I wanted to name my blog ‘Whistle Down the Wind’ after the film with Alan Bates and Hayley Mills, so this song was always going to get in here somewhere. I’ve been sorting out a lot of old records over the last few weeks on and off. Vinyl is a lovely thing, as are proper … Continue reading Whistle Down the Wind (vinyl version)
Tom Courtenay as Billy Liar (1963) Is Billy Liar really 50 years old? It’s one of the key sixties films catching Britain at a time of transition, mirrored by Billy’s dreams of escape from small town doldrums to something more ‘swinging’. In the early 1990s there was a wonderful BBC weekly retrospective of the era, … Continue reading Off to Ambrosia with Billy Liar
Graphics by Hans Riebesehl from a beautifully designed tour guide to Hamburg, Germany which dates from around 1956. It’s fascinating to see an original that could be equally at home today, or in the mid-eighties, when this kind of font was hand-in-glove with the rebirth of black and white photography. Does that mean we’re living … Continue reading Scenes from the 1950s – the art of triple retro
He went, like one that hath been stunne’d And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Here’s a small cinematic gem of a music video – an autumn afternoon of pale sunlight, the air perhaps smoky with bonfires, … Continue reading The easy listening sounds of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
WHISTLES IN THE WIND 