Here is the Mayhem chart for December 2024. Regular readers know the chart is based on my Spotify listening habits. These are gathered over the last month by obscurify.com. Apparently, my tastes have fallen by four points to 92% more obscure than the rest of the UK! It must be all the Christmas standards I have listened to last month. Incidentally no Christmas songs are included in the chart. But the most popular Chrimbo tune was Mr. Strange with “Santa Clause Hates The Poor”. The chart remains contemporary-ish (but if a classic artist releases something new they might feature in the chart). However, last month’s top three “Legacy” artists were David Bowie, Cat Stevens and Wham! Obscurify also suggests the most obscure artists I have listened to for November: Liz Davinci, Sleuth Gang and Carol Hodge. Carol also appears in the artist chart and the song chart. There is a top ten artists chart and a top 5 songs chart. There is the usual eclectic mix of artists, including three that were in the top ten last month. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds went up from number 2 to number 1. Herorangecoat is staying at number 7. Delilah Bon is staying at number 9. Delilah has been in the artist charts now for 13 months! Two artists appear in both lists for December: Delilah Bon and Carol Hodge. The number one song comes from HANDSHAKE IN SPACE. So without further ado here are those charts in full! Click on the Spotify link below to listen to the famous (or infamous) five!
Mayhem Artist Chart December 2024
1 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 2 Carol Hodge 3 Cassyette 4 Taylor Swift 5 Lana Del Ray 6 Du Blonde 7 HerOrangeCoat 8 Mannequin Pussy 9 Delilah Bon 10 Bobbie Dazzle
Mayhem Song Chart December 2024
1 Let’s Control It – HANDSHAKE IN SPACE 2 Not The President – Delilah Bon 3 Shake The Slack – Avalanche Party 4 Hunt You Down – ALT BLK ERA 5 Manoeuvres – Carol Hodge
Here is the Mayhem chart for June 2024, albeit a tad late. Regular and constant readers know that the chart is based on my Spotify listening habits over the last month gathered by obscurify.com. Apparently, my tastes have fallen to 96% more obscure than the rest of the UK! A drop of 2% from last month. The chart remains contemporary-ish (but if a classic artist releases something new they might feature in the chart). However, the top three “Legacy” artists for last month are David Bowie, Sparks, and R.E.M. Obscurify also suggests the most obscure artists I have listened to and for June those were Hawksley Workman, Jenny Don’t And The Spurs, and The German Art Students. There is a top ten artists chart and a top 5 songs chart. There is the usual eclectic mix of artists, including three that were in the top ten last month, Taylor Swift, Paul Weller, and Delilah Bon! Delilah is one of only two artists to feature in the artist chart and the song chart for June, with her current single “The Internet” making it to the top of the song chart and May’s number one “Evil, Hate Filled Female” falling to number 5. Delilah has been in the artist charts for seven consecutive months. The other artist to appear in both lists for June is Kate Nash, who also tops the artist chart. Female artists make up 50% of the artist chart and 80% of the song chart! So without further ado here are those charts in full! Click on the header of the song chart for the playlist on Spotify.
Mayhem Artist Chart June 2024
1 Kate Nash 2 James 3 Charli XCX 4 Scene Queen 5 The Streets 6 Delilah Bon 7 John Grant 8 Me First And The Gimme Gimmes 9 Paul Weller 10 Taylor Swift
1 The Internet – Delilah Bon 2 My Drummer’s Girlfriend – ALT BLK ERA 3 Millions Of Heartbeats – Kate Nash 4 No Calories In Cocaine – The Howl and the Hum 5 Evil, Hate Filled Female – Delilah Bon
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Here is the Mayhem chart for May 2024. Regular and constant readers know that the chart is based on my Spotify listening habits over the last month gathered together by obscurify.com. Apparently, my tastes are 98% more obscure than the rest of the UK! A drop of 1% from last month. The chart remains contemporary-ish (but if a classic artist releases something new they might feature in the chart). However, the top three “Legacy” artists are Johnny Nash, Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen. Obscurify also suggests the most obscure artists I have listened to and for May those are PERCY, The Apocalypse Disco, and Joe Solo. There is a top ten artists chart and a top 5 songs chart. There is the usual eclectic mix of artists, including two that were in the top ten last month, Frank Turner, and Delilah Bon! Delilah is the only artist to feature in the artist chart and the song chart for May, with her current single “Evil, Hate Filled Female” making it to the top of the song chart. Delilah Bon has been in the artist charts for six consecutive months. Meanwhile, a rather big artist hits the top of the artist charts. Yes, Taylor Swift has finally topped the only chart that matters! To honour that achievement she is also included in this month’s playlist! Incidentally, the longest artist name ever to reach the Mayhem Artist Chart is Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan, they are at number six! So without further ado here are those charts in full! Click on the header of the song chart for the playlist on Spotify.
