something to try at home...

hours of fun!
not sure it'd work that well with cds though...

Festive Frog-rock

Is this the most underrated Christmas song ever?



No scumbags, no maggots, no Radio 1 controversies here. Just good old Macca, Rupert the Bear and more frogs than a Frenchman’s Christmas dinner.

Although released in both 1984 and 1985 it never quite made it to the top of the sparkly Christmas number one tree but you don’t get much tougher competition that Geldof and his Band Aid chums, Wham’s Last Christmas and Shakin freaking Stevens!

Imagine a three year old Rory, still struggling to unravel the complexities of his new Transformer, being introduced to Paul McCartney for the first time. For all I knew back then he’d just won some tacky TV talent show and was riding on the coattails of Rupert’s fame (possibly the dullest kids character of all time?)

Anyway, I know a little more about Mr. McCartney now, apparently his group was quite popular for a time, but why don’t we hear more of this Christmas classic? Surely some festive DJ will answer my plea...

if it ain't stiff...

Last Friday I stumbled upon a repeat of BBC Four's documentary on Stiff Records. It was a great bit of telly and what's more, it was 90 minutes long...by the end I felt that I probably knew all I was ever going to need to know about the label, its disastrous tours, its constant flirtation with bankruptcy and its eclectic roster of hopefuls and hopeless cases (from Wreckless Eric to Madness to Lene Lovich to The Pogues to Elvis Costello to Jona Lewie to Ian Dury etc etc)

I even came away with a couple of things I never knew...1) Pete Waterman was a producer for Stiff and 2) Alvin Stardust released four singles on the label. Oh yes.

But stronger and stranger was the inescapable conclusion that the world was a very different place back then. Punk had changed the rules or at least hidden them somewhere, and there was still money in making singles. Could you imagine a record like this making number one these days?


Thought not.

Cheer up! It's nearly Christmas

Malcolm Middleton's attempt to get his catchy new single We're All Going To Die to the Christmas chart top spot takes him to Colin Murray's Radio 1 show on Monday.

Colin's website has a wonderful video of the former Arab Strapper recording a festive version of the song with sleigh bells and a children's choir at Maida Vale that you can watch here.

The official video is pretty good too:

The Wednesday biscuit #2

Today I clocked three esteemed members of the music team lifting the lid on an empty biscuit tin, only to walk away with a groan/hmmphf. Let's call that a grmpf.


I on the other hand was lucky enough to find half of what can only be described as a gingernut in disguise. An oblong shaped no-namer, not your regular round Griffin or Arnotts kind.
Hmmm. Were these biscuits bought from an off-licence?

Nonetheless this half of whatever it was, left quite an impression. My only piece of advice to the manufacturers would be to give this baked good an IDENTITY. Dress it up a little! Make people see that there's something worth being discovered...


Which, tenuously as ever, leads me to prog doom disco act Chrome Hoof. As part of BBC Introducing (BBC's new music initiative) they performed a special session at Maida Vale studios in North London last night, filmed for Gilles Peterson's show on Radio 1. And there is no mistaking them.


Loud, grinding and glam, this 10 piece work their magic with fabric (see below). Incorporating a wide variety of instruments, violin, bassoon, sax, trumpet, guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion to create their menacing racket. Try Pre-emptive False Rapture , released earlier this year for more of a taste, or catch them thundering away at these UK shows in the next week.

Even though it looks like it.... no humans were poked with giant light sabers during the taking of these photos.

Bemused sequined moment?....


Use the force.... the disco force.

i-Mix

From the 'what will they think of next?' dept comes a bit of software that allows you to use your i-Phone to control Pro-Tools. So poor overworked producers and remixers can literally phone in their performances from anywhere, thus avoiding having to deal with any performer egos or leave their, er, cribs.

