Wouldn't it be Nice

Dear 78records' friends,

Our hiatus appears to be nearing it's end. We'll soon be back and trying to impersonate John Peel while infringing any number of copyright laws. Until then, here's the Beach Boys:

We Are Golden

We are golden : Mika
by morg92

Dear Daniel,

Now, I've never been a fan of Mika and I suggest that you should not be either, despite him evoking the memory of Freddie Mercury in the nonsense-pop hit, Grace Kelly. In fact, he does more than simply evoke in that song. He more or less sings, "I'm going to try and sing like Freddie Mercury now," and then tries to sing like Freddie Mercury. As I say, nonsense.

Well, that's one thing. (In fact, there are two things: he sings, "Why don't you like me?" over and over which is simply dreadful and no amount of protestations about its ironic intent, its postmodern leanings, its subversive objective justify its complete bloody mawkishness.)

Anyway, he's gone a step further. For inspiration on his big new nonsense-pop hit, he's gone beyond Grace Kelly, bypassed Freddie Mercury and, erm, watched this clip of The Office from about 53"...



Surely the joke in The Office was that the song was awful?

Dear James,

I'm back!And I have this to say. If this was 1973 instead of 2009, Mika would be the new Sparks. Or the old Sparks. As it is, and as we always suspected, he's just turned into a dull pop act with the odd falsetto and silly shorts. So if this was 1984, he would actually be Freddie Mercury.

18 and Life

Dear James,

A couple of months ago I was taking the piss out of Skid Row and told you how their singer, Sebastian Bach (real name Sebastian Bierk), deserved a whole piss-taking post of his own. James, this is that post:

1. Sebastian Bach (real name Sebastian Bierk) named his 3 children Paris, London and... Sebastiana. If you and I were anything like Sebastian, I'd have a son called Stockport and you'd have one called Saint Saviour. Well, you'd have a son anyway. I suppose in many ways you have become more like Sebastian Bach than I will ever be. Unless I have a son and name him after a major conurbation, clearly. Leeds-Bradford Tunnard. It's got a ring to it.
2. Sebastian Bach (real name Sebastian Bierk) made his Broadway debut in 2000 in the title role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
3. In 2002, SB (RN Sebastian Bierk) played the title role in a touring company's production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He was fired for "diva-like behaviour". That sounds unfair. If you're playing Jesus Christ you've got to get into the whole "I'm the Messiah" thing, right?



I like to think Sebastian would have at least put more passion into his performance than the guy in the above video. The original album featured Ian Gillan of Deep Purple as Jesus and Murray Head as Judas. Murray Head of course went on to great success in the 80s with One Night In Bangkok.



But I digress:
4. Sebastian Bach was turned down in favour of ex-Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland as the lead singer of Velvet Revolver, because Slash said that with Bach they sounded like "Skid Roses". Of course, the fact that that Americans are as ignorant of the phrase "skid mark" as Germans are oblivious to the double meaning of "Bismarck" only adds to the humour.

5. Bach played the guitarist in the Korean girls' band in Gilmour Girls. As a married man, I endured the Gilmour Girls for years. I'm so gutted this huge comic moment passed me by at the time.



You may notice how he mispronounces the phrase "breast-feeding route".

6. Like many people, Bach went 13 years without speaking to W.Axl Rose. They made up, and Bach joined Axl's Not N Really aNymore Guns N Roses on stage on May 12, 2006, singing My Michelle. He then rejoined them on stage on May 14, singing My Michelle. He joined them again on June 4, 6 and 9, singing My Michelle. And again on September 23, singing My Michelle.



Eventually, they let him sing Nightrain as an encore, but only because Axl was "ailing".

7. 2006 was a busy year for Sebastian. He also formed a supergroup for the VH1 reality show "Supergroup" with Scott Ian (Anthrax), Evan Seinfeld (Biohazard and porn), Jason Bonham (Led Zep drummer, son of dead Led Zep drummer), and Ted Nugent (Ted Nugent). Oddly for a man with a 20-year career behind him, the reality show gets more words on his Wikipedia page than anything else. Which is probably about right.

