Today is December 8th 2010, the 30th anniversary of John Lennon. There will be millions more words written about him today, so I won’t add many to that. But I will give you a few Lennon covers, a cover from Lennon and a Beatles song. Enjoy these while you reflect on the life of a great man.
” “ December 6, 2010
OK people after last year you know exactly how to stop the X Factor winner making it to the UK number one spot over Christmas this year. Last time around pop muppet Joe McElderry was beaten to the Christmas number one by the brilliant “Killing In The Name Of” by Rage Against The Machine. This year there is another opportunity to prevent the X Factor lording over the charts once again.
This time it is going to be ” 4’33” ” a recreation of John Cage’s most famous avant-garde work. Well ok Emperor’s New Clothes time here, it is in fact 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. This may sound somewhat mental, however by downloading the piece you will be helping a number of charities including, Calm, a service for young men at risk of suicide, the British Tinnitus Association, Youth Music, Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy and Sound & Music, a charity promoting challenging new music and sound art. On top of that you will dent the next X Factor Muppets progress.
If only he'd been clearer about his wish. He hadn't really wished for a 12 inch pianist had he?
Many artists have participated by errr….. recording their silence. Those include; Fyfe Dangerfield off of the Guillemots, Unkle’s James Lavelle, Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, some Kooks, Heaven 17, Matty off of the Infadels, Suggs off of Madness, Orbital, Pendulum and Billy Bragg. Pete Doherty apparently failed to turn up. Read the story here on the BBC News site. Join the Facebook campaign here and let’s make Cage Against The Machine the Christmas Number One this year!
By the way, I realise there is no real title to this post, but what did you expect?
“Arms that chain us, arms that lie” December 1, 2010
Firstly this post is NOT in my Advent Calendar series OK? It’s another random selection of music stuff. Firstly and I am saddened to say it in many, many ways a Bowie song is at number one in the UK. It’s the X Factor finalists cover of Bowie’s “Heroes” Thankfully I haven’t been able to hear Wagner on the recording. The singles only other saving grace is that it is raising funds for the ‘Help For Heroes‘ charity which supports those British soldiers that have been injured in the ridiculous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we followed the Americans into. But believe me, it is the UK Government I have a gripe with and especially former Prime Minister Tony Blair, I have every respect for all the British troops that are out there right now. Go and buy the single and throw it away if you have to. In the meantime take a look at the classic original below.
You know I always thought that Santa's Elves were a little more cuddly than this!
Next some very good X Factor related news. Corey Taylor off of Slipknot has recorded a Christmas single and he wants it to beat whatever single the X Factor show produces for the Christmas slot. Let’s get behind this one people, let’s make Corey this years “Killing In The Name Of“. Buy it and keep a muppet off the number one spot. The song is called “X-M@$”. Check it out below and click here to read the NME report about the song.
US politics often baffles me, especially where outgoing officials are allowed to grant pardons for previous misdemeanours by various criminals, jailbirds and wrongly accused. However I was pleasantly surprised to read that the ousted Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, has issued a pardon for Jim Morrison off of the Doors following the singers arrest for allegedly getting his todger out on stage in Miami in 1969. Fair play Charlie and frankly, about bloody time too! It has always bothered me that with all the people and all the police at that concert there was never any evidence to prove that Jim actually did the deed. Read about the pardon by clicking here.
Enjoy “Break On Through” below
Apparently it was the dog's bollocks that Jim exposed, not his own!
“And she know why she came here, and she know where her clothes suppose to be” November 29, 2010
For a few months my blog has been getting thousands of hits from people searching for Lady Gaga, but seeing as how very media savvy she is I understood that. But over the last two days I have also had hundreds of hits from people searching for Colonel Gaddafi‘s nurse. I mean I have posted about Gaddafi’s all female security guards before and nurse has come up a few times, most recently in the Gregory Isaacs obituary when I gave you “Night Nurse” So that one stumped me for a while, well until I read the Guardian’s report on the latest Wikileaks exposure. Apparently Gaddafi’s personal staff includes a 38 year old Ukrainian nurse, one of a team of four, who ‘know his routine’ This is all according to the US mission in Tripoli, who also described the 38 year old nurse, 
Galyna Kolotnytska, as a voluptuous blonde. The obvious allegations appear to centre around a more than medical liaison. So does that mean that Gaddafi is in fact the Arab world‘s Berlusconi? Who know? Who cares?
Read some of the Guardian’s coverage here.
"You want my nurse you kiss me first little man!"
But I must say all the Wikileaks stuff does make rather interesting reading and apart from hits to my blog there is also a genuine link to Lady Gaga as well. The alleged source of these and other leaks is Bradley Manning a US soldier who was working as an intelligence analyst. He has been in solitary confinement for 7 months and his trial is expected to start soon. He allegedly downloaded all the material while stationed on an US Army base just outside Baghdad. He claimed it was ‘childishly easy’. Apparently he took a CD-RW labelled Lady Gaga into work and then pretended to listen to Miss Germanotta on headphones, apparently even going as far as lip-syncing her songs. But what he was really doing was wiping the disk and uploading thousands of diplomatic files.
