We write about the songs that make the whole world sing, we write about the songs of love and special things, we write about the songs that make the young girls cry, we write about the songs, we write about the songs.
I was going to do a lengthy post on Simply Red, for reasons best kept to myself, but we're moving tomorrow and I still haven't got enough cardboard boxes. Tonight we're signing the contract and I'm handing over a great wad of 6000 pesos, or 1200 of the Queen's pounds, in deposits, rent and estate agents' fees. Then tomorrow I'm paying a man 250 pesos for driving a van and carrying some stuff for a couple of hours, then a further 300 pesos to another man for putting a piano in his van and driving it for 20 minutes. This, I believe, is what Brian May was talking about.
In case you're still crying over missing Dios Salve La Reina when you're over, I've just found out that Liza Minelli will be performing the Sunday after you arrive. Let me know how many tickets you want.
This is a very touching tribute to Michael Jackson. It comforts me to know that Mr. Jackson has such grounded friends in his decade of need. I'm not sure about the dark, sinister figures who come on stage half way through the song. Maybe they represent his demons. You're never alone with them around.
1. Go to Wikipedia and click on "random article". That's your band name. 2. Go to http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 and take the last five words from the last quote on the page. That's the name of your first album. 3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days The third picture is your album cover.
So I'm now in a band called Kimmeria (previously known as Kiougioukki), our debut album is called "The Prime of Senility" and that's the album cover above. Or it would be if Blogger would show it, so look at it here. Sadly for someone who works in animation, I have no idea how to photoshop all that together.
Has it really taken me three months to post my first Queen video? I just read this old interview with Peter Saville and thought you'd enjoy this snippet:
"The consumer is being manipulated as an addict," reckons Saville. "To me, pop culture's gone from being acid to crack. When people took acid in the 1970s it was likely to be a mind-expanding slightly dangerous thing but they came away from it thinking, 'Well I never saw it like that before.' As opposed to crack, which will drain everything you've got until you're dead. And there's a big difference between introducing someone to acid 25 years ago and dealing them some crack today, and I don't like being part of that system."
Saville is now creative director of the city of Manchester, which is why it looks slightly odd these days. He was also of course the designer of New Order's Blue Monday sleeve. New Order/Joy Division is my favourite band story for a band I don't listen to. (The Frank Zappa biography got packed into a cardboard box along with all my reading matter by Josefina. What am I supposed to do on the toilet now? Just sit there and wait?)
I have an idea for my 33 and a third birthday party (4 October, 2009) where everyone has to come dressed as their favourite album. I could come as Queen II, simple by making a cardboard cut out of May, Taylor and Deacon to wear around my head, while I walk round with my eyes closed and my arms crossed across my shoulders, pretending to be Freddie Mercury. Technology being what it is these days, I'd expect people to have MP3 players attached to their costumes playing a selected track from their albums. Mine wouldn't be White Queen, but it's the only passable track available on youtube, although dios Salve La Reina's March of the Black Queen comes close. Dios Salve La Reina are playing Belgrano in March, but the week after you leave. I'm sorry.
How long before this is used as an advert for, I don't know, car insurance? Why can't we metal kids be in on a TV joke or two?
There are many things to recommend this video: Cliff Burton's declaration of ZZ Top love; Dave Mustaine's presentation of Cliff Burton "on the four-string motherfucker"- that's a bass guitar to you and me; one of Cliff Burton's early solos for the band, which ended up on the album as Anaestesia (Pulling Teeth), because obviously that's the first thing you think of when you hear a bass solo; and finally, a song so fast it's nigh on impossible to work out what's going on. And yet Cliff refuses to use a plectrum! That's what I was aiming for in my 1990 bass lessons. I fell well short. Started using a pick, like Duff McKagan. Sigh.
You can admire the young Hetfield's Whiplash lyrics here. It's the only Metallica song to mention "Metallica". There's a pub quiz question for you.
I could take Guns n Roses tapes on access days with my dad, but Metallica had to stay at home.
This is taken from the classic video, Cliff Em All, a tribute to the dead bassist. Jason Newstead must have been gutted that he didn't get a similar tribute, although to be fair he didn't quite die enough, he just went off in a huff. And of all the metal albums and videos I sold at university for beer money, this and Master of Puppets are the two I regret the most.
