The kids at Watville Primary School sing Iron Maiden's Flight of Icarus.
Hang around at least to the two minute mark. You WON'T be disappointed
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,
Red yellow green, purple or blue, We make a new suit,
We all try to make ours, as best as we could,
So when we out at Carnival, We be looking good,
Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,
Red yellow green, purple or blue, We make a new suit,
We got rhinestones on our suit, that shines like diamonds and stars,
Got to be sure that we 're together, cause we're sold on Mardi Gras, oh yall!
Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,
Red yellow green, purple or blue, We make a new suit,
Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,
Red yellow green, purple or blue, We make a new suit,
We got feathers, on our crowns, that stand a'bout eight feet high,
In every color, of the rainbow, We're beautiful , I ain't lying, oh yall!
Every Year for Carnival Time, We make a new suit,
We make a new suit
Monday, March 7, 2011
Stuck at Buenos Aires' Jorge Newbery Airport last Friday, Cyndi Lauper grabs the public-address microphone and sings her 1983 2-million selling platinum hit "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," as nearby travelers and airport workers sing along.
The song was originally written from a misogynistic man's point of view. Cyndi rewrote it and it remains one of the great feminist anthems of our time
The song was originally written from a misogynistic man's point of view. Cyndi rewrote it and it remains one of the great feminist anthems of our time
It is June 1968.
An assassin guns down another Kennedy.
Police arrest Martin Luther King Jr's killer.
War rages in Vietnam.
And racing up the pop charts is a steamy million-selling love song about a one night stand, "Angel of the Morning", by Seattle singer Merrilee Rush.
"The lyric was revolutionary for its time." Merrilee says, "Because this hasn't been said this way before. It was an overnight stand but it was said beautifully."
And sung beautifully by Rush, a dazzling brunette Johnny Cash called "the prettiest, sweetest apple the state of Washington ever produced."
"I was the Marlo Thomas of Rock n Roll," She laughs.
More than 40 years after that Grammy nominated performance, Merrilee has still got it. The voice. The stage presence. The mile wide smile. But she spends most of her time, these days, with her first true loves: her English sheepdogs. She bought her first sheepdog with babysitting money.
"I don't breed a lot, " she says. " but I've been breeding for 25 years and handling in the show room for 23 years and I love it. When you have a great moving dog that's really put together
and flows with you it's just my happy place!"
Her other happy place is an old dairy farm where her grandparents once lived. The cows are gone and so is the barn.
"And the outhouse," She points out. "I used to go in the outhouse .I was a mere child and I'd have to get up in the middle of the night, go out in the dark and I'd have to go to the outhouse."
A shy girl growing up, Merrilee had to be coaxed to front the bands she played in. Those were the days of bold patterned dresses and not one but two sets of false eyelashes.
"I was groovy." she laughs.
How groovy? Check out this 1969 clip from The Johnny Cash show.
Merrilee says looking back it all seems so foreign. Of course there were supposed to be other hits but that meant playing a game Merrilee wasn't interested in.
"I hated Vegas." she said."I hated the whole 'do the same thing three times a night every night'. There's no creativity. There's no room to move."
Now , with the farm she shares with musician husband Billy Mac and all those shaggy angels by her side, Merrilee has plenty of room.
Every so often she gets up on stage and sings her old hit, written incidentally by Jon Voight's brother Chip Taylor ( who also wrote "Wild Thing" for the Troggs).
The fans she considers most special? That's easy.
"The Vietnam vets that were over there at the time," She says."There was one fellow who said 'Yeah we played that before we'd fly out in the morning and some of them would tear up just talking about that period and that song so that means a lot."
By the way Merrilee is no angel of the morning. She's more of a night owl and prefers to sleep in.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
It is a tribute to Ron Wood and his good nature that when he recorded his first solo album, I've Got My Own Album To Do, he managed to enlist the help of an all-star cast of British Rock stars: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and even an uncredited David Bowie.
They all came to his house in Richmond to help their buddy out and they all left their egos inside the sports cars and limosines parked outside.
Writing credits for "Act Together" belong to Mick and Keith, but in his autobiography, Life, I could swear Keith said he wrote it either by himself or with Ronnie. I've lent out my copy of Life so maybe someone can fill me in. In any case the two were best mates and with Mick Taylor's departure, The Stones brought Woody on board in 1975 for the album Black and Blue and when The Faces finally broke up...well, the rest, as they say, is history.
You can argue an entire night about what makes the best cut on this album . Hell, you can even argue whether this is the last great Stones album. ( I'd say Some Girls and Keef's Talk is Cheap qualify) I love the boozy feel of "Act Together". Is this another song Keith wrote to Mick or Anita Pallenberg? Does it even matter? The lyrics work for both of those stormy relationships:
" We should try get our love together.
Once in a while,
put ourselves together
It's looking good.
Let's get our shit together.
Sure won't hurt you now."
Thursday, March 3, 2011
"Noise can be musical and beautiful. Once you commit to tape or disc format you've changed the presentation; why not take it as far as you can. Vibrating a bunch of guitar strings is an effect, after all. Layering various textures puts a kind of depth to the record...I dig that." -- James Lowe, lead singer, the Electric Prunes
"The Great Banana Hoax" is the lead off cut to one of the great albums from one of the greatest years in rock, 1967's Underground.. What is the hoax? Back in '67 word got around ( with the help of Donovan's "Mellow Yellow") that people could get high by smoking banana peels. Even Time & Newsweek wrote about it. The FDA put their best scientists on the case.
They discovered there are chemicals in the banana peels called serotonin and norepinephrine that are related to hallucinogens such as LSD, but not enough to get you high. All the people who have smoked banana peels say it doesn't get them high, only headaches
Though their roots were pure garage, The LA based Prunes experimented like mad scientists in the studio. That motorcycle revving up that you hear at the beginning of the song is actually a slowed down growl, meant to evoke the sound of moving furniture. The percussive effects at the end are done with an African kalimba.
This week bassist Mark Tulin, who also worked briefly with Smashing Pumpkins, died at the age of 62.
Billy Corgan paid tribute to Tulin via a blog post on Glittercop.blogspot.com, stating : “Mark was part of a movement of suburban kids in the mid to late 60s that changed the world with their dark musical dreaming, and of course their Anglophile obsessions. From their imaginations sprang so many technicolor daydreams and all manner of wishing; wishing that we were often what we are not,” before concluding, “God Bless you Mark, you will always be a star”.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
With a blast of feedback and no apologies to The Out of Our Heads era Rolling Stones, french rocker Jacques Dutronc is a misanthrope...but a responsible one.
I am worried I'm in trouble
I have trouble I torment
I have not the moral I've no money
I have no luck I have no friends
I am a responsible man
In the mid 60's Dutronc was a huge rock star. My stepmother, growing up in Switzerland, said all the schoolgirls had the biggest crush on Jacques. He kept his eyes and ears focused on what was happening in England at the time and, whether it was garage rock, Kinks-like pop or psychedelia he could translate it into a French hit. But he wasn't the only one borrowing riffs and ideas.
Mungo Jerry took Dutronc's "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi" and scored a No 3 UK hit with its cover, called "Alright, Alright, Alright."
Finally, Dutronc gets name-checked in one of the best songs of the entire 90's, Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha":
Jacques Dutronc and the Bolan Boogie/
The Heavy Hitters and the Chichi music.
Dutronc married french singer Francoise Hardy in 1981. He's an actor of note, having won the French Academy Award, the Cesar for his role in the 1991 film Van Gogh.
Clearly an artist who deserves more than a cult following.
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