Hello Old Thing, Hello New Thing: 35

Cocoa Tea, Home T, Shabba Ranks: Pirates' Anthem (Greensleeves, 1992)
I've not heard this record for at least ten years, but, literally, oh my goodness, what a great choon. In the hot summer of 1992 this record was everywhere (at least everywhere I went). We'd play it all day in the shop - selling bucketloads of it everytime it went on - then we'd go out and hear it two or three times in the night at local clubs and gigs and just hammering out of people's cars (because we were young and went out, often without planning it for a week and a half in advance, remember that?). Hey ho. Shabba Ranks was going to be a huge, huge star. But he was a bit of a knob, so it's with not a great deal of surprise that I notice that he's not released an album in nine years. And while we're on the subject of huge tunes, how about this little beauty? The picture is of Crowborough Farm Murder Case's accused man John Norman Holmes Thorne on his chicken farm circa 1925 with his own margarine-powered radio transmitter - selectah!


Lambchop: A Hold Of You (City Slang, 2008)
It sort of warms the soul to think that a band like Lambchop can survive, flourish even, over two decades making music that, while largely from the comfortably-sized casket marked, "Literally nice", can still expect the listener to spend more than a few seconds with it before its inner literal niceness is revealed. Anyway, this is from their tenth album, OH which doesn't exist on the British corner of the internet yet, but is out October 6. Oh yes.