On 14th April 1994, Kurt Cobain was cremated at the Bleitz Funeral Home, in Seattle. The death certificate listed Cobain’s occupation as Poet/Musician and his type of business as Punk Rock.
On that same date in 1980 Gary Numan issued ‘The Touring Principle’, which was apparently the first long-form rock video to be made commercially available in the UK.
In 1970, also on April 14th, Creedence Clearwater Revival played their first UK shows. Nothing low key though, just two nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Back in 1967 on 14th April David Bowie released one of his best-loved (maybe not) singles, “The Laughing Gnome”!
On 14th April the Illinois Crime Commission (BOO, HISS!!!) issued a list of ‘drug-oriented records’ which included “White Rabbit'” by Jefferson Airplane, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” by Procol Harum, and The Beatles’ “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.” Apparently David Bowie’s “The Laughing Gnome” was not included!
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Here we are at December 9th and edging closer to the visit of the big, bearded, red-coated house burglar on 25th December. That also means that it is day 9 of this years advent blog posts. The theme if you are not a regular reader is the ABC of British bands and day 9 means that we are at the letter ‘I’. What delightful British band do I have for you today? Well it’s none other than the marvellous Inspiral Carpets.
The band was formed in Oldham in the early 80s by Graham Lambert and Stephen Holt. Strangely I went to school with a Stephen Holt and I worked with a Graham Lambert; sadly different people from the founders of the Inspiral Carpets though. The band’s biggest success came between 1989 and 1995 when they had 14 UK top 50 singles. The biggest of those was 1992’s “Dragging Me Down” which reached number 12. They were dropped by their label, Mute, in 1995 and they broke up a little while after that. They reformed in 2003 and are still together now.
You may know that the band once had a certain Noel Gallagher working for them as guitar tech/ roadie. Obviously before his Oasis days. The Inspirals drummer Craig Gill formed another band after the break up. That band were named after a Creedence Clearwater Revival song, Proud Mary. That band were eventually signed to Noel Gallagher’s Big Brother record label. Another Inspiral Carpets roadie, Mike Collins, went on to bigger things too. He joined the Charlatans in 1991. Collins also went to school with Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs off of Oasis.
My favourite Inspiral Carpets song ever is “Saturn V”, what is yours?
Based upon information released recently it is alleged that the US Government had planned to blow up the moon in the late 50s as a means of intimidating their nemesis in the Cold War, the Soviet Union. After the Russians effectively took the lead in the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 it was apparently believed that a show of strength like blowing up the moon would really scare the Russians. Apparently it was called ‘A Study of Lunar Research Flights’ or ‘Project A119‘. Even that sounds a little James Bond like doesn’t it?
It really does seem like a crackpot scheme and it is unlikely at the time that anyone possessed enough in their nuclear arsenal to actually complete the task. At best it might have left the man in the moon looking more like the elephant Man and the satellite’s surface covered in high levels of radiation. In addition any debris that fell to earth would almost certainly have been radioactive as well.
I wonder if this idea came from the same think tank that thought of the idea of using an explosive cigar to blow up Fidel Castro or to rig the voting in Florida in 2000 in favour of Dubya. Ooops wait a minute that second one was true wasn’t it? had it happened then Neil Armstrong probably wouldn’t have been there to utter his famous ‘one step for man’ line. But then again maybe it did happen and didn’t work very well other than to make the moon radioactive. That would certainly give more credence to those people who believe the moon landings were faked and took place in a film studio directed by Stanley Kubrick.
I’d love to know what you think of this incredibly stupid, yet potentially real plan of Eisenhower’s government. Bearing in mind that his Vice President was Tricky Dicky Nixon, maybe it isn’t surprising! Anyway as I have said many times before so here are a few songs that may not have happened or certainly wouldn’t have been the same had the moon been blown to smithereens, feel free to add your own moon related songs.
Apologies but there are two kiddie fiddlers for the price of one on this next one!
And finally a special Billy Bonus, my favourite track from Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark side Of The Moon’; “Brain Damage”
I always get a bit of a good feeling when a favourite song, or even one that I recognise is mentioned in a story, do you? My favourite author Stephen King does it quite often. Now there is a regularly updated site called Small Demons that have compiled a list of the songs mentioned most often in works of fiction. Click here to read about it in the NME. Here is the top 20;
1. The Beatles – ‘Hey Jude’
2. Elvis Presley – ‘Heartbreak Hotel’
3. Led Zeppelin – ‘Stairway To Heaven’
4. USA For Africa – ‘We Are The World’
5. Abba – ‘Dancing Queen’
6. Carl Perkins – ‘Blue Suede Shoes‘
7. The Beatles – ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds‘
8. The Beatles – ‘Eleanor Rigby’
9. Nirvana – ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
10. Queen – ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’
11. Los Del Rio – ‘The Macarena’
12. Michael Jackson – ‘Beat it’
13. Creedence Clearwater Revival – ‘Proud Mary’
14. OneRepublic – ‘Apologize’
15. The Beatles – ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’
16. The Beatles – ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
17. ‘Lili Marleen’ (first recorded by Lale Andersen)
18. Michael Jackson – ‘Billie Jean’
19. Bob Dylan – ‘Like A Rolling Stone’
20. Rolling Stones – ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’
I get why some of these would appear, but USA For Africa, “Macarena” and “Apologize”? What’s that all about? “Hey Jude” has been mentioned in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. The Beatles have a probably unsurprising five titles in the top 20 with Michael Jackson the only other artist with more than one with his two entries. I suppose an entry for the Fab Four‘s “Paperback Writer” would have been quite apt wouldn’t it? Click here to see a longer and nicely pictorial list.
