The Black Widow

For a little Halloween treat head over here and listen to a classic Alice Cooper track, The Black Widow, which begins with a cameo voice-over from that gentleman actor with the velvety voice, Mr Vincent Price.

Magnum, PI

Can anyone enlighten me as to why I imagined a thrash metal version of the theme to old heavily moustached cult show Magnum PI? Its not like I've seen it anywhere recently, I don't know where it came from, but for some reason when one of my colleagues shoved on some very loud rock after closing time while they were tidying the store I suddenly imagined the growling singer and thrash rock they had on covering the theme from Magnum PI.

McKean video

Browsing YouTube I came across a singer I hadn't heard before, Izzy - pretty song but I was more taken with the video, which is by the excellent artist and film-maker Dave McKean, who I had the pleasure of seeing at the Edinburgh Book Festival this summer.

Like a drug

Going through some old albums recently I came across one I hadn't listened to in ages, one of my favourite bands that no-one else ever seems to have heard of when I mention them, rock band They Eat Their Own, who I picked up years ago in one of the second hand record stores in Edinburgh - must have been the early 90s because I remember the lyrics to one song, Better Now, turned out to be appropriate for a college essay I was working on and I ended up quoting them to add a nice touch to the paper. There isn't a huge amount out there on They Eat Their Own, but there is a YouTube of Like a Drug. Which is, as it happens, the song that reminded me to dig out that album because Fiona Apple who I've been listening to recently does a cover of it. Although her version isn't quite as rude and sadly this video version by the original creators is also slightly censored version - "you consume every thought but if you called me I would tell you to fuck off" becomes "tell you to get lost" which just doesn't have the same raw impact, but it was all I could find.

"I don't buy
Your true life stories
'Cause I've seen
The way you lie
But I don't mind
The things you tell me
Because I know
We'll say anything to get by

But when we're together
Somehow I feel better
My disease always tricks me
I believe you can fix me

You're insane
I love the drama
Tell the truth
You love it too I know you
Reason strikes
We fight and break up
'Cause it seems
The easiest thing to do

But when I don't get your call
I go into withdrawal
You consume every thought
But if you called me I would tell you to fuck off

I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
Drug

It turns me on
To say I love you
But deep inside
I know it's lust not love at all
One day we
Will leave each other
But we pretend
The end's not inevitable

I require protection
From my own obsession
In the object of you
One day I will rise above you

I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a

Until then
We'll stay together
I guess things could be much worse
One day things will be much better
But I don't really want to write another verse

'Cause when we're together
Somehow I feel better
My disease always tricks me

I believe you can fix me

I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you"
I need you like a drug"

Marching band Tetris

I pinched this from my mate Olly:

Accordion by the beach



Down on Portobello beach this afternoon (a dry day!!! a day with no howling gales!!! Quick everyone outside!!!), my mate's dog happily running around sniffing interesting smells (most animals walk about with their heads held up to see around them, except dogs, who trot around with their head pointing downwards so they can sniff everything) and as we walked along the beach we could hear music. Walking up onto the nearby esplanade we saw this chap playing the accordion, while nearby a wee boy was dancing happily to the music. It sounded like a little bit of France in the middle of Edinburgh's seaside and put us in happy mind of our trip to Paris coming up in a few weeks. I imagine in Paris accordion players busking must be a bit like bagpipers in Edinburgh.

Rhythm song

Checking YouTube for something completely unrelated I stumbled across this decent quality clip of one of my favourite musicians, the Scottish solo percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie. I've loved Evelyn's work for years; being a solo percussionist was pretty remarkable in the classical world, being a woman who chose to forge a path as a solo percussionist even more so, but being a deaf woman who carves out an international career as a highly respected musician is just astonishing. I've been lucky enough to hear Evelyn perform live several times and she is a powerhouse on the stage, utterly immersed in her music; the notes she cannot hear she feels.

