The Guardian published an excellent Q & A with Bobby Womack recently. I won’t list the whole article, but if you want to read it just click here. There were a couple of interesting mentions of Wilson Pickett and Sam Cooke. Apparently Mr Cooke liked to wear Estee Lauder.
There was also a reminder about how recently segregation existed in the USA, certainly and sadly well within my lifetime. But two little things took my interest. One is that Bobby’s favourite word is love and his greatest fear is cats. Surely he has to record a cover of the Cure‘s “Love Cats”. Have you heard his award-winning album ‘Bravest Man In The Universe’ yet? You should have, what’s keeping you? But is it right that the bravest man in the universe is scared of cats?
I’d like to wish the brilliant nme.com a happy 15th birthday. To celebrate the site now hosts a list of what they consider to be the best tracks of the last 15 years. Not too many surprises, even for someone like me who has been an NME reader since 1971. I am really grown up now and actually subscribe to the printed version. But nme.com along with the BBC and the Guardian are the sites that I check out each day. There must be people out there who have been reading NME for longer than me and equally kids who have only got into music since the launch of nme.com. I would love to hear your NME related stories.
Click here to access the whole top 150. The top 5 in descending order are;
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
Did any of you see Will.i.am‘s appearance at the American Music Awards at the weekend? It would be fair to say, well in my opinion anyway, that he looked like a bit of a knob. he was wearing a Legobaseball cap, at the usual hip hop style or indeed chav style jaunty angle. Only it wasn’t really proper Lego was it, because Lego is mostly square and that hat certainly wasn’t square. I wonder what the other Peas thought of it. There was also a great piece in the Guardian about it as well, which actually had the hat dissed by a kid who went on to make his own hat from proper Lego. Click here to read it.
I reckon he must have felt like a bit of a brick (misprint!)
Obviously many other rock stars have worn hats that were somewhat loud; Slash and Jay off of Jamiroquai to name but two. I just felt that Will.i.am’s millinery disaster zone was even worse than one time Guns n Roses member; Buckethead. What did you, dear readers think of it?
I also wonder whether that mild obsession with the Danish plastic toy will lead to worse things for Will.i.am, like Lego Porn, you have been warned!
But back to Will.i.am and the other Black Eyed Peas, have you seen their new video, for the new single “Time(Dirty Bit)”? There is a lot of pixellation that makes them seem somewhat Legoized. See what did I tell you it really will be Lego porn next!
With Just A Hint Of Mayhem 