Music Category
Music news and reviews, music videos and tittle tattle, with a lingering look at the past from Anorak. A source for rock, pop, album and live music, new releases, artist interviews and features.
Ode to a Highflying Bird – Charlie Watts’ Jazz Book
Charlie Watts left behind not just a catalogue of great music and performances but a book. The trained graphic designer and musician best known as the drummer with The Rolling Stones loved jazz. In 1960, he wrote and illustrated a children’s book, a tribute to Charlie Parker called Ode to a Highflying Bird – “Frustrated with what life had to offer him in his hometown, he packed his whistle, pecked his ma goodbye and flew from his nest in Kansas City bound for New York.” As Watts recalled, “This guy who published ‘Rolling Stones Monthly’ saw my book and said ‘Ah, there’s a few bob in this!’” The book was published by London’s Beat Publications on January 17, 1965, and cost 7 shillings.
Spotter: UDiscoverMusic
Posted: 26th, August 2021 | In: Books, Celebrities, Music | Comment
When and why Charlie Watts punched Mick Jagger, by Keith Richards
Charlie Watts has died. The coolest and best looking Rolling Stone by far. In Keith’s autobiography, we get a bit of Charlie we can admire:
Spotter: Andrew Beasley
Posted: 24th, August 2021 | In: Books, Celebrities, Key Posts, Music, News | Comment
Dread Beat and Blood: Lynton Kwesi Johnson, the Brixton Riots and The Spectator’s ‘Immigrant Swamp’
People had been getting angry. Forty years ago they’d had enough of heavy-handed police tactics and unchecked racism. On April 11, 1981, 13 young black people were killed in a fire at a house party in New Cross, London – an act of suspected arson for which no-one has been arrested. The Metropolitan Police were too busy looking for crime elsewhere to seek justice for the victims. The Met was busy sussing out suspected criminals using a system based on skin colour. Operation Swamp “resulted in a significant number of black youths being stopped and searched”. In 1978 Margaret Thatcher asserted that Britain “might be rather swamped by people of a different culture”.
Brixton in south London, exploded in rage. At around eight o’clock on the Saturday evening of 14 April 1981, someone threw a Molotov cocktail through a window of The George Hotel on the corner of Effra Parade and Railton Road. This was night two of what came to be known as the Brixton riots. In the 1970s The George had been the subject of several local marches. The South London Press wrote that the arson was “undoubtedly an act of revenge for years of racial discrimination”.
The music of Lynton Kwesi Johnson took on a prescience. In 1982, The Spectator noted that Johnson’s poetry written in Jamican patois “wreaked havoc in schools and helped to create a generation of rioters and illiterates”. Slum music for slum people. In 2012, Johnson’s dub poetry won the Golden PEN award for his “distinguished service to literature”. This was music and poetry as forces for understanding and liberation.
“In terms of our country, it would be foolish to say that we haven’t made some progress. Because we have,” he said in 2018. The poet who arrived in the UK from Jamaica when he was 11, went on: “But, right now, we are living through a time of reaction; the rise of Conservative populism. And some things simply won’t go away. I’m sure I’ll be crucified for saying this, but I believe that racism is very much part of the cultural DNA of this country, and most probably has been so from imperial times. And, in spite of the progress that we have made, it’s there. It is something we have to contend with in our everyday lives.”
Musical Knives from the Renaissance
If you didn’t know the tune at a Renaissance dinner party sing-along, you could read the lyrics and music score etched on your fish knife. Maya Corry, of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, says these musical knives (notation knives) offer “insight into that harmonious, audible aspect of family devotions”. That’s the kind of well-educated guess future generations with access to digital files won’t have to make when they eye a post-prandial karaoke machine. “The sharp, wide steel would have been ideal for cutting and serving meat,” writes Eliza Grace Martin at WQXR, “and the accentuated tip would have made for a perfect skewer.” Knives for cutting and stabbing..? Well, if you say so.
As Josh Jones notes, Kristen Kalber, curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, says “diners in very grand feasts didn’t cut their own meat.” That right? No, “we are not entirely sure” what the knives were used for, she adds.
But we do know that each knife had a different piece of music on each side, and that a set of them together contained different harmony parts in order to turn a roomful of diners into a chorus. One set of blades had the grace on one side, with the inscription, “the blessing of the table. May the three-in-one bless that which we are about to eat.” The other side holds the benediction, to be sung after the dinner: “The saying of grace. We give thanks to you God for your generosity.”
Chopsticks wasn’t written until the late 19th Century, and spoons didn’t get going until the 1950s. But pass the tuning fork, and we’ll sing for our supper.
