It seems that the new leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un, has his own song. He doesn’t sing it, but it’s lyrics seem to draw from one of his speeches around the time he became leader. The song is called “Onwards Towards The Final Victory” and as you might expect it is getting significant airplay on the countries radio and TV networks. His father Kim Jong-Il also had a song, his was called “There Is No Motherland Without You“.
The only way is Up!
Personally I find all this a little strange, I mean I know our own British national anthem, which incidentally is far less rousing than Kim Jong-Un’s little tune, is an awful ode to the power of the monarchy, but imagine if all of our Prime Ministers had their own song! So obviously I thought how about finding some possibly appropriate songs for our head public servants. I know that they see themselves as leaders, but actually they are really servants aren’t they?
According to a recent article in the Australian Geographic magazine it seems that global warming in the Mesozoic era may have been caused by windy dinosaurs. Scientist have calculated that all the herbivore sauropods produced around 470 million tonnes of methane, that compares with up to 90 million tonnes produced by modern ruminant animals, which includes cows, pigs and giraffes. I suspect that Catwoman (my good lady wife to those of you who aren’t regular readers of this blog) would say that I contribute another 50 million tonnes at least!
Current global emission of methane including natural and man-made (and me) is in the region of 470 tonnes and plays a big part in the warming of the planet. I would like to thank Simon Mayo‘s show on Radio 2 yesterday for bringing this wonderful story to my attention. Come on anything that is fart related has to be funny right? They used this story as the theme for a number of tracks yesterday, my favourite of those was probably “Whodunit” by Tavares. But the one that they didn’t play is the one I will use to bring this flatulent dinosaur story back to music. It is the rather beautiful sonnet, “I’ve Parted (Misprint)” by Ivor Biggun and the Red Nosed Burglars. Did you know that Ivor Biggun is in fact Doc Cox who used to appear on Esther Rantzen‘s ‘That’s Life‘ programme?
Enjoy the song, which in my opinion is a brilliant earworm and I’m confident it will be in your head for days! Click here to read the article on the Australian Geographic site.
Happy New Year to all my regular readers and to all of you who have chanced upon my blog by some kind of awful accident. If you are one of the latter feel free to stay, you won’t catch anything, I promise!
My first post of 2010 relates to one of the last big news stories of 2009; the attempted bombing of the plane over Detroit a few days ago. Firstly let me make an apology up front. I know this is a serious matter but for me there is quite a degree of humour in it, also no one was seriously hurt. So if you are offended by even the mildest of sick jokes then please stop reading now. I am often known by my good friend Fraser as a sick puppy, you may tend to agree.
OK so what is the issue here? Well I have a beef with the fact that Richard Reid who attempted to blow up a plane a few years back by concealing explosives in his shoes is now universally as the Shoe Bomber, whilst Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who concealed explosives in his underpants is being called the Plane Bomber by most of the British Press. He must be known as the Underpants Bomber surely? Is joking about people like this wrong? I don’t think so, indeed the anti Hitler propaganda in Britain during the Second World War focussed on making Hitler in to a figure of fun (who hasn’t heard the “Hitler has only got one ball refrain”?). Let’s not forget that Abdulmutallab was a ‘failed’ suicide bomber who had agreed to blow himself up starting with his wedding tackle. Actually whoever persuaded him to do that did one hell of a job, how many men do you know who would effectively agree to strap explosives so close to their private parts?
Anyway in the event it was a complete balls up or a cock up if you prefer. It was a real bummer and let’s face it the plan was pants. I dread to think how bad the skidmarks on his pants were. I am sure you can come up with plenty more, post them in the comments section.
Another amusing aspect of this whole story for me was the way it was reported initially. Apparently the Underpants Bomber went to the toilet for twenty minutes and then complained of stomach pains shortly after returning to his seat. It was then said that passengers nearby heard a popping noise and then smelt something horrible. I rest my case!
Johnny Fartpants off of Viz (shown on the side of an RAF Plane)
As I have said before this is ostensibly a music blog so enough about bombing and onto a few mildly appropriate songs
Of course if you can think of any other appropriate songs just let me know
And finally a great YouTube clip from the Singing Butts. I turned 51 today and I have always believed that I would become mature when fart jokes were no longer funny, so I am now able to confirm that as yet I am still not mature 🙂
Well I guess yesterday says and awful lot about those regular readers and many of the new ones. I include one fart clip and the views reach their highest in the history of this blog, well I know that history only stretches 9 days, but even so. Some of you who know me may have heard this before, but I have a theory that one day we just wake up and we’ve become mature. How do we know? What are the signs? Well for me I reckon my wardrobe will be full of nylon shirts, polyester trousers, sensible slip on shoes, a flat cap and a proper anorak. But that won’t be the real sign, the real indication will be that fart jokes are no longer funny. I can happily point out though that even though I’m now 50 years young fart jokes are still bloody hilarious. oh and my wardrobe still has plenty of jeans, t-shirts and my Converse All Stars
So what did you all think of the Brits then? I’ve posted my thoughts separately so I won’t bore you with them here. You’ll find them just below this post.
