late night with guy mondo

Survival Sampler: Fear and Loafing , collage ca. 1985 by StudioMONDO I don't recall how I came into possession of this cassette but it's still one of my favorite albums to listen to. Not one dud on the whole compilation of mid-80s New Wave, Pop and Rock acts from the Second British Invasion. It was the catalyst for my later purchases of music by groups like The Smiths, China Crisis, Scritti Politti and Depeche Mode , groups I, back then, knew little or nothing about.  There's also a great song from The Assembly a one time project of Vince Clarke (of Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure ) that leaves you wanting more like it. I just recently found out what the original packaging looked like (I did the artwork above because I just had the tape) but it was really cool and I wish I had it. A quick scan on eBay yielded yet another surprise: it was also issued as a vinyl LP! I guess should burn it to a CD even though, unlike most of my cassettes, it still plays flawlessly. Surviv...

Today i decided to do a little housecleaning. While rummaging through my collection of VHS tapes i found a bunch of promo music videos. Among them was Rock DJ by Robbie Williams . It's a mediocre song made more interesting by this video in which begins with Robbie center-stage in a roller rink full of yawn-inducing, generic fashion models. He becomes increasingly distressed at not being the center of attention and begins a striptease to catch the eye of any of the women and, particular ly, those of the DJ Lauren Gold .      There's a pretty good idea at work here and it's well executed with better than average make-up effects and CGI so it's, actually, a lot of fun to watch with the sound off (or on depending on your tolerance for Robbie Williams ). It's one of those things you want to view every once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, after watching it today, it is stuck in my VCR so now i can't watch my VHS copy of Volumen . Music: 2/5 - i'm bewilde...

  I recently bought a new, redesigned copy of the Album Cover Album by Storm Thorgersen and Roger Dean because my original 1977 edition was coming apart from it's glued-in spine and I found a new, hardcover copy on Amazon for $0.99. First, The Cons: For all it's touted redesign this book suffers slightly from it. The axiom "If it ain't broke don't fix it." applies aptly here as the original has larger images on pages with more than one cover displayed. The new editions images may seem sharper and the colors look to have been corrected (though a little too much contrast in some) but I'm at a loss as to why they were reduced in size by about 10%. The type redesign is "prettier" but less legible as the font is too light to stand out on the neutral gray background. It also baffles me that, as a book on design by designers, all the individual design credits are set so small and in an even lighter font as to render them insignificant. A...

Sunday afternoon I go out to buy some food and find a kitten just chillin' on the stairs.It doesn't seem to be afraid of me so I pet it because TheGuy likes the kitties a lot. When i come home it's still there and the kids from next door say she's been there all day. I suggest to DJ (the youngest kid of the group who lives across the courtyard from me) he take her home since Chico (the oldest of the three next door kids is afraid of cats) but he says his mom doesn't like cats either. So, after they go out to play, i go back to my apartment and the kitten follows me in. Okay, so what to do now? I guess i could make a flyer to say i found her. Later. I figure that she might be hungry because i vaguely remember that kittens (she looks to be about 4 or 5 months old) are sorta like puppies in that they need to eat a lot like the growing things they are. I gave her a little bowl of water and a fairly good sized piece of fried catfish. Not only did she eat 3 pieces of fis...

This is a compilation of songs, from different Hindi films, performed by "playback" artists (singers that dub the songs for the actors in Bollywood films) Mohammed Rafi and Mohammad Aziz . I guess the idea behind this cassette was to show how Mohammad Aziz 's reverence for Mohammed Rafi made him a shoo-in as his successor in pop music after M. Rafi's death in 1980. Both of them are excellent singers with very pleasant voices so it would be hard to say which I liked better than the other. Admittedly, M. Aziz' songs have better sound and production than some of the older tracks by M. Rafi and I can't comment on the quality of the material they worked with but the whole thing is an entertaining listen. A curious thing about this album is that, apparently, it's the 4th part of a series and it has spoken vignettes between each song with a man and woman talking. It sounds like they're shilling for the films related to the songs or for other ...

A view from inside the StudioMONDO Fortress of Solitudeness of part of my collection of vintage toasters (which all work by the way). Just posted this because it's late and i gots nuthin' else t'say...

Great Songs of the 60's Columbia Special Products CSP 129, USA (ca. 1963?) Track list: A1 Jerry Vale - Camelot A2 The Ray Conniff Singers - Never on Sunday A3 Eydie Gormé - Moon River A4 Andre Kostelanetz - Desafinado A5 Vic Damone - If Ever I Would Leave You A6 Lester Lanin - I Believe in You B1 The New Christy Minstrels - Green, Green B2 Patti Page - Fly Me to the Moon B3 Steve Lawrence - Ramblin' Rose B4 Buddy Greco - I Left My heart in San Francisco B5 Ernie Heckscher - I Wanna Be Around B6 Tony Bennett - This Is All I Ask