Spinechillinglyhairraisiningly good!

Great album too!

School's Out

The summer of 1972. I was 14.  Three months of holidays ahead. And Alice Cooper's "School's Out" was in the charts.  It didn't get any better than that!

Alice is 63 today. The inventor of "shock rock", he had a bizarre stage act which included snakes, baby dolls, guillotines, electric chairs and plenty of blood.  He was once rumored to have bitten the head of a live chicken and drank its blood on stage.  The real story is even more strange.

Cooper claims that the infamous "Chicken Incident"was an accident. A chicken somehow made its way on stage during Cooper's performance and not having any experience around farm animals, Cooper presumed that, because the chicken had wings, it would be able to fly. He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting it to fly away. The chicken instead plummeted into the first few rows occupied by disabled people in wheelchairs, who reportedly proceeded to tear the bird to pieces!

The next day, the incident made the front page of national newspapers, and Frank Zappa phoned Cooper to ask if the story, which reported that he had bitten the head off the chicken and drunk its blood on stage, was true. Cooper denied the rumor, whereupon Zappa told him, "Well, whatever you do, don't tell anyone you didn't do it",obviously recognising that such publicity would be priceless for the band.

I used to have all his albums and School's Out is still one of his best. The song itself is included in the Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 500 songs of all time and rightly so. Today,  Alice Cooper is a restaurateur and golfing celebrity. I wonder does he serve chicken?

Songbird

Today is Eva Cassidy's birthday. By now, I guess, most people are familiar with her story. Eva died in 1996, aged 33, of melanoma. She was a relatively obscure singer who enjoyed little commercial success while she was alive. In 2000, Terry Wogan (another obscure radio presenter!) of the BBC, promoted her recording of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow". A video recording of her playing in Blues Alley in 1996 became the most requested video ever on Top of the Pops.

Her marvelous compilation album, Songbird, then became a huge bestseller in the UK and Ireland and she went on to enjoy huge international posthumous success. In 2005, she was the 5th highest bestselling artist on Amazon.com.

Her version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow is truly beautiful and better, in my opinion, than Judy Garland's. The last song she ever sang publicly was What A Wonderful World, which she performed at a benefit gig in front of many of her friends and family.  She died 6 weeks later,

She would have been 48 today.  Happy Birthday Eva.



If you want to see the full story of her all too brief life this is a short ABC documentary made in 2010.

Smooth Criminal on Cello

Happy Birthday Biggie Mozah!

I missed his birthday yesterday.  255 years old.  Today he'd probably be called Biggie Mozah or something like that.

For America's greatest allies

Isn't it amazing how the action of one, simple street trader, Muhammad Bouazizi in Tunisia,  can challenge and topple an entire system? How fragile they are. Where are Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton now?

Julieta Venegas

I'm digging Julieta Venegas, at the moment. Music to make you smile.  This isn't the greatest recording.  Get her MTV Unplugged album.  Really excellent.

Anna Calvi

Great album.  Must have!



Anna Calvi

Imagine

Imagine from PlayingForChangeFoundation on Vimeo.

Oops! Happy Birthday to Steve Earle as well.

How could I forget Steve Earle who is 56 today?  This is Copperjack Road.  Earle is a seasoned anti war and anti death penalty veteran which must go down well in Texas where he hails from.  His son Justin Townes Earle has just released an excellent album called Harlem River Blues.  Worth checking out if you like country rock.

How Musical are You?

You might be surprised. I was!!

Click Here To Find Out

You won't believe it!

I don't like graffiti. Sofia is covered in it and most of it represents the meaningless scribbles of narcissistic morons who seem to believe that their "tags" are of interest to the wider populace.  Ok so I'm prejudiced. To challenge my prejudices I decided to have a look at "Exit Through The Gift Shop" which, ostensibly, is a documentary about street artists. I say ostensibly because by the end movie you are not really sure if the whole thing is a hoax or not.

Film critics are equally divided. Roger Ebert (the world's greatest film critic) believes it to be genuine while the Guardian film critic thinks its a hoax. The fact is that as a piece of entertainment it is riveting stuff.  You can't really believe what's happening as you watch it. I guess it's kind of like the "Usual Suspects" of documentary making!!

West Bank "Banksy"

In brief the story revolves around a French "film-maker", Thierry Guetta who lives in the US and starts to film famous street artists.  Ultimately this brings him to meet up with the world renowned Banksy from the UK.

