Former mop top and wings man Sir Paul McCartney was given a special gift when he played in Amsterdam recently. A Tulip that has been developed and grown in his honour. It took twenty years to create the red and white bloom. It’s botanical name is Tulipa Paul McCartney. I wonder if they tried to grow one in ebony and ivory colours?
I couldn’t let the 40th anniversary of the release of Bowie‘s classic 1972 album ‘The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars‘ go unmentioned could I? It will be 40 years old on June 6th and of course being the Bowie fanatic that I am the vinyl reissue which comes with a DVD including some unreleased mixes is winging its way to me as I type. Bowie has said in the early 70s that the Ziggy album was a concept album, personally I don’t really see that, but that doesn’t make it any less of an album.
How many of you own at least one version of Bowie’s Ziggy album? lots of you I hope and if you don’t own it what’s keeping you, go out and buy it, download it, borrow it or steal it now! The album took just no more than 10 days to record, which by todays standards is faster than the speed of sound and light, or perhaps sound and vision, (get it?) combined.
So, as I’m sure you have heard the album many times I thought I’d present it in a slightly different way, by giving you all the tracks in their original order but performed by different artists. Some whom you may have heard of and others you may not have. But just to make sure you don’t miss out on the Dame himself I have tagged on two cover versions that might have made it onto the album but didn’t. The covers track listing is shown below. PLAY LOUD and Enjoy!
“Five Years” – Polyphonic Spree
“Soul Love” – Tim Kasher
“Moonage Daydream” – Killers
“Starman” – Culture Club
“It Ain’t Easy” -Raconteurs
“Star” – System Noise
“Hang On To Yourself” – Charles De Goal
“Ziggy Stardust” – Balzac
“Suffragette City” – Turbonegro
“Rock n Roll Suicide” – Black Box Recorder
Now it’s time for Dave does Chuck and Jacques or Bowie does Berry and Brel!
Bowie has a message for MC Hammer about big trousers……”U can’t touch these!”
A new biography suggests that Van Gogh didn’t kill himself and he died from the aftermath of an accidental shooting. Clearly that is something that I would imagine is very difficult to prove. But however he died this bit of news does give me the opportunity to feature Don McLean’s 1972 UK number one hit “Vincent” which was written about Van Gogh.
The song was included on McLean’s classic ‘American Pie’ album. He wrote the song after reading a book about the life of Vincent Van Gogh in 1971. The lyrics describe a number of Van Gogh’s works and also suggest McLean’s admiration for the paintings and Van Gogh himself. I once visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and I found it quite a humbling experience. The impression I got was of a supremely talented artist who really didn’t know his true worth. What are your views on Mr Van Gogh?
Another random selection of music news for you in this post. Starting with the sad news of the death of soul legend Solomon Burke. He died today at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam on his way to play a gig in the city. He was only 70 and leaves behind a staggering 21 children and 90 grandchildren. He was in possession of a truly wonderful voice and will perhaps be best remembered by most people for writing and performing the now classic song, “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love“. The song has been covered by many artists and was used to great effect in the Blues Brothers movie. Click here for the BBC report on this sad news. You can view the great man’s performance on Top Of The Pops from 2003 below.
It was never one of my favourite songs, largely due to the bagpipes, but Paul McCartney and Wings million selling single from 1978; “Mull Of Kintyre” is back in the news. The 7,360 Carskiey estate which forms the Mull Of Kintyre is up for sale. So if you have £2.95 million stashed under the blanket you have a chance of getting your hands on it. The BBC report is here.
Dido is being sued by Bruce McCandless II an astronaut on the Space Shuttle Challenger. The picture on the cover of Dido’s album ‘Safe Trip Home’ features McCandless on an untethered space walk in 1984. He claims he never gave permission for it to be used. I have tried really hard to like Dido’s stuff, but to me this is the most exciting thing relating to her in ages. The NME’s take on the story can be found by clicking here. Here is the lady herself with “White Flag“, something she may have to wave against the might of NASA.
"Oi Dido, I can see your house from here!"
A sale of Michael Jackson memorabilia in Macau in China has fetched in excess of $1 million. It includes one of his many black crystal studded gloves and also a basket ball signed by Jacko and Michael Jordan which fetched $180,000 and $245,000 respectively. Amazing isn’t that stars become so much more valuable and marketable after they die. The BBC carries the story here.
Hello dear readers I’m back with another post and firstly I would like to say thank you to everyone who has read any of my blog posts. The total number of views reached 100,000 yesterday. Now that gives no clue as to how many ‘regulars’ there are out there so if you are a regular reader I would love to hear from you. (Mickey G you’re welcome to respond to this, but I know you’re a regular!)
