ragudave

Bill, I have a vague memory of John Peel & Andy Kershaw playing bits of an album which had recordings of drag racing runs. Twas a lovely sound! Got anything like that included? cheers, Dave

There is only one person I know who didnt care for Drakes. His name is Lone Pigeon.... Drakes made a difference! thank you, Dave

Is the new record shop owned by the Cavern official open now? I popped into the new venue on Saturday after seeing the throat singing @ the Ltree. A nice venue in a part of Aberdeen (under Union St) I never really think about, Dave

French got it exactly right - its a piss take message done by mate on another board. All top 10 lists are crap / subjective / useless anyway. Dave

10. Vienna Ultravox Famously, this pompous, overblown, Gothic snorefest never made it to number one, beaten as it was by Joe Dolce's 'Shuddup Your Face'. As many critics fail to point out Dolce (real name James Dolce) wasn't the talentless self-parody that he made out and as well as reaching number on in the UK he also was an accomplished mountaineer, cellist, librettist and international jurist, being responsible for writing the preamble to UN Security Council 338 which calls for the withdrawal from all occupied territories by the a-state of Israel, pronto. Ultravox front man Ure never lived down this perceived humiliation, despite Vienna reaching a 9 on the Ditchwater scale of dullness, and insisted that when he co-wrote 'Do they Know It's Christmas' with Bob Geldof, he insisted that charities had to sign a legal declaration thus: we (insert name of charity here), without let and hindrance do here forth admit that 'Vienna' was a more worthy and better song than 'Shuddup Your Face' which is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture; but rather repugnant to the word of God, and any charity that refused would receive nary a penny in aid. An interesting sub-note is that during the filming of the video of Vienna, Ure's moustache, having been declared a Crime Against Humanity by Amnesty International, had its own lawyer appointed. The moustache's resulting dirty-protest meant that the video had to be shot in black and white with a lot of 'tache obscuring dry-ice; Amnesty only relenting and agreeing Ure could keep the bumfluff in exchange for a promise to stop tucking his trousers into his boots. Regardless of the controversy, Vienna is now considered a classic although Shuddup Your Face is a far, far better song. Sadly Dolce lost his lustre and is reinventing himself as a drag tribute act covering maudlin, inoffensive pop standards as The Dago Dido. 9. Private Investigations Dire Straits Unbelievably this song made number two in the charts which was a personal triumph for gargoyle-faced guitar plucker Knopfler as it is actually a studio out-take, recorded in the aftermath after the band ganged up and beat him at Monopoly during the Love Over Gold sessions. When his colleagues went to find a late night kebab house to celebrate, Knopfler stayed behind in the corner of a studio and sullenly muttered to himself, occasionally kicking his guitar in a not-untypical spate of schoolboy petulance. The title of the song, Private Investigations, was scrawled on the master disc by mistake by the duty engineer when what Knopler was actually saying was Fenchurch Street Station, that being his only unmortgaged property he had left in the Monopoly game. The resulting 'song' became the subject of global controversy when a leaked tape recording from the doomed Mercedes 600's black-box recorder which the ever-suspicious Mohammed Al-Fayed had installed in all his vehicles, prior to a famous fatal crash of August 31 1997. ---tape begins---- Dodi Al-Fayed: Put your foot down, Henri. This Princess is in need of some good Moslem lovin' Henri Paul OK, boss, I'll (voice obscured by slurring) Diane: Oh, put this tape on, Dodi. It's that Dire Straits compilation that you taped for me (sounds of fumbling and clicking. Music starts, it is 'Private Investigations') Henri Paul (mutters) Merde, je deteste cette chanson soporifique Trevor Rees-Jones: Too right. Where's the fast forward on this bloody thing (screeching of tyres) Dodi Al-Fayed: Watch out whiskey-breath, you nearly hit that white Fiat Diana: (quietly) I'm sure that was my husband and father-in-law in that car Trevor Rees-Jones: No, no, press fast forwardI want Sultans of Sw..LOOK OUT ----tape ends---- 8. That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore The Smiths This song, amazingly Morrissey and Marr's favourite Smiths' track, came about when Marr played the children's nursery rhyme Six Little Ducks That I Once Knew in the style of Iggy and the Stooges before slowing it down, putting through an emulator, adding 197 guitar layers, filtering it through charcoal and baking it in an oven at Gas Mark 6 for 19 hours. It was rumoured that during the recording process, bass player Andy Rouke was so depressed by the dullness of the song he began his descent into heroin hell by intravenously injecting hard drugs to get him through the session. On July 19 1985 the band were due to perform the song on BBC1's 'Wogan' show, but cancelled owing to an altercation in the Green room, where the bewigged presenter described the song as sounding like two residents of a mortuary arguing over who has the best fridge space. In the ensuing chaos both Wogan and Morrissey were treated for 'tofu-related injuries' which meant Wogan had to present the show in a flesh-coloured balaclava whilst the Smiths' frontman flounced back to Manchester and refused to talk to the rest of the band ever again, recording his vocals for 'Strangeways Here we Come' in a public lavatory in Hulme. Oddly, Rough Trade released TJIFA as a single which failed to hit the Top Forty, thus making it the most inappropriate single release ever, until Geoff Travis smuggled a Uher into HMP Maidstone and recorded Gary Glitter and Jonathan King in concert singing Sweet Child O' Mine and put it out it in time for Christmas 2002. 