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 world’s greatest ever Harlem Shake
THE World’s greatest ever Harlem Shake. A washing machine meme’s it maker:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 20th, February 2013 | In: Music | Comment (1)
Playing Massive Attack’s Tear Drop on an aubergine
CAN you play Massvie Attack’s Tear Drop on an aubergine? j.viewz investigates:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 18th, February 2013 | In: Music | Comment (1)
1954: Woody Guthrie pictured in New York City’s Washington Square Park
1954: Arthur Dubinsky captures Woody Guthrie in New York City’s Washington Square Park. He’s accompanied by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 15th, February 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
Tulisa claims credit for rhyming ‘club’ with ‘up’
A ROW between the X Factor’s self-declared (see tattoo) “Female Boss” Tulisa and The Voice’s “Dope” will.i.am. Tulisa is claiming credit for some of the lyrics on will.i.am and Britney Spears’ hit Scream & Shout.
Tulisa has called in the lawyers. The Daily Mail notes:
One of the lyrics that Tulisa allegedly wrote was: ‘When you hear this in the club, you’d better turn this s**t up.’
Read the rest of this entry »
September 21, 1979: The Clash rock New York’s The Palladium
POP history – September 21, 1979: The Clash rocked New York’s The Palladium for two nights. This footage was shot on 8 mm film footage – the bootleg soundtrack put on later. The second night is celebrated forever. This was the night when Paul Simonon smashed his guitar into the stage at the end of White Riot, the show’s last song. Pennie Smith captured the moment that would form the cover shot of the epic London Calling.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 14th, February 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment (1)
Jim Colerick presents the greatest Songs for Jesus
JESUS Is My Nigga “Pastor Rap”. It’s American pastor Jim Colerick and his wife, Mary Sue, doin’ Rappin’ for Jesus.
My crew is big and it keeps getting bigga, that’s cause Jesus Christ is my ni**a!
We can’t find much news on Colerick. But rumours are that he operates at West Dubuque 2nd Church Of Christ.
If it is a spoof, it’s a pretty good one. These, however, are true. Really. This actually happened. These tunes prove the point: the Devil has all the best songs:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 12th, February 2013 | In: Key Posts, Music | Comment (1)
When David Bowie committed Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide live
THE Pope has resigned. Many of his workmates were shocked at the surprise announcement. But Benedict XVI is not the first. There’s precedent there:
Posted: 11th, February 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
RIP Paul Tanner inventor of the Electro-Theremin.
RIP Paul Tanner, the musician who played trombone with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and who, with Bob Whitsell, created the Electro-Theremin.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 10th, February 2013 | In: Flashback, Music | Comment
Eurovision stars: Yan Kasepava shows Gloria Gaynor Azerbaijan the door
ONE day theEuroVision masters will realise that they are sitting on a gold. Forget the voting. Just play every act that wants to enter the show one after the other. No judges. No voiceovers. Nothing added. Just people on stage singing. To kick of the newlook show, here’s Azerbaijan’s Yan Kasepava showing Gloria Gaynor the door:
Posted: 7th, February 2013 | In: Music, TV & Radio | Comment (1)
RIP Reg Presley: the star who let others shine
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 5th, February 2013 | In: Celebrities, Music | Comment
1985: LL Cool J plays Colby College in Waterville, Maine
BEFORE he was mega, LL Cool J was a 17-year-old who for $500 could be booked to played Colby College in Waterville, Maine. It was June 1985, when LL Cool J and his co-star DJ Cut Creator rolled into that venue. Were the crowd up for scratching? LL Cool J was cool enough to realise his crowd. He did not play the Birdie Song and invite the kids and mums lolling about the place to clap along. He invited DJ Cut Creator to show them what scratching was.
Says someone who was there:
LL was paid $500 for the show. Since he was the only rap act, he was worried it would a be short performance, so my dad suggested he fill it in with the scratching and beat boxing. LL was signed to Def Jam. My dad tried to get RUN DMC, but could not afford them, so Def Jam told him he should bring up LL Cool J.
