100 Records That Shook The World, #69

Dancing In The Street

Martha Reeves and The Vandellas

This song is important for a number of reasons. Firstly,  it charted twice, once in 1964 when originally released, then again when reissued in 1969. Secondly, Marvin Gaye co-wrote the song and played drums on the track. Thirdly, it seems like an innocent dance tune, but took on an additional meaning when riots in inner-city America led to many young black demonstrators citing the song as a civil rights anthem to social change, which also led to some radio stations taking the song off its play list because certain black advocates such as H. Rap Brown began playing the song while organizing demonstrations.

When Martha and The Vandellas (the 'Reeves' was tacked on in the late '60s) visited the UK, a British journalist aggravated Reeves when he asked her if Dancing In The Street was a "call to riot". She just rolled her eyes and said "My Lord, it was a party song."

The song also received a resurgence in popularity when it was famously re-recorded by David Bowie and Mick Jagger for Live Aid in 1985 and subsequently became a chart smash. This version was also the first video to be shown in movie theatres prior to the start of the film.

Sorry. I had to put both in. Oh come on! You'd have done the same.

Give Greyson A Chance

I feel the need to talk about this kid Greyson Michael Chance. I confidently predict big things from this young man. I mean, just look at what he has accomplished already. First he gets filmed at a local choir festival in Edmond, Oklahoma, singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi", then the video is uploaded to YouTube, goes viral, and he's invited to perform live on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show. Two days ago he was back on the show to perform one of his own compositions and Ellen then announced she was starting a record label, eleveneleven, and Greyson is her first artist.

Whoa.



This kid is 13.

I am willing to bet my girls will be begging for Greyson posters for their bedroom wall before too long.

Now there is the backlash, as fast as his rise to fame. People are saying there is something fishy about it all. Firstly, they say, if the school he was performing at is co-ed, where are all the guys in the audience? Clearly whoever asked that has never been to a choir festival and so never noticed that these things have predominantly female attendees.
Secondly, they say, why does he bow to the camera after the performance?
He's not bowing to the camera, the audience is not limited to all those girls on the bleachers behind him. Obviously he's up on a dais in the middle of the hall and there are audience members on either side of him, including the person with the video camera.
Thirdly, they say, how come the video picture and sound are so good?
Isn't it just possible that this person (unlike 90% of people who shoot digital video) actually knows how to hold a camera and has a steady hand?

Y'know, it's like every new talent. No sooner is a person built up to celebrity status that we say they're too 'cocky', too 'big for their boots' and 'need to be taken down a peg or two'. Trouble is, in this digital super-fast zippy instant age, both the rise to fame and the knocking down happen at warp speed.

To Greyson, I say a hearty "G'won my son! Give 'em hell!" and urge him to enjoy his 15, er, seconds of fame while it lasts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so1rWgXnamE (can't embed videos from Ellen's show).

Stifled

I removed two posts earlier, under extreme duress. One of them was a nice long one that I was quite proud of. I cannot tell you the reason why I had to remove it, because simply explaining it would be reason enough to make the person that requested their removal to ask me to remove this post. Suffice it to say I feel very emasculated, discomfited and disgusted with humanity as a whole, especially in a specific area of the world that I cannot reveal lest the people that caused the removal of the first two posts get mad and need the post to get taken down again. Confused? Try being me. Even I cannot get my head around it. I'm as pissed off as a writer can be. Yes, a writer. Not just some random guy sitting at his keyboard and churning out nonsense. So here's a few words of comfort:



We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.  ~Henry Steele Commager


The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.  ~Tommy Smothers


Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself.  It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.  ~Potter Stewart


We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.  ~Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764


The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.  ~Walt Whitman


Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.  ~Voltaire


I am thankful for all the complaining I hear about our government because it means we have freedom of speech.  ~Nancie J. Carmody


The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.  If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth:  if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


Books won't stay banned.  They won't burn.  Ideas won't go to jail.  In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.  The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.  ~Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959


Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.  ~Abbott Joseph Liebling, "Do You Belong in Journalism?" New Yorker, 4 May 1960


A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.  ~Albert Camus


To reject the word is to reject the human search.  ~Max Lerner, 1953, on book purging


Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.  ~Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935


What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.  ~Sigmund Freud, 1933


Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.  ~Heinrich Heine, Almansor, 1823


Did you ever hear anyone say, "That work had better be banned because I might read it and it might be very damaging to me?" ~Joseph Henry Jackson


If you don't have this freedom of the press, then all these little fellows are weaseling around and doing their monkey business and they never get caught.  ~Harold R. Medina


Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is solely and exclusively a contribution of the reading mind, and hence cannot be defined in terms of the qualities of a book or picture.  ~Theodore Schroeder


The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.  ~David Ben-Gurion


If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.  ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  ~John F. Kennedy


God forbid that any book should be banned.  The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.  ~Rebecca West


If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.  ~Noam Chomsky


Every human being has a right to hear what other wise human beings have spoken to him.  It is one of the Rights of Men; a very cruel injustice if you deny it to a man!  ~Thomas Carlyle


Books won't stay banned -
Ideas won't go to jail.
~Alfred Whitney Griswold


You can cage the singer but not the song.  ~Harry Belafonte, in International Herald Tribune, 3 October 1988


I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.  ~Voltaire

Bite Me

Bite me!!!!

100 Records That Shook The World, #70

You Really Got Me

The Kinks

The Kinks, a band formed in London's Muswell Hill by brothers Ray and Dave Davies, are one of the most important and influential bands of the 'British Invasion' era and beyond. It has been suggested many times that 'You Really Got Me' was the first punk record, and the band paved the way for acts like Hendrix, Cream, Zeppelin, Sabbath, The Stooges and yes, even the Pistols.

One of the most persistent myths about the song is the old chestnut about Jimmy Page playing the solo on the track. In fact, the band has always maintained that the solo was by the then-seventeen-year-old Dave Davies, and Page himself has gone so far as to say "I didn't play on 'You Really Got Me' and that's what pisses him (Ray Davies) off."

Fact is, Jimmy played on several Kinks sessions as a rhythm guitarist a few weeks after 'You Really Got Me' was recorded, but Jon Lord, keyboardist for Deep Purple, who allegedly played piano on the song (it was either him or Arthur Greenslade), maintains it was Jimmy's solo, while producer Shel Talmy says Jimmy was only playing rhythm. Perhaps we'll never know. Either way, it's a fabulous song, and firmly established The Kinks as a force to be reckoned with.

Fast Food, and Other Horrors

The General Election.

The Volcanic Ash Cloud.

British Airways Strikes.

Greyson Michael Chance. (He is awesome, by the way).

All of these pale into insignificance when compared with the story that is yet another fantastic reason to eat healthy. Here it is in all of its Press Association glory:


KFC fined over cockroach discovery
Monday, May 10 01:51 pm


Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has been ordered to pay out almost £19,000 after a cockroach was found eating a chip in one of the busiest branches in Britain. 

The insect was seen on a food dispensing counter near takeaway boxes and tongs used to serve chicken by an environmental health officer in a restaurant in London's West End.


City of Westminster Magistrates' Court heard that, during an inspection at the Leicester Square branch, the officer also saw a mouse, flies and dried chicken blood on the floor. The Westminster City Council inspector also said there was no hand wash in dispensers in the food preparation area.


"There was no soap in the ground-floor food preparation room so, on the day of the inspection at least, it was not possible for food preparation staff to wash their hands properly," said Michael Goodwin, prosecuting.


The fast food giant admitted breaching five hygiene rules after the inspection in August 2008. Mr Goodwin said that, four months prior to the inspection, the branch received a "specific warning" from the council voicing concerns about hygiene practices. David Whiting, mitigating, said the company took the inspection "very seriously".


"KFC accepts the condition that has been described to you," he said. "They fell below their own high standards and below legal standards."


Mr Whiting said that, since the inspection, the outside contractor employed to deal with pest control problems has had its hire agreement with KFC terminated across the UK. Mr Whiting added that, on the day of inspection, an employee had simply forgotten to refill the soap in the dispensers in the preparation room and there were still places where hands could be washed.


The Coventry Street outlet, which employs 65 people and operates from 10am to 3am, has since undergone a £600,000 refurbishment.


At a hearing in April, the firm, based in Woking, Surrey, pleaded guilty to failure to keep the premises clean, not keeping the building maintained and in good repair and not having adequate procedures in place to prevent pest control. It also admitted failure to ensure that the layout, design and construction permitted good food hygiene practices and failure to ensure that materials for cleaning hands were available at hand basins.


District Judge Howard Riddle fined the food chain £11,000 for the five offences. He also ordered it to pay £7,927.80 in costs and a victim surcharge of £15.


Now the bit that cracks me up is in the first paragraph... the cockroach was 'eating a chip'. Somehow that puts a bizarre image in my mind. However, not as bizarre as this one. Some lady over in Brownsville, Texas was caught selling six Bengal tiger cubs in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Has the world gone bloody mad?!

Then, back to KFC and the vile Double Down sandwich... here's Rachael Ray ripping KFC a new one with Joy Behar...



