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.
Quick question for you. If you were to form a Queen tribute band, would you call said band "Bigot". I've been trying to work out all afternoon why these people thought this would be a good idea. "Bigote" is Spanish for "moustache", but the Freddie-impersonator doesn't have one, so that doesn't make much sense. Bigot asked me to be their Facebook friend. I told them I already had one Queen-tribute Facebook friend, but accepted their invitation all the same. We people have to stick together.
I once met Pablo Padín, the Freddie of Dios Salve La Reina. I told him if he wanted I could give him some classes to improve his pronunciation. He gave me a look which many would interpret as the "Who the fuck are you?" look. But he still gave me his autograph. I read it. It said "Pablo Padín". That really shattered my illusions.
Dear Daniel,
Have a scan down the list of acts featured on this blog. 17! 17! I'm about ready to propose a moratorium on all things Queen.
Dear James,
How very dare you? I haven't posted 17 Queen videos, we've just mentioned them in the general course of things because when you think about it, all music comes back to Queen one way or another. And you've mentioned Eric Clapton four times, which is far worse.
I had one of those "where did all that time go?" moments at work the other day. I was doing the subtitles for episode one upstairs, where our remaining designers work while listening to Radio Kabul, a fine radio station if ever I heard one. I find this with designers, being able to work with music on. I find it very distracting. Even now I'm writing this while listening to Guns N Roses and I can't hear myself think. Anyway, there we were when this song came on and I remembered when it came out for the second time (the first release failed to chart) in 1989, kicking off my switch from Queen-fidelity to dabbling in metal. I realised that this made it the first time I was aware of music in the big wide world out there (apart from Queen, which was always very much a private thing) and that this had happened a full 20 years ago. Until that moment I had considered "Paradise City" as the start of "modern" in my record collection, as opposed to the "old" stuff. It turns out that there are probably a billion or two young whipper-snappers on this planet who categorically categorise this song among the old, like when you'd listen to Dave Lee Travis with your mum on a Sunday morning in the late 80s and hear ELO songs from what appeared to be a bygone era but turned out to be nothing earlier than 1979.
So then I got to thinking that from Paradise City up to 1999 I could quite easily give a visitor to planet Earth (or my children, whichever comes first) a full and frank overview of the past decade in music: big-hair rock, Madchester, shoe-gazing, grunge, Metallica, Britpop, 60s, 70s and 80s revivals, Take That, Spice Girls, the tragedy of Coldplay and the fourth re-release of John Lennon's Imagine. But if my imaginary children or this imaginary spaceman overprioritising pop culture in his bid for world dominance were to say to me: "Tell us about the music of the period between 2000 and 2009, we're not altogether happy with the phrase "the noughties" but haven't been able to come up with a better alternative", I'd smile at them blankly and hope they'd think I'd gone senile rather than thinking I didn't really know much about anything. And then they'd go off and get into all kinds of music from the period between 2000 and 2009 which I knew nothing about because I'd spent the whole decade listening to Guns n Roses and ELO and reminiscing about Dave Lee Travis.
Do you ever have thoughts like these? Or do you think like Taasha of The Audreys:
"A person quizzed me a few days ago about Paradise City and kept referring to the Axl Rose song, so I told him to imagine it for the women," Taasha offers. "Axl's singing that the grass is green and the girls are pretty with his misogynist view, so what was it like for the women in that city? Well it was probably pretty fucked. I really love people's interpretations of our songs and they're often more interesting than our own."
Incidentally, Slash's suggestion for the second line of Paradise City was "Where the girls are fat and they've got big titties". This was tragically vetoed by the rest of the band.
Dear Daniel,
It explains why Velvet Revolver didn't catch on in quite the same way as G'n'f'n'R.
Do you think your lack of naughtie-knowledge if down to your interest drifting away from modern stuff or it is that you are living in a different culture to the musical one you reference from 60s - 2000?
A lot of what you speak about it down to a shared frame of reference in one country. A rough 2000s from here looks, on guitar, like The Strokes through The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, The Killers while at the same time pop was doing Destinys Child, J-Lo, through Pink, Busted, McFly, the rise of the Black Eyed Peas and underground was turning the internet into a modern socialist revolution.
But in America, the whole guitar scene listed above is largely unknown and is replaced with Eminem and Emo. Pop's much the same, but it's all about marketing by multinationals so that's unsurprising.
Anyway, it's not like you've never heard of these acts. What are you talking about?
Dear James,
Yeah but no but, I've heard of them but they haven't formed any kind of soundtrack to my life in the last ten years, and due to my refusal to listen to much radio I've been making my own ignorantly oblivious soundtrack. Right here, on this blog.
Bloody hell! The news sources in Argentina can rarely be trusted, but I think their ¨Michael Jackson might have died¨thing might be correct. And to think we were just talking about cardiac arrests, two posts below, eh?
Mine and my dad's favourite MJ song has to be the eighth single to be released off the Bad album. Me and my sisters had received the Bad album from Great Auntie Susan, who used to send us a cheque for 2 quid every Christmas. We put out heads together and got this. Then we started taking it on access days with Dad. Dad enjoyed Man in the Mirror and could regularly be spotted singing along in his inimitable tone-deaf way, clearly taking in Jackson's wise lyrics and starting to look at that ¨Man in the Mirror¨. Or ¨Dad¨, as we used to call him. Time passed and the Bad cassette seemed to take up residence in Dad´s Lada Combi. Slowly, the awful truth began to dawn: Dad had nicked our tape. So much for Man in the Mirror.
