Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Gordon in the morning: In which Gordon has trouble understanding a competition aimed at teenage girls

You - yes, YOU - could have "a date" with Harry Styles and Liam Payne. If you win it.

Gordon has all the details, although apparently hasn't read through them:

ONE DIRECTION are taking part in a charity auction that is bound to inspire a bidding frenzy.

As one of the prizes, HARRY STYLES and LIAM PAYNE will be giving away a joint date to help raise money for cancer charity Trekstock.
Err... except the charity sale isn't an auction, so it won't be "inspiring a bidding frenzy". In fact, Gordon seems to realise this later on:
Even small donations will be entered in the draw but you’ve got to be over 13 to get involved.
We've seen the Mail and the Mail On Sunday subtly rubbishing each other's stories; this, surely, is the first time ever an article's second half gently rubbishes the first half.


Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Face '83: 23 Skidoo

They called it a coup. The track sampled from Apocalypse Now; it would go on to be sampled by The Chemical Brothers in its turn. Oh, and they pulled in Aswad's horn section. In fact, if 23 Skidoo had bothered to stick out a seven-inch version, they might even have had a hit with this.

So were the Face right to applaud this?



Yes. Indeed, they chose it as a recording of the year despite the official release not even coming until February 1984.

The Face 16; History 11.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Mann Parrish

Hip Hop Be Bop (Don't Stop) got more releases than a member of The Timpson family; eventually it settled for a place in history by appearing on the Shaun Of The Dead soundtrack.

Mann was still a way off from doing Male Stripper, and since without that track, this track would probably have sunk into half-forgotten disregard.



I think history is starting to overhaul the Face's judgement.

The Face 15; History 11.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Newcleus

I suppose there's some kudos in having a song called "The Wikki-Wikki song" at a time when Jimmy Wales had yet to unfurl his first 'donate now' banner, but...



Oh, lord, make it stop.

The very definition of acceptable in the 80s. For about five minutes.

The Face 15; History 10.

[Part of The Face's best 1983 recordings]


Face '83: Nile Rodgers

Another full-album, this time from Nile Rodgers. This was the first outing he made under his own name, and you can see why the Face wanted to be impressed by Adventures In The Land Of The Good Groove.

Here's the title track:



Hmmm. Smash Hits gave it ten out of ten, and David Bowie was enthusiastic. But it was called Adventures In The Land Of The Good Groove.

In order to weigh up this one, let's call an expert witness. Niles himself talks about the record in his autobiography, and... well, he doesn't endorse the Smash Hits ten stars:

"I knew it was a flop right away. I'd been so afraid of being labelled a disco musician that I was too tentative about the album's direction. And the songs weren't hooky enough. Over all, I wasn't clear philosophically or sure what I was trying to say."
If it's not good enough for Niles, it's not good enough for us.

The Face 15; History 10

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Tom Waits

And we're back, as we may be for every day of the rest of our lives, as we slowly work through The Face's favourite records of 1983, to decide if their choices were wise, or if history has had the last laugh.

Look, you could at least pretend to be interested.

The next choice from the list is Swordfishtrombones. The whole album. Which is a win for the face, if only because this track inspired one of the great online pseudonyms of our times:



Face 15; history 9.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Yasiin Bey experiences force-feeding as Gitmo protest

The US government are currently force-feeding prisoners, during Ramadan, at a sort-of prison they're supposedly trying to close down.

In an attempt to try and show what that force-feeding means, Yasiin Bey - who used to work as Mos Def - has had a go at being on the wrong end of the process. It's not pretty.


Lauryn Hill goes away

So, with the million in unpaid taxes finally catching up with her, Lauryn Hill has started her prison sentence:

Hill reported to federal prison in Danbury, said Ed Ross, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons. Inmates at the minimum security prison live in open dormitory-style living quarters and are expected to work jobs such as maintenance, food service or landscaping.
Landscaping? If they've got all their inmates landscaping, the prison grounds must look like Schloss Linderhof.


Nitro scooped up onto Bicycle

I'm not sure it's entirely "punk" to be doing company take-overs, but Bicycle Music Company has acquired Nitro, adding The Offspring and The Damned catalogue to an already hefty collection of everything from Phil Ochs to Tone Loc.


Monday, July 08, 2013

Face '83: Shannon

So, we're considering reissues outwith the scope of this project (thank god for that, eh, otherwise it'd drag on for what feels like forever); and I think we're all familiar enough with Little Red Corvette to let that through on the nod (Face 14; History 9).



Not only is this absolutely perfect, but The Face picked it as one of the best songs in 1983 almost as soon as it was minted, and for that, they deserve our respect.

