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11-22-2011, 06:58 AM
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#3 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,996
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 What's that you say? I like some damn weird sh*t? You're not wrong! Here are some more. Dougal and Father Ted with the Eurovision-losing “My lovely horse” (Lyric music and vocal by Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy). Is there ANYONE in the world to whom you can say “Mahna-mahna” and they won't respond “Da-doo-bie-doobie!”? Proof that muppets rule! To bring things onto a more sane level for the moment, here's Elaine Page from the musical “Cats" with a lovely song, “Memory”. It may be weird, but you can't fault the fragile beauty of Judy Garland's delivery on “Somewhere over the rainbow”. and to bring this catalogue of weirdness to an end for this time, anyone watch the show “Mongrels”?
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11-22-2011, 07:04 AM
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#4 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,996
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 The worm wonders if anyone remembers a band called M? Obviously agonised a long time before settling on that name!  This is, to the worm's knowledge, their only hit, but it was a big one.
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11-22-2011, 07:22 AM
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#5 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,996
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Kick --- INXS --- 1987 (Atlantic)
 Their sixth and most successful album, “Kick” took INXS to their creative and commercial peak. Four hit singles, world domination and a four-letter acronym becoming a household name. It wasn't going to get any better than this. And it didn't. After the release of this album their popularity began to slide, and with the tragic suicide of lead singer Michael Hutchence in 1997 following the less-than-enthusaistic reception for their eighth album, “Welcome to wherever you are”, the writing was on the wall for this band from Australia. But in 1987 the good times were rollin', and “Kick” broke INXS wide open commercially and worldwide. Having heard the title track to their previous album “Listen like thieves”, and mistakenly thinking they were called “Inks”, I bought “Kick” and was amazed (and still am) at how consistently excellent it is. Not one, single, bad track. Go back and read that again. That's right: every track is good, and some are quite brilliant. Almost every song was written by Hutchence and Andrew Farris, guitarist and keyboards player, and amazingly, given its now-legendary success, Atlantic hated the album so much that originally they tried to stop the guys from releasing it, offering them big money to go back and record something else. Bet those guys feel foolish now! It starts off brash and bold, with loud, almost sparse drums, as if playing alone in a large empty room, then an angry guitar joins in, with two chords repeated before Hutchence opens his mouth, and the melody continues like that for about two minutes of the two and a half that “Guns in the sky” runs for, with the later addition of a raging guitar solo to punctuate an angry, powerful song about the arms race, then jangly guitar introduces “New sensation”, which would be one of the hit singles from the album. Again, the melody is quite sparse, just guitar, bass and drums backing Hutchence's vocal, a kind of mix of dance and punk, before keys and brass come in to fill out the track, with a really cool sax break (when is sax not cool?) from Kirk Pengilly. There are three guitarists in INXS, so I can't say with any certainty who's playing on which track, unfortunately, as I'd like to give credit where it's due. It does hoever seem to be Andrew Farriss on the keys, though he also plays guitar. Almost all of the tracks on “Kick” are three and a half minutes or less, “Devil inside” being the exception, at over five minutes. It's also the most together, musically, with guitar again taking the lead but backed by the rest of the band in a much faster, busier song that was also released as a single, and did, like the others, very well. Hutchence is a little more restrained in his singing here, his voice most of the time lower, feeling no need to shout or scream, and it works very well. It ends on a great keyboard line from Andrew Farriss to take the song to its fade, and we're into their biggest hit, the number one smash “Need you tonight”, with again the melody returning to the sparser feel of the first two tracks, snappy guitar keeping the tune with stabs of synth punctuating Hutchence's vocal delivery, which is again sultry and seductive, and slides like a sinuous sexy snake into “Mediate”, which keeps the same melody but constructs the lyric entirely of mostly single words that rhyme with the title: very effective, with