As strange headlines go ‘Saddam’s Buttock Fails To Sell At Auction’ is surely among the best isn’t it? But what makes it even better is that it isn’t one of those ridiculous Sunday Sport “Elvis Is Alive And Lives In A London Bus On The Moon” type headlines; it’s actually true!
The cheek of it!
A former SAS man managed to retrieve part of Saddam’s posterior for posterity. (Two words I don’t think I’ve ever used in the same sentence before!) when the infamous statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down in central Baghdad back in 2003. He put it up for sale at an auction in Derbyshire in the UK.
The cheeky new owner was hoping to raise £250k for soldiers charities. When he was given the bums rush by potential purchasers with a maximum offer of some £21k he realised that he had just been going through the motions and he was gutted. But the idea has a nice ring to it so I believe that he should push hard to do it again and not just go home and sit on his stool. It certainly doesn’t stand up to much anal isys and maybe hard to digest, but perhaps he doesn’t have fart to go before a new owner plops some money into his back pocket to clench (sic) a deal on a number 2 auction.
With all the bottom references and it being nearly Halloween, how could I resist including this?
Read the story on the BBC by clicking here. I would love to hear your thoughts on this bit of news, but in the meantime here are a few hopefully related songs;
Yet more Gaga news for you today, she certainly knows how to create a media stir for herself doesn’t she. I guess I’m as guilty as the rest too as she does appear here quite a bit. She has become the first celebrity to reach ten million Twitter followers. She tweeted this message to her followers; “10 Million Monsters! I’m speechless, we did it! It’s an illness how I love you. Leaving London smiling”. She was the first to reach nine million in March having overtaken Britney Spears last year. She has 24 million ‘likes’ on Facebook although in terms of celebrities Eminem is ahead of her as is Texas Hold ‘Em Poker.
She also appeared at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Carlisle this weekend. She dedicated a song to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (aka Wills and Kate) and played a couple of jazz numbers. In her continuing quest to make an entrance unlike any other star she arrived on stage in a coffin. She was dressed in black and apparently wearing a prosthetic pregnancy. Unless of course it was real! Before Gaga’s super injunction takes effect I would like to state categorically that I am not the father! I would like to thank my good friend Nick Horslen for sending me the clip of her stage entrance. Incidentally Nick also categorically denies that he is the father. Nick also came up with a pun to describe the Gaga entrance that is up there with my worst puns. It went something like this ‘Lady Gaga had a bit of a coffin fit I hear…’ keep taking the tablets Nick!
Now for some non Gaga news. Last week Roger Waters played a few shows at the O2 Arena in London as part of The Wall tour. I would have loved to have gone but I never got around to booking early enough. But a work friend of mine was there and not only was it a great show, but also for the first time since Live 8 in 2005 the remaining members of Pink Floyd (David Gilmour and Nick Mason) joined Waters on stage. To say that I was envious of my friend Grant would be an understatement, being there for that particular performance is one to tell your grandchildren isn’t it? Click here to check it out on the BBC
And finally time for more mondegreens aka misheard lyrics. These were posted in the Rock Of Ages Yahoo Group and there are some real doozies there!
“I bless the rains down in Africa.” (Toto – Africa)
People sing: “I left my brains down in Africa.”
“Might as well face it, You’re addicted to love” (Robert Palmer – Addicted to love)
“Might as well face it, you’re a dick with a glove.” (some people have suggested that they thought this was about Michael Jackson!
“Body’s aching all the time.” (Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody)
“but he’s naked all the time.”
“And as we wind on down the road.” (Led Zeppelin – Stairway to heaven)
“There’s a wino down the road.”
“And kept her apart from the things that she loved.” (The Beatles – Getting Better)
“And kicked her apartment of things that’s Sheila.”
“Excuse me while I kiss the sky.” (Jimi Hendrix – Purple Haze)
“Excuse me while I kiss this guy.”
“See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen” (Abba – Dancing Queen)
” See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen.”
“Like a virgin, touched for the very first time” (madonna – Like a Virgin)
“Like a virgin, touched for the thirty-first time”
“We built this city on rock and roll.” (Starship – We built this city)
“We built this city on log and coal.”
“I’ll never be your beast of burden.” (Rolling Stones – Beast of Burden)
“I’ll never leave your pizza burnin’.”
“Here we are now, entertain us.” (Nirvana – Smells like teen spirit)
“Here we are now, in containers.”
“The answer, my friend,
is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” (Bob Dylan – Blowin’ in the wind)
“The ants are my friends,
they’re blowin’ in the wind
The ants are a-blowin’ in the wind.”
“Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road.” (Green day – Time of your life)
“Another turnip boy, the Ford stuck in the road.”
“Got my mind set on you.” (George Harrison – Got my mind set on you)
“Thought my mom sat on you.”
“There’s a bad moon on the rise.” (Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bad Moon Rising)
“There’s a bathroom on the right.”
Just because I love the song and it doesn’t get played too much here is “Beast Of Burden” by the Stones.
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 