Face 15; history 9.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983, to which we shall return, again, until we get through the list. It's just your time you're wasting.]


Face '83: The Style Council

When this video first appeared, Number One screengrabbed the arse out of it, running a 'Warning: Ear fondling' splash on the contents page.

It was about as close as you could get to homoeroticism without feigning an interest in novels where people drink tea back then.



Of course, fans of his previous band never warmed to the whole Style Council project - but then Merton Parkas fans knew what they liked, and were slow to change. That Weller guy is in it, too.

I'm minded to award the point for this round to The Face, but history is objecting. History's fans are on their feet, chanting "cappuccino kid" over and over again.

A slim victory for The Face, I think. Face 13; history 9.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Malcolm McLaren again

Oh, god. Having already thrown its elegantly-typographed weight behind the whole Duck Rock album, The Face then decides to single out, erm, the single Soweto:



Even at the time, this seemed like a bad idea. To be generous, it was three years before Paul Simon made a higher-profile attempt to convince South African musicians they really needed a pasty-faced bloke bellowing over the top to make their work listenable.

Jon Savage loves the track - he was writing in 2010, as well, which you thought would have at least afforded him a spot of perspective.

It's hard to see this as anything other than a miserable holiday in somebody else's cheap labour. Face 12; History 8.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Gwen Guthrie

So time to take another quick dip into The Face's best recordings of 1983, in a bid to decide if The Face, or the cruel hand of history, is a better judge of music.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Face is 11-7 up on its calls so far, as we pick up Gwen Guthrie's Portrait album.

This was three years before Guthrie's statuesque Ain't Nothing Going On But The Rent, so it was a strong early call from The Face.



Guthrie died in 1999, and surely is due some sort of critical revival by now.

Face 12; history 7.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Katy Perry settles her bad hair deal

Katy Perry has come to an agreement with GHD after she was convinced they'd "verbally extended" her contract as face of their hair products (spokescalp?), and they were equally convinced they hadn't.

Perry had been looking for two million dollars; it's not clear if she's getting any cash, but GHD would probably view that anything they have to pay out is worth the ability to issue perhaps the cattiest statement in legal history:

But the company disputed the agreement ever took place and insisted it wanted to cut ties with Perry as soon as its original deal expired because its research suggested she is no longer as popular in Europe as she once was.
Don't you think she looks tired


Gordon in the morning: Gallagher rumbles on

Good news for Gordon - so far, it looks like Dan Wootton hasn't been given any more days of the week to be in charge of showbiz.

This means Gordon can turn again to that battle of wits, or portions thereof, between Liam Gallagher and Robbie Williams.

About six years after Williams had the last word, Liam has come up with a response.

You might recall Williams suggested that Liam think about adding choruses to his song. Sadly, Liam's not going to take that lying down:

“We didn’t make a record to satisfy some requirements, this was our project. Robbie Williams said the record’s good but the songs have no chorus. I’d rather shoot myself in the balls than follow his advice."
Just the balls, mind.

The idea that Beady Eye sprang from some sort of project, almost deconstructionist in its scope, to satisfy no requirements is a surprise. You'd have expected something a little more astonishing if that really was the case, but maybe it's like when you first let rescue birds out a cage, and they just hang around where they know because they don't know how to roam free.

Sorry, Liam, you were saying?
“I do not listen to other music, so I don’t get my inspiration from anybody else, but maybe I should buy an iPod.”
An iPod. Bless. Maybe he'll look into buying a fax machine and getting Ceefax too.

But Liam, your claim that you don't listen to other music is a lie, and not even an interesting one, given how you were praising Emeli Sande the other day.
Meanwhile, Beady Eye have been asked to change the cover of their record because it has nipples on it.

Liam pretends to be anything other than delighted that anyone has even noticed he's got a record out:
Liam said: “Everyone has nipples, they could have put tape on it if they had to.”
... after all, it's not like any shop is going to have many copies; it'd only take a minute or so, right?

I think the real tragedy for Liam is that, if there has been an angry battle being fought over the oh-so-obvious 'put a tit on the sleeve, generate some publicity' move, nobody seems to have noticed that, either.

Gordon concludes this dash through the mind of Mr G by capturing his reaction to the cool response to the album from people who got past the sleeve:
He’s also not been best pleased by some of the reviews it’s had.

He added: “Ultimately the only thing I care about is how people react to the live shows.”

Good mantra to live by.
It's not really a good mantra to live by, though, is it? I suppose many bands past their prime do continue to make a decent living from touring, but given that Gallagher is already edging into "and do you have a smaller auditorium available" booking territory, "making a record which sells some copies" might be a better mantra to live by.

