Video Of The Week 15/12/07

Yaargh I almost did this yesterday but events took hold (they have a funny way of doing that) and so it has ended up being today. Doesn't really matter - I don't think for one moment anyone really cares.

Anyway, in recognition of the fact that the album was Uncut's album of the year, and is sure to feature of my end of year round-up today's video is the magnificent "Someone Great" by LCD Soundystem off their second album "Sound of Silver".



Enjoy!

Under The Covers Part Five: I've Forgotten More Stuff

Christ! If I were to contiue the prog-rock metaphor I started earlier this particular point about covers, which I never intended to be this long, is becoming something of a concept album. I'm perilously close to Operation Mindcrime or Tales From Topographic Oceans territory here.

Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me the other day that I completely forgot to mention Hands of Cuba's biggest cover-related failure, although a lot of good did come out of it too.

Just after Hands of Cuba started practising properly - yknow, playing through songs and trying to write stuff just like a proper band - we learnt of a competition, probably through the NME, I don't recall exactly, to cover "Skip To The End" by The Futureheads. The winning cover, as selected by the band, would appear as a B-Side to a future single.

Ever the eager beavers that we were at that stage in our careers we plunged headfirst into the challenge, recorded our composition and sent it off. We were excited. The thing was, though, that our version really wasn't very good. There was simply too much going on. It was a horrible mess of a sound-mulch. Double-tracked vocals courtesy of myself and Pat, our guitarist, were perhaps not a great idea, especially as they were slightly out of tune and completely out of sync.

We never heard back from The Futureheads or indeed anyone else. Mind you I don't recall hearing anything else at all about the competition at all and wikipedia reveals nothing about it appearing on the one and only other single taken from the second album. Maybe with them being dropped from their label and all the whole competition fell through. Who knows.

Anyway we did learn a lot from that recording session, which is handy as it would have been a massive waste of time otherwise. It took ages (quite a few days of solid work) but we learnt a lot about recording, which set us in good stead for when we recorded our own songs. Also by deconstructing the song to the extent we did we realised how little the band had done with the tune and structure and thus realised it wasn't terribly good. We also got some good drum patterns which were to come in lots of use later (especially in "Ted Heath", Cuba fans).

Also we never even attempted to play it live, which shows that lessons had been learnt. I really hope this is the last post about this topic for a while, lest I suddenly get an overwhelming urge to make that album about the Peloponnesian War.

A Wimba-way A Wimba-way

So, Atlas. Good isn't it? You possibly need to hear the album version to appreciate it or at least hear, as I keep pointing out, that it sounds somewhat like Can covering "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (though I can't take all the credit for that witticism, I'm afraid). There's also a wicked version on "Later With Jools Holland" that must have led to some serious some heads scratching, especially as they were apparently on directly after Crowded House.

I chose Atlas as Video Of The Week (all that time ago, I've been a bit slack with the write-up) because it was a sort of anthem of last term, being played almost constantly at clubs and house parties, much to the chagrin of a friend who doesn't really like the song. A similar, but less strong role, was played by the stuff off the latest Of Montreal album, especially "Heimdelsgate Like A Promethean Curse".

It's quite interesting how these things happen, and a social group can develop it's own sort of personal soundtrack, which is usually specific to a certain time as well. Last term was most definitely the term of Roxy Music, especially "In Every Dream Home A Heartache". Man, if there's a better song about having sex with an inflatable doll I don't wanna know about it.

I could write more about this, as its pretty interesting from a sociological perspective, but I've got enough of a headache as it is.

Christmas Is Awesome

Surprise video fun for you all today. Take a look at this. In case you can't be bothered to read the blurb English metallers Reuben have released a Christmas song in the hope of there being a decent Christmas number one this year. They probably won't succeed but I would dearly love it to so please download it. It's available on iTunes from 17th of December.

It would be churlish if I didn't, at some point, talk about Christmas songs. I've been thinking and I can only think of three good Christmas songs so far. They are "Fairytale of New York" (no surprises there) "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses and Mike Oldfield's "In Dulci Jubilo" (this is maybe my guilty Christmas pleasure, although it does have an awesome guitar solo). As far as I'm concerned, though I suspect you don't need me to tell you this, all other Christmas songs are mawkish, tatty, or just generally bad for one reason or another. There are less well known bands who have made good ones, such as Xfm's Christmas compilation or Low's Christmas album, but you're unlikely to hear those blasting out in Debenhams.

Incidentally I was quite glad when Gary Jules' version of "Mad World" got to number one. I prefer the original but it really pissed off Justin Hawkins from The Darkness, and meant his band's dismally depressing effort didn't win.