Watching television here in the UK, I keep picking out a theme. It's not the continued and evermore geriatric throes of reality shows. It's not the so-called revival of variety (as is variety was about expensive lighting and the forced editing of faux-dramatic backstories). It is the fact that everybody working in television is currently our age. It's a unique experience. Never before have the entertainment of the nation and my personal memories come together in so striking a sense. It's like a personal invite to an eclipse.
A case in point: some clever clogs at ITV4 has decided to promote their very very oldschool season of cop shows like the Sweeney and the Professionals by cutting the footage along to Sabotage and creating a gag that only people of a certain age will get. And that age is our age. It's been said before that TV is a joke. Well, now we're in on it.
Dear James,
So what's your beef? Finally a song with distorted bass and one chord gets used as backing music. Isn't this a good thing? How long before they get to use the "I've got this fucking thorn in my side" line in an advert for Dempsey and Makepeace? And how long before the classic metal of the early eighties gets its payday on ITV4?
It was 40 degrees cee here yesterday so naturally today we´re about to have a big old storm. So I've smoked an 11am loogie and am now watching Beatles records. Such is the creative process.
I like these videos for the interesting shots they do, quite different to a modern pop video. Ringo is a killer in both videos, sitting around wondering where his drumkit is and then going for a wander in the grass. Oh, Ringo.
I love how this single is so representative of the crossover from Rubber Soul to Revolver, and you could say the same for We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper as the crossover between Help and Rubber Soul. It shows also that Paul got turned on to acid a year later than John and George.
There was a lengthy pause there while I read Revolution in the Head. Did you know, Got to Get You Into My Life was said by Lennon to refer to McCartney's belated first acid trip, something which McCartney later confirmed?
Hang on, though. This video was made for the Ed Sullivan show. Why make two videos of the same song?
I've been spending the morning trying to come up with fresh ideas for the Songs of Bacharach and David film, starring Duels. So far I have half a page of A4 of fairly stale ideas and the newly-gained knowledge that the actress who played Maxine in Being John Malkovich played Jerry Seinfeld's artistic girlfriend in the episode The Letter. I like to believe that this is how writers work.
But my morning hasn't been a complete waste of time as I stumbled across this nice TV appearance of Burt Bacharach with Herb Alpert. Good to see that, like all great songwriters, Bacharach can't quite hit all the notes on the songs he wrote himself.
Just when it looks like Burt's not quite going to hit that note in The Look of Love, his buddies show up to help him out! That's What Friends Are For indeed, although that song wasn't written until 1985 and was a collaboration with Carole Bayer Sager of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life fame, not Hal David. I just spent half an hour looking for the clip but I couldn't find it. This is how writers work.
Then along comes Liza Minelli! I think this is the first time I've found her attractive, not that Liza cares. I just spent thirty seconds looking for clips of Liza Minelli in Arrested Development. As a writer, I feel I've learnt not to waste too much time looking for clips that don't exist. I wonder how Liza felt about sharing a stage with a novelty marimba band. Notice how happy she is that she gets to stand next to Wes Montgomery instead of the funny men with moustaches. I wish I had a marimba. This xylophone I bought is rubbish.
I've just found out from the A House is Not a Homepage website that Burt is playing four dates in Brazil in April. That is very tempting.
Concerned by the male-heavy direction the blog is taking, and eager to post another recently-dead folk singer, here's a lovely song from Odetta, who also popped up briefly in the Frank Zappa biography I claim to be reading, as well as in the Bob Dylan documentary I claim to have watched all the way through, where she played Water Boy. There was another very interesting folk singer in No Direction Home, with white hair, playing a stringed-instrument on his lap, but I neglected to note down his name. Not wanting to rely too heavily on our readership today, but if anyone has the inclination to watch the documentary here this and find out who it was, we'd be much obliged. Ex-girlfriends and stalkers need not apply.
I was just reading that Odetta started out life as a domestic servant, which is interesting because she bears more than a passing resemblance to my domestic servant. Maybe I should get Alejandra a guitar. Maybe I could pay her to watch No Direction Home until the appearance of a white-haired man playing what may or may not be a hurdy-gurdy.
Since John Martin died last week, I have been struggling to find a song to post on here. I settled on May You Never but it's just occurred to me that I have nothing to write on the subject and I really just never got Solid Air. It's not for me.
