Journal

Saturday, January 04, 2003
Over at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/singing_ringing_tree.shtml BBC Radio 4 has put up the documentary on "The Singing Ringing Tree" that people mentioned earlier in the journal. I'm looking forward to it.

And those of you into Radio Drama and good fiction might like to know that, for the next three saturdays, Radio 4 is broadcasting a radio adaptation of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Each play will be up on the web for a week in real audio, following the broadcast.

wow, an accordian version of "pump it up" that is by far the strangest and coolest thing i have heard in a long time. i am a huge costello fan, and for no real reason that is one of my favorite songs of his. I have to find that cd.
any hints besides amazon on finding it?


It would have helped if I'd got the name of the band right. It's Those Darn Accordions, not Those Damn Accordions. There's lots of stuff about them at http://www.thosedarnaccordions.com/about.html and some music files at http://www.thosedarnaccordions.com/audio/audio.html

And the Elvis Costello oddment I'm still looking for is "I Love You When You Sleep" by Tracie, a 1984 song that EC reworked into "Joe Porterhouse" on Goodbye Cruel World, and which I've not heard since, er, 1984 actually. I keep expecting it to turn up somewhere, but it never does.

Neil:
John in Knoxville here... I've also been a fan of McDonald's work for years, and your mention of a new FLYNN book sent me scrambling all over the web looking for info, but the only mentions I could find were a tiny excerpt on McDonald's site, and on Amazon listing a June 2003 publication date... help! :)
Do McDonald send you a copy early (if so, you lucky so-and-so!), or has it hit the stores already? Could you please post some more info on FLYNN'S WORLD on the journal, as I'd love to read that book!
Thanks...


There, apology number two -- I should have mentioned that the copy of Flynn's World I read was a proof, sent from Pantheon Books, and I just looked at the cover and realised that it won't be published until June 2003. (My only excuse is I normally take so long to getting around to reading things people send me, books that arrive in proof form are often out and in paperback by the time I read them.)