With everyone about to embark on the traditional failed January attempt at healthiness, what better way to celebrate the end of 2008 than by taking the Billboard top 25 and smooshing it all up together into a big Coldplay-with-a-hint-of-Rhianna smoothie.
Obviously being an American chart there’s a few sore-thumb moments (Cobe Calliat anyone? Anyone?) and Lil’ Wayne manages to steal the show as per, but it’s more or less a distillation of the Radio One playlist for the last twelve months into four and a half minutes of Chris Moyles free joy.
Full tracklisting below:
Flo Rida Featuring T-Pain – Low
Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
Alicia Keys – No One
Lil Wayne Featuring Static Major – Lollipop
Timbaland Featuring OneRepublic – Apologize
Jordin Sparks Duet With Chris Brown – No Air
Sara Bareilles – Love Song
Usher Featuring Young Jeezy – Love in This Club
Chris Brown – With You
Chris Brown – Forever
Ray J & Yung Berg – Sexy Can I
Rihanna – Take a Bow
Coldplay – Viva La Vida
Katy Perry – I Kissed a Girl
T.I. – Whatever You Like
Rihanna – Disturbia
Rihanna – Don’t Stop the Music
Natasha Bedingfield – Pocketful of Sunshine
Chris Brown Featuring T-Pain – Kiss Kiss
Ne-Yo – Closer
Colbie Caillat – Bubbly
Mariah Carey – Touch My Body
Madonna Featuring Justin Timberlake – 4 Minutes
Pink – So What
Finger Eleven – Paralyzer
There’s a lot more where that came from on DJ Earworm’s (possibly not entirely legal) website here.
Posted in Music on 29 December, 2008 by Christopher
The floor-shaking brilliance of Kevin Martin aka The Bug is well documented, not least by my drunken evangelising. He’s been a busy boy recently, getting all dubsteppy under the alias of Skeng, and exploring his feminine who side as Ladybug. This most recent project sees him reunited with Roger Robinson, the spoken word artist and singer who featured heavily on Pressure.
Judging by the demos on the KMS mySpace, we’re looking at a broken-hearted dub affair with all the body-bass you would expect. (They list Tearjerking Ballads, Apocalyptic Lovers, Gangsta House, Smack hop, and Dancehall Shoegazing amongst their influences) With Lost already shaking a dancefloor near you and an album titled ‘Super Heavy’ due on Hyperdub later this year, we’ll be holding our breath so hard blood vessels might pop.
There’s a few leaks on here to keep your respitory system out of danger, and I’ll post more as I know it.
Posted in Music, Reviews on 27 December, 2008 by Christopher
Top Ranking: A Diplo Dub.
For those of you who don’t know; Santogold is, depending on your level of hipness: the girl with the silly shades who was in all the ‘who’s going to make it in 2008′ polls this time last year, her off the hair gel ads who sounds a bit like MIA fronting the Pretenders or, like, so over already. If you are in the last camp I’m assuming that you’ll completely disregard the rest of this article on the grounds that this mixtape came out six months ago and you’re really getting into Coupe Decale right now.
For the rest of us, this is a dub-heavy mixtape by Philadelphia super-producer Diplo which curbs the more extreme of Santi’s Chrissie Hynde moments, smothering it in eighties hip-hop, classic reggae and favela funk air horns.
Perfect for blocking out the piped Slade/Shakin’ Stevens/Pogues medely that’s currently overwhelming every credit-crunch hit high street: stick on your big retro headphones and merrily skank past the charity muggers. It’s fairly faultless from start to finish, but some stand out moments include: Amanda Blank’s melancholy L. L. Cool J cover, rubbed up against Santogold’s I’m A Lady and thrown headlong into Sir-Mix-A-Lot and the early bling-fest of Posse On Broadway, Save Me by Aretha Franklin squished up with the jittery punk of Devo, and the blast-furnace toasting of Warrior Queen battering on about, well, whatever it is that Warrior Queen batters on about.
