I loved Kanye West’s early albums, particularly ‘The College Dropout’ (2004) and ‘Late Registration’ (2005). He has just released his ninth album, ‘Jesus Is King’ which he says is ‘an expression of the gospel’. Well, the Trump-supporting member of the Kardashian clan has surpassed himself in terms of how low he has sunk with this album. I have listened to it so that you don’t have to. It is an awful, almost dictatorial view as to how we should live from a demented, probably delusional, Christian Fundamentalist nut job. If I believed that Kanye was joking then even the irony in this release would be hard to find. But I think he is serious. This makes Bob Dylan’s Christian output look almost satanic. It is truly a terrible, terrible album. Definitely the worst of 2019 for me! The singing of the gospel choir is one very small plus point. If you have listened to it what is your opinion?
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Kanye West has been announced as a Glastonbury head-liner and an on-line petition is started to prevent this. What’s the point? That is all bollocks. He is more suited to Glasto than Mumford and Sons are as headliners at Reading and Leeds this year in my opinion.
However I do have issues with Kanye being feted as a genius. I think his early albums; ‘The College Dropout‘ in particular were very good. But for me, since then he has spiralled downhill to the point where in my opinion ‘Yeezus‘, which was highly acclaimed in the media, came across as a kind of Emperor’s New Clothes thing for me.
So my question to you about Kanye West is; Twat or Genius? Let’s vote people!
For it’s UK release ELO’s first album was simply called ‘Electric Light Orchestra‘. But in the USA it was called ‘No Answer’. This came about because their US label, United Artists, were trying to contact the band’s manager Don Arden (Sharon Osbourne‘s Dad fact fans) to find out what the album was to be called. The US label Executives got through to Mr Arden’s secretary. She tried his line and got nos response and her reply to the US Executives was ‘no answer’. I wonder if there is a similar story around how Kanye West came up with the title for his current opus; ‘Yeezus’? Which is not a great title in my opinion.
The team at the finish, just how fresh do we look? 😉
Regular readers will know that I took part in the world-famous Great North Run last Sunday. It is a half marathon (13.1 miles) which starts in Newcastle and finishes in South Shields. It was my first half marathon for 17 years so I wasn’t expecting a great time. I was part of a team of five and I am pleased to say that I came third in that little group with an official time of 2.44. But also big congratulations go to the rest of the team as well; Stuart O’Hara, Nick Cooper, Simon Downs and David Carline. In the overall race I was 35,301st, but I did still have a pulse at the end of the race and I have suffered no major aches or injuries. To my knowledge I was beaten by a the fridge man, a gingerbread man, a Scooby Doo (although I did beat another Scooby home) and Jesus. JC carried a heavy wooden cross for the whole run and gave me a rather disdainful look when I asked whether he was in fact Jesus or Brian.
The atmosphere and support were tremendous and perhaps the only negative was the heavy rain at the start. especially as it took me 50 minutes to actually reach the start line from when the gun went off. But there were somewhere in the region of 55, 000 entrants. A lot of our excellent Olympians and Paralympians were also there to offer support. In fact I was even able to high-five with the swimming superstar Ellie Simmonds and the magnificent Mobot himself, Mo Farah.
Up to now we have raised 83% of our target sponsorship for the Save The Children charity. So thank you to all of you who have contributed so far, but it’s not too late. Click here if you would like to donate. I also promise that this will be my last begging post for some time. So now for a special treat how about some appropriate songs?
I think I must be getting to that kind of age where many of your heroes or favourite folk from your youth are dying off. Well it’s happened again; sadly the great Jimmy Castor is now the late, great Jimmy Castor. He died yesterday in Las Vegas from apparent heart failure after earlier by-pass surgery. He was aged just 71 (although some on-line sources say 64). I hadn’t listened to him for quite a while but I heard the news on the way home from work tonight and played “Trogolodyte” on the iPod.
Mr Castor was a seriously funky dude who could even give the likes of George Clinton and Bootsy Collins a run for their money. His songs have been sampled by many artists including Madonna, Neneh Cherry, Kanye West, DJ Shadow, Ice Cube and the Spice Girls. If you’re too young to remember Jimmy Castor or he somehow passed you by then take a listen to the songs below and get your booty shakin’. You know it makes sense you funkateers you!
My thoughts go out to Jimmy’s family, friends and fans. RIP Jimmy Castor.
It would appear that UK chart history was made today by Rihanna. She became the first female artist to have a number one single five years in a row. She has almost matched the feat of Elvis Presley who managed a number one in each year from 1957 to 1963, some six years in total. Starting with “All Shook Up” and ending with “Devil In Disguise“. Inevitably the current record is held by the Beatles who had a number one in each year from 1963 to 1969, a 7 year run. Staring with “From Me To You” and ending with “The Ballad Of John And Yoko” I reckon Rihanna has a good chance of overturning both of those records. read about it on the NME site by clicking here.
