Category: [Music]

RIP Garth

Garth Hudson, second from right in the above photo of The Band, has left us at the age of 87. I was surprised to discover he was actually the last surviving member; either I’d forgotten that Robbie Robertson passed in 2023 or somehow I never got that news. I always loved the story that he only joined The Band on condition that they buy him a new organ and take him on as their “instructor” so that his parents would think he had a real job instead of just hanging out with some rock’n’roll band. Great player, great beard, even better forehead.

Victor’s short on his dough, apparently

It’s quite an arc to go from being annoyed at Trump using “YMCA” at his gatherings to letting him use it and making money therefrom to now being happy to participate in Mushroom Cock’s inauguration. And Victor Willis knows he’s going to piss off a lot of VP fans doing this, cos he admits it… so much for having supported Kamala in the election, eh. Whatever price Victor got for his soul, I hope it was worth it…

The FUCKIN’ songs!

If all else fails this year, and it probably will, we at least got a cracking new episode of “What Makes This Song Stink” from Mr Finnerty… Pat may never quite top the “Kravitz Bowl” video, but this is beautiful in so many ways too. I’d never heard of “Lonely Road” until now, and Jesus fuck it is RANK, a hideous interpolation of a certain John Denver song. It’s the sort of thing that makes me glad I’m mostly out of touch with what constitutes pop music these days. But—and this is truly impressive—it’s actually NOT the worst song featured in the video. There’s actually at least one song in here (that “Chevrolet” nonsense) that sounds even worse. Also, Pat has threatened us with a video about Disturbed’s version of “Sound of Silence”, so THAT’s something for us all to live in terror of if there weren’t enough such things…

Karlheinz Stockhausen at Disneyland

So I’m browsing through someone’s Tumblr archive just now, and one picture catches my eye, and I wonder “is that Karlheinz Stockhausen? And why does that building behind him look like something from Disneyland?”

And that was because it was in fact a picture of Karlheinz Stockhausen at Disneyland, apparently in 1966. Yeah… um… I don’t know what to say about this, other than this is one of the most incongruous things I’ve seen since that photo of Ingmar Bergman inspecting the shark on the set of Jaws. This is a weird head scratcher.

Live music!

Goddamn, I actually LEFT THE HOUSE last night and SOCIALISED! I can barely believe it myself, and yet here is photographic evidence… I don’t do a lot of socialising like this any more, usually when I do go out it’s to a club, and actual live music is something I do even less (last gig I went to was in August last year). But a bunch of friends’ bands were playing at Moshpit in Newtown, so I decided to take the opportunity to go see some people I know at a venue I’d never been to before and give the new phone camera a test drive… click to embiggen.

First up, Moroderhead, who weren’t quite as heavy as their amusing name may suggest, and who only lacked mullets to complete their overall 1986-ness. I was thinking this was the first time I’d seen Alberto not playing as half of Neuropa, but now that I think of it I have very vague memories of seeing him at the Hopetoun in 2006 when he was still doing Junk Circuit as well…

I got this shot of the stage backdrop while waiting for Burnt Souls to start…

…Which they did a few minutes later. Lineup’s changed since I last saw them at the Town and Country a couple (?) of years ago—new guitarist, new bassist, no more drummer—but at least Colin’s still got the tallest hair in the room…

…And finally Sounds Like Winter, who I was mainly there for, cos Ant has also recently reconstituted what he calls “version 3.0” of the band, though the band’s always had a somewhat wobbly lineup including a Spinal Tap-esque revolving door of bassists, so I think “version 3.0” was technically about eight or nine years ago… anyway, whatever number the new arrangement may or may not be, they’ve had a similar change to Burnt Souls (new guitarist & bassist, no drummer) and it sounded good. New album is apparently about half done, so presumably we’ll have that by the end of the year.

RIP Richard Perry

Now here’s a man with a hell of a career. Seriously, just look at that list of production credits… great list of production clients—Tiny Tim, Captain Beefheart, Leo Sayer, Barbra Streisand, Nilsson, Fats Domino, Ringo Starr, a whole bunch more—and a stack of hit songs, plus an eight-year romantic relationship with Jane Fonda:

And somehow, despite all of that, until news broke of his death a few days ago, I’d never heard of the guy to the best of my knowledge. I suppose it’s good to be reminded sometimes of how little I actually know…

It’s sentimental, I know

Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry? Well, this comes closer than most. I am not especially a fan of Christmas, it’s just one of those things I stopped having any use for a long time ago, and yet something about this is just… exactly right, and I start tearing up in the last part of the song when he starts envisaging future Christmases with his daughter as she grows up. It’s sentimental, all right, and it hits me in the gut every goddamn time.

