MOG - Jonh Ingham's Posts

The Problem With “Music Pirates”

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:16:09 GMT

Discussions about major music labels are usually vehemently negative, but there are a couple of things they do quite well. One is the ability to market an artist around the world in a very short time and within a few months create a global phenomenon. But in the wake of yesterday’s news that British ISPs have agreed to start monitoring their customers for illegally downloading music, the newspapers typically used a headline that employed the easy phrase "Music Pirates". And I realised that perhaps I was wrong about music labels and their marketing skills.

In deciding to call it piracy the labels have made the theft of music seem cool and perhaps even something to aspire to.

This is a music pirate:

Who wouldn’t want to imagine themselves looking roguish and buccaneerish like that? No, you’re right, only the truly demented. But how about his son?

It’s easy to fantasize being a pirate surfing on seas of data in search of elusive treasure like that live show of [insert favourite band here]. If you need assistance to imagine what a sea of data might look like, crack open William Gibson’s <i>Neuromancer</i>. His descriptions are more urban, but the adjectives and metaphors can be easily hijacked. You’re a pirate, after all.

The problem is, use the term "pirates" and pretty soon you have this:

Worse, they do this

That’s right, not just someone who wants to mess with you, but wants to mess with your American cultural-imperialistic ways.

But call them a music thief and the romance diminishes. Thieves rob convenience stores and mug little old ladies. Where’s the romance in that? A thief looks like this:

Let’s add ripping off my car stereo to the list of what these losers do.

So to diminish music thievery, music labels need to get wise with the marketing. Stop associating the illegal acquisition of music with guys who wear beads in their hair and swagger around galleon decks and recraft it in the image of that thieving little hoodie hanging around the street corner outside. The only person who thinks he’s cool is another thickhead. Achieve that connection and artists everywhere will rest easier, knowing that the music labels have once more protected their works and can concentrate on the business of selling to customers, not suing them.

Stax Volt Tour of Norway 1967 on BBC TV Tonight

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:54:18 GMT

For those of you who live in the UK, or use Zattoo.com to watch TV on your PC, tune your telly or Tivo to BBC4.

At 9pm is 'Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story.

At 10.55pm is Stax Volt Tour of Norway 1967. It includes Booker T & The MGs, Sam and Dave, and five songs by Otis Redding, inclding "Try A Little Tenderness", complete with thre false exits. (I'm reading the TV guide on this.) Sounds great - I'm sure it will.

Tony Allen - King Of Drummers

Jonh Ingham — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:49:55 GMT

The buzz has it that Tony Allen is the world's best drummer because he can play a different rhythm with each limb. So when the BBC's 'The Culture Show' interviewed him last night, the first thing Lauren Laverne asked him was to demonstrate. Instantly he started a grooving Afrobeat with each hand and foot playing a different time. The best part was that it sounded smooth and easy.

Allen was one of the founding members of Fela Kuti's band in Lagos, Nigeria in the early 70s. When he left Kuti had to replace him with four drummers. He is considered the founder of Afrobeat, that loping jazzy groove whose influence has spread far beyond West Africa. In the 80s he made a number of solo records, of which the most famous (and possibly the best) is 'Never Expect Power Always'. More recently he played for The Good, The Bad And The Queen.

A Tony Allen gig lasts about four hours, so when I saw him a few months ago, his hour long show was almost a warm-up. He even mentioned it as an excuse not to talk to the audience as it reduced the amount of playing time. On 'The Culture Show' he said he hates doing drum solos because it stops the groove. It's hard not to like a man with this attitude. In an interesting contradiction, he plays softly but uses sticks the size of baseball bats.

The BBC don't believe in embeding videos, so follow the link for a Culture Show jam.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cultureshow/videos/2008/07/s5_e8_afrobeat_extra/index.shtml

Making Pictures Without Cameras

Jonh Ingham — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:10:43 GMT

I just can't get enough of the new Radiohead video. Made with lasers, it presents a beautiful view of what our world looks like on a different wavelength. I find myself flip-flopping between succumbing to the match of imagery and music, and wondering how much of it is accident. The way the image breaks up around the edge of Thom Yorke's head; what look like interference patterns on his face; the collapse in parts of the exterior scenes; are these intentional? Not that it matters, it's just the would-be scientist in me waking up.

An unsual deal with Google means you can put this on your iGoogle home page. But you can also download the data (not the music) via a Creative Commons license, meaning that the band is giving away the right, in a controlled way, for others to make new art from theirs. Too often in these RIAA/Viacom litigious times everyone forgets that art and creativity enriches us and locking it up because you own it impoverishes us. I'm looking forward to what they do next.

A Request For Help From Musicians and Fans

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:16:54 GMT

For the last two years I’ve been involved with a new company that’s been developing an online talent show called 1Click2Fame. We think we’ve created something that is everything the other online talent shows aren’t: engaging, exciting, and rewarding.

Now we need to test it. That’s where (I’m hoping) you come in – the articulate crème de la crème who aren’t afraid to be honest and constructive. We’re looking for about 20 people who can use it and bend it, tell us what works and what we got wrong. We need some musicians to post some music - both professional and amateur. And we need some people to be fans and rate and comment on the content. It will take about ten days in total. If you would like to be involved, send me a MOGmail and I’ll give you the details.

Amy Winehouse - © Hanna Barbera

Jonh Ingham — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:27:21 GMT

Where would the tabloids be without Amy? Thinner - almost like her - for a start. This week’s escpades include hitting her own security guard in the face as she entered her home and (allegedly) taking off her blouse and suggestively rubbing her tits against the glass while moaning when visiting husband Blake in prison. And attending rehab.

Against this background, a very funny article in The Times doesn’t seem so far-fetched:

"Winehouse's life doesn't upset me any more. This is because, in my mind, every one of her days ends with the credits "©Hanna-Barbera 2008". Crack, hospital, violence, husband in jail - you might as well try to make me worry about the misadventures of Top Cat."

Titled ‘We've all got our own ideas of how we could straighten out Amy Winehouse. Here are mine’, author Caitlin Moran suggests that among the ways to get Amy out of the ditch we should…

1) Get that woman an orphan.
2) Send Winehouse into space.
3) Make her the new Doctor in Doctor Who.
4) Give her something to do with the Third World.

Read the article.

ASCAP Wants to Charge the Government Royalties for Music Played at Guantanamo Bay

Jonh Ingham — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:45:07 GMT

According to Wired, the American rights organisation ASCAP wants to collect royalties from the US Government for music played over and over to wear down detainees at the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison. The song of choice has been David Gray’s "Babylon", a choice about which Gray has been very upset.

There is a precedent in that some collection agencies deem nursing homes, hospitals and prisons to be "public places" and therefore liable to pay royalties on any music played on those spaces. Whether the Government would even consider paying is not known.

Read the full story here.

King Sunny Ade Live on a Funky Friday

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:07:42 GMT

When I lived in Hollywood there was a guy at all the "right" gigs who always stood at the back, always by himself, always kept his silence, always wore Ray Ban Wayfarers and a green Army raincoat.

In 1982, King Sunny Ade of Nigeria’s appearance at the Hollywood Palladium was the coolest gig in town and the only way I was getting in was through the generosity of a local scalper. Surprisingly, this guy was my saviour. He sold me the ticket at face value! And whenever I saw him after that and nodded hi, he kept his silence.

It was a unique night. The rhythms were complex, complicated and owed nothing to 4/4. It kept shifting all night long and every now and then you could hear it start to drift into a recognisable time signature, become a 4/4 or a 6/8 for a few minutes, and then drift away into something else. The guitar playing was spectacular, three rhythm guitars with capos at various points on the neck, each playing part of the overall riff. On top of this Ade laid a melodic tapestry that hid its George Benson influence very well. At regular intervals he would have to stop as Africans in the audience got on stage and papered his sweating face with money.

When he returned the following year the beat was locked to a 4/4, but the guitars were just as spectacular.

Ivylander has posted a track that sounds like the progenitor to Ade, and admitted that seeing Sunny Ade in the 80s is the single best concert he’s been to. Maybe this video will revive that party atmosphere.

