If I said to you “Paul Hardcastle”, then you’d probably reply “Who?” or “N-n-n-n-nineteen” and look quite pleased with yourself. If you were to be feeling particularly smug, you might mention the shocking cricket-based cover version of 19 by Rory Bremner.
It’s a bit of a shame that that’s all people seem to remember of Paul Hardcastle. Many years ago I possessed a second-hand Smash Hits tape which had been half taped-over by its previous owner, obliterating Big Fun in favour of various mixes of Hardcastle’s latest singles. Alongside 19 was Just For Money, this excellent synth track which my naive mind assumed contained samples of Del Boy & Rodney. After IDing and tracking it down on 12″ many years later, I was surprised to find that the actual samples are (in order of incredulity) Hardcastle himself, Bob Hoskins, and Laurence Olivier.
Worth a listen.
Paul Hardcastle (feat. Bob Hoskins & Laurence Olivier) – Just For Money
A quick note to announce the availability of Version 0.4 of Autowhack, the handy GUI for automatically compressing Javascript and CSS. This version adds support for compressing CSS as well as Javascript (a godsend for the project I’m working on, at least) and also remembers your settings between runs of the application.
This version’s a beta which I whipped together last night, so there are a couple of known issues to be aware of which are detailed on Autowhack’s Shinypixel Labs page.
There’s a World Cup on, y’know. I approve of this particular World Cup song because – among other things – it contains brass, silly moustaches, ukuleles and a kazoo.
Not what most people say when they see my record collection, but instead an oldish album title track by The Young Punx. Appearing in video form on their free “digital boxset”, Get To Know The Young Punx, it showcases their genre-hopping style and has a corking Q*Bert-inspired video. Today’s pick, then.
There’s a lot of music out there – I dredge through hours of podcasts, on average, every day. Occasionally one track pops up and makes me grin from ear to ear from start to finish. If You Do, I Do is one of those, discovered via The Young Punx podcast late on a Friday while glaring at some errant code after a week in the office.
What could be better – or more unexpected – than a Japanese, slightly-too-fast, scratch-filled, electro-house reworking of Pomp and Circumstance (also known as Land of Hope and Glory to you ‘orrible lot)? Answers on a postcard, but only after you’ve been struck agog by what Armand Van Helden’s Koochy would sound like if it gatecrashed the Last Night of the Proms.
