disambiguation

discuss.

barry chuckle covers jay-z

oh lord:



somebody once told me they'd put "scriptwriter for the chuckle brothers" on their CV. can anybody beat that?

another banger from the brothaz:

roots manuva in pun pile-up

rick ross, exposed again?

the new roots manuva video is wicket. the beat isn't 'deep cover', but i like his delivery. as usual with roots, the order of play is eccentric englishness, with no mention of balling and certainly no gatting. it's not gully by any means, but i reckon it's on point. predictably, the contest is likely to end in a draw.

roots manuva - 'again and again'



here's another teaser from his new album,
slime and reason, 'buff nuff', a true homage to raekwon's 'ice cream' video:




and more on the sportz theme: 'witness (one hope)'

British albums of the year, 1979-2008

Hello there! The internets are going ape for the latest viral-blogging think-piece phenomenon: listing your favourite album since the year of your birth. Well, not your birth; my birth.

I’m happy to help out, but I might as easily just list all the Nick Cave and Will Oldham albums, plus the same rap albums as everyone else. So here’s my favourite British albums. How’s about that, eh?

I was born in 1979, and Smashing Pumpkins wrote a song all about it:



The best British album of 1979 was nearly Judas Priest Unleashed in the East, but art-snobbery got the better of me. Anyway, a number of observations:

• The collapse of the British music industry in the late 90s was quite dramatic. A few smaller-scale bands kept things competitive – Mogwai, Arab Strap, Tindersticks and Gorky’s made it in; Hefner, Dawn of the Replicants, Four Tet and McLusky were all contenders. I’m sure the Brit blogrollers could think of more. But aside from breakthrough releases by the Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, the Streets, Dizzee Rascal and the C***plays (and waves of imitators), it’s been a pretty shapeless decade. I'm not crazy about Franz Ferdinand, The Life Pursuit or Curses, but the competition's pretty thin. Thoughts?

• I’m surprised My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Radiohead and trip-hop and didn’t get a look-in. Are you?

• Perhaps I should invest in lots of Elvis Costello and PJ Harvey records to make myself cooler and more knowledgeable.

• 1994 was right difficult.

• I might have forgotten a few.

Here we go, one video per decade:

1979 Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures
1980 Dexys Midnight Runners, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
1981 Iron Maiden, Killers
1982 Richard & Linda Thompson, Shoot Out The Lights
1983 David Bowie, Let’s Dance
1984 Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Welcome to the Pleasuredome

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - 'The Power of Love'

1985 Jesus & Mary Chain, Psychocandy
1986 The Smiths, The Queen is Dead
1987 Happy Mondays, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)
1988 The Pogues, If I Should Fall from Grace with God
1989 Vaselines, Dum Dum
1990 Happy Mondays, Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches
1991 Teenage Fanclub, Bandwaggonesque
1992 Spiritualized, Laser Guided Melodies
1993 Tindersticks, Tindersticks

Tindersticks - 'City Sickness'

1994 Suede, Dog Man Star
1995 Pulp, Different Class
1996 Manic Street Preachers, Everything Must Go
1997 Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, Barafundle
1998 Arab Strap, Philophobia
1999 Mogwai, Come On Die Young
2000 Belle & Sebastian, Fold Your Hands, Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
2001 Tindersticks, Can Our Love
2002 Libertines, Up the Bracket

Libertines, 'A Time for Heroes'

2003 Waterson : Carthy, Fishes and Fine Yellow Sand
2004 Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand
2005 Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock n Roll
2006 Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit
2007 Future of the Left, Curses
2008 Aidan Moffat, I Can Hear Your Heart

disco apache

Is this what Ira Hayes saw at the bottom of his whiskey bottle?

I hope Nas samples this on his next LP.

The Oxford English Dictionary ... of ROCK: Part 4 - Q-Tip

Nobody asked me to bring back the OED of rock series, but everybody hoped it would happen.

Amongst 2008's new entries is everybody's favourite squeaky-voiced jazz-rapping Baduizm sufferer, Q-Tip. Watch out behind you, Q! Damn, too late.

Q-tip, n.

Q n., the initial letter of QUALITY n. + TIP n.¹

The product was app. invented in 1923 by Leo Gerstenzang, a Polish-born American, who initially named them Baby Gays. In 1926 the name was changed to Q-tips Baby Gays, and later shortened to Q-tips.

A small, thin stick of plastic, paper, or wood with a cotton-wool swab at each end, used in personal hygiene, first aid, etc.

In the plural form Q-tips a proprietary name.