Thierry is a bit of a fantasist (my dog would make better movies than he does) and Banksy eventually turns the camera back on him.  He encourages Thierry to become a street artist himself.  Thierry admits he's not an artist so he hires graphic designers and other artists to do his work for him! He ends up selling millions of dollars of "street art" as "Mr. Brainwash" to LA art lovers who are desperate to buy "his work".  He even designed Madonna's "Celebration" album cover. At the end of the movie Banksy and all the other street artists are horrified at this charlatan who they have unwittingly unleashed on the world.  But did they conspire to create him in the first place as a snub to the artistic establishment? Who knows?

Graffiti of a Graffiti cleaner

Its a very funny movie and stands on its own as a piece of entertainment. It has won a host of awards and I would be surprised if it doesn't win an Oscar.  It will certainly be nominated.  Personally, I think the whole thing was a hoax and it will be the ultimate irony if Banksy (the doyen of subversive art) wins an Oscar.  That's show business!!

By the way, after watching the movie, I reluctantly admit that some graffiti can be artistic! But I don't see too much of it in Sofia.

Incidentally, Richard Hawley (formerly of Pulp) wrote the theme song "Tonight The Streets Are Ours".  It was written as a reaction to the perceived anti-youth policies of the British government. It's a great song.

The Big Man

Happy Birthday to Clarence "The Big Man" Clemons who is 68 today.  Clarence has been the saxophonist with Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band since 1972.  10th Avenue Freeze-Out tells the story of when he joined the band and on Jungleland he plays his most famous solo. Jungleland features on Born to Run which is, without doubt, one of the best rock albums ever made (15th on the Rolling Stone Magazine's top 500).

Peace, Love and Happiness

Happy Birthday to Scott McKenzie and Rod Stewart.

Rod Stewart got his bus pass last year.  He's 66 today. I'll pass on his solo career (Although American Songbook is quite good). Maggie May was a great song though.  Rod is married to Penny Lancaster who is famed for being blonde and 1.85m tall. At least Rod has somewhere to lay his head. They are expecting their second child this year.  Rod will be 84 when the kid is 18.  Nice! Happy Birthday Rod!

Scott McKenzie is famed for the generational hit, San Francisco which is synonymous with the "hippie" movement of the 60's.  It was written (by the Mamas and the Papas) for the Monterey Pop Festival which arguably gave birth to other major festivals such as Woodstock and Glastonbury.  All the acts (Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, Otis Redding to name but a few) played for free.  Bit cheaper than the €250 a ticket Oxegen!!

What connects Stephen Hawking, David Bowie, Galileo and Elvis Presley?

What a day! Stephen Hawking, David Bowie and Elvis were all born on the 8th of January and Galileo  died on the same day. Interestingly, I see that the Pope has just announced that God was actually behind the Big Bang so some major revisions now required to Genesis, I suppose. Came a little late for Galileo but better late than never.  Anyway in honour of these esteemed gentlemen (excluding the Pope) I have gathered some videos to hopefully honour the connection.  Not much on YouTube for Galileo so I settled for Declan O'Rourke instead.

Back to Normal 2!

Enough of all this touchy feely get in touch with your real self singer songwriter angst. Let's start the new year as we mean to finish it!  Some ol' time sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.  For 2011 make sure you shake all night long!!!

Teenage Kicks

I was listening to some of John Peel's Festive 50 recordings and came across this again.  The best pop/rock song ever written? Without doubt.  John Peel loved this song so much the opening line is inscribed on his headstone: "A teenage dream's so hard to beat".  Whatever happened to Fergal Sharkey?

Amazing Mash-up Mania - These are very good. Who'd have thought Van Halen and John Lennon would go together?

  Don't Hold Back, Sweet Jane (Chemical Brothers vs. Velvet Underground vs. U2 vs. MARRS) by Bootleg Mashups

  Duffy Train Running (Duffy vs. Doobie Brothers) by Bootleg Mashups

  If I Were A Free Fallin' Boy (Beyoncé vs. Tom Petty) by Bootleg Mashups

  Imagine A Jump (Van Halen vs. John Lennon) by Bootleg Mashups

  Jump You Fucker (Cee Lo Green vs. Van Halen) by Bootleg Mashups

  My Name Is Funk Soul Brother (Eminem vs. Fat Boy Slim) by Bootleg Mashups

Cee Lo Green's The Lady Killer: One of the best albums of 2010 and probably 2011

Don’t cry baby
If this makes you cry, girl I didn’t mean it
Next time I should lie, the truth is inconvenient
I bet if you’d try, you could live without me
I really don’t know why, you bother to cry about me

Cry, cry, cry baby, I guess that I’m a bad guy now
Cry, cry, cry baby, just like all the other ones
Cry, cry, cry baby