Jay Z Interview on Jonathan Ross

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:32:37 GMT

Before he demolished Glastonbury, Jay Z appeared on TV being interviewed by Jonathan Ross. JR is arguably the best interviewer on British TV, smart, knowledgeable and with a knack for getting into territory most wouldn’t. With Jay Z he asked about growing up in Brooklyn, leading to Jay talking about seeing someone shot when he was nine and how he started rhyming. It’s a fascinating conversation, with Jay giving as good as he gets.

Sample questions:

"Is your favourite music hip hop?"

"No. My favourite music is heartfelt music."

"Can I ask you about your home life?

"Woah…you can ask but I’ll dance around…"

Scarcity Part 2: Gang of Four & The Tom Tom Club

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:43:05 GMT

The Gang of Four are belting out a funky tune called "Love Like Anthrax" – whose chorus goes

"Love will get you like a dose of anthrax/
And that is something I don’t want to catch"

and I start thinking that perhaps this isn’t an appropriate message for the two teenage girls standing next to me. Another chorus goes

"I’m thinking that I love you/
But I know it’s only lust",

and it dawns on me, since the girls are wearing Access All Areas passes, that maybe they’re watching their parents on stage. Now that must be weird, especially if Dad is happily married.

When Dave Allen left Gang of Four back in the early 80s in the middle of a US tour, the band found an incredible bassist called Busta Cherry Jones to help carry on. When Dave and drummer Hugo Burnham left this time, a few weeks before their Meltdown Festival appearance, it made me wonder what rabbit would be pulled from the hat. The sight of a female skinhead entering the darkened stage and I knew it was okay – Bowie bassist Gayle Ann Dorsey was on hand. New drummer Mark Heaney matched her in elegant intensity.

As singer Jon King said, Gang of Four don’t play very often, so the crowd was immediately on its feet and cheering from the get-go. When they first appeared almost 30 years ago their sound was unique, yet another fresh route careening away from the main road of punk, a compelling drive of funk rhythm, keening chords and feedback sandpapering against desolate lyrics. Not a combination to conquer the charts; even at their peak of popularity it felt like a special club. Only in the past few years have we learned that those funky rhythms have inspired many a modern Ferdinand.

The band mostly played from their first album, ‘Entertainment’. Maybe it was a subtle message. The later highlight was "I Love A Man In A Uniform", Jon revealing that the US Air Force had wanted to use it in a recruitment ad, showing that the military is, as expected, free of irony. The rhythm section was finely tuned and powerful – perhaps it helps to dive in at the very deep end. Jon and Andy played only as people who’ve been together a long time can. It probably helps that they haven’t played the songs to death.

Over 25 years you can forget the details of what a band can be like on stage. I remembered Andy Gill staring at the crowd as he Fendered huge chunking chords and painful feedback attack, but I’d forgotten what a lunatic Jon King is. In the course of the night he used three different mic stands, jerked in a floor-clearing dance, and lost the buttons on his shirt. No surprise then when he got out a baseball bat and demolished a microwave oven to the beat.

The things we do for Art: microwave oven being beaten to death

The Tom Tom Club was a rhythm section spin-off from Talking Heads, popular at the same time as Gof4. Their take on bootylicious rhythms, however, had a very different effect. "Genius Of Love" immediately spawned a number of 12" spinoffs, including the equally cool "Genius Of Rap". Mariah Carey built one of her biggest hits around a sample of its hook. Tonight, they dropped it halfway through the set. It has one of my favourite lyrical hooks: "He’s the genius of love/He’s so neat." (Bet Mariah couldn’t write that innocently.) The place went mental because it still sounded so damn fresh. They followed it with their first hit, "Wordy Rappinghood", a paen to their favourite dance artists and another trove of clever words. From there on it was a big party. They encored with "Take Me To The River", and while Tina Weymouth would hate to hear it, Talking Heads used to do it much better.

Scarcity Part 1: Yellow Magic Orchestra Live In London

Jonh Ingham — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:49:08 GMT

Sometimes I stay awake at night worrying about the important stuff in life, things like: do the Japanese have heritage acts? I’ll sleep easily tonight; they do!

Exhibit A: The Sadistic Mika Band. In the mid-70s they moulded an obsession with Roxy Music, David Bowie and shopping on the King’s Road into a delightful output of songs that often included "boogie" in the title. They went through seven variations before calling it a day. But a quick search on YouTube shows them back at it in 2003 and again in 2006. Is this relevant to my story? It is for their drummer Yukihiro Takahashi. He was – is – also a member of…

Exhibit B: Yellow Magic Orchestra. Yes, Yukihiro drums in two heritage acts, plus he’s a solo artist – that’s one better than Phil Collins! YMO don’t have song titles with "boogie" in them; their most obvious influence is Deutsche knob twiddlers Kraftwerk. Except for one album. By 1983 it was plain that being arty and singing in English wasn’t going to make them a major act, so they did a cool album of cheeky J-pop and cleaned up. They called it ‘Bad Boys’. Then film directors knocked on poster boy Ryuichi Sakamoto’s door and a few high-profile film soundtracks later YMO was just an entry in their musical resumes. But after twenty years to temper their mutual dislike they played at Live Earth and again last year. Did they complete their ascendancy to heritage godocracy? Check the global library that is YouTube and, yes they did; they made a Kirin Beer commercial.

Just look at this photo. Do they look like a heritage act to you?

Of course it does! Three grumpy old men having to stand next to each other for publicity.

They’re not topping up the pension fund by actually touring though. Asked by Massive Attack to play at the Meltdown Festival at Royal Festival Hall, they’re managing one other gig in Spain. That’s it for Europe.

The three of them spanned the stage, standing behind small instrument arrays. Behind them were three supplementary musicians working laptops, downing them to play heavily treated guitar and mandolin, and flugelhorn. They didn’t talk. To each other or the audience. Black clothes and silver hair, black synths and silver MacBooks….it looked cool.

In a situation like this, there’s always the possibility that the evening will be a wallow in nostalgia. Not here. The songs were from all over the back catalogue, run through a blender of what’s tickling their current artistic itch. Basically, they’re into static and pre-Cambrian sounding electronic music sounds, layering them into and over the music. At times it clashed and at times it flowed, at times you wanted them to stop (now!) and at times it sounded very special. Where some of the music pieces originally were quite repetitious, now the rich texture of sound often progressed in micro-variations that made me think someone has Terry Riley’s ‘Rainbow In Curved Air’ in Most-Played on the i-Pod.

Playing "Riot In Lagos" in 2007

Each of the trio had moments of musical bravura, but for me the starlight of the night was Yukihiro. Halfway through he moved from his electronics to a drum kit, proving to be a snapping funk drummer. But on one of the dancier numbers, besides the bootylicious beat, throughout the song he kept moving the snare beat around so that by song’s end he’d put a pattern on every beat in the bar. Phil Collins would be jealous.

Check out Yukihiro’s chops on this cultural collision: YMO on ‘Soul Train’ in 1980 doing a unique interpretation of "Tighten Up".

African Tuesday - Salif Keita in Mali

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:25:03 GMT

Been doing a lot of work lately and finding Salif Keita is the perfect music to accompany it. When I get time I'm going to drop a couple of blinding tracks on you, until then here's a fun video of life in Mali to go with his princely rhythms.

Hall and Oates Make Adultery Sound Okay

Jonh Ingham — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 09:04:27 GMT

"Me And Mrs. Jones" by Billy Paul was a smooth dollop of Philly pop/soul from the early 70s. It accomplished that diffcult pop trick of being so smooth that its subject matter almost went unnoticed. How many of us sang "Me and Mrs. Jonessssss, We've a got a thingggg going on" without listening to the small detail that the singer was not Mr. Jones?

Hall and Oates have always flown their Philly roots flag high. I first heard them do this song on 'Later With Jools Holland' many years ago and from the relish with which Daryl Hall dived into the creamy lyrics you knew he probably sang this in the shower on a regular basis. I bet they're still singing it. And don't care about Mr. Jones.

