Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Scott Chris,
Bob Seger. The zedir of mediocrity.
Har har. Have to disagree though. Seasoned pro was Bob who wrote one of the best "on-the-road-melancholia" songs of all time:
That's a great song. Although for years I thought it was written by, um, Jon English.
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Hard News: Reputation and remuneration, in reply to Sacha,
Particularly admired Guyon Espiner not taking crap from Joyce about ‘evidence’ that didn’t exist. If only that had happened more in the last few years.
It was a fine bit of political interviewing in a very solid current affairs story. Would watch again.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Will de Cleene,
What goes around comes around, eh
Funny thing is, that stunt was what encouraged RWP producer Brent Hansen to go to London for a look-see. He got a producing job at the fledgling MTV Europe that led to him become President and CEO of MTV Networks Europe and then MTV's VP of Global Branding. Worked out very well for him!
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to Jonathan Hunt,
I’d be impressed if the NSA had access to the source code of Huawei’s products. Is there any evidence of this?
British Telecom says it gained such access and I gather MI6 and everyone else got to go through Huawei's security evaluation centre.
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Oh hell, while we're at it ...
'Rolling in the Deep' as bustling club banger:
A brilliant D&B take on 'Hometown Glory':
And a lovely chilled bootleg of 'Rolling in the Deep':
I have played the hell out of all of these.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Sacha,
There may be, musically, nothing wrong with Someone Like You
if extended whining floats your boat, perhaps
Well, (a) that’s not a musical complaint and, (b) pop songs are allowed to be sad.
I actually think Adele’s a pretty good lyricist. I don’t, and won’t, own 21 – but I think there’s an elemental quality to what she does that lends itself really well to remixing.
I realise that some folks aren’t going to like this at all, but I fucking love it in all its big girly disco-ness:
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
10,000 views just whipped by. Is that a record for most views in the opening weekend?
I'd have to check, but it's certainly right up there.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Scott Chris,
Not Barry ‘Dr Rock’ Jenkins?
We couldn't get him on the radio down in Christchurch. And anyway, until he heard the Stranglers, he was playing Little Feat and Return to Forever.
Which brings me to Little Feat. Just don't get that.
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It has dawned on me through this thread what a big influence listening to (and taping) Casey Kasem's American Top 40 was on my musical education.
Sometimes it took me some strange places -- Kansas' 'Dust In the Wind', ffs -- but it was also the first place I heard Patti Smith's 'Because the Night', which provoked an immediate OMIGOD WTF IS THAT I NEED MORE OF THAT response.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to TracyMac,
And, dear old Heart. They were awesome musicians, really stuck it up those who said “rock is for men”, but dear lord, how tedious I found their stuff.
One of those bands whose records I’ll never own but am happy to acknowledge. I taped ‘Magic Man’ off the radio (more of that in the next comment) as a teenager and I though that was pretty cool. More recently, I liked the way they told Sarah Palin to fuck off and stop using ‘Barracuda’.
It also reminds me of What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes, which I am not even going to post a link for. If you’re a dyke who was reasonably social, and lived in a flat with other lesbians, and had a partner who was into this kind of emo rock, there was no escaping the frigging song in ‘93. The rest of the album – which no-one seemed to play – was actually quite good with some bluesy-styled moments.
Wasn’t it ’What’s Going On’? The singer, Linda Perry, went on to become a serious force in pop songwriting and producing, most notably through her work for Pink. And although I would be happy to never hear that damn song again, she’s pretty cool.
But to continue the merge of 80s and crap – and my use-case against all those trolls on YouTube who say “80’s music was all AWESOME and music today is all CRAP” – I present darling Tiffany. Complete with boofy acid-washed denim jacket with shoulder pads. Which looked naff even then.
Good pop song. No problems with it. Great parody too: