This is the fifth issue in our fun newish series where we share the latest post with the most views for a given month and the archive post with the most views. This one covers November 2024. The biggest read post was my review of “Age Of Stupid” by the Jellybricks posted on 10th November. The most-read archive post was “Billy liked to peel the labels from his bottle of Bud”, the fourth ever post on this blog, from way back in February 2009. It was an on this day trivia post, just like much of my early stuff and it featured the A Team, Bobby Boris Pickett, Boy George, Captain Pugwash, Ian Dury, Jay Z, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Sheryl Crow (obviously given the snippet of lyrics in the post title), and the Smiths. I would like to think that my writing has improved, but I am not so sure!
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Sometimes it is hard to shake off a great earworm of a song even if that song drops regular F-bombs and other profanities. Well, it certainly is hard for me at times, particularly with the first ten songs to appear in the new Mayhem’s Parental Advisory Playlist (The Tipper Gore Mix). Let me know if any songs like this get you singing along, although maybe not in the vicinity of your Nan! Click here to check it out!
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On 26th July 1968, The Jackson 5 signed a one-year contract with Motown Records after label executive Hank Cosby was blown away by their audition, in which the five brothers played and sang James Brown’s “I Got the Feeling.” among other classic tunes. The group broke US chart records soon after when their first four singles; “I Want You Back,” “ABC,” “The Love You Save,” and “I’ll Be There” all reached number 1 on the Billboard chart. The group appeared on the UK BBC Top Of The Pops show many times, if you include the moments when their song was featured as a dance section by in-house dancers Pan’s People it was 23 times. The first was in February 1970.
While we are talking about Top Of The Pops on July 26, 2006, the final edition of the iconic British music TV show was recorded at London’s BBC Television Centre in front of a studio audience of just 200 lucky punters. It was first broadcast on New Year’s Day 1964 (my fifth birthday!), the series ran to 2,260 episodes, making it the world’s longest-running music show. Sadly, with hindsight, it was co-hosted by Jimmy Saville. But there were plenty of other hosts; Janice Long, Mike Read, Dave Lee Travis, Tony Blackburn, Pat Sharp, Sarah Cawood, Rufus Hound and Reggie Yates. There were no acts in the studio for the final episode but plenty of classic clips including; The Rolling Stones (they kicked the show off with, rather appropriately, “The Last Time”), Spice Girls, Sonny and Cher, Wham!, Madonna, Take That, Beyonce, David Bowie, Gnarls Barkley, Michael Jackson and Coldplay. The show ended with a video of Shakira and Wyclef Jean performing that week’s number one song, “Hips Don’t Lie”. I miss Top Of The Pops, but I don’t miss Saville, he can rot in hell!
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On March 14th, 1973, ABBA released the single “Ring Ring,” their first Swedish No.1 hit and debut release in the UK. The release was originally credited to Björn and Benny, Agnetha, and Anni-Frid, and was selected as Sweden’s 1973 Eurovision Song Contest entry, where it finished third. Just a year later, using the acronym ABBA as a name, the group won the same competition with their huge hit song “Waterloo.”
The 14th of March 1964 was the first time in the history of the UK charts that all Top Ten singles in the UK charts were by British acts. Number 1 was ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’ by Cilla Black, 2 – ‘Bits and Pieces’ by The Dave Clark Five, 3 – ‘Little Children’ by Billy J Kramer, 4 – ‘Diane’ by The Bachelors, 5 – ‘Not Fade Away’ by The Rolling Stones, 6 – ‘Just One Look’ by The Hollies, 7 – ‘Needles and Pins’ by The Searchers, 8 – ‘I Think Of You’ by The Merseybeats, 9 – ‘Boys Cry’ by Eden Kane, and 10 – ‘Let Me Go Lover’ by Kathy Kirby. But to be fair, they weren’t all great songs, were they?
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Shane Lynch Irish 47-year-old former member of Boyzone, alleged singer, and born-again Christian has said that Taylor Swift and many other rock and pop artists perform satanic rituals in their stage performances and send demonic messages in their music. He made the claims in an interview with the Irish newspaper Sunday World. Perhaps Boyzone would have been a tad more exciting if they had dabbled with satanic messages in their songs. How about “Love Me For A Satan”, “Satan And Son” or “Satan Can I Hold You” for starters. Lynch said “I think when you’re looking at a lot of the artists out there, a lot of their stage shows are Satanic rituals live in front of 20,000 people without them realising and recognising,” and “You’ll see a lot of hoods up and masks on and fire ceremonies.” I wear a hoodie and dance around at gigs, do I also worship the devil? Of course not, but then I don’t worship an imaginary friend in the sky either. Shane droned on and on about it, adding “Even down to Taylor Swift – one of the biggest artists in the world – you watch one of her shows and she has two or three different demonic rituals to do with the pentagrams on the ground, to do with all sorts of stuff on her stage. But to a lot of people, it’s just art and that’s how people are seeing it, unfortunately.” He went on to say that this is the reason he’s given up listening to several genres of music, including hip-hop.” Personally, I would be very pleased if he said he was never making music again, although to be fair has he ever made music?
