Indeed there is a new kid in town, his name is Juan Brooks and he is the newest addition to the With Just A Hint Of Mayhem family. Juan joins me (Bill), Paul Bamlett, and Tom Ray. Over the last year, we have been a little slow with reviews and we plan to change that this year. Paul is currently working on a couple, as am I. Meanwhile, Juan has just written his first ever review and he said “It was a biggie…a whole album. Nothing like getting stuck in is there?” Anyway, look out for that review coming your way very soon! Greetings from the new Fab Four, we are looking forward to interacting with you dear readers! Click here to find out more about us!
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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Before you read this I should warn you that if you are offended by profanities you might not enjoy it!
2021 is the 70th year of the UK Christmas Number one and up to now only three acts have managed three successive Christmas number ones; The Beatles, Spice Girls, and Ladbaby (a.k.a Mark Hoyle), the latter is vying for four in a row with “Sausage Rolls For Everyone” supported by Elton John and Ed Sheeran, the song is effectively a rework of Ed and Elton’s new Christmas tune, the current number one. It is also worth pointing out the Beatles took Yuletide number one on four occasions. The 2021 Official Christmas Number 1 will be announced on Friday, December 24 by Scott Mills live on BBC Radio 1’s The Official Chart Show. So you can download or stream up to midnight on 23rd and that will help your favourite move up the charts. Ed Sheeran and Elton John’s “Merry Christmas” might hang on to the top slot and everyone from Abba to Gary Barlow to Craig Revel Horwood to George Ezra are in the mix. But so are the Kunts with an updated version of “Boris Johnson Is A Fucking Cunt” from last year, the slight change is that it is now titled “Boris Johnson Is Still A Fucking Cunt”. (There are eleven versions of the Kunts track, don’t forget to download them all, you know you want to. I totally agree with the sentiment and personally, I would love to see the Kunts at number one, although I suspect that Ladbaby will win in the end. The saving grace for all of Ladbaby’s hits is that all the proceeds go to the Trussel Trust who supports a nationwide network of food banks in the UK. As I said earlier I really would love to see the Kunts top the chart, but if it has to be anyone else then at least the Ladbaby song is raising money for a great cause. Who is your tip for UK festive number one?
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I don’t often put together the best albums of the year list, but I do love a good list so here are my favourite albums of 2021. What were yours?
‘Delilah Bon’ – Delilah Bon –An absolutely sublime, sassy debut from Lauren Tate’s magnificent, impassioned alter ego. This has been my album of the year since I first heard it
‘The Yearbook’ – Baby Queen – Not many bands care as much about their fans as Baby Queen, but they are so much more than caring, they really are a stunning band
Other than the Beatles I really hadn’t thought about how many bands have played exclusive gigs on rooftops. But there are quite a few, here is a top ten, but I am not brave enough to rank them, so they are in chronological order. The list includes 4 British acts, 4 US artists, 1 Brazilian and an Irish band. Five of the rooftops, were in the US, four in the UK and one in Brazil. Sadly I never witnessed any of these rooftop shows firsthand, but I have been lucky enough to see six of these acts play live 🙂
1955 Elvis Presley – Porky’s Rooftop, Newport, Arkansas, USA – did the King kick it all off?
1967 Roberto Carlos – Copam Building, São Paulo, Brazil – not the footballer with the same name, this fella was known as the King of Latin Music
1968 Jefferson Airplane – The Schuyler Hotel, Manhattan, NYC, USA – way before they converted to a Starship, they laid the foundations for the city they built on rock ‘n’ roll
1969 – Beatles – Apple Building, Saville Row, London, UK – the last live show the Fab Four ever played. The title of this post is a John Lennon quote from that gig.
