The time is late April/early May 1996 and Babylon Zoo were as popular as Dean Sturridge, Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes and Dean Holdsworth. Jas Mann is the man who is totally Babylon Zoo. He is the Chungwit, the Biff Boff and the Puff Pastry Hangman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3XgouVH9-Y).

Babylon Zoo are one of Wolverhampton’s greatest exports alongside Noddy Holder, Cornershop, Kevin Rowland and Beacon Radio. They have had a career that reached a peak in 1996 when they produced music for CD-Roms and featured on the Independence Day soundtrack (but not on the film), although their songs did appear on the film ‘Mortal Kombat 2′. Discussed today is the subject of how to effectively interview Babylon Zoo at their peak of their fame and when their fame was rapidly declining.

Part 1 – How to interview Babylon Zoo at the peak of their fame… with Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan

What more could you want than Richard and Judy interviewing you, at a time when they could display an incredible lack of tact without any noticing . This is them at their height, when Fred Talbot was still impersonating Timmy Mallet and presenting the weather in a nearby river. Here is their top tips on how you should interview a famous popstar, especially if they are Babylon Zoo.

1. Do your research

Here Finnegan and Madeley prove that they have spent many long hours researching Babylon Zoo and ethnic minorities by trying to decide what Mann’s ethnicity is. Despite the fact that Mann’s home town is Wolverhampton; possible suggestions included being ‘half Asian and half Native American’ and somehow being ‘Irish’. This is despite Mann’s insistence that he is Anglo-Asian. Somehow it takes them over 100 seconds to realise that he may actually be from Wolverhampton. A shame as Mann comes across as a genuinely nice guy during this interview, even if the way he says the word ‘tigers’ is rather unsettling. Their lack of tact is astonishing, and they really should be made ministers for social equality and political correctness alongside Amr Zaki, Jim Davidson, Ron Atkinson and Lee Bowyer.

2. Promote the music

Madeley then decides to ask a question about how his origins may have influenced his musical styling. Sensibly, he decides to abandon this half-way and decides to promote Babylon Zoo’s new single ‘Animal Army’ by attempting to impersonate Tony Wilson. Madeley’s knowledge of the song extends to seeing the video on ‘Top of the Pops’ a couple of weeks ago. He describes the video as brilliant without mentioning anything about the quality of the song itself. This is the true testament of a classic song, as it does not matter how good the song is; it is a classic if the video is good.

Unbelievably, Finnegan shows a greater appreciation of Babylon Zoo by thinking that the title of their million selling hit single ‘Spaceman’ was in fact ‘the other one’. I am sure that if people promoted ‘Animal Army’ like Finnegan did it would have met her prediction of reaching number one. But no-one else promoted it like she did, so it reached number 17… with three weeks spent in the top 75.

3. Force people to agree with opinions that are so stereotypical that they become racist

Both Finnegan and Madeley ask Mann when he is going to have an arranged marriage. Despite Mann’s insistence that arranged marriages are no longer compulsory, Madeley goes onto to prove his point by stating how his newsagent has entered an arranged marriage and is very happy. When Mann is reluctant to agree, they sensibly decide to back down. Their view of a multicultural society is more off-target than Tomas Brolin’s entire career at Leeds and Crystal Palace.

4. Flirt with the interviewee

Finnegan then decides to flirt continuously with Mann constantly by glaring at him with desperation. She is in quite some state at this point as she asks if Mann wears contact lenses.. At one point, it does look like that she is high on crystal meth during 1.45 and looks like she has gone back to her four litres of wine per day habit.

As she points out that he looks very nice, Mann looks increasingly uncomfortable with his attraction to Finnegan and quickly leaves sporting an erection that is much more visible than it should be due to his tight silver cat suit.

5. Allow the band to perform

The ideal platform in which a band can promote their music is by performing live on a television show. However, seeing that it uses elephants, monkeys and tigers as its sound effects, it appears that the song is not being performing live.