Dear Daniel,
He was good, wasn't he? But let's be honest - only until the end of the 80s. Still - what a showman. I spoke to somebody who saw him play in Roundhay Park in 1988. The buildup was massive. Silence. The lights went up and he was propelled up through the stage, head facing right. Crowd went wild. He stood there for ten minutes. Crown continued to go wild throughout. After the ten minutes, he jerked his head to the right. The crowd went wild. For ten minutes. Then he started the show.
True or not, it totally believable and that is the mark of the man.
Crikey. The king is dead. To quote David Quantick, "Now, Jermaine is King."
Dear James,
I had no idea that my dad played in Roundhay Park. Was it rugby? I disagree that he was only good up to the end of the 80s; he had a purple patch in the late 90s and he's really perked up since his retirement and gave me a hundred quid for my birthday. Unless you're still talking about Michael Jackson.
If Mike Scott of The Waterboys had come to your school assembly in the late 80s, would your fellow pupils have reacted in such a friendly manner? I can't help but feel that if Mr. Scott had come to Hazel Grove High School and played a jolly tune on the piano, the students would not have reacted so enthusiastically. In fact, I don't think my school had a piano. And don't be fooled by their pretty website. In our day, we didn't even have those claret sweaters for uniforms. They were later imposed by an Aston Villa-supporting headmaster.
Yesterday when I was supposed to be working I discovered something very interesting. To begin with, some etymology for you, courtesy of Mr. Quinion. Did you enjoy that? Good. By now you should be aware that there's a leap year every four years, but not in years ending in 00 (1700, 1800, 1900), unless it's divisible by 400 (2000) in which case it's a leap year, and thus we keep all the seasons in step. This process, as you'll know being a scientist, is called metemptosis.
However, what happens if we want to add a date to the calendar to keep it in step with the moon? This is called proemptosis, one of which we won't be needing until 4200, but Quinion shirks out of explaining what this is all about. However, the 1892 London Encyclopaedia explains all in layman's terms:
METEMPTOSIS, from ¡ura, after, and iriirriD, I fall, a term in chronology, expressing the solar equation necessary to prevent the new moon from happening a day too late ; by which it stands contradistinguished from Proemptosis, which signifies the lunar equation necessary to prevent the new moon from happening too soon. The new moon's running a little backwards, that is, coming a day too soon at the end of 312 years and a half; by the proemptosis, a day is added every 300 years, and another every 2400 years : on the other hand, by the metemptosis, a bissextile is suppressed each 134 years; that is, three times in 400 years. These alterations are never made but at the end of each century ; that period rendering the practice of the calendar easy. There are three rules for making this addition or suppression of the bissextile day, and for changing the index of the epacts. 1. When there is a metemptosis without a proemptosis, the next following, or lower index, must be taken. 2. When there is a proemptosis without a metemptosis, the next preceding or superior index is to be taken. 3. When there are both a metemptosis and a proemptosis, or when there is neither the one nor the other, the same index is preferred. Thjs, in 1600, we had D : in 1700, by reason of the metemptosis, С was taken : in 1800 there were both a proemptosis and metemptosis ; so the same index was retained. In 1900 there will be a metemptosis again, when B will be taken; whicli will be preserved in 2000, because there will then be neither the one nor the other. This is as far as we need to compute for it : but Clavius has calculated a cycle of 301,800 years ; at the end of which period the same indices return in the same order.
All of which is no news to Ozzy Osbourne.
Dear Daniel,
During our time indindustry, our marketing woman at the label was called Claire Moon. During the video shoot for Animal, in between some shot or other, a bass-playing friend of mine started talking about the "hole of the Moon".
News today of the Cardiacs lead singer Tim Smith, who had a cardiac arrest almost exactly a year ago. The band has been going as long as you and I have been alive, but then ceased activities on that date and have been quiet ever since. Then,this.
To be frank, I've always found it difficult to get past the dishevelled-clown makeup (latterly inspiring Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, possibly?) and the pseudo-cryptic lyrics to actually get to the songs. And when I get to the songs.. erm, my god. It's a certain breed of genius, definitely. In the world of awkwardness I prefer Devo, but I have a feeling that makes me a lightweight.
A friend was adamant I would like them, even asking whether parts of the first Duels album were inspired by them. Not so - I'm with the reviewers who say one Cardiacs song has more ideas in it than some bands have in their entire career (do you see what I'm saying here?). I haven't counted, but I'll wager that Tarred and Feathered and this one, R.E.S., contain more mini-songs between them than there are tracks on the two Duels albums...
Honorable mention for the friend: one Chris Catalyst who is a multi-talented, indefatigable force of nature himself. He's currently to be found fronting Eureka Machines, anywhere and everywhere:
... when he's not featuring on MTV's cribs... I think.
Dear James,
Is it just me, or do The Cardiacs look and sound like Chris Evans trying to be funny?
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
