speaking of sexy. idol. i got into it this year. what fascinated me this year of all years? drunk astroboy? andrew g’s obvious battles with the wardrobe and hair departments – dude did his best to show how NOT to wear a suit as a man who isn’t stick thin like drunk astroboy. unbutton your jacket, dude, i kept screaming at the television. andrew g cuts a fine figure but spent most of the season looking like a barrel wearing a suit with an andrew g head stuck on top.

i was also bewitched by ricki-lee to some extent, i’m still not entirely sure why. strike that. i know exactly why.

did i ever tell you i wandered the streets of perth one night with a microphone and a cardboard andrew g mask? yeah that was ME interviewing you while we queued up to get into that bar

i didn’t really pledge allegiance anywhere during the show’s run but i think in the end my favourite was the husky melburnian foghorn leghorn.

i was as intrigued by his shocking resemblance to foghorn leghorn as i was disappointed by his failure to sing “campdown races” not even once during the course of the show.

for real. mark spano, your sex was on fire. buff dude from “the lost boys”, your sax is on fire. (thanks yerock)

interrupting the play-by-play on that inquiet remix – sunday afternoon seems like a good time to drop a few notes on what music i’m listening to at the moment. nothing too fancy, just feels a little overdue.

traffic sounds leigh (host of 2ser’s tape relay who, as far as i can tell from stalking her on mess+noise, is currently whooping it up with some kind of vincent chase lifestyle) recently put me on to eero johannes, for which i’m very grateful. he is a finnish dude signed to planet mu who is the torch-bearer for an underground movement of funky scandinavian chiptunez weirdly named “skweee.” the skweee movement moves into the spotlight, with a recent feature event on sonar and, of course, a wikipedia entry.

its scandinavian, so yeah, of course its too cool for itself and way too much fun. here’s a video sampler from skweee label harmonia (eero johannes from about 1:46 with skweee anthem ‘we could be skweeroes’ – yeah, seriously):

so fun, funky, so nerdy.

what else is around here… i went out to a bar at QV last friday night and the DJ played diamonds on the soles of her shoes, technically a tood terje edit but i didn’t figure that out until later. so i went and found that, and its dumb fun. then i went and found about 20 other todd terje edits, and couldn’t really figure out what the fuss was about. same DJ played this weird holy ghost vs the message thing that was pretty bad but reminded me what a mind-blowingly great sound “hold on” has.

i’ve been getting into a couple of tracks from a label/website called moodgadget.com – a label which, as far as i can tell, has several of their artists on extended loan to ghostly (mux mool, jdsy, reflecting skin). ghostly swim was such an amazingly strong compilation (and free too!) and one of the tracks thats really holding up for me from that comp is from moodgadget’s mux mool. not sure exactly how to track the threads on the moodgadget/ghostly connection, but anyway moodgadget put out a compilation of electronic artists earlier this year called “the synchronicity suite” which acts very much like a companion piece to ghostly swim, and has some great finds on it – the greatest being, easily, a track caleld “glad i met you” from d. gookin.

MP3: Mux Mool – Night Court

MP3: D. Gookin – Glad I Met You (from xlr8r.com)

i can’t quite get into the alexis taylor record, its hard to figure out what its trying to be, if in fact its meant to be anything other than a collection of castoffs and throwaway recordings (which i think essentially it is meant to be). covering mccartney “coming up” seems obvious but its hard to hate such a loving rendition. alexis taylor’s “coming up” and max tundra’s “coming up” are like very odd bookends that now sit on either side of that early 80s mccartney pop gem.

ahhh. the new kieran hebden vs steve reid is cool, more engaging than the earlier collaborations i think. its cool that they are just putting out whatever they do, you might not enjoy every record but you can hear their process developing which is fun. trying to get into the new skeletons record but its even harder to listen to than the last. i gave the last record a lot of latitude i think because i was so enraptured by the more accessible tunes. this one… i hope it grows on me.