Still: Liam doesn't care what people say about the record.

Which is surprising news, since about four paragraphs back he was preparing to shoot his own balls off in response to, erm, Robbie William's capsule review.


Sunday, July 07, 2013

Face '83: Evelyn "Champagne" King

There was a lot of this sort of thing around in 1983. There was a lot of this sort of thing on offer in The Face's list of best records.

It's not bad, it's just, when you look at what it is a very long list of records, and start wondering why nobody thought a spot of editing was called for, you can see this being struck through in front of your very eyes.

Still, here's Evelyn doing her thing on Soul Train. It's worth remembering that this song, Get Loose, was not set in space, or the future, or a nuclear facility. Pity Eve didn't remember that when picking her outfit.



[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

We'll be rejoining the project tomorrow, with The Face's judgement scoring 11 against the judgement of history's 7.


Face '83: Rufus & Chaka Khan

Somewhat missing the point, the Rocklist list for this credits Rufus but makes no mention of Chaka Khan, which you've got to hope is an error in translation rather than a mistake in the Face's original.

This is unquestionably great. Apparently it nearly ended up as a track on Thriller, but Quincy Jones was too slow and by the time he asked, it had been promised to Russ Titelman. You wonder which of the makeweight tracks on Thriller would have been tossed overboard to make room for Aint Nobody if Jones had been quicker - one suspects Paul McCartney could have safely saved a journey to the recording studio.



The Face's judgement 11; the judgement of history 6

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Was (Not Was)

1983's version of Out Come The Freaks was the second of a none-more-Douglas-Adams four-part trilogy. It came two years after the original, but was the first of the sequence to reach the UK chart. Although only 41.

Whether you think this was a wise choice for The Face or not depends entirely on how you feel about Was (Not Was). Personally, I think they tended to produce work that you'd expect would be better for all that over-thinking, but I guess that that is why I'd probably never be invited to write for i-D or Blitz. A narrow victory to The Face, I think.

10 - 6.



[Part of The Face's best recordings 1983]


Woot-ton: Dan returns to News Of The World, replaces Gordon Smart

Not that The Sun On Sunday is really the News Of The World or anything, but the title The Sun supposedly isn't keeps breaking through the carapace.

Dan Wooton's useless News Of The World showbiz column is returning to its old home.

Up until now, Gordon Smart had been offering up a seventh slice of Bizarre in the Sun Of The World; but it seems David Dinsmore has decided that Sunday readers deserved something a bit more meaty.

Dan Wootton had been showbiz editor of the News Of The World when it pretended to close following revelations of just how vague its grip of ethics was.


Face '83: Kashif

I Just Gotta have You. Is Kashif's song, with thirty years of hindsight, still able to hold its head up high?



Oh, yes. That's still pretty damn proud.

The Face 9; History 6, as we take another break from the proceedings. We'll be back to 1983 later.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Fonzi Thornton

We hit here a slightly fallow patch - given that it's virtually impossible for find Ruby Turner's Every Soul, or June Pointer's Don't Mess With Bill, online (there's a shit remix of one of the latter), let's give The Face the benefit of the doubt, and assume the originals were so glorious they ascended to heaven. 7-5.

Then there's David Bowie's Let's Dance. Not the greatest piece of Bowie's work - though, clearly, not the worst by quite a distance. Erring on the side of generosity, let's applaud The Face for supporting Bowie when a lot of popular opinion had written him off, shall we? 8-5.

Which brings us to Fonzi Thornton. A man whose Wikipedia entry kicks off with a great list of the people for whom he has provided backing vocals, while pushing the times he was at the front of the stage to the bottom of the page.

Mind you, all that work helping out others paid off when he came to make The Leader (the whole album is the Face's choice); he pulled in a bunch of favours and wound up with Luther Vandross, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, Jocelyn Brown and Kashif fleeting across the surface of the record.

It's possible that the starry cast blinded The Face to the shortcomings of the record. Thornton has gone on to appear on more than 120 further albums; only on one other occasion did he get top billing.

The Face 8; History 6.



[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: The Clark Sisters

Ten years into their career, You Brought The Sunshine was the Clark Sister's biggest crossover hit; it came at a tough time as their decision to consort with mammon by playing the Grammy awards left the group detached from their church, and their mother.

Gospel experts insist that there's a distinct "Clark Sound", which might be the case if you listen to a lot of gospel music, but I'm not convinced.

Still, a song which caused a mini-Reformation style spasm in a church has to be treated with respect.

Face 6; History 5.



[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Tina Turner

If you're just joining us, this is a rather long-haul project which is pitting the judgement of The Face magazine against the judgement of history. It's all about trying to establish if the Face was able to spot style in 1983 or not. Or something.

We left off with the score at four-all.

Let's leave unembedded Kiss FM Mastermixes Vol. II - because if you're a style guide, no matter how good a compilation album is, it's like opening a pop-up restaurant to host somebody else's tasting menu. 4-5.

Which brings us to Let's Stay Together. Tina Turner.



Back in 1983, Tina Turner was quite something. She'd skilfully executed a come-back in the face of quite some serious "squawking granny" hostility (people who think the gentle-joshing the Stones get is real agism should dig out some of the cuttings) and two enormous flop albums; and there was this - a perfect rereading of an Al Green song.

Sure, it was about to go to shit. A couple of years down the line, and the empty bombast of Simply The Best would see her extract maximum rewards from a lazily-adopted tune beloved of every shitarse furniture store and struggling sports team, while burning through goodwill as every repetition chipped away at the hard-won respect.

In 1983, though? This looked like an example of how to rebuild sales and status.

The Face 5; History 5.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Animal Nightlife

Oh, god. This is what people tend to forget about The Face - it had a sharp eye for dance music, and could run a wry ruler over pop with the best of them, but it had a fatal attraction for lumpy British soul. Any band turning up in Carnaby Street with a roll-neck sweater and a saxophonist on the payroll was treated with such awed reverence you can only assume The Face's working title was "shh... they might be able to introduce us to Paul Weller."



The Face's judgement 4; judgement of history 4.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

We'll be picking this up later...


Face '83: Malcolm McLaren

Well, as we seem to be keeping some sort of arbitrary score on the grounds of whether The Face should be blushing red for its 1983 choices, we better factor in the over-familiar tracks we've skipped so far into the reckoning.

So Michael Jackson was such an obvious choice, it counts against the idea of being taste-forming. 2-2. Blue Monday, on the other hand, might be over-familiar but still sounds fresh, they can have that. 3-2.

And Prince's 1999 could have been viewed either way by the future, so it was a brave choice, so it works as a choice. 4-2.

This brings us to Duck Rock.

I guess if you viewed Buffalo Gals, or even Double Dutch, you might consider that Trevor Horn just about saved Malc from himself. But The Face recommends the whole album.

Which means this is part of a recording they would point to and say "1983! This was the year!"



Duck For The Oyster. They don't usually mention that when they get misty-eyed about Malcolm's influence, do they?

4-3, The Face.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]


Face '83: Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock attempts to pull "if I keep out the video, MTV won't spot this is the sort of record they don't play" trick for second time. Fails to achieve Rock-It levels of success.

I wasn't impressed in 1983. I'm even less impressed now. A strike against The Face, 2-1.



[Part of The Face's best recordings 1983]


Face '83: MTume

MTume's Juicy Fruit. Coyly changing "you can lick me anywhere" to "candy kisses everywhere" in order to calm jittery broadcasters, they managed to scrape a minor UK hit and a Billboard R&B number one.

More significantly, the song has been so sampled it's impossible to imagine music without it.

Okay, The Face. You're 2-0 up.



[Part of The Face's 1983 best tracks]


The Face's Best Recordings 1983

The Face. It was soooo stylish, wasn't it? It was like, made entirely from style held together by cool. It was so ahead of the curve, it would appear through your letterbox before the paper lad had opened your front gate.

Or was it?

In a totally non-scientific survey, we're going to go back thirty years in time. Come with us to 1983, a time when the bands who appear on NME's cover today would only have been 20 to 25 years into their careers. What did The Face consider to be the very best music created in that year? Rocklistmusic.co.uk has got the list in full. We're going to dip into it...

I've been struggling a bit with the entry "Pacman by The Pacman", as it's a bugger to track this down. Is it something to do with Richard James' 1982 Pacman theme cover versions? (Presumably not, as that was under the name Power-Pill?

While that one's up for pondering, here's Christian Bale advertising a Pac-Man themed breakfast cereal:

I wonder how much he swore at the crew on that one?

