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One great building (plus some more)
I am heavily involved in the campaign to save Derby's near-unique Art Deco style Bus
Station. I got in touch with The Twentieth Century Society about this. Visit their site.
They go on some very interesting tours of examples of the
best of Modernist Architecture. The Art Deco Societies page has some useful contacts for
'Deco-holics' like me. Also, how could one forget Lara Goeke's excellent 'Art Deco Architecture'
site? It is easily the most comprehensive guide to this significant style of architecture
on the Web.
You can find the Bus Station illustrated
below. Also, please do click on the photo to get some idea of what
the campaign is all about. It'll amaze you what's going on in Derby
at the moment about the Bus Station, I guarantee you that!
For your delectation I have also got together a virtual tour around some of Derby's best
Art Deco and 'Moderne' buildings. I hope you enjoy the tour!
For a (saucy) bit of Art Deco style-watching you might like to drop by the Sally Rand page.
If you enjoy that sort of thing Amber DiGiovanni re-creates the Sally Rand persona for the
audiences of this very day and age. Those of Jean Harlow and Ginger Rogers are re-created in
like fashion by Amber.
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Links
The Twentieth Century Society
The Art Deco Societies
Art Deco Architecture
The Virtual Deco Derby Tour
The Sally Rand page
Sally Rand Shows
Several great sounds
At a local gig by the 1980's Mod band The Threads
I picked up a 7" 45 of the band's latest release, complete with Web sites and E-Mail
addresses on the rear cover - vinyl power in the Internet age! At the same gig I also picked
up a barley-sugar-coloured vinyl EP by The Sacred Hearts, by the name of 'Psyche Out'.
On the subject of 7" 45's, I've had recommended to me, by a friend, a site by the name of
Solid Hit Soul. There's a similar site with an unfortunately infrequently updated facility
whereby old Soul fans can get back in touch with each other called
Soul-A-Go-Go.
Check out the Ace Records, who re-release Cal Tjader's material; the man behind one of the coolest
records I've got; Soul Sauce; it's a thirty-eight year-old bit of Acid
Jazz by any other name. Get it on 'Verve' records VK-10345
(64-VK-601) or alternatively on the album 'Soul Sauce', number V/V6
8614. Cal Tjader also has his very own site.
Although 'Punks In Parkas' isn't really a music site, as such,
there's some cracking Mod style-watching on it and for anybody interested in that scene it
comes highly recommended. For students doing fashion studies projects on the history of
Mod-ern British gear, say, it'd be a positive goldmine.
The Soul Survivor's site (nice and
alliterative name, just like my moniker!) has tons of playable *.RAM's on the site to get
your feet moving around your office, study, bedroom, or wherever your infernal machine
'lives'. All I've got to say to this site is, "is this what you call 'Eastern Soul'?"
If you think that's good you should try the Soul Club Juke-Box, which admittedly takes
some time to load up in the browser, being the huge page that it is, but is well worth the while
in the end, since you can play anything that was ever anything in the worlds of, variously,
Doo-Wop, Girl Group and Motown and similar. It even runs to some British Beat. So, load it up and party. (All week if you want to!)
If you want to follow your favourite records up and down the (UK) charts - in the days when they
were in the charts - go to the "Nigel's Golden Days/Remember When" site.
There's obviously been a lot of work gone into this site and it's strangely absorbing. When you
get to the site you will need to click on the "Remember When" logo to go to the
charts archive.
A late (and contemporary) discovery has been a group by the name of The Gore Gore Girls
(yet more alliteration!) a group of three white-go-go-boot-wearing lasses from Detroit,
heavily immersed in the classic Girl Group era of the 60's in terms of musical influence and
image but overlain with a healthy slice of Grunge-like sensibility, all resulting in a breath
of fresh air (and a half!).
For general information on things Girl Group you could do a lot worse than visit Chuck Mallory's Girl-Groups.com.
Its links page is especially recommended, but it's also fun in itself. Cha-Cha-Charming,
hosted by the amazingly well-read Sheila Burgel, is yet another invaluable database for
female vocals-oriented Pop.