I wonder what Gaga herself thinks about it all. We probably won’t find out for a while as she has retired from social networking to support Alicia Key’s initiative to raise money to combat AIDS in Africa. Many celebrities have signed off of Twitter and Facebook and the like until a certain amount has been raised for African AIDS charities. You can support the charity, which is called Keep A Child Alive, by clicking here. Donate people, you know it makes sense!
I thought I’d finish with a moderately appropriate song, ladies and gentlemen I give you “Freek-A-Leek” from Petey Pablo. Geddit?
“It’s just an instant gut reaction, that I got I know I never ever felt like this before” November 27, 2010
On a recent flight business class flight to Australia it appears that Jay Kay off of Jamiroquai sat next to John Lydon off of Public Image Limited aka Johnny Rotten off of the Sex Pistols. Jay Kay says that Lydon spent the whole flight farting really smelly ones. He even said that after that experience he would prefer to travel cattle class in future. He went on to say that smoking has been banned so why not farting. But frankly and let’s be honest here, how many of us could complete a long haul flight without having to pop at least one little one out? Perhaps Jay Kay was jealous because he couldn’t muster up a decent response, maybe he could have caught up and got a second wind!
Jay Kay tries out his anti fart hat
But Johnny is still able to squeeze another one out
Just to show a degree of impartiality you can read the story on the Guardian website and also on the Perez Hilton Blog. Amusingly the Guardian chose to use Viz favourite Johnny Fartpants in their headline. Personally I think the whole thing is rather amusing, but then farts always are? Aren’t they?
But when Jay Kay farts he farts cars!
As far as appropriate videos I could only really go with the Sex Pistols “Belsen Was A Gas”
And for Jay Kay it has to be “Canned Heat”, doesn’t it?
Gaga cooks up a storm
In other news, this time from the Sun, yes you heard it right, the ghastly Sun gets a mention on my blog! They report the culinary talents of Lady Gaga and Cheryl Cole and show Katy Perry and Russell Brand‘s cat finishing off their turkey. It was their real turkey and not Russell in ‘Get Him To The Greek’ Read all about it here. Maybe John Lydon had been eating the Cheryl’s scones or Gaga’s casserole and that is why he had such high-octane flatulence. Incidentally I wonder if Gaga used the meat from her meat dress to make her meal?
Hansel and Gretel never had it so good.......... Lady Gaga gingerbread people!
“I don’t wanna take no pictures I just wanna take some shots!” November 25, 2010
Did any of you see Will.i.am‘s appearance at the American Music Awards at the weekend? It would be fair to say, well in my opinion anyway, that he looked like a bit of a knob. he was wearing a Lego baseball cap, at the usual hip hop style or indeed chav style jaunty angle. Only it wasn’t really proper Lego was it, because Lego is mostly square and that hat certainly wasn’t square. I wonder what the other Peas thought of it. There was also a great piece in the Guardian about it as well, which actually had the hat dissed by a kid who went on to make his own hat from proper Lego. Click here to read it.
I reckon he must have felt like a bit of a brick (misprint!)
Obviously many other rock stars have worn hats that were somewhat loud; Slash and Jay off of Jamiroquai to name but two. I just felt that Will.i.am’s millinery disaster zone was even worse than one time Guns n Roses member; Buckethead. What did you, dear readers think of it?
I also wonder whether that mild obsession with the Danish plastic toy will lead to worse things for Will.i.am, like Lego Porn, you have been warned!
But back to Will.i.am and the other Black Eyed Peas, have you seen their new video, for the new single “Time(Dirty Bit)”? There is a lot of pixellation that makes them seem somewhat Legoized. See what did I tell you it really will be Lego porn next!
“A great philosopher once wrote, naughty, naughty, very naughty”
It would appear that the Performing Rights Society recently undertook a survey to determine the most controversial song ever and surprisingly many of the usual suspects are in the top 10. Controversially I am still just a little under the influence so to speak 😉 Here is the top 10;
Smack My Bitch Up – Prodigy
God Save The Queen – Sex Pistols
Relax – Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Kim – Eminem
Killing In The Name – Rage Against The Machine
Ebeneezer Goode – The Shamen
Suicide Solution – Ozzy Osbourne
Get Your Gunn – Marilyn Manson
Angel of Death – Slayer
Dear God – XTC
In my view the songs represent many people’s view of controversy, but not mine! I can see that people might have been angered and provoked by many things in their topics; religion, firearms, death/ suicide, drugs, violence, sex and being against the monarchy. Well maybe they’re right, but I for one do not think so, but it is, after all about the rock n roll! well not just the rock n roll but also the sex and drugs too. Hmmmmmm…… “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll”
I’m also surprised that there is no room for Max Romeo’s “Wet Dream“, Donna Summer‘s “Love To Love You Baby” and “Je T’Aime” from Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. However there were only 1,700 people in the survey! read the story on the BBC here.