7. Where the Streets Have No Name U2 Picking dull songs from the Joshua Tree is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel but WTSHNN has a special place in the pantheon of boring songs as it is not really a U2 song. Legend has it that guitar monkey The Edge (real name Terry Edgely) was out of the studio learning a third chord when Adam Clayton accidentally played Little Feat's 'Roll Um Easy' at 33 rpm. Bono (real name Sherri Hewson) was so taken with the morose transatlantic sound that the whole band was immediately shipped off to Nevada where Bono (who, incidentally was only let in the country because the Custom's Officer at Carson City airport thought he was a relative of Y. Ono) pronounced himself a 'true son of the West' and insisted on drinking only root beer, sasparilly and sassafras-flavoured milk whilst being accompanied everywhere by a gigantic Starts and Stripes, a Sousaphone band and a flotilla of John Wayne look-alikes. In an attempt to become the new Gram Parsons, Bono insisted on burying himself in the desert outside Las Vegas where he would often stay for up to a week before the rest of the band members would come to 'dig him up and take him home'. During his time in the wilderness he wrote the lyrics for WTSHNN, a song so deathly dull that Larry Mullen can be heard to slip off his drum stool at 2:25 and 3:14 in his futile attempts to stay awake during recording. 6. Fool's Gold Stone Roses It is a little known fact that the most legendary band of the 80s were in fact a front for a Malcolm McLaren spoof act of dead rock stars who had been contacted by the Pop Svengali via a medium to record a novelty hit for Christmas 1988. The vocals for this dire sub-funk wah-wah-athon were actually voiced from beyond the grave by Ian Curtis of Joy Division whilst the spirit of Stevie Ray Vaughan entered John Squires for the duration of the session. This was a particular shock to Vaughan who still had over a year to live, although McLaren denied that stealing the guitarist's Essence and keeping it in an empty Jack Daniel's bottle in the studio in anyway hastened Vaughan's death. The result of the session was 17 hours of out-of the-body tedium distilled into a 13-minute yawn that so traumatised Squires that he refused to record any music for another 5 years until he visited a gypsy on Blackpool's North Pier who advised him to do the contractual fulfilment album and bugger off and form the Seahorses who were, of course, a much better and less dull band. McLaren, by the way, has never used the term 'pop-Svengali' since a late night materialisation by Svengali himself, egged on by Sid Vicious, gave him a wedgie and warned him against further use of his name. 5. It's a Kind of Magic Queen Freddy Mercury is the only pop star to be in the Guinness Book of Records four times. Mercury, Frederick (real name Hydrogyrum): - Song (best selling) p245 - Dwarves (most in one dressing room) p 27 - Cocaine (most snorted via anus) p923 - Song (dullest) p247 Of course IAKOM wasn't really his song as it was originally written by a seven year old Roger Taylor whilst in detention at Eton Prep but Mercury found his creative juices drying up so was happy to take the credit although his lyrical suggestions (replacing the word 'Magic' with 'Meerkat' were rejected by a majority of 3 to 1). However the song lacked the usual Queen pretentiousness and Mercury found that at huge stadium gigs when the song was performed, 40,000 fans would twitch disinterestedly and gossip amongst themselves until 'Hammer to Fall'. Determined to stop this Mercury announced the song at Live Aid in a typically theatrical manner: (July 13 1985 London, England) Mercury: De de de da da do-oh! (cups ear in anticipation) Crowd: De de de da da do-oh! Mercury: Do dah do, do dah do, do da, da daaah! Crowd: Do dah do, do dah do, do da, da daaah! Mercury: yeah. De da de, de dah de, de da da da doooooooooooooooooooooh! Crowd: De da de, de dah de, de da da da doooooooooooooooooooooh! Mercury: (Chants) It's a Kind of Magic Crowd: (chants) Where's the flipping chorus! 4. Stairway to Heaven Led Zeppelin Famously never released as a single, this overblown, overlong, overhyped and desperately dull 'classic' did actually make its way to the pressing factory but ran into problems. The members of the trade union Associated Radiographic and Stereographic Engineers: Hole Punch chapter (or ARSEholes) refused to drill the holes in the records on the grounds that the song caused foetal abnormalities in mice and distressed nursing badger sows. A deal was quickly done whereby a million US AM radio stations would play the song on heavy rotation as a way of distracting the populace from the Vietnam War. The row resurfaced when an engineer claims he deliberately included backward satanic messages on the track but by a million-to-one coincidence the wrong tape was played and when the track was later electronically examined the words are clearly those of an early 70s TV advert featuring Hartley Hare from UK Children's show 'Pipkins' exhorting listeners to smoke new Silk Cut Purple As they're low tar with the taste I like, I'm on Topov the world. After 25 years without problems Messrs Plant and Page's snoresome song was back in the headlines in 2001 after a well-meaning trainee played the song over the tannoy at Leeds' Tropical World, causing the entire Syrian hamster colony of 38 to commit suicide in a Jim Jones-stylee. 