8. That above article goes on for a bit, so I'll leave you with this gem:

In 2007, on an episode of the Trailer Park Boys season seven titled Friends of the Road, Bach played himself as a celebrity guest hosting a model train convention

I just don't know what to make of that, aside from the envy that Bach got to host it and not me, when I know loads more about trains. Anyway, 18 and Life, fantastic song in the late-80s glam rock vein of picking a name at random (Ricky, Billy, Johnny, etc) and writing a story about a young kid gone off the tracks. Great video too. Youth Gone Wild, meh.

Dirt Off Your Shoulder

Dear Daniel,

I've finally got around to listening to something which - when I heard about it 2 or 3 months back - got me pretty excited. I'm sure you'll remember back in late '95 when I used to repeat-play Sparklehorse's wonderfully-titled debut Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot? You don't? Well, you were all "Life" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" at the time.

I bought it because Jennifer Nine in the Melody Maker said "Rainmaker" sounded like an heir to Big Star's "Ballad of El Goodo", which you must remember me repeat playing. I remember getting the album home and being surprised at how remarkably dissimilar the tracks were...






Anyway, I saw Sparklehorse play in France a year later, Mark Linkous wheelchair-bound because, apparently, he fell asleep for 13 hours in the crouching position either after a particularly heavy night or because he was ill - depending on who you hear the story from.

Over the following years my relationship with the band dwindled, but then came Nina Persson - years after "Life" - to collaborate on a solo record of hers under the name A Camp with songs written by Mark Linkous. I can only imagine she worked with him to add a pleasingly circular quality to this tale.

And here she is with him again, this time adding vocals to a track on Linkous' album with Gnarls Barkley-bloke Danger Mouse, who created the super "Grey Album" by mixing Jay-Z's Black Album with The Beatles' White Album.

The new album also features Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, The Strokes' Julian Casablancas (whose forthcoming solo album sounds bizarrely like Vangelis...), Vic Chestnut, Iggy Pop, etc. etc. and is itself a multimedia collaboration with David Lynch.

But, months after it was "released" as a blank disc with the advice "For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will", you still shouldn't really be allowed to ever hear it.



Dear James,

At the risk of sounding precious, I remember it was you who was all "Life" in 1995, I carried on the Cardigan Torch for the Atlanta Olympics in 96 and there on in. And Sparklehorse's hugely original sound (you're right, nothing like Ballad of El Goodo) probably flew right over my head because I mixed them up with Seahorses, that band by the chap who used to be in a better band, and by your insistence on wasting your fancy Jersey States student grant on 2,761 CDs in 95-96 by bands that sounded like The Charlatans doing Crashin' In.



You'd already conned me into buying the Whiteout album so the pretty girl at Virgin Megastore (Hagar?) would notice me, and that was shit, so I drew the line at further jangly guiter US pop bands after that and snuggled up with Paul and Artie and my yellow wig. I'm pleased to report that my cats ripped the spine of the Whiteout album to fuck in the days when I had my albums arranged in alphabetical order, with the S-Z section dangerously low (My Bridge Over Troubled Water! How will I replace you?) and in a cruel twist of fate, now that I've reordered my vinyl by year of release, it's the 1986-1998 section at the bottom which gets the scratching. Which may fuck up half my Queen collection, but if it brings Whiteout more pain, it's a risk I'm willing to take.

And you didn't even tell us anything about the Grey Album, surely the most exciting song on this post? I was going to post Whiteout's "Jackie's Racing", but there's no whiff of Whiteout on youtube and they told me to post Jackie Wilson's "Lonely Teardrops" instead. No one reads this far down anyway.

Dreamer

Dear James,

Less of your modernism, here's some cheesy bollocks from the 70s. You know where you are with cheesy bollocks. Curious Supertramp video from a Paris gig here. The singer's only purpose appears to be to do a bizarre strip tease and speak a bit of French.

Supertramp were one of Princess Diana's favourite bands. We were in the Coto supermarket round the corner the other day when "Lady in Red" came on on the tannoy and we sang along at the check-out. I told Josefina the old chestnut about how Princess Diana loved the song and thought it was about her. And people think I have a big ego. At a gig or something Princess Diana went up to Chris de Burgh and thanked him for writing the song about her. Little Chris had to point out that actually it was about his wife.