It’s now just over three weeks until the big day when the bearded weirdo arrives at your house and drops down your chimney. Are you excited yet? If not then I hope that the two tunes with numbers in their titles that I have selected for day 2 get you at least a little bit revved up. So behind the colourful little cardboard flap today we have a couple of classics for singing along to when drunk.
Pull the udder one Damon
First it’s Blur with an excellent if rather unimaginatively titled song; yes it’s “Song 2” from 1997. It came from an album which also didn’t need much creative juice when it came to choosing a title; it was simply called ‘Blur’. However forget the issue I have with those titles for me it remains one of the band’s finest albums. Sadly it only made it to number 2 in the UK charts, but it did hit the top spot in Canada. It has been covered by a wide range of artists, including; Avril Lavigne, Scooter, Robbie Williams and Vampire Weekend. It was also sampled by Pink on her song “Slut Like You”. “Song 2” has featured in episodes of Torchwood, the Simpsons and South Park. It is said that the US military wanted to use the song at the launch of a new Stealth Bomber, but Damon Albarn refused them permission. Rightly so in my opinion.
The second song from day 2 is the wonderful “Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please” from Splodgenessabounds. The song was released in 1980 when it made it to number 7 in the UK charts. The B side was the rather excellently titled song “Michael Booth’s Talking Bum”. In a throwback to the early days of punk many of the band members gave themselves some rather clever stage names; including vocalist Max Splodge, guitarist Pat Thetic Noble and Miles Flat also a guitarist. The band still tours, often with Bad Manners and appeared at the Rebellion Festival for the 19th time earlier this year.
Well hello again dear readers it’s been 2 and a half weeks since my last post, that is probably the longest I have ever gone without posting, so hopefully I can make up for that in the next couple of weeks. As long as work doesn’t get in the way at least.
Thom auditions for the new series of Vision On
This post is a motley collection of the amusing and strange that I have picked up or seen and heard during that long lay off. Have you heard the new Radiohead album? You must have by now surely. I like it but I don’t think it’s as good as ‘In Rainbows‘. There have been many suggestions that as ‘King Of Limbs’ is quite a short album there will be a part 2 coming soon. I certainly hope so. Anyway if you are a fan you will no doubt have seen the video for “Lotus Flower” with Thom Yorke‘s crazy dance. This has spawned many versions of the video which put Thom together with completely different songs, many of which are rather amusing. Click here to see some of the best.
In a recent article in the Guardian’s Lost In Showbiz section it was revealed that Mark Feehilly off of Westlife is a big fan of artist Leigh Bowery. That really does seem weird to me that a member of one of the blandest boybands ever is into a performance artist who has been known to throw shit at his audience. But then again Westlife have been pushing shit songs at their audience for years now so maybe it’s not that weird. Click here to read the rather excellent piece.
The new Westlife tour has been sponsored by Ferrero Rocher and Leigh Bowery has designed the stage costumes........ oh ambassador you spoil us!
Have you ever wondered how well ambient music and cop radio go together? well wonder no more, this is a mash-up of recordings taken from the LA Cop radio frequency and some superb ambient style music. I really love this, what do you think of it? Click here to listen, you can also listen to similar sounds from different North American cities.
A scene from an Isaac Hayes concert, although the costumes were probably from a 70s porn movie!
And finally for this post, ever wonder about the genesis of the wah wah pedal? ever wondered what music would be like without the pedal? Well click here to see how the wah wah came to be and obviously there would have been no “Theme From Shaft” or indeed any 70’s porn soundtracks without it! Check out two very different Isaac Hayes classics below
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?
It’s now just over three weeks until the big day when the bearded weirdo arrives at your house and drops down your chimney. Are you excited yet? If not then I hope that the two tunes with numbers in their titles that I have selected for day 2 get you at least a little bit revved up. So behind the colourful little cardboard flap today we have a couple of classics for singing along to when drunk.
The second song from day 2 is the wonderful “Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please” from Splodgenessabounds. The song was released in 1980 when it made it to number 7 in the UK charts. The B side was the rather excellently titled song “Michael Booth’s Talking Bum”. In a throwback to the early days of punk many of the band members gave themselves some rather clever stage names; including vocalist Max Splodge, guitarist Pat Thetic Noble and Miles Flat also a guitarist. The band still tours, often with Bad Manners and appeared at the Rebellion Festival for the 19th time earlier this year.
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 