This clip is from the documentary Touch the Sound, which I saw at the Edinburgh International Film Festival a few years back and at which Evelyn surprised the audience by appearing during the director's Q&A and giving us an impromptu performance, just her alone with a snare drum, in the dark a single light shining up through the skin of the drum as she stood on the Filmhouse stage and utterly transported a rapt audience. I came out of the cinema into a bright summer day, a head full of music; that was one of those days where I floated home feeling the world was wonderful sometimes.

Rockford

Can anyone tell me why I spent all day yesterday with the theme from the Rockford Files stuck in my head? I was humming in the shower first thing and realised it was the Rockford Files; thereafter it was in my head all day long. I haven't seen it repeated anywhere recently or seen any old film on TV with James Garner, so gods know why it suddenly leapt out of the murky depths of my brain (I don't care to look down into the recesses too much, I'm not sure what I'd find in there).

Random recent scenes

Princes Street this evening on the way home, basking in late sunshine; outside the oh-so-posh Jenners department store a bagpiper in full highland dress is jamming with two black musicians playing some sort of ethnic variation on tom-tom drums. They're clearly all enjoying themselves as are the locals and tourists who stop to listen to this mix of African and Scottish. It sounds brilliant.

On my way in and out to work I pass some spectacularly beautiful displays of bright, colourful, fresh flowers in Princes Street Gardens and the crescents at the West End; in the bright sunlight the flowers almost glow. The council mismanages a lot of things in Edinburgh but kudos to the gardners for creating such beautiful, eye-catching displays that just make your day nicer by being there.

Making the most of the sudden burst of warm, summer-like weather we head down the coast where near the beach at the Fidra Lighthouse I bump into my friend Claudia with her visiting parents. After a very long walk all the way down the beach to North Berwick we're licking our yummy ice creams when my big cousin and her husband suddenly appear.

Bus to work on Monday; as I am getting off one of my friends from the book group is getting on although I only have a chance to say hello to her as we pass. Clearly it is my week for randomly bumping into friends and family as I go about. Who will be the next Guest Star in the ongoing soap opera of life?

Walking down Middle Meadow Walk a temporary wooden wall hiding the building works in the old Royal Infirmary which has been covered with posters for Fringe shows is now peeling and torn, scraps flapping in the breeze now it is all over. The grass of the Meadows still shows the marks of the recently departed marquees and big top from shows.

Hot, sunny day, warmer than most of the summer - great. Except it is too hot and dreadfully airless at my desk at work and I'm dying for some fresh air all afternoon - a good excuse to meet a friend and sit outside a pub on the way home drinking cold beer in the fresh air and watching the sun slowly dipping towards the horizon.

Sitting in Beanscene with Mel, enjoying coffee and cake I notice they have details on how to buy the antiqued leather sofas they have in the cafe - the sign advertising this is simple but brilliant "order a sofa to go". Oh yes, please, can I have a skinny latte, triple choc muffin and a sofa to go?

The fat lady has sung...

Although not the fat man since he's lost his breathing privileges. Or is it too soon for Pavarotti jokes?

Out with a bang

And thus Edinburgh's Festival season, the world's biggest arts festival, comes to an end for another year with mighty explosions echoing across the city like the pounding of the Castle's cannons as the traditional classical music and fireworks concert took place. I was lucky enough to be invited to my friend's workplace which has a good view out towards the front of the Castle rather than standing with the 250, 000 others in the streets and hills of the city watching it all. It was a lovely late summer evening as we walked into the city centre, the last glow of the sun washing the stones of the Castle in a copper glow before finally fading into darkness, the stars beginning to appear in the sky above the floodlit fortress. An air of expectation from thousands of people waiting in the dark... The orchestra in the Gardens begins to play and suddenly the dark night explodes in light, colour and sound, incredibly ephemeral sculptures and flowers of light in the air, lasting only seconds.













I love fireworks - there are some things you never grow out of an a huge fireworks show is one of them. But fireworks launching into the sky from an ancient fortress atop a volcanic rock is something else again. I love living here. You can view the full set at larger sizes on my Flickr stream.

Binari - Korean musicians at the Edinburgh Fringe

The Korean musicians I was talking about earlier, Binari, setting up for the Edinburgh Fringe as the Festival circus hits town. This is in Edinburgh University's historic Old College building quadrangle.

Fringe time

Its Edinburgh, its August, its time for the first stirrings of the world's largest arts festival. The Fringe starts officially over the weekend, but already most shows are in town and running their (much cheaper tickets) previews. The husband and son of Mel's cousin are over from Norway and I met them all straight from work at the Pleasance, one of the main spots for Fringe life. Mel and I introduced the Fringe newbies to our laid back way of doing it, which is to park out bums on a seat in the cobbled courtyard of the Pleasance (a hub with dozens of shows going on all the time, from tiny rooms to proper theatre sized shows) and wait for the many people coming round giving out flyers and telling folks about shows until we saw one we liked and off we went to see Son of a Preacher man, a stand-up comedy with Markus Birdman, an aetheist son of a clergyman - it was brilliant and I highly recommend it if you're going Fringeing.



Afterwards we headed back down to the Royal Mile to get some food at Wannaburger and as we approached the Old College Building we heard a powerful beat and decided to have a quick look. We found Binari, a Korean musical group pounding drums in the old quadrangle, the sounds echoing around the space as they performed a sound check, that wonderful, almost frantic and kinetic drumming and singing. And its just so cool that walking past somewhere you just come across something like this, but that's what happens in Edinburgh at this time of year. Its a circus, its maddening, busy and crazy and at the same time brilliant.



Last time I was in this building was for the launch of a major Scottish history book in the gorgeous Neo-Classical space of the Playfair Library, this time it is Korean musicians in the quad filling the night with music. After we'd had a late meal we walked up the Royal Mile, even near 11pm still buzzing with people as the Fringe starts up then as we approached the top of the Mile we had another treat.



A rehearsal for the Royal Military Tattoo was finishing up at the Castle and the cavalry were leading their horses down towards the horse boxes to take them home. Imagine a warm summer night in the middle of the Old Town, lights from the Tattoo flickering across the Castle and bagpipes playing while the clip-clop, clip-clop of horse's hooves come down from the Castle, creak of leather and clink of metal as cavalry troops lead their immaculately groomed animals down the cobbled street then round past the hub to the waiting transports. Even in Edinburgh this isn't exactly an everyday sight.



How beautiful is this horse? Just think, this is all happening in the heart of a capital city at 11pm, with a huge castle right behind me as I took this while behind the horse you can see the floodlit Herriot's School which at night looks like where very young wizards get sent before they are old enough to go to Hogwarts.



Even at that time of night you can see the sky just doesn't get fully dark at this time of year. Shame I didn't have the tripod to take these properly but obviously I wasn't quite expecting this. A little bit on unexpected magic.

New Jonas Moore mash-up

Upcoming multimedia webcomic The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore has had another musician take up the offer to remix material from the site - this time top producer Phil Nicholas, who has worked with Fat Boy Slim among others, has remixed Make It Through (sung by Steve Hart) to video and art material from the Jonas site. Very cool. I like the fact that Howard and his Jonas team are inviting people to remix material into new forms and the fact that quite a few musicians have taken up the offer so far means, hopefully, that it will mean the series will have appeal beyond the normal comics community too.

Seven Ages of Rock

I've really been enjoying the Seven Ages of Rock series on the BBC these last few weekends, from the Who ("Won't Get Fooled Again" is still one of the most kick-ass rock songs with great guitar licks) and Hendrix (who give me my theme tune, "hey, Joe, where you going with that laptop in your hand? Gonna write my old blog down...") through the wonderfully weird late 60s early 70s stuff (Floyd and the Wall, the wonderfully androgynous Bowie), the performance rock (dear old Freddie and the boys from Queen), the Metal years (memories of my leather-clad, long-haired, headbanging times at Madison's rock club), great goddam music.