And another disturbing story about KFC from the PETA website, May 11th....


US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack today announced new regulations that are meant to curb the number of meat-eaters who are rushed to hospitals after being sickened by life-threatening foodborne illnesses. It's believed that the "improvements" will keep 39,000 Americans from being infected with campylobacter and 26,000 from being sickened by salmonella-tainted chicken and turkey flesh—a small reduction from the 3 to 4 million Americans who contract these diseases every year.


In other words, the "improvements" promise little more than a drop in a KFC bucket.


What will a meat-eater's chances of getting sick from salmonella or campylobacter be under the new regulations? Considering that the new standards allow for 7.5 percent of chicken corpses at a plant to test positive for salmonella—and that of those corpses, 10 percent can be "highly contaminated" and 46 percent can have "low levels" of contamination—we'd say still pretty good, er, bad.


In a recent analysis, Consumer Reports found that among "fresh" whole chickens bought in 22 states, two-thirds harbored salmonella and/or campylobacter.


Folks, these new "safeguards" won't do squawk squat to keep consumers safe from salmonella and campylobacter. The simple fact is that eating chickens and turkeys will sicken just about every meat-eater sooner or later. Those who care about animal welfare become sickened when they learn about the abuse of billions of birds on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. Those who don't know about this abuse will likely find themselves locked in the loo at some point, sickened by salmonella and/or campylobacter—or worse, they'll find themselves in emergency rooms thanks to heart attacks, strokes, or other conditions that are linked to meat consumption.


Oy. It's a crazy world we live in, and no mistake.

100 Records That Shook The World, #71

The House Of The Rising Sun

The Animals

The roots of this song are shrouded in mystery. It is an old American folk song, first collected by folklorist Alan Lomax in Kentucky in 1937, although Animals keyboardist Alan Price claimed it was based on an old English song from the 16th century that somehow made its way across the Atlantic with settlers from England. In that version the infamous House was set in London's Soho. The true origin we shall never know.

What we do know is that when the Animals were touring with Chuck Berry around the UK in 1964, lead singer Eric Burdon heard the tune being sung in a folk club by a man named Johnny Handle. He liked it so much that he suggested the group do a version of it for their live act to differentiate themselves from other bands. Bob Dylan had done a version too, and The Animals were quick to point out that their inspiration had not come from his arrangement. However, this did not stop Animals fans from accusing Dylan of plagiarism, and he soon afterwards stopped performing the song live. He did, however, say that when he first heard the band's version on his car radio he liked it so much, he "jumped out of his car seat."

The song was recorded in one take in May 1964 and released to critical acclaim. Rock writer Dave Marsh described The Animals' take on "The House of the Rising Sun" as "the first folk-rock hit," sounding "as if they'd connected the ancient tune to a live wire," while writer Ralph McLean of the BBC agreed that "it was arguably the first folk rock tune," calling it "a revolutionary single" after which "the face of modern music was changed forever." Writer Lester Bangs labeled it "a brilliant rearrangement" and "a new standard rendition of an old standard composition."

As recorded, "House of the Rising Sun" ran four and a half minutes, regarded as far too long for a pop single at the time. Producer Mickie Most, who otherwise minimized his role on this occasion — "Everything was in the right place ... It only took 15 minutes to make so I can't take much credit for the production" — nonetheless was now a believer and declared it as a single at its full length, saying "We're in a microgroove world now, we will release it." And a good thing too.

It ranked number 122 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. It is also one of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The RIAA placed it as number 240 on their Songs of the Century list. In 1999 it received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. A 2005 Five poll ranked it as Britons' fourth favourite number one song of all time.

Mixtape Madness

I used to make a lot of mixtapes. Of course, back in the early 80's they weren't called mixtapes. We called 'em compilations. Or compilation tapes. 


When my friend Phil played me a tape made for him by our mutual friend Nick, I was blown away. Instead of just track after track, Nick had done the unthinkable and chopped and changed and cut and spliced and inserted and made the tape almost like a work of art. It was seamless - music flowed from one track to another, then random sounds were inserted, bits were repeated, the chord progression of The Cure's "Bananafishbones" was interrupted by weird noises... it was like listening to an episode of Max Headroom through headphones. It was art on tape. It was then I resolved to not only have a go myself but for all my subsequent tapes to push the artistic envelope. No longer would I be bound by the constraints of the vinyl's grooves or the tape's revolutions - if nothing else, I would make tapes that arrested the aural orifice and kept the listener on tenterhooks.

My first attempt was made using two boomboxes connected by DIN plugs - remember those? I remember one part where the song "Hit It Run" by Run DMC stopped, so I put in a different song, one that was as totally unlike rap or hip-hop that i could think of. Then later in the tape, I played the rest of the track.

