10 Sweltering Spells, 29 June 2025
CMAT at bedtime, every Moviedrome intro, Kate Bush, Kathryn Williams, Gavin Bryars and more
1. CMAT introducing her CBeebies bedtime story. (If you haven’t seen her Glastonbury set, it’s so joyful, strange and brilliant – like she’s channelling the spirit of the B-52s, but through pedal-steel-spangled Irish country, and with a voice to stop time.)
Spending Sunday morning wondering if Jarvis looking at his watch during Pulp’s Glastonbury set meant he knew about the Red Arrows flypast, the watching 101 videos of Pulp playing Common People, including Greg James’s, featuring Huw Stephens and Olivia Rodrigo, and one from a Red Arrows’ plane’s cockpit (a late edit here – I’ve just realised my original post was from the bloody Sun – urgh – apologies, all - other videos are available online!).
Oh, and I have an ache this morning, a deep, deep yearning, a chasm, for a time when I was seventeen, standing in a darkening field in Somerset, when the world stretched out before me, full of endless possibilities.
To get out of any Sunday morning melancholy funk, I recommend En Vogue, performing My Lovin’ on the West Holts Stage, with fans.
A deep dive into the music of Gavin Bryars’ on the brilliant Composer Of The Week daily slot on Radio 3. If you’ve ever heard his Sinking of the Titanic or Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, you’ll know how incredibly moving his avant-garde compositions are, works of epic sound art with a bruised heart. He’s dryly funny as an interviewee, as I remember from when I crossed paths with him in 2018, when I interviewed him about the lack of classical music nominees for the Mercury Prize. These programmes are hosted by Kate Molleson, whose gorgeous Scottish accent is the best audio balm.
Finding a YouTube clip on Thursday of all of Alex Cox’s intros for Moviedrome. (If you’re too young to get this reference, this was a series of films the director and writer introduced for the BBC2 series from 1988 to 1994. I love how honest he is about many of them – effectively slagging off what you’re about to watch – but he’s never not fascinating.)
This gorgeous Substack post about introducing kids to the magic of magazines.
The moment in episode 4 of cosy Sunday night Welsh detective show Death Valley when Gwyneth Keyworth – the none-more-Welsh DS Jamie Mallowan – calls The Lion King “Hamlet with lions”.
Listening back to Kate Bush’s guitarist Brian Bath talking about working with Kate Bush on her Tour of Life in 1979 and playing an old demo tape of their version of Gymnopedies, on – clang - my documentary with Just Radio, Satie: The Minimalist Muse, on Radio 3 this evening.
This evening! It’s about how one eccentric, velvet-suited, bar piano-playing French recluse inspired minimalism, ambient, techno and influenced so many popular musicians – including Gary Numan, John Foxx, Roger Eno, Genesis’ Steve Hackett. It’s on at 7.15pm, then on BBC Sounds.Excuse another little plug, but it was nice to remember how the Pet Shop Boys’ Loneliness refers to Ringo Starr wandering alone at the end of A Hard Day’s Night on the episode of the brilliant Beatles podcast, Your Own Personal Beatles, that I recorded a while ago, which is now up, up, up wherever you stream or download your favourite podcasts.
On it, I talk about interviewing Paul McCartney, studying Help for my music GCSE, my love of Abbey Road, and more with Jack Pelling and Robin Allender. (And here’s my massive black and white face, snapped by me on my iPhone in a hotel room in Manchester when the Observer needed a new byline photo there and then.)
Finally, Kathryn Williams new song, Personal Paradise. I love Kath. My brother introduced me to her music back in the early 2000s, I first interviewed her (and drained an honesty bar with her) in Ullapool in 2008, and wrote about her amazing Sylvia Plath album in 2015, as well as the liner notes for her 2019 box set.
Her music is outwardly delicate, but inwardly all sharpness and steel, blood and nerve. It’s been particularly wonderful seeing Paul Weller talk about her gifts as a songwriter so much in recent years, and play with her. He plays Hammond organ and sings on her new album.
For now, here’s Kath’s beautiful, eerie, moving new single. I can’t wait to hear what comes next.
See you next week – and apologies for no mid-week culture blast on Wednesday, due to parenting overload. Next week’s will be worth it, promise.
xxx
And now I’ve read the post about introducing children to magazines. It’s SO sweet! Also very helpful as I’ve been asked to participate in a careers speed-dating session at a local secondary school in a couple of weeks’ time and there are a couple of useful conversation starters there! My first ever magazine that I subscribed to was The Brownie. It was so exciting when it arrived at our house in Belfast from the Guide Asscn HQ in Buckingham Palace Road, London, rolled up and bounds with a special address label that dispensed with the need for envelopes. My second, not quite a subscription really, but it arrived every quarter in a normal envelope branded with a very famous pink logo, was the Puffin Post. After that it was comics just saved for me at the local newsagent, including Fab 208 and Jackie (of course), until a friend and I shared a subscription to The Bookseller in our last year at university. She later became one of the first directors of Waterstones; I spent three years at Hatchards of Piccadilly and three as a sales rep for Penguin’s Allen Lane h/b imprint before switching to journalism.
My husband listened to all the Gavin Bryars programmes and loved them. I’ve had too many deadlines! I only know Jesus’ blood, and had no idea there was enough of his music to fill a week’s programmes, but David says there easily was.