Rihanna hoovers up yet more chart records
Rihanna’s UK number one singles since 2007 have been;
Rihanna was born nearly 20 years after the last of the Beatles run and she is still only 22. She will be 23 in February. She originates from Barbados and plays a big part in the support of the marketing of her homeland. She is now an honorary cultural ambassador. She is also a great philanthropist, setting up her Believe Foundation in 2006. It is a charity which supports terminally ill children.
Is it Grace Jones? Is it Max Wall? No it's Rihanna!
A random selection of news is heading your way in this post. Starting with the sad news that Don Van Vliet also known as Captain Beefheart has died aged 69 from complications brought about by multiple sclerosis. Read the BBC report here. It would be fair to say that he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s hard to deny his influence and innovation. It took me a while as a teenager but I did get into ‘Trout Mask Replica‘ indeed I now have a CD copy of the album. He was a contemporary of Frank Zappa and Zappa Plays Zappa played “Willie The Pimp” in his honour the night his death was announced.
Lady Gaga possibly not everyone's cup of tea either
At least we know what she did with Santa's beard 😉
I haven’t posted about Lady Gaga for a while so here goes with news on the Lady GG. She is set to appear in the new Muppets movie along with the likes of Dave Grohl off of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, Jack Black and Ricky Gervais. She has also been named MTV Woman Of The Year for the second year in a row. She also had an Ozzy Osbourne moment at her London O2 show the other night. A stuffed Santa toy was thrown on stage by a fan, she picked it up and made a comment about hating Christmas and then bit the toys head off! I don’t know about you but I love rock and pop stars to be real fruitloops like Lady Gaga. Read the Santa murder story here.
So now all the hype and spin of the UK General Election is over for the time being. Maybe for just a short period too, given that we have a hung parliament there might be another election as soon as later this year, just like 1974. I was thinking earlier that all three main parties must be thinking about how badly they have done this time around and maybe about the recriminations associated with that performance. The Tories must have hoped to have won an overall majority, Labour might have expected to fare a little better (I wonder what influence bigotgate had on their result) and the Lib Dems surely would have wished for a massive improvement rather than going backwards in terms of number of seats. I also feel that this country is crying out for electoral reform. How is it fair that a party like the Lib Dems can win 23% of the votes but les than 10% of the parliamentary seats? That can’t be right, can it? To quote Mr Rotten from San Francisco in 1978 ‘ever had the feeling you’ve been cheated?’ I feel very cheated in this election. How does everyone else feel? Still there was a modicum of good news; the Green Party won their first seat in Brighton and the BNP still have no MPs. The BNP also lost 12 council seats in Barking, now that is very, very good news.Â
Gordon makes it clear what he thinks of his opponents. It certainly doesn't look like an 'I agree with Nick' hand gesture does it?
So back to thoughts of failure, recrimination and blame, with heavy emphasis on the blame element. As I have said plenty of times before this is a music blog so here come some blame songs, please feel free to add your own through the comments option.Â
“I Don’t Blame You At All” – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. In this clip the song soundtracks the UK chart rundown on the BBCs Top Of The Pops hosted by Jimmy Saville. Just dig that crazy fashion sense and dancing skills among the audience daddyo! Was that really my generation? Surely not. Back in my younger days I first heard this song on a Motown Chartbusters album, Volume 6 in fact. It was the one with the excellent Roger Dean cover of a Fly/ Spaceship hybrid. What do you think of it?Â
Motown Chartbusters Volume 6 cover - I reckon they should have called this superfly, although Curtis Mayfield may have been upset!
“Blame It On The Boogie” – Jacksons. The Jackson as they became after leaving Motown, they weren’t allowed to be called the Jackson 5 as Motown owned the name rights. They also left Jermaine at Motown and replaced him with brother Randy. Does anyone know what the ectoplasm going on in the video is? Confusingly this song was written by a British chap who rather confusingly was called Mick Jackson (not Jacko), click his name to hear his version. Either way it’s a brilliant disco song even after all these yearsÂ
“Blame It On The Sun” – Stevie Wonder. Taken from Stevie’s excellent ‘Talking Book’ album from 1972. I really had to include this for other reasons as well. In particular the UK tabloid the Sun, a part of Mr Murdoch’s empire back Cameron and the Tories to win. So maybe Dave will blame it on the Sun. At least there wasn’t the old headline of ‘It was the Sun wot won it!’Â
“Blame Canada” – South Park. Before I am inundated with comments from angry Canadians, let me just state categorically that I love Canada and certainly don’t blame them for the election result in the UK. Although I am sure that a conspiracy could be woven around that if required. This song is taken from the excellent South Park Movie from 1999, was it really that long ago? Oh Boy! Have you seen it before? If not then click here to buy it.Â
“Blame It On The Pop” (Top 25 songs of 2009) – Various Artists. Nothing much to say about this mixtastic, medleytastic bunch. It features 25 artists (and in some cases I use the term lightly) including Black Eyed Peas, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Keri Hilson, Flo Rida, Pitbull, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Jay Sean, Lil Wayne, All American Rejects, Kanye West, Justin Timberlake, Jamie Foxx, Kelly Clarkson, Rihanna and Jason MrazÂ
OK very funny, which one of you b*stards put super glue on the table?