1987 U2 – Apple Studios, Los Angeles, USA – part of the ‘Rattle And Hum’ shenanigans I think
2010 Bon Jovi – O2 Arena, London, UK – Jon, Richie and the boys stepped onto the roof of the venue they were playing a residency at
2011 Kasabian – Skylight West, NYC, USA – the Leicester lads play a set to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, or maybe the 40th anniversary of Mulberry, or maybe both!
2012 Madness – Buckingham Palace, London, UK – the Nutty Boys played for Her Maj on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee – Brian May also played the rooftop. Hardly the Pistols riverboat trip back in ’77, but I suppose it’ll do.
2013 Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Dick’s Drive In, Seattle, USA – I so wish they had played on the roof of a “Thrift Shop”. This wasn’t their only rooftop gig that year, check out the video below.
2021 Bull – EMI Head Office, Kings Cross, London, UK – one of York’s finest showcased their debut album ‘Discover Effortless Living’ with a fab show which was streamed earlier tonight. A small roof for a band, a giant leap for bandkind! Terrible pun I know, but trust me, Bull really are destined for great things!
Given that it was 1955 and there was no social media there appears to be no footage of Elvis’ roof top gig. Bull’s marvellous set is not on YouTube yet, but click here and it might still be available on their Facebook page 🙂
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Regular readers will know that I love a protest song and I bloody love the best all girl band there has ever been, the Tuts. Well the Tuts are back, with some great friends as Solidarity Not Silence collaborating on a bright, angry, sharp and powerful song about their trials and tribulations since they took a stand for the abused. It has most certainly not been an easy ride and sadly it ain’t over yet! I have copied below the message from the Tuts social media. Kathleen Hanna’s involvement has helped greatly and even Rolling Stone have picked up the story. Please contribute to the cause and stand in solidarity with them and everyone else involved with this song and all the survivors of abuse. If you can’t afford much how about leaving the song on repeat overnight on Spotify? I’ll be doing that and I have also pre ordered the vinyl single! Let me make that bit easy for you, click here for the Spotify link. Very special thanks to the Tuts, Petrol Girls, Kathleen Hanna, Colour Me Wednesday and Personal Best . The scales of justice is weighing on the wrong side right now, let’s help swing it back!
“Hello, we’ve been quiet for a while but TODAY we launch our brand NEW SONG ‘THIS IS SISTERHOOD’. We’ve formed a SUPERGROUP under the name SOLIDARITY NOT SILENCE ft The TutsPetrol Girls Kathleen Hanna Colour Me Wednesday, Personal Best & loads of feminist musicians & choirs, who have provided us with the most powerful gang vocals. We would like to say thank you to everyone who’s featured on this track (you know who you are) and Alcopop Records for releasing it with us. Gingerdope for the video Tunnel Of Reverb & Patrick James Pearson for recording it. This song release is not only to raise funds and awareness for our case and survivors but it’s for the wider issues at hand. It’s for anyone who wasn’t believed, who spoke up and got shut down, for the fuckery caused by the CPS, for that person who is too scared to speak up, who has to live with the haunting trauma. We hope that this song is somewhere you can feel safe, believed and less alone. We hope the message reaches you and the people who need to hear it and helps them as much as it’s helped us. We’ve been fighting this for over 4 years and it’s taught us resilience but also how hard it is to get JUSTICE. We have so much admiration for survivors. FULL VIDEO: https://youtu.be/GDHNlUY2V24 NEW MERCH & VINYL: www.solidaritynotsilence.bandcamp.com Please share it, download it, donate and support each other. Love,The Tuts xxx“
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I am proud to say that the With Just A Hint Of mayhem blog has now been around for twelve years, yes on February 9th back in 2009 is where it all started. In that time there have been more than 1,500 posts, nearly 1.7 million views and we now have over 2,500 followers. I can’t let this post go without a very special thank you to my great friend and wonderful human being Nick Horslen who suggested that I should start blogging all those years ago! After a very brief introductory post the first proper post was one about Bob Marley, click here to read that. I just read it again and despite expecting it to be a bit crap, I think I am quite proud of it. You have to start somewhere, right? The mention and the link to MySpace certainly dates it though. Given these awful times we are living in rather than suggest huge celebratory party songs in honour of WJAHOM’s 12th birthday I have chosen a couple of songs that always make me feel good which I hope will help you through these dark days. One of them is, in my opinion, the finest Bob Marley recording ever and the other is by my favourite vocalist of all time, Johnny Nash who we sadly lost this year! On top of that I have added a Bowie classic, well you knew I’d do that didn’t you. Stay safe people and thank you to everyone of you who has read, followed, commented, liked or dissed WJAHOM over the years. A huge thank you to all the bands and artists that have been a part of this journey. Here’s to the next 12 years, by which time I’ll be 74, so things might slow down by then, but who knows?
