Tagged with music

Hole - Malibu

This is a song I’ve decidedly mixed feelings about. To me, it’s staying at a mate’s place, staring at the teev whilst this plays on rage at 5 in the morinng, wondering what the hell you’re gonna do next. It’s being subjected to this (and the entirety of Celebrity Skin) at a not-comfortable volume en route to a country football grand final. It’s polished and radio-friendly and sounds like the lost Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac single Love intended it to be (indeed, she wrote it with Stevie Nicks in mind). But…

I find the lyrics waver between banal and enlightening, as any good pop song does…they implore, rather than condemn:

Help me please, burn the sorrow from your eyes
Oh, come on, be alive again
Don’t lay down and die…
I can’t be near you
The light just radiates

It’s a dialogue, the push-me-pull-you of a destructive relatiionship. Displaying empathy, while outlining the need to escape, hoping the act itself will solve everything. But there’s a difference between reaching escape velocity, and simply crashing and burning. And goodness knows California’s full of burnouts.

If you say you’re on your way to where you want to go, then why keep looking back?

  • Ring The Bell (Instrumental)

    YACHT
    3 plays

YACHT - Ring The Bell (Instrumental)

Of late, I’ve been going through posts that I’ve bookmarked (or “starred”) in Google Reader ahead of its demise at the end of June. I finally managed to go all the way back to January 2009 (when I first started using it), and along the way, I had apparently “starred” a post from some music blog which linked to this. And man, did it bring back memories, ‘cause as I (re)discovered going through the myriad of posts I’d saved, late ‘09/early ‘10 was some potent shit, yo.

Marianne Falthfull - As Tears Go By (1987 re-recorded version for the album ‘Strange Weather’)

A quick Wikipedia history lesson:

“As Tears Go By” was one of the first original compositions by (Mick) Jagger and (Keith) Richards, as until that point The Rolling Stones had chiefly been performing blues standards. A story surrounding the song’s genesis has it that Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen in order to force them to write a song together, even suggesting what type of song he wanted: “I want a song with brick walls all around it, high windows and no sex.” The result was initially named “As Time Goes By”, the title of the song Dooley Wilson sings in the film Casablanca. It was Oldham who changed “Time” for “Tears”.

Oldham subsequently gave the ballad (a format that the Stones were not yet known for) to Faithfull, then 17, for her to record as a B-side. The success of the recording caused the record company, Decca, to switch the song to an A-side, where it became a very popular single.
Faithfull (later) re-recorded her 1964 hit, “As Tears Go By,” in a markedly different arrangement using a slower time signature, and sung a full octave lower than the original.

  • Love in Motion (Masterfile version)

    Icehouse
    9 plays

Icehouse - Love in Motion (Masterfile version with vocals by Chrissy Amphlett)

The lead singer of Divinyls and one of the great vocalists in Aussie rock music lost her battle with cancer today, age 53. Vale.

Daft Punk to debut new album ‘Random Access Memories’…at the Wee Waa Annual Show in NSW?

No, seriously. From all reports this is the real deal.

With a reputation as innovators, Daft Punk have never really played by the rules. Even still, reports that the French duo are set to unveil their much-hyped forthcoming album Random Access Memories in a town with a population of 1,600 has come as a particular shock. According to the Herald Sun and triple j, Daft Punk are set to host their “global album launch party” in the Australian town of Wee Waa, situated in the North West of regional New South Wales.

Sound like a joke? The Wee Waa council thought so, too. Speaking to the Narabi Courier (the original source of the story), Shire Mayor Conrad Bolton told that he though a “mate was pulling my leg” when he got the call that Sony wanted to bring arguably the most famous dance act in the world to the small town. “We think Wee Waa is so uniquely Australian, so the folks at Sony Music along with Daft Punk thought it fitted the bill perfectly,” Bolton explained. “Daft Punk is known for breaking down barriers and coming up with new creative, innovative ideas to launch their albums.” [In The Mix]

It gets better:

It’s said Sony Music approached the Daft Punk camp with the idea, followed of course by good people of Wee Waa. The duo were apparently stoked on “the CSIRO Australia Telescope and its array of satellite dishes”, and were totally down.

Furthermore, the community feel of the new album, Random Access Memories, which features an array of guest artists, inspired confidence in the selected location.

There is talk of a purpose-build stage happening and the event will be a weekend-long experience.

If you’re into cotton, Wee Waa is where it’s at. The cotton capital of Australia is home to around 2,100 people living about 8 hours out of Sydney. The town doesn’t sound like the typical location to be associated with mysterious French pair, but as the story goes, they’re all about exploring new boundaries.

It’s all said to be going down on Friday, 17th May…(and) representatives from Narrabri Shire Council have confirmed that this is ACTUALLY HAPPENING. What in the world is going on. Is Wee Waa gonna be able to contain this many sweat-thirsty discoheads come May? This is incredibly exciting news. [Music Feeds]

A huge hoax or a major coup for Wee Waa? I guess we’ll see in a few weeks!

Beck’s 2012 “album” Song Reader was released not as a record, or a CD, or a collection of MP3 files, or as any kind of recorded performance at all—it was published as printed sheet music. 20 tracks worth. If you can read traditional music notation and you have a piano or guitar, knock yourself out.

…say what? Why am I only hearing of this now?

Blondie - One Way Or Another

(This) was released as a non-album single in 1979.  Or rather, released as a non-album single in America and Canada – it was never a single in the UK.  That makes One Direction the first people to have a hit with it in this country.  Which is just wrong  [Paul O’Brien]