a nice sax solo at the end. I think this track is unique on the album for not having any guitar in it: sounds to me like just keys and drums, with the sax coming in at the end. “The loved one” sorts that out though, with biting guitar smashing in the intro, a blues kind of melody with Hutchence more animated in his vocals. As I said at the beginning, there are no bad tracks on “Kick”, but if there are weak ones, this one and the one that follows it would be my choices. They're good songs, but compared to the rest of the tracks on the album they come up a little short in my opinion. Not that surprising then to find that this is the only track not written by Hutchence and/or Farriss; it certainly shows. “Wild life” is faster, more lively, but there's something missing there, something I can't quite put my finger on. All that is soon forgotten though as we reach the standout track, and a song that became one of their signature tunes. The only ballad on the album, “Never tear us apart” is the better for it, with its haunting strings melody which opens and indeed carries the song, Hutchence's vocals the most impassioned I've ever heard them, a false stop about one minute into the track an incredibly effective device to focus the attention on a truly remarkable song, and a powerful sax solo from Pengilly to just pop that little cherry on top of the icing which is already on this magnificent cake. Hard to follow that up, but “Mystify” is a great little track, almost in the mould of Queen's “Crazy little thing called love”, with finger-clicking, bouncy guitar, a real feel-good song to perhaps lift the sombre, sad mood engendered by “Never tear us apart”, and it's followed by the title track, which comes in on atmospheric keyboards then just explodes into a riot of brass, sax, guitar and drums, with the band bouncing all over the place, everyone having fun. Great hooks, powerful melody and great energy, this would have made a good choice for a single, but was not picked. Pity. The happy mood continues with “Calling all nations”, more jangly guitar and handclaps, multi-tracked vocals with a sort of combination of “Need you tonight” and “Guns in the sky” and a little piece of “Listen like thieves” in there too, then the album closes on another fast, upbeat, uptempo song, with “Tiny daggers” flying along at breakneck pace, great keyboard hook --- quite similar, very similar in fact, to Rod Stewart's “Tonight I'm yours” --- pulling the song along to its fade. I didn't buy an INXS album before, or after this, nor do I intend to. I would not in any way consider myself a fan, not even a casual one. But there's something about “Kick” that keeps me spinning it every so often, and unlike a lot of albums I could mention, it's one I can put on and leave to play through from start to finish. If you haven't yet heard this album (PLEASE come out from under that rock!) and want to hear a prime example of a band at their peak, this is the one to go for. TRACKLISTING 1. Guns in the sky 2. New sensation 3. Devil inside 4. Need you tonight 5. Mediate 6. The loved one 7. Wild life 8. Never tear us apart 9. Kick 10. Calling all nations 11. Tiny daggers
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11-23-2011, 04:38 AM
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#6 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,996
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Anyone living in the worm's native land will recognise this firstly as the theme to the football comedy team “Apres Match”, but for the rest of you, this is House of Pain with “Jump around”. (I told you, I can't jump! I'm a worm! No legs, see?)
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11-23-2011, 10:23 AM
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#8 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,996
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 What's the link that holds this selection of songs together? Well it's colours. Starting off with Alannah Myles, and a big hit for her (her only hit, I think), this is “Black velvet”. Would it be cheating to put Yello in? Yeah, it would. Instead, here's Joni Mitchell, with “Big yellow taxi”. We don't take the easy way out here, you know! Must be thousands of songs with blue in the title, so let's avoid the obvious and go for New Order, eh? And what about this one from Billy Ocean, “Red light spells danger”... I'm tempted to run “White Christmas”, but I'm old and can't run that fast (!) so how about “White wedding” instead, by Billy Idol? Not too many songs with purple in the title, so I guess “Purple rain” can be forgiven, if a little obvious. Green turned out to be harder than expected, but I finally settled on “Green eyes” by Nick Cave. For pink I went with the Boss... Violet Femmes? Now you're just pushin' it! Let's try “In the navy” --- nah, just kidding! Here's “Fade to grey” by Visage. And our last colour (man, this was hard!) is brown, so let's have the Stones take this one.
