With Just A Hint Of Mayhem

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

The Brit Awards 2013 (February 20th) February 20, 2013

Filed under: News,Observation — justwilliam1959 @ 11:28 pm
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It’s Brits time again and I will be typing live ready to publish later in the evening. It is opened spectacularly by Muse with an incredibly large orchestra and pyrotechnics. Although they were a long way from being Catwoman’s favourite I thought they were superb. It appears that James Corden is over the worst of the tonsilitis and back to present the Brits for the fourth time.

Damien Hirst has designed this years trophies. The first one presented this evening is for the best British female solo artist. It was given by Taylor Swift to the delightful Scot Emilie Sande. A very gracious speech too. Sadly we then switched to an at table interview of One Direction by Mr Corden. I really don’t like Boy Bands. Then to make matters worse Robbie Williams was the next live act. Regular readers will know how little I like him. Whilst “Candy” is not a bad song I dislike Robbie immensely. But the monochrome set and costumes of the dancers was very effective.

Next up it’s Best British group presented by Simon Pegg and a Bond Girl.The winners unsurprisingly were Mumford and Sons. At least it wasn’t One Direction. Some great British pride from the Mumfords too. It was the Best British Breakthrough prize next presented by Grimmy. I was expecting this to go to Jake Bugg Does anyone agree with me that James Corden is not particularly funny? A world exclusive by none other than Justin Timberlake was next to appear. It’s an ok song and whilst he wasn’t bringing sexy back his jacket was bringing shiny back!

Ed Sheerhan presented the best British male award to Ben Howard. Why no nomination for Jake Bugg when that Muppet Olly Murs was in the nominees? Now it’s time for the critics choice award and it goes to Tom O’Dell. Dermot O’Leary and Sharon Osbourne were introduced as man and wife (what a horrible thought) to give the Best International female statuette to Lana Del Ray. One Direction are on stage, will someone please kill me. How flat were some of those notes? A dreadful performance. Do this lot have any personality and stage presence? On this showing I think not. Bring back Blondie.

Coldplay won the Best British live act, strangely they are a band that I’ve not seen live, well not yet anyway. That is their 8th Brit award since they began. Tom Daley and Jonathan Ross (what a strange combination) gave out the best single prize to Adele for “Skyfall”. Sadly she wasn’t there as she is rehearsing for the Oscars. Thank god James Arthur or Olly Murs didn’t win!

Taylor Swift dressed as a wedding cake to perform between two braziers. Unlike Wand Erection though she can really sing. Losing that dress for the hot pants was a good move. Best International group was presented by a true rock god Dave Grohl. The award went to the fabulous Black Keys who sadly weren’t there, very worthy winners in my opinion. After winning two prizes so far Ben Howard was on stage to perform “It’s Only Love” which let’s be fair is a beautiful if somewhat sleep inducing song.

A brief interview with Mercury Prize winners Alt J by Mr Corden came up next. Now we have the best International male. Frank Ocean won it, what a damned good choice! The War Child charity won a new special recognition award. This is truly a great charity, a well deserved prize. Collected by Ben Knowles from Warchild and Damon Albarn. Mumford took to the stage for “I Will Wait” I saw them at the Reading Festival in 2011. They were bloody good, but I feel they peaked very early and that their second album was nowhere near as good as the first. I’m sure I won’t be the first to say that Mumford have become a bit dull will I?

None other than Byron Ferrari was on hand to present the Best British album gong to Emilie Sande for ‘Our Version Of Events’. Personally I love her voice, but I imagine she is a bit Marmite in that you either love her or hate her. Yet another Global Success Award was presented by Robbie Williams to One Direction; oh joy, two of my least favourite acts ever! What the fuck? Was this award invented just so that Wand Erection didn’t sob all over their school books? I bet that arsehole Simon Cowell was behind that! Emilie Sande closed the show  and yes she was good. But that Global Success award to One Direction has left a bad taste in my mouth. In fact it has turned a relatively dull Brits into something quite shit! Can we have some proper rock n roll edgeiness back next year please? Preferably a bit more edgy than Sharon Osbourne mentioning Harry Styles’ willy!

 

“When comes the shaking man a nation in his eyes” October 14, 2012

Filed under: News — justwilliam1959 @ 10:36 pm
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Well it’s been a long wait but Felix Baumgartner has done it. he has jumped from a balloon some 128,000 feet above the earth. He has broken a record that has been held since 1960 by Colonel Joe Kittinger. Felix appeared to have a spot of bother at the start of his jump when he was spinning over and over for a short while. He reached a top speed of more than 700 miles an hour. Click here to read the BBC report of his successful jump. I also found it a little interesting that he jumped over Roswell, site of the alleged crash landing of an alien spacecraft in 1947.

To celebrate Mr Baumgartner’s success I thought that you might like to listen to some jump related songs.

 

“I’m only payin’ the price for a trip I took to paradise” May 8, 2010

Filed under: Trivia — justwilliam1959 @ 7:38 pm
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Dave. Can he fix it? Probably not

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. 

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. 

“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? 

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 years 

“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!’ 

“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. 

“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 Mraz 

OK very funny, which one of you b*stards put super glue on the table?

 

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

Filed under: Trivia — justwilliam1959 @ 10:17 pm
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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?