This is a classic case of a record company not pumping enough money for promoting the difficult second single. Now if it was ‘Spaceman’ then there was no doubt that there would have been an attempt to find real aliens to perform with Babylon Zoo. Here, EMI could not even afford to fork out for a live satellite link up with various animals at Chester Zoo (seeing that This Morning was filmed in Liverpool at this point).

If using animal noises to reflect an ‘animal army’ seems pretentious enough, it does not match Mann’s attempts signing by a country mile. The result somehow ends up like Billy Corgan impersonating an Asian whilst putting on a Wolverhampton accent on at the same time.

Despite this, for a song to be commercially successful, it needs to pass the ultimate litmus test; seamlessly joining in with the end credits of a television show. If it manages to flow with the end credits perfectly and does not seem to be out of place then it is destined to be a hit, but if it does not then it probably will flop. Their performance of ‘Animal Army’ is a valiant attempt but ends up failing in the end. Maybe if the end credits were in a different font or scrolling in a different direction then maybe things could have been different.

Part 2 – Interviewing a popstar after the peak of their fame and when they become a washed-up ‘rockstar’… with Andi Peters

In this part, Andi Peters attempts to interview Babylon Zoo circa October 1996 on his short-lived ITV Saturday morning show ‘The Noise’ is discussed. Despite the fact that ‘The Noise’ was a music show that was shown just before ‘The ITV Chart Show’ and showed exactly the same music, it was one of the greatest televisual concepts that no-one ever watch. Just like how ‘Teleganticmegavision’ was.

1. Make sure that you have made a real effort in choosing the location of the shoot.

Here Peters suggests that the interview is filmed in Warsaw. However, due to his camp lisp, he manages to manipulate the audience as there are actually in Walsall; precisely outside Pete Waterman’s estate. Interestingly, he also decides to introduce Jas Mann by pronouncing his name as ‘Jazz Man’.

Due to Andi’s busy schedule he has also decided to conduct this interview in his favourite fancy dress costume (which is confidently his favourite piece of clothing that he wears non-stop). This is an exact copy of Carlton Banks’ outfit on ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’. The outfit is complete with the obligatory Jeep rucksack.

2. Make sure that you catch your interview at a low.

Peters has picked the perfect time to interview Mann, as he has put on at least five stone and seems to have an uncontrollable cocaine addiction. Probably from several late night crystal meth sessions with Judy Finnegan. This led to slaying his entire leopard collection for his coat, not washing his hair for 27 weeks. This is in addition to showing an extreme amount of paranoia, where he feels that everyone is viewing him and that he is a news reporter-cum-spoons scientist.

Even though his profile at the beginning of the clip states that he is from Wolverhampton, it does not say which part of the UK he lives in. This is probably an attempt to avoid being sent to Guantanamo Bay and being locked in a medium-level secured psychiatric hospital. He definitely does look like he has just returned from a holiday in Barbados with the Happy Mondays.

Mann does seems to know that his time is up, especially as his accent has turned into a broad Wolverhampton one. This shows that he is willing to return back to his roots and is near suicidal about his current state of mind.

However, his ego stops him from publicly admitting this. Mann, therefore, comes up with increasingly arrogant anecdotes. This reaches a high when he talks about a German family stalking him and his sister outside his house in Wolverhampton, and his anger at ‘Animal Army’ knocking ‘Spaceman’ off the number one spot in Greece. I doubt though that a family from Germany really did travel to Wolverhampton just to take pictures of his sister… that seems as ludicrous as stalking Adrian Coote.

3. Be constantly negative

Peters decides to take advantage of Mann’s deteriorating mental state, by attempting to stitch Mann up good and proper so he can become the new Jeremy Paxman. The interview has a constant feeling of negativity as he asks Mann if he regrets putting ‘Spaceman’ on the infamous Levis commercial and saying that he could be seen as bonkers. Mann brilliantly retorts Peters by stating that everyone else is bonkers except him, and you must be correct if you say that as there is no psychological testing that could prove that this is incorrect.

