On the final day of the premier league season, here's The Referee's Alphabet by Half Man Half Biscuit. Wouldn't it be fun, if they gave the ref a gun.
Sunday, 11 May 2014
Thursday, 1 May 2014
MSP BSP
For May the First, or International Workers' Day, two suitably left-leaning bands with similar acronyms.
In neither case does the SP stand for Socialist Party, but both bands have made their anti-fascist feelings fairly well known, so I've chosen a couple of tracks.
Manic Street Preaches with If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, and British Sea Power with Waving Flags.
In neither case does the SP stand for Socialist Party, but both bands have made their anti-fascist feelings fairly well known, so I've chosen a couple of tracks.
Manic Street Preaches with If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, and British Sea Power with Waving Flags.
Friday, 25 April 2014
Friday, 14 March 2014
A Cooke From The Monks Kitchen
One thing you need to do this spring friday is kinda let your backbone slip, and shake.
The Monks Kitchen with an irresistible cover of the 1964 Sam Cooke song Shake.
Available here http://wonderfulsound.bandcamp.com/album/shake-b-w-bluebird and the album here
http://wonderfulsound.bandcamp.com/album/music-from-the-monks-kitchen.
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Metal Mecanique Music
The Lapland album is out this week. The excellent Metal Lungs single from last year is very reminiscent of Musee Mecanique, which can only be a good thing.
The other immediate stand-out track on the album is Drink Me Dry. After the previous post Holding Pattern, another song about flying. Or at least, referencing flying, but about something else entirely.
Get the lapland album via http://listentolapland.com/
Talking of Musee Mecanique, where's their second album From Shores Of Sleep got to? I can't keep listening to Hold This Ghost forever. (I can).
Kansas Boston Toto Journey
Kansas Boston Toto Journey, Foreigner and Styx.
It's only been out a few days but perhaps my most played album of the year already. The production (from MMJ's Jim James) is faultless, the bass seems suitably high in the mix and is nicely audible throughout, driving several of the songs. As with all good albums, as you discover them your current favourite track switches several times. On one track, My Eyes Are Blue, he does sound a bit like Mr Garrison from South Park (now try getting rid of that thought when you hear it). There are too many highlights to mention, but I am finding it particularly difficult to get past Heartless People without repeating it. Happy And Free with or without you evokes cowboy hats and joshua trees and is a perfect finish to a fine album.
Listen to the Dean Wareham album, you too can be happy and free for a while.
Pay for it via http://deanwareham.com/.
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
I'm old and cold and tired and useless (and toothless)
Easily song of the year so far. Joyous. I can't stop playing it. With a little bit of you...
Orange Juice - Stanley Brinks And The Wave Pictures
Get it from Fika http://shop.fikarecordings.com/album/orange-juice, and album Gin http://shop.fikarecordings.com/album/gin.
Men At Twerk
Where women glow and men plunder, where beer does flow and men chunder.
Men At Work - Down Under.
That's enough twerking puns.
Men At Twerk.
Men At Work - Down Under.
That's enough twerking puns.
Friday, 28 February 2014
Get Ready
Sometimes a cover version can cruelly expose the limitations of a singer who sounds at home singing his own material, but lost at sea when stretched by mimicking someone else's style. Not so in this case, the enthusiasm, bubbliness, choppy guitar and irresistible backing vocals carry Ash's version of Get Ready along on the crest of an exuberant wave. Or maybe, as in the case of most cover versions, you like best the version you know best, which is why I have a soft and blind spot for this song.
Originally a single from the Temptations, produced and written by Smokey Robinson. William Robinson to his mother, hence the songwriting credit on the record label shown above.
The Ash version is buried away on the 1996 Goldfinger single as track four on the CD single only, which is where I know it from. It has since been made available on the extended edition of the debut full-length album 1977.
Compare and contrast the Ash version with other covers and the original.
Ash, 1977, Warner 1996
Rare Earth, Get Ready, Motown 1969
Ella Fitzgerald, Ella, Reprise 1969
The Supremes, Supremes A Go-Go, Motown 1966
The Temptations, Gettin' Ready, Motown 1966
Spotify links for all below the line...
Saturday, 25 January 2014
I am Martin Gene
Which obscure Britpop member are you?
Answer a series of amusing questions in the quiz linked above to find out which Britpop band member you are. I am Martin Rossiter from Gene, or "the bloke who thought he was Morrissey from Gene".
The questions will remind you of many ridiculous Brit pop band quotes, interviews and incidents.
And yes that is Sonya Echobelly pictured, along with Bonehead Oasis. I wonder which answers to need to provide to be Sonya.
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