Spotter: Open Culture, WQXR/@tedgioia
Posted: 6th, April 2021 | In: Music, Strange But True | Comment
Portable Radio – ‘Portable Radio’ (Crimson Crow Records, 2011)
Portable Radio have been chugging along nicely with a handful of releases, kicking off with the baroque pop double-header ‘Seven Hills’/’Parades’ and a pair of releases in the form of a smart Christmas Selection Box and a self-titled EP, filled with rich harmonies and killer pop sensibilities.
Now, with the release of the debut album – again eponymous – Portable Radio signalled the end of winter with lead track ‘Hot Toddy’, a slice of perfect pop that has echoes of The Zombies and current West Coast darlings, Drugdealer.
In the digital age, bands have been allowed to let their songs meander and sprawl, with LPs running as long as they please in a bid to fudge the streaming system with length rather than precision – but there’s none of that with this analogue gem – 11 tracks, totalling just over 30 minutes, with each song treated like its own single to hover around the 3-minute mark. The Lovin’ Spoonful always treated their album cuts with the same due care and attention as the hits, and its clear Portable Radio are carrying that same torch.
There are flashes of the Electric Light Orchestra, Hall & Oates, Carole King, post Beatles McCartney, and the pure pop of ABBA, The Carpenters, and a host of bubblegum psychedelia and West Coast magic.
Tracks like ‘Rise Above’ find the band in more reflective mode, but it still gallops along, with aching brass and the kind of fond observation you might find in say, Gilbert O’Sullivan or Weyes Blood. ‘Darling, Hold On’ and ‘Colour Me Impressed’ are kitchen sink dramas, loaded up to high heaven with layers of angelic vocals and bruised instrumentation, while ‘Should’ve Bounced’, ‘The Switch’ and ‘Worse Case Scenario’ and power pop bops that’ll have you out of your seat.
The band themselves swap lead vocal duties and swap instruments, dragging their friends along for the ride, with an LP that’s free of much of the naval gazing that understandably crept its way into many releases during these dark, weird times. While the sound is steeped in the perfect pop of the past, this isn’t some tedious facsimile of years gone by – it’s sounding fresh and pointing to a more hopeful period when we’re all able to mess around outside and get a cuddle and let the hysterical politicians and talking heads wither on the vine.
It’s an assured LP that sounds like Portable Radio have been around forever. If you’re in the market for fantastic 3-minute pocket symphonies, the Portable Radio’s debut album is the one for you.
Jimmy Savile all over an underage Coleen Nolan in 1979
Former Nolan Sister singer Coleen Nolan says paedophile BBC DJ and TV ‘personality’ Jimmy Savile invited her to his hotel when she was 14. The Nolans had been on BBC TV’s Top of The Pops in 1979 when the man who died innocent and blameless before being outed as a prolific child rapist promised to “look after her”. Nolan thought Savile a “dirty old man” and declined. “I’ve got four sisters on the stage that would have beaten the crap out of him.”
Here’s the footage of Savile hiding in full view – at the 4-minute mark:
Posted: 18th, March 2021 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Music, News, TV & Radio | Comment
Aphex Twin sells Virtual art for virtual fortune
Electronic musician Aphex Twin, aka Richard James, has sold an NFT (non-fungible token) for $127,000 in Ether. The genuine digital artwork called “/Afx/weirdcore,” features an animated version of the artist’s face with sound. Fans will recognise it as harking back to the cover of Aphex Twin’s I Care Because You Do studio album released in 1995.
Says Aphex Twin: “We will spend a portion of the money on planting trees* and either donating to permaculture projects or setting them up ourselves, depending on how much we get.”
*Real trees?
Posted: 16th, March 2021 | In: Money, Music, News, The Consumer | Comment
Musician identifies the classical music played in famous cartoons
Vincent Alexander (@NonsenseIsland on Twitter) writes that many of us were introduced to classical music from watching old cartoons. “I’m going to identify the pieces that frequently popped up,” he writes:
One of the most recognizable is Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2,” performed by those great piano virtuosos Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry.
Posted: 11th, March 2021 | In: Key Posts, Music, News, TV & Radio | Comment
Guide to the Cults – 1979
Youth tribes featured in the Daily Mirror’s ‘Guide to Cults’ in 1979. There were Skinheads, who loved reggae and “enjoy fighting”. One of those parts is correct. Skinheads embraced Caribbean music and style (see Rude Boys) and rejected the airy-fairy tosh of middle-class Hippies, who are, let’s face it, irritating, entitled and often eschew capitalism and consumerism because mum and dad have private means. These Skinheads not be confused with the later Dickheads, who are into racism. The rest: Mods, Bowies, Punks, Rude Boys (the best of the best) and Roots Boys are all highly loveable characters who share a love for good music and embracing the day. Hippies smell of mould and old money.