I also need to shit off the part of my brain that makes stupid suggestions. Today I came up with the idea of doing an album called "A Very Doomy Christmas" and, amazingly, the more I think about it the more I like it. Any ideas how this could be done?

To Advertise Here

I was flicking through TV Channels last night when I came across (no, not literally) a somewhat Celtic arrangement of Penguin Cafe Orchestra's "Music For A Found Harmonium" used in an MFI ad. Lovely song, rubbish at selling pretty tacky-looking furniture.

The Orchestra seem to be pretty prone to use in adverts - most of you, like me, will recognise "Telephone and Rubber Band" from its use by some phone company (I can't actually remember which one - take that "The Man"!)

It got me thinking about songs in adverts. It really quite annoys me when good songs are forever slightly tainted due to their association with any kind of tat and the usually crappy ad that tries to shove it in your face. Then whenever you play the song to people and they say "Oh yeah, the song from that advert". IT DID EXIST IN ITS OWN RIGHT BEFORE THEN. Ahem. Examples of this that immediately spring to mind are War's "Low Rider" (Marmite) and Pigbag's "Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag" (Tango, I think). Having said that the first time I heard "A Glass Of Champagne" by Sailor was in a relatively tasteful M & S advert from last year and I still like that, so it's not always a bad thing.

Having said that there was that Volvo advert that featured Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields playing a really bizarre version of "The Wheels On The Bus". What the fuck was that about?

In Which I've Clearly Run Out Of Ideas...

Stupid wastes of time #1 - Playing ridiculous jazz on the Ocarina in "Ocarina of Time". My other half just discovered that you can even bend the notes wildly whilst using the control stick. Hours of fun!

Sorry, can't be bothered to actually write about anything I was intending to. Hopefully the disaffectedness will pass.

Video Of The Week 08/12/07

Oh hell, I missed another one. Perhaps I'll just move Video Of The Week to Saturdays. We'll see.

Anyway this week I have chosen yet another live performance (mainly because the video is of the radio edit, which is frankly rubbish). It's Atlas by Battles:



A post about why I chose it and some general thoughts will follow soon.

Suffer For Fashion

I went and saw Of Montreal at ULU last night and they were fabulous.

It was especially good given that I've not been to a gig for ages, and hardly any this year at all. I don't know why, I've just kind of not been bothered with live music, which is especially odd given that I've been unusually good at listening to new music this year. The best gig I went to was probably The Earlies, back in May, which was excellent because there were only about 20 fans there and the band clearly felt a bit more relaxed and thus arsed around a fair amount.

Anyway, last night. Despite almost being ruined by twattish fans (and I don't have time to go into all the different types of idiots you encounter at gigs but it should suffice to say that these were the sort who forcibly push their way past you and then jump around in a very aggravating manner) it was an excellent night. The band were all very pretty, and it was pointed out that the keyboardist/bassist/drummer looked an awful lot like me (hooray!). They also too the extremely brave move of opening with a 12 minute dark, throbbing electro song basically detailing the singer's mental breakdown. Best of all at one point said singer disappeared off stage for a costume change and reappeared in the most absurdly gay (yet sexy) outfit I've ever seen. *Sigh*

Actually best of all was that it reignited my passion for creating music, which all good gigs should do. Campy electro indie-pop ahoy!

Whine, whine, whine

I'm not in the best of moods today. A couple of weeks ago I ordered a different coloured scratchplate to snazz up my new bass. I realise that won't mean much to some of you so this is a very similar product. I was very happy - the product I ordered was much cheaper than the one I linked to, I could make my bass look al sexxxy, everything was good.

Except that it arrived today and it doesn't actually fit on my bass. Seriously some of the holes don't even line up at all (matron) and in one place there's a great bloody gap.

This bass has been trouble from the start. My mum noticed slight bumpy bits on the paintwork shortly after it arrived, which I dismissed as nothing to worry about. Then the bottom string went all muted and weird sounding. Then somebody spilt Coke on it at my birthday party. Admittedly that wasn't the bass manufacturer's but it was the penultimate straw and this camel's back is broken. Still, at least I could clean off the dried Coke when I was fruitlessly trying to change the scratchplates.

It's enough to make me never touch a musical instrument again. I've always fancied being in a barbershop group, as it happens.