So, instead, here's Jack Ohly. I saw him in another group, the Old Goat, performing Brazilian folk songs which he had learned while living in Sertao and had then re-arranged. It was in an upstairs room through an unmarked, unlit doorway in a Portland, Maine sidestreet where we had to sit cross-legged on the wooden floor as there was no more space on the six slim pews; three to the left and three to the right. At the back of the room was a table laid out with CDs for sale featuring Jack's songs and songs by the band Big Blood, who were also playing. The covers were folded, reconstituted card with tissue-paper inserts and the stall ran an honour system. We bought one of each.
Pulling out on the N25 towards the White Mountains the next morning, eager for a rural soundtrack, we realised we had paid $10 for the cover Jack Ohly had propped up against the pile of actual cds.
But here's testiment to young folk playing DIY music in draughty first-floor artspaces everywhere. I wrote Jack Ohly a note explaining how we had enjoyed his night and how sad we were that we had no Goat music as a souvenir and do you know? Jack Ohly posted me a copy of his record. Properly bound with string and brown paper and with a note, handwritten in worn down, 6H pencil. "I'm sorry about the problem with the packaging," it said, "I shall have to have words with my distribution department."
Dear James,
You're such a country dropper. I enjoyed the John Martyn song, and I never got Solid Air either. Jazz-folk? A foolish scheme.
If any readers in Buenos Aires could tell me of any draughty first-floor DIY artspaces where I can take James to watch Americans play Brazilian folk songs, please comment in the relevant area.
In case anyone needs further evidence of all the other songs on Pin-Ups being rubbish, here's the original for Friday on my Mind by the Easybeats and here's Bowie's version. While we're here, here's the original Sorrow by the Merseys. Better!
The Easybeats were Australia's answer to The Monkees. What's that? Hang on...
The Easybeats were Australia's answer to The Beatles. You will of course notice ACDC's big brother George Young (he of the ironic dancing) and blond guitar-playing Dutchman Harry Vanda, who went on to form Flash and the Pan. You may not notice the guitar line that System of a Down borrowed for Kill Rock n Roll, set here for reasons known to its auteur to a Gorillaz video. SOAD might have heard the song via axe-god Gary Moore, essaying his version here and coming across as a Spinal Tap tribute.
More from Ian, who was unaware as I was that this video existed. True to Bowie form for the early 70s, the video is gash. The woman who looks like Claudia Schiffer, but clearly isn't because Schiffer would have been three years old at the time, is Amanda Lear, former lover of Bowie and Salvador Dalí and the model on the cover of Roxie Movie's For Your Pleasure. One wag on the youtube comments says Lear is a transsexual, which explains the big hands.
Sorrow is also notable as being the only decent song on the Pin-Ups album, which mostly consists of slowed-down covers of songs that used to be good in the sixties. The album's release came at a time of British nostalgia for all things past, this being the dark days of 1973. It's odd that Bowie, being so futuristic with the likes of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, should have released a covers album. The album also charted the same week as Brian Ferry's These Foolish Things covers album, so maybe it was an in joke with the arty people.
The b-side to the Sorrow single was a cover of Jacques Brel's Amsterdam, as featured below. I always thought Sorrow was a Pretty Things cover, and then had trouble trying to work out how it was a cover of SF Sorrow is Born. Turns out it was originally by The Merseys, The Pretty Things song on Pin-Ups was Rosalyn.
Having mentioned Elvis, I feel duty-bound to my fellow countrymen to post some videos of the Argentinian Elvis, Sandro, which granted is a bit of a girl's name for such a manly hunk. Here he is above, showing off his wildman moves. Here he is again singing Trigal, or Wheat Field. What a pair of trousers!
Wheat field, where my hands are dilated, Where they are compressed and snatch away, The colour of your wheat field, Wheat field oh! Wheat field.
Eh? Like Elvis, Sandro also did the odd fillum, but with a notably lower budget than his North American counterpart. Here he is in the film "Muchacho", filmed during a day out at Tigre.
I just spent half an hour looking through all last year's mails for a video of Sandro that I sent you but I can't find it. I've missed nearly all Everton vs. Aston Villa. Everton scored and I barely noticed. Here's another amusing rendition of Rosa Rosa instead.
