March 16, 2006

Hello Eurovision

For probably the first time ever I've had a sudden spark of interest in the Eurovision Song thing - usually I avoid the damn thing like the plague - but according to the latest Popbitch newsletter - Bodies Without Organs have an entry in this year. I *love* BWO. Their 'We've Been Conquering America' video is one of my all time pop video favourites.

Posted by groc at 02:10 PM | Comments (1)

January 24, 2006

subverting youth

DEV2.0

W00t! It's like something they thought up for B3TA.

I heart the cheesy animations in the videos too.

I'm a fan.

Posted by groc at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2005

zire song selection

I know how some people love to sneer at other people's musical tastes - so here you go -sneer away. I'll just sneer right back.

The random-ish selection of songs I've just loaded onto to my Zire.

A kick in the teeth - Fischerspooner
All we are - Fischerspooner
Ritz 107 - Fischerspooner
Six feet under theme - Thomas Newman
Conquering America - Bodies Without Organs
the day before you came - Blancmange
God’s kitchen - Blancmange
the sailor in love with the sea - 6ths
Toxic - Britney Spears
Queer (Martin Gore mix)- Garage
Blue jeans - Ladytron
Cracked LCD - Ladytron
Seventeen - Ladytron
I die, you die (information society mix) - Gary Numan
Photograph - Gary Numan
Down in the Park (piano version) - Gary numan
Storm Trooper in Drag - St Etienne
Metal - NIN
In the Bath - Lemonjelly
I Am A Scientist - Dandy Warhols
Dolphin language translator - Astronaut’s wife
The 15th (Tommy Sunshine mix) - Fischerspooner
The Universal - Blur
Running Up That Hill - Kate Bush
Boys - robots in disguise
Destroy everything you touch - Ladytron
Everybody’s changing - Keane
Homosapien - Pete Shelley
Private life - the Pretenders
I’ll stand by you - the Pretenders
Ode to boy - Yazoo
We Are All Made of Stars (Timo Maas mix)- Moby
You showed me - the Turtles
Hung up - Madonna
I am the walrus - the Beatles
Drugs - Talking Heads
Air - Talking Heads
These Boots Are Made For Walking = Nancy Sinatra
Scissor Sisters - filthy gorgeous
The chauffeur - Duran Duran

(oh dear - I'm sooooo gay, but in such a weird retro-futuro way -so that's OK.)

Posted by groc at 08:28 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2005

me loves the FischerSpooner

Interviews about every track of 'Odyssey'.

Posted by groc at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2005

BWO

no idea what this might be like, but I'm putting this link here so I can find it again later...

It's what Alexander Bard - ex of Army of Lovers is up to these days...

Another site here. There's videos and stuff on the downloads page. I particularly liked the 'Conquering America' video.

Posted by groc at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2005

tagged

Rakka did gone and tagged me with this meme thing, so here goes:

1. Total amount of music files on your computer?
iTunes tells me I’ve 1045 in it’s library -but I know I’ve way more than that dotted all around the place.

2. The last CD you bought was...
It might have been Morrissey’s ‘Your Arsenal’ from a sale -but after waiting so long to buy it -it turns out I don’t think I actually like it that much. So I’ve decided that one doesn’t count.

The last full priced CD I bought was the double Donnie Darko soundtrack. I have yet to listen to the second CD with the bands and that on it...

3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?
(other than something I had on but was ignoring on MTV? (Why is there quite so much rubbish ‘music’ around these days?) Although I listened to/watched ‘What‘s the Frequency Kenneth?’ by REM.) er… other than that ,what I really properly listened to was ‘the 15th’ by Fischerspooner (and I listened to the original by Wire too, but I prefer the Fischerspooner version. Sacrilege I know.)

4. Write down five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

Just the 5? That’s not enough. Oh well, I’ll try…

‘Camera’ by John Foxx. Because it’s lovely and yearning and nostalgic and it’s about the magic of photography.

‘Spaceboy’ - Bowie - love the Petshopboy’s remix - and I love the video with the montage of retro-futuro film clips, and Bowie’s sex earring - his stillies - and his giant microphone with all the wire and stuff hanging off it, the spinning lights… ooooooh.

‘Enjoy the Silence’ as covered by Tori Amos, originally by Depeche Mode. I love her stripped sown piano solo version. But then I like a lot of stripped down piano versions of things - because I love piano music.

'How Soon is now?' The Smiths, and TaTu, and Snake River Conspiracy, Etc. I love this bitter angry little song and that opening guitar wail… and that electric drone. So I even love the different cover versions...

Only one more song…? This is really hard…

‘Baby’s on Fire’ -Eno. Every so often I’ll haul out all the early Eno albums and listen to them and get inspired by them to want to do some mad art again (and again). The sheer mad glee and creativity and the colleges and cut-ups and the pictures that they make start running through my head… So energising, so inspiring. And it's a song about 'Human Spontaneous Combustion' - how great is that?

5. What 3 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?

Comatose
Coz he’s all about the music -maaaaan.

Trahaddict - because I'm curious to see what answers he comes up with. I bet he loves Barry Manilow or Liberace or something...

glennalicious - because the first thing I saw on his blog after not visiting it for a while was a little whinge about not being tagged. Poor soul.

Posted by groc at 08:26 AM | Comments (2)

February 12, 2005

FS & NB

I've fallen in love with Fisherspooner all over again, so many veedeeos I'd not seen before (mmmm Casey looks so indie-kid dreamy in the 15th vid).

Wasn't sure about the tracks on their new upcoming yet-to-be-released album - but they've been steadily growing on me with repeated listenings. And a track ('We Need a War') with lyrics written by Susan Sontag - I mean, wow.

Nathan Barley Review.

Update: Momus writes some of thoughts after seeing the show.

Posted by groc at 09:38 PM | Comments (3)

December 23, 2004

just a reminder

to myself to check out the Dresden Dolls later - 'cause I saw a video of theirs on one of those music channels and it did look intriguing it did.
I particularly liked this jokey piktur.

Posted by groc at 05:32 AM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2004

yeah yeah yeah

spanners

Posted by groc at 03:30 AM | Comments (1)

October 23, 2004

the state of the music today

How long do we have to listen to this for?

(For the record: groc likes much of the buggles album 'the plastic age'. Especially the Elstree track.)

Posted by groc at 01:18 AM | Comments (1)

October 03, 2004

broken

Another track for my lovely readers. Broken.

Posted by groc at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

September 25, 2004

ode

a present for Tim.

But really this is a time when MPGs really show their weakness, you'll need a lot of bass boost for this to get the most out of it. I used to play this on vinyl on my proper grown up system* with big beefy bass speakers... ooooh, those old analogue synths.

*Not really but it was the best I could afford and it was still lots better than anything I own now. Sighs.

Posted by groc at 12:12 PM | Comments (9)

September 12, 2004

There isn't enough

pretty piano music in the world. So here's another piece.

Posted by groc at 02:48 PM | Comments (1)

August 28, 2004

Domo's mad world.

the Donnie meets Domo video. Clicky on Donnie and then on video for halty-pausey Real Player teeny tiny video goodness. (Well halty-pausey on my 'puter coz I've got a P2P program working away in he background. Broadband - feh.) Now how the hell do you capture streaming video again? coz I never managed to work that out. Yet I'm sure it'd be the only way to watch these things properly without them being all halty-pausey. I've not ever had much luck with Real Player. (Ramble ramble.)

Posted by groc at 08:08 PM | Comments (1)

According to

iTunes these are the 25 most played songs I listen to (well, using that program away.)

Feel free to sneer at my tragic unhipness (since I know you will anyway.)

Posted by groc at 12:07 PM | Comments (4)

piano piece

mmmmm'kay. This is just for the two people who expressed an interest. One of my passions is for piano music and I've found it lurking in the most unusual of places.

Posted by groc at 04:31 AM | Comments (4)

August 27, 2004

Does you people

out there like it when I put up musics -or are you just not bothered, and I'm just wasting me bandwidth?

Posted by groc at 02:04 AM | Comments (2)

August 22, 2004

stakeout

via dykes do digital freezepop's stake out.

Also from dykes do digital -this label.

Posted by groc at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2004

Whatever happened to

Frank Chickens? Well one of them married a spaceman.

---

when software goes crufty.

Posted by groc at 04:33 AM | Comments (3)

July 30, 2004

if...

...you haven't heard this already -then you MUST. It's brilliant.

Posted by groc at 02:28 PM | Comments (1)

June 25, 2004

back when

Chrissie Hynde interviewed Eno.

Posted by groc at 07:09 AM | Comments (2)

June 02, 2004

Hummm

I've just heard one of the Big Brother contestants humming their own rap version of my last mpg offering. Weird.

Now an improvised acapella version of the Eurythmics 'Sweet Dreams'. Go Eighties music, go Eighties music.

Posted by groc at 03:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2004

Another woman and a piano

cover another version. Get it now.

Posted by groc at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2004

A woman and a piano

cover a version. 1.

Get it now before I replace it with another one. I'm not made of bandwidth you know.

(PC people: right click and save as...

MAC people: -I dunno what they have to do, cry probably. But not before telling anyone who'll listen how great and how very pretty their macs are. Yawn.)

Posted by groc at 06:43 PM | Comments (4)

April 22, 2004

RIAA

here's another in a long line of articles saying the same things I and many other people have said. But the RIAA never listens to anybody...

...and there's Blunkett who can't see the problems with the ID card.

S'all kinda ironic innit really?

Posted by groc at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2004

It's a Barbie world.

It turns out Alexander Bard of AOL beat those dreary Aqua people to it with a whole Barbie album, he wore drag to do it and sang about Barbie going round the world. There's even a video disguised as a mpg over at the AoL site I've previously mentioned (you'll have to dig around) and songs can be downloaded from here. 'Around the World, around the World -beep beep'.

Posted by groc at 10:39 AM | Comments (1)

April 12, 2004

Army

Why was I not told that there's an offical Army of Lovers website - a place where you can even download their old videos? Why?

There are even old CDs of theirs which I do not own - this is a bad wrong thing and must be rectified asap. Dammit.

Thanks be to Pop Justice for without whom I would have continued living on in ignorance.

The only acceptable AOL there is -ever.

Posted by groc at 06:02 PM | Comments (11)

great minds...

The Register must be reading my blog. They say the same thing I did.

Posted by groc at 05:15 AM | Comments (0)

Listings

Mark Edwards of the Sunday Times doesn't like iPods very much:

"There is a type of music “fan” who would actually much prefer to compile a list of the top 10 all-time guitar solos than actually listen to any of them...

...Then it allows them to sit for hours uploading tracks (a phenomenally nerdish activity), and — best of all — it allows them to compile a series of “playlists” of their music. The iPod’s greatest cultural contribution so far is that it has made one of the most geeky activities known to man — drawing up lists of “best tracks for driving”, “ultimate chill-out tunes” and “greatest synth-pop singles made by Midlands bands 1980-1983” — something cool."

Mmmmm, now how many bloggers do I know of who love making up long extensive lists of music? (Evil chortle.)

[via Neverthink]

PS

Edwards misses a crucial point in this exhalation of CDs over having the music tracks on an MPG player - if you’ve got any sizable collection at all -you'll know it can be a pain pawing through them all to see what you’ve got. (and that one particular CD you really fancy listening to usually manages to go walkabout just when you want it most) Having most of your collection to hand at the press of a button has got to be more preferable surely? and you can’t really lug your entire CD collection around with you when you're out and about or away from home now can you?

Not that I’ve got one myself. But I do own a CD player that plays MPGs burnt onto CD-RWs. It cost only £40 rather than nearer £400, it runs on 2 easily replaceable rechargeable AA batteries too. It'll do for me until the iPOD or the Creative Zen come down to a more sensible price...

Posted by groc at 03:27 AM | Comments (2)

April 10, 2004

Hello music lovers, prepare to be gouged -again

Just exactly how greedy and clueless is the music industry anyway? According to this article, well, words like extremely and vastly and staggeringly so, come to mind. [via plasticbag]

"The industry is also mulling other ways to charge more for online singles. One option under consideration is bundling hit songs with less-desirable tracks."

Errrr.... like they do with CD singles? Where once upon a time you got at least got 'b' sides which were often tracks you couldn't get anywhere else -not even on the album. Which made the CD single worth buying (-well sometimes, if you were lucky), but now you usually only get a mass of extended un-imaginative tedious cheesy dance remixes. Which is something (among other things) might partly have to do with the decline in singles sales? Hem?

So let's clarify this - the music industry is already saving masses of money because there's no actual CD being pressed, no plastic jewel box, no printed inserts to be designed and printed, so there’s no shipping or distribution costs -and instead you pay to download a computer file which is more than likely copy-protected to the hilt with all sorts of weird restrictions meaning you can only play it on your computer or mpg-player (and remember you've paid for your ISP connection and for the time taken to download it) and after all that they’re wanting to charge you *more* money than it would cost to have all those things when you buy it from a shop. Suddenly 99 cents looks bloody over-priced if you ask me.

Posted by groc at 04:30 PM | Comments (1)

March 31, 2004

Bowie

Um. I've just been watching that 2002 concert by Mr David Bowie on ITV 1 tonight and throughout it found myself thinking more than once: 'oh hang on a minute, this doesn‘t feel right‘. For example 'Sound and Vision' is a song that concerns loneliness and isolation, it’s about holing yourself up and shutting out the world. It’s actually quite a bleak little number -so why is it now being played out as a jolly little knees-up? Likewise where was all the distance and irony that made 'Heroes' such a classic? - here it was played out on all the one level. Where was the drama of it? It merely trudged along. The edge that has long made Bowie one of my all time favourite artists simply wasn’t there in this performance. But then at last it did make it’s overdue return (and thus restored a little of my faith that David hadn‘t completely lost it) in the final number ’I’m afraid of Americans’ which was played as an unrelenting wall-of-sound, thankfully free from silly little piano doodles or twiddly guitar solos*. Phew.

(*Which is precisely the sort of thing that makes watching Jools Holland‘s ‘Later’ on BBC 2 such torture for me. Musos jamming away -ugh. Shudder. No.)