Read the rest of this entry »
School camp on acid: Cyriak does it for Bonobo (video)
AT Anorak, we love Cyriak’s work. Ever since we saw teddy bears on Worthing Seafront, we’ve been watching. Now he’s created a video for Bonobo. If you’ve never taken acid (she has), this is a pretty decent take on what it’s like:
12 obscure David Bowie gems today’s artists would kill for
SO. David Bowie’s somewhat nondescript new single hit number one, and the newspapers are hailing his new album as a masterpiece, as they have done with every album he has produced since his last commercially successful ‘LP’ (as then was) 33 years ago.
Those themselves under the age of 33 might be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about, but the fact is that Bowie remains the sole pop artist worthy of standing alongside the giants of the 1960s. Between 1969 and 1977 he produced a series of albums to rank, in their range and quality, with those of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Who and the rest. Some would go further and argue that his mid-sixties, late seventies and early eighties work deserves equal billing too.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 17th, January 2013 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comments (3)
David Bowie is not so Sweet
SELF-publicising Tory Iain Dale offers a view on the new David Bowie record:
I really don’t like David Bowie… He’s not a patch on Sparks, Roxette, Meat Loaf and Sir Cliff. Just my humble opinion!
Taste is individual. But, as our Tim puts it, you should perhaps be held accountable if you have no taste at all.
Posted: 10th, January 2013 | In: Music | Comment (1)
Xmas Classics: Jan Terri sings ‘Excuse My Christmas’
THE 1970s were the golden age of the Chrismas hit. But Jan Terri is here to make the 21st Century rock with her “comeback hit” Excuse My Christmas:
Excused:
Christmas hits: those Seventies seasonal smashes
Seventies seasonal smashes
From the time when Christmas records ruled the Earth
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 20th, December 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
Thamys sings Party @ Ur House: try to be out
SONG of the Week: Thamys sings Party @ Ur House. This one has the lot:
Tom Waits and John Desmore write on allowing their songs to be used in adverts
TOM Waits has view on recording artistes who let marketing wonks use their songs in adverts. In this letter, Waits refers to the 2002 article in The Nation by John Densmore of The Doors (highlights after the letter):
Woodland Hills, Calif.
Thank you for your eloquent “rant” by John Densmore of The Doors on the subject of artists allowing their songs to be used in commercials [“Riders on the Storm,” July 8]. I spoke out whenever possible on the topic even before the Frito Lay case (Waits v. Frito Lay), where they used a sound-alike version of my song “Step Right Up” so convincingly that I thought it was me. Ultimately, after much trial and tribulation, we prevailed and the court determined that my voice is my property.
Songs carry emotional information and some transport us back to a poignant time, place or event in our lives. It’s no wonder a corporation would want to hitch a ride on the spell these songs cast and encourage you to buy soft drinks, underwear or automobiles while you’re in the trance. Artists who take money for ads poison and pervert their songs. It reduces them to the level of a jingle, a word that describes the sound of change in your pocket, which is what your songs become. Remember, when you sell your songs for commercials, you are selling your audience as well.
When I was a kid, if I saw an artist I admired doing a commercial, I’d think, “Too bad, he must really need the money.” But now it’s so pervasive. It’s a virus. Artists are lining up to do ads. The money and exposure are too tantalizing for most artists to decline. Corporations are hoping to hijack a culture’s memories for their product. They want an artist’s audience, credibility, good will and all the energy the songs have gathered as well as given over the years. They suck the life and meaning from the songs and impregnate them with promises of a better life with their product.
Eventually, artists will be going onstage like race-car drivers covered in hundreds of logos. John, stay pure. Your credibility, your integrity and your honor are things no company should be able to buy.
