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.
The Clash live in Tokyo 1982 – the full concert of the band’s last original line-up show
IN the first two months of 1982 the Clash stormed Japan. Their tour of the Far East was the last time the original line-up toured together: drummer Topper Headon was soon after rusticated for taking too many drugs.
On the fourth night of eight-date Japan leg, The Clash played Nakano Sun Plaza. It was January 28, 1982. The Japanese crowd were prevented from going truly wild by a local rule: they could only stand up if they remained by their seats.
Here below is the show in full. Look out for Paul Simonon’s wife Pearl Harbor (a.k.a. Pearl E. Gates) arriving to sing Fujiyama Mama.
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Posted: 29th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
Hey Lulu: The stoned and brilliant performance that saw Jimi Hendrix banned from the BBC
ON January 4, 1969 Jimi Hendrix appeared on Happening for Lulu. Sharing the bill with Pan’s People, Badfinger and Johnny Harris, Hendrix and his Experience would perform a duet with the Shout singer at the BBC’s London studios. Well, they were supposed to. But it never did happen.
Charles R Cross recalls what occurred in his book Room Full of Mirrors. After breaking into Hey Joe, as arranged and introduced by the pop Pixie, Hendrix had enough:
“We’d like to stop playing this rubbish and dedicate a song to The Cream, regardless of what kind of group they may be in, dedicate to Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce”.
The band then began playing Sunshine of Your Love.
Hendrix told his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham (pictured above in 1969): “I’m not going to sing with Lulu. I’d look ridiculous.”
Noel Redding writes in his book Are You Experienced? The Inside Story of The Jimi Hendrix Experience:
“We cringed,… [tit was] so straight it was only natural that we would try to combat that atmosphere by having a smoke in our dressing room…In our haste, the lump of hash got away and slipped down the sink drainpipe. Panic! We just couldn’t do this show straight–Lulu didn’t approve of smoking! She was then married to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, whom I’d visited and shared a smoke with. I could always tell Lulu was due home when Maurice started throwing open all the windows. Anyway, I found a maintenance man and begged tools from him with the story of a lost ring. He was too helpful, offering to dismantle the drain for us. It took ages to dissuade him, but we succeeded in our task and had a great smoke.”
Photo: Lulu marries Maurice Gibb of the pop group the Bee Gees at the Parish church, Gerrard’s Cross in Buckinghamshire on 18/02/1969.
Redding adds:
“This was fun for us, but producer Stanley Dorfman didn’t take it at all well as the minutes ticked by on his live show. Short of running onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was nothing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talking at the end, played through Stanley tearing his hair, pointing to his watch and silently screaming at us. We played out the show. Afterwards, Dorfman refused to speak to us but the result is one of the most widely used bits of film we ever did. Certainly, it’s the most relaxed.”
Posted: 28th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Justin Bieber alerts fans to the thrill of fizzy mineral water abuse
JUSTIN Bieber has lot of tattoos, gobs on his fans, walks about with his shirt off and pants low, and smokes weed. That makes him gangster.
Justin Bieber is a man-child who travels the world in big cars, grew up in rural Canada and has a private tutor to teach him to place the silent ‘h’ in ghetto. What with his inner-city crib and access to men with big guns, Prince Edward grew up more gangster than Bieber.
But Bieber is making a stab at being street. He’s been picked to rap with Brandon Green, aka Maejor Ali. This is that rap:
“Throwing up a G note/Like I’m at a casino/I’m all fancy yeah/I’m popping Pellegrino.”
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Great music videos: Douglas Hart – X Film Plus Ultra
VIDEO of the day is by Douglas Hart, former bassist in The Jesus and Mary Chain (1984 – 1991).
Spotter: Blank Editions
Who stole Willie’s Nelson stuffed armadillo?
“We now are quite clear as to what the perpetrator looks like. We’re going to close this thing up right and get that armadillo back to Mr. Nelson.”
