I’ve just started re-watching the first series of this fabulous kids TV programme, which ran in the UK from 1989 through until 1994.
The programme still seems just as fresh as it did 20 years ago, and I can still remember the exit-tune from my childhood – is there any child of a certain age who honestly doesn’t?!
Only 24 episodes were made of the series; six 25 minute long episodes per each of the four series.
I’ve still got a few episodes to go on Series One, before moving into some of the later series, however I can’t wait until I get to some of the episodes which parodied popular culture of the day (the Jurassic Park and Crystal Maze episodes to name but a few heh!!)
I watched Top Gun for the first time in ages t’other day… I’d completely forgotten what an awesome film it is! They really don’t make them like this any more.
Suddenly I’ve gotten all excited again about fighter planes and naval ships and really want to morph into being Tom Cruise and have cool 80s music follow me in whatever I do heh.
Speaking of Tom Cruise… this film came out a year after I was born, and it’s weird to know that Tom Cruise hasn’t looked hawt (in my opinion!) for most of my lifetime heh!! He looks gorgeous in Top Gun though! Nom!
Finally got around to watching this film – it’s amazing!!
If you’ve not already had chance to do so, I’d heartily recommend it if you’re after a film that is so 80’s that it’s tragically cool hehe!
Plot
When truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) and his friend Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) go to the airport to meet friends arriving on a flight from China, bandits from Chinatown kidnap Wang’s green-eyed Chinese girlfriend (Pai). To rescue her, Burton and Wang go into the mysterious underworld beneath Chinatown, where they face a number of dangerous challenges and battle kung-fu masters and a 2,000-year-old man – an ancient sorcerer named Lo Pan (Hong). Centuries ago, Lo Pan was put under a curse, and the only way that he can break it and become human again is to marry a woman with green eyes and then sacrifice her. Lo Pan is served by a ruthless street gang, the “Wing Kong“, and by the “Three Storms” – three mystical henchmen named Thunder, Lightning and Rain. Jack and Wang are aided in their quest by lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall), a tour bus-driving sorcerer named Egg Shen (Victor Wong), Wang’s friend Eddie Lee (Donald Li), and a helpful street gang, the Chang Sing.
Bit of a surprise for some on the subject of my tastes in music – I am guilty of enjoying a bit of Chris Rea on a sunny evening!
Take tonight for instance, I’m currently typing this as the sun streams through the window, I’ve a nice cold drink to hand and I’m really looking forward to the summer.
Having such a raspy, warm voice, I find Chris Rea perfect music for evenings such as this, and have been a fan of his since I was around thirteen/fourteen.
I heard ‘The Road To Hell’ (the song) on an old record of my parents around about that time, and absolutely loved it – especially the fact that the song was in two parts. Although it’s a bit of a sell-out to say it, this remains my favourite of his songs and I can all too frequently be heard singing along to this at work hehe. I just can’t resist those opening chords…
Chris Rea – The Road To Hell [part II]
When I started to hunt out more of Chris Rea’s work, MusicZone was still around (now I feel VERY old) and they used to sell ‘old’ CD’s rather cheaply (for example, you could usually pick up a Queen CD for under a fiver!).
Surprisingly, I managed to pick up the ‘new’ Chris Rea album “The Road To Hell Part 2″ for a reasonably small amount, mainly because I really liked the midnight blue colour of the back cover and artwork of the front cover! Well, this was ten years ago… I think this is when my fascination with pretty things began hehe!
I especially liked the play between the cover of 1989’s The Road To Hell album, and the cover of 1999’s The Road To Hell Part 2 album…
However, I bought quite a lot that day, and so this didn’t get listened to until one day when I was off school and feeling rather sick. I was lying in bed, trying to get to sleep, and thought that I’d try listening to some music to see if that’d work. Perhaps not the best conditions to listen to music to – even to this day, I still associate feeling ill with this album! Weird!
That said, I would count this as one of my favourite albums of the ’90’s.
To me, the album, at the time, had such a funky almost 80’s-esque futuristic sound, whilst still staying true to how I considered his ’sound’ to be – for a time, I just couldn’t get enough of this CD.
Some of my favourite songs on this album are:
New Times Square
E
Marvin
Can’t Get Through
Good Morning
I’m In My Car
Keep On Dancing
Remarkably, this album seems to have been perhaps one of his least successful – I cannot find a clip of any song from the album on YouTube and last.fm doesn’t have any music tracks from this album either.
I have read online that he was slated for the album with many people saying that Rea had lost his way, something that I can understand as this album is a little ‘clubby’ in parts (though it’s these bits that I especially like!). The album deliberately received practically no promotion, and didn’t even make it into the UK Top 40. Very little information about this album appears online it would seem… though to me, it still remains his best album!
That said, stores such as Amazon do still retail the album as new (in addition to listing resales), though most of the high street retailers, such as HMV, don’t even stock it on their websites any longer. Amazon resellers seem to do it quite cheaply, so for anyone interested, it’s definitely worth a punt in my opinion…!
My other favourite Chris Rea song is ‘Windy Town’, which comes from 1987’s Dancing With Strangers album (such a lovely name for an album I thought), which again came with some nice artwork.
So there you have it; I’m no longer a closet Chris Rea fan!
I was just perusing Thingbox and noticed that there was a thread that users were posting their favourite Sesame Street moments to. I’d forgotten how much I absolutely love Sesame Street and especially their musical numbers, they are simply amazing!
(I really wish we could enter that one for Eurovision!! hehe)
(I defy you not to dance along to that one!)
(80’s-tastic! – the German version is so camp hehe!)
(I so wish my nursery school lessons had taught me the alphabet like this!)
(I heard this before the Madonna version… needless to say, I still sing Cereal Girl by accident hehe – I can still remember watching this back when I was a tot!)
(So so clever!)
(Possibly my favourite Sesame Street moment of all time – always looked out for this when I was little hehe)
(OMG – I abolutely loved the cast in the 80s – Maria (real name Sonia Manzano) – the lady in the peach coloured jumper – was always my favourite cast member!)
And how else could you end a Sesame Street related post…?
Milky way advert from the 1980’s (back when everything was fun and exciting for us kiddies!).
If you need the lyrics to song-a-long, then frankly, I’m bitterly disappointed in you!!
the red car and the blue car had a race
all red wants to do is stuff his face
he eats everything he sees
from trucks to prickly trees
but smart old blue he took the milky way
he’s looking for a chocolate treat
fluffy and light
cos he knows it won’t spoil his app-e-tite
mm mm MMMM!
oh no! the bridge has gone, old red can’t carry on
but smart old blue, he took the milky way
