{"id":2437,"date":"2009-03-23T23:52:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T03:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=2437"},"modified":"2009-03-23T23:56:18","modified_gmt":"2009-03-24T03:56:18","slug":"the-blaggers-guide-et-al","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/23\/the-blaggers-guide-et-al\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blagger’s Guide, et. al."},"content":{"rendered":"

I had almost 12 hours in the car yesterday, and for most of that time I listening to various things on my iPod. Obviously there was some music–you can’t road trip without music–but these days I spend a lot more time on non-music content. I finished listening to a kids’ book<\/a> I had been listening to with my daughterHey, I needed closure on the plot.<\/footnote>. I wrapped up an audiobook of a science fiction book<\/a> I read a few years ago, one of a series<\/a> I’m working through again on audio when I’m driving. <\/p>\n

I listened to some BBC radio plays: one a series of four episodes doing comedy history around the Crusades<\/a> (with Hugh Grant, apparently), and one an adaptation of a Japanese SF story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the standout thing on this trip was the comedy history of music, The Blagger’s Guide<\/a>. I listened to the complete first series<\/a> while driving through Maine, and really, really enjoyed it. David Quantick<\/a> amused me for more than a couple of hours.<\/p>\n

It was available on BBC’s Listen Again service for a while, but it appears to not be there now. I’m sure I have no idea how someone could get a copy<\/a> to listen to at the moment.<\/p>\n

It didn’t start out utterly awesome–the first episode was interesting, but didn’t blow me away. During the second episode things suddenly turned from “pretty good” to “why yes, I shall listen to this entire series”. I can mark the exact point at when it happened to; it was during the “blagger’s guide to punk” section, right about here:<\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

Lots of good stuff there, and then the third episode really cracked me up with an utter thrashing of “White Reggae”, which included this notable bit at the beginning:<\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

Is it wrong that this little clip might have triggered some repressed and traumatic memories from the years when I lived one city over from North America’s largest Oktoberfest?<\/p>\n

By the fifth episode I was enjoying things so much that I didn’t even mind when Quantick absolutely ravaged the music that got me through high school:<\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

Actually as we got toward the end of that segment I was actually getting offended on behalf of my favourite band from high school days, a prog rock band that seemed to not even rate a mention as Quantick shredded the entire genre… and then he ended with this, which actually made me laugh out loud<\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

How can someone hate prog that much, and still love Kate Bush as much as Quantick clearly does? It confuses me. Still, it’s entertaining to listen to.<\/p>\n

When I ran out of episodes of that I was still in the music history mood, so I rolled into Alan Cross<\/a>‘ Guide To Alternative Rock<\/a>, in which I found a number of really weird facts and coincidences. The coverage in Cross’ stuff is in much greater detail–I only got through The Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie before I ran out of highway–and is a much less dynamic presentation than Quantick’s, but it shows a lot of research. And frankly, knowing some of the jobs Lou Reed had during various stages of his early career kind of freaks me out a little. And that whole thing about Iggy and Billy Joel as session musicians (who never met) on a well-known girl group single…<\/p>\n

I’d recommend the Cross as well, but don’t listen to it right after Quantick, since the presentation suffers a bit by the comparison. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had almost 12 hours in the car yesterday, and for most of that time I listening to various things on my iPod. Obviously there was some music–you can’t road trip without music–but these days I spend a lot more time on non-music content. I finished listening to a kids’ book I had been listening to with my daughterHey, I… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[381,104,208],"class_list":["post-2437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-radio","tag-the-road","tag-things-to-listen-to","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-Dj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2437"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2443,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions\/2443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}