If all that isn’t enough, there’s still Desmond Dekker, Prince Jazzbo, the B52’s and Iko Iko by the Dixie Cups, which has surely got to be in everyone’s list of greatest songs, if only because of Rainman. 96 matches in the box. Definitely. Definitely.
This is a DJ mix which performs the all too rare feat of making the listener feel like they are in a nightclub. By the time it got about two thirds of the way through I was looking for some cheap ecstasy and wondering if I should pick my coat up before it got too busy. There’s an old quote about the Radio Soulwax mix before it went stratospheric:
“If playing this CD doesn’t get the party started, then you’re at the wrong party” (NEW YORK TIMES)
That applies fairly well to this too. Stick it on at your Hogmanay party, and see the skanking ensue. The fact that it’s named after Althea and Donna is just a cherry on top.
It has become a Christmas tradition: George Bailey’s existential crisis and a glass of mulled wine are as much a part of the festive ritual as turkey and double-fare taxis.
On watching it this year, the contemporary relevances seem more apparent than ever. Runs on banks and mortgage foreclosures had seemed a sight confined to Stienbeck novels and the films of Preston Sturges, but with the Northern Rock/ Bear Stearns (delete as geographically appropriate) fandango earlier this year, Lionel Barrymore’s odious Mr. Potter seemed all too real a villian. It feels like once again the decisions of the handful of people who finance the banking system are deciding on the futures of the rest of us.
Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?
Pretty radical stuff for 1946. While it’s not exactly Battleship Potemkin, this is pretty left-wing for post war Reds Under The Bed America. People over profit? The masses working together? Well, it’s near on Communist.
I’m not the only one who thought so. In 1947, the FBI considered this chunk of Christmas cheer to be dangerous pinko propaganda. Here’s the original memo. (Thanks to Will Chen for the transcription.)
To: The Director
D.M. Ladd
COMMUNIST INFILTRATION OF THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY
(RUNNING MEMORANDUM)
There is submitted herewith the running memorandum concerning Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry which has been brought up to date as of May 26, 1947….
With regard to the picture “It’s a Wonderful Life”, [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a “scrooge-type” so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists.
In addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. [redacted] related that if he made this picture portraying the banker, he would have shown this individual to have been following the rules as laid down by the State Bank Examiner in connection with making loans. Further, [redacted] stated that the scene wouldn’t have “suffered at all” in portraying the banker as a man who was protecting funds put in his care by private individuals and adhering to the rules governing the loan of that money rather than portraying the part as it was shown. In summary, [redacted] stated that it was not necessary to make the banker such a mean character and “I would never have done it that way.”
[redacted] recalled that approximately 15 years ago, the picture entitled “The Letter” was made in Russia and was later shown in this country. He recalled that in this Russian picture, an individual who had lost his self-respect as well as that of his friends and neighbors because of drunkenness, was given one last chance to redeem himself by going to the bank to get some money to pay off a debt. The old man was a sympathetic character and was so pleased at his opportunity that he was extremely nervous, inferring he might lose the letter of credit or the money itself. In summary, the old man made the journey of several days duration to the bank and with no mishap until he fell asleep on the homeward journey because of his determination to succeed. On this occasion the package of money dropped out of his pocket. Upon arriving home, the old man was so chagrined he hung himself. The next day someone returned the package of money to his wife saying it had been found. [redacted] draws a parallel of this scene and that of the picture previously discussed, showing that Thomas Mitchell who played the part of the man losing the money in the Capra picture suffered the same consequences as the man in the Russian picture in that Mitchell was too old a man to go out and make money to pay off his debt to the banker.
There’s no evidence to suggest that Capra was a Communist, although the Savings And Load model of banking is certainly a lot more communal than the current system. It does sometimes strike me as a bit odd that the western belief system paints a method of government where everyone is looked after equally as somehow evil.
As we tumble impotently into another recession/depression/downturn/whatever we’ve decided to call it this week, let’s hope that we can be a bit more George Bailey, and a bit less Mr Potter.