Kay Petal sells this Willie at Felt Alive:
Posted: 26th, September 2013 | In: Music, Strange But True | Comment
Terrible rap: Top That from 1989 film Teen Witch is a horror show
IN the 1980s, white rap was routinely terrible. In this 1989 teen dream flick Teen Witch, the cast are forced on pain of death (we presume) to perform a rap called Top That.
The film, for those of you not in the know, is:
Louise is not very popular at her highschool. Then she learns that she’s descended from the witches of Salem and has inherited their powers. At first she uses them to get back at the girls and teachers who teased her and to win the heart of the handsome footballer’s captain. But soon she has doubts if it’s right to ‘cheat’ her way to popularity.
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The Top 10 masked bands of all time (volume 1)
SINCE time immemorial singers have coloured their faces or hidden behind masks. The masks enable the singers to be freer, take on news personas and cut loose. We’ve flicked through the record archives here at Anorak Towers and now bring you the Top 10 masked pop stars and groups of all time:
Gwar
Without doubt, the funniest masked band of all time, are the might Gwar. In their time, they’ve cut off limbs, given birth to ghouls and wheeled out giant menstruating beasts on stage. Their warty, demon masks are almost as important as their brand of schlock rock and god bless the lot of ’em.
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Posted: 23rd, September 2013 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment (1)
Old school hop hop megamix 1 and 2
TIME for an old school hop hop megamix. Remember how good this music was when you first heard it. Then the suits polished it into a pop-sized turd.
OldSchoolScholar writes:
This video’s theme is about the culture and music of Hip Hop vs Rap. What we hope you will identify is the enormous amounts of artists, flavors, aesthetics, crews, personalities, and competition that truly made the culture of real Hip Hop. Mainstream Rap, thanks to the corporate recording industry, has essentially stripped the pillars of Hip Hop away from what they call music. Hip Hop is for and from the streets as a true life form. Mainstream Rap is for and from controlled commercial marketing practices to sell products and brands.
We are simply demonstrating the greatness of the Old School and Golden Age of Hip Hop due to its tremendous growth and trailblazing thanks to style wars and battling by being “fresh” out the box every time. Thanks to Mainstream Rap, or Hip Pop, the current market only sells “clones.”
They all sound alike, dress alike, speak alike, deliver alike, and pose alike. Same content. Same gimmicks and artificial flavors.
This is the real Attack of the Clones. We thank the real emcees and artists in the streets for delivering the real Hip Hop like People Under The Stairs, JabberWockeez, East 3, DJ Craze, and Charlie 2na.
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Posted: 21st, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
Musical Youth return to place Welsh children under heavy manners
PUPIL’S at Bryngwyn Comprehensive School have Musical Youth to remind them to pass one another on the left hand side.
Head teacher Paul Jones explains:
“The concept was an innovative and imaginative idea from pupils coming out of a school council meeting. The purpose was to improve the smooth and effective transition, as pupils and staff travel around school between busy lesson changeovers.”
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Posted: 21st, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
Now That’s What I Call Brutality: the songs used to torture prisoners
WHAT music do you hate? What music would drive you mad? We’ve trawled the archives to bring you the list of songs used by torturers to make their victims squirm. Retired US Air Force Lt-Col Dan Kuehl told the St Petersburg Times that it’s nothing new:
“Joshua’s army used horns to strike fear into the hearts of the people of Jericho. His men might not have been able to break down literal walls with their trumpets, but the noise eroded the enemy’s courage.”
Had Joshua played Cliff Richard on vuvuzelas he would have conquered the world.
In his book on experimental intelligence practices, The Men Who Stare At Goats, journalist Jon Ronson traces the technique’s origins to a 1970s military manual recommending loudspeakers playing “indigenous music and words of peace” as a means of demotivating America’s enemies – a strategy which has since left behind its New Age roots for today’s sonic onslaughts.
