Friday, June 29, 2007

Thanks To YouTube

Sometimes there are bands that go beyond producing songs that you like. Sometimes there are bands that do the things that you think you'd do, if you were to be a band.

Case in point? This 1978 performance by Devo on French TV , doing their cover of The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction":



Sunday, June 24, 2007

26th Birthday

'I'm thirty', I said. 'I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.'

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1926)

Heh.

It occurs to me that my birthday was last Sunday, but I hadn't actually mentioned it here yet. I actually spent it in London with my sister, who noted that she never seems to feature here.

We had tickets to two days of the Wireless Festival in Hyde park , which allowed me to see The White Stripes and The Kaiser Chiefs headlining. The foirmer were predictably good, but the latter actually sold me on them as a band - I'd liked some of the singles, but as a live act they were really excellent.

Other highlights included seeing The Only Ones playing their herointastic "Another Girl, Another Planet" (currently to be heard selling mobile phones), beneatha rival mobile company's logo, the lead singer of The Cribs biting off far more than he could chew when he dived into the crowd, and the fresh faced youngsters of Mumm-Ra experiencing a positive reaction to a new song ("Did you like that? Ooh, we'll use that one!").

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Origins



From the online comic Shortpacked. I often find the occasional superhero jokes like this to be better than the regular comic, but that could just be me.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

God Save Your Mad Parade

Suddenly you didn't have to be alone. You submerged. You had a good time by having a bad time. You were full of poison.


- Jon Savage, England's Dreaming (1991)

Yes, it's now 30 years since punk's high point - causing there to be no Number One single in the week of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, because the top selling single was the Sex Pistol's "God Save The Queen" and the BBC didn't want to cause offence. That week, the charts ended at Number 2.

Why my favourite musical era is one which happeded a few years before I was born is an interesting question. I suspect that Jon Savage nailed it with that quote, however.