Under The Covers Part Four: The Reckoning

Oh! I've just realised that a chapter of this particular history has, thus far, been left unwritten (I didn't just realise this, of course, I was just trying to make it look like I didn't plan my blog meticulously like some kind of obsessive weirdo). That's right, the story of the covers performed by Hands of Cuba has yet to be told. Were mistakes learnt from The Quatermass Experiment? Did we manage to actually not butcher a song? Could I get any more sexy? Well the answers to these questions will be revealed... right now.

In general the answer to all three questions is yes (especially the last one). In general Hands of Cuba relied less on covers than Quatermass, which was a wise decision in my opinion. There was also less of the "let's suggest a slighty stupid cover and then learn it but never actually play it", which was somewhat annoying and wasted an awful lot of time. In fact we only covered 8 songs during the course of our, admittedly short, career and I know this because I'm written them all down in a typical fit of list making nerdiness.

Some naturally didn't work as well as others. A synthed-up "This Charming Man", as well as getting the fanboys huffing and puffing over their NHS glasses, was perhaps an idea that worked best in its original conception, recorded alone in a bedroom on an old 4 track by my beautiful and monstrously talented other half (hi!). Similarly an electro version of Ash's "Burn Baby Burn" never really worked as well as it should have done. Still, I got to play keyboard on that one and I even got to do the guitar solo, so I'm not complaining.

Even better a few covers I think we did really, really well and not only did we stamp our own mark on them but they even became live favourites, of a sort. "No More Heroes" was pretty damn good and had the advantage of being known by everyone but not too obvious but the real success story was our version of Liliput's "Die Matrosen". Quite how we managed to make a pretty obscure song written by four Swiss women in very bad English, which prominently features whistling and an out-of-tune saxophone into such a hit is a mystery to me even now but we did it. In fact, download it now if you can. It's really ace.

So where am I going with all this? I'm not really sure except to give some friendly advice to new bands. Covers are good to start off with but it's really much more satisfying to write and play your own stuff. Also don't pick any of the old "standards" to cover as you'll inevitably sound boring at best. That is unless you follow my third piece of advice: don't continue to play anything unless you can pffer a fresh twist on it (and no, playing it in a punk style doesn't count as a fresh twist; bands have been churning out that shit for years). Bands with record deals and everything don't follow that last piece of advice, naturally, but the ones who do are the ones who make memorable covers.

Oh and I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to all Smiths fanboys out there. I am one of you really.

Waxing Lyrical

I was cleaning out my room on Saturday so I could fit all my uni stuff into it when I stumbled across some old notebooks that I'd hoarded. Back in my teenage years I had used said notebooks to write down lyrical inspiration if and when it occurred (the emphasis being very much on the "if"). Anyway I naturally decided to look through them, before I mercifully condemned them to the recycling where they belonged and whilst doing this I was struck by one overriding thought:

I was a pretty odd and awkward teenager.

This I suspect many of you knew or suspected already. It certainly holds true for my lyric writing. If I were to disappear and the police were to go through my stuff or if Time Team ran out of old things to dig up and decided to come sniffing round West London that is definitely the conclusion they would come to. As well as just plain odd my lyrics were often derivative or just plain bad. Any occasional needles of inspirational were completely lost in a vast haystack of angsty, cliched rubbish.

Not that anything's really got better since. I *think* I'm alright at writing lyrics when I have a song and a vague theme to work with, as was the case with Hands of Cuba, but I find it very difficult to do unless I have some music already and most of the time I can't be arsed and have no inspiration. Perhaps I need someone to be a Morrisey to my Marr. And also for me to be as good as Marr. It's a shame because I'd quite like to do more lyric writing and I think I'm fundamentally deficient as a "songwriter" in some way if I can't do any.

If any lyricists could shed any light on how they do what I do it would be much appreciated. Meanwhile I've got a killer first line to develop:

"I really love you
Cos you're lovely
and that"

Bob Dylan's got nothing on me.

Video Of The Week 01/12/07

Hello, sorry it's late all, I was very busy yesterday. Plus I'm prone to periods of intense laziness.

Anyway, on with the video. These past few days I've been loving Animal Collective's "Strawberry Jam" with a vengeance. I've been having real trouble deciding between the album's two best tracks (in my opinion); "Peacebone" and "For Reverend Green".

So you know what? Since I'm home and in a very good, if very tired, mood you can have them both.

First up, the fantastically nonsensical "Peacebone", live at some festival in Malta.



Incidentally do check out the proper video to this song, it's one of the most disturbing things I've seen in a long time.

Nest up: the swirly, magnificent "For Reverend Green", again live at some festival or other.



Have a good week, y'all. I might just finally make good my promise of more regular posting. We'll see.