If only the Dame was still around to help celebrate the 12th Birthday of With Just A Hint Of Mayhem! Especially as the blog title was stolen from one of his lyrics!
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I thought I would share some of my Spotify listening habits. Apparently I listened to Spotify for more than 12 days last year, I wish I knew how much time I listened to vinyl, CDs, MP3s, radio and other on line sources too. I discovered 577 new artists, wow! My most listened to song was David Bowie’s version of “Wild Is The Wind” and unsurprisingly Bowie was my most listened to artist once again (996 minutes, nearly 6% of my total Spotify listening time) I was also in the top 0.5% of Bowie listeners. The other artists in my top 5 were Biffy Clyro, the Streets, Ella Fitzgerald and Woke Up Dead. I listened to 1,286 artists. My top decade was the 1970s, again no surprise there. Top genres were Rock, Soul and Dance Rock. Rather fascinatingly my music is more obscure than 80% of UK users, what on earth does that mean? I also found a few rather amusing, to me anyway, graphs and charts to accompany this post!
Since starting on this post I have also discovered a few sites on which you can regularly update your Spotify statistics split between artists and tracks and then last 4 weeks/ current, Last six months and all time within that. My favourites among these sites so far are Favourite Music Guru, Obscurify Music and Stats For Spotify. Have you used any of these or can you recommend others?
In case you’re interested in my warped eclectic taste these are my top artists on Spotify (Current, Medium Term and all time) The top songs follow those lists. Incidentally the Kunts and Jarvis Cocker feaure strongly on the tracks lists simply because I did my bit to get them to be the Christmas number one in the UK these last two years!
Top Artists — Short Term (4 weeks)
The Beatles
Yusuf / Cat Stevens
Eagles
London Symphony Orchestra
Evie Sands
Rumer
Jackson Browne
David Bowie
Bobbie Gentry
Harry Styles
Top Artists — Medium Term (6 months)
David Bowie
Biffy Clyro
Gregory Porter
The Avalanches
John Lennon
Eminem
Stevie Wonder
Stephen EvEns
Ella Fitzgerald
The Beatles
Top Artists — Long Term (years)
David Bowie
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Biffy Clyro
Frank Turner
Bruce Springsteen
Four Tops
Eminem
Johnny Nash
Elton John
The Streets
Top Tracks — Short Term (4 weeks)
Boris Johnson is a Fucking Cunt – Single Edit — The Kunts
Billy the Kid, Ballet Suite: I. The Open Prairie — Aaron Copland, London Symphony Orchestra
True Faith ’94 — New Order
Jamaica Say You Will — Jackson Browne
Everybody Used to Love You — Silverjet
Raison D’Être — Stolen Dead Music
Wear A Mask — Sing Sing Rabbit
Three Points on a Compass — Martin Rossiter
Drag Me to the Light — Miles and the Chain Gang
Alfred – Intro — Eminem
Top Tracks — Medium Term (6 months)
Boris Johnson is a Fucking Cunt – Single Edit — The Kunts
Taking It Slow — Heartsink
Concorde — Gregory Porter
Freakin’ At the Freaker’s Ball — Dr. Hook
Pepper — Butthole Surfers
Career Criminal — Stephen EvEns
Close — The Islas
Belladonna — Spunsugar
Make Us Eat — The Shining Tongues
Smiling — Alanis Morissette
Top Tracks — Long Term (years)
Boris Johnson is a Fucking Cunt – Single Edit — The Kunts
Running the World — Jarvis Cocker
Star Treatment — Arctic Monkeys
(red, white, and blue) Cheerfulness — Perry Farrell
Balance, Not Symmetry — Biffy Clyro
Future Legend – 2016 Remaster — David Bowie
Deep Sea Dreaming — Ocean Flaws
Loser of the Year — Woke Up Dead
Three Points on a Compass — Martin Rossiter
Wild Is the Wind – 2016 Remaster — David Bowie
