Oof. This one’s a bit heavy.

Download: The Chase – Propaganda (mp3)

What is it with the internet and kittens? More of these at The Kitten Covers.

Download: Animal Crazy – Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls (mp3)

Been a long time since we had any Pauline Murray here so I was very happy when he pulled this one out.

Download: Life’s A Gamble – Penetration (mp3)

What with Bowie, The Associates and now Robert Fripp he does seem to have a taste for my more avant garde records.

I was never all that keen on Fripp’s Exposure album which I think I only bought (and kept) because I liked the cover. But it does have some nice moments on it like this which I think is better than the version on Gabriel’s first solo album (and has Brian Eno playing synth on it to boot).

Download: Here Comes The Flood – Robert Fripp and Peter Gabriel (mp3)

He got the hang of this pretty quick, I actually had to stop him pulling too many albums out.

That’s my boy.

Download: What In The World – David Bowie (mp3)

My mother either threw or gave away nearly every toy I ever owned. All my games, piles of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, my (talking!) Action Man and his extensive wardrobe of uniforms, plus all my Thunderbirds rockets and Captain Scarlet vehicles, my Batmobile, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car, and Yellow Submarine, all of which would probably make me enough money to retire on if I still had them.

The only survivors of this ruthless cull are my teddy bear Little Ted and a dog called Doggie (no points for originality there). Little Ted got his name because my sister had a larger teddy bear called Big Ted, though I assume they were both named around the same time because neither of their names would make much sense without the other one, would they? Little Ted is a polar bear and I got him because of Pipaluk, the baby polar bear born at London Zoo in 1967 who caused a bit of a craze among kids at the time and joined the ranks of other celebrity animals at the zoo like Guy The Gorilla and Chi Chi the Panda. Apart from Little Ted I distinctly remember having a Pipaluk badge which I got at the zoo when we went to see him.

40 years later the two of them are sitting on the bookshelf in my living room, a bit ragged and beaten-up (all those fights with Big Ted probably) and probably worth less than one wheel off an old Batmobile, but I obviously didn’t keep hold of them for investment purposes. They’ve survived all this time and escaped my mother’s chucking-out purges because like most little kids I was attached to them in a way that I never was with a toy car — you can’t cuddle up and go to sleep with a Hot Wheels can you? They’re major characters in my childhood and I bet I’m not the only grown man who still has his teddy bear. Not that I still sleep with him or anything.

Download: I’m Your Toy (live) – Elvis Costello (mp3)