Victor Willis vs… God?

Spotted this tonight:

I don’t know when this was posted, so I don’t know if this was from before or after that silly story about Victor Willis from the Village People threatening to sue people for claiming “YMCA” is a gay anthem broke the other day, but I did have a fantastic vision of news headlines about Victor suing “God” now…

Go west no homo

Village People’s Victor Willis okay with ‘Y.M.C.A’ for Trump and the gays

Victor Willis, one of the Village People’s founders, posted to social media on Monday defending President-elect Donald Trump’s use of the song “Y.M.C.A.” and threatening legal action against any news organization that labels the iconic tune a gay anthem.
Willis, who portrayed the cop with a nightstick in the band, cowrote “Y.M.C.A.” with Jacques Morali who provided the music while Willis provided the lyrics. Morali died of AIDS-related illness in 1978*.
Willis acknowledged he had asked Trump to stop using the song after receiving “over a thousand complaints” from fans.
“With that many complaints, I decided to ask the President-Elect to stop using Y.M.C.A. because his use had become a nuisance to me,” Willis wrote in his post to social media on Monday.
Willis said he reconsidered his decision after seeing so many other artists withdraw the rights to their songs from the President-elect. He said the decision to reissue the licensing agreement with Trump proved financially sound.
“Y.M.C.A. has benefited greatly from use by the President Elect. For example, Y.M.C.A. was stuck at #2 on the Billboard chart prior to the President Elect’s use. However, the song finally made it to #1 on a Billboard chart after over 45 years (and held on to #1 for two weeks) due to the President Elect’s use,” Willis wrote. “The financial benefits have been great as well as Y.M.C.A. is estimated to gross several million dollars since the President Elect’s continued use of the song. Therefore, I’m glad I allowed the President Elect’s continued use of Y.M.C.A. And I thank him for choosing to use my song.”

(*sic. It was actually 1991.)

I like the bit at the end where he stresses he actually supported Kamala Harris in the recent debacle, it’s not like he approves of Trump… just the amount of money Trump’s made him. I like, too, that he’s happy for gay folks to consider it a “gay anthem”, but don’t you dare actually call it that or he’ll sue you.

As for another debacle that has “reached a fever pitch” amid Trump’s continued use of “Y.M.C.A.,” according to Willis, the singer wrote that any branding of the track as a “gay anthem” is “completely misguided” and “damaging to the song.” He also threatened legal action against “each and every news organization that falsely refers” to it as such starting in January 2025, although he personally doesn’t mind if “gays think of the song as their anthem.”
“This assumption is also based on the fact that the YMCA was apparently being used as some sort of gay hangout, and since one of the writers [Jacques Morali] was gay and some of the Village People are gay, the song must be a message to gay people,” Willis wrote. “To that I say, once again, get your minds out of the gutter. It is not … such notion is based solely on the song’s lyrics alluding to [illicit] activity for which it does not.”
“Y.M.C.A.” has indeed been widely adopted by the LGBTQ community over the years, with many interpreting the lyrics as references to the gym chain’s reputation as a popular cruising site back in the day — plus, the track comes from a 1978 album titled Cruisin’. Even so, Willis’ latest post is not the first time he’s sought to distance the track from the gay anthem label, writing in a 2020 Facebook post: “No one group can claim Y.M.C.A. as somehow belonging to them or somehow their anthem. I won’t allow my iconic song to be placed in a box like that.”

So you don’t really want teh pooves to claim the song as “their” anthem, but you’re fine with exploiting that demographic to make a career and a fortune out of them. Hope any lawsuit Victor does try gets laughed out of court. What a cunt.

RIP Quincy Jones

As I noted when he celebrated his 90th birthday last year, Quincy Jones did well for a man who was supposedly dying of not one but two brain aneurysms in 1974, beating them and living another 50 years… his passing the other day has obviously generated a lot of comment on social media, amidst which I saw someone saying about how they were discovering just how much music he was behind, and, well, I made my own discovery:

I have known this piece of music for years (I gather it was the Austin Powers movies that brought it back), but have never known what it was, never knew its name, and consequently had even less idea who might’ve written it; indeed, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it was actually a recent composition like a bit of stock music or something pastiching 60s lounge music or some such. But then last night Youtube suggested this somewhat randomly, so I clicked on the video… and OH! It’s THAT music! It’s ACTUAL 60s music! And Quincy Jones wrote it? I will indeed be damned. So if other people are amazed to discover some of the things “Q” was responsible for, so am I…