I contributed a specially-written track to Dexter Bentley's One Minute Wonders Show which was broadcast today, and has been uploaded to Mixcloud. Take a listen to 89 one-minute songs! 

https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/the-hello-goodbye-show-one-minute-wonders-2025-26th-july-2025

PLAYLIST

Tristan Burfield – AY Caramba

Dee Fry Servals – Saltchuck

Ilia & Kitsu Rogatchevski – Bleating Sheep (Yorkshire Sculpture Park)

David Cook – Excerpt from Avenue Moog

John Hughes & Sissy Christopoulou – In the shower

Venus In Noise – Deep End

Jimmy Andrex – My Best LIfe A One Minute Wonder

Jessica Rowland – 1 Min Binaural Singbowl

SILKess Demon – Feathers are meant to help

ART-O-MATIC – Wild Kinetic Thing

Leonor & Gashnois – Ode To The Sun

Carsten Aniksdal  – Stella

Les Bicyclettes Blanches – I don’t know why NUUT

Emma Roper Evans – Fans

The Tumbledryer Babies – Empty As A High Street

KR Seward – Wondermint

Hannya White – Dinner Time

JM Ogara – Blood Moves Through The Heart

Mika Mann – The World Of Red

Red Bedward – River Man (by Nick Drake) One Minute Wonder 2025

The Witch Of Brussels – One Slow Minute

David Pannell – It’s Good To Be Alive

Eki Shola – Madre

The Panic Room – Give Me A Minute

Der Teufel – Predators

Pete Branscombe – What Happened at Cameron House

Funkcutter – Mordern Life

Ralph Clayton & Francesca Payne – I’m OK (95% of the Time) EXCERPT

Sairie – We Wept For The Sea

Kat Five – Space Junk oneminutewonder

Sally Child – Unhinged

Lester Square – Grand Mal

VIOLET NOX – ONESIXTY

Art Terry – Lockdown

Helen McCookerybook – Voodoo Doll

Azalia Snail – Don’t F*ck With Us

Double Simien – 30 Second Blang Theme

Quantum Flirts – Deep Listening

Adrian R. Shaw – Wheat Field

Luis Cano – Done

Steve White – Free Speech

Morgan Fisher – Green and Pleasant 

gon7o – 1st Floor

Liz Bentley – Summer Is Coming

now – See Me Inside

Pete Gomes – Going

Spinmaster Plantpot – Everybody’s Got To Book A Baby Hey

Patrick Lyons – Are You Hungry?

Dye Wain Dye Ritchie – Last Legs

Nina Dellow – Music for Skating

The Family Grave – The Immigrant EXCERPT

Alexei Shishkin – I Wish I Was Guided By Voices

The Drain On The Balcony – Little Sir Jacob

Seamus Hayes – Kind

Gran-paw Frankee and the Son-of-a-Gun – Goddamnit

John Garner – Shakukatchi

Schroeder / Smith with Stuart McKay – CLAPHAM JUNCTION

Dirty Viv – Chainsaw (EXCTRACT)

Alex F-F – Chocolate Bourbon

The Camodes – George Goes a Groovin

Dull Glitter – Caving

Jack Hayter – LSD and Worms with Jacquie

Silver Tears – Tiny Trumpets

Leg Puppy 2.0 – Home

Hungry Dog Brand – X-Box King

Cleaners From Venus – The Lost Tango

Frank Lloyd Wleft – Goodnight

David John Sheppard – Snow Ritual

Dr Awkward – Overstellar Interdrive

Asbo Derek – Star Noise

Duncan Parsons – Fissures Of Men

Simon Williams – Mode 5

Billy Pilgrime & Corm O Rant – Gular Fluttering

Philip Sanderson – Boat number 23 (ft. Alan Dupuy)

Paul McCallum – Can I Just Say

Murdertits – Spit Sandwich

Irina Shtreis – Electricity

BABYMAN – Collapsing The Mirror Stage

Planetruth – Your Lines

Party In Hiroshima – Fraunhofer

Simon Kunath – Up From The West

Rita Niemba – Right Back

Graham Graham Beck – MISH MASH THRASH CRASH

Extradition Order – Thank U Tho

Cockney Street Triage Team Band – Guess What Synthesizer This Is

{AN} EeL – Liver Spots

Soloman Tump – Thorpe

d’Animal – Cycles

Alas, Macbeth – Western Avenue Breakdown

Rock Band Filming In Denmark Street, London

 

Drawing A Poster For Bandcamp Friday Next Week

 

Let's Make Up by the Pop-Up Chefs: New Video

 

Gina Birch and the Unreasonables at Rough Trade East

I pinched photos from Nicholas Blincoe and John Earls.

What a brilliant night. I'll write about it when I've recovered. Adrenaline kept me awake almost all night. Brilliant band, brilliant show, brilliant audience! Gina is a star, no doubt about it.

