One good use for your old vinyl

I sense I might be a bit slow off the mark with this one, but check out these highly inventive (and, in some cases, downright brilliant) 'Sleevefaces' on this Flickr group.

The idea is to place an album cover with a prominent face on it over your own face - and then fashion your body/clothes so the album cover continues to 'live' in the real world. That makes little sense, so just click the link to see what I mean. I might try with this album and I am particularly fond of Olivia for the inventive use of the gatefold...

Addendum: This whole idea really did strike a chord in my sleep deprived mind so I went home and me and my bloke created a couple of our own. If you spot Talk Talk's 'The Party's Over' and U2's 'War' then that's us :)

On A Roll

Radio 3's documentary 'Rolls, Records and the Return of Myra Hess' told the story of the player piano or pianola (or as some like to call it, 'the reproducing piano'. Though its presence in the middle class drawing rooms of the early 20th century ended with the advent of radio and the phonograph, it remains a unique instrument. No piece of hi-tech digitalia could ever reporduce the physical sensation of a skilled player's performance in quite the same way, and to think it's all done with paper, cogs, hammers and wheels seems almost unbelievable. The great Myra Hess commited a few performances to the roll, and the results (even on the radio) were remarkable, and to me anyway lifts the pianola out of the realm of antique curiosity to something much more important. Before the advent of sequencers, it could also handle material that couldn't be played by a human without suffering permanent physical and mental damage (see below!)

You can listen again till Saturday 2nd Feb.

Cat Power - Live on 6 Music

I was lucky enough to see Cat Power perform a memorable 6 Music Hub Session on Tuesday. I've long been a fan of her records but had never seen her live before, mainly because I'd heard too many stories about her unpredictability on stage (I did have ticket for one her shows years ago and she cancelled).

While Chan Marshall did show up, the session didn't go as smoothly as some I've seen. Accompanied by accoustic and slide guitars, she sounded great and began with her new spin on Hank Williams's Ramblin' Man. An apropriate title since her subsequent conversation with George Lamb meandered for ages.

Halfway through her second number, Song to Bobby, the band abruptly stopped playing as the electric guitar went dead. Chan didn't realise they were live, broke the cardinal daytime radio sin of letting fly an expletive, had a confab with her band about what they should do, and eventually played a different song.

To those listening live it might have sounded shambolic. Watching it in the flesh was a lot of fun.

You can listen to the session on the iPlayer (edited for decency I believe) and see some photos on the 6 Music website.

If you're unaware of Cat Power, this the video for Lived In Bars from her last album The Greatest, is a pretty good introduction.

And a couple more versions of Ramblin' Man, first the Hank Williams original on top of footage from a Buster Keaton movie:

And secondly the video for Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell's version:

Dozens of people have covered this classic. If you find more, post them below,

Music video I found and like (beta)*

The dedication of this department to deliver you the most up to date music news from across the globe knows no bounds. Last Wednesday I was getting text updates from the Bjork gig at Sydney Opera House from our correspondent in Oz. It was like some Icelandic pop version of a Sky News report with Sarah embedded in the venue with nothing but a flak jacket and a satellite phone.

I admit, I struggled to relay the information to the public. I just don't have the skills of a Dermot Murnaghan or Bill Turnbull. If you are Bjork fan, and you feel you missed out I am truly sorry. I can only offer this video as a means of small compensation.




Music video I found and like (beta)* provided by: Bjork - Declare Independance


*Lucy didn't like my "Cool Video of The Weak" title so I'm going to have to come up with a new one :(

Cool video of the weak...

Pete took leave today. Without his sage guidance and motivational speeches on Captain Beefheart we struggle to make even the slightest imprints on the online musical landscape...

We can only hope he returns soon...if only for Matty's sake.




Cool video of the weak courtesy of Emily Haines and The Soft Skeleton - Our Hell

People writing songs that voices never share...

picture: nevermore

London is bleak. After the colour and noise of December, the street are thin and silent. Who wants music in January? Not me. Everything sounds perky, gauche and too loud.

Listening again/iPlayer-ing again to Rob Da Bank's The Sound Of Slience, I was hoping for a nihilistic journey into beautiful nothingness. Two hours of dead air. Instead it was just some guy playing records. Vangelis, Debussy, Harold Budd, Aphex and Cage.