Mr Lynch borrows Lucifer’s pitchfork
The devil has been an ever-present in music for years ever since Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul at the crossroads. So many satan related tunes are out there from the Rolling Stones with “Sympathy For The Devil” to Cliff Richard (yes the Christian Mr. Clean with “Devil Woman”. Is rock and pop an easy way into satanism? Of course not. Does Taylor Swift worship satan? I doubt it. Is Shane Lynch talking utter bollocks? Of course, he is! OK, dear readers I would love to hear your thoughts regarding Satan in rock and pop!
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This is the twentieth song in the Play It Again Mayhem series, which began in 2020. Check out the previous entries along with this new one in the Play It Again Mayhem Spotify Playlist click here to take a listen! It has only been just over 2 weeks since the last entry, so do you fancy a quick one while she’s away? OK, that was a big tease, this post does not feature the Who! Once again it is back to the 70s though, to 1978. This means that so far, 15 of the 20 songs are from the 1970s. This time it is the turn of the Rolling Stones. This is the first non-single track to make the Mayhem Play It Again Playlist, although it was a B-Side. It appeared on the flip side of the Stones’ huge 1978 disco-funk-styled smash “Miss You”. It is called “Far Away Eyes” and like “Miss You” appears on the band’s 1978 album ‘Some Girls’. It is a delightful country pastiche or homage from the Stones. Jagger’s vocals are very much in a great country style and are split between spoken and sung. It is a lazy, lolloping rhythm. Ronnie Wood plays a fabulous slide guitar on it. This, maybe surprisingly, is my favourite ever Rolling Stones song. What is yours?
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In my humble opinion companies like Viagogo are, in simple terms ticket touts that have somehow become legitimate. These companies refer to themselves as “ticket resale agencies” a rather cuddly and friendly title for what feels like industrial-level scalping. But there are other “ticket resale agencies” I hear you say. Yes, there is Stub Hub, but did you know they merged with Viagogo? There is also Seat Geek which has branched out beyond resale and is now a ticket agency in its own right. In fact, it is the ticketing partner for numerous sports teams and venues in the USA and in 2020 signed a similar deal with Liverpool Football Club in the UK. There are other scalping agencies, perhaps too many to mention.
Recently Taylor Swift tickets for her Eras tour became available on Viagogo at pretty much the same time they went on general sale, including pre-sale tickets, that smacks of some kind of high-level scam. Some were on sale for more than £3,500. The price for most legitimate tickets for her UK tour were reasonably expensive to start with, between £100 and £200. Cris Miller who owns Viagogo was asked at the time to justify the huge price of Taylor Swift tickets for her ERAS tour on his site, According to MyLondon, the BBC, and other press publications, he said that Viagogo was “ensuring that there’s a secure, safe transaction“. So does this mean safer than the more legitimate ticket agencies like Ticket Master (another company I am not a huge fan of, but they will be covered in a future article). He also stated that “There’s not going to be enough seats. So, from our perspective, ensuring that there’s a secure, safe transaction that takes place is the single most important thing“. Well, there never are enough seats to satisfy demand when artists on the scale of Taylor Swift tour, unless she played three shows a day every day for six months that is unlikely to ever change.
So, the bottom line suggested by that comment is that Viagogo is all about creaming as much money from fans as possible right? Well, that is certainly my takeaway. Miller went on to claim that “fans prefer to buy more expensive tickets on Viagogo”. Seriously? What the actual fuck is that about? How many people do you know who would honestly prefer to buy tickets at ten times the face value? I know people do, but do they prefer doing that? Of course, they don’t. Miller said, “I wake up every single day, as does everybody else that works at the company, thinking about one thing, and that’s getting fans into these events all over the world”. That might be true, but it is more likely about how much money they can scam off said fans.