On a similar theme there's a cracking-sounding club down on the South Coast by the name of
'Da Doo Ron Ron'. I'd love to make it down there myself sometime. This is, though, another fun
- and informative - site, which shows a deep consciousness of what the Modernist
Movement is all about. A fly in the ointment about this site (for Netscape 4.* users) is
that it is simply not viewable in the said browser, as common a platform as it still is.
Bizarrely, it is viewable in the much more esoteric Hot Java Browser and also in
the StarOffice browser. Don't ask me why this should be. You'll have to get in touch with the
Webmaster about that. (The same actually applies in the case of Cha-Cha-Charming, although
that isn't viewable in the SO browser).
I've only recently discovered that there is a radio station of rare depth and breadth beamed
from the city of Minneapolis/St. Paul, called KFAI (Fresh Air Radio). I especially recommend
the show called "This Little Girl's Gone Rockin'", playing the best of female vocals
over the last half-century or so, with a specialism in the Girl Group sound of the 60's. What's
even better is that you can listen to the two most recently broadcast shows on-line.
Just to show that that 60's spirit is truly alive and well
elsewhere, see what the Uppers Organization is up to in Sweden, with its reports from the
front line of Mod as it is today. It'll blow you away. It's a long page that maybe could
take some time to download, but there's links to all sorts of fascinating nuggets.
If you want to know who started it all go to 'The Originator'. However, where would we have
been without the distaff side of proceedings coming along a few years later? (See the
following link)
Martha Reeves - 'The Motown Diva' - is back and better than ever. Join her ever-growing
fan-club by dropping by the Martha Reeves: The Motown Diva 'Yahoo!' Group.
Links
The Threads' release, 'Sorry/In This Town'
The Sacred Hearts' release, 'Psyche Out EP'
Solid Hit Soul
Soul-A-Go-Go
Ace Records
The Cal Tjader site
The Affair (Class of '79 Mod band, Secret Affair are back under a new name)
Punks In Parkas
The Soul Survivor
The Soul Club Juke-Box
Nigel's Golden Days/Remember When
The Gore Gore Girls
Girl-Groups.com
Cha-Cha-Charming
Da Doo Ron Ron
KFAI (Fresh Air Radio)
Reports from the Uppers Organization
'The Originator'
The Ellie Greenwich site
Martha Reeves: The Motown Diva
Rapid Rewind 2005(The Rapids/The Rapids Big Roll Band/Godfrey's Grit 'n' Soul Band - one of Derby's greatest contributions to the 60's music scene).
My interactive "From 'Sweet Sixteen' to 'Twenty-One Today' Top Twenty"
Record Chart, with some surprises in there for a Mod like me. There's ten each from the last
three years of the seventies and the first three of the eighties.
Two great organisations
Mind and SANE, (Schizophrenia: A National Emergency), do sterling work amongst those with mental health difficulties. I hope that, as a person who has experienced such difficulties, by taking on the task of setting up my own business, I shall go some way to combating the baleful stereotypes that abound about people with mental health problems. Please support Mind's 'Respect: In Working Life' campaign: the fight against discrimination in the workplace on mental health grounds. It doesn't take a genius to tell what effect being knocked back for these reasons has on somebody whose mental well-being may be already potentially at risk. SANE runs the nation's only emergency phone line for those experiencing severe mental distress and the suicidal thoughts that this can sometimes bring about, SANELINE.
Links
Two great football clubs (well, that might be a matter of opinion to some of you!)
Please don't laugh after the comments immediately above, but for reasons best known to myself I am a Dunfermline Athletic and Norwich City fan. So, feel free to indulge yourself in a bit of light relief after the above with a visit to a bit of the 'Auld Grey Toun' and 'The Fine City'.
Links
Dunfermline Athletic
Norwich City
One great TV show
Celebrate one of British Popular Culture's greatest exports, the TV show, 'Coupling' by becoming a fully signed-up 'Couplie'.
Link
E-Mail:busstnactgrp@netscape.net. I should be only too delighted to hear from you.
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© 2005 : Christopher Bentley.
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