“Einstein can’t be classed as witless, he claimed atoms were the littlest” November 24, 2010
This will be another short post, I promise. Largely because I have imbibed a few units of alcohol while watching a rather dull Champions League game (Glasgow Rangers versus Manchester United) with some new work colleagues in London. Anyway after travelling back to my hotel in the Old Kent Road (yes that’s one of the cheap brown ones on the Monopoly board) I switched on the TV to catch the BBC news. As expected the main coverage was the student protests in London. Click here to read the story
Now as I have said before I very much support the actions of the UK students although I do not condone the violence and damage to property that a rogue element seem to perpetrate. Anyway there was a rather funny clip shown where at the height of the protests, while some idiots were trashing a police van. Why was it funny? Well largely because the young lady interviewed on camera shouted her protest at the government, it was something along the lines of “they will be charging us £9,000 a year, for three years, that’s £21,000” Forgive me for being cynical but that young person really does need an education in basic arithmetic, doesn’t she?
OK amusement over, let’s get back to some music and for today I thought I’d go for a couple of slightly appropriate songs from the late and very definitely great Mister Ian Dury! Ladies, gentlemen and those of you with both bits, please enjoy “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards” and “Clever Trevor” Also as many of todays protesters were in fact school kids I thought that you might also like Alice Cooper‘s classic “School’s Out” from 1972 and performed here on the Beebs sadly missed Top Of The Pops show.
“I’ve got a hunch that you’re following, to get your own back on me” November 23, 2010
I know this isn’t music related exactly, well not at all really. (But I’ll address that later!) However I didn’t want to let the passing of one of the most iconic horror movie stars. Ingrid Pitt star of many Hammer Horror classics died this week aged 73. I didn’t realise until I read the report on the BBC website that Ingrid was actually born in Poland. You can read the story by clicking here.
I have always loved the Hammer Horror movies and I have many of them on DVD. Perhaps one reason I love them so much is that my Uncle Ron worked on quite a few of them, he was the Production Manager, which I think means he was responsible for finding the right locations for filming. Which for much of the Hammer Dracula related films, as far as exterior locations go anyway, was in fact Black Park in Slough. Who ever would have thought that Slough could ever be a stunt double for Romania? If you watch a Hammer Horror movie keep your eye on the screen for all the opening credits and you may well see my Uncle’s name come up as Production Manager, he was called Ron Jackson and whilst he died some time ago is still sadly missed!
As I have said on many occasions though, this is indeed a music blog and to mark the death of Ingrid Pitt there can only really be one choice of song, can’t there? ladies and gentlemen and those of you who aren’t quite sure, I give you the delectable Kate Bush and the wonderful “Hammer Horror”
“But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow” November 16, 2010
Clearly the new iPad would be difficult to carry, maybe it's the weight of all those Beatles songs
So at last the two big apples come together. The Beatles back catalogue are now all available on I Tunes. There was previously a lengthy trademark dispute between the Beatles Apple Corps and Steve Job’s Apple company. This was resolved a while ago and the gap between then and now was potentially down to EMI. That is certainly something that Paul McCartney hinted at. Steve Job was very happy with the deal and was quoted as saying that it had been “a long and winding road to get there” You can read the story by clicking here. Personally I have all the Fab Fours albums on CD so I am unlikely to buy anything of theirs from I Tunes. However it made me think that we ought to pick a Beatles song to beat this years X Factor song to the Christmas number one spot in the UK. Ideally “Revolution”, what do you folks think?
James Blunt holds his hand up and voila...... World War Three is prevented!
I would like to thank my good friend Nick Horslen for sending me this story. Apparently whilst he was in the army and stationed in Kosovo James Blunt prevented the start of World War Three. Does that explain why he went on to write such crap songs? I saw him on TV recently when he chaired ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks‘ on BBC2, personally I thought he was devoid of humour although he was clearly trying. To be fair he was better than Jedward when they appeared on the show. You can read the Blunt Story on the Guardian website by clicking here. Incidentally I often wonder why he changed his name from Blount to something which rhymes with the ‘C’ word, do you?
Incidentally I love Weird Al Yankovic‘s take on Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” which is wonderfully retitled “You’re Pitiful” I always used to slip this into my mobile disco set when I played background music at weddings. It worked well as people couldn’t hear it perfectly well so thought James had changed the words!
A new band I came across recently are the Ambassadors Of Morocco who have a new single out called rather interestingly “Wikipedia” I can’t get the chorus out of my head and it will be on my I Pod tomorrow for certain!
Talking of a great and catchy chorus have you seen the video for the new My Chemical Romance song? I’ve never been a big fan of the band but this song and the accompanying video are brilliant and somewhat weird too.
let me finish this post on a roll, a Rick Roll. This is the metal version of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Not bad for the former tea boy at RCA. Does anyone know what he’s up to these days?
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 