Posted in Music, Reviews on 21 December, 2008 by Christopher
Winter solstice seems like an appropriate time to review Glasvegas; a band who know the power of a moment of bright light in the darkness.
Tonight feels like a landmark of sorts – The Barrowlands being a venue suited to the band’s blend of melancholy glamour, and it’s easy to imagine them seeing it as a target early on in their career. Fittingly, there’s quite a turn out tonight: the usual angular-haircutted hipsters, check shirt lager-lads, more jounalists than is reasonable and, crucially, normal people.
You can always tell when something is a success when people who don’t usually do it turn up. Gig-going is, let’s face it, a pretty unpleasant experience which those of us who do it regularly become a bit inured to. When the folks who get themselves worked up at being shouted at by the security staff and the bars having only one (warm) beer make the effort to log on to ticketmaster it’s a clear indicator that a band are on the threshold of stadia and festival headline slots.
Jesus. Glasvegas headlining P in the Dark. That’s quite a thought.
So there’s a weight of expectation tonight, and a lot of adulation being directed toward the almost dark stage – almost save the ocassional burst of blinding white light from Caroline’s drumkit, which she pouns in manner that would make the Mary Chain proud. The East-Kilbride boys are a band you hear invoked a lot around Glasvegas, and aptly so – opener Flowers and Football Tops is a blood relation of Just Like Honey, musically if not lyrically. Lyrically James Allan is in a class of his own: searingly honest, alternately vulnerable and defiant. The comedown paranoia of It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry sees shaven headed East End men hugging and fighting back tears, and Go Square Go turns the ballroom into a baying mob.
There’s something seasonally appropriate about this music, evoking as it does the festive bombast of Phil Spector and the alchol-fuelled introspection of Fairytale Of New York, and the recent Christmas mini-album slots easily into the set, the band’s concession to set decoration marked by a (black, naturally) Christmas tree. When snow starts to fall at the climax of a full-throated Daddy’s Gone the Christmas converson is complete.
Posted in Work on 19 December, 2008 by Christopher
‘Tis the season to be abusive, falalalal lalalala.
There are a few names for today in the trade, and none of them positive, but by far the most common is ‘Black Friday’. The last Friday before Christmas and traditionally the busiest day of the year, this is office party central. It generally fills up around mid-June.
Buisiness in itself is not the issue at heart here though. We’re good at busy: we’ve been preparing for this for months: the bookings sheet is fine tuned, the staff briefed and filled with Pro-Plus (it’s gonnae be at least a fifteen hour day), every available inch of fridge space has been filled with blanched potatoes and pre-peeled sprouts. What makes the thought of Black Friday enough to make ten-year veterans talk about getting a job in a call centre is not the volume of customers, but the type.
I’ll be succinct. The folks that eat out today, they, well… don’t get out much. Today we’ll see people who haven’t set foot in a bar since this time last year. Who have no idea what their capacity for alcohol is, or their reaction to it. That when you order six different cocktails it might take a couple of minutes to make them. That – and this is a big one – they are not the only people in the restaurant.
It doesn’t help that the mercenary opportunists who run the trade can spot a sucker from twenty paces, meaning as soon as Christmas hoves into view prices double. Well, goes the logic, we scrape by for eleven months of the year and if there’s profit to be made we’ll get it when we can. This engenders in the once-year-drunk a certain sense of entitlement. Used to paying a tenner for a bottle of supermarket vodka, faces redden when I ask for nearly a fiver for 25ml of Belvedere and a splash of Ocean Spray. The righteous indignation soon evolves into a belief that they can behave in whatever manner they see fit - which usually means sexually harrasing the more attractive staff, and slurring abuse at the rest of us.
Now I’ve said this before, but it bears re-iteration. The worst drunks are not young. They are not ’neds’ or ‘chavs’ or ‘pikies’ or whatever your idiom of choice for barely disguised snobbery is. It is the middle-aged middle-class. People who can’t distinguish between ’service’ and ’servant’. Last week a woman with a striking resemblance to my mother drank so much Veuve Cliquot she was sick on my shoes - after calling me a ‘jumped up little cunt’ when I suggested that she might, perhaps, consider a soft drink. I’ve had torrents of abuse from people because they’ve waited ten minutes for a taxi (you should’ve booked…), or just because they don’t want to tip and are looking for an excuse.
