“If it made you feel angry go ahead and write a letter” February 13, 2013

So the big news for the year so far would seem to be that the Pope is retiring. It’s only a surprise because it hasn’t happened in nearly 600 years, but frankly isn’t he a bit of an old duffer to be holding such a big role? I mean he was 78 when he took the job on in 2005. I wonder why he chose to go now and did he pontificate much (did you see what I did there)? But clearly the world economy must be in a bad state when even God starts laying people off. Anyway if you are likely to be offended by an opinion of religion which may not be in support of the Pope or the Catholic Church I suggest you stop reading now. You have been warned!

the conspiracy theorists are probably going into overdrive as I type this; does it relate to unpaid subscriptions for his Hitler Youth membership. is he about to admit to kiddie fiddling with a choir boy or two? If so did he use a condom? The latter would probably be a bigger sin wouldn’t it? Does he feel guilty for the Vatican giving Scumbag Saville a papal knighthood? Is he in fact the Anti Christ or even worse a transvestite; the Aunty Christ anyone? Or is he about to give us the headline the world has waited for and never thought possible? I’m talking ‘POPE ELOPES’ folks.

I am also really surprised at the length of his notice period. He resigns on 11th February and his last day is 28th February. 17 days? My notice period is 4 weeks and I barely lead one and a half people let alone 1.2 billion. Will the new Pope Bloke be a radical reformer or just another old duffer in a funny hat? I’d like to think reformer, but it’ll be a duffer won’t it? But before I get to the music I’d like to float my conspiracy theory. I believe that Benedict is resigning because the end days of the Book of Revelations are upon us. The four Horseman of the Apocalypse have in fact arrived but somewhere the translation was incorrectly carried out. The Horsemen are in fact the four Horse Meat products; Ladies and gentlemen I give you Bad Burger, Bloody Evil Bolognese, Sinful Sausage and Lousy Lasagna. These are the true heralds of the apocalypse. As for the Anti Christ, that must be Sinead O’Connor right? If it is then she has my full support!

“Still I’ll be always laughing like a clown, won’t someone help me?” May 7, 2012

According to the UK tabloid the Sun Prince Harry has aspirations to become a reggae DJ. This apparently all stemmed from what has been described as an inspirational meeting with Bob Marley’s widow Rita on his recent visit to Jamaica. He has supplemented his House music vinyl collection with some heavy reggae on vinyl and has taken mixing lessons.

Someone needs to sign him up for a club gig, for a Royal he seems to have a good attitude. Coming from me that is high praise indeed. I wished that I hadn’t retired as a mobile DJ, otherwise I’d have offered my help. In fact maybe my life long buddy Glen and I (formerly Bill & Glen the Disco Men) should reform and let Harry join the team. How does Harry, Bill & Glen the Royal Disco Men sound?

“If you just put your hand in mine, we’re gonna lay all our troubles behind” February 10, 2012

Do you receive a regular selection of random e mails from various groups that you have subscribed to over the years? I get loads and often I can’t be bothered to look at them. But for some reason I took a  chance and opened one at random. It contained stacks of old pictures. Mostly of different stars together and not necessarily those that had worked together. Here are a few that I really liked and had never seen before. let me know what you think of them.

Bob Marley & the Wailers and the Jackson 5

George Harrison & Bob Marley

Mick Jagger & Jimi Hendrix

Mick Jagger & James Brown

No more words required just listen to some great music by some of those artists while you enjoy the pictures.

“There ain’t no room for the hopeless sinner” October 18, 2011

This hopeless sinner (or maybe I’m just a talented sinner) was listening to the radio at the weekend and a song that I really love came on. It was the beautiful “People Get Ready” by the Curtis Mayfield era Impressions. Now this is a very religious song and I am not a religious person. So my question to you is; should I be able to enjoy religious songs even if I am not religious myself? Well I’m talking conventional religion I suppose because in the last two census forms I completed I registered as a Jedi (hence the Star Wars elements of this post!)