Silence is a contentious issue. A few years ago, Mike Batt - the Womble-bothering Frankenstein to Katie Melua's jerking, revolting monster - got into trouble when he credited a one-minute long silent "track" to Batt/Cage. Cage's publishers were up in arms crying plagarism of the composer's 4'33''. The dispute went to court. Cage's men even hired a clarinettist to (not) perform it.

London is cancelled till February. Don't exert yourself. Don't join in. Better to keep still and not make a sound. Just don't mention Cage.

Pop. Punk.

BBC Four’s three week season on all things pop, Pop! What Is It Good For? is now underway.

That’s the name of the season, plus one of the programmes, on tonight, which involves ex NME Journalist and pop music fiend Paul Morley indulging his passion. One scene in the programme's rough cut features Paul visiting the garage of Can’t Get You Out of My Head’s writer, Mud’s Rob Davis, in Leatherhead, Surrey where Rob recreates the song writing process, complete with falsetto voice, cheapo synth sounds and raw guitar. I didn't know that the song was originally offered to Sophie Ellis Bextor. I can kind of see that working...

But working on the Pop Britannia website gave an insight into the psyche of the pop artist. This three episode documentary tells how Britain went pop, scanning 6 decades of an industry evolution. Check out the clip of Cliff Richard, where he discusses the Cliff Sound, and how it still surprises him when people say they can always tell a Cliff song. He claims to still think he sounds like everybody else. Is this false modesty, or a classic case of insecurity driven ambition? You’d think that after selling close to three hundred million units, he wouldn't worry .




Full interview transcripts for the doc included an interview with Pete Waterman and Lulu – both of whom were happy to describe themselves as punk. The corporate, tinny sound that dominated the late 80s, reviled and resented by many “true” British pop musicians, Waterman initially appears to be the antithesis of punk, but he has a contrasting view. Putting on the gigs that cost kids about £1 a go to see Kylie, Jason, Sonia et al, (many of whom let’s face it were just kids themselves – Rick Astley the tea boy with that strange wail), a revolutionary process, getting 2-3,000 14 – 17 year olds in the venue and 12,000 outside. And perhaps it was. He claims Stock Aitkin and Waterman were successful “Because we were those three girls that were the Supremes on that bed with the hairbrushes.”

And Lulu described herself thus:“When I started I was considered to be a bit of a rocker, actually a bit of a punk, more than a rocker. I just, you know, because my first record was shout. So it's a very strange situation to have had what I had, which was the first hit record. You record it when you're fourteen years old. There's no big management company or big record company you know or big wheels, big cogs pushing you. And it went straight into the charts.”

It’s funny how things start out and where they end up… next time you’re near a karaoke bar in Tenerife (ok, maybe not in your lifetime but you get the idea) and someone’s murdering this little song, remember its journey from the birth of a 14 year old's punk dream to an afterlife as a hen nightmare.

And worth a watch is definitely Charles Hazlewood, branching out from his normal Proms and Radio 3 Classical domain into working out what makes perfect pop in How Pop Songs Work.

BBC Four's Pop What Is It good For? season runs through the first 3 weeks of January. For more details, go to www.bbc.co.uk/pop. If you’ve missed Pop Britannia’s first episode, watch again in the next 4 days on the BBC’s iPlayer: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

Music-Blogger "Best of 2007" List Cheat-Sheet

Hey music blog pseud! Want to compile a cooler-than-thou end of 2007 list but don't know where to begin? Check out the catbirdseat.org's Music-Blogger "Best of 2007" List Cheat-Sheet and watch your hipster friends wet themselves with envy. With handy pick 'n' mix options and attractive wildcards to personalise to your own taste, you can impress the 4 people who read your blog, without ever having an idea of your own. Yahtzee!

Strange things said in the office last week...

There was one point yesterday when I thought the world was ending, but it was just you...

What is your definition of a boombastic jazz style?

I don't want a monster living in my pants...

She's not pretty, but I like her...



Have you ever sat in a room not six feet from Martha Wainwright?

Celine Dion remix? Shall we stick it on, have a listen?

Matt, I like a band that's contemporary, what am I going to do?