This negativity extends as Peters seems to refuse to promote his new single ‘The Boy With the X-Ray Eyes’ adequatley. All that is mentioned is a short question about the concept of the song, and a short period where the new single is being played as background music. Yet the video clips of ‘Spaceman’ and ‘Animal Army’ are played.

If anyone does wonder what the ‘Boy With the X-Ray Eyes’ sounds like then it sounds exactly the same as ‘Animal Army’ does but without the sound affects. Mann however does decide to change his singing style as he now sounds like Billy Corgan impersonating a Wolverhampton accent whilst gargling an entire jug of water at the same time.

Peters then decides to be a backstabbing bastard by trying his best not to appear biased at all by saying that it is morbid to suggest that there would be no Babylon Zoo. Life is truly morbid without Babylon Zoo. Andi Peters, what a cunt. Even Richard and Judy had more respect for him.

To end this blog, Jas Mann was in the 1980’s and early 1990’s indie group ‘The Sandkings’. They are surprisingly pretty decent, with melodies reminiscent of Mega City Four and Teenage Fanclub. Personally, they were very unlucky to be bigger than they were as they do appear to sound ahead of their time. To give Jas Mann some credit, here’s one of their finest songs, ‘Hope Springs Eternal’.

Ok first things first, Jukebox Cinema is a new section were i’m going to be putting up posts about films. It could be a new upcoming release, it could be an old favourite of mine, it could be an absolutely devastatingly bad film that me and my friends have vocally torn to shreds over and over (Cradle of Fear springs to mind) yet still find ourselves somehow drawn to watching it or last but not least it could be just any old film i fancy writing about. So why the jukebox part in the title? Well all the films will be accompanied by mp3’s that are somehow related to them either through subject matter or title so thats where the “jukebox” comes in….

DISTRICT 9

District 9 is an alien/sci-fi film set in a pre-millenium Johannesburg. It’s directed by Neill Blomkamp, you may recognise the name. He was apparently due to make the movie adaption of Halo before the project fell on its arse, so to speak. Its also produced by Peter Jackson (he of LotR fame).

The storyline is pretty simple so i won’t go into to much detail. Aliens land in South Africa, the military and government find them, house them in a Government refugee camp and keep them quarantined from human society in an area called District 9. Then the fun begins….

It’s released over here on the 4th September (next Friday), i can’t wait to go see it.

Mp3’s
1. Blink 182 – Alien’s Exist
2. Monster Magnet – Space Lord
3. Prodigy – Out Of Space
4. Radiohead – Subterranean Homesick Alien
5. Unicorn Kid – Wee Monsters
6. Mogwai – Angels Versus Aliens
7. Spacemen3 – Take Me to the Other Side
8. Muse – Space Dementia
9. Suicide – Spaceship
10. Babylon Zoo – Spaceman

BONUS VIDEO

Postal Service – The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

I was the one worth leaving………

S.I.T Wolf  X

'Trapped' by Jeho Bitancor

“My purpose is to tell of bodies
that have been changed into shapes of different kinds”

-Ovid, Metamorphoses

Do we read pictures or do pictures ‘read’ us?

In a time when we are bombarded with an excess of images, we, paradoxically, lack a shared vocabulary to interpret in an in-depth manner the images that we encounter. In the 17th or 16th  centuries, men do have a shared vocabulary whether they are viewing a still life painting, religious art or court-commissioned portraits.

Although the world of advertising and mass media has appropriated for us the interpretation of these images, for example, a car to convey status and wealth, a bottle of perfume to signify youth and beauty, fashion to indicate identity, etcetera, the efficient and speedy consumption of these images precludes in-depth or transcendent learning.

For this blog on reading paintings or pictures, I select two paintings from contemporary Philippine artists. One is Jeho Bitancor’s “Trapped” shown at BlueLine Gallery in Makati City last September 2008, and the other is “Inquisition Symphony No. 3,” by Tyago Almario (exhibited a few weeks ago at Blanc Gallery, also in Makati) which I fleetingly commented on in a previous blog (See ‘Babylon Zoo’).

