Feet up! : music

The Pirate Prince?

File this story under "you couldn't make it up"; midget, cross-dressing, comedy-act Prince is bandwagon jumping (which makes a change from the usual shark), and suing The Pirate Bay for piracy.

As the first commenter on El Reg mentions, Prince's most recent album was given away free with a low-brow UK newspaper at launch, so it's hardly high-value content. In fact for added perspective, I bought said paper just out of curiousity, recycled the paper (well the pet rabbit did) instead of reading it, and lost the cd before it was ever played. I'd even forgotten the entire event until today; so, what's the value of Prince's work? Not a lot, I'd say...

TPN Rock - unofficial decades show

Given that Ewan slipped up and didn’t come out with one of his “best of” decades show for TPN Rock 101–110, here’s my take what I think are the best bands in the last decade of shows. No doubt Ewan will actually find a better selection if he does TPN Rock 111 as a decades show.

TPN Rock 101

Kill Van Kull – classic 70s bluesy tunes
Oh Crap Ninjas – crunchy, melodic, modern rock
Aldo Leopardi – smooth, big ballad
Fissure – Soaring anthemic rock, not quite as much like Genesis as they think (which is a good thing in my book)
Lady White Noise – Noisy, bouncy stuff

Rock The Week In 15

Antiqcool – yay for mellow, Pink Floyd-esque and mysterious

TPN Rock 102

Cafebar 401 – Almost Supertramp-like, electric piano and clapping, very retro!
The Silence Industry – a bit drony, but still an interesting wall of noise

TPN Rock 103

Montgomery California – good noise, classic driving rock
Aaron – Gypsy Kings-esque, the Spanish guitar wins it for me too
Unknown Component – Oasis-style big ballad, without the Gerry Anderson style eyebrows

TPN Rock 104

Vamp Le Stat – they should get in for the name alone, more stonking classic rock
Optic – Evanescence done properly
In Reverent Fear – modern, interesting and I pointed Ewan at them :-)

TPN Rock 105

David Pendragon and Tribeworld – classic powerful folk rock
The Milestone Corporation) – Jangly guitars, Hammond organ and cowbells, how can it fail?

TPN Rock 106

Hell’n’Diesel – Yet another great Swedish rock band, stadium rock with an edge
Dollar Sent – Thumping straight ahead rock from Brighton

TPN Rock 107

Deadstring Brothers – more 70s style stuff, with great keyboards, think Paice, Ashton, Lord, or even Hoof

TPN Rock 108

Neall Alcott – moody, atmospheric, dark, but not too thrashy
Sharelle – Kate Bush/Tori Amos style balladeer
Damh the Bard – mellow folk rock

TPN Rock 109

The Beatings – punky, bouncy, grungy, and crunchy
Alona – anthemic, symphonic rock with great female vocals
Joe Granata – crashing riffing guitar intro that lasts for the whole song, inspired concept

TPN Rock 110

Madcab – classy, modern rock
The Trailer Park Kings – toe-tapping groovy stuff with great wah guitar
Nanowar – crazy, symphonic, melodic rock with thrash-metal drums from Italy, Spinal Tap couldn’t do it better

International CD Baby Delivery.

At first glance it looks really expensive to order from CD Baby if you're not a US-ian.

However, checking out CD Baby's delivery prices properly, it appears that if I order more than one cd it shouldn't cost much more than 2 usd per cd, and with the usd worth less than 50 pence, you're quids in with CD Baby's pricing.

The shipping price for international orders comes down a lot if you choose slow delivery and bin the crystal boxes, which is nice. I can buy crystal boxes cheaply in bulk in the UK, so I don't need to pay a high postage rate to send one or two of them across the Atlantic. Nice stuff!

