Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Wednesday, 7 October 2009

Taking Tiger Mountain



We climbed and we climbed,
Oh, how we climbed
My, how we climbed
Over the stars to the top
Of Tiger Mountain
Forcing the lines through the snow.

Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
BRIAN ENO

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Happy Birthday Billie Holiday


"If I'm going to sing like someone else,
then I don't need to sing at all."

Billie Holiday, born April 7th, 1915

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

[In] Appropriate Crushes - Kate Jackson


You wouldn't think it to look at her, but...


..she's from Bury St. Edmunds.

Monday, 22 September 2008

This Used To Be The Future


I bought one of these for 50p


Thirty years ago this week, The Human League released their first single, and British synth-pop was born. (Ta - Da!)

Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were working as computer operators. This was back in the day when computers filled entire rooms. They bought themselves synthesisers (one of them was a Roland, the other one a Korg, fact fans) and they formed a band. (Ta - Da!)

The name of that band was The Future.

They weren't very good.

Then, in 1978, along came their friend Phil Oakey, with his Northern nasal baritone and his beautiful lopsided hair. They changed their name to The Human League and left The Future behind.


Phil Oakey

Their first single was rather arty and pretentious. It was about silk stockings - but not in a Cyd Charisse way... oh no... Fifteen years after Dylan sang Blowing In The Wind, and seven years before Morrissey sang Meat Is Murder, The Human League kept the tradition alive with the only protest song ever written about silkworms. [*]

"Listen to the voice of Buddha
Saying stop your sericulture
Little people like your offspring
Boiled alive for someone's stocking
Buddha's watching, Buddha's waiting"











Filthy murderers: that's what you lot are.


Johnny Rotten called them 'trendy hippies' in the NME. He was wrong on both counts, but apart from that, he was completely right. David Bowie called them 'the future of pop music'. (He was just wrong. Sexy girls were the future of pop music. They still are. Eventually, The Human League got some sexy girls, and had some hit records.)

I'm sorry to say Phil Oakey now has a lot less hair. (Less hair than Perfect Virgo for example.) There isn't enough to ask his hairdresser to style it lopsided anymore.

So instead, here's a picture of Angus Young from AC/DC. Angus still appears on stage in his school uniform, even though he's 53.


Parental advisory: lock up your mum.


[*] Unless you count 'Animals Are Cut In Two' by Half-Handed Cloud. But that doesn't mention any species by name. And it's not very good.

Tuesday, 3 June 2008

Bo Diddley Was a Gunslinger



I can't remember a time when I didn't know the Bo Diddley riff.

That jink -a- jink -a- jink shuffle followed me round in my childhood and my teens. It kept turning up on the radio, in the Rolling Stones' 'Not Fade Away', in The Who's 'Magic Bus', in The Smiths' 'How Soon Is Now', in U2's 'Desire'.

I don't know anyone who can do a Mick Jagger impersonation without thinking of him wiggling his little butt and shaking a pair of maracas. I can't even think of maracas without hearing the Bo Diddley beat. Shave and a haircut, two bucks.

Bo Diddley was a true original, and his groove will live forever. Distracted as a fourteen year old with a hard on, and powerful as a steam train.

Saturday, 17 May 2008

Saturday Night Special



The divine Miss Piggy struts her stuff in the latest electro-disco style.
(Not suitable for under-18s)

Thursday, 8 May 2008

The Dresden Dolls

Amanda Palmer sings and plays piano in a band called The Dresden Dolls. Sometimes I dream about having an intense, passionate, sexual relationship with Amanda, from which I am eventually rescued by Sia Furler.

This video will explain everything.



I also fantasise that Brian, the drummer, is the actor who plays Brian, the dog, in Family Guy. But I know that it's only a cartoon, and besides, a dog would never wear that much makeup.

Monday, 5 May 2008

Isis


I married Isis on the fifth day of May,
But I could not hold on to her very long.
So I cut off my hair and I rode straight away
For the wild unknown country where I could not go wrong.