From my own uninformed position as a common viewer, I read Bitancor’s ‘Trapped’ as a masterful indictment of the vicious cycle of blind consumption. Here we see beastly, mutant-like creatures crouching on fours, and picking on fallen apples. These mutant figures are seemingly roaming in a circle, against a dark, cloudy background, with the shaded or shadowy arcade of columns where similar faceless creatures hang lifeless.

In this claustrophobic space Bitancor painted right upfront, the greenish and glowing outlines of a car and a house or tower-like building, reminiscent of the cutting or splashing lines one sees in the paintings of Francis Bacon. There is no ambiguity here, and we are made part of the malevolent and sombre space that offers no horizon. Or escape.

Inquisition Symphony # 3 by Tyago Almario

Almario’s “Inquisition Symphony No.3,”  is one of a handful of pictures which form part of the second in a series of a two-man exhibit with fellow artist C.J. Tanedo. The paintings by both artists show human forms with heads of birds and skeletal remains, and the road show is titled ‘Babylon Zoo,’ referring to the Biblical city where humankind was condemned to an eternal state of incomprehension.

In Biblical times representations of human forms are taboo, and the Talmud for instance warn against creators of ‘graven images.’ The prohibition resulted to pictures of inanimate objects and in some illustrated ancient Mid-East manuscripts I saw in a museum in Berlin, living or human forms were depicted with birds heads to hide the human features. Tanedo and Almario employed the same in their works for Babylon Zoo and Inquisition Symphony struck me as a fitting companion piece for Bitancor’s ‘Trapped’ in the depiction of human abasement.

In Inquisition, though, we see a horizon, the immediate past of the crouching headless male figures with broken backs. These male figures seem to be advancing forward. Hovering over the male figures are sinister ravens or crows, conventional symbols for death and bad omen. Both men and birds are presented within the same space or visual plane as the viewer, and although there is a surreal or private ambiguity in Almario’s work, the human figures confront the viewer in a hyper realistic and absolute manner.

Two masterful and unapologetic pieces from two Filipino artists!  Viewing these works I am reminded of the quote from Ovid’s Metamorphoses which prefaced this blog.

Can we read pictures? Indeed we can, for the experience of art can be understood if we take the effort and submit to the discourse. After all, and however fantastic the recreated world is, what the artist presents is a part of human experience.

Music in advertising can have a massive impact and there are mental associations which have been zapped into our brain by apparently ignored ad breaks that can stay with us forever in a really big way.

At a performance of The Nutcracker Suite, there must be some 80% or more of the audience internally singing “Everyone’s a fruit and nutcase” when that tune arrives, and I know for a fact that no one ever hears The New World Symphony without thinking about bread.

Another example I remember from my youth was the apparently golden touch of being included in an Advert for Levi’s Jeans; whatever song got used in the latest advertising campaign seemed to shoot straight to number one. That was clearly a double edged sword though, as is demonstrated by the further careers of Stiltskin and Babylon Zoo. 

Yes, a powerful message that can’t be found in words can be transmuted through music and boy, don’t advertisers know it! It seems like choosing the right song is at least as important as any tagline or fancy animation. When they find the right tune, it gets crowbarred in at all costs.

At all costs:

In 2006, the AA made an advert that portrayed them as your friend in times of need, and someone to turn to when things go wrong (although presumably such mishaps would have to be limited to auto breakdowns for them to be of much help). To hit that message home with extra clout, the used the Carole King classic ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ which seems to be tailor made for the message they were trying to put across.

Evidently not tailor made enough to actually fit into the advert though, as some trigger happy editing guy proved in the final cut:

Hmm, that’s not how I remember it sounding. I did a quick beat count of the chorus, and it basically washes out as 7/4, 4/4, 4/4, 7/4, 4/4. 7/4 (by rights there should be another bar of 4 in there, but the editor didn’t seem to like that one) and then gets vaguely confusing at the end.