A simple digital distribution option might be even better, a couple of links to an iso or similar and some scans of the cover paperwork; we have colour printers and CD burners in Europe too! If the bands were concerned about potential piracy, it'd be easy to brand the iso and paperwork with my name or CD Baby login. That's better security (DRM ha) than they get with the physical CDs anyway, as it's trivial to rip and redistribute a CD if you were so inclined. CD Baby guys, could you do this?

Band of the week - Buddard

This has to be my band of the week; Swedish rock band Buddard. Their Wish you were beer album, is great stuff and the album is CC licensed too, how much better can it get?

The stand out track for me has to be Two tons of steel (mp3), a great punchy driving song, rocking solidly along in classic AC/DC or ZZ-Top style. I've been tapping my toes to this all week long.

The atmospheric YouTube video made by a Buick Riviera fan is superb too.

Thanks to Ewan's new TPN-Rock sidekick Iain Foulds for finding this gem of a band.

Band of the week: Lordi

It's been a while since I've got around to fully forming my thoughts on a favourite band of the week, with so many great musicians around, how can you pick just one band?

However, this week it's easy.

This week is Eurovision week.

For non-Europeans Eurovision is a litle hard to explain, but imagine a karoake contest where the electorate (and candidates) belong to rival in-bred feuding families. That might certainly give you some of the feeling of the inter-nation friction, and for added confusion the singers and bands cover such a broad range of music that direct comparison is nigh-on impossible.

Despite this however there are clearcut winners, one is this year's entry from Finland, Lordi.

Ok, the contest is not until tomorrow night, but how can these guys fail to win? They ROCK!!

As Janne points out all you've got to do is watch, enjoy and Vote Lordi!

Suggesting Tunes

Followers - or sufferers - of my link blog will have noticed a few links to rock bands going through tagged with forEwan - I know this isn't the traditional for:nick del.icio.us tagging style exemplified in Joshua's plea for new music, but as far as I know Ewan doesn't use del.icio.us, and it seemed a good way to suggest bands that I reckon ought to be on TPN Rock. Some of the ones I've spotted so far are great, and I'd suggest using the same tagging trick if you spot a band that'd fit nicely in TPN Rock's wide range of music.

Good Gig Warnings

Former band of the week Hoof are playing on the party/nightclub boat Patricia in Stockholm on Thursday 1st December. Also prospective band of the week (as soon as I write it up) The Revolutions are playing London's Brixton Telegraph this coming Sunday (27th November).

Two great bands, and two potentially brilliant gigs and I don't think I'm going to be able to make either. If you get to one, please write it up somewhere!

Band of the week: Eye Bent Grape Spasm

Well, I thought I had been here before, and heading back into the mists of blog-time I’ve found that I was raving (or was it ranting?) about them back in April 2003. As I still like and listen to the guys, I believe they are very worthy recipients of the band of the week award.

Here’s what I said about them back in April 2003

The Eye Bent Grape Spasm
Yes, erm, well I think they rock.

Today's listening is The Eye Bent Grape Spasm's seminal 1993 classic album Large Scary Nasal Hair. Personal favourites have to be Steenkin' Bandito's and Serious Jazz. What more can I say, excellent stuff, especially the Hendrix-esque excursions into previously uncharted sonic domains.

Something else to check out in a similar vein are the other bands on the Very Concerned Records site – Pompillion certainly look like a future candidate for band of the week!

Band of the week: Hoof

This week’s band are Swedish classic rockers Hoof. With hints of Deep Purple, Hendrix and a significant nod in the direction of the funky Paice, Ashton and Lord, Hoof are original and they’ve got a bundle of great tracks available for download on their website.

I’ll start with the oldest set of tracks, So Long. The slowest set of tracks, melodic, and almost Doors like (I’m a big Hammond organ fan), these three tracks from 2002 featured an early lineup of the band, the full history of the band being available on their excellent website. My favourite of this set being And You Are There the third track.

