"We lived in Arizona, and the skies always had little fluffy clouds in 'em..."

Music One of the big sellers on Amazon at the moment is the compilation album Moods which has all the tracks you'd expect it to (Enigma, Vangelis, DJ Sammy) and includes The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds which I first heard when it was played to me by a friend at university when I visited his house. We sat on his carpet and he pumped it out of his very good sound sound system and it was like nothing this Debbie Gibson fan had experienced before.

Listening again just now on Spotify, I finally decided to try and find out exactly where the sample interview came from, this voice I've been listening to all of these years.  I've always assumed it was a news voxpop, perhaps from some US cable channel.  Or a documentary about the weather.

Inevitably the Wikipedia has an answer:

""Little Fluffy Clouds" is centred on clips from an interview with Rickie Lee Jones in which she recalls picturesque images of her childhood. Critics and fans sometimes attribute the odd nasal tonality of Jones' voice to drug use, though Jones later claimed that it was the result of a heavy cold. The samples are widely believed to have come from a conversation between Jones and LeVar Burton on the children's television programme Reading Rainbow., but in fact originated from an interview disc that was issued with some promotional boxed copies of her album Flying Cowboys. The interview was not actually conducted by Burton at all."

Which then leads to YouTube and the first interview most of us can actually speak along to ...



Interestingly, the uploader makes the LeVar Burton mistake too even though the voice we hear sounds nothing like Geordi LaForge.

What the Wikipedia doesn't mention is what the first voice we hear is. That would be John Waite whose audio show reel is also on YouTube and mentions The Orb in his CV:



He's currently the reporter on Radio 4's Face The Facts.

John Lancaster on the London Underground.

Travel John Lancaster at The Guardian answers an age old question about the London Underground:

"I've lived in London for more than quarter of a century now, and this is the first time I've ever been on the day's first train. It's something I'd often wondered about, though, from both a practical and a romantic point of view. The practical question was a simple one: if the transport network isn't running in the early morning, how do the people who operate it get to work? How does the driver get to the train, if there are no trains to take him there? The answer is prosaic: they get there by minicab. The cabs travel a prescribed route to the various depots on the District line, picking up staff en route as they head to Upminster, Earl's Court, Ealing Common, Barking and Hammersmith. Of these postings, Upminster is the most popular, because a large number of drivers live nearby – that's one of the reasons it is, as I was told by a District veteran, the "senior depot". The first train out from Earl's Court in the morning is at 5.21, but to get there, allowing for multiple pickups and some waiting around at the depot, the minicab from the East End starts as early as 2.30 in the morning. That's an early start to a working day."

But if the driver doesn't have the taxi parked outside their house, how does the driver get to work? Wheels within wheels.

"bent by a brogue"

History Mary, Queen of Golf:

"She loved St. Andrews, where she kept a small vacation cottage and often stayed incognito, doing her own shopping and cooking, and playing golf along the links by the Firth of Forth. She may well be responsible for the origin of the term "caddie": She had probably learned to play as a princess reared in France, where military cadets carried the royal clubs. It's thought that her accented pronunciation of the term was further bent by a brogue when she came to Scotland to assume the throne at barely 20 in 1561, after the death of her young husband, King Francis II of France. "

Why has this never been filmed, not least in the 70s biopic Mary, Queen of Scots? Vanessa Redgrave stooped over a golfing tee with Glenda Jackson's hoard massing for invasion? [via]

a cover version.

Music  Meanwhile, The Bangles's Going Down To Liverpool is a cover version.

Blog Critics has a review of the original:

Katrina Leskanich

(of, yes, Katrina and the Waves -- ed)

fights for to keep her individualism in the bold "Going Down To Liverpool." [...] Audacious guitars open the single, setting a rebellious tone. Katrina Leskanich snarls to her friend, who is looking for a job, that he's missing out on enjoying the beauty of England."

Listen again in this very vinyl video at YouTube.