Incidentally, one of my favourite concerts was also the shortest. In the early 90s a friend was in a band supporting Hall and Oates. Backstage after their set, a typical London brick and concrete halls and rooms establishment, there suddenly came an amazing sound from the floor below. Everyone fell silent and for five minutes we listened to Daryl Hall warming up in the hallway.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Live In London

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:28:31 GMT

You want to know why Zeppelin isn’t touring this year? Because Robert Plant has a hit album! He’s always been one to experiment, but winning platinum for an album of country music made with Alison Krauss and T-Bone Burnett is pretty leftfield. Defining this work as ‘country’ is, of course, relative. It’s probably more accurate to call it American music; not rock and roll American music, but what was there before, a much older expression of the country’s inner soul.

The band started low-key, sounding a lot like the album, then three songs in came an intro full of chords strange though familiar; only when Robert parted his smiling lips did we know which Zeppelin song had been hot-rodded. You haven’t heard “Black Dog” until you’ve heard it done psycho-country. One of my few problems with Zep is that the lyrics often sound like irrelevant add-ons, but in this haunted musical setting of banjo, fiddle and stalking bass Robert’s young man lament had found its home.

“Black Dog” in Cardiff.

Now the band was awake. There were three guitarists and they played in that peculiar southern-American style of looking half asleep on their feet while regularly dropping startling interpolations and lead runs into the rhythms. The drummer had an ancient looking wooden kit with a snare sound like no other. If drummers can play a drone he did it, beating repetitive patterns on the kit while the stand-up bassist happily watched the tom foolery.

It got louder and louder and the guitars started to drone in a manner and intensity unlike anything on the album. I kept thinking that if the Velvet Underground had been formed in Texas or Tennessee, this is what it would have sounded like. It was that weird. T-Bone Burnett directed proceedings from the side of the stage, his high-necked grey waistcoat and black frock coat making him look like a preacher – a preacher of sin. During the solos Robert walked into the centre of the band, listening with contentment to the intricate volume-dealing around him, a man who feels happiest with the wind of a speaker cone against his back.

Alison Krauss had her share of the spotlight, playing both songs from their album and her own work. Notable was a haunting version of “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” and a spectacular “Down To The River” from Oh Brother Where Art Thou. Then T-Bone got up to play “Bon Temps Roulez” as though heavy metal had been invented in New Orleans.

“Down To The River” in Amsterdam

Robert has said in interviews that he had always thought that white American music was a poorer version of black music. Then T-Bone showed up with an armful of records. “How wrong I was.” It seems to have inspired him, a deep music that’s new but recognisable from the English folk music from which it grew, a connection made clear by dropping Sandy Denny’s “Maddy Grove” into the middle of “In The Mood” and in how some other Zeppelin songs were rearranged. But in the end he’s a Wolverhampton lad so even c&w needs some volume and edge. Think of it as two galaxies colliding. One is bluegrass and American earth music, the other is a city-size sound of factory-made riffs and earthquake drums. In the centre are “Black Country Woman” (banjo and fiddle), “When The Levee Breaks” (drone plantation moan and a verse from “Girl From The North Country”) and (a given when you have Alison Krauss to your right) a blinding country-metal version of “The Battle Of Evermore”, on which Sandy Denny originally sang.

For encores they raided the oldies cupboard, first with a rollicking “One Woman Man” with Robert sounding like a male Wanda Jackson, then sending us into the night with Alison and Robert in perfect harmony on a near-accapella “Your Long Journey”.

“Gone Gone Gone” in Bergen

Bo Diddley – Called to Heaven

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:46:48 GMT

One of the true originals has died at 79. Let us pause and remember him with the beat that defined him:

bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp

It’s a beat and a riff so essential that it helped fuel the careers of both Buddy Holly and The Rolling Stones. Quicksilver Messenger Service practically built an entire career on it. Bo was also instrumental in inventing the use of tremelo and vibrato. A Rock God in other words. For a good obituary, go here.

Along with Chuck Berry’s signature intro, rock and roll was built on this beat. Show any musician of a certain age this album cover and they’ll get all misty-eyed. They all learned to play from hearing it.

His influence was so deep that even actors wanted to pay their respects; Dan Ackroyd put Bo in both ‘The Blues Brothers’ and ‘Trading Places’, where Bo memorably lorded it over the pawn shop.

Bo’s live show was centred around Jerome Green his maraccas player and The Duchess on bass. Want to see how good they were? Here’s Bo doing “Road Runner”:

Why was that riff so damn good? Because it was made for dancing:

Buddy Holly lifted The Beat for “Not Fade Away”, but he was cool enough to give props by recording “Bo Diddley”.

Of course, Buddy wasn’t so cool that he wrote the song – Bo wrote it as his first single. (Nothing like advertising your own brilliance.)

The Animals weren’t content just to cover a song about Bo Diddley – they wrote one of their own. “The Story Of Bo Diddley” is the kind of history lesson they should teach in school.

Bo Diddley aka Ellis McDaniel – born Dec. 30, 1928, died June 2, 2008

Thought For The Day

Jonh Ingham — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:19:12 GMT

Pink Floyd On 45. Pink Floyd On Stage.

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:43:00 GMT

It's impressive how 'psychedelic' Pink Floyd were in ’67 and ‘68. A fish-eye lens, a couple of trinkets and the glass house at Kew Gardens could make you seem on the bleeding edge of NOW.

The English have always had a penchant for a bit of foppery but Floyd raided the dressing-up box with serious intent. Has any band looked more stylishly in tune with the times?

From Jon Savage’s ‘Punk Psych On 45’ compilation, here’s the US 45 rpm single of "Flaming". It won't take a trufan to notice the considerable differences from the LP version. [Ignore that album reference up above. What does Gracenote know about reality?]

My very first rock star interview was with Rick Wright. What a disaster! Boy, he was patient, while manager Steve O’Rourke fretted in the background for 20 minutes before mercifully ending the debacle. If I ever run into Rick I won’t be reminding him we’ve met before.

I saw them at the Santa Monica Civic a few nights later, playing most of the UmmaGumma album. Pink Floyd was an underground sensation and we were all part of a secret club. There was no light show, no big production, just immaculate attention and focus on the music. Here they are on the same tour, playing at the Fillmore in San Francisco on April 29, 1970.

Hearing this afresh I’m struck by how much Nick Mason plays like Keith Moon – all those off-beat tom fills. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to think that in this period any drummer of worth would be closely observing Mr. Moon. If I ever run into Nick I’m going to ask him.

As any fan would hope, they still played “Interstellar Overdrive”.

Universal, Sony BMG Placing Chips On MOG

Jonh Ingham — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:46:04 GMT

That headline made me think it was rootkit all over again. No, it's a reference to our favourite waste of time's new funding.

From Digital Music News:

Big labels are starting to spread their investments beyond artists and smaller recording and publishing entities. In fact, nosebleed deals involving both artistic and executive talent are starting to wane, leaving room for more strategic investments in promising startups.

That includes MOG, a music-focused social network that recently rustled $2.8 million from a round that included Sony BMG and Universal Music Group. The round, specifically handled through Universal Music Investments and Sony BMG Music Investments, also involved Angel Fund 74.

MOG, which claims a unique userbase of one million, secured an earlier round valued at $3.2 million. The latest round was first revealed by VentureBeat.

In Memory Of Albert Hoffman

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:56:00 GMT

Contrabandwidth has just posted news that Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD-25, has died at 102.

Wallowing as I am in six CDs packed with psychedelic gems, it's appropriate to celebrate the man with two sides of what he inadvertently wrought.

On the video, The Yardbirds exploring their mind's eye in "Happening Ten Years Time Ago".

On the audio, the aptly named Freaks of Nature performing "People Let's Freak Out".

Thanks Albert!

Punk Psych – The Sons Of Adam

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:53:45 GMT

Students of psychedelic posters will be familiar with this early Wes Wilson effort for The Family Dog. I’ve always wondered, who were The Sons of Adam?

Thanks to Google I finally know. A mid-60s LA group, they recorded one EP that included an Arthur Lee original, “Feathered Fish”, which Love never recorded. After the band broke up, guitarist Randy Holden joined seminal super-loud rockers Blue Cheer.

Thanks to Jon Savage, here’s “Feathered Fish”. Maybe they tapped Arthur for it when they played with “The Love”.

Does anything shout out 1966 louder than those shirts and haircuts?