There really are too many tribute bands around don’t you think? Just click here for the Wiki view and you will find plenty tribute bands named, including Dread Zeppelin and the Iron Maidens. However the one that caught my eye was Beatallica a tribute band that plays Beatles and Metallica songs. It got me thinking of other potential fantasy or nightmare tribute bands you could have if you combined some bands.
Here are some that I thought of and if you click carefully you should find a song from each of the constituent parts (including a guest appearance by Joan Collins in one of them and Chris Martin off of Coldplay in another) and don’t forget this will probably be the only post I’ll ever do where I won’t diss Boyzone or Westlife (or could that be Westzone or Boylife?);
I would love to hear your own ideas and maybe I could even muster up the usual cheap and tacky prize for the best one! While you contemplate what riches you could win take a look at the appropriately titled “Tribute” from Tenacious D
By the way, somewhere above there is a ‘hidden’ song which features one of the above acts doing some backing vocals on a U2 song, did you find it?
So after all those rumours from Blogland that Mr Bowie would come out of retirement and headline New Zealand’s Big Day Out Festival next year it has finally been announced that he was apparently ‘never really an option’. In other Bowie news I can report that his has a new album released in January 2010, well you can guess how excited I was when I read that only to find that it is not a new album but a double CD compilation drawn from shows on the Reality Tour from 2003………. Oh well one can always hope! Incidentally if you’re interested in the line up for the Big Day Out here is a summary of the biggies; Muse, Dizzee Rascal, Lily Allen, Kasabian, The Mars Volta, Rise Against, Peaches, Horrors, Girl Talk and Mastodon.
Lily Allen follows the advice of this blog or probably not!
On the subject of Lily Allen those regular readers among you will be familiar with this blogs ‘Lily Allen Naked’ experiment. The objective of which was to expand the number of blog views by attracting people who were searching for ‘Lily Allen Naked’. Obviously I have felt guilty about this for some time as there were never any naked Lily Allen pictures here, despite the fact that more than 600 people had arrived here seeking them. Although of course it might have been one person arriving 600 times, come on Tom own up! So if you’re among that group or you are that person or if it was you Tom then please accept my apologies and let me also give you some good news. Lily was clearly influenced by our experiment because she recently completed a rather tasteful nude photo shoot for GQ magazine. Click here to see a selection of those, rather good, pictures. I would also like to mention the countless other searches for naked pictures of; Eminem, Sting, Kate Bush, Katy Perry, Ronan Keating, Bryan Ferry among others and perhaps most bizarrely of all a handful of people arrived here while searching for Meatloaf naked…………….I mean COME ON! That is so wrong in many ways…………..WHY????? So in my humble opinion that brings the ‘Lily Allen Naked’ experiment to a close. So now all we need to do is think of what the next experiment will be. Any suggestions? I have a few on my mind;
Although to be fair the last one has probably been done to death already! Anyway I do look forward to receiving your own ideas. I would also like to state categorically that I really haven’t been thinking about these for long. While you ponder them why don’t you enjoy the fabulous Lily Allen with “It’s Not Fair” Lily I know you have some very strong and indeed valid views abot downloading, but whatever your thoughts I and many others would rather you carried on recording!
As this is somewhat of a random post let me continue with a jolly good link that was passed to me by my good friend Nick H from the parish of Marlow. It’s a piece that the NME are running on line about the best gig you ever saw. Now that’s a really tough one for me. Obviously I would select at least one Bowie gig (probably 1976 at Wembley) plus Radiohead (at Lancashire County Cricket ground in 2008), Suede at the Reading Rivermead (hmmmmm when was that? Late 90’s methinks), Gene (the Old Trout in Windsor 1994). But if my life depended upon it I would have to say Parliament/ Funkadelic at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1978 a truly unforgettable concert experience! George Clinton and Bootsy Collins two cast iron geniuses in my opinion! Anyway to check out the NME link click here. What was the greatest gig you ever saw, I think we’d all like to know, wouldn’t we?
And finally for today I must draw your attention to the rather excellent C’Mon Son posts, if you click here you can see number 4 and boy does he deal brilliantly with uber twat Mr Kanye West for barging into into Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech recently! What do you think?
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 