Review by John Earls here: https://arcana.fm/2025/07/20/gina-birch/

Unfinished Hat Display

 

Goat Wants A Scratch

 

Louis Philippe and the Night Mail

I got tickets for this gig ages ago, not knowing that James was going to die in the interim. It felt weird to go out to such a socially effervescent event so soon after his funeral, which was a definite 'the end' ceremony for us all. 

However, if any music was going to be cathartic, Louis Philippe's lovely, fluid and ethereal music would be the music I'd choose. It felt like I was walking into the Water Rats as a different person, still in a catatonic state, but seeing Jessica and Peter and chatting to them both was a real ice-breaker. We talked about art for a while, and meanwhile someone tried to show my companion their ticket, since they were standing by the door.

It was also nice to see Jane and Dave again on the door. Life has been going on, which is really comforting. Inside, it was very crowded but remarkably not too hot. 

Honestly, there's no other music like this on the planet. I started recording it, because although I have some CDs, the delicacy of sound simply isn't captured in the recording studio. There seem to be wisps of cloud emanating from the stage- not from the obligatory smoke machine, but the auditory version. It's a combination of all of the sounds of the instruments, plus the sound of Louis', voice blended into a supernatural wave of warmth and curious song trajectories.

'What made him write that, after that and after that?', I wondered again and again. I slipped to the front so I could dance. Mandy and Vic saw the gap in the crowd and slipped in too, though I had to move quite soon because I was standing behind Tall Man, the one who goes to every gig and is in front of me. Who is he? I'll never find out.

A woman violinist joined the stage for some songs; a guitarist from XTC was augmenting the sound last night. If I was a proper reviewer, I'd know their names (and I might put them in later). But there was Robert Rotifer on guitar, Ian Button on drums and Andy Lewis on bass, giving it their all without breaking a sweat; these are such complex songs and the band played perfectly, supporting the high tenor voice of Louis as he spun poetry and melody into his gorgeous songs.

I closed my eyes and floated away. Just perfect.

The Devil Wears Panda

Misread, silly.

From The Glasgow Herald, Many Moons Ago

This was written by Neil Cooper, who still writes about Scottish culture 

Newspaper Articles

While looking through piles of photos and bags of stuff for photographs of James, I've come across other things I didn't even know I had. Here are two of three articles from Newcastle papers- one from the Sunday Sun and one from The Journal. The Sun article is from a screen test that I did to be a presenter for The Tube, the Tyne Tees TV pop music show of the 1980s. Almost everyone else on 'my' day got the job, and although I felt a bit superficially miffed by that fact, you can see from what I'm wearing that I'd already got Helen and the Horns going at this point. Perhaps it would have helped the band reach dizzying heights, but I think I needed to concentrate on what we were doing. 

I remember seeing the show later and thinking 'There is no way that I could speak into a microphone while walking backwards'. I also felt that there was sometimes something forced about the 'controversial' interview techniques and I was glad not to have been part of that. Rather craftily, at the regional focus groups they'd slurped up the ideas of the participants- mine was to interview Tony Fletcher from Jamming magazine, and another young woman at the one I went to proposed doing a feature on the air guitar competitions that were being held at Camden Palace. Nice bit of free research for the production team, and not my first experience of energy vampires!

I did, however, get on really well with Muriel that day, despite what the reporter says. I think she didn't suffer fools gladly and I am not a fool. We kept in touch and she came to see the Helen and the Horns play at The Calton Studios in Edinburgh, which was a fantastic gig for us. We'd made friends with the band So You Think You're A Cowboy the night before at a gig at The Oasis in Dunfermline and they all showed up to see us, as did Muriel. After the show she bought round after round, and much fun was had by all. She also had a show on a Sunday afternoon on Radio 1 in London and we did an afternoon session for her. She popped down from the heights of wherever she was doing her bit from, to the basement where were set up, and was absolutely delightful.

The other article is from The Journal, and must have been printed after we'd signed to RCA Records (Elvis's label, aha!). I have one that was printed just before our gig at Tiffany's in Newcastle too, quite a while before this.

I have more cuttings but I won't over-post them; it's just that I've been putting stuff on my Facebook page and it's such a dodgy platform, isn't it? So I'll transfer over some of the other things too when I get a moment.

Pearlies at the Race Finish

 

Man Painting Shop Sign

 

Podcast Interview with Robert Miller

Robert's a US podcaster who talks to a lot of musicians and people in the sphere of music, and thanks to the author Christine Feldman Barrett for putting us in touch!

https://www.followyourdreampodcast.com/episodes/helen-mccookerybook-70s-uk-punk-rock-star-with-the-chefs-and-helen-and-the-horns-turned-author-the-lost-women-of-rock-music-and-shes-at-the-controls-now-solo-artist

Friendly Bear, Valencia