Sixteen

The little girl in this photograph, our daughter Eliza, turns sixteen today (coincidentally also the day she takes her last GCSE exam). The toddler in The Clash t-shirt seems a long time ago now. In recent time honoured fashion she has booked a day ticket for the Leeds festival, a rite of passage for today's teenagers. Happy birthday Eliza- enjoy the physics exam and your last day at school.

For many years Eliza and her friend have gone to dance classes, joined the team and performed locally and at shows. I've often gone to pick them up in the car from the classes. On one occasion when they were both much younger I had Misty Waters by The Kinks playing on the car CD player. They latched onto it and started singing along. It then became a thing, playing Misty Waters and all of us belting it out on the drive back from dance. We were still doing it a few weeks ago.

Recorded by The Kinks in 1968 Misty Waters was an outtake- an outtake!- that failed to make it onto either Four Well Respected Gentlemen or The Village Green Preservation Society and only turned up much later on The Great Lost Kinks Album.

Misty Waters 

Amps cranked up and at double the speed, Billy Childish and The Buff Medways covered the song for their 2000 album Steady The Buffs, about the time I started to get into Wild Billy Childish and his enormous back catalogue.

Misty Water

Steady The Buffs

The Who mini-fest continues: first up this performance of My Generation from Germany's Beat Club in the mid 60s, mod smarts, windmills, guitar and mic stand abuse and pounding rhythm. It all started here.



I promised Billy Childish's cover of A Quick One the other day. There's a version on Billy's Christmas album but the superior one is this one from 2002's Steady the Buffs lp.

The Buffs were the Royal East Kent Regiment, one of the oldest regiments in the British army dating back to 1572. Wild Billy Childish and The Buff Medways (named after the regiment and a local variety of chicken) released Steady The Buffs on Graham Coxon's Transcopic label and it's got to be one of the best Childish albums- among the twelve songs there are career highlights Archive From 1959 and Troubled Mind, the trash mod rock of Sally Sensation and Dawn Said, the very great Strood Lights and the breakneck cover of The Kinks' Misty Water. It finishes with Ivor (the two minutes twenty two seconds cover of A Quick One, although it's only the final section to be fair). Steady The Buffs is highly, highly recommended as a Childish starter if you're a novice.

Ivor

Mr Childish modelling summer 2012's look. Pay attention now Gok Wan acolytes- this is the perfect look for beer gardens, festivals, summer barbecues and your two weeks off in the English sun.

Move Over Rover

As a bonus extra to the earlier Hendrix post here's Billy Childish and The Buff Medways ripping through Fire (off Are You Experienced?). Garage style, no overdubs.

Fire

What a great hat. I believe it's known as a Gorblimey hat. Want one. Where did you get that hat Mr Childish?