These hats are awesome :3

i became completely obsessed with this song a couple of weeks ago. it holds within it the secret of all music, and indeed, life and time and space. you think i’m joking? i want to throw away whatever ideas i’ve ever had about music and just start a new movement based only on what is contained in this song. you think i’m kidding? i want to coat myself in honey and jump from a tall building onto a giant piece of sourdough. you think i’m fooling around?

also – i want to meet that dad. whats your dad like?

goyter.com

coach comes from the changes EP, released last november. buy it or don’t.

also – there are, all of a sudden, a bunch of places online where you can hear new faux pas songs, works in progress, remixes, things like that:

- 3 new songs at myspace.com/iamfauxpas
- a remix of mine now appearing at myspace.com/olloollo (which comes from their recently released remix ep)
- the rad istanbul blog undomondo recently posted an edit i made of 70s kraut stoners agitation free… alongside some footage of them rolling in egyptian dunes. big thanks, considering that its only through undomondo that i found out about the track in the first place.

over at whothehell.net, blink and you would have missed jerry’s post on the digital millenium copyright act or, more accurately, about his blog’s first-hand experience of a takedown notice from the RIAA – they were asked to take down a pnau remix. never mind that they were actually sent the file by pnau’s label:

My post is just one of the many examples how this law is being misused. It’s true that the mp3, being hosted with Dreamhost a US company, falls under US court of law jurisdiction. But hosting companies are so fearful of being sued by labels, movie studios and huge bands like Metallica and U2 that as soon as they received a takedown notice they restrict access to the disputed file without even doing background checks to the validity of the notices…

One of the sites has example of how to write a counter takedown notice, so I did a simple cut and paste, filled in the details and sent it back not to Dreamhost but to antipiracy@riaa.com, letting them know that they are in no position to serve this notice in the first place because they don’t even represent the copyright owner of the song. And then I waited, to see if I’m going to be sued for blogging an mp3 I was given permission to. A few days passed, and then I received an email forward from Dreamhost, the RIAA has rescinded their notice and the file has been put back up online. It is now available again. whothehell.net 1, RIAA 0.

full article.

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in the comment boxes for the above post you’ll find dj donna summer – aka jason forrest – weighing in with gusto… this is a great opportunity for me to, first, point you towards the birthday party berlin blog being healthily maintained and furnished with pop-core type stuff by forrest and his homies over in berlin, and second, clue you in on the fact that he’s recently made all the songs on his myspace profile available for download. that includes 3 tracks from what is close to my favourite album of all time “shamelessly exciting.” go over there and do some downloading – i know you’ll do the right thing and buy the album eventually from sonig, cos of its undeniable brilliance.

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i generally only use the street press to wipe my ass with (sorry dudes, for the vitriol and for the visual!) but there’s a great interview with cool hunter sia in this week’s inpress if you are around melbourne town. i love anthony carew’s (rrr broadcaster and international pop evangelist) subtle technique – which often takes the form of a kind of sly character assassination that you don’t catch the first 2 or 3 times you read the article:

The New York-based 32-year-old was born in Adelaide, raised in a new-age, beyond-Bohemian household that seems to have ingrained in her, from the very start, the need to be self-consciously kooky. A conversation with Furler feels like an interaction with someone who’s been told, from when they were very young, how ‘crazy’ they are; like you’re privy to a kind of performance. You’re warned to expect anything, but all you end up with are quirks, smirks, and mid-interview trips to the toilet.

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finally, tv on the radio do something that i can relate to:

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and finally finally – and i fear this is going to become more regular, at least until the novelty of me mentioning it wears off (for me) – but despite evidence to the contrary i won’t be appearing with Never tRuSt Hippie at the wall of the death concert in, um, мурманск russia this coming saturday night. but just remember, as i always say… Значит твоё место в СТЕНЕ СМЕРТИ!!!

i listened to the moody blues a lot when i was a kid because of my dad. i think actually that we were both exposed to the moody blues at the same time in our childhoods – he, an impressionable kid when “nights in white satin” was on the airwaves the first time, me about the same age when he started to bring home the remastered CDs in the late 80s.

lets start with the obvious, in case you’re drawing blanks on the moody blues completely. after a flop debut album, the moody blues recruited a symphony orchestra to make a rock version of dvorak’s new world symphony (their label’s idea). the dvorak connection was lost, they ended up making orchestral psychedelic pop songs, and the album “days of future passed” spawned the mega-hit “nights in white satin.” here’s a promo clip for the original 1967 single edit, shot at least partially in paris. i get chills.