Anyway as the number of views has hit six digits for the first time I thought I’d include a few statistics, wow how exciting does that sound……..NOT! But I’m going to do it anyway. Firstly the artists that most people have searched for and found there way to my blog are;
Kate is in fact top of the class and definitely not a dunce. She is just borrowing Robbie Williams' hat 🙂
1 Kate Bush, 2 Pink Floyd, 3 Lily Allen, 4 Jackson Five, 5 Slipknot, 6 Iggy Pop, 7 Beatles, 8 Catwoman, 9 Michael Jackson and 10 Green Day This ranges from more than 10,000 hits for Kate and the Floyd and 1,400 for Green Day
Lily uses her new eco friendly banana microphone
Of course some of you may be familiar with the ‘Lily Allen Naked’ experiment we undertook here (if you’re not then check out the tags). The principle was not to lower the tone far enough to show any tabloid style naked pictures of the wonderfully talented Miss Allen, but simply to see how many people arrived here by using Lily Allen Naked as a search term. I can confirm that 220 people have done that. In a couple of strangely related incidents though 253 have searched for Ronan Keating Naked and a further 205 people for Eminem naked. There were also a handful of searches for Kate Bush naked and perhaps I shouldn’t mention the 4 people who searched for Meatloaf naked! (But for those who did search for Meatloaf Naked check the picture below, it’s just for you 😉
Meatloaf Naked, well there's no gravy on it is there?
And finally for the stats the most viewed links from the blog have been Steal The Smile (my son’s excellent band – click their name to check them out!), Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” video and Wyclef’s “Stripper Song” video with 34, 26 and 19 views respectively. Catwoman asked me to point out that she loves statistics or maybe she said that she didn’t 😉
OK I’ve bored you enough withnumbers so let’s move on to some hopefully more interesting stuff. Firstly an item from yesterdays newspapers in the UK. A 46 year old Alice Cooper fan was fined £250 and also received a suspended jail term and a 3 month curfew order. He apparently removed his prosthetic leg and waved it around at Alice’s gig in the Southampton Guildhall. One member of the audience tried to stop him and was beaten up. To me this almost sounds like it could have been part of the one time Vincent Furnier’s act. Here is the link to the story in the Daily Telegraph. Let me know what you think of it.
Alice warns the unruly fan that if he hits anyone else with his false leg he'll cut the other one off too!
Also in the news yesterday was the legendary (in my opinion) Mick Jones off of the Clash. He has opened a library/ exhibition of a stacks of his Clash memorabilia, clothing and various other personal items. He calls it ‘one big living artwork’ Read about it here on Spinner.com. I would love to visit but I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it
Either Mick now runs a newspaper stand or this is some of his collection
Morrissey played at the Brixton Academy a few days ago and this is the film and music he played before he came on stage, bloody brilliant in my opinion! Did you guess the music? It’s “Lighten Up Morrissey” by Sparks! And for the hell of it here are the excellent Flaming Lips with a wonderful cover version of Madonna’s “Borderline” I would like to thank those wonderful folks at Mojo Magazine for pointing me to those two
Here’s a great blog for you, I know it’s not music related but I thought it was bloody funny it’s called Kemp Folds and features pictures of Ross Kemp off of Eastenders (aka Grant Mitchell) that have been folded. OK I know that sounds stupid but check it out by clicking here
Let’s finish today July 24th with a few ‘onthisdays’. firstly on this very day in 1967 all four of the Beatles and their then manager the late great (l’s & g’s are back ra ra ra) Brian Epstein signed a petition printed in The Times newspaper which called for the legalisation of cannabis. Well it seems like no one listened doesn’t it? Where can you use marijuana legally now apart from Amsterdam Coffee Shops?
On this day in 1997 Liam Gallagher off of Oasis was given a caution by police after admitting he had caused criminal damage following an altercation with a cyclist in Camden, London. Liam was travelling in a chauffeur-driven car (it’s a tough life being a rock star isn’t it?) when he grabbed the cyclist through the car window and broke his Ray Bans. Do you remember when Ray Bans were THE fashion item? There not as big these days are they? Anyway sticking with Oasis, when Noel Gallagher was the guitar tech for the Inspiral Carpets. The Carpets used to call him “Cot Death” because he slept so much.
I thought this was quite amusing. Thank you to Snipes.com
And finally for the ‘onthisdays’ today we go back to 2002. A garden centre was sued by the late great (l & g’sback with a vengeance) Freddie Mercury’s former partner Mary Austin. the law suit accused Clifton Nurseries of killing a collection of Freddie’s prized Koi Fish. Austin had inherited the collection on his death. The claim was that 84 fish died when a the electricity which supplied power to the fishes environment (a temporary pond apparently) was accidentally turned off by a worker at the Garden Centre in Maida Vale, London. Apparently by the time he died Freddie had built up one of the biggest Koi collections in the UK. These are not the sort of fish you’d find in your local fish and chip shop, one Koi can be worth as much as £250,000.
Imagine that Battered Koi, Large Chips and Mushy Peas ...... mmmmmmmm 🙂
To finish let me say thank you once again to everyone who has stopped at this blog occasionally, visited regularly, read it, commented, clicked on the links or simply looked at the pictures! And as this has been a statistics lead numbers post here is a link to the wonderful “Living By Numbers” from New Musik
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 