I came to a high place of darkness and light.
The dividing line ran through the center of town.
I hitched up my pony to a post on the right,
Went in to a laundry to wash my clothes down.

A man in the corner approached me for a match.
I knew right away he was not ordinary.
He said, "Are you lookin' for somethin' easy to catch?"
I said, "I got no money." He said, "That ain't necessary."

We set out that night for the cold in the North.
I gave him my blanket, he gave me his word.
I said, "Where are we goin'?" He said we'd be back by the fourth.
I said, "That's the best news that I've ever heard."

I was thinkin' about turquoise, I was thinkin' about gold,
I was thinkin' about diamonds and the world's biggest necklace.
As we rode through the canyons, through the devilish cold,
I was thinkin' about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless.

How she told me that one day we would meet up again,
And things would be different the next time we wed,
If I only could hang on and just be her friend.
I still can't remember all the best things she said.

We came to the pyramids all embedded in ice.
He said, "There's a body I'm tryin' to find.
If I carry it out it'll bring a good price."
'Twas then that I knew what he had on his mind.

The wind it was howlin' and the snow was outrageous.
We chopped through the night and we chopped through the dawn.
When he died I was hopin' that it wasn't contagious,
But I made up my mind that I had to go on.

I broke into the tomb, but the casket was empty.
There was no jewels, no nothin', I felt I'd been had.
When I saw that my partner was just bein' friendly,
When I took up his offer I must-a been mad.

I picked up his body and I dragged him inside,
Threw him down in the hole and I put back the cover.
I said a quick prayer and I felt satisfied.
Then I rode back to find Isis just to tell her I love her.

She was there in the meadow where the creek used to rise.
Blinded by sleep and in need of a bed,
I came in from the East with the sun in my eyes.
I cursed her one time then I rode on ahead.

She said, "Where ya been?" I said, "No place special."
She said, "You look different." I said, "Well, not quite."
She said, "You been gone." I said, "That's only natural."
She said, "You gonna stay?" I said, "Yeah, I jes might."

Isis, oh, Isis, you mystical child.
What drives me to you is what drives me insane.
I still can remember the way that you smiled
On the fifth day of May in the drizzlin' rain.

Sunday, 4 May 2008

Can Canadians Ever Be Cool?

A few months ago, I went to an industry trade event, and I got given a CD of new Canadian music. It was being promoted by something called FACTOR (Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings), so I didn't have terribly high hopes for the contents, especially since the last Canadian band I remember liking was BareNakedLadies, and that was partly because they named one of their albums after me.

Anyway, I was going through a pile of CD's, found it, and decided I'd better play it before I took it to the charity shop.



Most of it didn't move me. I know I've heard the name "Tokyo Police Club" several times, but they sound like a bunch of guys who listened to Joy Division and couldn't get a deal in 1981. The other band I'd heard of were The Besnard Lakes, and they left me cold.

I'd never heard of Les Breastfeeders or Holy Fuck, but they seemed to have used most of their energy on picking their names.

There were a couple of things I liked. Dan Mangan is from Vancouver, and sings a quirky little song called 'Journal of a Narcoleptic'. But my two new favourite Canadian bands are both electronica acts from Quebec.

Champion, or "DJ Champion et ses G-Strings" takes a very sexy, cracked, bluesy female voice, the kind that Moby used to steal from old 78's, and layers it into a sonic lasagne with electric guitars and synthesisers.

And in this case, the voice belongs to a real live woman by the name of Béatrice Bonifassi.



Here they are on a French language TV show.

Because I'd already heard BareNakedLadies, I expect a band called Lesbians on Ecstasy to be a bunch of fat, white men, but - joy of joys! - they are real live women, and they have names like Fruity Frankie and Bernie Bankrupt, and they also sound like they take drugs and have great sex with one another, and with their fans. This has to be a good thing.



Here they are asking the all-important dating question, "Tell me, does she love the bass?". (I think she probably does.)