Posted by groc at 02:57 AM | Comments (5)

February 23, 2004

what?

So what the hell is that fairground style music they use on the current TV commercal for cheap Vodafone texts?

Posted by groc at 07:31 PM | Comments (1)

January 30, 2004

You are what you like

I Pod, You Pod.

"The old High Fidelity mantra that "You are what you like" still holds true, and nothing declares what you like more forcefully than your CD collection. Most people collect CDs solely to arrange them -- alphabetically and by release date, of course -- in a comically oversize CD rack and just stare at 'em, arms outstretched, beaming. This Is Who I Am, the divine accumulation of my fabulous eclecticism. And in the event of an earthquake, Who I Am can tip over and literally crush me."

Mmmmm -who do I know who's like that? It's not just the one person either...

Posted by groc at 11:06 AM | Comments (6)

January 29, 2004

Klaus

Nomi.

Posted by groc at 04:43 AM | Comments (3)

January 28, 2004

Phkkhewww! (sound of gunshot) Ow-ow-ow! (bullet hitting foot)

Big Music's Worst Move Yet.

NB. This is an article from a Business Magazine -even they think the RIAA is shooting themselves in the foot -well, some more that is. But I bet you can lay money on betting that our version of the RIAA -the BPI will be rushing to repeat all the same mistakes...

These people really aren't very bright -insanely greedy yes, intelligent -no.

Posted by groc at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2004

goldfrapp

twist

Posted by groc at 06:47 PM | Comments (2)

January 09, 2004

I'm declaring

John Foxx's Camera as my current theme tune. You'll have to source your own copy of it because I'm out of webspace.

An interview.

The official website.

He wrote a song called 'A Blurred Girl' and if wonder if these are his photos. After all he did spend time as a illustrator/graphic artist. No? Oh well it was a nice idea.

Posted by groc at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

Dammit

dammit dammit -I just missed the chance to tape Smack the Pony's musical number 'I Just Can't Find My friend'. I *love* that piece. I love the music. I love the silly dances. I love the video - especially the bit when they pogo along to the onomatopoeic words being shown on screens like 'beep beep beep' and 't-t-t-t-t-t' etc. I want it mixed up into a proper single and I want it to get to number one for at least 4 or 5 weeks, and I want it now.

Posted by groc at 12:16 AM | Comments (6)

January 07, 2004

current listening

Tori Amos' cover of Depeche Mode's 'Enjoy the Silence'.

Posted by groc at 11:33 AM | Comments (4)

Aqua

By the way I spotted a copy of Aqua's CD Aquarium for £2.50 in a charity shop yesterday. Any one want me to buy it for them? Now I know what great fans you all are of the band. (You sad, sad 'irony'-loving people.)

oh and look... Industry Watchdog Sues Music Labels Over Copy-Protected CDs. When I first heard of Mac owners putting one of these sort of CDs into their machine only to have the computer crash and in some cases even stick in the computer I always thought that by rights they should be able to take the record company to court and sue for the costs of repair, and of any lost data. After all there's never any clear warning on any of those CDs. Funny that. Wonder why that is? Oh yes - of course, because no one would buy the bloody things. D'oh.

Whenever I hear the music and film industry bleeting about their imaginary lost revenues -I'm reminded of that line from Tom in 'Gimmee Gimmee Gimmee': "Don't you piss on my head and tell me it's rain".

Posted by groc at 09:05 AM | Comments (7)

January 02, 2004

100 worse

On watching Channel 4’s top 100 worst pop songs show tonight I was struck by what a sizable bulk of the songs featured were responsible for me so vehemently hating going out on the (Nottingham) gay scene throughout the 90s. At the time I remember so many people loving and feverishly dancing away to lots of those songs (and often many times to the same tunes in the same night). I even had someone spend some time trying to persuade me just how good and fun and ‘ironic’ ’Barbie Girl’ was. I wasn’t in the least remotely convinced then and I hope that person is feeling a deep pang of shame now. Feeling like I was being tortured and perpetually mildly nauseated I was often castigated for being a misery and a spoil sport -but no, in actuality I was just someone with reasonably good aesthetic tastes and has never once felt any compulsion to blindly follow the herd. Especially not when they were doing the dance steps to ‘Tragedy’ or the ‘Macarena’. (Uh shudder. The sick bastards.) Oh, and not being off my face on substances meant my perceptions remained uncompromised. Because let’s face facts -your facilities have got to quite severely damaged before you think ‘No Limits’ or ‘the Only Way Is Up’ or Cher’s ‘Believe’ are great to dance to. Although this doesn’t explain (or excuse) people from going out and actually buying those records in the cold sober light of day. Why do they do that? Why? What is wrong with them?

But what ultimately worries me now is well, isn’t 99.9999% of the pop output now unbearable shite? Sigh.

Posted by groc at 02:46 AM | Comments (19)