The very wonderful Sony XO-550W.

I had a good job at the time and so I bought a lovely Sony stack system, the XO-550W. The nicest thing about the system was the mic mix feature, that enabled me to mix sounds from another source while recording from record or cassette. Thus I could hook up the headphone jack of my boombox and mix in the sounds from that over the top. So Sparks' "Beat The Clock" had some clips of Fawlty Towers thrown in. Holger Czukay could be heard speaking over The Stranglers, and some short-wave radio broadcasts filtering in above The Smiths' Asleep. In one memorable tape one could hear me putting a cassette into a Walkman (with the headphone resting over the mic of the boombox), the tinny sound of Mark King's version of Cream's I Feel Free beginning and then cutting that to the stereo version... ah, those were the days. I gave the tapes odd titles too. One had the football commentary and results off the radio mixed in and out, and was titled Home Side and Away Side. One tape that was full of not-very-dancey tracks was called Dancefloor Burner. One was full of house and hip-hop tracks entitled Get Up Off Your Fat Little Ass And Dance, B***h!. Another that was full of oddball album tracks mixed with my own songs in demo form was called The Scourge Of Cassette Deck Fascists!*(This is not a party tape at all, so sod off and play your Bon Jovi somewhere else). One that was made up of tracks purely from tapes was called Cassettes Go Ape Crazy! and yet another was called Psychic Disturbances, which had a 7" side and a 12" side. My favourite was called You're A Really Lucky Bugger, taken from one of the tracks that was included, The Boomtown Rats' Watch Out For The Normal People.


*By the way, a "cassette deck fascist" is one of those people that would bring their own tapes to a party and put them on when everyone was good and drunk and didn't know what they were listening to. Usually a Siouxsie And The Banshees live bootleg or some other "Not-very-party-like" doomy music.

Here is a track listing of what I can remember from Bugger. It's been a few years (24) since I made the tape, and a while since I've listened to it (yes, it still exists).

Side 1
Everybody's Happy Nowadays - The Buzzcocks



Psycho Killer - Talking Heads





(Watch Out For The) Normal People - Boomtown Rats





Guilty - Classix Nouveaux





Mr. No - John Foxx





Thirteen - The Human League





Milkman of Human Kindness - Billy Bragg





Does Everyone Stare - The Police




Into The Valley - The Skids



Side 1 finishes with a sound clip of German producer Zeus B. Held saying "Well, we all liked that - we were leaping around like good'uns".

Side 2


Coyote - Joni Mitchell





What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend - The Special AKA





This Earth That You Walk Upon (b-side to "Love Song") - Simple Minds




I know that somewhere here is a clip of Canadian comedian Rick Ducommun saying "Montreal, I love it here. I love the traffic here. I love the way you can stop, slow down, turn, or go on a red, yellow, or green light."

Speed Your Love To Me - Simple Minds





Cemetry Gates - The Smiths





Party Fears Two - The Associates





Loved One's An Angel - Blue Zoo





There are more tracks on the tape, but those are the ones I can recall at the moment.
During the entire thing are sound clips from Paul Merton, Ben Elton, Nigel Planer and others.

As anyone who has ever heard the CDs I burned can attest (i.e. anyone who worked with me at LensCrafters), my eclecticism when it comes to music has not waned in the slightest. And I think that's a good thing. There are very few music styles that I cannot listen to, and I think that makes me a very well-rounded person, at least musically.

There was just something about making a mixtape that was good for the soul... taking records that you cared about and bringing them together in one 90-minute celebration of their goodness. Putting them on was like saying... "this is who I am.. listen and understand." I want to make a tape right now!

100 Records That Shook The World, #72

Needles And Pins

The Searchers

Here's something I bet you didn't know. I didn't know this, so that's why I bet you don't. "Needles And Pins" was written by Jack Nitzsche (who he? He's the guy who later became known for creating Phil Spector's infamous "wall of sound") and Sonny Bono.  Yeah, THAT Sonny Bono. Wow. It was originally written for Jackie DeShannon and was later covered by Cher, and, you guessed it, The Searchers.


A Liverpool group, the second one to hit it big in the States, they were formed in 1959 as a skiffle group. After several lineup and name changes, they settled on The Searchers, and after a few minor successes, they heard Cliff Bennett singing Needles And Pins  in a club in Hamburg and instantly decided it had to be their next single. Merseybeat had officially arrived.


The song hit #13 on the Billboard chart upon its release in 1964. It has been covered by many artists, notably Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers' live version with Stevie Nicks, The Ramones, and even Megadeth used the intro in one of their tunes. It is fair to say that music would probably be quite different if not for Needles And Pins. Roger McGuinn of The Byrds noted its influence on his style, saying in a 1996 interview:

The Seekers and The Searchers had put out records with a 12-string-like sound. I think they were actually using overdubbed 6-string guitars. Needles and Pins was a big influence on the 12-string sound. I used the pattern for "Feel A Whole Lot Better." Later, I developed my own style based on the banjo roll.

Enjoy the track. Keen-eared listeners will no doubt have heard the squeaky bass drum pedal throughout the song, particularly during the intro. 

I Am... I Said

I have finally arrived.

Usually the best way to make sure I would show up in a Google search was to search for my name. But tonight I was searching for something completely random on Google Images and came up with three images from this blog. Hot doggie! I have gone global.

What was I searching for, you might ask? Well, I was writing a piece in the food blog about Mexican food, and somehow got on to the topic of Jempson's of Peasmarsh, where I went today to do a bit of shopping. Jempson's is fairly near Sir Paul McCartney's farm and so sometimes he shops there, or at least he used to. I mentioned this in the blog post, and was searching for an appropriate image out there and so I hopped on Google Images, and just for a laugh, did a search for "Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft", a nickname given to him in the 80's by the music mag Smash Hits, because he seemed to appear in a lot of pics giving the 'thumbs-up' sign accompanied by a cheeky grin (see pic).

When I hit search I noticed one of the resulting pics was the banner at the top of this page. Then I studied further and noticed two more images from my December archives. Turns out in one of my December posts I had referred to the Fab One by this nickname. I'd completely forgotten this.

Good on yer, Sir Paul.

Thanks, Aled

Aled Jones rocks my socks!

I'm sure that a lot of you are puzzled by that statement. There is one group of you that is puzzled because you don't know who Aled is. The other half does know, and are puzzled because Aled is who he is, and doesn't seem like the type of person I would even care about. But this morning, Aled started my day off right.

For those of you not familiar with Mr. Jones, he is a 39-year old singer and radio presenter from Welsh Wales, bach, the valleys boyo! and is well known in the UK for becoming famous as a boy treble with his cover of "Walking In The Air" from the Raymond Briggs animated classic The Snowman. He was 14 at the time, and it hit number 5 in the UK chart. A lot of his recordings are classical and churchy due to the fact that he was Lead Soloist of Bangor Cathedral at age 11. He has released a bunch of albums (over 25, in fact), and he also presents BBC Radio 2's Good Morning Sunday, a show that features a lot of spiritual music and religious and ethical discussion.

Well, today wasn't Sunday but it was Bank Holiday Monday, so that means all your TV and radio schedules are a bit different, and this morning Aled was presenting the breakfast show when my alarm went off.

The first record I heard him play was this one:



Nicely bringing me to consciousness. Lovely song from Freddie et al.

Now I had gone to bed in a pissy mood. I had written a blog post that I was unable to publish because the topics it was about (censorship was one) were compounded by the fact that I had to censor myself in order to be able to write it. I know that doesn't make sense but I was still mad at myself and a lot of other people as I awoke. What I needed was an anthem, and dear Aled did not fail me.

He was talking about a recent Stereophonics gig, wherein the lead singer was struck in the face.... by a flip-flop. Yes, a flip-flop. So what did the Stereophonics do? Quit playing and walked off stage until the culprit was found and escorted from the building. Aled remarked that it would never have happened in The Who's heyday. He said, and I quote, "Roger would have jumped into the crowd and punched the fella in the face. And he actually did." And then Aled laid it on me. The anthem I was seeking...



I joined in noisily!! I know all the words!! Even the bit about 'the north side of my town faced east and the east was facing south' which I can only assume was written without a compass. I was lying in bed loudly singing at 6:21 am! That never happens! My mother popped her head round the door to see if I was OK. I have been singing that song all day! Can't get it out of my head!! Sub-sti-tute! Your lies for facts! I can see right through your plastic mac! I look all white but my dad was black! My fine lookin' suit is really made outta saaaaack!

Ah, that was good! Thanks, Aled.

Censoring Myself

I just wrote a scathing post. It will probably never see the light of day and shall remain in draft format. It was mostly a biting critique of Southern US cuisine, but turned into much more than that. If any of you are the least bit curious to want to read it, I will email it to you, as long as I am sure it will never get back to the people I attacked (although no actual names or relationships were mentioned). I just feel better for having written it and got it off my chest. If you are curious, leave your comment at the bottom. Cheers y'all.

Jeff