So onto the usual mundane mishmash of Birthdays and Onthisdays and maybe some other stuff too. Firstly 19th February 2009 is the 69th birthday of the supremely talented Mr William ‘Smokey’ Robinson. Smokey is not only a gifted singer, songwriter and producer but he was also appointed Vice President of Motown Records by Berry Gordy in 1972, which was the year the company moved from Detroit to LA. Robert Zimmerman (that’s Bob Dylan to the uninitiated) once called Smokey “the world’s greatest living poet” just listen to some of Smokey’s excellent lyrics and you’ll see why. “Tears Of A Clown” is a lyrical masterpiece in my opinion especially the way he manages to mention Pagliacci, give it a listen. You know the drill, click on the songs title. But my favourite Smokey composition is “The Love I Saw In You (Was Just A Mirage)” , here it is by the Jackson 5.
Smokey and the boys at their Butlins, Bognor residency!
Today is also the 63rd birthday of Pierre Van Den Linden off of Focus a very successful Dutch rock band who were very big in the early 70s. They had two top 20 singles in the UK in 1973, “Sylvia” and “Hocus Pocus” He left the band in 1974 but joined up with Thijs Van Leer from the original band in 2004 and they continue to tour. Here are the band performing both songs on the UKs classic show the ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ in 1972. Oh I should point out that Focus were largely an instrumental group apart from the odd bits of wordless vocalising and yodelling!
There is definitely some cymbalism in this picture!
The final birthday for today is that of Seal perhaps most famous for “Kiss From A Rose” He had his first his as ‘featuring seal’ when he did the vocals for Adamski’s UK number 1, “Killer” in April 1990. Seal rerecorded his own version and took it to number 8 in the UK in November 1991. Seal was given up at birth by his mother Adebisi to a white foster family in Essex although she took him back when he was four. His full name is Sealhenry Samuel. The scars on his face are from contracting the disease Lupus in his early 20s. Here is the video for the Adamski and Seal version of “Killer“. Don’t you just love the jaunty angle at which Adamski wears his baseball cap and doesn’t Seal look young? Mind you that is nearly 20 years ago now!
No one ever seemed to want go clubbing with Seal!
On this day in 1977 Manfred Mann’s Earthband were number one in the USA with a Bruce Springsteen composition “Blinded By The Light“. Click the song title to see and hear the band play it live on a 70s TV show. It was also, I believe, the first UK hit with a Bruce Springsteen song. The Earthband had a unique selling point for one of their early albums. They gave away a small piece of Wales with each copy of “The Good Earth” sold.
Manfred Manns Earth Band
Now this next one is a strange ‘On This Day’ for the story covers this day in 1972 AND 1994 and relates to the same song. That song is the classic “Without You”. On this day in 1972 it was a UK number one for Harry Nilsson and on this day in 1994 it was a UK number one again, this time for Mariah Carey. The original version of the song was recorded as an album track by Badfinger and was written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of the band. Things ended very tragically for Pete and Tim, both committed suicide by hanging themselves in 1975 and 1983 respectively. On a brighter note it’s strange that whilst Harry Nilsson wrote some excellent songs his two biggest hits, “Without You” and “Everybody’s Talking” were both written by others. “Without You” has become something of a standard for balladeers on talent shows such as X Factor and American Idol to the extent that in 2008, Valentina Hasan, a contestant of Music Idol Bulgaria, sang her own version of “Without You” in extremely broken English. It came to be known as “Ken Lee,” the video of Hasan’s performance was a big hit on You Tube. So that you can make up your own mind here are four versions;
And almost finally for today, not quite a fart clip, but in the same region so to speak. On this day in 2004 Johnny Cash’s family blocked an attempt to use his classic song “Ring Of Fire” to promote haemorrhoid products. I can understand how they must have felt and I suppose they didn’t really need ‘piles’ of money either 🙂
Johnny shows the best way to treat haemorrhoids, don't forget to wash afterwards though!
And finally today here is another fart clip, a music related one in fact. But don’t worry this will not be a regular feature, maybe an occasional one though, especially if you have any music related flatulence clips. Anyway this is a track that came out in the late 70’s it was by Ivor Biggun and the Red Nosed Burglars and the song was “I’ve Parted (Misprint)” can you guess what the misprint was? The song never charted although it’s predecessor did, that was called “The Winkers Song (Misprint)” obviously back in those days we didn’t have spell check! Incidentally fact fans Ivor Biggun was in fact a made up name, his real name was Robert ‘Doc’ Cox and he is a British musician and former television journalist. He is perhaps best remembered for his appearances on the BBC programme “That’s Life” during the 80s.
Bye for now good people and the bad ones too, obviously!
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 