One nice thing to come out of that Federalist silliness is that, in checking out the responses to it, I discovered this:
“This” being a mini-album called Imposter by a one-man electronic & post-punk band called Libel. I was going through the responses to that silly Federalist article, was hugely amused to see one posting this legendary Onion article, and followed through to see what else they had on Twitter… oh, they’re a band. Post-punk indeed. Have they got recordings, oh, they do, there’s a Bandcamp link… let’s see what this is like… oooh, this is GOOD. VERY much so, indeed. Bought it as soon as I’d finished listening to it and will certainly be sampling Gavin’s other work; if I ever get to DJ a goth night again, “Death Cult” is going to be in my set.
Jesus fuck. It’s been a few days for people dying, hasn’t it? Now we can add Tina Turner to the list… we actually nearly lost her in 2016 due to kidney problems when her husband donated one of his own and basically bought her seven more years on Earth. Good man, Erwin. Ike would never have done that for her. And obviously her finally breaking away from Ike in the mid-70s was the best thing she could’ve done; I actually never realised until today that he owned her name. He not only renamed young Anna Mae (or was it Martha Nell?) Bullock, he trademarked the name Tina Turner so that if she tried to leave him he could just replace her and she wouldn’t be able to work under that name again. Just like KISS copyrighting the old makeup for Ace Frehley and Peter Criss so Paul & Gene can use it on whatever ringers they get to replace those two. She made a point of demanding the name in the divorce, and won it despite Ike’s efforts.
I had no idea in the 80s, cos I was still too young, to realise just what it meant for her to become big in the 80s; I don’t know if I was even aware that she’d had a career before that, or maybe I was dimly aware that Ike had been a thing but it was only a dim awareness if that… certainly I didn’t appreciate that this was her rebounding from years of abuse and lack of solo commercial success on her own by the end of the 70s, having a mega hit of an album released by a record label that hadn’t even wanted her… and that she was in her mid-40s by the time she was doing this. She’d undeniably earned it by then. Here she is in 2009, still having it at nearly 70:
News is coming through of the passing of Andy Rourke, bassist for The Smiths, aged 59 from pancreatic cancer. Poor bastard, screwed over by Morrissey & Marr and then screwed over by what I presume was a combination of bad legal advice and his smack habit needing urgent fulfilment, settling for less than a hundred grand while Mike Joyce ended up with a million pounds because he insisted on fighting on. Marr at least posted a nice farewell message to him; I haven’t seen anything similar yet from Stephen Patrick but I can’t imagine it being terribly kind somehow if/when he does acknowledge it… (EDIT: happy to have been proven wrong about this.)
I already knew that Jack Posobiec was a crypto-Nazi and professional conspiracy liar and all-round cunt, but I am late to discover that he was also in a Christian rock band in his misspent youth:
What, and I can’t stress this enough, the FUCK
Look… I know American Christian culture likes to look at whatever’s big in secular popular culture and come up with its own knock-off that’s been remodelled to make it more goddish so they can keep the kids on their team (Seth Andrews has a video on that theme here which is quite illuminating as to just how stupid but bold these people can get. I mean, TESTAMINTS for fuck’s sake), but this… this… I don’t even know what the fuck this even is. The sheer misguidedness of the very idea, and the lack of self-awareness in admitting to it and apparently not being ashamed of it… just… fucking hell. I have no idea what else to say, I just wish I’d discovered this a year ago when it was fresh…
Well, I think I’ve just discovered why ABBA spent decades not wanting to get back together: they were afraid someone would ask them to recreate this look from 1975 and they’d be unable to pull it off.
Yes, we’re all sick of the coronation but the oddest story to come from it has just started spreading: it seems that composer Karl Jenkins (one of whose works was to be played at the big show) caused a bizarre amount of confusion on social media among people who, frankly, couldn’t believe he looked like he does, e.g.:
I mean… not unfair?
The Classic FM article helpfully also includes this photo of him in his days in Soft Machine:
British Jazz-rock fusion was serious business back in the mid-70s
That’s him at left in the back, demonstrating that he has indeed kind of always looked like that. I find this whole thing very strange but also rather delightful, and fortunately it appears that so does Sir Karl… best publicity he’s probably had in years if nothing else.
