Toxic language

As Pelosi and other reps got up to the podium on Monday to announce that the bailout wasn't going to be waved through by Congress, Republicans and Democrats were having more identity crises but still deliberately disinforming on the issues within the frame of the unwelcome 'nationalisation' of (yet more) toxic assets being somehow redolent of 'socialism'.
The Times didn't help either today with their cartoon showing the monkey Bush as part of the Marx-Lenin-Stalin state-socialist line. A facile comparison.

"You were being asked to choose between financial meltdown on the one hand and taxpayer bankruptcy and the road to socialism on the other and you were told do it in 24 hours."
Republican Congressman Jeb Hensarling (Texas 5th district)

Music for the drunken happy

More wedding reception disco dancing action last night, this time on the compact carpet floor of the floating Chinese restaurant in Regents Park. Only a few weeks back all the older relatives bowed out to give the 30-something friend core a dedicated dance-off in the basement of the Thames-side Trafalgar pub in Greenwich - the stadium house of Jaxx, Armada and co, 80s revivals and new soul did the trick for most, and even I was up in time for the skanker finale of the Bodysnatchers' Let's Do Rock Steady.

At this one the programming twist was that all guests were allowed to nominate one tune they'd like to hear. As the male fiance at the time wryly noted, this should not include Energy Flash or Higher State of Consciousness, but as with any 'what's your favouite...' type question it still throws up a dilemma. I have huge tunes for many different scenarios but not weddings; how populist do you go? Throw taste to the wind or keep it 'real'?

In the end, I plumped for the League and their fluffy ebullience of romance Love Action. Sound of the Crowd is too moody; Keep Feeling Fascination has been tainted by Barley and Don't You Want Me really would be playing to the gallery. The occasional strings, the constant synth bass, Phil and the girls; it always does the trick and although arguably a bit late on for this crowd kept them moving and smiling.



The groom went on to do a fine set himself, in marked contrast to my own nuptial when i could only get my shit together to put on one record (Mary J Blige's Family Affair). Fools Gold, naturally, was played at both recent dos.

Now Playing – Brass Hotties

A minor chuckle surfaced when BBC6's Now Playing digi-radio function, handy for when you’d like to find out a tune straight away as is de rigueur these days, turned up Orchestra Babe when it should, clearly, have been Orchestra Baobab with their tidy Senegalese percussive blues-trance Ndeleng Ndeleng. No such spelling errors among the humans listing it up on the tube.