Speaking of Elvis, which I was just now, I remembered yesterday's idea for a post about this song. It may have been my state of mind while listening to this seminal rendition from The Ritz in 1988, but I got the impression that it could have been an Elvis Presley cover. It isn't, but try singing along to this with A Little Less Conversation, give it a skiffle beat and I'm sure I'm onto something.
Mr Brownstone was written on the back of a grocery bag by Axl and Izzy after one of those days on the heroin, or Mr. Brownstone as they liked to call it. That's why the grocery bag is vastly superior to the plastic bag. You can write a song on the back of a Tesco bag, but only if you do so before shooting up.
I actually wanted to post this song by Jacques Brel but enabling has been disabled, so I asked youtube to give me a video I could post in its stead and for reasons known only to youtube it suggested this Leonard Cohen number. Take your coat off, Lenny. Stay a while. Except youtube originally suggested the live at Isle of Wight version, then told me it wasn't available, thus rendering my raincoat comment incomprehensible.
Wikipedia really does throw you some odd lines at times. I'm sure this one's made up:
One morning at six o'clock he read the words of Amsterdam to Fernand, a restauranteur who was about to set off fishing for scorpion fish and conger eels for the bouillabaisse. Overcome, Fernand broke out in sobs and cut open some sea urchins to help control his emotion.
The English lyrics to Brel's songs and much used by Scott Walker were written by Mort Shuman, who also wrote Viva Las Vegas.
Two weeks ago Ian sent me a whole load of youtube clips in the middle of the night, which may or may not have been intended for the blog. Most of it was avant-garde nonsense such as Derek Bailey, but now and again he comes through with a couple of gems, such as Diamanda Galás here, who is the friendly face of avant-garde and sometimes sings proper songs like what Billie Holiday did.
Last night we saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Valentines Day programming at the cable company) and Funseeker was right, it does get better the second time around (the film, not marriage). Then we thought of secretly getting baptised as Greek Orthodox so that we could a) do something vaguely George Costanza-ish and b) get married in St. George's Cathedral here in Palermo, which is Greek Orthodox and has a lovely golden dome. We could then go across the road to Los Andes bar for a game of pool and a cheap lunch. Anyway, I mention all this because our Diamanda here is Greek Orthodox. As is Maria Callas, which surprised me. I thought all opera singers had to be Catholic.
Billy Holiday's version of this song was banned by the BBC because it was a bit, how shall we say, gloomy. Read more here, including details on the Dead Milkmen's (Theme From) Blood Orgy of the Atomic Fern.
Some songs as mentioned on my other blog, as read here. I like to think that people have the time and inclination to toggle between the two as they fawn in admiration. Bedroom Scene:
It's at least 72 hours since you last posted which means I get to post more heavy metal. Good news for me, bad news for our reader(s). When you bring me this turntable (weekly reminder) the first thing I'll do is go out and buy the first four albums of Sui Generis and Black Sabbath. The second thing I'll do is listen to the hundred-odd albums I bought and never listened to, starting with the 30 Years of Bossa album I claim to have listened to in the post below.
A brief history of Black Sabbath, cribbed from Wikipedia: In 1968 everyone liked flowers and listened to pretty music, so Black Sabbath were pretty revolutionary. In December 68 Tony Iommi left Sabbath to join Jethro Tull, appearing on the Rolling Stones' Rock n Roll Circus and becoming the first of many members to leave the band. Their first album, Black Sabbath, was released in 1969, recorded live in one take and described by Lester Bangs of the Rolling Stone as
discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitised speedfreaks all over each other's musical perimeters, yet never quite finding synch
Which sounds like fun. Paranoid was released in 1970. The title track was written in twenty minutes, although that includes the time taken to skin up. It reached number 4 in the UK, Sabbath's only UK top ten hit. Master of Reality was released in 1971, featuring marijuana paean Sweet Leaf, which you'll know from Ugly Kid Joe's cover. Lester Bangs described it as
naïve, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel
Such a way with words, our Lester, though perhaps ignorant of the very essence of heavy metal. With the success of Black Sabbath Vol. 4 the band appeared on Top of the Pops, sharing a stage with Engelbert Humperdink and Diana Ross, though perhaps not at the same time. By now the band had more money and more drugs, which shows in the video to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, off the fifth album Sabotage, which featured 24's Rick Wakeman on keyboards. It was downhill after that.