But what is God’s own music? How do you beat down the enemy? Why, with Now That’s What I Call Brutality:
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Woman forced to listen to The Eagles turns into knife wielding nut
LET’S not rush to judge. But if you music is shite and keeps me up all night (N. Gallagher), things could get messy. Mindful of that we turn to the news that 54-year-old North Charleston woman Vernett Bader, allegedly, was “wielding a knife in an assault on her roommate after he refused to stop listening to rock music by the Eagles on Monday night”.
Bader expressed that she didn’t want to listen to the band. The roommate responded by telling her to shut up, the report states.
Bader grabbed a serrated knife from a kitchen drawer and swung the weapon at the man, police said.
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Posted: 17th, September 2013 | In: Music, Strange But True | Comment
Music GIF: Beyonce pulled off stage in Brazil
TO Brazil, where a fan has pulled Beyonce off the stage. By, then…
In the 1950s Amy Winehouse appeared on the album cover Billy Devroe’s Broad Minded?
IN the 1950s, Billy Devroe & The Devilaires sang and recorded bawdy songs. Albums were called suggestively An Assortment of Party Naughties, Censored, She Gives Food Stamps and Broad Minded.
Anorak has noticed that the female accompaniment on the cover of Broad Minded looks not a lot unlike the late and much missed star Amy Winehouse?
The face rings bell:
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Posted: 15th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment (1)
National Night in Singapore: Mentos mints release rap to promote procreation
THE results are not yet known. We do not know the take-up rate on the drive to make babies on National Day in Singapore this August 9 . The music to procreate by was supplied by Mentos Singapore and BBH Asia Pacific, the rap including such lyrics as:
“As a Singaporean citizen you’ll be doing your civic duty if you forget about the condoms after the fireworks and the parades are all over with. So let’s get fu**ing, shall we?”
“Let’s not watch fireworks, let’s make ‘em instead”
“Singapore’s population, it needs some increasin’ / So forget wavin’ flags, on August 9th we be freaking,”
“Exploring your body like the Night Safari / We gotta go all the way for Singapore”
“It’s National Night, so let’s make some fireworks ignite / It’s National Night, let’s make Singapore’s birthrate spike”
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The 1977 Sex Pistols Christmas Party and Huddersfield cake fight
ON Christmas Day 1977, the Sex Pistols were to Huddersfield for the Sex Pistols Christmas Party. All the cool children were at Ivanhoes to see the Postils play a benefit show for the families of striking firemen and miners. Johhny Rotten served cake to the children of striking miners who thew it back in his face.
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Posted: 11th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comments (2)
Moaning: the secret of the great British pop song, as told by The Jam’s Paul Weller
WHAT’S the secret of a great British pop song? Daniel Rachel talks to The Jam’s Paul Weller and others:
“Down in the Tube Station at Midnight” revealed your sophistication and depth as a songwriter. Can you describe the evolution of that song and your changing ability to hone in on the small and the particular?
That started as a long prose-poem thing, like a short story in a way. It came from my insecurity and paranoia at being in London. I didn’t have any music for it. I was in two minds whether to do it. I was coaxed and talked into it by Vic Smith, our producer at the time. He was saying: “This is really good, you should try and set it to music.” The attention to the details is part of the person I am anyway, but it’s also bound up in the mod ethos which is predominantly all about attention to detail. We were talking about English songwriters: it’s picking up on the mundane, the everyday things and putting them, into a different setting, the very, very ordinary feelings, emotions or details that, once in song, you hear them in a different way. Without something too poncey or pretentious I was thinking about pop artists as well, where they took the everyday objects and made them into art. I don’t think it’s that dissimilar.
What was the appeal in chronicling the mundane?
It’s a very English thing, the way we all like to moan about the weather or we like a cup of tea or a particular f***ing biscuit and all that nonsense, but it’s us. It’s our identity, isn’t it?
