Vaguely Obsessed

I've found myself really getting into Roxy Music as of late, totally independent of the fact that they have announced dates over the summer (notably at Lovebox and Bestival). Not knowing a great deal about their back catalogue I decided to dedicate some time to find out more.

The album For Your Pleasure (1973) is a particularly brilliant piece of work and, for me, one of the many stand out tracks is In Every Dream Home a Heartache. The first half of the song is chilling, with Bryan Ferry robotically serenading a blow-up doll whilst simulataneously trying to find meaning in the empty materialism which surrounds him, but the real pay off is in the second part: a decadent descent into God knows what.

Doug Fieger, R.I.P.

I read the news today, oh boy, and I saw that Doug Fieger, lead singer and songwriter with pop/rock gems The Knack, known for their number one hit My Sharona, had lost his battle with cancer.

Arguably the one hit wonder to end all one hit wonders, if My Sharona was Mr. Fieger's only significant contribution to the world of Rock and Pop then, by gum, it was a great one. Enjoy:


The Knack - My Sharona

Rab | MySpace Video

Awful Album Covers.....Part Two!

Due to the runaway success of my last post (four people 'liked' it on Facebook and my sister said it was hilarious - I'm classing that as runaway) I thought I would drudge through the sludge that is the internet and try to find some more awful (amazing) album covers. Here be what I found...

I want to hug him.

They're queuing up...

I know.

...And thank you for the music. Oh, wait.

Tango'd.

Is that a jazz flute?

Awful Album Covers

My Dad has three main hobbies. He enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles, he is a trainspotter and he is a stamp collector. I find it hard to muster any enthusiasm for the first two. His stamp collection, however, does hold some interest for me.

Since sending off tuppence to the Royal Mail as a young boy he has been sent their First Day covers ever since. The latest batch to come through were based around classic album covers and included, amongst others, The Division Bell by Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie. It got me thinking though. All of the albums which featured on these stamps were, in their own unique way, works of art. But what about the worst album covers, album art so lacking in taste and style that you can only marvel at their brutality? So, I had a little look on the internet to see what I could find and here is a small selection of what I found. Brace yourselves...

I don't know about you but I find this terrifying.

By request only, apparently. Thank God.

One can only imagine how many times

he's been punched since this was released.

I think this may be the greatest thing
I have ever seen in my life.

My favourite is the clinically obese one.

"We're going to have to ask you to leave, sir.
You're scaring the children."

I can only assume he didn't leave Glasgow alive.

"I told you to put the incense out before you went to bed!"

Germaine Greer's favourite album cover.

Have a look for yourself online. Believe me, there are thousands.

Cheryl Cole feat. Will.i.am - 3 Words

I was surprised to hear that Cheryl Cole was releasing a new single. Her debut single, Fight For This Love, seemed such a singular, cataclysmic Event I thought that pop music as we know it was thus rendered obsolete aswell as making everything you and I hold dear seem pointless. Such was the foaming-at-the-mouth, piss-your-pants hoo-haa it caused upon it’s release one could be forgiven for thinking it had cured both AIDS and cancer in one diamante'd swoop. How wrong one can be.

Our Cheryl is set to release her follow-up single, 3 Words, on 20th December in what can only be assumed to be her stab at making Christmas Number 1.

The song, featuring album collaborator Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, is unique in its uniformity. It’s not distinctly awful in any particular way, nor is it jaw-droppingly progressive. Instead, it ploughs the steady, no-risk electro-pop field which has served Kylie Minogue so well for the last decade (I keep forgetting the Noughties are coming to an end. Scary stuff). I’d love to sit here with bile dripping from my fangs and lay into it with the venom of a pissed off pensioner but it just doesn’t rile those emotions. It is too darn comfortable.

If anything, the talking point of it's release is the video in which Mrs. Cole wears a blonde wig for a bit. Pop Music is eating itself again...

The Intros Round

This weekend just departed I took a trip to Abingdon, near Oxford, to visit a friend for his birthday. Another friend of mine picked me up from Bath (ironically at a notorious dogging spot) and off we went down the M-something or other, music throbbing from the speakers of the car.