At the moment I'm reading Barry Miles' "Frank Zappa". Miles' McCartney biography "Many Years From Now" was great, but this one's harder going. Probably because it's about Frank Zappa. When we were in Concepción at the weekend, Funseeker's niece Ana asked me to read to her, so I read her some of this. She's only four. That'll stay with her forever.
I've got up to the bit where young Frank moves to Hollywood and figures out that a) the freaks (what the hippies were before they were called hippies) like the Byrds; b) the Byrds are popular; c) therefore, if he can get the freaks to like him, he'll be as popular as the Byrds. Clearly an oversight on Zappa's part, as Miles writes:
Zappa's music was never as danceable as the Byrds' and required a lot more concentration. They couldn't just flow with it because Frank was always changing the time signature or introducing spoken parts.
It's also just mentioned that Arthur Lee and Love were also on the Sunset Strip scene at the same time, which is handy as it means I can post this video instead of looking for a listenable one by Zappa.
I just spent twenty minutes exploring The Duels' new website. I would have liked to have spent more time, but I ran out of things to look at. Still, I've downloaded five songs, so I've got something for later, as we say in erotic cinema. I notice you have a merchandise section too, which will explain Jon's reluctance to give me a t-shirt last August. If I'd known how much you were charging for badges, I wouldn't have given them away so willy-nilly either.
It's hard to find Duels videos on youtube because you type in "duels" in the search engine and it gives you all this dungeons and dragons stuff. Even typing in "duels bright lights" gives you some geek showing off his "third lightsaber". I found this video last year, I like how the sinister masks fit with the music. The person who posted the video says it's an old public service thing, but I know it's you and the boys dressed up really.
Is it true you appeared on Trinny and Suzanna Undress the Nation?
Much jubilation at Serrano y Cabrera as communications have once again been established with Áine the Woodentop. I'll see if she heeds my request for some Woodentop links, in the meantime a summary of our cyber-conversation:
1, In 2006 we went to a marvellous record shop in Salvador, Brazil called Brinjal, or Aubergine. I could tell you a long story about the etymology of aubergine and brinjal, but Mr. Quinion tells it much better here. Anyway, at the shop in question Áine and I both purchased the same "30 years of Bossa Nova" record, which may or may not include songs by these people. That's Toquinho on the guitar, Maria Creusa singing, Tom Jobim on the piano. And that's not your granddad dancing across the stage and embarrassing the others, it's Vinicius de Moraes.
3, A very talented individual plays The Pixies' Debaser on a Bontempi organ. I wish I could play piano two-handed.
4, While recording with the Woodentops, Áine got to play a minimoog, but sadly only to make white noise. Here's Dr. Moog explaining his invention. I now know what "attack length" means on my Yamaha Electone.
5, And on a completely different note, here's all the swear words from The Sopranos. That's 30 minutes of swearing. I've never really got into The Sopranos, but now I might have to.
Life was good for Olivia Newton John in 1980. The men wore nice v-neck sweaters and ties, and the ladies wore long skirts and generous blouses. Everyone owned a pair of roller skates, and they weren't afraid to use them. Even the ladies who didn't own a pair of roller skates knew they could get a ride somehow. Brian May had a big cocktail umbrella and was slowly mastering the art of doing the splits. Roller skates were so cool, even the Evel Kineval was changing his act. And Olivia knew that no matter how much you dressed it up with dancing boys and a lady's voice, you could tell that this was an ELO song a mile off.
And Jeff Lynne had to live with the fact that, despite having written gems like Mr. Blue Sky, The Diary of Horace Wimp and Last Train to London, THIS would prove to be ELO's only UK number one.
I'm off to Misconception of the Uruguay for the weekend, or as I like to call it, Xanadu.
In tribute to the inimitable Lux Interior, who has died, here is People Ain't No Good. Very possibly not classic Cramps, but I like it for when I am feeling at my most misanthropic.
You can stop it at about 3'50" before it continues into Hot Pearl Snatch, although I imagine just by typing that half a sentence I have encouraged, rather than dissuaded you...
Dear James,
For a soft-handed indie boy, you listen to a lot of dischordant garage. Although if the most misanthropic you get is to listen to a band that sound vaguely like the B52s, I think your soft-handed indie boy image should remain intact.
