The Woman In Black March 11, 2012

Earlier this evening we went to the local Vue multiplex, which frankly isn’t as nice as the Picturehouse City Screen cinema in York. However putting that aside the film we saw was ‘The Woman In Black‘, it is an adaptation of Scarborough born Susan Hill‘s 1983 novel of the same name. Incidentally the book is bloody good too. It is the first production from a newly reincarnated Hammer Studios.

Daniel Radcliffe plays the main character, Arthur Kipps. He is a lawyer sent to a desolate coastal town in the north-east of England to close the estate of a recently deceased woman. I won’t add any spoilers in this post but if you like classic horror in a gothic style take a trip to the cinema as soon as you can. In the UK it is a 12A certificate, but I’m not sure I can think of any 12 year olds that wouldn’t be scared shitless!

Was it scary? Well there were a few ‘make you jump’ moments but personally a film has never scared me and this one was no exception. It did scare the living daylights out of my beautiful wife Catherine a.k.a Catwoman. It is a great film though; excellent acting, brilliant script, perfect casting and wonderful locations and cinematography. On this showing there is clearly a long life after Harry Potter for Mr Radcliffe, he has the makings of an award-winning actor.

Hammer is back with a vengeance with this slice of classic British Horror. (My late uncle, Ron Jackson, would have been proud. He was Production Manager of many of the great Hammer Horror films).  Hollywood couldn’t have made this and let’s hope they don’t try. This is not a musical nor is it a music related film, but I felt the need to talk about it. So in keeping with this being a music blog please enjoy a few appropriate songs. Also click here to see a great spoof based on the film.

“I need help ladies and gentlemens I need someone to stand beside me” October 10, 2011

I watched the classic Peter Sellers movie ‘Being There’ for the first time in years yesterday. I went out and bought the DVD at the weekend following a chance (no pun intended to fans of said movie!) conversation at work last week.

My memory of the film was always that it was quite deep, funny, emotional, spiritual and very well written and acted. On this occasion
my memory has certainly not failed me, this is truly a classic film, featuring in my opinion Peter Sellers finest performance. The supporting cast is equally accomplished too.

If you haven’t seen it I will try to describe it simply and with no spoilers. Sellers plays a character known as Chancey Gardener, who in
fact is just a gardener…… or is he? It seems that everything he knows he has learnt in the garden or from watching TV. His simple, yet powerful thoughts on life in relation to gardening can be seen as the ramblings of a slow-witted person or something much more profound. Personally I’d opt for the profound.

If you haven’t seen this film yet then I would strongly recommend that you do. If you come away from watching it not feeling better
than you did before then you really are hard-hearted.

It’s not a musical but I felt able to include it in my music blog simply because of its excellent use of two seminal 70s tracks, the latter
of which is one of my all time favourites. If you have already seen this film or have watched it on my recommendation I would love to hear you opinions on it.

“Why wait any longer for the world to begin, you can have your cake and eat it too” June 3, 2011

I have a small selection of oddities for you in this post. Starting with the Arctic Monkeys, no I’m not suggesting that the Monkeys are oddities, but a funny little story about what rude boys they are! Apparently their new album will suffer the indignity of having a sticker placed over its title when it goes on sale in a large US supermarket chain. Not because it has nudity, pornography, swearing or anything like that on the cover, but because the title is said to be very suggestive. I don’t agree at all. So what is that offending title? Why it’s a phrase I have often used myself. It’s ‘Suck It And See’ Now I can hear all of you with an honours degree in double entendre sniggering, but frankly what’s the point in stickering (stop sniggering again ok) that? I thought it was pretty stupid when a pretty tasteful naked girl on the cover of the first Darkness album was covered with a sticker in US supermarkets. But the funniest for me was that the todgers on the classic statues on the cover of the Dame’s second Tin Machine album were removed for the US supermarkets. What a pathetic bunch of arseholes! Tipper Gore this is your legacy!

Liam shows just how much he enjoys lay lady lay by laying down

Now for some Gallagher brother news. It would appear that Liam Gallagher is not a big fan of Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan. Liam likes Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” but thinks that Bob is a ‘bit of a miserable c*nt’. He also has a dig at 60s and 70s bands that reform to rake in festival money with greatest hits sets. read what he had to say by clicking here for the NME site. In another piece of Gallagher news it appears that Noel and Liam’s Mum is ready to bang their heads together. She says that the only way she expects Liam to miss Noel’s forthcoming nuptials is if both his legs are broken. If I were Liam I’d be afraid, I’d be very afraid. Read about that in the NME as well by clicking here.

So tell us Gaga, how many Muppets were harmed or killed in the making of this outfit?

It appears that Amazon have had one of the biggest loss leader products in recent years. They have been charging just 99 cents for the download of the new Lady Gaga album ‘Born This Way’, but they have been paying her record label 9 dollars per album downloaded! It is estimated that in about a week they have lost around 3 million dollars. Now is that just pure waste or some kind of reverse greed? Click here to read the story.

And finally, Catwoman and I went to see the new Marvel movie Friday evening; ‘X Men: First Class‘ I won’t be doing a full review as it’s not really a music related movie. But it is an excellent film and for me one of the best Marvel adaptations so far, go and see it if you get the chance. But there is a small music link as the song that is played over the closing credits is the new Take That single “Love Love”. In spite of the fact that Robbie is involved and regular readers will know I really don’t like his stuff, I sadly really like this song. Do I need therapy?

“And the future is certain, give us time to work it out” April 12, 2011

OK I know i's not actually Friday today, but that's not really the point is it?