As we approached Abingdon the speakers began oozing the inimitable treacle of a Motown number. It was Heard it Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye. I turned to the driver of the vehicle and said “It has to be the greatest intro of all time”. It’s menacing yet seductive, unsure yet confident – everything all at once. It got me thinking about similarly majestic introductions to songs and here be a small list (Come on, I didn’t think about it all weekend):

Reach Out, I’ll Be There – The Four Tops: Four bars of windswept raw emotion from Motown’s hit machine, Holland-Dozier-Holland. Perfection.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones: Despite having heard it almost as many times as Mick Jagger has paid off pregnant supermodels, it is probably the greatest riff of them all.

Help! – The Beatles: With so many to choose from it is impossible to pick just one but this 1965 single positively jumps out of the speakers with electrifying insistence.

20^th Century Boy – T. Rex: Guaranteed to blow any set of speakers when played loud, never have two solitary notes sounded so bloody raunchy.

This Charming Man – The Smiths: Johnny Marr’s riff dances merrily from his guitar on arguably the Smiths most recognisable track.

Be My Baby – The Ronnettes: Generally lauded as one of the finest pop songs ever written, it’s all about that beat. Not bad for a murderer (Phil Spector).

Wouldn’t it be Nice? – The Beach Boys: Yes, Good Vibrations is probably the better song but this sun-baked, stoned and skewered intro captures the simple, child-like essence which make the Beach Boys so appealing.

Once in a Lifetime – Talking Heads: Kicks in with all the bombast of a flaming hot, funky meteor landing in your lap from nowhere.

Fashion - David Bowie: I know, I know; my unhealthy addiction to David Bowie infiltrates every darn aspect of my life to the point where I only like people on the proviso that they like David Bowie but the synthy upbeat is an exceptionally wry observation on the mindless conformity of the songs subject matter. The listener is fooled from the off.

Wolfmother - Cosmic Egg

Having garnered both commercial and critical success with their eponymous 2005 debut album, Aussie retro-rockers Wolfmother fell apart due to musical differences. Seriously. Even their break-up was heavily indebted to Rock’s golden era. However, singer/guitarist Andrew Stockdale clung onto the name, recruited three presumably passive musicians and made a follow up album, Cosmic Egg.

To say that Stockdale continues where he left off on Wolfmother’s previous album is like saying Hitler was a bit of a knob. By that I mean a grand understatement. This latest offering could easily have been packaged as a double album with it’s predecessor such are the similarities and continued themes such as sorcery, staring vacantly into oblivion’s still valleys, naked, having lost your clothes, and yet more sorcery.

In the intervening four years between albums it is instantly clear that Stockdale hasn’t been listening to any new music whatsoever. The inspiration and influences which helped shape the band’s debut are still ever-present: The White Stripes guitar stylings on New Moon Rising screech and scream like a banshee whilst White Feather is AC/DC at their most radio-friendly; elsewhere the colossal Zeppelin-like stomp of Sundial and 10,000 Feet strut cockily onward.

When it’s good the album is a force to be reckoned with. California Queen gallops forth into a tie-dyed sunset and Pilgrim piles on more Priapismic riffage. Ah, the riffs. There are some truly filthy riffs present throughout - riffs so mucky you’ll feel compelled to have a wash after listening.

However, when the album is bad it’s pretty nullifying. The record lets itself down on In the Morning, a self-indulgent track with a genteel introduction exploding into beaming power-chords before descending into a rambling guitar solo/wank. Far Away is a tepid stab at the power-ballad and the song “most likely to encourage holding lighters aloft”. It even has a bit of November Rain ivory tinkling at the end.

Final track Violence of the Sun is the album’s Altamont. A droning, dying beast, thrashing around in it’s own excretia with it’s last ounces of energy, it provides little comfort. In fact, it’s mildly distressing.

This isn’t groundbreaking in any conceivable interpretation of the word yet it is never meant to be. This is Guitar Music for the Guitar Hero generation; guitar solo as proof of ability, riff as king. A celebration of the glorious overblown pomposity of Rock music, Cosmic Egg is a stoned, shaggy album, tailor-made for beach parties whose attendees are Gap models with Rolling Stones tongues on their t-shirts. Tell Jim Morrisson I said Hi, maaaan.