FT
18 November 2005
other things that i liked or made me laugh:
i. gambo wipin away a tear when sabbaf were inducted
ii. the general old folks reunion small-world-intit feelin
iii. angus young in LONG PANTS AT LAST!!
iv. p.townshend sounds EXACTLY LIKE (and looks a little like) my neighbour: viz quizzical, querulous, quite high-pitched “hippie” cockney
v. the commentator who explained pink floyd’s ageless astonishingness thus: hummable tunes played by excellent musicians in refined settings
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
17 November 2005
inducting j.hendrix and b.dylan into the UK Rock Hall of Fame, the powers-that-institutionalise opted for STARS OF TODAY doing cover versions: slash (plus a winwood and some now-rotund jimi sidemen) for the former, alanis morisette for the latter
and he wz careful and serious and strangely polite really; and she wz bright-eyed and amused and comfy — and the latter worked a lot better, for the (deeply absurd) situation
UPDATE: bah, 25 years have not improved love will tear us apart; it is still JD’s worst song, weighed down by by the inadequacies of its singer then and its singer now, both of them better than OK on other songs, but hapless and crummy on this morose, structurally half-formed sales-pitch wettie
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
15 November 2005
I notice that the BBC has tagged us as one of the sites which writes about pop music in simple language rather than using “bloglish”, which is a tool whereby The Kids confuse The Man and stop him buying their music with his so-called “fifty quids”.
Well done Alan Connor of the BBC for a sensible reply to an absurd Observer article (look it up if you can be botherd), but now we have a reputation to live up to, so here are five great pop songs I’ve been listening to recently (i.e. that have just come up on my iPod), and a good reason why to like each of them.
FRANKIE KNUCKLES ft JAMIE PRINCIPAL – “Baby Wants To Ride”: Because it’s a paranoid early house track which mixes up sex and spirituality, Prince style, and then brings in geopolitics while the beat goes on and you-the-listener get the uneasy feeling that it’s 3am and you’ve gone home from the club with a lunatic.
RACHEL STEVENS – “Nothing Good About This Goodbye”: Because it’s the most heartfelt, bittersweet and straightforward pop song from Rachel Stevens’ second album – which is an excellent record but ‘heartfelt and straightforward’ seems to suit Rachel more than ‘clever and cool’.
THE CONTOURS – “First I Look At The Purse”: Because it’s the cousin to the more famous Motown hit “Money” and just as delightfully cynical. “Why waste time / Looking at the waistline?”
WILL SMITH – “Will 2K”: Because it’s such a perfect use of an iconic rock sample, and because squares like to party too.
BROADCAST – “Echo’s Answer”: Because it’s the sound of a winter night, and after four years I still can’t get less vague than that.
Normal gibberish can now resume.
Tom in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
The average number of CD’s owned in the UK is 126. The average number of those CD’s which have had to be replaced due to theft, loss or accidental melting because they fell down the back of the radiator is 36.
What a wasteful society we live in, this report suggests. It also puts much credence to the idea that you should never lend CD’s to anyone, and that these things probably never happened with vinyl (this conclusion is wholly my own).
I assume the actual conclusion, since the research was commissioned by Napster, is that mp3′s rule because people can’t steal them, or drop them down the back of the radiator. However an interesting comparison might be how many tracks have you lost due to file corruption, a computer dying or dropping your i-Pod?
Pete Baran in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
14 November 2005
Today I was listening to Radio 1 on the web — research purposes only, of course — and a caller managed to break through the hurried sheen of the Colin and Edith program with a heartfelt message to her boyfriend, who not only made her feel like a queen, taking her out constantly, etc., but — and here the caller’s voice cracked a little, stumbled, collected itself and went on stronger — had stood with her during family troubles, and his support meant the world. That the caller sounded like the kind of superficial babbler you might avoid at a party made the sincerity in her voice the more striking. It’s a common phenomenon — that, talking blindly down the phone to an audience of thousands of absolute strangers, people find something noble inside they never realized they had — and DJs and program directors are only too eager to tap into it, especially since it’s free minus the cost of the phone banks. Colin appreciated it too — “That was a good ‘Lunchtime Lovers’, Sarah,” he said, collegially referring to the name of the segment. And we moved on.
Elisha Sessions in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
10 November 2005
ABBA’s “The Day Before You Came” has a superb lyric. If you don’t know it, it’s a haunting song* detailing a totally ordinary day in the life of a single woman – getting up, going to work, eating lunch, coming home, going to bed. She’s vague on the details, because after all it was an ordinary day. It was also “the day before you came”, and we never learn any more about the “you”, but that’s not the point right now.