Shoot The Pianist

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:34:14 GMT

If chanteur Charles Aznavour is thought about at all outside France it’s for the song “She”, sung with Aznavourian brio by Elvis Costello over the closing of the film ‘Notting Hill’. But he is also an understated actor with 60 films to his credit. In Francois Truffaut’s film ‘Shoot The Pianist’ he plays a concert pianist whose guilt over a life-changing accident does just that - giving up his career to become part of a dance trio in a low-class bar. I won’t give away plot points because you should see this film. (It will be a good test for the depth of your DVD rental company’s catalogue.)

Its confidence seduces from the first second, though nothing much happens for the first 30 minutes. There are no car crashes and no-one gets shot. The biggest event is someone banging their knee against a lamp post while running. It doesn’t matter. The confidence! The exhilaration of handling celluloid! Truffaut was a critic for the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinema, enthusiastically praising underrated Hollywood directors like Howard Hawks and the fatalistic vision of film noir (the term was invented by the Cahier critics). Truffaut takes the energy of Hawks and both the high-contrast emotions and visual shading of film noir and impressively makes it his own. By the end of the film there’s been lust, deception, betrayal and a body count, told in long tracking shots, jump cuts, silent film comedy and passers-by staring curiously at the camera.

Aznavour pulls off the impressive trick of appearing to do nothing. The reason he’s playing bad piano in a crappy bar isn’t revealed for a long time but you accept the enigma he presents and happily wait to know more. Unlike Yves Montand, another song and dance man of the period who became a film star, he doesn’t bask in his own narcissism. Maybe because, unlike Yves, you couldn’t call Aznavour beautiful.

‘Shoot The Pianist’ was Truffaut’s second film, coming between the raw energy of ‘The 400 Blows’ and ‘Jules and Jim’, the cinematic ménage a trois that cemented his career as a world-class director. As a result it’s been largely forgotten. To me ‘Jules and Jim’ is a smug, self-satisfied film, despite the luminous Jeanne Moreau. Give the ‘Pianist’ your attention instead.

There was an illuminating article in last week’s New Yorker detailing the friction that built over the years between Truffaut and the other great New Wave director Jean Luc Godard. Partners as film critics, they grew apart as directors. While Godard has become an obscure, difficult taste, they both started in the same place. His first film ‘Breathless’ is just that, a sizzling tour de force amazed at its own vitality. Like Truffaut he took the then radical step of reminding you that you’re watching a film, in his case having the petty criminal hero muse on the nature of Humphrey Bogart while staring at a cinema poster. Truffaut is more direct. Aznavour’s character is in bed with a girl, who is sitting up, naked. He says that in a Hollywood film the girl would sit like this and covers her breasts with a sheet. The girl just laughs.

PS: The film clip is the theatrical trailer and frustratingly doesn’t convey any of the film’s rhythm and atmosphere – art film triumphing over film noir. But it shows all the characters and the themes.

Not Guilty About This Pleasure

Jonh Ingham — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:33:25 GMT

I found this as an mp3 on someone's drive a few years ago and it's been a fairly consistent joy ever since. Everything that's great musically about Queen. Everything that's great vocally about George Michael. I had no idea where it was from until I found this on YouTube - the Freddy Mercury Tribute at Wembley back in...1990?

According to a comment on the page, George has said this is his best ever performance. I can believe it. Maybe that's why he plays so seldom. Or maybe he's just rich and lazy. (Maybe I'm envious.)

Check out Brian May's expression at 3:58 - that is one happy man.

Punk Psych - The Idle Race

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:23:02 GMT

Time for a taste of English. Without the brutality of the draft siphoning off fodder for the Vietnam War, English psychedlia always sounded lighter and a bit fey. After all, they had Peter Pan and Wind In The Willows in their genes.

The Idle Race was the first band of Jeff Lynne, where he learned all the tricks that brought him fame in ELO a few years later. Birmingham is known as the British home of heavy metal - The Sabs, Slade, The Move, Robert Plant - but you'll have a hard time finding it here. Percy Plant still has an ongoing fascination with West Coast psychdelia, so maybe it was (and is) something in the water.

More Punk Psych - White Lightning

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:56:57 GMT

Equal doses of punk and psych here, from Minnesota band White Lightning around '68 - '69. Leader Zippy Caplan seems to be wagging a stern finger at psychedelic warriors everywhere but they all knew that White Lightning was another name for LSD.

Key lyric: "You think you're making music when it's twisted out of key"

You'll want to know that White Lightning were the first band in Minnesota to use all double-stack Marshalls. Bring the noise!

It's A Punk Psych Freakout!

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:14:41 GMT

My good friend Jon Savage has compiled a 6CD mixtape set of Punk Psych. What an amazing racket of crunching beat and lysergic anthems, full of songs called "Mirror Of Your Mind", 'Smell Of Incense', 'People Let's Freak Out', and 'The Orange Rooftop Of Your Mind", played by bands called The Blue Things, Freaks Of Nature, The Electric Prunes, and Painted Faces. Seamlessly mixed among these groovin' freakouts are the contemporary singles of "serious artists" like Jimi Hendrix, The Move, Steppenwolf, Soft Machine and (of course) Pink Floyd.

I have learned that if you want to be a psychedelic six-string warrior, the following is necessary:

1. A rocking beat. 2. Loud guitars. Distorted guitars. Loud distorted guitars. 3. Lyrics using words like "mirror of your mind". 4. A singer who sounds like Them-period Van Morrison.

Jon has ripped them all from 45s in his collection, so the sound is magnificent. There's a lot to take in but I'm thinking that the gems should be posted for the greater joy of MOGkind.

For starters here's the 45 version of The 13th Floor Elevators, "(I've Got) Elevation.

Ray Charles Goes Jamaican

Jonh Ingham — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:16:20 GMT

According to allmusic.com there are 105 versions of "Hit The Road Jack". I think I'm on safe ground in saying this interpretation by Big Youth is one of the most original.

Nico – My Part In Her Fame

Jonh Ingham — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:03:27 GMT

Talking with Mike The Knife awhile ago we got onto the subject of Nico (it’s a popular topic) and it reminded me of my role in her career as press officer. The memories sank again into the deep, but then Spike’s post on Nico once more reminded me of those happy times.

In 1974 I worked as a press officer at Island Records. It says something of the artistic license an A&R man could take in those times that he signed both John Cale and Nico almost purely on their reputation as Velvet Undergrounders. Cale was musically and philosophically close to another Island signing, Brian Eno, and it wasn’t long before they were partners in mischief. Completing the label’s artistic coven was Kevin Ayers, founding member of Soft Machine and enjoying a certain muso credibility for having discovered Mike Oldfield, then riding high with the all-conquering ‘Tubular Bells’.

But how to sell this arcane quartet to the huddled masses…. How about an old-fashioned revue, art-style?

So it came to pass on June 1, 1974 that the four played The Rainbow. With one exception it was a guitar jamboree: Kevin had Oldfield with him, the shyest guy in show business. Eno played the epic “Baby’s On Fire”. Cale seared the unsuspecting audience with his volcanic interpretation of “Heartbreak Hotel”. The exception was Nico. Alone at her harmonium she pumped out a trio of mournful odes, none more doleful than her bus drive through “The End”.

The event was recorded, packaged and released exactly three weeks later, a monumental effort in logistics. My role was to kindle and feed the excitement of the press.

Seven years on from The Velvet Underground, Nico still looked beautiful but her face had hardened. She wore gowns and a cloak, hiding who knew what state of body. Singing, conversations, publicity…each was approached the same way. Her interviews had journalists reaching for the thesaurus: funereal, sombre, gloomy, melancholy, monotone. Because she didn’t care about “career moves” and being your friend, she seemed arctic. I liked her.

I never had a natural conversation with her. I’m not sure anyone did. It was more like a series of pronouncements that you explored for hooks with which to construct replies. Even Cale, who was in the middle of making his third album with her, seemed to have the same conversational dynamic. Her voice was just like on record but maybe even slower. Every sentence sounded like a definitive statement, an effect that worked really well when we spent half a bus ride talking about how masks were used on the ancient Greek stage. (Yes, “I took a face from the ancient gallery” ran through my mind more than once.)

Underneath the surface lurked a considerable humour, expressed through sardonic jokes and an almost secret smile that would surface in the silences. Maybe she was just laughing at our attempts to reply.