I’m not sure whether is a genius reimagining or a complete indiscriminate butchery of the song.

What is more, this doesn’t seem to be an isolated case. I’ve noticed tons of ads recently which merrily shave beats off here and there to fit the song in exactly with whatever’s going on on the screen and inadvertantly create jarringly weird versions of the songs they’re using.

I’m not a purist by any means, and I’m not even particularly offended by it all, but it just seems weird and slightly counter-intuitive.

On the other hand for all I know to non-musicians ears, it might all sound totally normal because all the words are present and correct and the phrasings are sort of intact. (As a point of interest, the punk band NOFX used to have an amazing tendency to just shave words off the end of lines so they’d be more pleasing musically, which resulted in some very confusing lyrics that would only become clear when you read what they should’ve been off the sleeve notes).  

Please, please post below and tell me if you’ve noticed this, or if I’m just going crazy. If you have, include some youtube links and I might do a big ‘best of’ and blow the whole racket wide open.

Tyago Almario's Inquisition Symphony No.3

Running for the last week at the Blanc Gallery in Makati City, Philippines, is the two-man show of artists C.J. Tanedo and Tyago Almario titled ‘Babylon Zoo.’   I first got acquainted with the work of C.J. Tanedo last year when I saw his piece ‘A Dreaded Sunny Day’ at West Gallery.

Employing traditional painting techniques, albeit highly textured and glazed, CJ’s unusual choice of subjects and themes caught my attention. I made a mental note:  here is an artist going against the tide that is sweeping the current Philippine art scene.

I don’t claim to be an expert on the latest contemporary Philippine art, but to me it was obvious that CJ is doing something that his ‘more-sought’ contemporaries have totally avoided or ignored. Going against the pull of the mainstream or refusing to succumb to the tendencies of what is generally approved or admired is a tough stance for any artist, and particularly to an artist whose art is also a main source of livelihood. The death knell for any artist is to handle his brush as dictated by the siren call of the all-too-powerful art market.

From what I gathered from the press announcements, the current Babylon Zoo exhibit is the second of a series, probably the second to the last (I stand corrected here) which is planned this coming July. I wouldn’t rely or go deeply into the introduction about the show in Blanc, but the show title refers to the infamous Babylon, a classic Biblical myth describing the mankind’s downfall. In the two-man show, the idea of a downfall is further reinforced by the idea of beastly creatures, or half-human, half beasts.

CJ Tanedo's Homage to Putridity

For the purposes of this short, cursory blog, I will focus my concluding comments on one piece, the ‘Inquisition Symphony No.3’ done by Tyago Almario, CJ’s collaborator in this project. The piece stopped me on my track. This is a matter of taste or preference, but my own personal meter of what an authentic , remarkable art is a work that provides a sort of sting, something similar to that tinge or humming excitement when a tuning fork or a metal detector stirs into action the moment it detects something vibrant beneath the ground.

Both Tanedo and Almario’s works are unapologetic, but its power may lie not so much in technique but in the imagined world recreated by their brush. In Almario’s Inquisition Symphony,  the landscape is barren and nearly lifeless, where mutated human forms and ravens (harbingers of death and gloom) co-exist. Or rather the mutated human forms barely exist, their near broken forms animated only by the quack of the sinister, winged creatures.

It is the task of art historians to reflexively search for context, comparisons and the impulses or motives behind the art work, and in this case, the Philippine culture often analyzed and examined for its defects and shortcomings, should provide the basis of scrutiny.  But Tanedo and Almario’s Babylon Zoo project can find resonance even outside the Philippine experience. And if tied to local experience their art can be read as the writing on the wall.

This approach may be regarded as heavy-handed, but for two young artists to venture into a bleak landscape requires audacity, the very same nerve and vibrancy that would hit the viewer when they are confronted with the bizarre world and atypical creatures. And this is precisely the reason why we need art: to have a full grasp of that tuning fork that connects us to a living and flowing source.