One of the reasons it’s such a great lyric is that it makes Andersson and Ulvaeus slightly pernickety grasp of English work in their favour. Sung in the voice of someone no more than averagely articulate, their grammatical exactness gives dimension to a life that seems exact, routine and slightly dull. Another reason is that it’s full of delightful little details, like this from when the singer goes to bed:
“I must have read a while, the latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style”
Offhand, vague, and the choice of author is perfect – intellectual but still quite populist, exactly the sort of thing you’d expect a serious-minded European woman to be reading in 1982. (Plus as a writer best-known for studying the history and effects of patriarchy, she’s resonant with the song, whose dread-laden music makes it ambiguous to say the least about the benefits of coupledom.)
The single was not a hit, and a couple of years later Blancmange covered it. They changed very little of the lyric, which is mostly gender-neutral and worked just as well for a gruff male voice. But they did change that particular line, probably because Marilyn French wasn’t that well known in the UK. (Although The Woman’s Room was a bestseller.) What did they change it to? Well -
“I must have read a while, the latest one by Barbara Cartland or someone in that style.”
Sorry?
There are several reasons why this totally misfires:
i) It has at least one more syllable, two more when you hear how the original squeezes “Marilyn”.
ii) There are perhaps slight ideological differences between Ms.French and Ms.Cartland.
iii) You find yourself unavoidably thinking, “Why on EARTH was he reading a Barbara Cartland novel?”
Great example all in all of how a song can be made or lost by a tiny detail.
*(A-Ha’s “Stay On These Roads” has just come on my iPod – why are these Nordics so damn good at this?)
Tom in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
6 November 2005
Acoustic cover versions are often as annoying as 80s-pop/00s-rap mashups (yes I’m looking at you Frente), but I couldn’t but help to go O WOW OMG!!!eleven at an ad (for a telly and on telly) that had an acoustic cover of The Knife’s “Heartbeats”. See the ad on the ad makers website (click through Work > Sony Bravia). The cover is by Jose Gonzales and there’s one guy on soulseek with the song, but he’s never around, worst luck. No idea about this chap, but top marks for both covering a terrific song and, well, making a pretty good go of it.
Here’s hoping Rex teh Dog (whoever the sodding ARSE he turns out to be) does a remix soon.
[edit/update...]
OK, so first off, i meant Frente were guilty of questionable acoustic cover syndrome. obv. Second, to make up for NYLPM being so apparently behind the times, here is a MASH UP of the original Knife version and this acoustic version that’s doing the rounds on better informed mp3 blogs.
Third and finally Mr Gonzales is an Swede, hence compatriot of Teh Knife, who has many an acoustic cover under his belt it would seem.
Alan in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
1 November 2005
Julie London – “Mickey Mouse March” (it’s a YSI, sorry readers from the future).
This song is tucked away at the end of London’s Nice Girls Don’t Stay For Breakfast album, and is indeed a sultry version of the M-I-C-K-E-Y Mouse theme. It’s odd, and not necessarily good, but it seems quite an early example of i) a ‘classy’ performer reaching out for a ‘trash’ artefact and ii) a style or genre being self-conscious of itself as a style, and hence able to apply that style to ‘unlikely’ material.
(This is 1967 though, which is later than I originally thought, so quite possibly the novelty cover version was already popular as a move.)
Tom in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
28 October 2005
1978 hits include:
- Youre The One That I Want (& all other Grease)
- Take a Chance on Me
- Wuthering Heights
- 3 Times A Lady
- YMCA
- Rivers Of Babylon
Wed-tastic!
Tom in FT /New York London Paris Munich • 5 Comments
The Jimmy Castor Bunch – “Troglodyte”
I can’t remember who introduced me to this song – Mike Daddino, most likely! – but it’s been a perennial playlist favourite ever since. It’s outrageously simple – lecherous caveman monologue, driving groove – but effective and leaves you wanting a lot more. I can’t believe I hadn’t played it out before the last Poptimism, but I hadn’t, and when I did I was gratified at the ‘wtf’ reaction. Yours now to hear and enjoy – all together now, “CAVEmen…caveWOMEN….TROGlodytes!”
(Several more sounds to be found, as ever, on top LJ community Poptimists)
Tom in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
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