Scammers like Viagogo and their ilk pay a lot of money to Google and other similar sites to promote themselves as legitimate ticker agents, falsely in my opinion. This enables them to show up on the top of page one of a Google search when you search for gigs and shows. They operate in an incredibly devious and sophisticated way to give genuine fans and ticket buyers the impression that your tickets are direct from the authorised seller. They often charge an increased base price for tickets and add an inflated booking fee. There have also been many incidents of fans buying tickets for shows only to find that on arrival at the event their tickets were not valid. This impacted fans of the Rolling Stones and Take That in the years leading up to Covid. In 2018, even the UK Government expressed negative thoughts about Viagogo when the then Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries, Margot James stated clearly on BBC Radio “Don’t choose Viagogo. They are the worst.” However, the company is now legal in the UK and that statement from Margot James was possibly the last sensible thing a UK Minister has ever said in public.
A few years before Covid I used Viagogo to purchase a ticket for the Reading Festival, that is the one and only time that I have ever or will ever use them. I had left it a bit late to get a ticket and weekend tickets had sold out. So, believing Viagogo to be a genuine fans resale company I purchased via their website. It cost me almost double the face value. Never again! I would rather not go than pay ridiculously inflated prices. This happens for almost every major event not just Taylor Swift. The same thing has impacted recent shows by Harry Styles and many UK festivals. What makes it even worse for me is that since Covid many shows struggle to sell out and having large tranches of tickets in the hands of legitimised touts and scalpers will not help change this. Late last year Rammstein mounted a successful legal fight that forbids Viagogo from selling tickets to their shows, let’s hope more artists do the same. Also last year UK independent TV channel ITV worked with the Fan Fair Alliance to discover that nearly all tickets on Viagogo’s site are supplied by just three traders, which means that only around 10% of tickets on the site were on offer by what we might call ordinary punters.
Meanwhile, there is the NME who, back in the day, were bastions of positive and liberal thinking and even recently they have written some quite strong pieces that slagged off Viagogo. But now, presumably thanks to advertising revenue, the once proud NME who, back in the day, really knew how to “stick it to the man” is licking Viagogo’s tarnished golden rim by publishing paid-for advertising features for Viagogo. Is Viagogo legitimate? Sadly, it is in most places, they currently have operations in more than 60 countries. Is it ethical? Well for me that is at best a very grey area, personally, I don’t believe that they are. Can I stop anyone from using Viagogo? No, I can’t. Can I implore people to avoid the company forever? Yes, I can and I really believe you should do some research into this awful organisation before you consider using them!
This is a screenshot taken from the Viagogo site on 27th July 2023 for Taylor Swift tickets for the Liverpool shows. These are just floor tickets!
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The Mayhem Artist Top 20 artist chart for June 2022 is here. Many of you know that I am a keen user of a site called Obscurify. It claims to tell you how obscure your listening on Spotify is. Compared to the rest of the UK I achieved a level of 97% more obscure than other users in the UK this month, one point up from last month’s 96%. Regular readers will know that it also lists my most obscure artists, which currently are;
Promethium (The British metal titans are back on the list!)
Johnny Nash (Seriously, why is the greatest singer that ever lived listed as obscure?)
Apollo Junction (An absolutely brilliant band from Leeds, very nice lads too)
Vaquelin (One of York’s finest young bands. You will be hearing more about them on this site soon)
Millie Manders and the Shut Up (Fabulous ska-punk outfit, but they are so much more than that. Millie has huge talent and a fantastic band) – Check out the “Not OK” video below
As for the June Top 20, only Dame David remains from the last chart, but this time he climbs from number six back up to the top of the pile. This was probably driven by me being at the David Bowie World Fan Convention in Liverpool a few weeks ago. That wonderful visit also accounts for French artist -M- (at number 10) who the supremely wonderful human being that is Gail Ann Dorsey is working with, the marvellous Donny McCaslin sitting at number six and the late, great Mick Ronson at eleven. There is a good amount of soul this month, including Aretha Franklin, Millie Jackson, and Mel & Tim. Reggae is represented by Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Upsetters, and the Dynamites. Given his history, Johnny Nash could be represented in the soul or reggae camp. There are plenty of classic rock artists including the Beatles, Rolling Stones, T Rex, and the Who. More recent classic acts are well represented by the Wonder Stuff and Suede. Kate Bush is in at number sixteen and I haven’t even seen Stranger Things 4 yet! Half Man Half Biscuit are in there because I went to see them with my mate John at leeds Uni Stylus. Cigarettes After Sex are at number seven. I planned to see them while I was on a business trip to Bologna, but things conspired against me so, sadly I missed them. I would love to hear your thoughts on this chart. Oh and keep your eyes open for the fourth Mayhem Monthly Song Chart, just like an old-school top 20 singles chart! That one includes songs by a few of the artists featured in the June Artist Chart.