Posted: 5th, March 2021 | In: Fashion, Music, Tabloids | Comment
The Radiohead Public Library is open and free to use
Radiohead are giving away free music. They stole the hackers’ thunder when demos for the band’s 1997’s smash hit album OK Computer were stolen by releasing 18 hours of the material free to stream or buy for a limited time. All proceeds went to charity. Then more. The band’s archive is available in a free “public library” – go there to claim your click and print library card.
Spotter: Rolling Stone.
Posted: 26th, February 2021 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment
Tom Waits & Cookie Monster mashup – sing God’s Away On Business
YouTuber cookiewaits has created this terrific mashup of Tom Waits and Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster singing God’s Away On Business. The singer and cookie enthusiast do sound remarkably alike.
Posted: 12th, February 2021 | In: Music, TV & Radio | Comment
Hear James Baldwin’s great record collection on a Spotify playlist
You can hear American writer James Baldwin’s record collection as Spotify playlist. In his hymned work Another Country, Baldwin hailed the creative power of music:
The beat: hands, feet, tambourines, drums, pianos, laughter, curses, razor blades: the man stiffening with a laugh and a growl and a purr and the woman moistening and softening with a whisper and a sigh and a cry. The beat – in Harlem in the summertime one could almost see it, shaking above the pavements and the roof.
Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi, a curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, has gone further, creating a playlist of Baldwin’s listening. “I latched onto his records, their sonic ambience,” says Onyewuenyi. “In addition to reading the books and essays, listening to the records was something that could transport me there.”
Image: CC – Allan Warren – James Baldwin taken Hyde Park, London
Spotter: Flashbak, Hyperallergic
Posted: 31st, December 2020 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment
Lux Interior of The Cramps Christmas mix tape download
Kristian Hoffman received a mix tapes of Christmas songs from Lux Interior of The Cramps. Called ‘Jeezus Fuck, It’s Christmas!!!’, you can download it. Says Hoffman on his Facebook page:
Lux Interior used to make holiday cassettes for me, and so many of his friends. As odd as it seems, he was all about sharing. Listening to this one right now.
You can get more files at WFMU Ichiban.
Spotter: flashbak
Ye Motherf*cker : listen to a medley of Medieval hip hop covers
Helping us know what hip hop sounds like on Medieval instruments is Beedle the Bardcore . Listen out for twinkling, instrumental version of songs by Wu-Tang Clan, Eminem, Coolio & L.V, 2Pac and The Fugees.
Would be interesting to hear what rappers make of Medieval texts, like Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:
“This Absolon gan wype his mouth ful drie./ Dirk was the nyght as pich or as the cole,/ And at the wyndow out she pitte hir hole./ And Absolon hym fil no bet ne wers,/ But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers/ Ful savourly er he was war of this./ Abak he stirte and thoughte it was amys,/ For wel he wiste a woman hath no berd./ He felte a thyng al rough and longe yherd/ And seyde, “Fy! Allas! What have I do?”/ “Tehee,” quod she and clapte the wyndow to.”
Endeth.
Spotter: Laughing Squid
You scumbags, you faggots: BBC censors The Pogues Fairytale of New York
‘You scumbag, you maggot /
You cheap lousy faggot /
Happy Christmas your arse /
I pray God it’s our last.’
Prudes at the achingly stiff BBC Radio 1 have censored The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York. Words deemed too strong for the Beeb’s youth audience have been purged. This is of course marvellous news for The Pogues because there is no surer way to blunt the once edgy and hip than to have it endorsed by the BBC. Ban it. And ban it good. The kids will seek it out.
Listeners to Radio 1 will not hear Kirsty MacColl and Shane MacGowan sing “faggot” and “slut”. Instead it’s “haggard’ and “slut” gets beeped out. Oddly, BBC Radio 2 will air the full version and in a sop to further management cowardice 6 Music will allow its DJs to choose the version they wish to play. So if you want to hear the uncensored version, kids, tune into the station once reserved for middle-aged roadkill.
The BBC says: “We know the song is considered a Christmas classic and we will continue to play it this year, with our radio stations choosing the version of the song most relevant for their audience.”