I have quite a few songs of a religious nature in my collection including;

“I Want Jesus To Walk With Me” – Johnny Nash – But then I do have a rather extensive Johnny Nash Collection

“Forever Loving Jah” – Bob Marley – I love loads of Rasta but let’s face it I can never be one, I am now forever a “Crazy Baldhead”

“You Got The Love” – The Source featuring Candi Staton – Probably my favourite dance track, probably my favourite song of the 90s too! I am pretty sure this is a religious love song about the love of god rather than just a love song.

“People Get Ready” – The Impressions – A truly beautiful song whatever it’s sentiment in my opinion

“Caravan Of Love” – Isley Jasper Isley – The biggest hit from this Isley Brothers offshoot and also superbly covered by those legends from Hull, the Housemartins

I’d like to know what you think about this potential dilemma. I don’t have a problem with this, but I wonder if there is anyone out there that does. On a similar vein I once worked with a guy who was a racist, I’d like to stress that he wasn’t a friend. He had lots of 60s soul music in his collection; Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and plenty of Motown. Personally I find that hard to reconcile; he didn’t like black people and yet he had a large amount of black music in his collection. I’d love to hear your views on that too.

Incidentally I would like to state categorically that I do not own any of Cliff Richard‘s religious songs such as “The Lords Prayer ” and “Saviours Day”

“I wanna know why you never look me in the face” October 14, 2011

I think I have come close to experiencing regret on two occasions and that is with the benefit of hindsight. Those two occasions occurred in the late 70s and both involved me turning down what would have been significant opportunities.

Firstly I was sitting in my local pub one evening in December 1976 (it was the now sadly departed Oak Tree in Hillingdon) when someone came in and offered tickets to see a band at Brunel University. It was a band that was causing quite a stir and I could have made it quite easily. But I decided that the pub would win that night. The band was the Sex Pistols!

Possibly the very ticket that I turned down!

Secondly I was on a lad’s holiday in Spain in 1977 (or it might have been 1978). We were staying maybe less than an hour’s drive from Barcelona. While we were there a now sadly late, great performer was playing a gig in the city. We asked our travel representative about getting tickets. He
said getting them was easy but that for a bunch of English blokes to turn up at a gig in Spain would incite the Spanish youth to violence. I now realise that this was probably complete bollocks and we should have gone to the show. That legendary, late, great performer was none other than Bob Marley.

So I have always felt that I have never regretted anything I have done in my life so far. I still believe that and I also feel that this is a good philosophy, however that doesn’t mean that you can’t be sorry about some things you have done, does it?

There were a couple of people at school that to be perfectly honest I treated in quite a mean and disrespectful way. With one of those people I simply followed the herd and behaved just like most other people in my school peer group. With the other person I made them look like a liar in order to save some teenage face. So there you have it, my teenage confessions of sorts. I would like to apologise to both of these people albeit so many years later, but I guess I am just salving my conscience. I thought long and hard about whether I should mention them by name and I personally feel that I should, I’m sure that the chances of them reading this is pretty remote anyway.

So at the risk of steering into Simon Mayo confession territory I would like to apologise unreservedly for my behaviour towards two people between 1972 and 1977 or thereabouts. Geoffrey Guile and Susan Batty this one’s for you! If I knew then what I know now then I would have behaved very differently.

“He likes to keep his fire engine clean, It’s a clean machine” May 9, 2011

I bring you some momentous news in this post dear readers, oh and some other rubbish too. So firstly the momentous news. According to the US Social Security Administration Elvis has dropped out of the top 1,000 boys names for the first time since 1954. Fans can console themselves by the fact that Presley is still hanging in there at number 274. The top five boys names are Jacob, Ethan, Michael, Jayden and William. For the girls it’s Isabella, Sophia, Emma, Olivia and Ava. There is a rather strange girls name at number 25 though; it’s Nevaeh. It’s heaven spelt backwards if you were wondering. I think I may just start calling myself Lleh, what do you think?