She usually had a bottle of red wine in her hand, from which she regularly sipped. “It tastes much better from the bottle. In a glass it doesn’t taste as good. She confided with such certainty that I started thinking I should change the way I drank. Supplementing it was a small hash pipe. Often the two went in circular sequence.

Nico’s solo oeuvre was a very arcane taste. She was possibly alone in “rock music” to create the sounds she did – music was linear in those days. ACNE, as the quartet was called, did several gigs around the country and while her music was alien to almost everyone’s taste, her focus, concentration and otherworldliness always made me pay attention. My mind didn’t wander when she was on stage.

The last time I saw her was in the Island press office. She was sitting on a sofa by the door, half-empty wine bottle on the floor by her feet, hash pipe between her lips while we talked about upcoming interviews. The label president stepped through the door, not noticing her as he asked someone a question. Then he smelled the sweet fumes and looked down for a long ten seconds. When he looked back up you could see a shutter come down to his right and she ceased to exist in his presence.

Her album (‘The End’) came out soon after, but it was never going to sell to anyone who wasn’t already interested. The label didn’t renew her contract.

The Sex Pistols First Interview

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:37:28 GMT

On April 4, 1976, the Sex Pistols first interview was published. I wrote it.

I hadn't intended to write it, but the morning after seeing them I was talking about it to my editor. I was really bored with current music and the Pistols seemed to be the first truly modern band in several years: they didn’t sound like anything else. He didn’t say much, listening with an increasingly bemused look, then told me to do an interview. When I protested they were too new he pointed out I’d been talking about them for 10 minutes, so something was obviously going on.

Manager Malcolm MacLaren made me speak with him first. His mix of manifesto, Gene Vincent, retail philosophy, disdain for New York bands and contempt for English ones was compelling. It was a hot day and I had to admire a man who could wear leather and a flesh-pink nylon turtleneck t-shirt and not sweat. We made a date to meet the band.

When I arrived he was alone. ‘Where have you been? The band got bored waiting for you and left.’ Although I was on time he kept insisting I was 30 minutes late. So for the next appointment, outside their Denmark Street rehearsal room-flat, I showed up 30 minutes early. Malcolm and the band, minus John, were waiting. With a grin Malcolm again started the ‘your late’ routine but I had passed the test.

The interview took place upstairs in the Cambridge Arms, a run down pub on Charing Cross Road, where we had a large room to ourselves. John arrived midway with two girls, unacknowledged by the band, and sat some distance from us, directly facing me. Even after he arrived the others talked about him in the third person, as though they hadn’t yet made up their minds he was part of the band. It added to my uncertainty about him because he was so aloof.

When I finally asked a direct question and he started the tirade quoted in the interview, everyone was watching me. Later, when he was used to the press, John’s tirades were slower and laced with sarcasm; this one was delivered in staccato high velocity with an incredible glare. It was both riveting and funny and in the silence that followed when every eye swung towards me I started laughing. It cemented my intuition that this was a band to watch.

The interview is here

A Man's Face Is His Resume

Jonh Ingham — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:13:51 GMT

Mick: 'Hey Keef, ever been tempted by a facelift?'

Keith: 'Hell no. I worked damn hard to get this face.'

Sex Pistols/Buzzcocks - Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester - July, 1976

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:03:47 GMT

One advantage of writing about music is that you don’t need a diary. One disadvantage is that you experience so much of it that there are concerts of which I have absolutely no memory. Not one shard. I know I was there – I have the newspaper clipping.

Today, Rocks Back Pages reminded me I saw the first gig by The Buzzcocks, opening for The Sex Pistols. At the same show The Pistols unveiled “Anarchy In The UK”. Not bad for a night’s entertainment.

This is not an evening I’ve forgotten. Who could forget this:

‘Howard Devoto, wearing sneakers, pencil thin Levis, t-shirt and baggy blue jacket, is singing love songs, the strangest love songs you've ever heard. They have titles like (and I can't vouch for their accuracy) 'Breakout', 'You're Shit', 'Put 'Em Down', 'I Love You, You Big Dummy'. One song goes 'I’ve been smoking in the smoking room, Now I'm in the living room, I want what I came for pretty soon'.

It's the Boston Strangler singing the dance of romance, his face getting redder, eyes popping, kicking and punching the air.’

Or this:

‘After 'Pushing And Shoving' John takes off his red mohair sweater, the right sleeve of his shirt casually rolled up to show the cigarette burns on his forearm.

At the Lyceum, like a nonchalant robot he'd stuck out his right fist, ground his fag out on it and chucked the butt over his shoulder, all in one fluid, mechanical motion.’

This was the night when the Pistols became the No Future of Rock and Roll. You can read the full review HERE

Thought For The Day

Jonh Ingham — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 09:12:14 GMT

Baby Scratch My Back

Jonh Ingham — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:06:37 GMT

As cool rocking names go, Slim Harpo is in the freezer. His sonic stylings are just as frigid. A narrow minded man would say he sounds too much like Jimmy Reed. An eloquent man would talk about his lazy-sounding vocal style, the sinewy guitar, the backbeat you can drive a Cadillac through, how less is most deliciously more. But I’m neither of those.

Instead I’ll mention some titles: ‘I Need Money’, ‘Shake Your Hips’, ‘Baby Scratch My Back’….What economy and directness. The lyrics are just as straightforward, stories of simple pleasure that often contain well-observed truth.

Did he make this up right before the tape rolled? --

Ohhh, I dig those crazy clothes Let me feel those fishnet hose Cut low at the top And high at the bottom In fact, I don't see How we ever did without 'em

Slim is from Louisiana. Maybe that explains his magic.

“Baby Scratch My Back”

The British beat guys dug his sound. Slim recorded this song as “Shake Your Hips”.

On ‘Exiles On Main Street’, the Rolling Stones did it as “Hipshake”. I like the version on record because about halfway through they noticeably speed up.

The Stones on Beat Club in Germany

Slim’s most famous song is “King Bee’. The Stones did it of course, but let’s hear Pink Floyd’s version. Syd Barrett’s solo is a perfect filter of Slim Harpo through Wind In The Willows.

Pink Floyd – (I’m A) King Bee

Blind Faith - Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:37:06 GMT

Doing some dull stuff today, so cranking the stereo to help the time fly is a priority. But then this comes on. I'm helpless and have to play it over and over - it keeps me off the dull stuff but I'm not getting anything done.

Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton played together at MSG on Feb 26th - effectively half of Blind Faith. I was never a fan of that group and while I've loved both Winwood and Clapton I would never have pursued a copy of this concert if I hadn't been told about it.

Winwood played on the original of 'Voodoo Chile', so I guess he has more of a claim than just about anybody to do a version of it. Clapton always said he wanted to be in The Band, because with so many virtuosos he wouldn't have to carry the show. With Steve by his side he's able to step back and you can hear what he means because his solos go way off the meter.

If you want to pretend you were at MSG, I give you three options:

In the rich people's seats:

Halfway back - it only cost you your first born:

Up where the normal people breathe:

Neil Young – Hammersmith Odeon, March 10, 2007

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:55:39 GMT

I’ve been embracing music at the Hammersmith Odeon for 36 years, but I’ve never sat seven rows from the front. There’s no orchestra pit or barrier to separate you from the artist, so we walked down to the lip and gazed at Neil’s acoustic guitar setup. I don’t know if one of them was the ex-Hank Williams guitar, but they all looked beautiful, seven guitars and a banjo arranged in a semi-circle around a chair. The band back line was already set up behind and it was a fascinating mix of the old and really old, with Neil’s ancient Fender amp hidden to one side. Behind the amps was a giant movie wind machine. Movie klieg and spot lights were placed all around the set, which is what it was – a ramshackle movie set of what a rock band stage should look like.

One mark of an artist is a disregard for the audience in his song selection. Another is when he can own a stage and your attention for an hour playing that disregard with just an acoustic guitar. Neil Young is one of those artists. From the first bar of ‘From Hank To Hendrix’ his focus was total, sucking you instantly into his world. As the songs unfolded it began to feel like a review of his songbook, mixing the expected (‘After The Goldrush’) with the unexpected (“Harvest’) and the rarely heard (‘Ambulance Blues’). When he started singing ‘Love Art Blues’, recorded in 1965 on a demo for Elektra, we were really in obscure trufan territory. Being so close I could wallow in nuances of his concentration and fretboard fingering, a rare treat when the musicians are usually metres away.