Counterfeit, works by Tanedo (left) and Almario

STAINES  HOBGOBLIN
Sunday 25th January 2009

Gravity is Dead

But There is Plenty to Hold On To

It is said that gravity is much weaker than it should be. They say that this is because it has the ‘other’ eleven-or-so dimensions  to deal with. They say this will all be revealed once we start to get results from the Large Hadron Collider. So, to quote Laura Veirs, it does look like “Gravity is Dead”.

When the Surrey band of the same name came to the stage at The Hobgoblin, Staines last Sunday I said to myself, “Go on surprise me…make me go whoop”.  And this they did.
‘Gravity is Dead’ is a local garage punk band who can achieve moments of blinding and uplifting brilliance and also plunge the wells of the purest yet darkest thoughtfulness. The heavy-ish choppy guitar sounds are insistent and tight- reaching melodic highlights at times and reminding me of vintage Lightning Seeds.

Their combined musical ability is all-too-real and the slow-burning ‘You Don’t Understand’ starts with Led Zep ‘Stairway’ type unplugged sounding chords before tapping out much more complex rhythms and building up to an intense and satisfying conclusion.

To the question, put to the audience by lead singer James, “What’s Your Name?” the answer was a feeble ‘Nigel’ hollered from the back of the room, near to the gents bogs. Then the band replied by playing an upbeat and harmonic tune with plenty of colourful melodic phrases ( more ‘Vines’  than ‘Hellacopters’ but in the same tradition as both.) Slowest song of all in the band’s scrapbook was the genteel swayer “Put Up A Fight” packed with plenty of feel-good colours and tones. A jamboree bag of the most comforting vibes.

When I slipped off to the gents, the pub’s resident-in-chief Mersey-born piss-head said to me, in his drunken state, “Tunes…they are all just tunes…and I suppose if you like tunes then you’ll like this lot.”  And, even if he was not trying to be complementary, he was right.

Clean-cut Joe Williams’ lead guitarwork is insistent and threatening – think of the Swedish ‘Hives’ guitarist Vigilante Carlstroem to get the idea- but each nuance and squeak is optimized and tweaked by this ‘city-trader’ looking control-freak to get the most out of the frets. Joey Godzikowski (drums) rattles out a good solid blaze-of-glory beat without unnecessary flourishes or flamboyance.  Long haired (starve a hippy) bass-player Ben Sinfield is as reliable as an Army Hummer on a dusty desert track in the Kandahar province; Muttering firmly onwards, he is not looking too hard for any trouble.

Most of the focus of the crowd is on the red-fringed centre-forward named James Tate (vocals and guitar) whose controlled aggression reminded me of a Spanish matador… gradually wearing down the prizebull (in this case the crowd) with his patient toying and exciting, yet casual, flirtations with peril. Tinkering with tragedy-  he keeps the crowd t-t-tense with anticipation. And then finally, when we cannot take the intensity any more, he rises for the kill.

And so the songs continued, always played with a ribald punky edge, towards the coup de grâce conclusion of the self-titled
song ‘Gravity is Dead’ that yearns to be a major hit and is built as solidly and as proudly as the hurricane bow of an aircraft carrier. Powerful, commanding and secretly deadly.

But then, when the final stage of the performance was all but over and the faena was complete, the braying crowd started to plead for mercy and just one more, final, song. So ‘Space’, the band’s most famous track, was dusted down and presented by James as a tasty treat. It was provided as an after thought. A bit like the host of a posh dinner party forgetting the after-eight mints at the end of the meal and so offering them to the guests as they bundled, blinking, out of the front door.  This song starts like the Muse song ‘Take A Bow’ and also kinda reminds me a lot of the Wolverhampton art-rockers Zoo Babylon track ‘Spaceman’ both in lyrical content and in ambition. It was a great final course but would’ve been better if served with coffee…

