With Just A Hint Of Mayhem

Music reviews, gig reviews, fun trivia and extra added random stuff!

“And nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls” January 9, 2020

Filed under: News,Observation — justwilliam1959 @ 8:49 pm
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Some interest and irony in seeing climate change denier Marvin Lee Aday a.k.a Meatloaf taking part in Veganuary, especially as he has rejected calls to change his name to Veganloaf or Nutloaf. But to each their own, right? Anyway, Meatloaf has been big on vegetables before, well at least his music has; Sussex University used his ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ in a study in 2000 to see if rock music helped vegetables grow faster. Well, guess what, apparently it did make them grow faster. Let me have all the Meatloaf vegetable song title puns you’ve got! I’ll start with “Two Out Of Pea Ain’t Bad”!

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“Oh and down in the tunnel where the deadly are rising” April 17, 2015

Filed under: Trivia — justwilliam1959 @ 11:45 pm
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Meatloaf is a bit of a football fan (that’s soccer to my friends across the big pond). In fact he is supposedly a fan of English football and his favourite team is the mighty Hartlepool United. Really? Are we supposed to believe that? Anyway I wonder if the club sell Meatloaf pies?

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download

 

“Could you even give your brain the time of day?” March 10, 2015

Filed under: Trivia — justwilliam1959 @ 6:09 pm
Tags: , , , , ,

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We’ve all heard of “Bat Out Of Hell”, Bat For Lashes and Ozzy Osbourne’s taste for bat’s heads but now a real live bat (as opposed to the Ozzy one) has become a rock legend. Maybe not a big legend, but a legend nonetheless in my opinion.

NapalmDeath

During a recent US gig Napalm Death had to stop the show because a bat was flying persistently above the stage. The band might be hard-core rockers but they did see the funny side of it and broke into an impromptu Black Sabbath song!

 

“And I guess that I could get crazy now baby” June 5, 2013


sine-e

The late and incredibly great Jeff Buckley was once a roadie for the Commitments and this is apparently how he secured his residency at the Sin-e in New York. I know that Noel Gallagher was a roadie/ guitar tech for the Inspiral Carpets before he joined Oasis and the Meatloaf played a roadie in the 1980 film ‘Roadie‘ (which also featured appearances from Blondie, Alice Cooper and Roy Orbison). There have also beeen a few songs about roadies too. But I’d love to hear from you with any other stories of roadies who went on to find fame themselves.

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and a roadie related song to finish 🙂

 

“No sitting down on your butt, the world don’t owe you” October 2, 2009


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!

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;

1) Calvin Harris Underpants (Acceptable In The 80s)

2) Sugababes lingerie (Get Sexy)

3) Mick Jaggers Athletic Support (Let’s Work)

Mick Jagger, very much in touch with his camp side

Mick Jagger, very much in touch with his camp side

4) George Michael flashing (I Want Your Sex)

George flashes his ring ;-)

George flashes his ring 😉

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?

 

“From feudal serf to spender, this wonderful world of purchase power” September 15, 2009


Me and my helmet :-)

Me and my helmet 🙂

Here we go again folks and I have some brilliant news, well it was brilliant for me anyway. On Saturday I spent the day at the Riders Edge Harley Davidson centre in Wales. This was a gift experience which was given to me as a birthday present by the wonderful and beautiful Catwoman for my 50th birthday back in January. You have to bear in mind that I have never been on a motorbike in my life. So to say I was a little apprehensive at first would be a major understatement. Let’s just say that I made sure I packed a clean pair of under crackers…….just in case!

Anyway being a complete novice I spent the morning, around three hours riding a 500cc machine around the private roads within the Royal Welsh Showground at Builth Wells. Whilst I never fell off once I came close a couple of times! I guess I pictured in my head having to lean right over when taking corners, but that’s for the speed freaks, at the speeds I was doing taking a corner upright was easy. Incidentally while it felt much, much faster I don’t think I got above 40 mph. For me the coordination required to change gear with your left foot while not looking down at all was very difficult. But when you think about it it really shouldn’t be. I mean I don’t look down when I change gear in the car so why should I need to when riding a motorbike? Well perhaps because I’m not using a gear stick with my hand but trying to change it with my foot. But by the end of the morning session I had reached the dizzy heights of 5th gear twice and stalled less than ten times in total and as I said earlier, I never fell off or crashed once! The last part was a great result for me as I fully expected to take a few spills.

