Category: Music

I seriously meant to post this on Monday. Seriously. I’ve been counting down for years to post it, but it totally slipped my mind in the wake of all the Super Bowl hoopla: Monday was the 30th anniversary of the death of Sex Pistols’ bassist, Sid Vicious.

On February 1st, 1979, Vicious was released from New York City’s infamous Riker’s Island jail. He had spent 55 days there after his arrest for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Sid had actually used his time in Ryker’s to fully kick his heroin habit. The night of his release, a party was held in his honor. However, Sid’s mother had some heroin delivered to the party – against the wishes of everyone else at the party. The heroin was of remarkable purity, and Sid accidentally overdosed. According to NYC’s then-Chief Coroner, Dr Michael Baden (who you may know from countless Autopsy specials on HBO), Vicious died peacefully in his sleep at around 10 am on the morning of February 2, 1979.

Most everyone in the 30-50 age bracket knows the story of Sid Vicious; for those of you that don’t, here’s a summary:

Continue reading “R.I.P. Sid”

Did you, by any chance, happen to catch this week’s episode of Fringe on Fox? Because if you did, you would have heard The Watson Twins’ cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven”.

The Watson Twins – comprised of identical twins Chandra and Leigh Watson, along with Aram Arslanian, Russ Pollard, Jason Soda, and Jenny Lewis – are a band based out of Los Angeles, California.

Born and reared in Louisville, Kentucky, Chandra and Leigh attended the University of Evansville before moving to Silverlake, California in 1997. There, they formed a band called Slydell. A few years later, they formed The Watson Twins.

What can I say about this song… other than it’s awesome? Imagine a slightly more folksy version of Mazzy Star covering The Cure and you’ve got this song down pat. I was watching Fringe on my computer, then saw the scene with this song in the background. I immediately paused the video player and looked online for this song… and after I’d downloaded it, I listened to it over and over and over again. It’s just so… hypnotic!

Tell me what you think:

[audio:watson_twins.mp3]

Check out their MySpace page here and their Wikipedia page here.

Well, there’s no long story or anything here. Trembling Blue Stars is a band from London, and this song is from their 2001 album Alive To Every Smile. I just like the song, and thought I’d share.  Here are the lyrics:

Got a postcard from her:
“St. Paul’s Cathedral At Night”.
Spent a couple of days
Trying to read between the lines:
Now I don’t have to read between the lines.

Talking in an empty cinema,
Walking back through Parliament Square.
St. James’ Park at Christmas-time:
Glimpsing the lake through the evening lights.

I didn’t want want there to come an end to our time.
I know I’m in no position to miss her,
Shouldn’t hold her so close when she goes;
Still I wonder what she was thinking
As she traveled home.

Sad, but a great pop tune. Have a listen:

[audio:tremblingblue.mp3]

My fascination with cute little French girls singing chanson continues. First there was Alizée Jacotey and her brand of French electro-pop. Then there was Mylène Farmer, the French Canadian pop star that discovered Alizée and put her on the map. Then there was Carla Bruni, the first singer I encountered that sang something resembling actual chanson. And now there’s Coralie Clément.

Born in Villefranche-sur-Saône, France in 1982, Clément comes from a long line of musicians. Her father is a professional clarinetist who also plays a mean violin. Her brother is also a singer, songwriter, and record producer. So she has the background… but she also has the looks:

What man can resist the “lip biting” pose? And her name is Coralie! How sweet is that?

Have a listen to “L’effet Jokari”, the lead track from her new album Toystore, and tell me what you think!

[audio:coralie.mp3]

Remember the band Manic Street Preachers? Although this Welsh act were mighty popular in the UK, most Americans probably remember them as a “here today, gone tomorrow” act from college radio. Their rhythm guitarist and co-lyricist, Richey Edwards, disappeared back in 1995. According to Wikipedia,

Edwards disappeared on 1 February 1995, on the day that he and [a band member] were due to fly to the U.S. on a promotional tour. In the two weeks before his disappearance, Edwards withdrew £200 a day from his bank account, which totalled £2800 by February 1. He checked out of the Embassy Hotel in Bayswater Road, London at seven in the morning, and it has been proven that he then drove to his apartment in Cardiff, Wales. In the two weeks that followed he was apparently spotted in the Newport passport office, and the Newport bus station. On 7 February, Anthony Hatherhall, a taxi driver from Newport, supposedly picked up Edwards from the King’s Hotel in Newport, and drove him around the valleys, including Blackwood (Edwards’ home as a child). The passenger got off at the Severn View service station and paid the £68 fare in cash.

Continue reading “Richey Edwards declared dead”

After years of speculation as to when sales of digital music would overtake that of CDs, Atlantic Records has an answer for us: now. In the last quarter, sales of digital music accounted for 51% of all of Atlantic’s sales (even though CDs still count for two-thirds of all music sales).

Another interesting factoid from the linked Engadget article: music sales continue to decline. Back in 1999, record labels took in $14.6 billion; this year, it’s estimated that they’ll take in $10.1 billion.

Although a collapsing economy surely takes a lot of credit for the tumble, a large part of the decline is also due not to OMG TEH P!RATES!!1!!1!, but instead to single track sales at stores like iTunes and Amazon MP3. This, and not piracy, is one of the main reasons that the record labels fought music downloads in the first place: they’d much rather sell 2 million copies of Britney Spears latest crappy CD at 11.99 each ($23.98 million) than 10 million downloads of her latest single ($9.9 million). Of course, I’m using retail numbers instead of wholesale numbers in this example, but the overall drop in revenue would remain the same.

Here’s an awesome performance of the Cocteau Twins’ song “Lorelei” from the British show Old Grey Whistle Test:

Interesting fact: Old Grey Whistle Test’s budget was so tiny that the show couldn’t afford a proper set. So in many early episodes, show staff simply painted the back of an existing set black – a set that was used earlier that day, mind you – and hung an “Old Grey Whistle Test” sign on the wall!

Back in high school, I was the pretentious twit that had to be “this much more alternative than you”. Remember the first time you heard The Pixies? I was already “done” with them by then. The Replacements? Please – I was into them years ago. The Residents? Yep – been there, done that! Mission of Burma? I’ve already taken my MoB albums back to the store, to trade them in for the “latest and greatest”… except for that one album with the guy wearing the WREK t-shirt on the back – that’s kind of cool.

At any rate, being the “most alternative guy you know” was my badge of “cool” I suppose, pointless though it all was. To keep myself on the cutting edge, I buried myself in a gigantic pile of imported or obscure music magazines, like Melody Maker, NME, Option, and Trouser Press, to name but a few. One of the positives of this was that it really did keep me on the edge for several years. One of the downsides was that magazines don’t actually play music. Before the Internet, you could read about a band in a magazine, and if you wanted to actually hear them, you paid $15 for the LP or CD. Picking a new band using the printed word works well much of the time, but sometimes I’d shell out $18 for an import LP that I really didn’t like.

Such was the case with Danielle Dax. Her 1987 album Inky Bloaters came highly recommended from several indie mags, so I shelled out the $21 for the import CD… only to hate it. But it’s not a “New York Yankees” kind of hate. It’s more of a “Vegemite hate”, in that I’ll still go back to it every so often and think “oh, it couldn’t possibly have been that bad…”. But after ten minutes with Danielle Dax (or biting in to a thick layer of Vegemite on toast), it just wasn’t meant to be… until now.

I stumbled across this song from Blast The Human Flower, her only major label recording. It’s the last song on the disc, and probably a throw-away track… but it’s somehow cool. Have a listen:

[audio:16_candles.mp3]