Tag Archives: Speech Debelle

Podcast Special – Selection Box v Speech Debelle

Yon editor seems to have got all a-giddy and presented this as some kind of huge new exciting podcast brew ha ha type behaviour. It seems a bit over excited, considering that I announced that this interview would appear on these pages a few weeks ago, but if someone wants to trump for my corner, who I am to complain? So long as it doesn’t smell.

Speaking of corners, it also seems that young Adam – for he is the aforementioned editor in question – has titled this interview as either some sort of pugilist pagga betwixt myself and my subject. Either that or that we’re indulging in one of those terpsichorean mash-ups, which is not the case either. It’s just two people having a chinwag, one of them (me) duty-bound to be far nosier than the other.

So, here’s the obligatory photo for visual stimulus, and then you can listen to the interview, by jiminy.

The wind was a South Easterly that day

The wind was a South Easterly that day

[podcast]https://www.bcbradio.co.uk/musicblog/wp-content/uploads/SinglesClub_03.mp3[/podcast]

Selection Box 5/10/09: Speech Debelle interview special

I’ve found of late that I have reached the age where I am simultaneously envious and sneering of young people just entering adulthood.  I recognise that this is something of a tragic and predictable state of affairs for someone starting to leave the realms of “young” and hurtling with a winced resignation towards the slapheaded middle age that will be my lot by the time the next Olympics come around.  I swear I blinked when I was 19 and suddenly 13 years had passed me by.

Thankfully the what-the-hell-does-he-think-he-looks-like fuddy-duddisms and the you-know-nothing-you-fools grumpy grotty gripes were less in evidence when I took a trip up to Leeds University last week to meet Speech Debelle before she performed her headline gig at the Mine venue of the aforementioned learning establishment’s Student Union.  There was, I’ll confess, an overriding sense of jealousy, however.  Fresh-faced Freshers with their entire University life ahead of them – a life of late nights, debautched frivolity and loose sexual morals.  Even if I wasn’t happily married I just simply wouldn’t have the energy to keep up any more.  I guess I’ll have the last laugh when they’re all riddled with the clap.

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Speech Debelle & The Mercury Music Prize

I had intended to knock something up about the Barclaycard Mercury Music Prize before I went on holiday, and therefore also before this year’s winner was announced.

You only have my word for it, therefore, that Speech Debelle was my tip for the prize. In fact, I think I have now correctly guessed the Mercury Prize winner for the past four years. Sadly, I’ve never even set foot inside a bookmaker’s, so my Nostradamusesque capabilities in this matter have sadly not led to a bulging wallet.

It’s a strange old beast, the Mercury. When Antony & The Johnsons won the prize in 2005 for the modern masterpiece I Am A Bird Now, the eponymous lead singer Antony Hegarty claimed that the award was “kind of like a crazy contest between an orange and a spaceship and a potted plant and a spoon – which one do you like better?” I suspect it this nonsensical eclecticism which determines that I should always be quite so interested in the result. Continue reading →