Bringing the band up to date are two sets of tracks from 2004, the Been on a Show “album” is more fluid and punchy than their earlier tracks, Child of a Vicious Mind and The Colours wouldn’t have been out of place on Deep Purple In Rock or Fireball (without the air conditioning noises). The third track, Too Tired is pure PAL, and the fourth and fifth tracks are funkier and slow the pace down whilst adding a little variety, my favourite of the bunch are And The Colours, and The Media Club with its superb lyrics.

There’s also a third set of songs – Live In Replokal. These won’t win any awards for musical fidelity being unmixed and merely recorded on a single stereo microphone at Hoof’s rehearsal studios, but they prove that Hoof can actually play and are a tight and together band, rather than the product of some painstaking studio work piecing together samples.

Hoof are smart guys, they’re the only TPN Rock featured band I’ve seen so far using Last.fm to promote their music, surely this is an obvious route for small bands to get their music heard?

So, in summary, great band, superb tunes, stylish website, the only downside being they don’t seem to gig very often. Next time they play in Stockholm I’m very tempted to grab a cheap flight and beg some floor space from Gustaf for the night (in exchange for a few beers, natch).

Yet another top band, it’s going to be tough finding something for next week, or is it?

Band of the week: Arthur Vance

Can I solo artist be "band" of the week, sure, it's my category, what I say goes!

Just to muddy the water further, Arthur's actually more of a song writer than a full-on rock star, and he didn't even play on Cool Creek his most famous track to date, but with a tune this good that really doesn't bother me, and it's an admirable bit of ego-control by Arthur. Cool Creek appeared on TPN Rock 15 and can be downloaded (alomg with 9 other cracking tracks) from Arthur's weblog, personally I'm really looking forward to hearing the other 11 tracks recorded by the guys.

Band of the week: The Supersonics

So here's part 1 of an irregular "band of the week" slot on Feet up. Funnily enough most of my choices will be pretty similar to the criteria for inclusion on Ewan's TPN Rock podcast, the band have to fit one or more of the three U's: Under-appreciated, unsigned, and unknown. To which I'll add one proviso; if the band doesn't have at least 2-3 downloadable mp3's I'll probably not mention them, after all, how can I recommend someone you can't listen to?

I'm going to start the series with a great Danish rock band, the Supersonics, they've featured on TPN Rock a couple of times now, first on show 13, and just last week on show 20, with the very appropriately timed Apollo 13 - for those of you with heads in the sand, Nasa were having yet another potential space disaster at the time the podcast aired...

Good stuff, I'd love to catch these guys live, good all-around listening, not too heavy or dull and pretty varied to boot.

The Rock Show, Rock On!

Being of a certain age my Friday night radio listening used to revolve around the late Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show, which I'd invariably tape and re-visit during the week, rather like a late 70s/early 80s style podcast. Now I'm listening to Ewan's rock podcasts every Friday on the Podcast Network, Ewan seems to variously title it TPN Rock, or just "The Rock Show". Whatever, it's all good to me.

He's discovering new bands that I've never heard of, which sounds grim at first, but the majority are superb and I've not heard a truly duff one yet. If you're into pretty much any genre of rock music I'd suggest giving Ewan's rock music podcast a few listens.

Fresh Cream?

On Friday night BBC 4 had an Eric Clapton special, part of which was a documentary of Cream's final concert in 1968 at the Royal Albert Hall. A few things struck me about this, chiefly how sublimely great and tight Cream were as a band, secondly how superb Ginger Baker was/is a wall of noise drummer, and thirdly how bland everything that Eric has done since then appears in the context of Cream.

Now nearly 40 years on, Cream are playing four reunion concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, for those lucky few with tickets - it's a total sell-out - tonight, Tues, Weds, and Thurs should be very special nights indeed.

The Playlist Meme

1. Open up the music player on your computer.

2. Set it to play your entire music collection.

3. Hit the "shuffle" command.

4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That's right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It's time for total musical honesty. Write it up in your blog or journal and link back to at least a couple of the other sites where you saw this.

