HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT – Rock n Roll Is Full Of Bad Wools

‘Play One The Drummer Knows…’       

My favourite band-ever. I could have put any of their songs on here but this is the one I have played most recently, last track on the last album ’90 Bisodol  (Crimond)’. With a riff bearing a strong resemblance to ‘Oddfellows Local 151‘ by REM Nigel takes a scalpel to the vacuous skinny indie kid (insert your time-waster of choice here) who, beneath the blandness of his media-trained responses, has no depth whatsoever. Easy target maybe but done with such beautiful precision-the small, telling details are one of the many reasons I love this band so much. He goes on to bemoan the current state of production-line pop bands, before relating an evening spent watching a Crowded house/David Gray covers band in preference to the latest NME Flavour-Of-The-Week up the road.

Their first album sold 250,000 copies-any of the piss-weak rim-sniffers who play indie music would murder their mothers for sales like that nowadays-and they have been beavering away ever since, improving in leaps and bounds as musicians, now being capable of everything from a punk thrash to a polka to a Beatles-esque psychedelic raga. Nigel Blackwell is Britain’s greatest ever lyricist. Better than Morrissey (shock!), Strummer (what??!!) and Macgowan (surely not!?). The most throwaway lines are often the most profound. My favourite couplet, from ‘Surging Out Of Convalescence’….

‘And if I get to Heaven’s Gate, I’ll doubtless have to wait

While St. Peter investigates the inevitable asterisk.’

That is genius in anybodys book.

Half Man Half Biscuit are a National Treasure. They should put Nigel’s picture on the £10 note.

Anyway, enough of my yakking.

Also here is a link to Chris Rand’s HMHB Lyrics Project  http://www.chrisrand.com/hmhb/  your one-stop shop for all things Biscuit-related.

THE BEATLES – The Word – Ghetto Funk Allstars Captain Remix

Popular Beat-Combo Given 21-st Century Tune-Up

There are people who say that you can’t mess around with The Beatles‘ music: that the songs are holy artefacts, separate from, yet ruling over the entire history of Pop Music and that this position is not open to question. Can I state right here, for the record, that these people are idiots. The entire Beatles musical journey was one of taking their influences from EVERYWHERE , from basic 3-chord rock ‘n’ roll, country & western and rockabilly, through to more ‘high-brow’ art, such as Bach and William Burroughs, and putting their unique Beatles-spin on it. Pop Music develops by taking the past, twisting it, and sending it off into the future: this is its purpose, and how it evolves.

Which brings us here.

This is a great re-mix. It keeps the basic structure of the original, and enhances the elements which made it great in the first place-McCartney‘s killer bass-line, and the Lee Dorsey-style piano riff. It works to demonstrate the skill of the remixer and to bring out the brilliance of the original. Past meets Present and becomes The Future-dig?

AFGHAN WHIGS – Faded

In celebration of the reformation of one of my favourite bands…

Someday I’ll post up my Afghan Whigs reviews and then you’ll be sorry. In the meantime a little more Greg Dulli, keeping up his reputation for picking exquisite songs to cover, has a go at Outkast’s rump-shaker. This is great….