A nice bit of cheese from Argentina for you, in conjuction with 676.words.blogspot.com. So that's Pimpinela, Iron Maiden and Eric Clapton all in the same week. This blog has no street-cred.
Dear Daniel,
You know that it was a joke at Eric Clapton's expense, right? There will no be any earnest slowhand action on this blog.
I relly hope that sentence doesn't get us traffic from dodgy google searches...
Oh go on then, one more before I go and put the deposit down on the apartment and get the tickets for Concepción.
Dear James,
Here's quite the find: Diana Ross and Stevland Morris singing the Diana Ross and The Temptations hit of the same name. I think this is the first time I've ever considered Diana Ross sexy, as opposed to considering her a weird Michael Jackson lookalike. She's less sexy when she patronises the talented blind boy, to the extent that, until he stands up, he look's like a dummy to Diana's ventriloquist.
This song was originally recorded by Dee Dee Warwick, Dionne's less successful sister. It was written by Gamble and Huff, who also wrote the O'Jays' Love Train and the Simply Red classic, If You Don't Know Me By Now. Anyway, back to you Stevie. Bongos and drums indeed!
If we weren't doing this blog, we'd be like this guy in this video. The DJ, Top Cat Tony, at Stockport Students' Union used to play this for the cool kids, in between my requests for Metallica and Pearl Jam. He did well to accommodate us all. The years passed, Eddie Vedder's grip on my soul loosened, and I started to think about this song and where I could find it. Then when we were at the Funky Monkey in Camberwell last September the DJ played it. I was amazed anyone in the whole world had ever heard of the song. That DJ looked familiar.
It says here that The Snake is currently being used in England to advertise Lambrini. It says here that Lambrini is a brand of light perry that dominates the commercial light perry market. Do the ladies go into the pubs and say "I'll have a light perry?" It also says on one of those that Al Wilson's biggest hit was Show and Tell in 1973. Some would call this mid-70s guff.
I was watching some documentary on the telly with my mum a couple of years ago about the birth of heavy metal when Bruce Dickinson appeared.
"Oh, I've always liked Bruce Dickinson," says my mum. "Eh?" "Oh, I think he's a lovely boy."
I wrote to mum the other day to ask her about this. "Bruce Dickinson, the airline pilot?" she asks. I google. Turns out he's a licensed airline pilot as well as the duke of darkness. "Yes, the airline pilot too", I write back. "I don't remember ever saying that", she replies. You can imagine the trouble I have writing the novel.
But I still stand by what I heard, and am starting to think Bruce Dickinson's been sending out subliminal messages to my mum. If you play this video backwards, at the start where he says "Scream for me Long Beach!" you can almost hear him say "Scream for me Susan!"
Maiden drummer Nicky McBrain (he has a side project called, wait for it... Brain Damage) once told a funny story on Raw Power about a performance of this song at the Hammersmith Odeon (Scream for me Hammersmith!) which went wrong. Now that I think about it, the story wasn't that funny. It's the way he tells them.
So first I was listening to Black Sabbath and wondering why it had taken me nearly 33 years to get into them. Then I was reminiscing to Iron Maiden's first album. Then I thought, wouldn't it be fun if every time James didn't post after 72 hours, I would post heavy metal videos until he started posting again. Then I searched for Anthrax's Got The Time, that nasty track from the glorious rock year of 1991. My bass teacher once arrived and said "Isn't it awful, that Anthrax song? The bass player can't play in time". I'd just been about to ask him to teach me it. It was favourite song during a week hiatus in between changing from claiming Duff McKagan as my favourite bass player to claiming Cliff Burton as my favourite bass player. My bass teacher's words stayed in the back of my mind, and to this day, I can't for the life of me remember the name of that bassist from Anthrax.
Then I remembered this: Got the Time was a cover of a song written by Joe Jackson, and remembered I had always assumed that Joe Jackson must have been the name of the songwriter in Judas Priest or something. Hang on, I then thought. I know another singer called Joe Jackson, the one who did Is She Really Going Out With Him? Could it possibly be the same person?
Here's an idea for when you're over: let's record The White Album from start to finish and post it on youtubes and sit back and watch the plaudits roll in. We could do a death metal version of Obladi Oblada, my cheesy Yamaha Electone would play a prominent role throughout and you could bring your school bell for Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and my Monkey. Eric Clapton says he'd be up for a cameo.