3. I'm Not In Love 10cc Tired? Eyelids heavy? Unable to sleep? Try whispering this be quietbig boys don't crybig boys don't cry (repeat for what appears to be an age and you will be out like a light). Man alive, how this cotton wool song ever became a classic is purely down to stupid women who think that their husband's requesting this song for them on Chav FM's golden hour is a heartfelt gesture. It's about denial at best and male manipulation at worst but you don't care because it's the only half-romatic thing he has ever done in the 9 years you've been married and he only takes you to the Berni Inn on Saturday (and it's only a glass of wine, never a bottle) because he wants a shag and it's never as good as when you fantasise about that bloke at work and you don't really talk these days and you wonder what he does with the money but you love him because no-one else would have him and he requested this song for you. The song lulls you into such a false sense of security you don't realise that your brain is bleeding with the sheer torpor of it all. In 1975 Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewer's and Listeners' Association was invited on Juke-Box jury (Compered by a young Noel Edmonds) when this song was played. It was assumed that mrs Whitehouse indulged in one sherry too many in the pre-show hospitality and thus the tape has been held under lock and key for 30 years but here's what happened: NE: So 100cc's I'm Not In Love there. What does the panel think? Mary, erm Mrs Whitehouse. Will you be buying that record? MW: I don't know about you, but I'd rather suck Satan's cheesy cock. It is long rumoured that fellow guest Marc Bolan was about to reveal the truth when he mysteriously died in a car crash two years later. In the Times the following obit notice appeared: Bolan, Marc (Starchild) 30/9/47-16/9/77 Got you, you bastard from the NVLA 2. Every Breath You Take - The Police Weighing just 20 ounces when he was born his mother rejected him and it was only as a result of suckling the family jird that he made it through infancy. At school his constant loneliness ad inadequacy drove him on and through sheer determination he eventually stood at the foothills of his noble profession. Sadly teaching didn't work out for the 4 foot 6 Mr Sumner and, after being tarred and feathered by a group of year 6 girls, he sadly left teaching. When he asked his dad what profession he could take up his father said two simple words that changed young Gordie's leave: Son, Don't fret. Don't fretdon't fretdon't fret! It was an epiphany for Gordon and as he laboured as a jockey in the Hexham sheep races he eventually had enough money to buy his first fretless bass guitar. Little Gordon never looked back. Soon the Police were formed (the were originally called the Polite, as well-raised Gordon considered good manners to be the mark of a man) but Gordon's shaky handwriting said otherwise and the three spiky blond members of the group bought dull-but-worthy white-boy funk (sic) to a mass audience. When the recording session for EBYT commenced Sumner was determined to make the atmosphere as morose as possible. To that end he ordered the studio temperature reduced to 4 degrees Celsius, had band member Andy Summer's pet alpaca sacrificed to the god Molech and arranged for Myra Hindley and Ian Brady to guest on backing vocals (indeed critics agree that the lilting timbre of Hindley's voice gives the track a depth and maturity that other non-child murdering vocalists failed to impart on earlier cuts). The deeply depressing result meant that banality and inanity reached new heights as people flocked to buy the song, which was cleverly marketed with a special scratch'n'sniff card that promised to give middle-aged men an erection like tempered steel. By the time the ASA had caught up with them the single had sold 800 million copies and Gordon changed his name to Sting and fled the country to avoid prosecution. To this day Sting lives in exile on Haiti where he has purchased the cadavers of Harry Worth, Peter Glaze and Billy Dainty, hoping to harness the power of voodoo to bring forth a mighty army of second-rate comedians to do his bidding. 1. The whole of the second half of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. The ingredients are all there. The greatest voice on the greatest actor ever. Phil Lynott as a barmy priest, David Essex as a barmy artilleryman, the crystal voiced Julie Covington etc. So why is it all so bloody dull? One day, after Jeff Wayne had the idea of doing a musical based upon an interplanetary war (as you do) after reading Nostradamus. From the south will come tales of the red planet The chosen one shall cause progressive sound to come forth For the bare footed man and the bearded student The people will rise up, their ears bleeding And decided that he alone was worthy. Unfortunately for all those concerned Wayne was a martinet who stalked the studio with a Bengal tiger on a leash and a whip made out of bass guitar strings (Justin Haywood still bears the scars from a particularly severe beating after he failed to put enough emotion into the words Blew Away in Forever Autumn). More than a perfectionist (he had a junior engineer flayed alive for pronouncing 'gnu' with a hard 'G') as the album progressed in length (and dullness) so Wayne's behaviour became more and more odd resulting in all the vocalists having to abase themselves before him and pretend to be farm animals when he was in the studio. You can still hear an echo of David Essex bleating like a nanny-goat at 14:27 on side 3 of the album diring the silence where Burton and the Parson are locked in the cellar, until eventually Covington snapped as revealed in the original demo tapes: JC: (Sings) No Nathanial, no. There must be more to life. There has. JW: "Bray like a donkey." JC: There has to be a way that we can restore to lifeee-aw...EEEAWWW. (aside) I don't want to do this Jeff. JW: "Goddamit. Bray, you bitch." Lynott got off lightly as a piglet because his acting was hammy enough but eventually the whole cast rebelled leaving Wayne to piece together the second part of the album from out-takes. His latest concept album, based upon the Holocaust (provisionally titled 'Bergen-Belsen: Skiffle sets you free') has yet to be completed. thanks to Conmurph http://boards.fool.co.uk/Message.asp?mid=9031761