After all this time Elvis really should have known that farting in a jump suit wasn’t a good option

Canadian Josh Chalom runs the amazing Cube Works Studio in Toronto. He has made some superb art pieces from carefully and strategically turned Rubik’s Cubes. Check out the gallery website by clicking here and enjoy some of his work below. In particular; the aforementioned Elvis Presley, Billy Idol, Bob Marley, Mick Jagger and Alice Cooper

      

My favourite is the Marilyn Monroe picture though

There was some rather sad news at the weekend. David Mason died late last month aged 85. He was a classical trumpet player and was a regular in many orchestras. But from a rock music perspective it was Mr Mason who played the Piccolo Trumpet solo on the Beatles song “Penny Lane“. RIP

“It’s been a long, long time since I’ve got you on my mind” December 29, 2010

This will be quite a short post, but one I simply had to post. Regular readers will know that I am a big Johnny Nash fan and also not a small fan of Bob Marley. I have a Google Alert set up for Johnny Nash and today it pointed me towards a real gem of a blog post from the Transpontine Blog. It is a South East London Blogzine and todays post was about a story that appeared in the Southwark News from early November. If you thought Peckham was only famous for Del Boy and Rodney then prepare to think again, for it may have reignited the career of Johnny Nash and sparked the career of Bob Marley in 1972.

Keith Baugh, the Art Teacher at Peckham Manor School in the early 70s met Johnny and Bob in a London club in 1972 where they bemoaned the fact that they simply couldn’t get their songs played on the radio. So Keith suggested that they do a bit more promo work, perhaps with a gig at his school. So they took him at his word and played two sets, they also found time to play a bit of football with some of the pupils.

I really loved the Transpontine post, so thanks to them, the Southwark News and Keith Baugh for providing the photos and the story. Transpontine has also been added to my Blogroll. Obviously this also gives me a chance to indulge in a few songs from a couple of my most favourite artists. Did I ever tell you that Johnny Nash was the first person to have a UK chart hit with a Bob Marley song? Well he was and that song was “Stir It Up“

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)

“When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on” October 3, 2010

A recent survey undertaken by PRS for Music sought to discover the songs that make us men cry. A total of 1,700 men were polled and the results make somewhat interesting reading I think. The top ten is shown below, with a few comments from me. Click here to read a report on the results in the UK free newspaper, the Metro.

1. Everybody Hurts – REM – A great REM song taken from the classic ‘Automatic For The People‘ album. It was written by drummer Bill Berry, although he didn’t play drums on the track, that was done by a drum machine. He also said that the song was aimed at teenagers. In 2006 the song was voted 4th in a poll by Channel 5 to discover ‘Britain Favourite Break Up Songs’
2. Tears in Heaven – Eric Clapton – A very sad song in many ways. Clapton wrote it with Will Jennings after the death of his four-year old son Conor in 1991. The boy fell from the window of a friend’s apartment in New York
3. Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen – Now this one is a classic and has been covered by many artists. X Factor winner Alexandra Burke reached number one in the UK with, at best a very mediocre working of the song and at its worst would easily make music purists cry. In my opinion the best version is easily that of the late, great Jeff Buckley and that version can indeed bring tears to my eyes
4. Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinead O’Connor - She will always have my respect for tearing up a photo of the pope on US TV, I bet that made a few people cry with rage though. It reached number one in the UK in 1990. The song is actually a cover version of a song written by his royal purpleness, Prince. It was recorded and released by the Family in 1985, this was simply a vehicle to enable Prince to release more of his material.
5. With or Without You – U2 – This was the first single from ‘The Joshua Tree’ in 1987 and became their first US number one song.
6. The Drugs Don’t Work – The Verve - This was the band’s most successful UK single and reached number one in 1997, having been released the day after Princess Diana died. It was written by lead singer Richard Ashcroft about his own drug habit and also about the death of his father.
7. Candle In The Wind – Elton John – I really do prefer the original version of this song, it was about Marilyn Monroe and was taken from the album ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road‘ However, sadly, in my opinion, the version that most people remember is the rewritten version for Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997, although in its defence it did raise millions for charity. Incidentally I reckon that must be the first time Princess Diana has been mentioned more than once in any of my posts.
8. Streets of Philadelphia – Bruce Springsteen – Bruce wrote this for the first mainstream movie to tackle HIV/ AIDS, ‘Philadelphia’ from 1993. The song won the best original song Oscar. It reached number one in many countries, although not in the US or UK. It has also been known to occasionally open my tear ducts too.
9. Unchained Melody – Todd Duncan – whilst the article lists the Todd Duncan version, which was taken from the 1955 prison film; ‘Unchained’ it is probably the Righteous Brothers version that most people know. That version was recorded in the sixties but became a massive hit again when it was used in the 1990 film ‘Ghost’. It has been recorded by more than 500 artists including, Jimmy Young, Elvis Presley, the Supremes, U2, the Smashing Pumpkins and there was also an excruciatingly bad version by Pop Idol muppet Gareth Gates.
10. Angels – Robbie Williams – As regular readers of this blog know, I am definitely not a Robbie fan and I particularly dislike this song. I really don’t get it, I mean “I’m loving angels instead”? Instead of what exactly?