Me on a Harley

Me on a Harley

So after just three hours on the saddle they sadly weren’t going to let me loose on a fabulous Harley on my own. However I did get a pillion ride on a gorgeous Harley Davidson machine under the control of one of the Rider’s Edge expert instructors, Ian. Having never even ridden pillion before that too was also a great experience for me. Cruising around some wonderful Welsh countryside. Great weather, great views and remarkably attractive sheep, well at least I would imagine they are attractive if you’re perhaps Welsh or a Kiwi.

Uneasy Rider perhaps?

Uneasy Rider perhaps?

I would like to take this opportunity to say a big, big thank you to all the folks at Riders Edge. Especially Clive, who was my instructor in the morning and also Ian with whom I rode pillion in the afternoon.

In the meantime and as this is really a music related blog let’s steer it back in that direction! Can you guess what today’s theme might be? Well it’s a bit obvious really isn’t it? Today’s theme is Motorbikes! Here are a few motorbike or motorbike related songs with a morsel of trivia about each of the artists or songs

“Motorcycle Emptiness” – Manic Street Preachers. This was the fifth single to be taken from the band’s Generation Terrorists album in 1992. The lyrics are inspired by a book about biker gang culture called Rumble Fish which was written by S E Hinton

“Motorbikin’”– Chris Spedding. This 1975 Top 20 hit was Spedding’s biggest and he is perhaps best known as a sought after session guitarist. He has played with many artists including; Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music, Elton John, Brian Eno, Jack Bruce, Nick Mason, John Cale, Katie Melua, Harry Nilsson, Tom Waits, Paul McCartney, Jeff Wayne and even the Wombles! He also famously played on and produced three demos for the Sex Pistols in 1976. The three songs were “No Feelings”, “Problems” and “Pretty Vacant”

“Funky Moped” – Jasper Carrot. This was a surprise hit for Mr Carrot in 1975. The single was backed with a risque monologue based around the 60s TV series the “Magic Roundabout“, which at the time I thought was bloody hilarious! he also has a thespian daughter; Lucy Davis who played Dawn in the Office. She was excellent in that series don’t you think?

“Silver Dream Machine”– David Essex. At the age of 23 in 1971 David took the lead role in the musical Godspell on the London Stage. I actually went to see that show as part of a school trip in 1972 when he was still in it. Our coach was delayed because all the girls on the trip had gathered outside the stage door to scream and get his autograph. It was around the time he released his first major single “Rock On”. My first serious girlfriend; Gay Topsom, was a big David Essex fan and I remember buying her each of his singles as soon as they were released. I never had enough money to stretch to an album. But we were together for two years from 1975 to 1977 so I guess that’s a fair amount of singles. She left me for a guy who was slightly older and more importantly had a car! But you know what I’m over that now and if you’re reading this Gay, I forgive you 🙂

“Bat Out Of Hell”– Meatloaf. Meat was born Marvin Lee Aday on 27th September 1947 so he will turn 62 in a couple of weeks. get your cards written and sent now folks. Jim Steinman the producer and I suppose you could say creator of Meat’s landmark Bat Out Of Hell album was apparently trying to get something that sounded like a cross between Wagner, Phil Spector and Bruce Springsteen. Well I for one reckon he succeeded. What do you think?

“Born To Be Wild”– Steppenwolf. This band hailed from Toronto and many credit their recording of the iconic “Born To Be Wild” as the first Heavy Metal record, although just as many disagree. It has had a long association with motorbikes, very likely due to its inclusion on the soundtrack to the movie Easy Rider which starred Peter Fonda

I used to have this poster on my wall as a teenager :-)

I used to have this poster on my wall as a teenager 🙂

I am sure that you can think of plenty more so fire away folks!

This is the poster I really wanted on my wall as a teenager ;-)

This is the poster I really wanted on my wall as a teenager 😉

 

“It shakes all over like a jelly fish, I kinda like it” July 24, 2009


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 :-)

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

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?

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 hit's anyone esle with his false leg he'll cut the other one off too!

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

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

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 :-)

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

 

“We were barely 17 and we were barely dressed” March 11, 2009


Hello dear readers and welcome to the 11th March, coming up there’ll be one birthday and four ‘onthisdays’. But just before those here is yet another blatant plug for my son’s band ‘Steal The Smile‘ check them out and tell me what you think of them, add them as a friend on MySpace too if you haven’t done so already, click their name for the link.