5. If you get the same artist twice, you may skip the second (or third, or etc.) occurances. You don't have to, but since randomness could mean you end up with a list of ten song with five artists, you can if you'd like.

Here's my list:

Via Rui and Gustaf.

Listen with #mobi

I've managed to drag a good handful of the Mobitopians and the #mobitopia "massive" kicking and screaming onto last.fm, you can see what they and I like listening to (some of it's rubbish, some's even worse than that). Maybe I should round up my playlist and herd it into a playlist meme post.

Give Bob the Money

So 20 years on and there's another Band Aid song, and quite frankly it's crap.

20 years back Bob famously said "just send the fucking money", well that still applies, but please for the love of god don't buy that excreble song. Buy the old one if you can or buy pretty much anything else. Failing that, if you feel you really have to buy the new one, do so and destroy it.

You'd think that today's singers with their almost continuous diet of covers would have been able to make a good fist of covering Feed the World...

And as for Bono, it looks like Justin was right, hell my dog could have sung that line better.

Finns on Auntie

The Finn brothers tour continues apace, they're now in the UK. Yesterday was the Fan club gig in London's Regent's Park, and there's plenty of action throughout the week. A live session on Virgin Radio at 2:45pm today (BST, i.e. UTC+1), and an interview/session on Johnny Walker's Radio 2 show this evening, followed on Thursday by an appearance on Gideon Coe's Radio 6 show and an instore in London.

A busy schedule, it's a shame the BBC stick with the grotty Real Audio nonsense for their streaming though.

Update (20040810): Looks like the Virgin session is now going to be on Weds, the Johnnie Walker show was pretty good, although Tim's voice seems to have a a life and tuning of its own. I guess recordings will turn up on the Jane-Music ftp site shortly.

Update (20040811): Monday's Johnnie Walker session is available for re-listening, and the Virgin session should be sometime between 7 and 10pm tonight on Ben Jones' Most Wanted show.

UK Tour Dates plus Dublin

The tickets for the 15 dates for the UK leg of the Finn Brothers tour (15th Oct to 5th Nov) go on sale today. With a Dublin gig on November 2nd (tickets on sale 19th June) too. There's also a fan club gig in the UK, which'll be well worth getting to if you're a fan club member.

There's the same news on the Finn Brothers News Board. But, it hasn't got permalinks or a feed so I'd much rather link to the far more usable sevenworlds.net fan site.

Waiting...

A quick round up of some of the updates on the new Finn Brothers album: Everyone Is Here, it appears that the US release will be on the 24th of August and North American tour dates have been announced - starting on 9th July in Vancouver though to 4th August in Austin, an interview in Rolling Stone, and rumours of a UK tour after the North American tour.

Does it strike anyone else that it's a bit odd to tour 7 weeks before the album comes out?

Personally I can't wait, thank god for the Jane music site for some good old Crowded House and Finn Bros. tunes to keep me sane until the new release creeps out.

New Finn Brothers Album On The Way

News from the Tongue in the Mail mailing list, Frenz guru Peter Green's Famous for 16 minutes site, the Finn Brothers News Board and the Seven Worlds fansite is that the Finn brothers have a new album coming in the next few months.

Entitled "Everyone Is Here", from a working title of "Where the fuck is everyone?", it looks like the album is going to have the following track list:

1. WON'T GIVE IN
2. NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU
3. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN
4. LUCKIEST MAN ALIVE
5. HOMESICK
6. DISEMBODIED VOICES
7. A LIFE BETWEEN US
8. ALL GOD'S CHILDREN
9. EDIBLE FLOWERS
10. ALL THE COLOURS
11. PART OF ME, PART OF YOU
12. GENTLE HUM

There were 4 other tracks recorded, which no doubt will creep out in bootlegs, b-sides and club cds. They were "Way Back Down", "The Land and the Sea", "Sunset Swim" and "Everyday Alright".

In other news, it's Neil's birthday today too!