Then last week's episode, Left of the Dial, charting indy rock from the mid 80s to mid 90s, from early REM through to Seattle, Nirvanna, Henry Rollins, Black Flag, the grunge scene. Again great music, great attitude (almost punk in the DIY and fuck-it-all attitude) but for me personally that one was something more; that was the soundtrack to my student life, the music of my college years, drinking, noisy parties with various substances passing around, good friends, more drinking, doing a course I really liked (where watching movies counted as 'research') and basically having one of the best bloody time of my life (never understood the cliche that the school days were the best of your life - college was much better. It came with louder music, later night, longer mornings and drink and other pleasurable things). Somewhere along the line I also managed to earn myself a good degree in between waking up after a party and finding someone had painted 'graffiti' on our flat's walls with shaving foam or tripping over my wall mirror on the floor because someone had taken it down to snort off of. And that music there all the time. That episode just plugged me directly back into my mid 20s student life for an hour. And I fucking loved it. Might be years in the past now (scary to think how many years and how quickly they've gone past) but god that music just pulled it right out of me as if it was yesterday. And at least that era didn't end with a shotgun in the mouth for me. I love classical music, I adore jazz, but a big part of my soul is forever rock and roll, a true believer in the Holy Trinity: bass, drums and electric geetar, baby. There's a part of me that still wants to bawl out "touch me, I'm sick". I hope there always will be.

Fopp no more

Dammit, looks like Fopp has gone to the wall, probably the only music store I spend time in these days (never been mad on Virgin, not the best range plus they are too pricey and I haven't been into an HMV since I left The Bookshop Who Shall Not Be Named since it is part of the same company and therefore part of the Evil Empire. Plus their range and prices weren't terribly good either and I never liked browsing there). For those who don't know it, Fopp was became a nationwide group doing really good deals on music (and later DVDs and some books and graphic novels) and was especially good for backlist albums at very cheap prices which encouraged you to stock up on older material too. Which meant since it was cheap you thought, well, I'll just buy that and that and that...oops, just blew thirty quid... They also had a 'suck it and see' policy where you could return an album if it really sucked.

But it was also a special institution to music lovers in Glasgow where it first started and my mates and I spent many happy time having a rummage through the music on offer on the store on Byres Road near Glasgow University. In fact a couple of months back when Gordon and I were through at the revamped Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum we went for a walk in the sunshine afterwards, up towards the University towards the old stomping grounds of our younger days for a drink then into Fopp there. Sure, we had Fopp in Edinburgh (two of them actually) but going into the old Glasgow store was also a nostalgia trip for us. I was thinking in going in for a browse this weekend (downloading is fine as far as it goes, but I still like to physically own an original album) but that ain't gonna happen now. I feel especially sorry for the staff as they are not only out of a job but according to the news reports they aren't going to even get paid at the end of this month.

Jonas Moore mashups

There's an upcoming new multimedia webcomic coming up which I have been blogging about on the Forbidden Planet blog recently called the Many Worlds of Jonas Moore. Unlike most webcomics (some of which are very, very good) Jonas Moore is taking advantage of the fact it is online to used mixed media, so we we have comics panels, animation, video, music and even archive footage as we follow the actor Colin Salmon (from the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies and Resident Evil) as Jonas Moore, a character in an online game who has become sentient in a world where the British Empire never fell and the world population is kept quiet by being addicted to many online games, some of which seem very similar to our real history. Marked as defective and to be deleted JOnas goes on the run across the different games worlds. A bit Matrix, a bit Moorcock and a dash of Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright.



