I nicked this from Kevin Lehane’s blog (hi, Kevin, hope you don’t mind); a great song, performed across national borders…
Stand By Me from David Johnson on Vimeo.
Good, innit? Go on, play it again. You know you wanna.
Category: Music
1. I have to admit to being faintly disappointed at the stripped-down nature of Duffy’s cover of Live And Let Die on the Heroes album, but I nonetheless urge you to buy it. It’s for an incredibly good cause, and her version corrects the irksome overuse of prepositions in the line “but in this ever-changing world in which we live in”.
2. I would have embedded this bit of video as I think it’s amusing, but it features language which might not be suitable for public places (and I know some of you read this blog whilst at work), so instead I offer it as a link. Contains strong language, but it makes me smile. Some of you may have seen it already, as I gather Mr Fry recently shared it on Twitter, but for those of us who don’t tweet…
3. Speaking of such things, Fry’s recent Meet The Author podcast (free to download via iTunes) contains, amongst many other comments to enjoy, the best argument I’ve yet heard for using Twitter. Streets ahead of the ‘you must’ or ‘everyone else is’ stuff I’ve heard. I won’t repeat it here as I doubt I could do it justice, and anyway you’ll benefit from listening to the whole thing. Worth your time.
4. I can’t make it, but if you’re of an energetic and charitable nature, this looks rather fun…
5. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of the music of Jim Steinman, so I was rather disappointed that the rather lightweight boyband Westlife recently covered his song Total Eclipse Of The Heart. Mind you, I was even more disappointed to hear that Steinman had done a remix of their version of the song, which the record company then decided not to release. I appreciate that he’s ‘work for hire’ in that situation, but if anyone should know how to do a version of that song, you’d think it might be the chap who wrote it.
Anyway, the song’s never been properly released, which means that there’s no legitimate way of getting hold of it… but then again, as we all know, there’s often more than one way to rip a track.
Hmm, a slightly link-heavy post today, I suddenly realise. Still, I like to share the fun stuff around if I can…
The results were recently announced for the 2008 Art Vinyl prize for best record cover – here’s the BBC News link – and because I’m hip to the sound on the trip-hop streets, I thought I’d share two of the top three with you fine people.
The winner was the Fleet Foxes album, and in third place was Coldplay (both pictured here).
However, the reason I picked these two is because they don’t really strike me as particularly worthy of the prize – they are, after all, pre-existing pictures by Bruegel and Delacriox, with a few words added in white. I know there’s a debate to be had about the nature of art and creation and found objects and all that, but given that second place went to a wholly new image – and a pretty creepy one at that – on the recent Roots Manuva album (see it in glorious scare-icolour here), I think that it seems to be rewarding designer for cleverly choosing bits of old art as opposed to creating new images of their own.
Then again, looking at Art Vinyl’s own website, it seems to be more about the sale of frames in which to hang your vinyl albums on the wall as opposed to the sleeve art itself, so maybe I’ve just been duped into wasting braintime thinking about something which is little more than a thinly-veiled advertising ploy.
Darn it.
Then again, it appears that the news-gathering forces of the BBC were equally fooled, so I shan’t blame myself too much.
Besides, I never liked vinyl as a format very much when I was a youth in the 1980s, it was far from easy to play on my Walkman.
I’ve mentioned the band Kyro before on the blog, and as a quick squint at previous posts will show, I think they kick bottom. And that I’m biased as their lead singer Ian George is a friend of mine.
Well, Kyro are no longer together (they went through a couple of name changes before splitting up, which makes me think of the fate of the band Dead Monkeys in the Monty Python Rock Notes sketch), but Ian is now a solo artist, and crikey o’blimey if he doesn’t have a single, Number One Creation, out in collaboration with the group Remember. Have a look at the video here.
It’s really rather good, isn’t it ? Ian’s the chap at the podium, and I think he carries it off rather well – not just the singing, but looking like he’s hectoring the audience too. Of course I’m biased as he’s a good sort, but on the other hand since when we used to work together we’d try to make each other giggle in meetings by saying “Yeah, I’m dealing with that work Ian’s passed me, but the information’s kind of fragmented and …bitty“, seeing him playing the role so well makes me even more impressed.
Anyway, he’s a very talented singer and musician and a jolly decent chap, and the single’s available to buy from iTunes for the piffling sum of 79p (unfortunately I don’t seem to be able to provide a direct link to that or to embed the video, though that might be my techno-density at work), and I gather it’ll be on Amazon and Napster soon too. So, if you like the video (and what’s not to like? It’s really rather different from so many promos, I think), or the song, or just want to ensure you make it onto my ‘Nice’ list as Christmas approaches, why not buy it?
And if you’re feeling brave, you could even leave a comment on Youtube about the video – but if you do… well, you’re braver than me. Folks who post comments there all too frequently seem determined to make Web 2.0 look like a chimps’ tea party, it seems, so I hope you’ll try to raise the standard.
