TuNesday: Rumer

I like to think that I approach my music the same way I approach my diet: varied and adventurous, nothing too fishy and a lot of cheese. So when I first hear this next artist on Radio 2 a few weeks ago, I was sure that I was listening to another throw-back tune from my childhood. I couldn't remember it clearly, but it seemed to evoke a deeply-buried southern memory - like climbing to the top of a (surely haunted) barn and jumping into a pile of corn cobs. Yes, my early childhood really WAS that simple. And beautiful. And I think those are two words that  fit this song perfectly. With more than a touch of Karen Carpenter, Rumer's 'Slow' seems to cuddle up to me like a handmade quilt and lets me nestle in its embrace with the smells of autumn playing in the front yard. She's an odd pop star, having admitted in a recent interview for Radio 1 that she didn't know who many of the current chart artists were. Does that make her removed, perhaps a bit aloof? Maybe... but maybe it makes her a more honest artist, as well. And in a musical calendar that has too many X-Factors and '(your country here)'s Got Talents, I for one am extremely happy that someone can still make this kind of music, and that it can get out to people like me. Like I said: I loves me some cheese. Enjoy.

Confessions of a Childhood Crush #1: Erin Gray

Like most hetero guys my age, I grew up with pretty predictable celebrity crushes:  2 of Charile's Angels, Justine Bateman, the tennis girl scratching her ass, Mindy, Weird Shapeshifter Lady from Space 1999, Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Mrs. Stemper (technically my kindergarten teacher but a celebrity to me) and, of course, gold-bikini Princess Leia. Guys who liked girls wouldn't be guys who liked girls if we didn't sucumb to at least one or two (or all) of the ever-present media's image of what sexy was. Of course, "sexy" changes... looking at some of the 'hot' women of my childhood makes me wonder whether anyone in the 70s had breasts, or hips or any curves at all.

I'm not going to over-analyse it. I'm just going to add her to 'The List': Erin Gray, AKA Colonel Wilma Deering from Buck Rogers of the 25th Century. Colonel Deering, with your skin-tight pre-lycra suits (the ONLY thing to be seen wearing in the future, apparently) and your ridiculously ill-fitting helmet, you made my transition from 9 to 10 so very easy. Sexier than all the Star Trek ladies combined, and with a bit of moxie to boot... that freeze-frame laugh at the end of every episode won me every time. You made Twiki bearable. You almost made me forget about Hawk and his silly feathair. Colonel Wilma Deering, thank you for making me look so forward to the future.