2012-02-21
post/18033128911
For those poor sods who suffered through what Twitter seemed to indicate was an even more banal Brit Awards ceremony than usual, here’s the classic KLF / Extreme Noise Terror performance from 1992:
Unbelievably ENT and the KLF performed this at the Brit Awards 1992, where they made national headlines by firing blanks from a machine gun at the unsuspecting audience and causing chaos at the after show party.
Speaking of the after show party, here’s the Guardian’s description, from a piece on the “key fifty moments in the history of pop music”:
Bill Drummond did his best to shock, firing blanks from an automatic weapon over the heads of the crowd and later dumping a dead sheep with the message: “I died for ewe – bon appetit” tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties.
(Other British music ceremony moments of note include Fruitbat of Carter USM flattening Philip Schofield at Smash Hits awards circa 1991 and Jarvis Cocker flapping his bum at Michael Jackson during the Brits in 1996. Hurrah for irreverence.)
2012-01-09
On PJ Harvey
I remember bemusement when I first heard a live recording of ‘Let England Shake’, complete with “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” refrain; it was not endearing. But when the album arrived, the abrupt, cheery opening melody quickly slides away to expose something more integuing and broody. ‘Let England Shake’ is the most coherent album of the year, and probably of a number of years before too. Musically and thematically, it’s wonderful throughout. It stands apart from PJ Harvey’s other work too. Frustratingly, I’ve missed her touring the album, but I find it difficult to imagine it mixed in with anything else from her extensive career. The record has a high peak, ‘On Battleship Hill’, the incredible ‘England’ through to the final soaring refrain of ‘In The Dark Places’ is a really wonderful set.
I was lucky enough to get a last-minute ticket to PJ Harvey’s show in the Warfield, San Francisco, in April.
It was a fantastic concert, partly because she pretty much only played music from the album. The material is so thematically linked that most of the other songs wouldn’t have fit, and the solution was simply not to play many.
April was a hard month for me. I was really hitting the first of a couple of bad patches last year, this one centred on a real feeling of homesickness. Despite hardly being a depiction of the best of the nation, Let England Shake really helped remind me of London and the countryside. Seeing the concert was some sort of cathartic, I think.
(NPR has a recording of part of the concert, if you’d like to listen.)
2012-01-03
post/15261539064
Rachel Maddox, comparing two female writers on music in a review of their work for Oxford American. I pulled this out because I think it’s fairly insightful in how modern music snobbery works, and because I’m re-evaluating my previous guilty feelings about liking somewhat unfashionable artists like the Pet Shop Boys.
The whole article is well worth a read, though.
2011-12-12
post/14134042207
The UKs most played Xmas songs are quite different (2008 list from here) 40s - 1, 70s - 3, 80s - 5, 90s - 1
- Last Christmas - Wham!
- Do They Know It’s Christmas? (original 1984 recording) - Band Aid
- Fairytale of New York - The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl
- All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
- Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - Bruce Springsteen
- Stop The Cavalry - Jona Lewie
- I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - Wizzard
- Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade
- Lonely This Christmas - Mud
- White Christmas - Bing Crosby
(Source: marathonpacks)
