Thursday, April 26, 2012

Now We Are One

Banished's Bugs is one year old today. We made it through the winter with no bugs to speak of and actually prospered, in a small way. And on Tuesday we acheived a little page view milestone that I never thought we would hit in just a year. But its so embarrassingly tiny a number I'm not going to tell you.
We could celebrate with 'Happy Birthday' by Altered Images and don't think I didn't consider it. But looking back, without the benefit of rose coloured glasses, it seems so perfectly horribly vacuous and twee in  the way that only 80's pop can be that I couldn't inflict it on you ...or me for that matter.

So instead here is Birthday by The Sugarcubes. Its from the 80's too if rather later. But Bjork has been rather more influential than Claire Grogan who's career was all downhill from Gregory's Girl if you ask me which you didn't but since you are here I'll tell you any way. It's my blog after all.
Besides which it lets me be difficult and self-centred like my hero the out of print pamphleteer Dobson, by deliberately choosing the Icelandic language version over the English one.

So,  til hamingju með afmælið Banished's Bugs.
Yes that's the Icelandic eqivalent of Happy Birthday, though not a literal translation.

Obviously

8 comments:

  1. Jolly good, jolly good.
    Carry on that man.

    OSM
    (I'd listen to the featured track but the only "bad-trip" I've ever experienced was occasioned by that very same recording).

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  2. I'm sure neither have been down that road in a good while OSM. A nice glass of rioja does it for me these days.

    I do suspect that repeated listening to the Altered Images alternative could inflict terrible psychic damage without any chemical aid whatsoever. I listened to about 30 seconds when preparing this post and I still woke in a cold sweat in the night.

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  3. I've said before, I'll say it again..
    "Y'know you'er getting old when the NHS is your drug dealer".

    I'm sure you have some health-care provider over there that you could substitute for the 'NHS' bit.

    As for birthday tunes, try 'Born, Never Asked" from Laurie Anderson's "Big Science".
    (My favourite album ever, in the whole wide world.)

    OSM

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  4. I was thinking just the other day that I really wish I still had my vinyl box set of United States.

    I don't know why but the story about if you want to be truely safe on a plane you ought to take a bomb. You'd never use it, but while the chance of one bomb being on a plane is tiny...the chance of there being 2 bombs is infinitesimal

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  5. Congratulations on the birthday. Keep up the good work.

    I would like to take this opportunity to confess that I remain hopelessly enamoured of "I Could Be Happy" by the twee and vacuous Altered Images. Mind you, I haven't actually listened to it for years.

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  6. Ah now theres the rub Mr.Key. I would have said the same of Happy Birthday until I had to hear it in the course of my researches

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  7. In a spirit of objective inquiry, I have now listened to both "Happy Birthday" and "I Could Be Happy". I can report that whereas the former can be consigned, without regret, to the dustbin of history, the latter remains a tiptop smash hit, as ancient DJs like to put it.

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  8. As rare as that may be Mr. Key we must agree to disagree in this case.

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