While he played, an artist behind the backline simultaneously painted a number of large canvasses.

The mix of old, new, borrowed, and blue continued with the electric set. Of course there was the black Strat maelstrom (‘Down By The River’, ‘My My Hey Hey’, ‘No Hidden Path’), but also more relaxed songs, including a lovely version of Don Gibson’s ‘Oh, Lonesome Me’. From seat G-12 I could see in detail his pickup switch flicking and how he manipulated the guitar feedback in a field from a speaker leaning against the drum riser. It was here in 1976 that I first heard Neil break out the volume and noise; now I was seeing just how he did it.

The band was a mix of Stray Gator, Blue Note and Crazy Horse and that’s how Neil introduced them, mentioning the albums, as if reviewing his career. I’ve heard different concerts from this tour and every night he uses almost exactly the same words to introduce them. Is this a 3-D film?

As each song started the artist placed one of his canvasses on an easel by the side of the stage, with the song title painted on it. ‘The Loner’ had an F-4 firing its rockets.

For the encore he played ‘The Sultan’, B-side of his very first single as a teenager. For full effect a sultan with bright red turban and gold genie pants rang a giant gong.

PS: He’s changing the songlist quite a bit throughout the tour, so if you’re a Neil fan you know where to go and what to do.

JOE GIBBS RIP

Jonh Ingham — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:01:30 GMT

I just heard that the great reggae producer Joe Gibbs passed away on February 21. He was 65 and died of a heart attack.

Never as famous as Lee Perry (who got his first break from Gibbs), for me he was the king of dub. He wasn’t afraid to strip a record down to the barest elements and send riffs spinning off into a canyon of echoed looping in a style I always thought of as Jamaican psychedelic. Many of these, on the B-sides of Jamaican singles, are credited to The Mighty Two, the nickname for Gibbs and houseband leader Errol Thompson. In Gibbs’ musical universe it was OK to overdub babies crying or fire engine sirens. On one track he mixed in both a doorbell and a cuckoo clock – the brilliance or madness (take your pick) is that there’s no attempt to slot them in musically. He made the second weirdest reggae record I’ve ever heard - ‘No Bones For The Dogs’ – recommended to all students of the mind expanding. The peak of this experimentation can be best heard on the African Dub Almighty trilogy, which starts simple nd by Vol. 3 is somewhere beyond Pluto.

At the other extreme, he produced the ringing harmonies of The Mighty Diamonds, the sweetness of Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown (‘Money In My Pocket’) and Culture’s ‘Two Sevens Clash’. The latter caused a sensation when it sneaked out in 1976 and became a punk anthem through the hot summer of ’77. The mid- to late 70s were the peak of his powers, which coincided with the introduction of the powerhouse rhythm section of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare to the house-band, The Professionals.

To hear what great music Joe Gibbs could make, go to this address and download a sampler album. You won’t be disappointed.

http://mistadsmusicblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/joe-gibbs-rip.html

The Congos

Jonh Ingham — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:02:37 GMT

Serendipity is a wonderful thing and it seems to flow through MOG like the River Jordan so beloved of Rasta singers. First jenny points at music blogs we should know about. That leads me to a man of impeccable taste toasting the enduring greatness of one of the best reggae groups of the mid-70s: The Congos. To say a group is among the best from that period is really saying something, because wonderful, fabulous groups were thick on the ground in the 70s.

Hearing their sweet melodies and riddims some 30 years later, I just had to put up a track for y'all. Then, just now, as I'm delaying the work to do it, I'm reading Dave Allen's post on Lee Perry and he namechecks The Congos as one of Perry's best productions.

It must be the vibes. So check it out - a great vocal duo floating atop a band that flows with riddim and the Super Ape Lee Perry at the controls. On a sunny Spring day it's a perfect mix.

The Real Value Of The Spice Girls

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:57:11 GMT

The music business is constantly going on about how they need to get customers to "realise the true value of music". Is this what they mean?

This is The Spice Girls comeback single, spied in the CD rack of th elocal supermarket.

'Til death did we party: Amusing stories of the music business in the Nineties

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:26:23 GMT

As an educational tale of why the music business is in the state it is, this story in The Times is a beaut. Sample commentary:

"I quickly learnt a key fundamental for survival in meetings - say everything with absolute certainty and as though your life depended upon it. I saw a very senior industry figure (someone who, in all likelihood, has signed and developed music which you own) throw the first White Stripes record out of a fourth floor window with the words: “No one will ever - ever - be having this f*ing nonsense!”"

A very funny article and well worth a diversionary surf. You're not trying to actually do some work, are you?

Find it here.

Download Amplive's Radiohead Remixes Free

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:10:44 GMT

What's an album without the remixes?

When Radiohead learned that Amplive was putting the breaks on 'In Rainbows', they put on the brakes with a cease-and-desist. But an agreement has been reached and now we can all get it for free. No contribution necessary.

Rainydayz Remixes is composed exclusively of source material pulled from In Rainbows, re-envisioned by Amplive and complimented by vocal work from Too $hort, MC Zumbi of Zion I, Chali2na of Jurassic 5, Codany Holiday, and Del The Funky Homosapien.

This is a fascinating interpretation of the Oxford "academics", done with love and skill, and a good argument that art doesn't wait for the suits to catch up.

You can download it from here.

The Grace Jones -- AC/DC Connection

Jonh Ingham — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:15:34 GMT

It’s a pub quiz starter for 10: Explain the connection between Grace Jones and AC/DC. For an extra 5 points, how do we connect David Bowie? Shall we finish early and hit the bar? Then explain the Mad Max connection.

The core, the nexus, the hub for the spokes, is an Australian music dynasty called Vanda and Young. In 1968 Harry Vanda and George Young’s group The Easybeats had a massive global hit with the fabulous “Friday On My Mind”. Here they are live on German TV – dig the dancers! I don’t think the ‘60s had come to this part of the country. That’s singer Stevie Wright with the swivel hips.

The Bowie connection – of course! – is his cover of the song on ‘Pin Ups’. Next to the blindingly great original I think you’ll agree David’s version lacks a little something.

George Young is the older brother of AC/DC’s Malcolm and George Young. Check those early AC/DC album covers and you’ll see both songwriting and production credits for Vanda and Young. They also produced Rose Tattoo, whose singer Angry Anderson is one of the feral gang in Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior).

In the late ‘70s Vanda and Young created the brilliantly strange Flash & the Pan. Characterised by a vocal that sounds like it’s coming through a tin can on a string, the singer almost redefines “world-weary” with a delivery that would have emotion if only he could summon up the energy. It’s pretty clear the whole thing is a wonderful joke and its finest sleepwalking moment is “Wallking In The Rain”.

Which brings us to Grace Jones. Island Records was on a high, with owner Chris Blackwell living out his Atlantic/Jerry Wexler fantasies. He had Compass Point studios in Nassau and a house band that included Sly & Robbie, the hottest rhythm section in the Caribbean. Working with Alex Sadkin, Chris created the uber-groove that is ‘Nightclubbing’.

Looking at this period we tend to see weirdness and groove like The Cure and Gang of 4. But think about this for an idea: let’s shove Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing” motorik through a reggae-electro blender and slow it way down along the way…that’ll get the boys on poppers cheering in the discos! Uh-huh. Whoever chose the songs for Grace Jones deserves a medal.

Grace’s version of “Walking In The Rain” is one of my favourite songs (the 12” version is a stunnah). The band is a mix of reggae session kings, Bob Marley’s band, and English musos and singers - the same motley crew that played on Marianne Faithful’s ‘Broken English’.

The svengali behind Grace was French design visionary Jean Paul Goude, who came up with all the visual flair and the conundrum of Grace’s androgyny. Later on he made a Chanel advert that put Vanessa Paradis (Mrs. Johnny Depp) in a gilded bird cage. You can see it all here in this marvellous retrospective.

Shall we get a drink?