So, before you get too worried about losing your grip on this- or any other world, (at least for the moment) – I think you can assume that ‘gravity can hold you down… ‘

© Neil_Mach
Jan 2009

Link:

www.myspace.com/gravityisdead



staines
live music
rock music
gigs

Feedburn This

I’d come back after work and found the house a total state. There
was a huge pool of dirty water in the living room and my girlfriend was
lying by the fire. She’d become a smack addict and had to have both her
legs amputated. She was preparing some smack for this other guy who was
kneeling beside her. He looked like Paul Raven from Killing Joke. She
said “Alright dear, this is [K]… he plays bass in Babylon Zoo.”

There are certain songs people never forget. They lurk in the back of your heads just waiting for the right moment to pop out and say “Hey! Remember me?”. Some people call them oldies but goldies, others refer to them as one hit wonders. I just call them for what they are. Superb creations of pure genius putting most artists today to shame! I loved the music from the 90s, partly because these are the songs I grew up with. By now, you might wonder. “What the hell is this guy talking about?”

I am talking about the lyrics for the song Zoo Babylon – Spaceman.

I haven’t heard this song in many years but I will never forget the chorus. Not because of the lovely melody or the music video. It is the lyrics! After all these years, I still can’t decide wheither the lyrics are the ravings of another deranged hermit or if they are missunderstood poetry.

It is mostly the chorus that interests me. It basically goes “Spaceman, i’ve always wanted you to go into space, man!” It feels like something a squirrel high on something green would say. If you listen to the rest of the lyrics, you will just be more confused. Personally, I like it! Click Here for a direct link to the lyrics.

Hace ya unos cuantos años, concretamente doce,  este grupo de un solo éxito o one-hit-wonder, sacó al mercado este sencillo titulado Spaceman. Este sencillo, en un principio, tan solo incluía la parte rock del mismo excluyendo el inicio un tanto electrónico que fue lo que finalmente le daría mucha más fama a este sencillo.

Aqui teneis este viejo éxito para rememorarlo o definitivamente olvidarlo.

Pd. Adoramos a Rihanna.

This morning I introduced my little sister, who is eleven, to as much music as I could that didn’t contain swearing, before she had to go back downstairs.

See, I’m leaving home in a few months, and as the older sister, it’s my duty to leave her with loads of amazing music so she doesn’t get corrupted by really rubbish music when I’m gone lol…

I introduced her to Fall Out Boy, You Me At Six, Angels & Airwaves, Boys Like Girls, My Chemical Romance and this old song called Spaceman by Babylon Zoo…it’s not often that someone else takes an interest in my music, let alone a member of my family, so it was an exhilarating experience to be dancing on my bed to music with my younger sister, and not arguing for once

Download the Cheer Up Songs Podcast here

Cheer Up Songs podcast

I’m thoroughly uplifted after recording the Songs to Cheer You Up Podcast. Thanks for all who left suggestions including new blog buddies VonPip and Monscooch. Next week I’m looking for your top 5 songs from ads. They can be ones that always remind you of a brand (e.g. Republica, Ready To Go), ones with infectiously catchy tunes (e.g. Young Folks, Peter Bjorn and John), make you want to sing along and dance (e.g. Bohemian Like You, Dandy Warhols) or just be crazy songs (who remember Flat Eric and The Flatbeat!). Anyway, here are My Top Five what are yours?

Get your suggestions in to make the next podcast (Wednesday).

EDIT: The ever resourceful Monscooch has found this link to make things easier.

FINAL PLAYLIST

4Hero, Les Fleurs (Baileys) (Monscooch)
5 . Wouldn’t it Be Nice, The Beach Boys (Irish National Lottery)

Uncle Pat, Ash (Heineken) Kate

4. Heartbeats, Jose Gonzalez (Sony Bravia) (rut)

Disseminated, Soul Coughing (Ford Transit) (Matt & K.Tee)3. A Little Less Conversation, Elvis Presley vs. JXL (Nike Football)

Fantastic Cat, Takako Minewa susan, Julie

2. Mr. Brightside, The Killers (Champion Sports)

Let’s Dance, Paula Flynn (Liam & Jane) (Ballygowan)
1. Spaceman, Babylon Zoo (Levi Jeans)

Also, as requested by a My Top Five reader, I’ve now put the full playlist of the podcast on the relevant posts. Keep the feedback coming folks.

