Below is what I’m watching, listening to or simply rate very highly. My personal ‘IN’ Crowd.
I’m not selling, just telling…
Just so you know where I’m coming from. You can check the stuff out and make your own mind up in your own good time.
Dobey Gray 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
As well as giving us the track, The ‘In’ Crowd , he also lifted millions of hearts and nodding heads with that other all-time-great, Out on the Floor. What ever shifts happen below, in no particular order, Mr Dobey Gray will be heading up this page for gifting us the song, the original and the best. It’s got that swing, cool as…
The Spybrary Podcast https://spybrary.com/ 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
For starters Spybrary has a killer theme tune and a superb host in the form of Shane Whaley, a Welsh geezer broadcasting from the wilds of Vermont in the USA (Station V).
The show regularly features a truly diverse span of international contributors (including moi), with interviews, short reviews, deep dives and round tables, even including a regular appearance of someone believed to be that early 70’s rapscallion from Department S, Jason King !
When it comes to spy-fiction, to quote King’s old drinking pals the Doors, Spybrary’s open gate is ‘straight, deep and wide.’ SUBSCRIBED ✅
Gilles Peterson 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
.https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01fm4ss
The acid-jazz pioneer and super-star DJ Gilles Peterson spins tracks both essential and eclectic on his Saturday slot on BBC radio 6. He rarely disappoints me at any time.
The three hour show always throws up something new, along with classic Unknown’s. I rarely listen live but download for the right time, an emotional lift is guaranteed. SUBSCRIBED ✅
Jamz Supernova 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000txn3
Because Sheriff Peterson is human and also deserved a nice summer holiday in 2020, cause and effect delivered deputy DJ, Ms. Jamz Supernova, to our ears.
Jamz was on a free transfer from 1 Xtra for three weeks, and it was simply a joyous fandango of Progressive Sounds.
A year on she has her own slot Saturday afternoon on 6 Music. How’s that?
Okay, okay, I know I’m more of ‘Tom’s Garden Tips’ vintage than Jamz’ target audience and promise no ‘dad dancing’ but my ilk should tune in and open their ears and minds before wingeing about the state of new music. SUBSCRIBED ✅
The Curiously Specific Podcast 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
https://www.curiouslyspecific.com/
They dangled the bait of the Ipcress File. You can guess what happened next…
The Curiously Specific podcast is a two-man bookclub put together by a couple of mates. One’s a digital media walla, the other’s an underground novelist who does a bit with ‘Auntie’.
It all amounts to an irreverent blast, as they visit places in search of curiously specific land marks, bars (of course) and locations.
There’s a carefully curated pile waiting for you to subscribe, download enjoy and hopefully they’ll be back soon. Please? SUBSCRIBED ✅
Don Letts Culture Clash Radio 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072pzt
Where do I begin🤔? He looks like he means it doesn’t he?
Although Don ‘The Rebel Dread’ Letts drags the tags of the punk era and his association with The Clash round like Jacob Marley’s chains, the truth is he’s been active across all areas of media, as a constant, for going on half a century.
Culture clash is his musical specialism, he listens and spins without prejudice. I’ve shook his hand- and yes, he does bloody well mean it !😉 SUBSCRIBED ✅
Black Mirror/ Beyond the Sea (Netflix)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Q: What do you get if you send the selected works of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, Arthur Macken, a pinch of Fleming & Deighton, a dash of Irish Folklorist Eddie Lenihan and a sprinkling of James Bridle’s non-fiction tech-mare The New Dark Age through the Onyx filter?
A: The Glimmer Girl.
Heady mix? Indeed, some may say mind-bending, resultant in my first spy novel.
I was first made aware of Black Mirror whilst on operations with a fellow galley-slave, Mobiwan Silvasi, in 2011.
Mobiwan’s recap involving the PM’s indulging in porcine coupling on live TV didn’t exactly set my soul on fire.
Too believable.
Thirteen years later, I’ve just enjoyed the sixth series. A couple of aspects are uncannily similar to those in 2020’s The Glimmer Girl: the road incident in Mazey Day, and the three hits/sacrifices in the prescient Demon 79– X minds think alike.
The other stories of this series, idea-wise smacked of diminishing returns…save for the episode Beyond the Sea, which may be the jewel in the crown of the whole goddamned pantheon.
Set in an alternative space-age 1969, who else but Brooker could mash up the Manson-cide of hippydom with classic sci-fi paperbacks in second hand bookshop? The fate of two astronauts is an inversion of Bowie’s Major Tom’s, turning the series’ recurring theme of man vs, machine up to a techni- colour max.
Beyond the Sea stars Kate Mara, Josh Hartnett and Aaron Paul.
It’s beautifully shot, in retro exposure a la Asteroid City, and is best thing I’ve seen in a long time ensuring Black Mirror/ Beyond the Sea’s place in The ‘IN’ Crowd for some time.