There are a few songs that can make me blub, many by Johnny Nash, Bob Marley and Jeff Buckley. But perhaps the one that does it the most is “Sailing” by Rod Stewart. It was always my Dad’s favourite song and we played it as his funeral back in 2001. What songs make you cry?

Finally let me finish with a classic video for one of my favourite songs about crying. It’s “Cry” by Godley and Creme

“When screaming fight the power, that’s when the vulture devoured” August 4, 2010

A few trinkets of music news for you today. Firstly Wyclef Jean off of the Fugees seems likely to run for the presidency of Haiti in November. He has until 7th August to register. Although he now lives in Brooklyn he has always been fiercely proud of his Haitian roots. He was very prominent in supporting his fellow countrymen following the devastating earthquake in January. Personally I hope that he runs and wins the election, I suspect that he will be a breath of fresh air to politics. Read the story on the BBC by clicking here

The dress code in the Haitian Parliament was clearly far more relaxed than in Britain

It got me thinking about who we’d like to see enter politics from the music world. Clearly Bono would like to be considered, but whilst I am a U2 fan, Bono can be bloody annoying at times. I can think of a number of dead stars who might have made an interesting career in politics; John Lennon, Bob Marley and obviously Screaming Lord Sutch, who did partake very regularly in UK elections. He was also the longest-serving party leader in British politics I believe. He created and led the Monster Raving Looney Party for many years. Alice Cooper famously stood against Nixon as an independent candidate in the 1972 US elections. I think of living stars Paul Weller, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Jackson Browne would be good. What do you think?

In other news Lady GaGa has been nominated for a record 13 MTV Video Music Awards, next in line Eminem has just 8 nominations. GaGa is never short of a good quote and she didn’t let us down here either, having said that she was pleased that her number of nominations was an unlucky 13 she went on to say “God put me on Earth for three reasons – to make loud music, gay videos and make a damn ruckus!” I love that one! Read the story here on the BBC site, the awards themselves take place on 12th September in LA.

Sometimes GaGa just couldn’t be bothered with all the fancy dresses or maybe she was covering the Cranberries song “Linger(ie)”

In a separate story Lady GaGa has admitted to Vanity Fair magazine that she is an occasional user of cocaine. She also pointed out that she did not want her fans to take the drug. Maybe I’m a bit simple here, but if you don’t want the more gullible of your fans to do the drugs you do, then maybe not telling them might help! The BBC has the lowdown on that story, click here

Lady GaGa was so rich she could now afford to employ her own commode-bearer