Rhymefest – Man In The Mirror

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:19:53 GMT

Since Michael Jackson doesn’t look like making a decent album soon Rhymefest has done it for him. Working with producer Mark Ronson and a number of other creatives, Rhyme, has sampled, mashed and beaten up some of Jackson’s best musical moments into a heady brew. Rhymefest must be a fan because he avoids the obvious digs into the hidden depths of the Jackson catalogue, and the results are to be had for free. Recommended if just to hear “Dancin’ Machine”.

Download it from here

Thought For The Day

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:48:55 GMT

10 Celebrity-Trashed Hotel Rooms

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:13:06 GMT

WARNING: Artist At Work

Here's a new twist on why you might want to stay somewhere - travel site Budget Travel has drawn up a list of 10 hotels trashed by celebrities

Hardly surprising that most of them are musicians. But in yet another case of sloppy research, Keith Richards gets the credit for throwing a TV off the balcony. This was de rigeur rock star practise at the time and anyone with a good memory will recall that members of the J Geils band raised this to a fine art, carrying as part of their luggage a very long extension cord so that when the TV hit the ground it was still turned on.

It's probably Keith Moon who started the fad. My favourite story of the many Moon destruction derbies comes from former Who PR Keith Altham. In 1968 The Who and The Small Faces were both touring Australia. It was Steve Marriott's birthday and to try and isolate the disruption, The Southern Cross Hotel had put the bands on the top floor. As Altham recounts it, Marriott's birthday party was riotous and crazed. At some point Moon picked up the TV and hurled it through the glass balcony doors and over the balcony, where it fell into the swimming pool below. Some time later an angry hotel manager stalked into the room carrying a dripping TV and demanded, "Who threw this in the pool?" Moon grabbed the TV, said "I did. Like this --" and promptly threw it off the balcony again.

My Soundtrack To 2007

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:45:14 GMT

I started last year with a torrent of MOG-recommended music that drowned me in more exciting, interesting and idiosyncratic sound than I’d heard in years. I ended it doing a pas de deux with pneumonia that left my head empty of any sound whatsoever. Thanks to all of you and your wild and crazy obsessions!

From 2007, these are a few of my favourite things.

Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Everybody Knows EP This may be my favourite music of the year. The playing is superb, the production excellent, and 95% (maybe 97%) of Ryan’s lyrical imagery is wonderful. I’m not sure I’d like to live in the world he describes – no, I am sure. I wouldn’t – but he brings complex depth and emotion to it in a way that makes even the downside sound semi-attractive. To take one of several good examples, “Two” makes loneliness sound so damn lonely. I feel sorry for the guy – he’s trying so much not to sound like a loser, which is the worst kind of self-awareness. Whenever I play these albums it’s like a good friend taking my hand and walking with me to where things feel good again.

Fergie – Clumsy Pop has an incredibly narrow rulebook. That we get so many excellent pop songs from it is a constant joy and amazement to me. This song fulfils all the briefs and I love it. It’s like an intricate jigsaw, with the wonky beats, that snare noise every two bars, and a load of other deceptive small details that make it sound simple. The Little Richard “sample” is a nice touch too.

M.I.A. – Boys On the other hand, some people just tear up the rulebook.

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand I hooked back into Plant on his Strange Sensation tour – I love an artist who continues to follow his own voice. He’d been planning to work with Alison Krauss for some time but I wonder if this is how he heard the finished article. The material and the atmosphere sounds like it’s 1950-something, but the arrangements and production could have been made by Eno. There’s hardly a conventional arrangement or solo and when there is one it rarely sounds like a solo. If rock and roll had just been invented it might sound like this. Already have my tickets for the show, even though it’s in London’s worst venue.

Led Zeppelin I think Zep is in my DNA -- I haven’t needed to listen much in 25 years because nothing is forgotten. But the O2 reunion has me hot and sweaty all over again. They’ve written and recorded some fabulous swaggering pieces over the years and whether I’m hearing it studio, live, demo, or unreleased I’m really enjoying the crunch and clamour.

Prince @ The O2 I’ve written about the Minneapolis munchkin at length. It still sounds fantastic. May be the best soul revue since James Brown and The Famous Flames circa “Live At The Apollo Vol. 2”. And not because Prince gets to call out “Maceo!” every night.

Amy Winehouse – Cupid Her personal life is a shambles, but she continues to create magic in the studio. The way she phrases this Sam Cooke titan is gorgeous and her sympathy with the musicians a delight. This got heavy rotation in the office.

Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate - In the Heart of the Moon My kind of chill-out music. One of the last records Ali made before his death, this is a master class in empathy and musicianship. Ali (guitar) and Toumani (kora) had never met and didn’t rehearse. The first time they played each song is what got recorded. (Once you dig into the heart of their playing it’s fascinating to follow the way they signal changes and build on riffs.) The result is a gorgeous blanket of warmth that sounds like no other African music I’ve heard.

The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America Is there a cooler song all year than “Chill Out Tent”? Is there anything better than the massed Strats and power chords on “Stuck Between Stations”? Great car music, though it’s not quite Highway 1, driving on the Wokingham Road.

David Arnold – Soundtrack to ‘Casino Royale’ Like its new owner, this Bond music is brash, a bit crude, looks good in a casino... Key moments: The way it pumps up the action in the first big sequence with the crane; the whole Miami airport sequence. I love the fact that the music for both Bond and the Oceans series are made by guys who come out of indie and DJ-ing. It’s what makes Britain so swinging.

A Joyous Season To All

Jonh Ingham — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:49:39 GMT

It's been a very entertaining year on Mog. Heard great tunes; saw amazing videos; met, read and laughed with a lot of cool and wonderful people. I'm looking forward to doing it again in 2008.

Have a great Christmas, a wonderful Hannekuh, a fulfilling Haj, ring that temple bell, or whatever way you have to celebrate the season.

Louis Armstrong - Cool Yule

Jonh Ingham — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 12:08:36 GMT

Another tune from the Japanese Jazz Christmas CDs.

Louis Armstrong surely loved the festive season - I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. (For the innocents among you, Louis allegedly smoked reeefer every day of his adult life.) Anyway, these 2 CDs have three tracks by him. Anyone want to heard 'Christmas Night In Harlem'?

A BB King Christmas Gift For You

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:59:57 GMT

BB King - "Christmas Celebration"

When I lived in Tokyo I came across the best Christmas LPs I've ever found - compilations by music fanatics of A Blues Christmas and A Jazz Christmas.

Kicking off the blues album is this festive masterpiece from the Memphis Blues Boy. It does exactly what it says on the label. May you celebrate the season in equal style and joy.

Captain Beefheart – The Spotlight Kid goes Funky Friday

Jonh Ingham — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:11:57 GMT

Fopp is back! The best music shop in Britain has returned to artfully part me from more money than I can afford. Among this week’s Siren charms was a Captain Beefheart two-fer: The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot.

I’ve happily ignored the albums on which the Captain’s reputation built - just too strange – but these are a different matter. This is the funk done Captain style.

First up we have “I'm Gonna Booglarize You, Baby”. That’s Roy Estrada on bass.

Gotta have a train song. “Click Clack”, live in Paris.

The Captain (tho his mama calls him Don) knows a thing or two about the facts of life: “Nowadays a Woman's Gotta Hit a Man”.

“Big Eyed Beans from Venus”…”Mr. Zoot Horn Rollo, hit that long leaning note and let it float.”

And one from the album/s. The mastering is excellent - it sounds fantastic. There are ballads and weirdness as well as the guitar fusillade, but this is Funky Friday.

Press the red button and reveal “Sun Zoom Spark”

M-m-more Zep

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:00:36 GMT

Since the Mogaplayer is megathin on info, this is Led Zep live in a studio playing 'The Ocean'.

What a great jam it is. Everything that's the best about them is in full effect.

Revelation for me is John Paul Jones. He always seemed so plodding and dull but all those years of session work are on show here - you couldn't lock that bass any tighter to the kick drum if you tried.

Dig the backing vocals too - pretty good!

I bet the lucky few in the studio audience boast about being there.

The Zep At The O2

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:33:40 GMT

It was a complete surprise in the middle of the 10 O’Clock News to suddenly hear the noisefest that is ‘Black Dog’, but I’d forgotten that Gods reuniting is a newsworthy story. It was an even better surprise to hear how fabulous they sounded.