Susan Boyle’s Christmas LP to feature Elvis’ ghost
REMEMBER when everyone didn’t think Susan Boyle could sing because she wasn’t a young woman with an attractive face, wearing a snapback cap hi-tops? Then she sang with that soaring Radio 2 voice and everyone felt a bit bad, before continuing to continually talk about her looks because we’d learned nothing?
Well, while everyone has been working out whether they’re arseholes or not, Susan has been conquering the world with her easy-listening, raking in huge amounts of cash and forgetting all about us sausage roll dribbling plebs who have to queue up for things and worry about our mobile bills.
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Posted: 10th, September 2013 | In: Celebrities, Music | Comment (1)
Songs to tan by: Samantha met Doe de Waddy Waddy
SONG of the week: Samantha met Doe de Waddy Waddy.
Samantha seems to be the one in the middle, who looks like John Terry wrapped in old Leeds United flag. The backing signer are dressed by Woman at Grammar for Genitals, a kind of Dutch Caps Lock:
Stage disasters: the unlucky 13 pop stars for whom the show did not always go on
IN this Flashback, we look at State Disasters. The show doesn’t always go on
Beyoncé’s bad hair day had a happy ending – she extricated herself from the fan (mechanical, rather than maniacal in this case).
And at least she had the good humour to see the funny side afterwards – other victims of onstage disasters certainly didn’t. And one didn’t even live to tell the tale…
Syd Barrett
Early signs of the Pink Floyd front-man’s mental disintegration were apparent in 1967. That year he appeared on stage with an entire tube of Brylcreem in his hair into which – according to some accounts – he had crushed a handful of Mandrax tablets. Mandies or not, the lotion melted under the lights, leaving him looking like ‘a guttered candle’. The song Vegetable Man (unreleased) reflected Syd’s self-loathing at the time…
Arthur Brown
Arthur’s bad hair was in a league of its own, thanks to his famous flaming helmet, worn in honour of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s solitary hit, Fire. Its precursor – a colander soaked in methanol – was less successful. The fuel soaked into his scalp and set his head alight at the Windsor Festival in 1967. The fire was put out with beer.
Vince Taylor
The pioneering British rocker is remembered for two things: his classic single Brand new Cadillac and the mental problems, exacerbated by LSD and booze, which led to incidents such as declaring himself the apostle Matthew at one of his London concerts.
David Bowie was a friend of Taylor’s, and recalls encountering Taylor lying on the pavement in Caring Cross Road, studying a map of Europe and pointing out where UFOs would be landing. He later based the character of Ziggy Stardust on Taylor.
Keith Moon
So many to choose from, not least the time he overdosed and fell unconscious twice during a 1973 Who concert in California. After the second incident, Pete Townshend asked if there was a drummer in the audience, and the volunteer played the rest of the set.
Possibly the most spectacular mishap occurred when Moon detonated some powerful fireworks in his drum kit after the band’s 1967 appearance on the Smothers Brothers show. The explosion (7.20 onwards in the clip below) genuinely stunned the hosts, and is blamed by Townshend for his subsequent hearing problems.
Video here.
Frank Zappa
December 1971 was a bad month for the Mothers of Invention. First their equipment was set on fire by a flare fired from the audience during an appearance at the Casio de Montreux. The casino was razed to the ground, and, as a final indignity, the fire inspired Deep Purple to write Smoke on the Water.
Later that month a fan pushed Zappa off the stage at London’s Rainbow Theatre. He fell into the concrete orchestra pit, sustaining serious injuries to his head, neck, back and legs, and crushing his larynx. He was wheelchair-bound for a long period afterwards and his voice deepened significantly.
Patti Smith
The rock poet ‘did a Zappa’ in 1977, with a 15 foot fall into an orchestra pit in Tampa. She broke several vertebrae.
Harry Styles
One Direction’s young shaver was hit squarely in the other kind of ‘orchestra stalls’ by a shoe hurled from the audience during a performance in Glasgow earlier this year.
Stereophonics
The Welsh rockers suffered a less dramatic shock in 2004 when Kelly Jones and Richard Jones were electrocuted at the Bataclan in Paris. Sparks flew but the band played on.