Here's the list in full:

Billie Jean – Michael jackson
Blue Monday – New Order
Pills And Soap – Elvis Costello
Juicy Fruit – Mtume
1999 (LP) – Prince
Autodrive – Herbie Hancock
Duck Rock (LP) – Malcolm McLaren
Native Boy – Animal Nightlife
Kiss FM Mastermixes Vol. II (LP) – Various
Let’s Stay Together – Tina Turner
You Brought The Sunshine – Clark Sisters
Every Soul – Ruby Turner Band
Don’t Mess With Bill – Ruth Pointer
Lert’s Dance – David Bowie
The Leader (LP) – Fonzi Thornton
I Just Gotta Have You – Kashif
Out Come The Freaks (II) – Was Not Was
Ain’t Nobody – Rufus
Get Loose – Evelyn King
Portrait (LP) – Gwen Guthrie
Soweto/Zulu’s On A Time Bomb – Malcolm McLaren
Long Hot Summer – Style Council
Look At Granny Run (reissue) – Howard Tate
Little Red Corvette – Prince
Let The Music Play – Shannon
Swordfishtrombone (LP) – Tom Waits
The Land Of The Good Groove (LP) – Nile Rodgers
Jam On Revenge – Newcleus
Hip Hop Don’t Stop – Mann Parrish
Coup – 23 Skidoo
Get Wet – C Bank
Rockin Radio – Tom Browne
The Roxy – Phase Two
Power, Corruption And Lies (LP) – New Order
Soul Mining (LP) – Matt Johnson
Love Town – Booker Newbury III
Labour Of Love (LP) – UB40
Just Fascination – Cabaret Voltaire
Daddy Rollin’ Stone (reissue) – Derek Martin
Last Night A DJ Saved My life – Indeep
Une Sale Histoire – Fab Five Freddy
A Fool In Love (reissue) – Ike & Tina Turner
Thriller (LP) – Micahel Jackson
Pacman – The Pacman
Candy Girl – New Edition
Just Be Good To Me – SOS Band
Go Deh Yaka – Monyaka
I (LP) – Steve Arrington
Outstanding – The Gap Band
White Lines (Don’t Do It) – Grand Master & Melle Mel

Some of these I think we can take as so familiar as to not be worth spending time on, so let's start with Costello, shall we?



Except wasn't this released under the name The Imposter? Did The Face struggle with names?

Elvis's 1983 election-campaign counterpoint. (And, incidentally, one of the two thousand songs which might have been a better use of download-effort during the week of the Thatcher entombening.) Yeah, you can have that one, The Face.


Promotional lag: A jab at the Hutt

The music industry has a leak problem. Sure, it's not quite as bad as the fracking industry's leakage problems, as it's only music you can't buy yet leaking out, but it's still a problem.

Here's what happens: the music is finished. In order to "build buzz", the tracks are released to DJs and bloggers and other people whose mothers believe they don't quite have proper jobs. Sometimes, this can be getting on for two months ahead of when the record is actually in the shops.

In the industry's minds, this is supposed to create a vast army of people waiting outside the record shop on the Monday when the song is finally available, cramming money into the tills.

Instead, what happens is that a person hears a song they like, tries to buy it, fails, so snaffles an unlicensed version instead.

Most people looking at this problem would suggest that maybe the record business should start to sell music to people when it is available, rather than waiting a month.

The music industry doesn't see that as the solution, though, and instead has created a solution called the Promo Hutt.

The idea is that instead of waiting six weeks, now people will pay a subscription in order to get access to music six weeks before they could otherwise buy it.

Yes, the labels are trying to monetise their broken distribution system.

The obvious outcome of this - that there will be far, far more ripped copies of records you can't buy circling the internet - seems to have been missed.

Memo to the RIAA: Pop music isn't like stilton. You gain nothing by keeping it in a room for a few weeks while it develops a smell.


This week just gone


The stores from July 2003 which have been most-read over the last decade:

1. Pop papers: Paul Weller in Word, while Boy George files the New Statesman diary
2. Channel 4's The Madness of Prince Charming: Justine Frischmann narrates a life of Adam Ant
3. Pop papers: NME launches pop video chart on MTV2 while Gareth Gates overshares
4. 2003 Mercury shortlist pitches Darkness against Floetry
5. Pop papers: Jello Biafra interviews Greg Palast for Punk Planet. Hard to imagine it went out of business, isn't it?
6. "People are calling Beyonce the new Madonna" reveals Cat Deeley
7. Pop papers: In which Kelly Osborne is used to promote the Edinburgh Festival
8. Karl T watches Tin Tin Duffy in Borders
9. Pop papers: The drummer from the Coral is on the cover of the NME
10 Looking even further back, to Record Mirror's final best singles list

These were the interesting releases:


Deap Valley - Sistrionix


Download Sistrionix



Editors - The Weight Of Your Love


Download The Weight Of Your Love



The Duckworth-Lewis Method - Sticky Wickets


Download Sticky Wickets