TOM WAITS
Densmore:
Dread ripples through me as I listen to a phone message from our manager saying that we (The Doors) have another offer of huge amounts of money if we would just allow one of our songs to be used as the background for a commercial. They don’t give up! I guess it’s hard to imagine that everybody doesn’t have a price. Maybe ’cause, as the cement heads try to pave the entire world, they’re paving their inner world as well. No imagination left upstairs…
It all started in 1967, when Buick proffered $75,000 to use “Light My Fire” to hawk its new hot little offering–the Opel. As the story goes–which everyone knows who’s read my autobiography or seen Oliver
Stone’s movie–Ray, Robby and John (that’s me) OK’d it, while Jim was out of town. He came back and went nuts. And it wasn’t even his song (Robby primarily having penned “LMF”)! In retrospect, his calling up Buick and saying that if they aired the ad, he’d smash an Opel on television with a sledgehammer was fantastic! I guess that’s one of the reasons I miss the guy.It actually all really started back in ’65, when we were a garage band and Jim suggested sharing all the songwriting credits and money. Since he didn’t play an instrument–literally couldn’t play one chord on piano or guitar, but had lyrics and melodies coming out of his ears–the communal pot idea felt like a love-in…
Vaclav Havel had it right when he took over as president of Czechoslovakia, after the fall of Communism. He said, “We’re not going to rush into this too quickly, because I don’t know if there’s that much difference between KGB and IBM.”…
The late, transcendental George Harrison had something to say about this issue. The Beatles “could have made millions of extra dollars [doing commercials], but we thought it would belittle our image or our songs,” he said. “It would be real handy if we could talk to John [Lennon]…because that quarter of us is gone…and yet it isn’t, because Yoko’s there, Beatling more than ever.” Was he talking about the Nike ad, or John and Yoko’s nude album cover shot now selling vodka?…
So, in the spirit of the Bob Dylan line, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears,” we have been manipulated, begged, extorted and bribed to make a pact with the devil. While I was writing this article, Toyota Holland went over the line and did it for us. They took the opening melodic lines of “Light My Fire” to sell their cars. We’ve called up attorneys in the Netherlands to chase them down, but in the meantime, folks in Amsterdam think we sold out. Jim loved Amsterdam.
John Densmore
Spotters: DM and The Nation
John Travolta and Olivia New Ton John says I Think You Might Like It (video)
JOHN Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, the one-time screen couple (Grease) say I Think You Might Like It.
This is what Happened to Sandy and Danny after their car took off into the skies. Danny’s jacket wore thin on the elbows, forcing him to patch it up with his head. Olivia opted for rubber*.
* Faces are inter-changeable.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 6th, December 2012 | In: Music | Comments (2)
Will Muhammad Shahid Nazir, 31, aka £1 Fish Man, deliver the Christmas Number 1?
WILL Muhammad Shahid Nazir, 31, aka £1 Fish Man, deliver the Christmas Number 1? His The £1 Fish Song is in all good and bad record shops on 9 December.
Nazir, who sings his song at Queen’s Market, Upton Park, London, has signed a deal with Warners.
The B-side does not feature a Turkey Song, which is disappointing…
Read the rest of this entry »
The Anthology album of Rolling Stones secret songs
No Stone Unturned
As the Rolling Stones begin their 50th Anniversary with a tour, TV celebrations and yet another greatest hits compilation, we present our own tribute. Unlike their Sixties rivals the Beatles, they have never received the Anthology treatment, and obscure gems from their heyday remain uncollected and largely overlooked. So here, in the interests of history, is Anorak’s album of Stones secrets…
1965: Ride On, Baby
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 26th, November 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment (1)
How the Hit Parade moved from phonograph needles, platters and sleaze to MP3s
SIXTY years ago, the first British singles chart – or “Hit Parade” as it was called – was published. It appeared in the New Musical Express, and it was a top twelve that contained fifteen platters, on account of the joint number sevens, joint number eights and joint number elevens. Al Martino was number one with Here In My Heart. Only one of the discs was available in the new-fangled 45-revolutions-per-minute 7-inch vinyl format; the rest came as easily-breakable shellac 78s, for which the term “smash hit” was all too apt.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 25th, November 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