1926 Lancaster (Ohio) Daily Eagle 8 June 3 (advt.) ‘Q Tips’. The safe and sanitary medical applicators for both babies and adults. 1952 Good Housek. Dec. 48/2 (advt.) Hollywood stars and famous make-up experts consider Q-Tips a ‘must’ for glamorous grooming. 1985 New Yorker 18 Mar. 37/3 ‘I could be cynical, I really could,’ said Gary Epstein, whose business it is to clean cars with fine lotions..toothbrushes and Q-tips. 2000 P. SAMPSON in J. Adams et al. Girls' Night In 269, I get a pain in my own [ear], like when you stick a Q-tip in too far.

that ought to clear things up. i hope q-tip releases a record this year - he's really good. look:


and listen:

q-tip - 'won't trade you' (maddening radio rip)

q-tip - 'gettin up'

tha quad is hot

regular readers know how i hold it down on the streets of oxford. either on the corner betting grants with the croquet champs, waiting for my connect to arrive on a barge, or our pouring a little port on the ground for colin matthew.

a lot of oxford rappers don't show their faces round the quad once they're cheddared up. they live up in kidlington an' shit, and their videos are mostly green-screen. but zuby lives the lyrics.


zuby hit the headlines across the UK today when five-o seized him at gunpoint on bournemouth station. a case of mistaken identity - lucky he's not brazilian. the southampton-bournemouth line has a reputation for being hardcore. i once got off at pokesdown and found a copy of daily operation in a second-hand store. true story.

anyway, here's zuby, warning folk not to mess with his family tree, and sounding a bit like the game. more power to that man. i'm drawing a blank on identifying the quad, inspector morse-style. is it teddy hall? i particularly like his posse, running down queen's lane like kris kristofferson at the start of heaven's gate. they look a little unthreatening, though. too early, perhaps?

my bloody valentine, ringtone rap and samuel beckett

plug one, plug two. plug one ...

for the un-initiate, my bloody valentine's reputation as the loudest, laziest and most lauded of all-time arty-album auteurs precedes them. hence their reunion, an expensive five-night residency at camden's mighty attractive roundhouse (which is hosting el hijo del santo and his fellow luchadores this week - great work).

mbv seized the crown of most-pretentiously-reviewed-2008-indie-comeback even before yours wordily went to see them. beaten to the 'punch', GMS will attempt to steer clear of pseud's corner in reviewing the final night at the roundhouse. i'll stick to facts, conjecture and nonsense.

• loud: mbv are louder than dinosaur jr and godspeed, but not as loud as atari teenage riot or machinehead. there.
  

• baggy dancing: fair play to the bez-style flailing-limbs pill-head dance-numpties, valiantly 'losing it' to walls of art-noise. they brought a note of levity and old-school 24-hour-party-people attitude to a crowd that was otherwise so intent on appreciating serious art as to stand still through a whole set by spectrum, a post-rock band so dull that even atp haven't booked them. i think.
  

• oo-wee-oo: for all their love of texture, counter-intuitive arrangements and a-rhythmic lurches, mbv gets the best response from the whale-song-guitar bits from loveless that go 'oo-wee-oo-wee-oo'. simple stuff. does this make mbv the ringtone rappers of the early-nineties shoegazing set?

• you made me realise: as everyone's sure to mention, mbv like to close their set with 'you made me realise', a disorienting, aggressive three-minute pop song with a twenty-minute interlude of unimpeded noise. it's hard to avoid pretension in attempting a serious description of something so pompous, wilful and silly. it's like watching an entire simpsons episode; except, instead of the simpsons, white noise. the nose rattles. breathing takes concentration. boredom and curiosity mingle, to no result. attention turns to the crowd, who are either uncomfortable, confused, angry or delirious. on reflection, it's a lot more like a beckett play than the simpsons. i'm not sure which tells you more about the human condition, though. i'll leave you with sam.

trub: what was that noise?
[pause of several years]
kevin shields out of my bloody valentine: um
[noise level increases]
trub: thenoisethenoiseidontknowwhyitsgoodtheguardiansaysitsgooditisprettydamngoodihavetoadmit
bilinda butcher out of my bloody valentine: la
[pause of several years]
[the noise level increases]
[mp3: my bloody valentine - 'feed me with your kiss' (peel session, 1988)]
trub: what was that noise?
[pause of several years]
kevin shields out of my bloody valentine: um
[noise level increases]
trub: thenoisethenoiseidontknowwhyitsgoodpitchforksaysitsgooditisprettydamngoodihavetoadmit
bilinda butcher out of my bloody valentine: la
[pause of several years]
[the noise level increases]
[mp3: my bloody valentine - 'you made me realise' (studio version, 1988)]
trub: what was that noise?
[pause of several years]
kevin shields out of my bloody valentine: um
[noise level increases]
trub: thenoisethenoiseidontknowwhyitsdrownedinsoundsaysitsgooditisprettydamngoodihavetoadmit
bilinda butcher out of my bloody valentine: la
[pause of several years]
[the noise level increases]
[mp3: my bloody valentine - 'you made me realise' (live in vancouver, 1992)]
[fin]