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11-24-2011, 12:59 PM
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#9 (permalink) |
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Born to be mild
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: 404 Not Found
Posts: 26,996
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 FIFTH SPIN So, let's see where the Wheel of Mystery (well, the “play random” key on my media player!) ends up sending us this time! Looks like it's settled on a band from Switzerland --- first time for that, I think --- known as Lunatica, who are described as a “symphonic metal band”. Can't be bad. Let's get a little background, then, shall we? Formed in 1998, the band has released, up to now, four albums, with a fifth in the works since 2010. A quick look at their website, however, for up-to-date information, merely informs the reader “We are working on our new album and website”. Hmm. No date. So could be that abovementioned --- and as yet untitled --- fifth album, or could be that the information is old and Lunatica have split. Who knows? When your own website gives out that little information, bad news I fear. But all may not be lost. Fables and dreams --- Lunatica --- 2004 (Frontiers)  Lunatica are, it would seem, another of those female-fronted bands like Nightwish, Leaves' Eyes, Within Temptation et al. This is their second album, and it opens like a movie soundtrack, with low synth, wind noises and the sound of what I take to be an eagle screeching. Dramatic, powerful music flows over the listener, then a voice announces ”Two years ago, Atlantis was found/ But this is history/ And my search continues/ The search for a book/ A book called Fables and Dreams.” It appears from the opener, “The search goes on” that this album is a concept one, based around the search for the eponymous book, and that a tale is going to unfold as the album progresses. I don't know who does the narration, as the only credit given for vocals is for Andrea Datwyler (there are some umlauts in there, but my character set doesn't support them), and the narrator's voice is definitely male. At any rate, “The search goes on” is carried mostly on the atmospheric and ethereal keyboard work of Alex Seiberl, and is pretty much an overture to the album proper. First real track, “Avalon”, is much punchier, guitar-driven by Sando D'Incau, with Seiberl swapping his synth for a nice piano, and we first hear Andrea's vocals. Very powerful and clear they are too, not as operatic as Sabine Edelsbacher or Tarja, but strong and distinctive. The music is very much what you'd expect of a symphonic metal band: big, brash, dramatic, bombastic, with lots of keyboard runs and guitar solos. “Elements” slows things down just a little for its opening, then speeds up again as the keyboards lead the song in what becomes a powerful slice of symphonic rock, nice sharp guitars backing up the keyboard lines and again some effective piano slotted in there too. The title track is the first (and only) ballad, nicely laidback with a duetting vocal, but don't ask me with whom Andrea sings: information on this album is sketchy, to say the least! Whoever he is, he's good, his raw, somewhat gutteral style perfectly complementing the clear, angelic voice of the lead singer. Nice ballad with some very nice keyboards and choral vocals. “Still believe” is an epic, strings and keys driven monster, the second longest on the album (“Elements” pipped it by about forty seconds), mid-paced with urgent guitar and frothy keyboards, more of those nice choral vocals. “The spell” is a much faster, uptempo rocker, with male backing vocals added in the style of Evanescence and some nice guitar work from D'Incau, and the tempo doesn't slacken for “The neverending story”, and though it seems like “Hymn” is bringing things down a gear, it's actually not the case as it explodes into another fast rocker with some really good backing vocals. A cover of an old Ultravox, apparently, but I don't recognise it personally. Things keep moving with “Silent scream”, and a problem I'm coming up against fairly regularly now with these bands I've not heard before is that a lot of their material sounds very similar. It's certainly the case here: the last three tracks have sort of gone by in something of a blur, one could be the other and so on. That's not to say they're not good, but I don't see anything about any of them standing out enough to make me either remember them, or want to seek them out to play them again. In short, if I were making a playlist of symphonic metal, I'd be hard-pressed to know/remember which tracks to choose from this album, if at all. Perhaps that will change with the final track... Well, it starts off like some dance track. That's interesting. Loud, brash keys, galloping guitar, choral vocals. This is “ A little moment of desperation”, but despite the promisingly different opening, it seems to slip into what appears to be the natural groove for this band, and becomes another somewhat faceless and generic track, indistinguishable from the rest. Pity, thought there was going to be something original here to close. After all that, I'm left with the feeling that this album could easily have fit into the “Meh...” slot, which is never a good thing. You never know what you're going to get when you Spin The Wheel, of course, but I had hoped for so much more from this band. From something that began well, it quickly slipped into mundanity and even the concept --- if there truly is one --- is lost on me; it's certainly not expressed through the songs, though as ever with a concept album (if indeed this is such) it helps to have the liner notes to follow the story, as we found when I reviewed Fairyland's “Of wars in Osyrhia”. In the end, not bad at all, nothing against them, but kind of like I said at the beginning, there are so many other bands doing this so much better than Lunatica, I have to wonder if they'll ever get that untitled fifth album finished? TRACKLISTING 1. The search goes on 2. Avalon 3. Elements 4. Fable of dreams 5. Still believe 6. The spell 7. The neverending story 8. Hymn 9. Silent scream 10. A little moment of desperation
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