Just checking in with PooterGeek to update you on my real life. In the day job, have moved offices in Tamworth from Tame Valley Industrial Estate in Wilnecote to space above designer wool and crafting outlet Tolsons Mill Yarns in Fazeley. In the evening job, I am now the lead singer of Midlands Stevie Wonder […]
Read MoreVia Kellie Strøm, this is a delight:
Read MoreI often grumble here that there’s no such thing as “timeless greatness” in art. Everything from subject matter to structure to execution to meaning depends on the circumstances that prevailed when a work was made. Indeed, if a work is published into another set of circumstances, it can escape its creator’s intentions completely, even without […]
Read MorePortrait of the ghost drummer from odaibe on Vimeo. ‘Portrait of a Ghost Drummer’ expands the understanding of drummers activity from purely auditory experience to spontaneous visual performance. From technical point of view motion trajectory was captured on Vicon MX system and raw CSV files were translated into visual language in 3d environment Cinema4D.
Read MoreIn a fit of shameless Google-baiting, I collect here some of the YouTube remixes of Nick Clegg’s Party Political Broadcast apology for his and his party’s breaking of their tuition fees “pledge”. The Original The Poke's AutoTune version The Simon Bates “Our Tune” dub The “honest subtitles” overlay If you know […]
Read MoreIf you’re in the area this weekend, “Partly Covered”, the cut-down version of Sussex soul and pop band Covered will be playing at The Red Lion in the pretty West Sussex town of Arundel. And I’ll be the lead singer.
Read MoreI have spoken of my love for Sound On Sound before. It’s a popular music magazine that’s about music. It cares for more about excellence than coolness. If you enjoy the mocking of naked emperors, its demo review pages are especially fun. Sadly, I had to save money a few months back when my subscription came […]
Read MoreRight now, I am banging my head like Flat Eric to this. The intro rambles on a bit then it all kicks off in a diversity-tastic way: Bhangra Nights – Husan 2010 (Tom Pritchard Remix) by Tom Pritchard
Read MoreMartin In The Margins makes an important criticism of an otherwise mostly admirable and well-intentioned enterprise: As for that plea for a focus on ‘tolerance’, it would have helped if the rally organisers hadn’t included a performer who has expressed the most outrageously intolerant opinions. Appearing onstage in the National Mall was Yusuf Islam, the […]
Read More16-year-old Justin Bieber is the pop new sensation with pre-teens. [High Court Judge] I have yet to have the pleasure of hearing one of his musical performances [/High Court Judge], but I have heard this: J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis which is one of his recordings slowed down 800% and pitch-shifted […]
Read MoreI’ve no strong objections to the sub-genre, but I’m certainly not a rockabilly fan; this afternoon, though, Imelda May, having been flown in specially with her band by private jet to play, impressed me on Dermot O’Leary’s BBC Radio 2 show1. Check out this video of her performing Johnny Got A Boom Boom on Later… with Jools Holland […]
Read More[via Martin Robbins]
Read MoreRyan Tedder wrote Bleeding Love for Leona Lewis and his band OneRepublic consists of friends from his church in Denver making music for people who think Coldplay are a bit too experimental. They are about as uncool as it’s possible to be without actually being David Hasselhoff. I love their new album, Waking Up. It’s […]
Read MoreLord Macca of Loch Kodak on his appearance on The X-Factor: [Sir Paul McCartney] said he got some great reaction from people about his performance on the X Factor. “We got great feedback on the streets the next day. It’s my claim to fame now.”
Read MoreFurther to my rant about clueless DJs replacing proper producers, here are a couple of funny little animations about the horrors of being a mastering engineer to today’s “talent”: Mastering: The Movie Part One and Part Two. And, from an interview this month’s Sound on Sound magazine, here’s Bruce Swedien, studio engineer for Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall and Thriller albums, […]
Read MoreThis [HD YouTube video] is a bonkers slab of wonderfully British-sounding soul-pop from V VBrown. Shame about the over-compressed production/mixing/mastering that turns every peak into white noise. This [HD YouTube video—censored version] is an equally bonkers slab of ironic hair metal from the self-proclaimed “modern Spinal Tap“, Steel Panther. I know it’s meant to be a […]
Read MoreOn being shown Michael Jackson moonwalking to Billie Jean, a friend’s seven-year-old son shrugged his shoulders and commented, unimpressed: “Ahh… He’s got wheels in his shoes.” [Anecdote and title stolen wholesale from JL.]
Read MoreVia Clive Davis and thanks to YouTube, Esperanza Spalding plays Stevie Wonder for POTUS [Click the “HQ” button for better quality]:
Read More“There ain’t a woman in this town big enough to keep me warm.”
Read MoreBack in the 80s, I used to be in a band with a guy called Martyn Hope—indeed, we went to school together. Back in the 90s, having read that, surreally, Elvis revivalist Shakin’ Stevens was a closet Red1, I went searching online to find out if he was a member of a late 70s cohort […]
Read MoreThe other day, I was (as one so often is) on the door at the latter stages of a central Brighton soul and Motown event with a mixed-race lesbian bouncer. She leerily told me tales of her days running sapphic club nights, and how the punters only really started to pile in when she imported […]
Read MoreBrothers and sisters, watch and listen as the universal language of music meets the multimedia multi-ethnic mega-mashup that is teh Interwebz and a groove is born [YouTube video]. Kutiman, a 26-year-old citizen of [sarcasm]the Evil Zionist Entity, isn’t too busy baking the blood of Palestinian babies into matzos[/sarcasm] to do a reggae one, with a […]
Read MoreClive Davis is a champion of singer/musician Curtis Stigers, who had a couple of enormous mainstream hit singles and then made the journey from pop to jazz years ago. Sadly, it seemed at first that only seven people noticed his migration, including Clive—or as, as wardy observed, seven and two ragged tigers. This year, on the […]
Read MoreCongratulations to the Web surfer brought here by a search for: “interracial dates that like Radiohead” You have hit the jackpot.
Read MoreThe guitarist in the band I’m in has a diploma in (popular) music performance and his music theory is pretty good—certainly better than mine—but he was never taught any music history and he’s only just turned twenty-one. So when, during a discussion about the scores the sax player had written1 for himself and the trumpet […]
Read MoreLed by The Fat One, Take That are top of the singles charts and will soon be top of the album charts. Robbie Williams is not. I feel about this state-of-affairs the same way I feel about Histon beating Leeds in the FA Cup.
Read MoreTIGER WOODS WINS 2008 US OPEN DESPITE KNEE INJURY CAUSED BY ILLEGAL KARATE ATTACK FROM EVIL MAFIA GOLFER ROCCO MEDIATE. OBTAINS CRUCIAL PAR SCORE ON SUDDEN-DEATH HOLE USING “CRANE KICK” BEFORE COLLAPSING ON THE FINAL GREEN IN AGONY, MUTTERING “I DID IT FOR YOU, ELIN!” LEWIS HAMILTON CLINCHES WORLD F1 DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP IN HIS MCLAREN, […]
Read MoreThe Economist plays air plastic guitar: AS THE music industry searches for a new model in the age of digital distribution and internet piracy, it is getting a helping hand from an unexpected quarter: video games such as “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band”, which let people play along to songs on simplified imitation instruments. “These […]
Read MoreSome time back, I raved about the freedom my fat, ugly iRiver gives me compared to an iPod. Now you can make your iRiver free-er or liberate your Apple MP3 player with the marvellous new version 3.0 of Rockbox, the open source firmware replacement. It works with lots of other models of portable music jukeboxes […]
Read MoreThis week, I saw John The Savage and Bela Emerson at Komedia. John The Savage is an experimental post-something-or-other band featuring my friend Richard Brincklow on piano. Don’t be put off by my arty-sounding and vague description. They have tunes and they can play. They groove and they rawk. But they’re also very unusual indeed. […]
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