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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 11h

Glad to be of service! I'm actually amazed the formatting is still holding up – if I tried tinkering with it now, I'm sure the whole thing would just fall apart. It's still one of my favourite pieces from Smoke days, and hopefully every so often someone googles "Black Prince" and comes across it...

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 12h

Great news about the new stadium, but why all the guff about it “redefining sport in East London”? Orient have been doing that ever since I’ve been watching them – it’s why you’ll find me in the West Stand at 5pm every other Saturday shaking my head and muttering “I don’t know what that was…” #LOFC

Leyton Orient

Official Leyton Orient FC Website - The O's

www.leytonorient.com

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 12d

"Where the Trent meets the Ouse" sounds like the tagline of the worst romantic comedy of all time. But, to answer your question, no... and, looking at the map, I'd be very surprised if anyone had...

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 13d

Don’t know about you, but I tend to find major river confluences a bit of a disappointment. In Lyon, though, we got to see the Rhône meet the Saône and, well, chapeau, les fleuves! Rhône on left, Saône on right. Not sure about the train tracks, but I think that motorbike’s got serious SatNav issues.

Confluence of Rhône and Saône in Lyon, with railway tracks disappearing into water and figure standing in waves.

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 14d

Though that’s no way to talk about my mother.

Interesting thing about the LP in that first picture, by the way, is that Vera had already taken up position when the bomb hit. Consummate professional that she was, all she did was ask for a mirror so that she could check her hair. [2/2]

#BethnalGreen

Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 14d

Despite being of good Bethnal Green stock, I’d not come across the novel Bethnal Green till I saw it in that Mick Jones exhibition the other week. Going by the blurb, it's set in a post-war East End my parents would’ve known all too well in their courting days – it could almost be their story. [1/2]

A copy of the book "Bethnal Green" and Vera Lynn's "Hits of the Blitz" in the Rock and Roll Public Library Exhibition.

Blurb on the back of the novel "Bethnal Green".

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 15d

rather than a band who’ve just met a poet. [3/3]

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

#TheCatenaryWires #BrianBilston #SkepWax

Riley & Coe - Brian Bilston & the Catenary Wires - BBC Sounds

Gideon Coe plays featuring live music from Brian Bilston & The Catenary Wires.

www.bbc.co.uk

Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 15d

or become a better person. For now, I’m going for the former, as I can’t believe the latter would be much fun and the session is exceptional – they really do sound like a band who’ve just acquired a new singer (not that Brian sings, and not that there’s anything wrong with the old singers), [2/3]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 15d

Having accidentally acquired a groundhog from a bloke in a pub (look, I thought it was a big guinea pig, OK?), I seem to be permanently trapped in last Monday, forced to either listen to @brianbilston.bsky.social and The Catenary Wires in session on 6 Music over and over again [1/3]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 18d

Man sidles out of Mary's Cafe on Camberwell Road as we're passing at 9.30 this morning. "Want a few bits of salmon?" he mutters. Well, sir, no. I don't think I do. #Camberwell #Walworth

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 19d

No physical release, sadly, but downloadable here:

blueboy.bandcamp.com/album/a-life... [3/3]

#Blueboy #SarahRecords #PreciousRecordings @precrecs.bsky.social

A Life in Numbers, by Blueboy

13 track album

blueboy.bandcamp.com

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 19d

shimmer, soar, snap and crackle in ways only hinted at before – a stained-glass box full of kaleidoscopes exploding in a thunderstorm, that sort of stuff. One and Deux, their recent 7”s on Precious Recordings, open proceedings, followed by My Three, 4am, Five Minutes and… ah, that’s clever. [2/3]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 19d

And the third Sarah-related release is… A Life In Numbers, the beautiful new album by Blueboy, with Gemma now on lyrics and on vocals that slip in the flicker of an eyelid from note-perfect confidence to something more vulnerable, fragile and raw, while Paul’s guitars [1/3]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 21d

I know it should be really easy, given what he went on to do, but for some reason I can never remember whether Robert Redford played the Sundance Kid or whether he played Butch Festival.

Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 22d

“Reject what they don’t hide – the othering, belittling, the misplaced pride – and let your existence be the resistance...” [3/3]

(Original June post about this linked below)

lightninginatwilighthour.bandcamp.com

#LightningInATwilightHour #TheFieldMice #SarahRecords @elefantrecords1.bsky.social

Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · Jun 12

Once upon a time there was a band called the Field Mice who, in 1991, put out a 12” single called Missing The Moon that was, we thought, the greatest seven minutes in the history of pop – even NME made it Single of the Week. Others disputed this, saying that technically it was 6’59”, but… [1/5]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 22d

the case of There’s More To Life Than Crooks, the magnificent new single by Lightning In A Twilight Hour, Bobby Wratten from The Field Mice’s current band, which is finally now out on Elefant Records… [2/3]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 22d

“Swallowing lies as history repeats. Not a single care for those they put at risk…”

Songs with lyrics provoked by the state of the world always run the risk of being left to sound irrelevant or foolish by the time-lag between composition and release; sadly, pretty much the opposite is true in [1/3]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 23d

some of which you can pick up and read… well worth an hour of your time if you’re in that neck of the woods. There’s a definite Clash bias, as you might expect, but… nothing wrong with that. (www.rocknrollpl.com – it’s free, but closes on the 18th.) [2/2]

#RRPL #TheClash #MickJones

Books teaching you how to play guitar and use a tape recorder, RRPL exhibition.

London books and records, RRPL exhibition.

Bookshelf of random paperbacks, RRPL exhibition.

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 23d

Stopped off in Mile End on our way to see the O’s on Saturday to visit the Rock & Roll Public Library, the personal pop culture archive of Mick Jones from the Clash, bits of which he occasionally lets the public have a nose round. Posters, fanzines, records, books, magazines, [1/2]

Wall of punk fanzine covers in RRPL exhibition.

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 25d

Not sure why but, no matter what the result, whenever I leave Brisbane Road at 5pm I always have an inexplicable urge to buy some bricks.

Bit wet today.

#leytonorient #lofc

A puddle at Brisbane iin front of an advertising hoarding saying "Bricks bricks bricks".

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 26d

be stand-alone singles on the grounds that anything else is just marketing. But, if you’re appalled, the CD is smaller.

For more objective thoughts, the link below is to a review at @normanrecords.com. Or the Bandcamp is here: circuitryrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/lyceum

#SarahRecords #TheOrchids

The Orchids - 'Lyceum': Reviews

Discover new - or old! - music for your lovely ears by reading our staff and customer reviews of Lyceum by The Orchids.

www.normanrecords.com

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 26d

the Orchids’ Lyceum, eight tiny miracles that shimmer and ache and sigh and are gone before you know it. “I whispered ‘Hi’ as you walked away…”

And it’s just been reissued by Circuitry. Its diameter sadly exceeds 10", but that’s because it now includes the songs we insisted should [3/4]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 26d

Bloody-minded? Yes. Reckless? Oh, definitely: it turned out that 10”s weren’t cheaper to make than 12”s at all – quite the opposite, in fact. But being reckless and bloody-minded was our thing, and it meant that we accidentally released one of the most perfect pop records of all time: [2/4]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 26d

Back in 1989, having a band itching to do an album was a tad awkward for a 7”-only label like Sarah. But losing that band to someone else would’ve been unbearable, so… we compromised: we’d do our first LP, just as long as it didn’t measure more than 10” across or contain more than 8 songs. [1/4]

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Unchartered Streets @uncharteredstreets.bsky.social · 27d

In the meantime… please enjoy this beautiful video of a six-planet orrery in motion. It’s very soothing. Even though one orb is clearly angling for a fight. I think, rather appropriately, it’s Mars. Or possibly Action Painting! [3/3]

#sarahrecords #LightningInATwilightHour

The Six Planet Genesis Orrery

YouTube video by Staines & Son Orrery Makers

www.youtube.com

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