One of the things I really like about the concept isn't just the mixed-media format but the fact that Howard Webster is encouraging readers to take the material and remix it into their own mashups - so far some indy bands have remixed some of the viral videos they have created to go with their own music (such as the one above). With so many big studio comics-based movies using the bands on their soundtrack as a marketing gimmick to get folks to go I like the fact that Howard is doing this remake-your-own approach; they're also hoping if people remix material later on to create sidebar stories that the best may be incorporated into the ongoing story. Apparently this sort of approach is really pissing off the professional marketing folks and ad agencies, which, in my book, makes it even better. And doesn't Colin Salmon look bloody cool on that bike (Lili, stop drooling over him!)?

Of silence and music

Channel hopping while munching lunch I accidentally came across a programme on Ruth Montgomery, a young musician preparing for solo performances with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. The solo spot is a tremendously stressful role for any musician - indeed being the person standing out there in front of everyone else on a stage for any kind of performance is pretty stressful. I've done that a few times myself and it really does put the frighteners on you; first time I had to do it was a largely last minute addition to the school opera when I was about 16. Walk out from behind that curtain, light in your face, dark auditorium, the feel of two or three hundred people looking expectantly at you; mouth goes dry, confidence bids you adios and genuine shivers go down your spine. Then you do what you rehearsed to do and if it works the stress and fear vanishes to be replaced with elation. That doesn't make it any easier the next time you have to do it though, you still go through the stress and fear and cotton mouth thing everytime, but that early experience paid dividends much later when I would have to walk in front of a few hundred folks and introduce a major author.

So yes, I can empathise how stressed she would be, at least to a certain extent. Ruth has another level of worry to add to what would be a worrying time already for any musician about to do their solo spot - Ruth is deaf. She has problems with an early rehearsal because the piano is in the wrong place so she can't get close enough to the violins to feel them and can't see the conductor's movements clearly enough, something they simply hadn't considered when setting up the stage. On hand was one of my favourite musicians and a personal heroine, Evelyn Glennie, one of the most famous soloists in classical music and again, a performer who is completely deaf. Watching both of them was a reminder, if any really be needed, that the real artist creates from within; deafness doesn't stop feeling and it doesn't silence that inner voice, a part that speaks without words in an inner dialogue with the artist, a dialogue they then translate into music, words, dance, paintings that other can share with. It's not the physical abilities, its that inner dialogue and the feelings it creates; if you don't have that then how can you communicate it to anyone else, regardless of whether you are a musician, a poet, a dancer?

And in one lovely little scene, as Evelyn is rehearsing her own spot you could see a wee deaf girl, just about 6 or 7, totally enraptured, her hands moving to copy Evelyn's (anyone who has been to one of Eveyln's performances will know she is pretty dynamic on stage, she doesn't just play, she moves to the music she is making). It was just the most gorgeous scene, this little deaf lassie copying the deaf musician; it wasn't just cute it was the realisation that this might be opening a door to a world this child had never really encountered before. And isn't that one of the effects any artist longs to make on someone?

For the journey

A couple of weeks ago I was talking about the gorgeous animation for Lloyds TSB bank - it doesn't make me want to switch banks, but the animation is lovely, following a couple on their train journey which is also a compressed version of their life as they meet, fall in love, marry and have a child. The style of the animation from the looks of the long-nosed characters, tall skinny buildings and raised railway line is obviously influenced by the wonderful movie Les Triplettes de Belleville, which is not a bad animation to borrow from. There are a series of them, apparently, with the second running on TV now (these sorts of adverts are often the main source of income for struggling animators); YouTube has the first one up now:



Someone left a comment on the previous post on this subject (sorry there was no name on the comment I think) asking about the lovely music which goes along with the adverts. I did a bit of Googling and found on the Boosey and Hawkes (very famous musical name) that the music is a version of Eliza's Aria by Elena Kats-Chernin, composed for the ballet Wild Swans, based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen - according to the B&H site it will be getting a new release on CD along with other work including her Piano Concerto No 2 and Mythic. There's a link on the B&H site to where you can order the disc - I may pick that one up myself. Meantime someone else has uploaded the music to YouTube as well: