Music

Fishmaster!

Those of you who didn’t know it already will not be surprised to learn that there is a Finnish symphonic rock outfit called Nightwish. They have recently sacked their soprano lead, so, if that’s your bag, now’s your chance to put on your horned helmet and boob-armour and record a demo for them. This YouTube […]

Read More

Two Answers To Questions You Didn’t Ask

My darling readership has solved two PooterGeek mysteries. Remember the “hair guitar” version of Pachelbel’s Canon? This New York Times article [PDF] tells the tale behind it. A couple of weeks back, on the way back from the site of a wedding reception, I managed to get myself stuck in one of the few actual […]

Read More

Kid Beyond

A couple of times in the past I’ve linked to snippets of multi-part vocal harmony [MP3, 770kB] here. Thanks to digital audio workstations like the marvellous Sonar and audio interfaces like this, I can record myself singing the various parts of the arrangement, overlay the harmonies, set them in an artificial space, and create my […]

Read More

Mad Choons

Yesterday evening, while I was eating me tea, I had the Cambridge Folk Festival on the radio. Luckily I wasn’t paying too much attention to the introductions so I had no advance warning of Salsa Celtica‘s “signature blend of big-band Latin dance music with Scottish accents”. They’re tight as a Highland midge’s nether parts and […]

Read More

From The 70s To The 80s

Here are two of the scariest things I ever saw on national TV, in the days when I watched it. The Black And White Minstrel Show: a once-popular entertainment featuring some white people who couldn’t dance very well and who wanted to look like black people (temporarily) Michael Jackson’s Thriller: Image excerpt provided by Clipland […]

Read More

More Totally Awesome Snakes On A Plane News

Trevor Rabin, 80s hair-guitarist-with-pretensions and the man who wrote Owner Of A Lonely Heart (one of the greatest pop singles of all time) while sitting on his toilet, has scored the orchestral music for Snakes On A Plane! Does it get any better than this? The film is so important to me now that I […]

Read More

Barawque’n’Roll!

This video of a guy playing Pachelbel’s Canon on his electric guitar starts sedately enough, but after a minute you’ll have one foot propped up on your PC base unit and a window open so that the breeze blows through the cascading ringlets of your bubble-perm wig. For some reason the guitarist keeps his face […]

Read More

How Cool Is This Man?

I’ve just had one of those “ain’t life sweet?” moments: finally, after a long hot drive home from my parents’, I got to eat my dinner whilst I listened to the BBC Radio 4 Front Row special about musician and producer Quincy Jones. Asked about his famous Las Vegas live recording with Frank Sinatra, he begins: […]

Read More

Pop Culture Observations

There are people in the world who want to smell like Big Brother refugee Jade Goody. Despite his public claims of punk-hood, ex-boyband munchkin and now wannabe rock beast Matt Willis‘s current single [Keeping Me ]Up All Night is a shameless rip-off of 90s Scottish hair-rockers Gun‘s Steal Your Fire. BBC Political Correspondent Terry Stiastny […]

Read More

Your Fifteen Minutes Start Now

The blogtacular Grammar Puss sticks it to Sandi Thom, a “politically aware” songstress who keeps it so real that her marketing people have to invent an up-from-the-Net overnight sensation story to give her some street cred. And dontcha love the way the bint confuses fashion statements with actual achievements? Of course she’d rather sing out […]

Read More

More Advertising

Sorry for the thinness of posting and for the “online poker” comment spam at PooterGeek lately. I have been busy with wedding photography and other photography, attending my nephew’s (godson’s) christening, and catching up with friends—as well as this thing of course. Thank you to PooterGeek readers who have been helping me get business (and […]

Read More

Great Moments In English Legal History

Apple Computer has won a major legal battle today when a High Court judge in London ruled that the company had not breached a trademark agreement made 15 years ago with the Beatles’ Apple Corps. … The 1991 Trade Mark Agreement gave Apple Corps – owned by Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows […]

Read More

Who?!

In an ad in Sound On Sound, Pete Townshend is quoted as saying: “I’m a huge fan of Ivory. It amazes me every time I use it.” Ivory is, according to the reviews I’ve read, superb software for obtaining grand piano sounds that are indistinguishable from the real thing (they are the real thing), but […]

Read More

Yah!

A while back I linked to Saturday Night Live‘s excellent “Narnia Rap”, Lazy Sunday. Via An Englishman In New York, I have now experienced Britain’s response to this online hit: Lazy Sunday UK: We Drink Tea. [Requires Macromedia Flash Player.] Unlike the US original, the rapping is painfully inept, but I think that’s the point. […]

Read More

Mystery Gift

A perk of running this site is receiving nice presents from readers / freebies from corporate shills—not that any of them sway my editorial judgment at all, as I sit here watching the Web on my Mitsubishi monitor, eating Bahlsen’s tasty Choco Leibniz. Recently, in response to one of my posts here, the proprietor of […]

Read More

Young People Today, Eh? Shocking.

I’m in a Brighton musical instrument shop looking for a couple of brackets for my keyboard stand. There’s a teenager sitting slouched at one of the digital pianos in sweats and a baggy jacket. He’s wearing a mesh baseball cap and through it you can see that his buzz-cut hair is dyed a colour Eminem […]

Read More

A Lazy Blog Post

Before I set about some other duties, I pause to browse the blogs and bitch about them (affectionately of course). On the subject of lazy blogging, if Guido is going to complain about substandard satire on the TV, he needs to get some of his own material or at the very least put me on […]

Read More

G-reetings

And now, in honour of a far-too-frequent reader of PooterGeek, the Drunken Choir of the Enlightenment sing their hit jingle Happy Birthday [Get A Life] [MP3 729Kb].

Read More

Holy Shit

How politically correct is Brighton? I’ll tell you. This local Gospel choir’s Website carries the following warning to those aspiring to join it: Although we are a non denominational [sic], some of the songs taught do include religious references i.e. Jesus/Lord. However we wish to emphasise our aim is merely to celebrate the style of […]

Read More

Own Up, Boys

Was this Guardian letter really a parody by the Harry’s Place mob? Please tell me that Chris Martin supporting the Tories was a spoof. Disillusionment with Labour is bad enough, but to lose respect for Coldplay and their music would exacerbate the situation. Michael Pritchard Watford

Read More

Truly The Devil Has The Best Tunes

Cher can sing, but it’s commonly thought that the warbly electronic effect applied to her voice on her multi-platinum hit Believe was achieved with an infamous piece of pitch-correction software called Auto-Tune. Recording nerds debate whether it was that program or a less interesting vocoder-type gadget (Digitech Talker) that really did the business, but Auto-Tune […]

Read More

Keep The Faith

On Friday I went to Cambridge to stay with Jenny and Matthew (and their son Douglas) Crikey! Douglas does his Boris Johnson impression. [click image to enlarge] and to attend Cathal’s leaving party / St Patrick’s Day celebrations. After a few months you forget just how surreal a night out in a Cambridge pub can […]

Read More
Newer Posts
Older Posts