A sad start to the day, then, to be woken by news on the Today programme of Oliver Postgate’s passing. For anyone in their late thirties and early forties, Postgate’s wonderful and vivid animations were an indelible part of our childhoods. As a spokesman for BBC’s children’s channel CBeebies noted, Postgate’s great strength lay in his ability to create “worlds within worlds”, the kind of places populated by talking dragons, sentient trains, pink woollen aliens and crotchety, intellectual woodpeckers.
Before we get to the records, a quick reminder that December’s Club Uncut is here already, with Department Of Eagles, Hush Arbors and Mr David Viner comprising what looks like one of our best bills of the year at the Borderline tonight.
I found this morning a decent MP3 stream of the Dead’s Obama benefit show from last month, which has just started playing as I write. The tracklisting looks great – including “Slipknot”, “Help On The Way”, “Franklin’s Tower”, “Dark Star”, “St Stephen” and, fantastically, “Unbroken Chain”.And the starting “Truckin’”, which has been going for a good while now, sounds pretty healthy. Maybe some of the more experienced Deadheads among you could hunt it down and let me know what you think.