Gutterblood with Bonnie Prince Bob, “Gardyloo”, which is a delightful term from Edinburgh via the French language. What relevance the word (which kind of translates to “watch yersels doon in the street, we’re putt’n’ oot the shite”) has to the British monarchy is something I have absolutely no idea about. Not the slightest clue. Also, “Hanoverian” and “Luciferian” is one of the best rhymes I’ve ever heard.
Ed Sheeran is in the midst of trial for a lawsuit that claims his song “Thinking Out Loud” rips off the Marvin Gaye classic “Let’s Get It On.” His attorneys have spent the past few months unsuccessfully trying to get the case dismissed, but now, he’s raising the stakes by threatening to quit music entirely if he’s found guilty of copyright infringement.
Per New York Post, when Sheeran’s attorney asked what he’d do if the plaintiffs won the case, he responded: “If that happens, I’m done. I’m stopping… I find it really insulting to work my whole life as a singer-songwriter and diminish it.”
Sheeran has vehemently insisted that any similarities between his 2014 hit and Gaye’s 1973 song are purely coincidental, and that those similarities were too common to constitute copyright infringement. To drive his point home, he reportedly “belted out various mashups of Van Morrison songs for the courtroom on Monday” during his testimony, which probably did not help him as much as he thought it might.
I haven’t paid any attention to this case, which has been dragging on for some years now, largely because, you know, it’s Ed Sheeran; he seems to be a perfectly delightful person but his music holds no real interest for me… but when I saw him issuing this threat to quit, I thought I should perhaps see what the fuss is about. Consequently, I turned to Rick Beato:
And oh dear. Once Rick transposes the Gaye song down a half-step so that both songs are now the same key, you find it’s basically the same chord progression, same tempo and overall groove, and when he alternates the two songs one bar at a time… yikes. Not looking good for Ed, except that the latter goes to different places when it leaves that first part of the verse and melodically the two songs are completely different. I suppose the question then becomes can you prove it was deliberate (which I don’t think it was) and is it enough to merit this absurd $100m that the company managing Gaye’s co-writer’s assets (cos it’s not even Marvin’s estate this time) are asking for (which it surely isn’t)… I don’t know. Like I said, it doesn’t look great, but at the same time it’s also not the whole song; Ed’s potential problem is that this isn’t his first go-round with the copyright infringement thing, and though he did win the second one he settled on the first one, and that always looks like an admission of guilt (whether or not you are in fact guilty). Be interesting to see if he lives up to that threat if the case goes against him…
Parenthetically, something similar happened with my band, the Inflatable Voodoo Dolls… we had a song which I’d made, though calling it a “song” is dignifying it unnecessarily; it was called “I Believe Robert Smith is My Saviour” and it was basically a string of samples against a beat I’d come up with and the only melodic aspect of it was actually the cymbals which I’d pitched… anyway, it took years for us to solve the problem of actually putting a proper melody to it, until Joe (partner in crime, now housemate and spider wrangler) had the brilliant idea of just starting the fucking thing from scratch. The result was great but the little pattern of notes he’d come up with as the basis of the new track was almost the same as that of The Presets’ “Are You the One”… not that I expected legal issues or anything, but I suggested pitching it down and changing it slightly. Weird how I wasn’t worried about the battery of uncleared samples we had all over the album otherwise… but I don’t think there was ever much danger of us even being noticed, let alone sued over anything, anyway, given we’ve probably sold literally about a millionth of what Ed Sheeran has. There’s no money for Bob Larson to make from us…
EDIT: And he won. Looks like the Cradle of Filth collaboration will be happening after all!
I mean… really. It was good to see uncle Jim make it to his 76th birthday last week, but it remains astonishing that he’s still here to have celebrated it (and in relatively good shape, too, all things considered)…
I mean… really. It was good to see uncle Jim make it to his 76th birthday last week, but it remains astonishing that he’s still here to have celebrated it (and in relatively good shape, too, all things considered)…
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