.

One Blood Dub

Friday Photo #76

Milkweed is an experimental gothic folk-noir duo, responsible for 'Remscéla', an LP created with banjos, loops, found sounds and glitchy, unsettling vocals. It was very possibly my album of 2025, certainly one of my most played. At the end of the year, they also reissued two earlier cassette only releases, 'The Mound People' and 'Folklore 1979', on vinyl for the first time. The band's lyrics are inspired by folkloric texts and their music is is lo-fi and haunting, claustrophobically enveloping the listener like a dense fog. I was lucky enough to see Milkweed perform twice last year, the first time was in my own home town, where the photo above was taken. 

Exile the Sons of Uisliu

How Conchobor was Begotten

Monday Long Song

In January, a notable anniversary slipped quietly by while I was looking the other way - David Bowie's 'Station to Station' turned 50. It can be terrifying stuff, this aging malarky. The album came a mere 10 months after 'Young Americans' and just a little over 4 years after my proper introduction to the man via 'Hunky Dory'. In real time, the gaps between Bowie's releases felt unremarkable because, as Paul Weller noted, '...life is timeless, days are long when you're young...', but looking back at his extraordinary 1970s output (which for me actually begins with 1969's 'Space Oddity' and ends 9 months into the 1980s with 'Scary Monsters'), it's clearly unsustainably prolific in the long term. 13 studio albums, 2 live sets, a clutch of stand alone singles plus all of the unreleased material that has surfaced subsequently, is considerably more than most artists create over an entire career. What a time to be alive. Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven.

Station to Station

Monday Long Song

Cosmic Appalachia isn't a descriptor that you come across every day, though in the case of Eight Point Star's 2021 self-titled debut, it's an apt one. Following last year's terrific 'Tom Winter, Tom Spring' LP, created in cahoots with long time favourite of this parish C. Joynes, I've been dipping in and out of American fiddler Mike Gangloff's extensive back catalogue, some of which I was familiar with, but, given the sheer breadth of his collaborations, much of it I was not. Eight Point Star is, as of this writing, a one-off project, with Gangloff and fellow Virginians Tim Thornton, Matt Peyton and Isak Howell on a variety of guitars, fiddles and sruti boxes, creating a series of far-out ragas that effortlessly burrow their way into earworm territory. Take the descending fiddle refrain in 'Winchester's Dream' for example - it's catchy as hell, but trickier than it seems and just lately I find myself unconsciously trying to whistle it, without success.

Eight Point Star - Winchester's Dream

Friday Photo #75

Fate had a damn good crack at scuppering my birthday week plans. Firstly, while dressing for work the week before last, my back went into spasm, both agonising and scary given that it came out of the blue. I couldn't really move without considerable pain for a few days, after which it gradually eased, though a fortnight on it still isn't right. I never pull a sickie, so my boss knew it must be something serious when I called the store in some distress. By Thursday I was mobile enough to welcome my cousin and her husband for their long planned stay, during which we enjoyed a number of local excursions in the warm, spring weather, including a jaunt over to Snape Maltings where Barbara Hepworth's 'Family of Man' looked particularly majestic standing before the reedbeds of the Alde estuary. The last time I visited Snape the piece was absent, so it was nice to see it back in situ. The hand of fate hadn't quite finished trying to put a spanner in the works though, as a Tube strike had been belatedly announced for the very day of the family reunion in London that I mentioned in my previous post. But, in spite of all the obstacles, each of us somehow made it to the Euston pub at roughly the appointed time and enjoyed a memorable, if all too brief, few hours together.

Steve Wynn - My Family