Shing-A-Ling!

For all those of you in London, Shing-A-Ling is a new every-Friday-night shindig featuring vinyl-loving DJs spinning intoxicating rhythms for your dancing feet...

The launch party, on Friday 7th August will feature all the Shing-A-Ling DJs - who you might just know from their other, more established musical ventures: Dean Chalkley (Shake!) / G the P (Get Involved & Gerry's Joint) / Miss Red (Shuffle Off To Buffalo) / Paolo (Valley of Wax) / Si Cheeba

The music? An infectious blend of Rhythm'n'Blues, Soul, Ska, Rockabilly and anything else the Shing-A-Ling DJs feel like throwing down. Dancing shoes essential!

In the words of Shirley Ellis, "Come on sugar, let's Shing-A-Ling!

Launch night: Friday, August 7, 2009 at 7:30pm. Thereafter every Friday, at The Smithfield Tavern, 101 Charterhouse Street, London

Uploads reinstated

Since Boomp3 has gone belly up and taken all my uploads with it, I've replaced all the dud links with Divshare ones instead, which should work fine.

The Ballad of Cherry Flavor

I'd always steered clear of Marmalade until quite recently. I think it was partly from dislike of their name, and partly from their cover of Obla-Di-Obla-Da, surely an example of Paul McCartney at his most teeth-grindingly twee.

So it was with some surprise that I discovered that their later work was melancholic, wistful and really quite special. If you don't already know it, I urge you to seek out Reflections of My Life, their 1969 number one. Its haunting description of teetering on the edge plays like a valedictory address for the sixties itself and is surely one of the most mournful singles ever to top the charts.

Their follow up single, Rainbow, ploughed a similar furrow, though with more propulsion and spirit to it, but it's Rainbow's B-side, The Ballad of Cherry Flavor (or Flavar, as it's spelt on the single) that I've pulled out here.

The song is an address to the eponymous Cherry, a 'Bunny Girl' who was dating the band's drummer Alan Whitehead at the time, destined to wait West End tables while Whitehead caroused his way around town. The song is not condemnatory, merely resigned and weary with it all. This is the way of world, it seems to say, and poor Cherry might as well accept it.

The Ballad of Cherry Flavor is an exquisite, delicate sketch that tells us so little, yet so much. I hope Cherry Flavor was okay in the end, I think she deserved better.