Every blog has certain pre-occupations. With some it is the Gulf War and with others it is ID cards, electoral reform or pictures of kittens, so I feel a bit intellectually inferior when I realise that the two things which crop up most often here are photos of abandoned shopping trolleys and Spizzenergi.

Today its the turn of Spizz. (Sorry trolley fans)

First of all a plug for his show on Friday 9th December (the “Where’s Spock? 2005 tour final show” apparently) It is at the Hertford Marquee.
Doors open 8pm and last trains back to London are at 23:23 and 23:19 to Liverpool Street and Kings Cross respectively.

For anyone who doesn’t know what this is all about, a cheap way to find out is to buy this month’s Uncut magazine which has a free covermount CD of tracks which sum up the spirit of John Peel’s ‘Festive Fifty’. Alongside such other Peel regulars as Half Man Half Biscuit, The Fall and The Wedding Present is the classic Spizz track Where’s Captain Kirk?. Why not give it a try? You get all sorts of other goodies plus, of course, the magazine with articles about Peel, The Smiths, Joe Strummer and Paul Weller.

In its guide to the tracks on the CD the magazine says this about Spizz:

When the UK Independent Singles chart was first established in 1980, its first No 1 was Spizzenergi’s classic blast of Trekkie-punk “Where’s Captain Kirk?” – and it stayed there for eight weeks. The same year it made the lower end of the Festive 50 – quite apt since it was Peel who launched their career with a BBC session in 1978 under their original name of Spizzoil. The next decade saw the band mutate from Athletico Spizz 80 to Spizzorwell, Spizzsexual and Spizzorbit. Last year Uncut asked actor William Shatner if he’d ever heard Spizz’s ode to his most famous character. “Spizz what?” replied Shatner. “No. Is it nasty about me?”

Finally, there is a Spizz DVD available now through Cherry Red Records (and almost certainly on sale at the Hertford Marquee on Friday)