uke sighting

beard? check.
willie nelson cover? check.
'95-era will oldham steez? check.
ukulele? bingo.

phosphorescent - 'too sick to pray', 'at death'

Phosphorescent - Too Sick To Pray + At Death (Ukelele)
Uploaded by noahmTV

more phosphorescent on GMS
buy to willie

NASA - 'The Spirit of Apollo' - album review

if i could invite anybody i wanted to a dinner party, i'd invite barack obama, homer simpson, a porn star, and einstein. the conversation would flow, and a few of the world's more pressing problems would be set to rights. on the menu would be baked potatoes and wine.

in the background, i'd play NASA's guest-list-heavy fantasy-dinner-party past-present-and-future-of-critically-approved-rap-rock-and-pop debut album, the spirit of apollo. i've no idea who these NASA folks are, except that they're two middle-aged chaps with silly names, as if gnarls barkley didn't put them off. i do know that they've got a massive, retro-looking rolodex, from which to make hip musical alchemy and shit. hence: collabos :-

NASA - 'Hip Hop' (feat. KRS-One, Fatlip & Slim Kid Tre)

tom waits makes great records by prentending to be mad; kool keith makes mostly-awful records, possibly because he is mad. david byrne is gawky, white and likes gadgets; chuck d is shouty, black, and likes terrible puns. ol' dirty bastard is un-self-conscious, drunk and dead; karen o is hip, sardonic and possibly past it. so it goes on. will they make musical magic, fuelled by baked potatoes and wine? or will it be more like that dreadful movie starring raekwon and bijou philips?

of course, reader, it's neither of these. the spirit of apollo pitches its pretend-united-nations tent somewhere between an above-par jurassic 5 record with a more singing, and a woolly-minded-liberal version of neon neon. "money is the root of all evil", sings someone who might be seu jorge. "you can be whatever you want to be", wails david byrne. "hip hop", declares KRS-One, king of say-what-you-see. "sizzla", replies sizzla. "strangling the monkey with the hands of a clock", suggests tom waits. all civilised repartee, at least until scarface arrives.

NASA - 'Money' (feat. David Byrne, Chuck D, Ras Congo, Seu Jorge & Z-Trip)

ten years hence, this won't look a shabby monument to late-00s mash-up hipsterism, especially if you skip over santogold's contributions (or leave them in as a warning to future generations). then again, this exactly the record the beastie boys could have made in 1999 with their grand royal roster and friends. nor does it look that far removed from 1989, when chuck, KRS, del tha funkee homosapien, kool keith et al were more than just list fodder, and when another daft-named white hip hop act was pushing things forward.

so, to break the ice, whatever happend to peanut butter wolf?

number's up

patrick mcgoohan, off of the prisoner, who outwitted number two but couldn't fool columbo, has kicked the bucket. pour out a little liquor for one of the best that ever did it. by 'did it', i mean battle a giant plastic guard-ball in a colourful-yet-sinister spy-prison from the 60s.

weren't they meant to be remaking the prisoner, with nicholas cage, or something? by 'they', i mean amazing people, touched with genius.

here's ed 'television personalities' ball's band the times with their 1982 tribute, 'i helped patrick mcgoohan escape'. which, to be fair, isn't all that great:



and the original intro sequence, which, to be fair, is:


ed ball > ed balls

ye olde

it's not all bad news. i can think of two or three lamer years: 2004 was pretty dull, and in 1943 there was a war on!!

notwithstanding the invasion of poland, 2008 was the year of old man strength. the best albums were all by musicians at least ten years 'deep' in the 'game': aidan moffatt's rambling spoken-word sexpert opus i can hear your heart, tindersticks' elegant, modest hungry saw (review), and the breeders' woozy, nagging grower, mountain battles. the best gigs, too, were by chaps who might have liked a sit down afterwards: leonard cohen bringing electric clarinet to the royal albert hall, my bloody valentine bringing earplugs to the roundhouse, and the jesus & mary chain paying tribute to earl brutus' nick sanderson at the forum.

most of the middling stuff was also from veterans: dependable records rather than career highlights from nick cave, bonnie prince billy, portishead, gutter twins, glenn campbell and spiritualized, from ageing metallers like the /dc, the priest, and the 'N Roses, and from rappers around since at least the late 90s: EMC, pete rock, heltah skeltah, lil' wayne, scarface, q-tip, nas, vast aire, el-p, RZA, GZA, tricky and roots manuva. Not Common, though. hell no.

next year one can only expect the same, as market forces, the global credit crisis, and the collapse of the once-sturdy rock pension scheme forces more and more ageing rockers onto the comeback trail.

do remember to keep warm during the winter months.

west coast bad boys - 'high fo' xmas'

christmas and rapping go together like pigs and shit, if you'll excuse my language.

from 'christmas rapping' to 'christmas in hollis' to a dipset xmas, there's enough material for a guardian blog post, let alone an entry in galactic mystery solvers. put simply, violence is that much more violent at christmas; incarceration that much more bleak; smoking weed that much more festive.