This weeks blog came from a suggestion from a regular reader of the blog who wanted to know my opinions regarding music on adverts, so here we go . . .

Songs featured on adverts have helped launch a whole cacophony of musician’s careers and are responsible for more one hit wonders then I could care to mention, but how often is it that someone actually makes a solid career out of it?

The blog title is a reference to your favourite aussie rockers and mine; Jet. When ‘Are you gonna be my girl’ first hit the screens as the soundtrack to that shiny Vodaphone advert, the whole nation was pretty much hooked and I’m no exception. I thought, and still think, that it’s a cracking track and I can honestly say I can’t see me ever not dancing to it when I’ve had umpteen pints and it gets played on a Monday night in the Leadmill. Because of that song, I both bought the album and went to see them live, both of which were mediocre at best (and they were actually one of the supports for Aerosmith this weekend but I very wisely went to watch ‘Kids In Glass Houses’ instead). Although I wasn’t impressed by them, I believe Jet are a band who ‘outgrew’ the advert that made them famous, so in that sense, it worked for them.

Then you get Wolverhampton’s infamous Babylon Zoo. Spaceman: The track that’s interesting and quirky for 30 seconds with the crazy little voice but then becomes infuriatingly bad for the next 3 minutes. At the time, it was the fastest selling single ever, it then went on to stay at number 1 for 5 weeks selling, get this, 893,000 copies!

But have they lost out? Babylon Zoo are basically now in our memories just for us to take the mick out of them when we’re all having a pint, (“oh yeah, I remember that, I actually bought it!”) but selling that many records may have made him a few pretty pennies. That’s if he kept hold of his copyright of course.

Having your music synched with adverts is incredibly lucrative and can be worth a load of cash, especially if you’re an unsigned or new act. Lets be honest, if you can barely get together the petrol money for that gig in Widnes, it’s going to be hard to turn down 14k for your best song to be used on a Ribena advert isn’t it?

I think that’s where the bigger question comes in: once a band is financially stable and doesn’t really need the money anymore, is selling your music to multinational conglomerates for them to use on their new car adverts considered ’selling out’?

What is selling out anyway these days? Bob Dylan is selling his records in Starbucks! STARBUCKS! The voice of a nation, neigh, a generation, is selling his records at faceless, corporate, soulless, delicious Starbucks! (which reminds me I need to do a blog about them selling music). John Lydon appearing on ‘I’m a celebrity…’, again, what the hell is that about?

I’ve gone off the point here a bit, sorry.

So does the product that your music will be synched with matter? If I was a songwriter, and someone really cool like BMW approached me as they wanted to use ‘Love will tear you a new one’ on the new mini advert and for that they’d give me £5k and a brand new mini cooper s with the john cooper works on there. I’m not going to lie; I think I’d struggle to say no.

One of Sentric’s artists ‘The Alphites’ are going to be on Hollyoaks in the next few weeks, (and although not an advert, a similar argument applies) and it’s going to be interesting to see the effect it has on their career. The Alphites know who their key demographic is and Hollyoaks is quite simply quintessential to their target audience’s lives; so why should they not do it?

What do you lot think?

I am in no way a music snob. If I like it I like it. Be it rock, pop, hip hop, jazz, blues, acid house, Christian rock etc, so I genuinely don’t think if a songs been on an advert its going to change my perception of it.

I’d still buy Muse even if they were advertising Cillit Bang

What I’m listening to this week: Jack Penate (saw him last week and he was ace live. Got a right set of pipes on him) and Zed Bias

Stay tuned

sP