I’ve been rambling around YouTube looking at all the clips fans have thrown up from the show. It’s fun to see it from so many angles and distances and while the sound is generally tinny it does show the Zep to be in fine form, particularly ‘Ramble On’ and ‘In My Time of Dying’. Because media is mostly written by hacks and not fans, there was a general air of amazement that they were in good voice and power. If they’d bothered to see Robert Plant last year with his band Strange Sensation they would know he’s been keeping parts of the Zep repetoire lubed and supercharged.

I can remember exactly when and where I first heard them. What an amazing noise – we played the album about four times in a row. A few months later I was lucky enough to be in LA when they came to town on their second tour and saw them. Robert was wearing what looked like a girl’s lace blouse and Jimmy was in black jeans, leather jacket and Converse sneakers. (Cool or what?) At one point Plant helped a girl climb on stage and dance with him. Hanging around at the end of the show I saw Page walking across the floor and excitedly shook his hand – he looked kind of embarrassed by the fannish attention. I daresay he got used to it.

When you can see their faces in The O2 fan vids they looked like they were having fun. I hope they decide to play some more, because it’s an amazing noise I’d like to feel again.

The Mathematics of Rap

Jonh Ingham — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:34:48 GMT

Rappers often rhyme about dropping science. Go here to see exactly what they’re talking about.

Some examples to whet your thirst for knowledge…

RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT MUSIC

Jonh Ingham — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:45:11 GMT

Did you know that one of the words du jour among The Kids is “random”? I’m still trying to work out what it means within their trendy teen argot because I refuse to ask the 12 year old. After all, she needs to have a role model in How To Be Cool. That person is not I, but I won't lower myself to her view of me. Naturally, I was thinking about “random”, as we all do, as the thing that makes the iPod the new transistor radio. Back when radio was where you heard new music (as opposed to one of Anna’s 600 MOG friends), one of its true joys was never knowing what came next. My iPod on shuffle has been AI enough to play a perfect sequential history of the Blues from Robert Johnston to recent Eric Clapton – what you might call a Radio 2 evening programme. It’s also managed to pile up Gram Parsons, M.I.A. and Shang Shang Typhoon. Random. Radio can’t compete.

In the office I frequently end up with multiple MOG pages open as my compadres insist I repeat-play certain tracks you guys have posted. We click it – oh yeah – random-style. Amy Winehouse’s amazing version of “Cupid” (thanks Flux) was mainlined so much that finally I had to localise it onto the laptop. The way that girl slides up close to a song and then seduces it would surely get the praise of Sam Cooke. And any mashup the natty Knife throws down is on a highway to heavy rotation. It turns out the 23 yr old assistant is big for Eric Clapton but virgin to The Zep, so a quick click of the dial to Deezer.com clued him in to the virtues of braggadocio, bombast and Bonham. Whatever reasons there are that keep the old music fresh for The Kids, I’m sure that a big reason is what’s mostly missing from new music: swagger.

After two months though, my still predictable habit – nothing random about it – is listening to Prince at The O2. He sells his album to the Daily Mail to give away in their newspaper and you think he’s a visionary. Then he sues Pirate Bay and you see he’s still - as he frequently says in his concerts – old skool. I don’t care. Any one of the 21 nights posted on Pirate Bay kicks more booty than his new album. Swagger is a good word to describe Prince. His band is a machine of joy and between them and some of his guitar playing it’s as good as music gets. I recommend the 21st September Indigo version of “Come Together”; he gets reflective and stretches out for several minutes. I’d call it noodling but it makes you stop whatever you’re doing just to listen. What I like best though is how he rides the band like a swinging bandleader, bending them to his commands as he makes up the arrangements on the spot. He makes me think of Cab Calloway and I can think of no higher compliment.

It’s Good To Be Back

Jonh Ingham — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:50:13 GMT

It was a bit of a shock to look at my MOG page and realise it’s over a month since my last post. Life intervenes. Scribbling as I am within a music blog, it’s appropriate that this post is about a country in silence.

In the past few weeks I’ve travelled more often than I have in the previous few years. Last Wednesday I was in Copenhagen – now there’s a city that has rush hours and central heating sorted. The week before I was in Warsaw – there’s a city that knows how to make great pastries and food. The week before that I was in Saudi Arabia.

I’m working with a Saudi company to build a music and film download service and it’s been a fascinating experience because Saudi is easily the most unusual country I’ve ever been to. Public music is outlawed. There are no cinemas or theatres. Alcohol is banned. Women can’t drive. There’s no tourist industry; you have to be invited. The big thing to do on a Friday night, which falls on a Wednesday, is to hang out at the shopping mall.

It may seem odd to build a music download service for a country without public music or an indigenous recorded music, but there’s plenty of action in private. There are even some pretty sophisticated regional p2p sites that, like Pirate Bay, have moved from country to country as the law pursues them.

The highlight of the visit was a taxi drive three hours across the desert to Riyadh. While I didn’t expect the Empty Quarter, I was surprised by how busy the route was. No more than ten minutes went by without an oasis, a farm, or some kind of oil infrastructure. The road was thick with trucks. There were a lot of camels, which made the experience perfect, especially seeing a herd of white ones. We were traveling at 100 mph or more but that didn’t stop our Indian driver from making frequent phone calls, holding it to his ear while he drove with one hand. On one of his phone calls, traveling at about 110, I became aware of a car next to us and looked out to see the driver next to us. He was txting with one hand while he drove. This went on for some time, side by side, each driver one handed while fiddling with mobile phones, while I nervously suggested we pull over a lane and was ignored. Finally the towers of Riyadh appeared. Both of them. I was expecting the capital city to be like any modern urban high-rise, but two skyscrapers is all it has and we were going to one of them.

Kingdom Tower. Our meeting was on the top floor.

After the memorable meeting – it’s not often you find a record company on the 58th floor entirely floored in marble – we were on a plane to Bahrain. It was now three days without hearing any music (somehow it seemed wrong to plug in the iPod while in Saudi) and Bahrain is the opposite of where we’d been, full of clubs and entertainment. So after dinner we went to Pal Joeys, recommended as a place to hear some good sounds.

The door opened into a short hall, thus disguising a décor that can only be described as Bad Irish Pub. One filled with Thai hookers. In the time it took to walk to the bar I don’t think I’ve ever felt more desired in my life. The music was….imagine a sound that isn’t John Mellencamp but the guy who sounds like John Mellencamp. This wasn’t right. So we left, only to see a poster outside advertising the hot presence of Pink Mustang. We could hear their wild crazy sound coming out of a door opposite, so stepped inside to see a mixed gender Filipino bar band coming out of their prog improvisation into… “Smoke On The Water”. Different…and perhaps promising, but barely had we parked our elbows on the mahogany when a girl and her pimp shoved between us, arguing at each other in high speed Tagalog. It was useless trying to push them away so I settled back to enjoy the back-combed hair and fuck-me red lipstick in the face of an apoplectic young man, sound-tracked with one of God’s better riffs. She was winning, and celebrated her victory with a grin of victory and a hand gesture straight out of an Italian film about streetwalkers before sauntering off without even looking at the two guys she had crashed into. Could the evening get better? The opening guitar chords said it could, a riff that is known but takes a few seconds to register. “Whiskey In The Jar” in the hands of Phil Lynott can be a few minutes in heaven. But though it’s not often you hear an Irish song sung in a Filipino accent and played by a band with prog tendencies, the result was somewhere short of the pearly gates. But we did laugh.

Part of being a gentleman is knowing when to leave the party; tonight it was when the synth solo started.

After the days of silence it was a night of interesting musical memories, ones I will celebrate as unique because with luck and application I will never repeat them.

Thought For The Day

Jonh Ingham — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:45:50 GMT

Funky Friday – Le Freak for Sexy Dancers

Jonh Ingham — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:18:35 GMT

How many ways can a guy play the same song? I posted 'Le Freak' in an earlier post. On this show he decides to show us how it would sound if Wes Montgomery took a solo. How cool is that?! How twisted is that?? The more I hear the more I'm in awe. This was song 3 in the encore. Y’all get funky now.