So there it is. The young must be protected from hearing bad words and so remain on the ‘right side of history’. Meanwhile… here’s on Radio 1 is a song about Cardi B’s vagina:
Alexander Dorogokupetz : the teenager who threw eggs at Frank Sinatra and lived to tell the tale
On Flashbak the story of Alexander Dorogokupetz, the 18-year-old who carried a small bag containing three eggs into a Frank Sinatra concert and tossed them at the singer. He struck a few days after the so-called Columbus Day riot, when as many as 35,000 bobbysoxers overwhelmed the area around New York City’s Paramount Theatre for a chance to see the return of the dreamy Frank Sinatra.
There was a lot that irritated Dorogokupetz about Sinatra and his fans. In particular, the bow ties frustrated him, those famous bow ties they were famous for wearing. Why, he thought, did people say he looked like Sinatra if he wore one, and not that Sinatra looked like him? He had a collection of two hundred bow ties at home, and had got his first when he was seven years old. Bow ties were his thing, not Sinatra’s.
…
There was a lot that irritated Dorogokupetz about Sinatra and his fans. In particular, the bow ties frustrated him, those famous bow ties they were famous for wearing. Why, he thought, did people say he looked like Sinatra if he wore one, and not that Sinatra looked like him? He had a collection of two hundred bow ties at home, and had got his first when he was seven years old. Bow ties were his thing, not Sinatra’s.
…
Sinatra began singing I Don’t Know Why (I Just Do). This was what Dorogokupetz had wanted, a romantic song, the more romantic the better. He thought of himself as a singer too, having been in the choir at high school. Sometimes, he told people he was a better singer than Sinatra. As proof, he would sing a plaintive duet, done solo.
He threw the first egg gently, and missed. The second, more forceful, hit Sinatra between his eyes, as he was singing the first “you” of the song, his mouth open: “I don’t know why I love you…”
Sinatra stopped.
The third egg hit him on the chest of his gray suit, glancing his bow tie. For each egg, there was a gasp from the crowd. The “horde of female rug-cutters,” the papers said, “were confronted with the deliberate desecration of their bow-tie idol.” Someone shouted, “get the skunk who done it!”
The Teenager Who Egged Frank Sinatra And The Bobby Sox Riot – New York City, 1944
Posted: 1st, October 2020 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Music | Comment
State approved rap rebel Wiley finds sympathy in the Guardian and NME – antisemitism is mainstream and the Left is OK with it
The musician Wiley (MBE for services to music), aka Richard Cowie, is in the news over what the Indy calls “antisemitic social media posts”. Tweets include: “I would challenge the whole world of Jewish community on my own I am not scared I can handle them”; “There are 2 sets of people who nobody has really wanted to challenge #Jewish & #KKK but being in business for 20 years you start to undestand [sic] why … Red Necks Are the KKK and Jewish people are the Law…Work that out.”; “If you work for a company owned by 2 Jewish men and you challenge the Jewish community in anyway of course you will get fired.” In a video reported on by ITV, Wiley says, “crawl out from under your little rocks and defend your Jewish privilege”.
The establishment have loved Wiley. They gave him an MBE. They praised him:
And how did the Press and big brand media respond to Wiley’s recent nastiness? With blinkers on – by making it mostly about Israel. And you know how it’s ok to hate Israel:
Thankfully, some people get it:
You can say what you like about Jews. Anti-semitism is mainstream.
Posted: 25th, July 2020 | In: Key Posts, Music, News | Comment
Those Beastie Boys videos have been remastered in HD
The Beastie Boys’ videos have always been immensely enjoyable. Ever since She’s on It (1985), the band has been cranking out a lively and fun blast of sight and sound. And now they’ve remastered 36 of their videos for the internet age.
Six of the video were directed by Spike Jonze, who also directed the Beastie Boys Story film. The pick of the bunch has to be the video for Sabotage.
The Beastie Boys love the fisheye lens:
Check out the playlist.
Fight Coronavirus with a DEVO Energy Dome PPE face guard
DEVO are helping the world fight coronavirus with their personal protective face shield, modelled on their Energy Dome. You can buy one here.
Against all odds after unfortunate experiences with some bad actors & pandemic related delays, we are now able to offer cool DEVO stuff to any spud who might want it. In addition to the masks and classic T’s we have a spiffy, clear plastic, DEVO PPS Shield that is designed to attach easily to the DEVO Energy Dome to protect you from invisible microbes and unwanted bodily fluids. Stay safe in devolved style!