So in yet another attempt to post a short one (oooooerr missus!) here comes that birthday.

Today is the 59th birthday of Bobby McFerrin who had a massive hit in 1988 with the rather excellent “Don’t Worry Be Happy” (UK 2, US 1 that is it’s respective chart positions and not an international soccer score in case you were wondering). It was the first a capella song to reach the top of the Billboard charts in the US. The phrase “Don’t Worry Be Happy” comes originally from the teachings of Meher Baba. His teachings were followed at times by Pete Townshend of the Who

Bobby was having the worst bad hair day of his life!

Bobby was having the worst bad hair day of his life!

On this day in 1967 the music publisher Dick James announced that the Beatles song (well it’s Macca’s really) “Yesterday” had been recorded by 446 acts at that point. Considering the song was only released in 1965 that’s pretty good going It is now believed that there are more than 3,000 recorded versions. The song is believed to have been performed more than 3 million times in the last century according to the BMI. Paul McCartney gave the tune the working title of “Scrambled Eggs” before he wrote the lyrics. Here are two cover versions of the song, firstly from Dogpatch Debbie, it’s certainly different and then a great version from the late great (oh yes they’re back!) Ray Charles

Paul's audience were somewhat surprised when he decided to cover "I'm A Little Teapot Short And Stout"

Paul's audience were somewhat surprised when he decided to cover "I'm A Little Teapot Short And Stout"

On this day in 1978 there was some shocking news (geddit?). French singer Claude Francois was electrocuted while changing a light bulb when he was standing in his bathtub, presumably with water in. he had a UK hit in 1976 with “Tears On The Telephone” Claude is perhaps most famous for writing the song “Comme D’Habitude” which became a standard after English lyrics were written by Paul Anka and the song with those new lyrics was recorded by ole’ blue eyes himself Mr Frank Sinatra (or as I like to call him Frank Sinister). That song ladies and gentlemen is “My Way” Incidentally David Bowie (yet another DB reference) was the first person to write an English lyric for the tune but nobody took his words up! Here is Claude with “Comme D’Habitude” and here Mr Bowie explains his encounter with the song, it’s impact on “Life On Mars” and how he met Marc Bolan.

Claude always wore Lynx anti-perspirant and it certainly seemed to work for him!

Claude always wore Lynx anti-perspirant and it certainly seemed to work for him!

Also on this day in 1978 Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell” album began a 416 week run in the UK album charts and selling 2 million copies in the process. Mr Loaf is actually called Marvin Lee Aday, his Meat Loaf name allegedy came from an incident when he stood on the foot of his high school football coach. Jim Steinman wrote the ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ album and many claim that it shows his love of Bruce Springsteen, Phil Spector and Wagner. The album was produced by Todd Rundgren. The album supposedly still sells around 200,000 copies per year even now. Is there anyone reading this that doesn’t own the album? Here is Mr Loaf himself with the classic “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” ably assisted by Ellen Foley.

From the look of it Meat Loaf should have taken Claude's anti perspirant advice

From the look of it Meat Loaf should have taken Claude's anti perspirant advice

And yet again in 1978 the debut single from the wonderful Kate Bush, “Wuthering Heights” Kate was only 15 when EMI’s interest was sparked by a demo tape of hers was passed to their A & R man Bob Mercer by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Gilmour actually plays guitar on the song too in particular that wonderful solo on the fade out. The company spent nearly 3 years on developing Kate as an artist. Sadly with the awful rise of X Factor and Idol shows that kind of thing is almost unheard of these days. She undertook, dance, vocal and mime classes. Her mime teacher was none other than Lindsay Kemp, who also taught David Bowie his mime skills (there you go, yet another Bowie reference). “Wuthering Heights” was originally scheduled for release in November 1977 but the company deemed it to be not radio friendly, it was eventually issued in January 1978. The song was inspired by Emily Bronte’s book of the same name, Kate is a big Bronte fan and even shares her birthday, July 30th. (Kate in 1958 and Emily 140 years earlier in 1818) Here is Ms Bush with that wonderful song and yes “Wuthering Heights” is certainly one of the 50 songs in my top 10

Kate's Atage Musical version of Lady Godiva never really took off

Kate's Stage Musical version of Lady Godiva never really took off

And finally here’s another picture of Kate, simply because I’ve always had a thing for the delectable Ms Bush 🙂

More Kate Bush........ because I can!

More Kate Bush........ because I can or perhaps more likely because I'd like to 😉