Yep the Naked City track I have is from Grindcrusher 2

What John Zorn related albums would you recommend? I like the one track I've heard of by Naked City, the first two Painkiller albums and the album with JZ and Fred Frith. Dave

well you could always petition Mary Ann Hobbs, who plays all sort of her Breezeblock show...

Peel replaced by three blokes

Does anyone know anything about the John Peel tribute night(s) at the Blue Lamp? I think its on later this month. I heard a rumour that the Kitchen Cynic was DJing.... Dave

This site lists a lot of Capitol / Adeen gigs from 1982 onwards gig site

Strangely I never saw a single band at the Capitol, although I remember the posters outside for all sorts of bands / comedians etc. However I used to see lots of world cinema / foreign films there. This was of course, before Oscars moved in. I guess the Capitol closed in 1995 or 1996 and Oscars was opened in 97ish or so and closed about 5 years later. Then it became another beer factory with a different name or two... Dave

Did you hear the Mike Marra special on Radio Scotland? It was last week and worth a listen Marra prog on Radio Scotland Dave

Richard and Judy Weds 5th of January will see housewives favourites Bam and Kerbie from UF, appearing on the Richard and Judy show to talk about the Jump Britain documentary. - that'll be interesting.... Lets hope Richard doesnt do another Ali G impression, Dave

Yep I felt rather ruff around the edges on the 1 st. I blame the German beer we had at the Blue Lamp and the very late night. Some of it was almost 8 % but had a great taste. Yep it was a great Hogm given that the Blue Lamp had been rather limp and quiet and we all had a few beers the previous night. Dave

I saw Jump London when twas shown originally and when repeated. I really liked the electronica soundtrack. I wonder if Bip_Hop were involved with it? Will try and watch it this Thursday, Dave

Since Fopp dont do second hand music, t shirts, vinyl or more obscure Cds et al I doubt they will put One Up out of business. Asda / Tesco / Amazon etc are more likely to put HMV / Virgin / Fopp out of business in the long term because of the intense price competition rather than range / customer service focus. BTW I wonder how One Up will do when the Cavern vol 2 opens this month? Dave

Yep I liked it - like Godspeed meets a Dickensian novel at sea... Dave