Video: The Moody Blues – Nights in White Satin (1967)

they scaled back the orchestral overtones for the following album “in search of the lost chord” and instead upped the hippie factor. yes, its a concept album about trying to find the ‘lost chord’ – i don’t want to ruin the ending but, they do find it, and it turns out to be ‘om.’ despite this vomit-inducing revelation there’s much pop greatness on this record. here they are on the bbc show colour me pop, miming the opening track on the record “ride my see-saw.” its introduced here, as on the record, with a poem.

Video: The Moody Blues – Ride My See-Saw (1968)

gosh they are a handsome bunch. in particular, check out the smooth dance moves of the moustachioed ray thomas, the band’s flutist. and justin hayward busts out a mean guitar solo. the moody blues shared around the songwriting duties in a fairly democratic fashion. never mind the fact that its generally the honey-eyed sickly-sweet ballads of justin hayward that pull focus, its the esoteric contributions from the less pop-idol members of the band that make their records intriguing. check this tribute to timothy leary, also from “in search of the lost chord”, which incidentally is my favourite song featuring my own name in the lyrics:

Video: The Moody Blues – Legend of a Mind (1968)

“a question of balance”, the fourth record, opens with an absolute belter. thats what craig huggins would probably refer to it as. i find this track really curious actually, because its possibly the most forthright and commanding pop song that they’d written to this point – its the moody blues equivalent of ball-tearing, frenzied acoustic strumming, intense orchestral flourishes, and justin hayward getting, like, totally in your face about the world, like:

Why do we never get an answer
When were knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war.

Its where we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need.
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed.

fuck yeah! but the song just dies about half way through, basically they cut and paste a syrupy ballad into its middle. its like taking the heart of a puppy and transplanting it into a dragon – the dragon is weakened, and a perfectly good puppy (that if left alone would probably have been very cute and been doted on by many handsome ladies) is left for dead. you’ll know what i’m talking about – feel free to skip the middle bit:

Video: The Moody Blues – Question (1970)

i could really go on forever here, but go forth and enjoy yourself with the moodies, there’s plenty more surprises for you to uncover in the first four or five albums from the moody catalogue. plenty more stuff on youtube. there are drum breaks to be had for those who are that way inclined. also, one of the moody’s was one of the first mellotron reps and pioneered the use of the instrument live and on these records.

but i leave you with a part of their legacy that unfortunately can’t be denied, and its that they just went off in the 80s, not like pat benatar going off or metallica going off, but like milk going off. innumerable lineup changes and an unhealthy obsession with 80s synths and production techniques led the moodies down a dark path i’m afraid. like jethro tull, basically everything they released in the late 70s and through the 80s sounds like it was written by a team of trained monkeys and recorded in a septic tank. there is one exception to this – an album called “long distance voyager” released in 1981 (the year of my birth – coincidence? i think not) thats probably best described as a guilty pleasure. its a rarity though in that its an early 80s album that doesn’t sound like dick.

but look, the descent into 80s pop balladry and 90s dinosaur band mentality is their true history and i’ll share a bit of it now – the rather hideous “i know you’re out there somewhere” from 1988:

Video: The Moody Blues – I Know You’re Out There Somewhere (1988)

moody blues i love you.

here are just some reasons why this 2 minute live performance of “jacaranda” from 1976 is awesome:

- sailor were a completely nautically themed band. they sang songs about the sea, they played synthesisers which on-stage they built into a contraption they called the ‘Nickelodeon’ (meant to resemble part of a ship), and of course on-stage, and on record covers, they wore stripey shirts and sailors hats.

- the dude is playing a harp

- the dude playing the harp has a tattoo of an anchor on his cheek

all this and the song is incredible. it was originally the b-side to a single of theirs called “girls, girls, girls” – admittedly a lot of their pop singles were pretty disposable, but there are some absolute gem instrumentals, including this track which i think may have been some kind of cult hit in germany.

click here to watch a couple of more clips from this 1976 performance in southend, and click here to learn more about sailor and their nickolodeon.

sailor.