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Personally I find lists of top ten albums, singles etc. for a given year quite subjective so I have decided not to do that for 2020. But I thought that you might be interested in what has been happening on the With Just A Hint Of Mayhem blog page in 2020. The site had more than 30,000 views for the year for the first time since 2016. December hits were 6,449 which is the highest monthly total since May 2015. There were views from 148 different countries. More than 300 people follow us directly from WordPress, the Facebook Page now has 818 followers and we are close to 1,400 followers on Twitter. A total of 2,523. Thank you to each and every one of you. Stick with us in 2021 and beyond, share all our links (you will find them below) and tell all your friends to come and say hi!
We made a total of 164 posts, and wrote 66,693 words that is more than 400 words per post. The most popular post published in 2020 was written by one of our newer contributors Tom Ray and related to Jeffrey Lewis, click here to read it. The most popular post from previous years was viewed a lot this year and it was “We Make Out In Your Mustang To Radiohead” from 2011, click here to read that one.
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I might get some flack for this post, but do you know what? I don’t care. Regular readers will know that I have never been a big fan of boy bands particularly the likes of Boyzone, Westlife and yes, One Direction (or Wand Erection as they have been called). However every so often, or maybe every generation, there is the rare occurrence when a boy band breaks up and one of the team proves that they have something so much more to offer. I guess George Michael is the most shining example of that, some might say so was Robbie Williams, although I have never been a fan of the latter. I should add a small note of praise for Charlie Simpson from Busted who branched out nicely with Fightstar though.
But right now I believe a really talented 21st Century pop star who was formerly in a boy band is in our midst and making an amazing mark on the world. I am talking about Harry Styles. I loved his eponymously titled first album from back in 2017 and I think that last years ‘Fine Line’ is even better. The new single, “Golden” is the fifth single to be released from ‘Fine Line’ and I suspect that it won’t be the last. “Golden” harks back to the finest 70s pop rock anthems. The “doo doo doo” part reminds me of America’s “You Can Do Magic” hit from 1982. I will go as far as saying that “Golden” is one of my favourite singles of 2020, it makes me feel good every time I hear it. OK, so now I have confessed to the world that I am a Harry Styles fan and in doing so I hope that I have proved that I am not a music snob, well not too much of one anyway, although I really don’t like Robbie Williams’ music and I have always found Gary Barlow to be a bit of an arse! Oh and I also love the Vogue cover shots that Harry did, that took balls!
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There have been plenty of alter egos in rock history, some good, some bad. Bowie gave us plenty including Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke. David Johansen gave the world Buster Poindexter. Marshall Mathers became Eminem who in turn became Slim Shady. Beyonce became something stronger as Sasha Fierce. Prince briefly became Camille, an artist of uncertain gender. Even Hank Williams tried the separate identity thing as Luke The Drifter, a character he used to sing his much more political tunes. Nicki Minaj (more of her later) has a whole tribe of alter egos, including fast talking British gay man Roman Zolanski. Well move over every one of you, because now there is a new alter ego on the block!