Just a few morsels of news for you with this post, ok for a couple of these ‘news’ might be stretching it and ‘olds’ might be a more apt description. Especially this first one. Many of you will have no doubt heard of Rebecca Black. She is the young lady who recently released what many consider to be one of the worst songs and worst videos ever. There has been an awful lot of nasty, vicious, vitriolic comment about her song. So other than saying I really don’t think the song or video are very good I will try not to add to what has already been said. The key thing that concerns me about this sad affair is that the poor girl recorded the song for a vanity music label; the Ark Music Factory. So now everyone can be a singer, just pay a few grand, or indeed get your parents to stump up the cash and you will get a song, a guest rapper, a vocoder and a naff video. sounds great doesn’t it? But surely you need talent as well? But in these days of X Factor and Idol that probably isn’t the case. Now that in my opinion is a really sad state of affairs. the one saving grace for Rebecca (apart from the millions of YouTube hits) is that the proceeds from any sales of her song “Friday” will go towards the earthquake relief in Japan. judge for yourself, if you haven’t already, by watching the video below. I would also love to hear your opinions on vanity record labels.

Talking Heads - Digging for Crist!

The BBC reported today that David Byrne off of the Talking Heads has settled his case against former Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist after the politician used the Talking Heads song “Road To Nowhere” to attack his opponent in the race for the senate. personally I am really pleased that Byrne took Crist on. What do you think? Read the story on the Beeb by clicking here.

Bono wonders whether he should have put his $558m in the hotel safe rather than trousered it in the pocket of his Speedos

It has now been confirmed that U2 have achieved the highest grossing tour ever with their 360° tour which began back in 2009. They still have 20 dates to go too, but they have already grossed $558 million. That even allows for missing a few dates, including Glasto last year, due to Mr Hewson’s back problems. Are they really worth it?

Dunc with Dad, Dame Dave

Richard Rich and Max Tannone have put together a brilliant free EP based on mixing hip hop sounds with the soundtrack to Duncan Jones (son of David Robert Jones) excellent movie ‘Moon’. Click here to download all the tracks. It’s called the Selene Project and has nothing to do with song strangler Celine Dion, it’s spelled very differently people!

Finally I was honoured to accompany the delectable Catwoman (aka Catherine Lee, my fiancée) to the studios of Radio York on Saturday where live on air she reviewed the newspapers. Once again she did an excellent job, you can still hear the show for three more days by clicking on Radio York’s Julia Booth’s page here. You can also check out the website for her excellent Virtual Assistant company, Kaleidoscope Business Services by clicking here and she would also love you to comment on her rather spiffing series of blogs.

“I’ve got a hunch that you’re following, to get your own back on me” November 23, 2010

I know this isn’t music related exactly, well not at all really. (But I’ll address that later!) However I didn’t want to let the passing of one of the most iconic horror movie stars. Ingrid Pitt star of many Hammer Horror classics died this week aged 73. I didn’t realise until I read the report on the BBC website that Ingrid was actually born in Poland. You can read the story by clicking here.

I have always loved the Hammer Horror movies and I have many of them on DVD. Perhaps one reason I love them so much is that my Uncle Ron worked on quite a few of them, he was the Production Manager, which I think means he was responsible for finding the right locations for filming. Which for much of the Hammer Dracula related films, as far as exterior locations go anyway, was in fact Black Park in Slough. Who ever would have thought that Slough could ever be a stunt double for Romania? If you watch a Hammer Horror movie keep your eye on the screen for all the opening credits and you may well see my Uncle’s name come up as Production Manager, he was called Ron Jackson and whilst he died some time ago is still sadly missed!

As I have said on many occasions though, this is indeed a music blog and to mark the death of Ingrid Pitt there can only really be one choice of song, can’t there? ladies and gentlemen and those of you who aren’t quite sure, I give you the delectable Kate Bush and the wonderful “Hammer Horror”

The Social Network October 15, 2010

Last weekend I accompanied the beautiful Catwoman to a free preview of the new film ‘The Social Network‘ at City Screen in York courtesy of the Guardian. It is based on the book ‘The Accidental Billionaires‘ which recounts the story of the birth of Facebook.

The script is tight, pacey and at times very, very funny indeed. The film’s strap line is ‘You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies’ and this is the focus of much of the film, particularly all the legal wranglings about whose idea it was. This largely focuses on the relationship between Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his former partner Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and his other battle with the Winklevoss brothers who he refers to rather amusingly as the Winklevi.

I never realised the part that Sean Parker, the guy who created Napster, played in the early days of Facebook. He is played incredibly well by none other than former Mickey Mouse Club star Justin Timberlake.

I suggest that you get yourself off of Facebook right now and go and see this movie, you won’t be disappointed! I can also confirm that JUSTWILLIAM1959, WITH JUST A HINT OF MAYHEM and CATWOMAN all ‘Like’ this movie.

As usual this is indeed a music blog so let’s mention some of that. The actual soundtrack was composed and performed by Trent Reznor (off of Nine Inch Nails) and Atticus Ross and it works really well. There are some excellent songs used during the film and you can find a few of them below;

“Dreadlock Holiday” – 10cc

“Ball And Biscuit” – White Stripes

“Like A Bad Girl Should” – Cramps

“California Uber Alles” – Dead Kennedys

“Crazy Baldhead” – Bob Marley & The Wailers

“Baby You’re A Rich Man” – Beatles (although I think it’s a cover version used in the film)