Half An Hour Of Disco Poco Loco Pub

Out in Mallorca, straddling the Palma Nova/ Magaluf border, sits Disco Poco Loco Pub. Sadly, it wasn't open when we were there two weeks ago but every time we passed it I enjoyed the sign and the thought of Disco Poco Loco Pub. For this week's half hour mix I'm putting together thirty four minutes of music that the DJ at Poco Loco might have played. I'm guessing that the tracks I've stitched together below aren't what will be coming out of the speakers and filling the floor once the season is well under way in Magaluf so the mix below is more of a Poco Loco mix of the mind or of my imagination, some piano house and Balearic remixes, spanning the mid 80s to this year. 

Disco Poco Loco Pub Mix

• Voice Of Africa: Hoomba Hoomba
• Piano Fantasia: Song For Denise
• Coyote: As The Crow Flies
• Saint Etienne: Speedwell (Flying Mix)
• The Aloof: Never Get Out Of The Boat (Gosh Mix)
• Audio Trip: Dreamatic

If the mix is a bit clunky in places, that's all part of the appeal. The DJ at Poco Loco isn't too fussed about mixing, it's all about the vibe and the song selection. Plus it's difficult to see with those sunglasses on indoors. While smoking. It was even more random when he/I was trying to shoehorn Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the theme from Hill Street Blues into it. Maybe we'll have to return to Disco Poco Loco Pub another time. 

Underneath Disco Poco Loco Pub  there is a shop selling tat for tourists. Being both a tourist and someone who is partial to a bit of tat, I had a look inside. All three of us agreed that Isaac would have loved the mug you can see below. He would have laughed long and hard at being offered his juice in it. So we bought one for him. It now sits on the bookshelf near by records and stereo, in between a replica Lewis chessman and a knitted Andrew Weatherall doll. I did think about putting it on his grave but we felt that was a step too far. 

Heaven

Heaven, it turns out, is situated on a side street in Magaluf. This may be news to the major religions of the world. The entrance seems to be more of a roller shutter too than the promised pearly gates but it's nice to have these things cleared up. There are loads of heavens in music- according to Belinda Carlisle it's a place on earth and standing in front of this venue last week I was inclined to agree. Back in 1987 I'd rather have poked my eyes out with forks than admitted liking this song but thankfully now I'm older I can come clean....

Heaven according to David Byrne, is a place where nothing ever happens, where the band play your favourite song, all night long and where 'it's hard to imagine/ that nothing at all/ could be so exciting/ could so much fun'. Talking Heads sound effortlessly sublime on this song, the sweetest moment their most bewilderingly brilliant album, a record that doesn't have any kind of weak spot, has some seriously deranged moments and sounds like the feverish work of a group of musicians at their absolute peak. 

Heaven

In 1981, two years after Talking Heads released Fear Of Music, Echo And The Bunnymen released arguably their best album, Heaven Up Here. The title track is a dark, frenetic, urgent piece of post- punk, the band flailing around and moving rapidly, all scratchy guitar and thumping drums. Ian sings of empty pockets and being unable to afford beer. 'The apple cart upset my head's little brain', he complains before settling on giving up the whiskey for tequila. The centre section, 'groovy groovy people' he sings, 'we're all groovy groovy people' is exhilarating, a rush, and then it's back to the main riff and Ian's found somewhere for the Bunnymen- 'it may be hell down there/ But it's heaven up here'. There's more rapid fire words, more drums and then a sudden dead stop.

Heaven Up Here

Saturday Theme Five

We got back from Mallorca yesterday afternoon, Manchester welcoming us back with some biting April cold. Funnily, when we arrived in Mallorca on Monday morning and got to our hotel at Palma Nova it was both cold and windy, the palm trees being blown around all over the place by the strong wind coming in off the sea. The weather got better as the week went on and on Thursday we all got sunburnt sitting/ lying by the pool and on the beach. The break was just what the three of us needed, some time away from here and away from everything that has been going on since Isaac died last November. Not that we didn't take it with us- one of the rules of travel is wherever you go, you're still you- but we were able to unwind and relax. Some of the physical symptoms of grief lessened while we were away, a fact brought home to me when we were in the taxi from Manchester airport yesterday, driving up one of the main roads back to Sale, and some of those physical symptoms suddenly re- appeared. 'Hello darkness my old friend', as Paul Simon put it.

It was very good to be away though and Mallorca has got a lot going for it- a beautiful island, with beaches and mountains, that magical Balearic feel, and a wonderful capital city in Palma. It also has some superb 1960s concrete modernism in its hotels, constructed for the arrival of mass tourism in the 1960s. They pepper the coastline all the way from Palma down the coast to Palma Nova and Magaluf. The bars, restaurants and hotels were only just re- opening after the winter, the season not fully started yet with plenty of places still closed or in the process of getting ready for the summer. We haven't been anywhere since summer 2019 and I'm sure we'd have been happy to be anywhere but Palma Nova and its surrounding areas were very much exactly where we needed to be for a few days. 

The beach at Magaluf has this view, the uninhabited Isla de Sa Porrassa sitting in the bay, stunningly photogenic at dusk and during the heat of the day. 

This is the theme from Top Boy, the inner London crime drama that started on Channel 4 and was then reprised by Netflix. Brian Eno's theme works just as well as a piece of semi- ambient, instrumental music as the theme to a gritty crime drama. 

Theme From Top Boy

Fasten Your Seatbelts Says A Voice

Back in spring 2020 we booked a ferry crossing a few nights in Antwerp and Ghent for my 50th birthday. This holiday for the four of us never happened. In March 2020 we went into lockdown and my 50th (in May) was spent on the front doorstep as people came and wished me happy birthday over the wall. The ferry crossing, an overnight cabin from Hull to Zeebrugge, was converted into a voucher. We were planning to use the voucher to go from Hull to Rotterdam (the Hull- Zeebrugge crossing was axed last year) and that the three of us would spend a few days in Amsterdam and by the Dutch coast. In the aftermath of Isaac's death we've all been feeling the need to get away and a week in the Netherlands seemed to be just the ticket especially as we've already paid for the crossing. Then, two weeks ago, P&O sacked 800 workers and since then most of their ferries have been stuck in port. The new poorly paid workforce are untrained and the ferries have been deemed not safe to sail. We have some qualms about using P&O at all due to the appalling, some might say illegal, nature of their business practices although I also don't see why they should pocket our £440 without us getting anything in return- we'll have to square that circle later this year. 

But anyway, to cut a long and tiresome story short, with the need to get away from home and to spend some time somewhere else (almost anywhere else) burning strongly, we took the money we have saved in our holiday fund that we'd put aside for the Netherlands and spent it on a five day stay in Palma, Mallorca. Adios amigos- see you all next weekend. 

Majorca