Kris Novoselic
The Nirvana bassist failed to catch his instrument after throwing it in the air during the 1992 Music Video Awards. Apparently he still has a dent in his head.
Iggy Pop
In 201o, Iggy Pop dived at the New York crowd; and missed.
“When I landed it hurt and I made a mental note that Carnegie Hall would be a good place for my last stagedive. The audience were just like, ‘What are you doing?'”
Les Harvey
The mother of all stage accidents occurred the following year during a Stone The Crows gig the Top Rank Suite in Swansea. Les Harvey (brother of The Sensational Alex) touched an unearthed microphone with wet hands and was killed on the spot.
And finally…
U2
Our favourite. Life imitates art as the Irish megastars suffer a Spinal Tap moment – trapped inside a 40ft mechanical lemon. When the fruit malfunctioned the band were forced to clamber out of the back during their PopMart tour in Oslo.
Posted: 6th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Beyond parody: The Ministry of Sound sues spotify over playlists
THIS really does take the cake:
Dance music empire the Ministry of Sound is suing music streaming service Spotify to protect the value of its compilation albums, in an unusual test case of European intellectual property law.
The legendary clubbing empire launched proceedings in the UK High Court on Monday. It wants an injunction requiring Spotify to remove the playlists and also wants the music streaming service to permanently block other playlists that copy its compilations. The company is also seeking damages and costs.
No, they’re not suing them over having copied the music: Spotify already has all the licences it needs from the record companies. It’s not even something that Spotify is doing: it’s the users who are creating the playlists.
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Terrible Tunes: Mickey Katz’s K’nish Doctor
TERRIBLE Tunes presents Mickey Katz ‘s K’nish Doctor.
In his biography, Katz recalls asking a radio station manager why he wouldn’t play any of his records:
I asked him why he wouldn’t play my records. He said, “Because some of our listeners are offended.”
I asked, “Who, besides you?”
He said, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
I answered, “I think it is my business because this is how I make a living. You play Italian records, you play Polish records–”
He cut me off. “I will not play any record with Yiddish in it. Yiddish is the language of the ghetto.”
“My friend,” I said, “Yiddish is the language of our forefathers.”
“I do not care to hear it.”
“Then why don’t you play some of my instrumental records? They’re some of the greatest music in the world, played by some of the greatest musicians in the world-Ziggy Elman, Mannie Klein, Nat Farber–”
Again he cut me off mid-sentence. “There will be no Yiddish spoken, or Jewish music played, on this station.”
Katz’s other tunes include: Borscht Riders in the Sky, Old Black Smidgick, She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Katzkills, Barber of Schlemiel, and That Pickle in the Window (How Much Is).
Posted: 4th, September 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
Don’t know what Twerking is? Let Morgan Freeman explain…
EVERYONE has learned a new word this week – ‘twerking’. Everyone is tittering away about it and saying ‘I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TWERKING IS!’, almost constantly.
And so, to clear things up, Morgan Freeman is going to explain what twerking is in a new video. And then, we’ll give you an instructional video.
In the video, Freeman says:
“The word twerking has now been added to the Oxford dictionary. Here’s the definition they gave: To dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner, involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.'”
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Posted: 2nd, September 2013 | In: Celebrities, Music | Comment
Bad Ad Watch: Status Quo for Australian shop Coles
BAD Ad Watch: Status Quo for Australian shop Coles:
Are you with the Quo or Adele, who said:
“I don’t want my name anywhere near another brand. I don’t wanna be tainted, or haunted, and I don’t wanna sell out in any way. I think it’s shameful.”
Was Bill Hicks right – are the Quo now “off the artistic roll call forever. You’re another whore at the capitalist gang bang … Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink.”
Are the Quo selling groceries or just selling out?
Posted: 28th, August 2013 | In: Music, The Consumer, TV & Radio | Comments (3)