Emerging from her blog-hibernation, Lianne has reassured the world that her radio silence wasn’t due to bad stuff (which is good to hear), and as if to prove it she’s thrown a ‘meme’ towards seven people, myself included. It goes like this:
“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to”.
It’s my first time being tagged in this way (though there’s another similar post which I’ve been meaning to do for a few weeks, and hopefully which will surface in the next couple of days), so please be gentle with me if I make a fool of myself, but my answers are…
1. ‘November’ by Steven Lindsay – From the album Exit Music, which (along with his more recent album Kite) was looping as I did a lot of writing last week. It’s a beautiful song – very melancholy, but Lindsay’s voice is great, and the arrangement is perfect for the overall feel of the song. To my mild amusement, it reminds me of the U2 song ‘October’, and I was wondering if it was possible to create a playlist of songs with months in their titles, but I ran pretty dry after these two. Any suggestions? Please let me know.
2. ‘Alive’ by Meat Loaf – From the not really very good Bat Out Of Hell III, this is probably the only decent track on it that’s not written by Jim Steinman; in these apparently-sensitive times, I’m impressed by the use of the couplet ‘I’m a runway train on a broken track / I’m a ticker on a bomb that you can’t turn back’, and there’s a nice breakdown bit towards the end. It’s as ridiculous and overblown as you’d expect from a Meat Loaf song, of course, but I like it.
3. ‘Join With Us’ by The Feeling – I feel a combination of surprise and disappointment that this is being used in a car advert, as it struck me as an obvious choice for a single, but I guess in these downloadin’ days the idea of single releases is kind of limited to the songs they make a video for, and maybe they see the advert as a similar promotional tool? I dunno, but I’ve thought this was the best song on the album of the same name, mainly because of the frankly ludicrous lyric ‘Ring Ring, beep beep, ah-ha’, which I think is delightfully stupid, though of course it does rather invite criticism for being, well, nonsense. But I like it.
4. ‘The Beat that my Heart Skipped’ by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip – This is a strange one. This song was one listed as part of the soundtrack for the latest issue of the comic Casanova (first issue to read free online here – fourth row down), suggested by the rather talented writer, Matt Fraction. It’s a pacey little number, awash with lyrics, and my first hearing of it made me think it was kind of positive and romantic, and the title inevitably made me think of m’lady. However, having looked at the lyrics, I have to say that it’s far more ambivalent about the object of his affection. Oop. Anyway, I think it’s a good song regardless of this.
5. ‘Foux du Fafa’ by Flight of The Conchords – Is stuck in my head a lot at the moment, mainly because of the utterly ridiculous lyrics. I love the exchange ‘Ou est le discotheque?’ ‘C’est ici, bebe!’ but that may be because I am little more than a child. I genuinely urge you to listen to the whole album, it’s a great deal of fun – even if the impressive sales of it do rather undermine the joke that the ‘Chords (as they’re known by, er, nobody but me) are a failure as a group. Though for me, that makes it even funnier.
6. ‘True Faith’ by New Order – I used to share a house with a chap who was a huge fan of New Order, and the following dialogue took place more than once:
Me: Come on Jason, you must know the one I mean.
He: No, I don’t.
Me: You MUST. It goes ‘de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-dee-dee-dee, something-something-something, rising sun’
He: No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop going on about this.
…After I found out what the song actually is, I discover it’s one of New Order’s bigger hits. Makes me wonder if he was a fan at all. Anyway, I think it’s a really strong song (in either its original or its 1994 remixed version), and if I get another tune stuck in my head – an irritating one, I mean – I tend to focus on this one and push the unwanted one out. Might sound mad, but it works for me, probably something to do with the drums at the start. Oh, the sound of drums…
7. ‘Only Myself To Blame’ by Scott Walker – I was reminded of this song after hearing the similarly-titled ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ by Beth Rowley (which is also rather good), and it’s a smashing recent re-discovery. I’ve heard Mr Walker referred to as ‘God’s Tonsils’, and the sheer breadth of his voice on this song shows why. Oddly enough, this song is from the soundtrack to the Bond film ‘The World Is Not Enough’, but I’m not quite sure how it’s supposed to fit in with the theme of the film, as it’s brimful with regret and melancholy, and not so much about boat chases down the Thames. Not that it really matters; the song’s fab, in my opinion.
… so, then, those are my (currently) magnificent seven. I think they should all be easy enough to find and download through the wonders of the internet, so you can always make up a mixtape or playlist and give it some witty variation on my name like ‘Danger Soanes’. Oh all right then, don’t. Suit yerself.
Now, I’m supposed to tag seven people with this, so I will – lord only knows if they’ll even see this or respond, but I want to do my bit for the spread of the meme, since I was amused and slightly touched to be tagged in the first place. And so I hereby tag M’colleague, Steve, Fwengebola, Marie, Angie, Elinor, and lastly but not leastly Jon (this last is a thinly-veiled attempt to check Jon’s all right, as he seems – as Lianne recently was – to be blog-hibernating. See how I returned to the opening theme there? Ah, life and its cycles…).