Let me introduce you to Delilah Bon, the secret identity (well not so secret really) of Hands Off Gretel’s Lauren Tate. In the ‘about’ section on her Spotify profile she says, “HEY WORLD!!! I’m Delilah.. I’m 23. I RAP, SCREAM & SING LIKE AN ANGRY PRINCE-LESS PRINCESS! I’d say my music is BRAT – PUNK influenced Hip Hop which I completely made up because I don’t fit in a box. oh.. I also PRODUCE/ WRITE ALL MY OWN MUSIC… I do EVERYTHING myself – like seriously, I’m a busy bitch”.
She also explains how Delilah Bon came to be born. “From the fiery pits of girl rage within me I gave birth to ‘Delilah Bon’ after speaking out about sexual harassment of women at my live shows with my grunge band ‘Hands Off Gretel’. I was met with resistance online, guys telling me girls were ‘asking for it’ with girls flooding my dm’s explaining they’d been sexually assaulted or felt unsafe at music shows. I had all this rage in me and nowhere to place it. So I had all these words coming outta me, I had this beat playing and I just started rapping which is TOTALLY random for me as until this year I’ve never even attempted it! I just KNEW I wanted to create something that MYSELF and my girls could DANCE TO, something we could just feel empowered and BOSS BTCH listening to, something that would allow me to merge all elements of myself into something completely new.”
I saw Delilah/ Lauren fronting the magnificent Hands Off Gretel just over a year ago at the Fulford Arms in York. That was, I recall, close to the peak of the venomous attacks on her by the press and so called fans for simply standing up for what is right. She wrote an open letter to the guys that come to her shows, click here to read it. I have been going to gigs for just shy of 50 years now and it is so depressing that girls are still being harassed and assaulted at gigs. That has never been ok! I still believe that most blokes at gigs and festivals are not like that, but while some are we need to do everything we can to eradicate them. This is why I totally support the stand of Delilah Bon. OK I know I’m not “one of her girls”, I’m an old bloke for god’s sake, but that doesn’t mean I am not totally with her on this crusade. Particularly when the music she has produced under this new guise is so staggeringly good.
There have been four Delilah Bon singles so far this year. Each one very different, while sharing a common theme of just being fabulous tracks. Has she shaken up a few misogynists on the way? I certainly hope so! If you like rap, rock, grunge, punk, pop there is something here for you. Hell if you just like great music there is plenty here for you. It all kicked off with the Prodigyesque “Devil” accompanied by a captivating video based around a computer game where Lauren’s conscience or devil and angel on her shoulders are battling. Next up it was “Bad Attitude” which struck me as Rage Against The Machine having switched to a bad ass bitch on vocal duties. The video for this one has Delilah in a jail cell with the anger turned up to 11. “Homework”, the third single, should serve as a warning to any men who think they can get the better of this woman, don’t even try it. This is one full on independent woman. The video features Delilah in the kitchen with some strange, amusing and, perhaps scary for some, food ideas. The current single is “Chop Dicks” and for me it is her finest yet. Delilah raps like she was born to do it. As well as the anger, there is humour and a tank full of sass. The lyrics are a perfect encapsulation of the hypocrisy and double standards of misogynistic men who have a myopic world view that only lets them see women as sex objects. It contrasts that view with how they might think if it was their mother, sister or daughter being objectified.
I think Delilah Bon live will be an exceptional show, let’s hope that happens in 2021. In the meantime enjoy the videos and also check out the Delilah Bon cover of Nicki Minaj’s (I told you she would get another mention) “Chun Li”. Click here for Delilah Bon’s Spotify page. I am a fan of Hands Off Gretel, I am a fan of Lauren Tate and I am absolutely a fan of Delilah Bon! Hail the alter ego, the world needed a new alter ego to emerge and Delilah Bon is perfect for these strange fucked up days!
I “borrowed” all the pictures after finding them on line. If you are the photographer and you would like a credit and a link to your site, or for me to remove them, let me know.
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