1 David Bowie 2 The Wonder Stuff 3 Johnny Nash 4 Aretha Franklin 5 Millie Jackson 6 Donny McCaslin 7 Cigarettes After Sex 8 Suede 9 Half Man Half Biscuit 10 -M- 11 Mick Ronson 12 Bob Marley and the Wailers 13 The Upsetters 14 The Dynamites 15 Mel and Tim 16 Kate Bush 17 Beatles 18 T Rex 19 The Who 20 Rolling Stones
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As a part of my birthday jaunt to NYC my wonderful wife Catwoman (a.k.a Catherine) booked a rather intriguing East Village Punk ,n, Rock walking tour of New York’s East Village from Rock Junket. Our host and Rock Junket Head Honcho was Bobby Pinn (not his real name) and it was a pure delight to spend a couple of hours in his company. I pride myself on knowing an awful lot about rock music, but I bow to the vast encyclopaedic knowledge of Mr Pinn. I learnt so much on this tour.
We saw the apartment block where Joey Ramone (a.k.a. Jeffrey Ross Hyman and also a.k.a Jeff Starship!) lived. Not far from there is the spot where the iconic photo of the Bruddas that adorns the cover of their first album was taken. Take another look at that picture, in particular the subtle way in which Joey is bending his knee and Dee Dee is standing on tip toes just so that the vast gap between the pair of them does not appear so vast.
Whilst I didn’t try one until later in the week we learnt what an Egg Cream drink was. The drink is immortalised in song by Lou Reed and apparently one of the best spots to buy one is the Gem Spa, a one time haunt of the New York Dolls. Strangely enough the Egg Cream beverage contains neither egg nor cream! Go figure!
I already knew a lot about Bill Graham’s venue the Fillmore/ Fillmore West in San Francisco, but I knew next to nothing about the Fillmore East in New York. Many great acts took to the stage there from the Allman Brothers to Frank Zappa. The most appearances by any artist or band was by the Grateful Dead.
Apartments that were once home to a young Madonna and tortured jazz giant Charlie Parker were encountered. Charlie Parker even has a street named in his honour. Now that is not bad for a suicidal junkie who died aged just 34. But that was just a part of his story and it is impossible not to recognise the towering influential, pioneering genius of Mr Parker. Also who knew that Madonna’s early live appearances were as a drummer for her then boyfriend’s band? I certainly didn’t!
I I hadn’t been on this tour with Bobby Pinn I am certain that I would have walked right past the building that features on the front cover of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 double album ‘Physical Graffiti’. The building was the home of Jimmy Page’s drug supplier who lived on the fourth floor. That floor is conspicuously missing from the album cover after a real cut and paste job by artist Peter Corriston. The very same tenement block was used in the video for the Rolling Stones 1981 single “Waiting On A Friend”.
The tour ended at the site of the now defunct CBGB’s; the iconic 1970s New York punk venue. I took the obligatory pictures outside and even ventured into the ridiculously expensive and rather disappointing shop that is now on the site. That said, the Captain Fantastic pinball table was stunning!
In this post I have tried to give you a flavour of this magnificent tour of some classic rock landmarks in the East Village. I didn’t want to add much more and therefore spoilmyour enjoyment when you take it. Make sure that you go walking around New York with Bobby Pinn next time you are in the Big Apple. You will not regret it. Click here to check out the Rock Junket site and to book your tour.
Apart from the Rock Junket header all pictures were taken by yours truly, apart from those that feature me which were taken by the most wonderful person that I know, Catherine Adamson. If you were wondering which landmark birthday I was celebrating it was 18 with 42 years of experience. 😉
It is with great sadness that I report the death of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry, he was 90 years old so that certainly is a life lived. Sure Chuck had issues and he paid his debt for those. But he was truly a pioneer, would rock ‘n’ roll have been the same without Chuck Berry? Somehow I doubt it. Given his legacy it’s a shame that his biggest hit was “My Ding-A -Ling” in 1972 which went to number one in the US, the UK and Canada. he did have a few US R & B number ones though. But you know what we need to consider whether the Beatles and the Stones would have existed without Charles Edward Anderson Berry, as his parents knew him. My thoughts are with his friends, family and all his fans across the world.
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 