Fan-funking-tastic.

I haven’t bought a Prince record since he was using a squiggly symbol as his name but I still regard the little chap as a genius and I don’t throw that word around lightly, especially when it comes to pop musicians.

So I was more than happy when his new single “Screwdriver” turned out to be something of a return to top form. He even has a band of sexy girls behind him just like in the great old days of Wendy and Lisa and Sheila E.

It was a major oversight on my part not to include Katy B’s On A Mission in the list of my favourite albums of 2011 because it was one of the best dance albums I’ve heard since Madonna was in her pomp. Hopefully one day she’ll find it in her heart forgive me.

Now she’s back with a four-song EP called Danger which is terrific and you can download it for FREE from her website. This video is another of those “out on the town” jobs that Londoners can play spot-the-location with, though judging by the Brick Lane sign a lot of it takes place in the East End which was far from being a trendy destination when I lived in London. I did my first year of art college in Whitechapel and back then Brick Lane was almost Dickensian in its squalor and Docklands was a wasteland.

The English language is a wonderful thing but I’m having trouble finding the words that can really express how truly, insanely, off-the-hook, happy-face-making, dog’s bollockingly great this is.

“The famous collage that Richard did was very exciting to me, and I suppose that when I try to analyse my own work, certainly some of the early songs were very collage like — where I’d actually throw different styles of music into the same song, or try to.” — Bryan Ferry
Re-Make/Re-Model
Michael Bracewell (2007)

Very sad to hear that the great British artist Richard Hamilton has died. I think that the man who (probably) invented Pop Art, designed the cover of The White Album and was Bryan Ferry’s art teacher, certainly deserves a mention and a doff of the cap here.

Download: (I Want to Be An) Anglepoise Lamp – The Soft Boys (mp3)

Above: Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956)

No words can convey how happy this made me.