After three years of fun, Get Involved is winding down its monthly parties on Little Portland Street – ending with a suitably lovely party this Friday 19th December.

Get Involved has been an absolute joy to put on thanks, mainly, to the lovely guys and gals who work behind the scenes at The Social, but also because so many of you have come down to shake a tambourine and a tail feather of a Thursday evening with me. Thank you.

So, all that’s left for me to do now is to say thanks to all my guest DJs over the years – with an extra big special thank you to Becky “Grandmaster” Nolan, Leo the Amateur/Rave/Wizard, Paul Pensom, Mayor McCa and Dean Chalkley.

I’d also like to deliver a massive WHOOP to all the artists that have kindly created bespoke artwork for the night over the years. I’m both delighted and humbled to know that artwork created for the night has now appeared in FOUR different books - that you can buy in shops and everything. Amazing! Big shout to David and Jodie at Peskimo for creating the smiley maracas logo and for creating Hobson, the maraca and tambourine wielding monster that adorned a poster they created for Get Involved and who now exists as a KidRobot toy. Oh yeah!

The Get Involved website will remain up and running, as I regularly select music from my dusty old record collection for anyone to get involved with / download / read about etc – and do look out for Get Involved appearances at nights such as Dean Chalkley’s splendid SHAKE! at The Boogaloo, and at festivals such as Secret Garden Party Festival, Glastonbury and Bestival…

PLEASE come and get involved this Friday at our last party at The Social - at which we’ll be dishing out free schwag including instruments, badges, screenprinted posters and a rather lovely compilation CD - while stocks last!

Come along now, everyone… Get Involved!

I found this scruffy-looking 45 among a huge stack of equally scruffy bits and bobs whilst having a dig in the basement of Flashback (see London Record Shops) earlier this year. I knew The Fireballs had done some instrumentals on a similar vibe to The Champs (of Tequila fame) so grabbed this in the hope it might be worth checking out. And when I got home I played this side about 10 times consecutively: I love it! Turns out Quite A Party is an urgent rockabilly instrumental from 1961 and this copy, despite looking like it has been used as a doormat for twenty years, actually plays great. A great addition to my collection!

This Saturday I’ll be babysitting Dean Chalkley’s fantastic SHAKE! night up at The Boogaloo. There’ll be a whole heap of rock’n'roll, twisted soul, boogaloo and psyche to keep toes tapping and hips twisting all night long.

I’ll be joined behind the decks by Harry and Mikyla from The She Set and together we’ll conspire to drop the hottest tracks (mainly on wax) from the 50s and 60s.

Wear a smile and don’t forget your dancing shoes. It’s gonna rock!

Full deets on Facebook

If you like your old gold, then chances are you’re familiar with at least one version of the track The Peanut Vendor. I remember Stan Kenton’s version appeared on a Blue Note compilation I bought about 14 years ago - and my mate Dave has a Robert Delgado album (with a hilarious sleeve which looks as if Robert Delgado is actually Eric Morcambe wearing a sombrero ) entitled The Peanut Vendor – and Get Involved hero, Gilbey, included Alvin “Red” Tyler’s version of the track in his excellent Right Place, Wrong Time playlist which you can grab from the Beats’n'Treats section of this site. Actually - you can hear that version by clicking the song title below. A Get Involved percussive classic with an awesome break!

Alvin “Red” Tyler – The Peanut Vendor

Well, look, I’m rambling a bit, because this post isn’t about the track, it’s about a spanky new secondhand shop opened up in my neighbourhood which happens to be called The Peanut Vendor - yes, these are all images of said shop. Photography: Leo Cackett

There’s been a couple of second hand furniture spots in Islington and Stoke Newington for a while although, over the last year or two, it seems they’ve become ridiculously overpriced. Will someone really pay over £400 for a G-plan sideboard? The answer, in Stokey at least, will soon be “hell, no!” - thanks to the arrival of this flippin’ lovely shop, which overlooks Newington Green. In here, £400 will go much further than just one piece of furniture…

The reason your money will go further here is pretty simple: proprietors Barny and Becky get in their van and trawl this fine nation of ours on a weekly basis, seeking out beautiful mid-century classic furniture in places no one else would bother looking – junk shops, house clearance places, auctions and anywhere else they can think of, finding stuff at rock bottom prices that they can lovingly restore. And, as the stock in their spanky new shop attests, they’ve got that most important of assets in the second hand game: a really good eye. Yes, the place is full of the kind of stuff that would make our mum’s and grannies proud (if not slightly bemused) to see ensconced in our homes. We’re talking teak furniture, formica kitchen tables, 70s lightshades, 60s tea sets, collectible valve radios, vintage cameras, bakelite phones, mono record players, modular Danish furniture and, at the time of writing, an awesome yellow Le Creuset fondue set that has to be seen to be believed.

While companies like IKEA are cutting down trees, seemingly on a mission to homogenise domestic interiors – it’s great to see a new shop recycling old, beautifully made furniture and giving us an affordable chance to enrich our home environments with objects that offer genuine charm and a whole lot of style and quality to boot. Bravo!