Our new camera is wicked

Zaireeka moment

Anyone who’s had the pleasure of stumbling across Mr. Wayne Coyne and friends will know that there ain’t no party quite like a Flaming Lips party. Investigate a little further and you will realise that it’s not all balloons and Santa costumes, these Oklahoma gents have done some interesting things in their day; gigs at the zoo, boom box experiments, and a long awaited Christmas on Mars movie (which should finally debut at 2008’s South by Southwest festival) to name but a few.

Top of the list nevertheless must be 1997 album Zaireeka. How they convinced Warner Bros to release it in the first place is an achievement, but out it came, in full four disc glory, each of which to be played simultaneously on separate cd players to create the complete sound.

The album garnered promising reviews but was never going to be a commercial success, but what, I hear my inquisitive cosmic friends does it sound like? Well that’s the thing… a young upstart from Northern Ireland called Stephen McCauley has gotten himself a show on Radio Foyle (a mighty good it is too may I add). Being a fan of the odd experiment himself, the Electric Mainline presenter enlisted the help of Radio 1’s Rory McConnell, Radio Foyle’s Mark Patterson and Jane Bradfords (they’re big in Qatar) frontman Deci Gallen for a Zaireeka experiment of his own.

Stephen treats us to two of the albums eight tracks and its well worth braving it past the minor technical difficulties of whispering Rory McConnell in the introduction to hear the tracks in full glory.

Have a listen here...

A broadcasting first? He’ll be roving the streets of Derry in a giant balloon before we know it.

Stockhausen on Aphex Twin on Stockhausen

I randomly found an interesting article on Karlheinz Stockhausen from an old issue of The Wire. In 1995, Radio 3 sent the composer a package of tapes of music (by Aphex Twin, Scanner, Plasticman and Daniel Pemberton) and asked for his opinion.

These were artists he had supposedly influenced - the Radio 3 programme was called Advice To Clever Children - so it's very funny that he dismisses the four pieces and then recommends some of his own works which would be "very helpful".

I wish those musicians would not allow themselves any repetitions, and would go faster in developing their ideas or their findings, because I don't appreciate at all this permanent repetitive language. It is like someone who is stuttering all the time, and can't get words out of his mouth.

Fair play to The Wire, as they got responses to Stockhausen's suggestions from the "clever children". Full article (Q8). http://www.sinologic.com/newmusic/stockhausen.html

Einstein's Fiddle

If you've got a spare 15 minutes betwen now and next Sunday and a passing interest in the connections between music and physics and emotion (yeah, I know...) then this is so worth listening to...

The Brian Eno iPod

The ideal Christmas gift?

The Poetry of History

...is the title of a new Radio 4 series exploring, er, the links betwen poetry and historical events. Not the most obvious place to look for a top notch music documentary, but Sunday's episode was just that. Shakespeare scholar Jonatahan Bate talked to the mighty Linton Kwesi Johnson, whose fusion of dub (provided by Dennis Bovell) and poetry soundtracked The Brixton Riots of 1981.

Listening, I was taken back to my first exposure to LKJ, which was courtesy of Radio 3 (honest!) in the late 70s. Though I lived only 60 miles from Brixton, this dark, dread-filled sound laced with stories of police brutality, bereaved mothers and random, racially motivated violence felt like it was coming from another planet. It was one of those moments; though to paraphrase Morrisey this was music that said nothing to me about my life, it kind of fleshed out the TV coverage of burning police cars - this was like proper news from an alternative source. LKJ wasn't just talking about this stuff, he was living it. And the music...this was miles away from Bob bloody Marley; spacey, bassy and beautiful. I went out and bought the records, but it kind of felt like I shouldn't be; I felt they weren't meant for me. I always expected to be asked questions at the till ("Sorry lad, that's not for the likes of you. How's about the new Cure album?").

I sort of still feel like that. A couple of years ago I saw LKJ in a lift at Broadcasting House. I really wanted to tell him that nearly twenty years ago his words had somehow touched a white Grammar school boy living in Kent, but I somehow didn't quite have the guts.

And if I ever see him again, I still won't have them.