if i could go back in a time machine, dispensing goodwill to my fellow man, i'd travel to no limit HQ in 1998, and convince master p to put together a christmas album featuruing his full-strength roster (and mr serv-on), cementing his position as the phil spector of mostly-awful southern rap.

of course, master p did release a christmas album, albeit with a thinner roster, in his early, indie days on the west coast. high fo' xmas by the west coast bad boys, a half-hour tape released in 1994, is far more enjoyable than its big-budget west-cast-counterpart, suge knight's xmas on death row.

saddeningly, there is no line rhyming "christmas tree" with "penitentiary", but there are a few gems, not least from king george, who laments that "christmas in the ghetto got me paranoid / makes me wanna spray around with my shiny toy". elsewhere, 'rev. do-wrong xmas party' injoins revellers to celebrate "til you throw up, with some egg-nog, gin and some roll-up" over a 'party n bullshit' sample. 'jackin fo xmas' pinches well-known west coast beats for an entertaining seasonal medley. strangest of all is 'ghetto nite', a thin, echo-laden rendition of 'silent night', which sounds like something animal collective might release: what it's doing on a numbskull gangsta christmas record is anyone's guess.

king george (feat. master p) - 'lock up fo xmas'

king george, big ed & lil' ric - 'rev. do-wrong xmas party'

west coast bad boys - 'ghetto nite'

"like a bottle of chateauneuf du pape"

"i'm fine like wine when i start to rap"

what's that he's reading? ross mckibbin?

beastie boys - 'body movin'' (green lantern remix, with bits of gangstarr and ludacris, from ny state of mind)

"get my slippers, before i go gung ho"

2
i've had my eye on these slippers for a while now. come christmas day, i might be in luck.

ghostface, predictably, says all that needs to be said about the lust, panic and envy of slippers. rrrrrremixx:

ghostface killah - 'hidden darts' (from hidden darts: special edition)

slang democracy

pavement - 'sebadoh'

the first rule of successful metal is to name a song after yourself.

in an ideal world, this song would appear on your eponymous debut album. i'm thinking, of course, of 'iron maiden' by iron maiden, off of iron maiden.

in cases of extreme largesse, bands even name songs after other bands. talking heads wrote 'radiohead' more than a decade before radiohead were even formed. but radiohead are profoundly important like that.

pavement did this several times, paying tribute to the likes of jon spencer and (hey!) polvo, as well as singing the priases of REM, smashing pumpkins, and stone temple pilots. if they don't release them on their super-deluxe-back-catalogue-10th-anniversary-domino-records-reissue-fandango-series-of-decade-long-pitchfork-reassessment-reminiscence thing, i might post some more. i, too, pratice, largesse. here's the best one:

pavement - 'sebadoh'

it would be cool if sebadoh were to cover this. yeah, cool.

fiddle interlude

no, not that kind of Test.

 

i’m fiddling around with my blog. don’t mind me.

 

if i like how it turns out, i might write some reviews of gigs that i’ve been to, by the dead kennedys, the gutter twins, built to spill, f***ed up and leonard cohen. would you rather i didn’t?

 

while i’m here, a video. this actually happened in england, which upsets the applecart somewhat:

SEMTEX TV: DELA SOUL, MOS DEF, NAS, WILL I AM, KANYE WEST, DAMON ALBARN ROC THE MIC @ THE G.O.O.D. MUSIC AFTER PARTY, LONDON, UK from DJ SEMTEX on Vimeo.

 

i like nas’ arran sweater, getting his clancy brothers on.

 

from the sound of it, i might get into trouble if i post an mp3. let’s see:

 

jelly roll morton - ‘dirty, dirty, dirty’

normal service presumed

hello american mp3 bloggers!

so, what are your thoughts on the inspirational candidacy of sanitor obama? do you think he’s got what it takes to win? leave a comment in the comments box, saying who you’re going to vote for.

speaking personally as myself, i haven’t yet adumbrated this forum to speak on senteror obama’s candidacy, with it’s themes of hope and change, or to articulate due hommage to his eloquence.

now, that drought can end.

advisedly, i live in a foreign country and am asleep while the American Nation has elections. but, as someone who has occasionally posted rap tunes, i feel it would go without saying to post an enormous picture.

time was, i’d had enough of all these politicians. like my man dizzee rascal, i thought they were all pretty much the same. do you know what i mean? that was, until i saw this:

the bullingdon club and it’s social wing, the Conservative party front-bench, is the true face-image of HOPE. hope that things will CHANGE. hope that CHANGE will work.

just as dentistor obama’s selection of joe budden as his running mate epitomizes and endorses his status as the hip-hop candidate, so the bullingdon’s decision to name themselves after Oxford’s indiest venue ushers in a vital new period of grass-roots DIY politics. heads are starting to recognise this shit, and rest assured, GMS will be in the vanguard of this particular sweep.

no great popular movement is the same without the endorsement of musicians. here, bonnie tyler has stepped up to the plate and given dap to the bullingdons in the webclip for her street anthem, ’total eclipse of the heart’. if you believe in democracy, you’ll stand up too, and make his thursday a total eclipse of the ballot box.