So, be kind to your waiter tonight. He’s put up with a lot this month, and he’s just trying to get through today without climbing a clocktower with an AK-47.
‘I’m a traveller really, I would die as a person if I stayed in place for more than a year, I like to change my impressions and refresh my personality. My roots are in my music, and in my friends, that’s enough…”
Davy Graham died on Monday. It’s always difficult to emphasise how much of a pioneer he was without descending into hyperbole, but he was incredibly influential, and vastly ahead of his time. As a teenager he travelled around North Africa, busking and learning. He combined the ‘raga’ style of the Oud with Scottish folk and finger-picking blues to create a style all of his own, often referred to as ‘blues baroque’, and popularised the DADGAD tuning now used commonly by folk and blues guitarists. Heavily influenced by the music of Charlie Parker he decided to become a heroin addict in order to emulate his heroes.
I’ll say that again: he decided to become a heroin addict in order to emulate his heroes. This was a man so dedicated to music he was willing to completely subsume his own life to improve his playing. My waffling can’t really do justice to the sublime minor blues of the much-imitated Anji or his intricate take on Rev. Gary Davis’ Cocaine Blues, so I’ll leave you with the man himself.
He was truly one of the greats. As such, I’m sure his legacy will be pissed on in a mobile phone advert soon.
Posted in Music, Reviews on 17 December, 2008 by Christopher
Primal Scream are one of the worst and best bands on the planet. The worst? Exhibit A:
I mean, just look at them. Jangling ex-junkies in Oxfam suits trying to look like Mick’n'Keef in the early seventies. Bobby even went so far as to get one of those Nudie suits like Gram Parsons used to wear.
Exhibit B: Beautiful Future. You heard it? No, didn’t think so. When the selling point of an album is that it uses the same marimba as ABBA, you can probably take it as read that it won’t be featuring too heavily in the old end-of-year polls.
And, of course Exhibit C: Bobby. He looks like the kid in school that would scare away the bullies by smacking his head off the wall and screaming. Dances like a seven year old up past his bed-time after too many cola bottles showing off for the adults.
But then, you have to remember, we’ve written them off before. After Give Out But Don’t Give Up the press decided that they were unashmed Rolling Stones revivalists suitable only for inclusion on Top Gear compilations, and that Screamadelica was merely an ecstasy-induced blip.
Which they followed with three albums of generation-defining electronica: Vanishing Point, XTRMNTR and Evil Heat.
So no one really knows what to excpect going into this gig. It could be an hour of Jools Holland approved boogie woogie, or they might just give us feedback and bleepy noises. The crowd seems pretty divide between the two; a lot of parka wearers with Hollyoaks hair who are here for Movin’ On Up, young guys in Fred Perry waiting for Country Girl and the rest of us silently praying ‘please please don’t be shit…’
After a cursory mumble from Mr. G, the echo-boxed bass drum kicks and the Tannoy blares:
“Punk is not sexual, its just aggression
10-4 old buddies
Destroy, kill all hippies”
And all is well with the world. Most of tonight’s set comes from XTRMNTR and Evil Heat, along with the hits to keep the parka wearers happy. Disapointingly nothing from the dub-heavy Vanishing Point: a Sepultura-heavy Kowalski would have gone down very well, but plenty to keep the bass junkies happy. There have been sightings of Kevin Sheilds on this tour, and while he’s not present, his influence is palpable – noisecore versions of Shoot Speed/Kill Light and a ten minute feedback blast to close which leaves us staggering out with ringing in our ears and grins on our faces.
Judging by tonight, The Scream Team are back on form. Let’s just hope they put down Bjorn and Benny’s keyboards and get back to doing what they do best.