There's a band who did the whole of the White Album as a gig. I can't find who it was, for some reason I think it was Sonic Youth.
Dear Daniel,
Alright, we'll do 2 songs a day and miss out revolution 9. Which means we'll have to do a few songs during the night as well. If only I could bring across the Lorenzo standard organ I have. That would sound perfect.
I've been meaning to post this one for a while, ever since Anna said she'd never heard the song. Or maybe she just didn't recognise it from my ukulele rendition. Said rendition will be my cameo appearance in the film The Songs of Bacharach and David, as a busker gently butchering the mellow sounds of the sixties. However, given that once again I got up at 11am today, I have yet to find the time to take on a further project. I'm waiting for a spurt of creativity, but once it comes, mister, you mark my words...
This video is an excellent experiment in the beauty of minimalism. The light at the start, the appearance of Gene Pitney as he walks to the camera, about to present a hard-hitting current affairs programme. We should make some Scroops videos while you're over, following the same ethos.
I first heard of Gene Pitney when he appeared on Top of the Pops with Marc Almond singing Something's Got a Hold of my Heart. My nanna sat there muttering "poor old Gene Pitney" throughout the performance. I thought it was because he'd died. I think in fact he'd just been outed by the Daily Mail. A former Leeds Polytechnic student, both of Marc Almond's UK number ones were covers, the other being Tainted Love, a 1964 single by Cincinatti's Gloria Jones, penned by Ed Cobb who also wrote Every Little Bit Hurts (recorded by The Small faces and The Clash).
I could write a whole blog on Ben Folds and his Five. The song you posted below is from last September's album, Way To Normal. I downloaded it, listened to it once and never returned to it until you posted You Don't Know Me. It's a grower, it has its moments, but the thing is this:
When you've written a song like Philosophy, where do you go from there? Well, Steven's Last Night in Town and Narcolepsy, clearly, and even Ben's first two proper albums had half a dozen songs each of the standard we'd come to love. And it's saddening how one of my two hereos (Jerry Seinfeld being the other) has lowered his game to this radio-friendly- if it wasn't Ben Folds I wouldn't give it the time of day- mush, but I think we can accord him the same status as Queen and Billy Joel who smashed our musical illusions by making a load of great albums and then a load of guff. That's age for you.
I was going to post more videos then, but I've just discovered there was a Ben Folds Five reunion gig in Chapel Hill on 18 September last year. Josephine Funseeker's birthday! I'm going to watch that instead. Why don't you watch it too? This is huge.
Well it's now 4.15am and I just watched that and it brought forward all kinds of emotions, from the trumpet at 2:22 in Don't Change Your Plans and onwards and before that. What a band. Sometimes you get two friends together and they become a couple and they thank you, but it doesn't compare to my thanks to you and Áine for getting me into this band. Thank you and good night, good night, sweet baby. The world has more for you.
Dear Daniel,
Well crikey, you're welcome. I wasn't aware that Reinhold Messner had become something of a lost classic in the US or that Robert Sledge had become overweight or that Darren Jessie had a solo career. To be honest, I didn't realise ten years had passed. Bloody hell.
In record-straightening news: I was a fan of Billy Joel aged 7, with a nostalgic relapse aged 11 - 13. It don't makes him my Queen, he's my ironic nostaligic childhood joke-act reference, or "inchjar". No musical illusions were smashed by that man, he doesn't deserve that much attention. I think REM were to me what Queen were to you. But anyway, I see your point...
Dear James,
Darren Jessee now sings in Hotel Lights. At first listen, I'm tempted to say it sounds like non-descript, lily-livered Americana. You might like it, you like Elliott Smith.
James and Daniel, or Jim and Danny to an unfortunate few, were going to be like the old men who ran 78 Records in Stockport, but writing a blog about the songs and videos they came across seemed a lot less hassle, and saved them having to move to Stockport. And so they created 78x78 Records, so that other people could know what it was like to be their friend, and what they wrote about when they wrote to each other about music. And so they will post videos of songs you might enjoy 78x78 times. And then they will stop. And then they will do something else. That's 6084 posts. They´ll endeavour to get it done quickly. They'd love to hear from you and any videos or songs you'd like them to post. You can do this by commenting in the pertinent area, or by e-mailing them your suggestions at 78discos@gmail.com
.jpg){kind=link}