Wear one and feel cosmic energy vibrate thought your body”
It was designed according to ancient ziggurat mound proportions used in votive worship. Like the mounds, it collects energy and recirculates it. In this case, the Dome collects the Orgone energy* that escapes from the crown of the human head and pushes it back into the Medulla Oblongata for increased mental energy.
Posted: 16th, May 2020 | In: Music, The Consumer | Comment
John Prine sings Sam Stone
Chicago folk musician John Prine (10 October 1946 – 7 April 2020) recorded Sam Stone “to say something about our soldiers who’d go over to Vietnam, killing people and not knowing why you were there”. He told Rolling Stone in 2018: “And then a lot of soldiers came home and got hooked on drugs and never could get off of it. I was just trying to think of something as hopeless as that. My mind went right to ‘Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose.’ I said, ‘That’s pretty hopeless.’” Sam Stone was voted the 8th saddest song of all time in a Rolling Stone readers’ poll. It’s beautiful:
Make Your Own Vinyl Records with an Easy Record Maker
You don’t need a factory to make vinyl records. Japanese artist Yuri Suzuki has crested the Easy Record Maker:
To cut a record, you simply play audio through an aux cable and lift the cutting arm onto a blank disc. Once the record is cut, you can instantly play back your recording through the tone arm and the in built speaker!
More like cute your own records — look at how wee this thing is:
Spotter: Kottke, Design Week
Posted: 6th, April 2020 | In: Music, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Lawyer creates 68 billion musical melodies by algorithm so you can never be sued for copyright infringement
Two lawyers think if every piece of 12-note musical melody can be created by an algorithm then all music is publicly owners and nobody gets sued for copyright theft. So lawyers Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin came up with a way to record all melodies because, as they see it, only a finite number of melodies can exist.
Riehl explained more in a Tedx Talk. The crux is that music becomes copyrighted the moment it’s recorded and anyone can be sued for “subconscious infringement”. You can be an unwitting thief if a melody in your song sounds like a melody in one of thousands of songs that formed your musical appreciation. The other argument is that hasn’t Riehl just infringed the copyright of thousands of songs?
You can test the theory flicking through one of the 68 billion melodies created at allthemusic.info.
Posted: 4th, March 2020 | In: Key Posts, Music, Technology | Comment
Paris creates Rue David Bowie – and we’re not sure why
There’s to be a street in Paris named in honour of David Bowie. “There will soon be a Rue David Bowie in the 13th arrondissement of Paris,” says district Paris mayor Jerome Coumet. Although “the naming must be approved by the Paris council in February”.
We know Bowie, a Londoner, moved to Switzerland, West Berlin and New York City, but why Paris? He was familiar with Jacques Brel and Marcel Marceau, sure, and did smoke Gitanes for a while when living in LA, but for the major to say Bowie “had a strong link with the city of lights” is a bit of a push – like saying Lou Reed is synonymous with the London Underground, no?
Posted: 4th, February 2020 | In: Celebrities, Music, News | Comment
Art Nouveau and the path to psychedelic 1960s music posters
All great art contains a degree of copying. Those psychedelic 1960s music posters borrow much from Art Nouveau, which borrowed from the Arts & Crafts Movement. In his 1920 work The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, T. S. Eliot looks at how imitation is one form of flattery:
One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
Martin Hohn, president of the Rock Poster Society, has a word:
“You can draw a straight line between Art Nouveau and psychedelic rock posters,” Martin Hohn, president of the Rock Poster Society, says. “Mucha, Jules Chéret, Aubrey Beardsley. Borrow from everything. The world is your palette. It was all meant to be populist art. It was always meant to be disposable.” He later adds: “What the artists were saying graphically was the same thing the rock bands were saying musically.”
Norman Orr, who did about a dozen posters for Bill Graham from 1970 to ’71, says he was influenced by was the Moravian artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939). “It was the sensuality of the graceful, flowing lines of the Mucha work, and the way that the female form was combined with the sensuality of the line work that I found to be most appealing.”
Buy gorgeous Art Nouveau posters here.
Spotter: Kottke
Posted: 20th, November 2019 | In: Music, News, The Consumer | Comment
Kurt Cobain’s cherry-burned sweater sells for $334,000
Someone just paid $334,000 for a cardigan with stains and a cherry burn hole in it. The green cardi was worn by Kurt Cobain for Nirvana’s 1993 MTV Unplugged performance.
“This cardigan, it’s the holy grail of any article of clothing that he ever wore,” says Darren Julien, CEO and president of Julien’s Auctions. “Kurt created the grunge look; he didn’t wear show clothes,”
Posted: 29th, October 2019 | In: Celebrities, Music, News, The Consumer | Comment