The Peanut Vendor
133 Newington Green Road
Islington
London N1 4RA
Tel: 020 7266 5727
http://thepeanutvendor.co.uk

Good tune for the current economic climate… Oscar Boyd’s 1962 ditty When Things Get A Little Better hits all the right notes - with handclaps, backing singers and the kind of groove that gets under your skin. Things are looking up already!

In 1957, a 23 year old Huey Smith - who’d been cutting records since he was 15 and who played piano for Little Richard’s first band - formed Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns with blues singer Bobby Marchan. The pair signed up with Johnny Vincent at Ace Records. They had a top ten hit with Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu that very year and followed it in ‘58 with Don’t You Just Know It which was also a hit record. This week’s slab of old gold is Bobby Marchan’s 1967 solo version of Rockin’ Pneumonia released on Cameo Parkway in which the words “Boogie Woogie” are replaced with “Boogaloo”. It’s very New Orleans. It’s very, very nice. Enjoy…

Having just posted about Get Involved artwork appearing in a monograph of the work of the prolific British artist Jon Burgerman - I just remembered that more artwork created specially for Get Involved has also just been published… Nice!

I’m referring to the visual wizardry of a certain James Joyce of One Fine Day who created artwork for a Get Involved postcard (shown above) early last year. James created all the artwork and branding of two other club nights I’ve co-run with friends in the last few years, and artwork created for DJ collective It’s Bigger Than also appears in Postcard, a beautifully crafted tome (compiled and edited by FL@33) aimed at the coffee tables and carefully curated shelves of designers and image makers - and of course those that appreciate such things…

Ah, behold: the One Fine Day spread from Postcard showing a myriad flyer designs for It’s Bigger Than on the left hand page (three years worth of monthly flyers!) and on the right, shown at actual size in the book, is the Get Involved postcard that James designed a year ago.

Good work - and thank you, James!

To find out more about the Postcard book, visit http://www.postcard-book.info/

Enclosed in the book is a 20-page booklet of sketches and a DVD of motion graphics, screen wallpapers, videos of live drawing installations and other bonus material.

Remove the dust jacket and - oh joy of joys - it turns out to be a folded poster…

…Nice!

Jon Burgerman: Pens are my Friends, published by IdN, is a 310 page hardback book encased in a folded poster measuring 755 x 620mm and also a screenprinted transparent dustjacket. Enclosed within is a 20 page mini booklet of sketchbook art and a DVD containing Jon Burgerman motion graphics, animations, videos, screen wallpapers and icons

Because I Can’t Sit Still solo exhibition IS ON RIGHT NOW and runs until 1 November at Coningsby Gallery, 30 Tottenham Street, London W1T 4RJ

Keep up with all things Burgerman on his website: jonburgerman.com

Most of these images and the info contained in this post, along with an interview with Jon Burgerman, on Creative Review’s splendid blog

Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart is a song about falling in love. Head-over-heels, butterflies in your stomach, full-on naive, puppy-dog, swoon time shit. Over the years it’s been recorded by Chet Atkins, Judy Garland, Charlie Byrd, The Coasters, June Christy, Bob Brookmeyer, Billy Eckstine, Donald Byrd, Frank Sinatra… I mean I could go on.

This version by The Furys, from 1964 honestly makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up - you know when you hear something so wonderful that you basically get a rush? That’s what I’m talking about. Normally, a song gets me with the tune and lyrics are, for me anyway, secondary. But The Furys’ vocal delivery on this gives this gentle profession of love real presence and right now it’s a real favourite of mine.

Dear when you smiled at me, I heard a melody
It haunted me from the start
Something inside of me started a symphony
Zing! Went the strings of my heart

I still recall the thrill, guess I always will
I hope ’twill never depart
Dear, with your lips to mine, a rhapsody devine
Zing! Went the strings of my heart

Yes, this is a cover of Huey “Piano” Smith’s classic ditty, Don’t You Just Know It – but as covers go, this 1958 effort is pretty darn good - although it is almost identical to the original and came out only a few months later so it was never going to cause a sensation…

The Titans, despite selling fuck-all records, are actually an interesting bunch to read about. The founder of the band, Larry Greene started his working life as a cab driver and ended it as a record company executive. One of the band, a certain Curtis McNair, could blow a mean tenor sax and had a good voice on him. By 1965 he’d changed his name to Curtis Knight and formed a band called The Squires. In October that year he hired a guitar player called Jimmy James who’d played on a Lonnie Youngblood session and who had recently been fired by Little Richard. James only played with The Squires for about three months before signing up to play with King Curtis. In 1966 James left King Curtis, travelled to England and changed his name to Jimi Hendrix. It was Curtis McNair/Knight (of The Titans) that wrote Jimi: An Intimate Biography Of Jimi Hendrix in 1974…

All this information (and more!) was gleaned from the enlightening Marv Goldberg’s R&B Notebooks.