A Bit of Fit

Fitbit. It's not the new word on the street to call a bit of hot totty, but an awesome new little gadget that's been launched in the States in the last year. A very fancy pedometer, it's as much a motivational device as it is a fitness tool.

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Containing a 3D motion sensor, the fitbit tracks your calories burnt, steps taken, distance travelled and sleep quality as long as you remember to wear it. You can connect it up with your social networks but balls to all that oversharing. Instead I'd be perfectly happy keeping my data within fitbit's own, pretty great on first glance, social network. It tracks your progress over time, weight, foods, and allows you to set goals and see how your friends are doing - thus adding another motivational factor. I'm particularly interested in the sleep efficiency as it takes me forever to get to sleep once I'm in bed and it would be good to see it monitored.

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I'm feeling very motivated and am going to be doing a lot of diet / fitness activities over the next month in the hope to have more energy for Glastonbury. Unfortunately, fitbits are so in demand that there's a month backlog of orders. Still, one is about to be ordered and will hopefully be with me late June.

If you want one, they're $99, but you'll have to get a mate in the US to sort it out though, as they're currently only available to order to American addresses.

Zelda Ronson

If you're hoping for more vintage soul from the new Mark Ronson album 'Record Collector' then you're  in for a big disappointment. The most important thing you need to know is that there isn't a horn or cover in earshot. Instead Mark, under his new act name 'Mark Ronson & The Business' has ditched the Stax sounds and intially put out a squelchy breakbeat of a track called 'Circuit Breaker' as a bubble track (I'm bored of the word buzz). Check out the very cute, geeky video which meets DJ Hero with old school Zelda synchronised to the music.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luoAYFR_hH0[/youtube]

From what I've gathered the actual first single features the curious combination of Boy George and the London Gay Men's Choir on a track co-written by Jake Shears. Triple threat. Ex Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall is on four tracks and there's contributions also from Miike Snow, Spank Rock, Q-Tip and Santigold. I would be excited about Rose had she not seemed so disinterested and blah about her music when I saw her at SXSW. It was enough to send us home early for the night with all our energy zapped. Hopefully though Mark will have brought back her pizzazz.

'Circuit Breaker' however just makes me expect Stuart Hall to appear with the news. This is what the theme tune to Northwest Tonight sounded like in the 80s, yes?

Jessie's Girl

Rick Springfield's 'Jessie's Girl' isn't a song that I've really grown up with. Despite being a Grammy award winner and Billboard #1 in the States in 1981, it only reached #43 here when it was released 3 years later over here. So I'm not really sure how big this song is in the UK, if anything it's probably Guitar Hero that's secured it's enduring popularity. Personally I think I only first heard it a couple of months ago when Lucio played it at 'I Built This Speedwagon on a Prayer' (a power ballads night at The RVT that we run) and then soon afterwards I watched Boogie Nights in which it features. Since then I've been list ening to it A LOT and played it again at the latest Speedwagon last week.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2T7wKdQsTo[/youtube]

What nicely ironed trousers.

Once the Madonna episode of Glee aired, a lot of people suggested they'd foolishly left out the schmaltzy 'Dear Jessie'. Instead it seems Jesse St James was definately named for a reason, but it's so they  could bring Rick Springfield into play. When 'Laryngitis' airs in the UK on Monday I'm pretty sure that the #43 chart position is going to be smashed to pieces. In fact it's probably the most hit heavy episode of the sadly fading Glee. There's not very much action but brilliant song after song is banged out with two non Rachel based duets in particular absolutely nailing it.

Don't Accuse The BBC of Labour Bias Again...

Now a dead link but screengrabbed - Gordon Brown's legacy

Did Nick Robinson commission this page?

Frankie & The Heartstrings

To my ears the Sunderland / Durham / Newcastle accent when sung by male indie groups sounds the same. I know this is ridiculous but perhaps I am so swept away by the romance of a NE accent that I totally forget to listen for any defining qualities. Maximo Park were noticeably not The Futureheads because their music was much spikier, but when new Sunderland band Frankie & The Heartstrings came along last year I had a quick listen to their not very interesting debut single 'Fragile' and promptly put them into my forgettable, I'll just listen to the Futureheads if I want that, box.

The first disappointment came because it's very easy to assume things based on the first things you see about a band which are normally their name and their first promo shot. The worst thing at the moment is every band under the sun sending over some glitzy, polysexual photo that inspires you to click on their myspace, only to discover utter twaddle when it comes to the music. For Frankie & co, there was an awful, although at least not faux-gay, promo shot (see above) but the name conjured up images of beehives, quiffs, a rock & roll high school and soaring strings. 'Fragile' totally didn't tick that box.

It's good work on their part then that their second single 'Tender' is much more exciting and retro sounding complete with point winning hand claps. Dancable and infectious, the video totally endears them to me and the idea of someone who 'feeds you milk and gives you wine' sounds like a winning combo. Plus I love a frontman who doesn't have an instrument to hide behind, yet has the ability to jump about looking silly and like he's actually digging his own music. Can someone organise a Frankie vs Friendly Fires' Ed McFarlane dance off please.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29A5jD2Hz4U[/youtube]

(It still sounds like The Futureheads)

I Am Yours Now

During the first few months of 2010, you couldn't watch television without Florence popping up in the background of some trails or another. Now that moment's passed, it seems that The XX are the latest 'trail friendly' band. After 'Crystallised' popped up, much to the anguish of a snobby indie fan, on the 90210 Channel 4 trail, it's now time for 'Islands' to take centre stage seemingly in the position of the BBC's election advert song.

Handy then, that it's the band's next single. I saw them for the first proper time over at SXSW in a dimly lit Methodist church in Austin and it was magical. Now for 'Islands', video director Saam Farahmand (Cheryl's 3 words) has managed to create something very special out of the story of love breaking apart through a delicately changing dance routine. Totally mesmerising.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXNS0Uub80k[/youtube]

Lost Musicals: Paris

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-oEA1sK374[/youtube]

Forget people banging on about going to see Rufus Wainwright's opera at Sadlers Wells in the next couple of weeks; the real hot ticket comes courtesy of Lost Musicals performing 'Paris' in the accompanying Lillian Bayliss Studio.

Run by Ian Marshall Fisher, Lost Musicals is a brilliant project. It is designed to find and stage musicals which have been 'lost', either literally or in memories, by some of America's greatest songwriters. Over the last 21 years, the project has staged over 70 different works and does so with the help of actors who give their time for free as well as researchers and Ian himself who trawls the world looking for songs that have been mislaid so he can reconstruct the shows.

I'm a massive Cole Porter fan and last year, Lost Musical's staging of The New Yorkers first introduced me to their project. The show takes place on Sunday afternoons with actors in evening wear, on a stage with neither a set nor props, reading from their scripts. It's a very unusual style to watch but utterly captivating.

This year, one of their three shows is another Cole Porter show and I caught it last weekend. Not quite as sharp and lively as 'The New Yorkers', 'Paris' was Porter's first Broadway show and revolves around a marriage between an American socialite and a French actress. It's the show which features possibly Porter's most famous song 'Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)' and showcases his brilliant rhyming wit that really shines in later songs like 'You're The Top'. The show is really stolen by the socialite's mother, Cora, who at Lost Musicals was played by 'er off the tele', Anne Reid, probably best known to me as Doctor Who monster, the Plasmavore, who enjoyed sucking people's blood with a straw.

The Lost Musicals series is totally recommended and I think now a firm spring outing each year in the diary. Paris runs for three more weeks and it's followed later in the year by Lerner & Loewe's 'The Day Before Spring'.