MAYHEM ARTIST CHART MAY 2024
1 Taylor Swift 2 Percy 3 Paul Weller 4 Richard Hawley 5 Billie Eilish 6 Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan 7 Yard Act 8 Frank Turner 9 Dea Matrona 10 Delilah Bon
1 Evil, Hate Filled Female – Delilah Bon 2 Debris – Skanger 3 Come Alive – Francesca Faye 4 Here Right Now – Jessica Wilde 5 My Bile – Kate Nash
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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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I know it is hard to believe but With Just A Hint Of Mayhem has been with you for fifteen years. We began on 9th February 2009 with a tiny pffft sound and one day we might make that huge bang! Thank you to every single one of you who has visited, liked, commented, or participated in this endeavor! I thought an appropriate way to celebrate was with fifteen songs with 15 in their title, so without further ado, blow out those 15 candles, get your party trousers on, and feel free to sing me a happy birthday tune of your choice!!!!
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I know a lot of people don’t like the end-of-the-year list craze, but I do, so the Mayhem Albums Of The Year feature is back for 2023! I tried to keep it to a top ten, but I failed miserably, so it is a top twenty. Is your favourite included, or conversely, is your least favourite one of my favourites? There are a lot of big artists on the list, because whilst I focus on newer and smaller artists, I still listen to the big ones, what can I say, I just bloody love good music! I am not going to write a piece on every album and artist included, but I would love to hear your choices for 2023. So here it comes, the Mayhem top 20 albums of 2023!
Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd – Lana Del Rey
Black Rainbows – Corinne Bailey Rae
Heavy Heavy – Young Fathers
Chaos For The Fly – Grian Chatten
Drop Cherries – Billie Marten
The Ballad of Darren – Blur
Seven Psalms – Paul Simon
UK GRIM – Sleaford Mods
Smile – Skindred
Fata Morgan – Liz Davinci
The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons – The Hives
Vertiginous Drops – Carol Hodge
Venom – WARGASM
Chronicles of a Diamond – Black Pumas
Black Classical Music – Yussef Dayes
1989 (Taylor’s Version) – Taylor Swift
Things Lost – Suncharms
Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart – Lucinda Williams
CACTI – Billy Nomates
10,000 gecs – 100 gecs
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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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Weird lyrics are great aren’t they? Often they might be confused with crap lyrics I suppose. Such as Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak” contains the line ‘tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak somewhere in this town’. Somewhere? Obviously it will be at the jail won’t it? That for me is a crap lyric. A weird lyric for me comes from Haircut 100’s “Love Plus One” as in ‘where do we go from here, is it down to the lake I fear’. Then of course this little gem from Pharrell William’s wonderful song “Happy”; ‘Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof’. Anyway, maybe there is a very thin line between weird and crap, what do you think? Online music company Blinkbox Music recently undertook a survey to find out the weirdest lyrics. They asked 2,000 people for their opinion and the resulting top 10 weird lyrics were;
The Killers – “Human”- ‘Are we human, or are we dancer?’
The Beatles – “I Am The Walrus”- ‘I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob.’
I’m a bit late with this but I thought the 2013 YouTube awards deserved a mention. (Thanks for the reminder Mr H). The highest profile awards went to Eminem who was artist of the year and Girl’s Generation a South Korean K-Pop group won the video of the year for their song “I Got A Boy”. Other winners were;
Response of the Year:Lindsey Stirling & Pentatonix, “Radioactive”
I felt that it was a nice surprise that Lady Gaga, who played a new song “Dope” at the awards show, won no awards. Eminem has also been in the news a lot recently. His recent UK number one single “The Monster” featuring Rihanna was the seventh consecutive year that Rihanna has had a UK number one. Only Elvis Presley and the Beatles have managed that before. In a two sevens clash numerical coincidence Eminem’s new album ‘The Marshall Mathers LP 2″ became his seventh consecutive UK number one album. He is the first US artist to acheive this feat.
Not content with picketing the funerals of servicemen and women, gay people and Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman those arseholes at the Westboro Baptist Church are now attacking Taylor Swift. They have called her the ‘poster girl of the young whores of doomed-America‘
Taylor sends a message to those twats at the Westboro Baptist Church!
Clearly these fundamentalists have shit for brains and how come the Christian right isn’t shouting them down for at least being unpatriotic; ‘doomed-America’? How would these fuckwits react if we picketed their funerals and constantly pestered them with hate messages? Would anyone care if the Westboro Baptist Church was destroyed? I doubt even god would care. I suspect that if he/ she exists (and I don’t believe he/ she does) he/ she would break into a wry smile when hearing the news. But equally the fact that arrogant religious nutcases like this exist helps prove to me that there is no god, because if there was why would he/ she create such a bunch of moronic, bigoted wankers as those who are a part of the Westboro Baptist Church?
The same people who picket funerals send their kids out like this? That really is obscene!
The video has sacrificial goats 🙂
If God exists I suspect he would carry a placard that says GOD HATES THE WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH!
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 